Ultimate awareness (ICA)

This is being jarred into awareness of everything going on in one's life and in the world around; as though one were frozen in a state of lucidity, standing outside of one's self observing everything going on inside. There is a sense of having one's eyelids permanently sewn open – no matter how hard one might try to rid one's self of this heightened awareness, it just won't go away. It may compared to a condemned man on his way to the gallows who finds it hard to fall asleep.

A dimension of this experience is a sense of awe, that is fear and fascination. One wonders how much more one can stand it and often longs to return to a life where things were simple and one was not so aware of what was happening; and also wonders if one's mind is playing tricks on one. At the same time there is the intriguing question of what it would mean to embrace this consciousness forever, and one experiences an exhilarating kind of liveliness that sustains in everything one does.

In the midst of this experience, people look straight at the real situation, yearning to communicate their lucidity with others as though they had a deep secret to share. They sense they know what truth is like – they have seen it, heard it, felt it, tasted it or touched it; and this creates a sense of freedom to pursue what has been revealed.

This state is number 17 in the ICA Other World in the midst of this World.