The Only Unmediated Experience You Ever Know

Main Entry: un·me·di·at·ed
Function: adjective
Date: 1648

: not mediated : not communicated or transformed by an intervening agency

Every experience you have, every feeling, every emotion, every impression is mediated. When you touch a cool piece of smooth metal, all information regarding that experience is passed to you through your sense of touch and a comparison between the state of your flesh and the state of the object. That sensation then passes through a layer of filters composed of your past experiences, and knowledge. Before anything gets to your conscious awareness it has been filtered, digested, categorized and defined by some set of mediating agencies.

Even the thoughts in your head have their origins, and interpretations, within the mediating circumstances of your past experiences, psychological back drop, and current situation.

The actual you, the pure awareness of all objects, never receives any impressions without passing through, and being mediated by, your central nervous system at the very least. Most experiences will also pass through your checkpoints of cultural definitions, past knowledge, learned reaction, and gut instinct. Nothing gets into your awareness unless it has passed through this host of mediators, and the distinct experience is changed & interpreted by each along the way.

There is only one thing, one experience that occurs for the basic awareness that you are, that ever comes to you without mediation. The one thing that is purely known, without filters, without alteration, is that you are. Everything else is changed to one degree, or another, before it gets to your conscious awareness. The only pure sensation available to you, ever, is the raw fact that you exist. You know that purely, without doubt, and previous too all occasions which arise. You are. That simple truth is the only truth you have.

In the path of Self-Inquiry it is said that all problems in life, whatsoever, have as their origin a mistaken identification with something other than the actual self. In other words, taking a mediated experience to be what you truly are. The act of getting in touch with the unmediated experience of being, whenever possible, slowly erodes the mistaken identification with any experience, or ideal, that is outside of the pure awareness that we really are. To put it another way, anything which you can find, and identity, is categorically an object (because you can see it) and therefore not the pure subject, which is you.

By the simple act of repeatedly stopping all activity, and turning awareness at the raw experience of being, the disease of false identification is eroded, and finally cured. It is akin to taking a medicine. We don't necessarily know all the ins & outs of what the medicine is doing to us, we just know that it works. By taking a few seconds, whenever it occurs to you to do so, and turning full attention to what it feels like to be, all false identification will fade over time. And then, you will still have all of your mediated experiences, but just without being invested in their outcome by the mistake of thinking that you are them.

That is the path, and the aim, of self-inquiry.