If we want to be totally honest, all we immediately know in our experiences is the experience itself, our self in other words. We ARE are own experience. Everything else we experience is “mediated” knowledge or awareness OF: awareness of the divine, of the rock, of everything — which in no way defines the true nature of the divine, the rock, or anything else. By the very nature of the reflexive mechanism of the mind, consciousness’ first knowledge or experience is itself; only secondarily is it a knowledge or experience of something other than itself. Thus while the self-experience defines consciousness, it cannot define the true nature of anything else or the true nature of what it experiences.
Bernadette Roberts
