During a contemplative practice, you’re asked to notice your breath.
Then…you’re asked to notice yourself noticing your breath. But who is noticing that?

This question points toward a profound realization: there exists a dimension of you that eludes definitive articulation…a presence that transcends thoughts, emotions and actions, yet is foundational to your very being.

This is the Imaginal "I".

Deeply understanding this will reveal profound insights about the nature of consciousness and your place in reality. Let’s begin:

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The Subjective Knower
What is it that you can never quite point to, yet it underpins all you know and experience?

At the foundation of your experience lie two fundamental modes of knowing that shape how you engage with reality:

Participatory Knowing:
This is how you "know" through your deep engagement with the world. It’s not just thinking; it’s knowing by being an integral part of the patterns and principles of reality.

Participatory knowing manifests through three interrelated dimensions:

• The interplay between mind and body

• The fusion of your embodied existence with the world

• Your interconnectedness with other beings

When you "know" in this way, you do not simply understand a principle abstractly; you participate in its unfolding. A skilled musician, for instance, does not merely know music theoretically but participates in it, embodying its flow emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Perspectival Knowing:
Imagine the unique "lens" through which you see the world…your perspective. It shapes your experiences but also limits them.

Your perspective provides the shape and structure of your experience. While not a literal geometric shape, it creates an ever-present paradigm through which you perceive everything. This isn't just about what you see, it's about how you're positioned to see anything at all.

Where participatory and perspectival knowing intersect, you discover something remarkable:
You don’t merely experience this intersection,,,you come from it.

It’s the origin of our sense of self.

This is reflected in everyday language when you ask someone, "Where are you coming from?".
The question points to more than a physical location…it indicates the source of our perspective and understanding.

Yet, when you try to grasp this origin…it slips away.

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Tracing Consciousness to Its Source (Atman)
When you attempt to locate your consciousness, you encounter a peculiar challenge:
You cannot stand outside yourself to point at the source of your awareness.

Why?

Because the moment you try to point at it, you're already viewing from a new position.

However, this apparent limitation reveals something profound:

• You can trace a trajectory of awareness moving "backward" toward its source

• This trajectory isn't moving through physical space but through the structure of consciousness itself

• What you discover isn't a "thing" you can point to, because anything pointable-to would already be an object of awareness…not awareness itself

• You arrive at a sense of a "no-thingness" from which our awareness emerges—what you might call the ground of consciousness

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Penetrating the Nature of Reality (Brahman)
Conversely, you can do imaginal projection into the world. This involves:

• Examining the immediate patterns you observe (e.g. the room you're in including chair, table etc.)

• Looking behind these patterns to discover deeper organizing principles (e.g. the atomic structures of the chair, table etc.)

• Continuing this investigation until you reach another kind of "no-thingness"—the ground from which all phenomena emerge

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The Convergence of Paths
The inward and outward paths illuminate a profound unity. The inward path reveals what Immanuel Kant called the "transcendental ground"…transcendental meaning the ultimate structures of possibility that make your knowing possible.

The outward path discloses the transcendent ground of what can be known (the transcendent ground of what is knowable of reality).

These are not identical, yet they form a unity…a "non-identical oneness".
It is in this unity that we uncover the primordial interpenetration between:

• knowing

• being known

• and being

This unity is best understood through the ancient Greek concept of "symbolon"…not our modern notion of a symbol, but the original meaning: two distinct elements that perfectly fit together, revealing their essential belonging-together.

Engaging with this insight is not merely an intellectual exercise…it invites a reorientation of being.