Dear friends, the "higher awareness" realized by all (serious) followers of esotericism is completely different from the "common man's awareness"...

Higher, enlightened, awareness is direct, "extra-intellectual" apprehension of Reality.

Awareness freed (from personal distorting mechanisms) first perceives itself as part of a Greater Objective Reality: as a center of awareness of the Universal Objective... (not that it is identified with or absorbed into the All).

This Greater Perception includes, but transcends, the physical world.

Information from the physical world passes through the mental mechanisms unprocessed, (without reference to an ego, without mental analysis, without perceptual distortion): It is perceived from the physical world, simply, for what it is.

Such an awareness experiences only the now (and is not dispersed in the imagination of tomorrow and the memory of yesterday)...

The unenlightened awareness of the ordinary man works quite differently.

In principle awareness does not function as autonomous awareness, but only through the distorting personal mechanisms.

All information refers to the ego and is related to the ego. This is a complex process that requires time (even if minimal): This is how the first distortion manifests itself and everything becomes "subjective".

It manifests, in addition, not only the primary intellectual perception that subjectivizes, but also mental activity, thinking, imagination, memory, and continuous processing of information, to be encoded, categorized, etc...

A continuous selective intake of natural events is also manifested.

An unenlightened awareness tries to transfer all information to the ego and relate it to the ego and thus subjectivizes everything... Even the metaphysical experience of a higher awareness, it tries to refer to the ego, it subjectivizes it, and because it cannot "conceive" outside the subject, it believes that "no one can"... (But this is not what Aristotle's Logic says...)...

Dear friends, all (serious) followers of esotericism practiced some practices, precisely to overcome personal distortion mechanisms (ego, intellect, selective perception)... Examples:

The Christian hesychasts speak precisely of the control and overcoming of the three kinds of reasoning, the complex-emotional, the human, and the "angelic," (corresponding precisely to the three mechanisms we mentioned, selective perception, mental commentary, and obsession in the ego), to reach the liberated, pure mind: Only the pure mind can perceive the Greater Spiritual Reality, God... God Is A Living Reality In Which We "commune"... With the inner path in it the higher awareness we reach until the final Union with God...

Buddhists, in principle, perform the external dhyanas precisely to neutralize the processes, samjna, samskara, vijnana, (corresponding exactly to the three mechanisms we mentioned, selective perception, mental commentary, and ego-obsession), and to reach a higher awareness of a wider reality... With the inner samappatis they transcend the three states of higher awareness to reach the Asamskrita (Uncreated) State, realizing the final nirvana...

And in all other religions they practice similar practices and reach the same results...

The bottom line, dear friends, is that we are talking about "An Underlying Greater Objective Reality" that to be "revealed" to our own awareness our awareness must be freed from personal, distorting mechanisms...

What We Realize is "a Transcendental State"... and from here True Life begins...

All the great teachers, such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Plato, Plotinus, and others, showed the way...

Whoever wants follows...

A Note...

Awareness is what we all have: we realize that we exist, that we are here, that we live...

But this awareness in us works in a limited way, through an ego-center, mental commentary, selective perception, etc...

Our enlightenment, our liberation from these mechanisms, shifts our awareness to a center different from the ego (to a higher perception of individuality...)... which, because it is free, is connected to the Greater Universal Awareness...

This higher awareness because it is precisely a center of awareness (individuality) of the Universal, participates in Objective Reality (Revealed Here), as far as it can in principle... As awareness expands, also removing the internal limiting mechanisms of the new individuality us, so widens the awareness of the Universal, until our complete transformation, until complete deification....

In the present phase awareness is connected to the brain which is a phenomenon of life, which emerged with organization, from inorganic matter... which in the background is not the solid matter that we see with the eyes, but energy... which somewhere else has its source...

When awareness is freed from the personal mechanisms (which have a complete correspondence to brain functions), it participates in something else, outside the brain: It is also here (connected to the brain) and not here, as a center of awareness of the Universal, the Objective. .. (This is why I say that the "topology of God" is a pseudo-problem... since God also reveals himself in our own awareness, which is connected to the brain, and Transcends it...)...

Such awareness can survive separation from the body (death)...

And all cognitions survive within the Underlying Reality, participating in various degrees of awareness, from full awareness, to non-awareness... and this is the real meaning of metaphysical worlds, heaven, hell, etc... they are degrees of awareness... of God...

Finally, "how" and "why" Awareness, which is activity, energy, (a Transcendent Mind, corresponding to our own limited mind) is "transformed" into creation, nature and emerges again from nature back to its Self ... these are far from the present discussion... And Plato and Plotinus and Hegel and other philosophers have tried to talk about them... It remains for the rest of us to verify these "theories" or reject... however, we cannot ignore them...