Phenomenology of Enlightened Experience

As everyone may knows the practice of phenomenology is to describe in detail one's experience without judgment while attempting to eliminate presuppositions.

This thread is to explore the nature of lived experience of both enlightened people and those on the path. One thing that Shinzen Young mentions in 'The Science of Enlightenment' is that he has not seen the great masters be willing to openly discuss their experiences (of life) with each other in the same way that scientists openly discuss their theories and experiments. He mentions that many of them have a lot to lose, there are elaborate support systems built around them, etc.

There is also the danger in any kind of discussion like this of misunderstanding, due to the intrinsic difficulty of translating non-dual experiences and realization into linguistic structures. From my point of view, this does not mean that it should not be attempted, though it may mean a lot of working through statements and clarifying.

The other danger is, of course, that in describing one's experience it might yield judgments regarding one's level of development on the part of others. Coupled with the danger of misunderstanding, this could prove frustrating for some people.

I decided to post this thread when I became aware of my own hesitancy to describe the fact that I still had embodied experience vis a vis 'seeing through the first person perspective,' which was not so much 'seen through' as deeply and actively participated in with a blending of subject object orientation. I wondered 'Well how do others experience this? Do they 'see through' embodied experience in the same way that I've seen through ego identification? Does this mean that I'm not as far along as I thought? If I say that I don't see through it, but rather live it deeply, will people believe that my level of realization is superficial?'

Continued...

Once I became aware of these thoughts, I knew I had to say something '“ for after all, if I really had missed something, and was 'not as far along as I thought,' then it would be better to know, than to keep quiet '“ that is, in fact, l part of the purpose of participating here.

The other reason for this thread, aside from helping people with self diagnosis, and with rigorously examining their experience is as a kind of experiment - do people with high degrees of realization have similarly structured experiences? In what way are they different.

I'll begin by describing what I remember of how things seemed before... and then a bit of how I experience things now.
You guys are welcome to comment and tear things apart. I'm not worried about it.
D

Prior to the structure of my consciousness changing deeply, I was a pretty troubled person. The changes happened when I was a teenager after doing extensive meditation and other practices

I was an intellectual, and considered "weird" by many of my peers. I completely identified with my thoughts and thinking. I had a constant inner monologue that commented on everything that was happening. The thoughts had a definite location as did where I located my "self" - all that seemed to take place literally inside my head. I lived in a world of material objects that were cold and dead - a materialistic universe.

I was alexithymic - literally (and officially diagnosed with this - one reason I hate the idea of AF). I was unaware of my feelings, and denied that I had them, though I experienced anger, shame, and guilt often enough, as well as deep angst. I had a limited emotional range and capacity for empathy most of the time. I felt contempt for most people and the shallow lives they seemed to lead. I felt that I could not truly understand the inner world of another human, and they could not understand mine. I was acutely aware of the limitations of language and felt that those considerations could never be overcome, no one would ever be able to truly know me, or understand me.

I worried intensely about what other's thought of me. I did not trust my impressions of other people and their reactions - I felt I could not truly know, and that these impressions were psychological projections on my part.

I listened to music in an intellectual manner - not truly getting into it, I was completely unaware of the intuitive "vibe" of situations, or how to flow with them.

Existential issues dominated my experience of life. I was filled with anxiety at the thought of my own death. I wondered if there was a God. I despaired at the utter meaninglessness of everything - not only my life...

but I also despaired at the meaninglessness of human life in general - the cold uncaring universe I perceived, the depravity and utter mediocrity of human nature, and the utter isolation of being totally and completely alone. I was overwhelmed by the thought that I could choose to do absolutely anything - I was completely free. There was no direction, no purpose - what should I do?

I was deeply lonely, with no hope of easing this. I often said to myself "Life sucks, and then you die."
Depression was an almost constant part of my emotional world... and at times I thought of suicide to end the pain of existence (though I never acted on this).

Hey, David, it takes guts to open up like this.I respect that. I'm anxious to see the next part... what it's like for you now. I'd like to compare notes.

Hey Dave!

Thanks for sharing - guts indeed! A very well articulated account of the plight of the human condition, one of so many variations thereof - one of isolated suffering in apparent exile from life itself - the pain of the existential alone-ness, persistent dissatisfaction with experience and emotional numbness; with a necessary spiraling deterioration in well-being and heightened personal distress.

I look forward to hearing about the phenomenological changes, their apparent triggers, and present experience.

Great stuff!!

In kind regards,

Adam.

Before I dive into this, some prefatory comments are in order: Through some hard work, luck, and a smidgen of chemistry, I had a series of mystical experiences which permanently and radically altered the structure of my consciousness (for the better). In my experience, most spiritual experiences do not cause permanent change, and most are rather, in the final analysis, well, both meaningless and useless. These were a major exception. I'm not going to focus on the content of those experiences, because in some ways, the actual content is not as important as their effects. The permanent changes were effected in three ways as far as I can tell: 1 Their were concrete cognitive changes that imply to me Right hemisphere activation. These changes were the most trivial, and least noticeable by me, but they did occur. All of the sudden, I could do mathematics, something I had found impossible from an early youth. My ability to play chess took a quantum leap and there is no doubt that I added about 500 points in less than a year. I comprehended mathematics now in terms of spacial relationships. Shinzen Young reports similar cognitive changes. 2. The experiences conferred profound insights about the nature of reality that were comprehended simultaneously on a gut, emotional, and intellectual level. Some of the process of creating permanent changes had to do with integrating these insights, which were implicitly understood to be true, into my worldview, radically altering my worldview to accommodate these insights, and otherwise working out the consequences. 3. I seemed to have developed new faculties and capacities, and there was some work done in learning how to use them. Less like suddenly gaining vision when one had been blind from birth, and more like having blinders one had worn from birth removed.

One more point - many of the things I found most impressive at the time when these things were first discovered are not nearly as important to me now, and some things I barely noticed or thought about have become some of the main features. It was very difficult to remember what it had been like before all this...

Primary insight #1: "All is One. Void contains All. "I" am Void." or "Oh, My, God!! Everything has the same Inside!!!"
Without going into the details of what I now believe were fruition experiences, the above were the take home points.

Boom. Down came crashing the gates of isolation. I wasn't what I thought I had been. "I" was part of Everything. Everything was part of me. The universe was no longer cold and dead, but living, interested, and in intimate relationship with me, teeming with primordial sentience. Not only was the universe at large experienced this way, but every single thing within it as well, each forming it's own universe and sentient reality. The whole idea of "everything has a spirit" believed by some tribal people, was no longer a metaphor...

One of the most interesting cognitive changes was that I was no longer focussed on the inner monologue. I still had it, but I no longer identified with my thoughts. In fact, I *knew* I wasn't my thoughts - beyond any shadow of a doubt. "Cogito ergo sum" became an obvious absurdity. Furthermore, significantly, I could turn off the inner monologue at will. I could spend pretty long periods without any verbal thinking (and can to this day - like up to an hour if focussed) - which is not to say that I don't have some proto-cognitions that would become thoughts if allowed, but could suppress even those up to five minutes with complete mental silence. Prior to that I had struggled to get seconds with no thinking during meditation to my immense frustration. Now it was easy

Now that I didn't identify my thoughts, and had the ability to not even pay attention to them when they were not interesting, that freed up a lot of RAM space to pay attention to other things.

For one thing, a lot of what I had considered to be psychological projections were seen to be intuitions about the nature of things. I could see pretty clearly where I was projecting, and what parts were basic perceptions of the universe at large. You know how you perceive your car as having a personality - maybe it even looks sad sometimes if you don't change the oil? That's real. All things in this world have their Sambokakaya aspect - that's what's meant by everything having a spirit. As bizarre as it sounds, even inanimate objects have feelings, and if you don't relate to them correctly you can hurt those feelings - even more so for living things. (And yes, I know it sounds crazy...)

So now I saw the universe as alive and sentient and part of me - and so were other people. I felt like the boy who lived in the bubble had suddenly had his space suit ripped off. I was definitely NO LONGER alexithymic.

Rather I was intensely aware of my emotions - but I was not attached to them any more than my thoughts. Not only did I experience my emotions intensely, I experienced *other peoples* emotions - directly. Sure, I was also much more attuned to social cueing in a way that I had never been before, being rather self involved, but now - I didn't have to even look at someone to know directly how they felt. I didn't always know *why* they felt the way they did - that was still subject to some misinterpretation or projection if I wasn't careful - but *what* they felt was intuitively obvious.

I couldn't read minds (though this has happened very rarely over the years while in states of intense rapport and concentration), and I didn't have access to the memories, knowledge, or embodied experience of anyone else - which was actually a bit baffling to me initially as I "knew myself to be God and Everything," but other's emotions I experienced as my own. Not only that, but I could observe the effects of my empathy upon the other parties emotions in real time. One interesting thing I noticed was that this perception had always been the case - I had just never paid attention to it, or rejected it, or refused to trust it - it was in the background awareness all along.

I wasn't too interested in "David" anymore - that person had been terribly self-involved, deluded, and blind to many things. He just wasn't nearly as interesting as everything else going on (though he had been my obsession before). Other people, were actually a lot more interesting - even the ones I'd had contempt for!!

Now I had compassion for everyone - I found myself feeling sorry for the "popular kids" whom I had detested so much.

I remember back then (I was 18) it had been very difficult for me to ask girls out - I would have to work myself up to it over days, and then would feel intense pain if rejected. I would feel embarrassed and ashamed, and replay the scenario over and over in my mind - avoid the girl, etc.
One day, I was walking down the hallway of my school, and I passed this girl whom I sensed (knew) in that moment, was strongly attracted to me. There had been hints of it before, but there was the knowledge at that time that this had been brewing for a while, and I had been too oblivious to catch on. She was from a different crowd - a bit preppy and conservative. Back then, I dressed like a beatnik - all black, wrap around sunglasses, wooden beads. Without thinking I approached

and I asked her if she's like to go to a music show I had tickets to.

Her eyes lit up.
As fortune would have it, some of her (less tolerant) friends walked up right at that moment. She affected a sneer, and responded with an insult which left no doubt about whether she'd be going to the show with the likes of me
I involuntarily cocked an eyebrow and she looked down. I could feel her wither inside as she struggled to steel her face, her grief at losing this chance, causing the one she secretly admired (me) pain, and intense shame at her own cowardice - all while the other girls laughed.

There was a time when I would have been deeply contemptuous of this young lady's hypocrisy, and angry at her for failing to be true to herself, and ragefull at the clique of friends that could so determine who she liked or did not. I would have been hurt and embarrassed, and I'm sure I would have hung onto it for weeks.

I did feel a brief flush of embarrassment which passed through me and disappeared. Instead of all those things, I found myself thinking of the girl - trying to figure out how to make it less awkward for her - feeling very sorry for the unfortunate timing and the pain this was obviously causing her all while understanding that her pride would be unable to let me console her directly. I felt sorry for each of the girls in the clique, who were deeply insecure, and deeply afraid of rejection or slander... and I gracefully exited, and I did not think about it for the rest of the day. In fact, the rest of my day continued to be wonderful - just as that one moment was seen in it's poignant beauty.

I could go on and on about this. All of the sudden, my relationship with my parents, which had been deeply conflicted, was instantly transformed. All of the sudden I could completely understand their perspective, and while I felt that their values were deeply misguided their love was real.

I did my best to test this perceived new capacity for emotion rationally and found, that yes, just as I thought, I could read people like a book and understand their perspective without even trying - with uncanny accuracy. This persists to this day and is a great help in my work. I'm also a fantastic poker player - but I don't enjoy playing poker or taking other people's money very much, even though it's easy for me.

The same sort of merging of subject and object (with some polarization - though sometimes complete merging occurs) is part and parcel of this emotional capacity - other people are felt to be a part of me in a real, literal sense. The things I'm holding feel like a direct extension of my hand. I feel the music and flow of situations. I can dance (I danced like a whilte kid before). Incidentally my musical abilities took a quantum leap as well - I could improvise and play by ear with no problem now (on pretty much any stringed instrument) when formerly that had seemed an unfathomable mystery. I'm still not the most technically accomplished musician, but I have soul, and I can crank out some tunes.

I didn't obsess over what people thought of me anymore - I could read their reactions to me in real time and interact appropriately - and I could also read the personal distortions they brought to the relationship.

Most importantly, the existential dilemmas I had struggled with were simply no longer an issue. They were seen to be non-issues - they *never were* a problem. The "David" I had been, didn't exist any longer - *and he never had!* Everything could be seen as meaningless - light, airy, or infinitely meaningful. I saw how meaning was spontaneously created and enacted (by me) - I didn't *need* for it to be meaningful. There was no longer any anxiety about my personal death - in fact, in a strange way, that made everything more exciting.

I could see and feel all the good in the world, and all the evil and suffering - and how taken all together, it was inexpressibly beautiful. This next part is going to not make sense - while I could feel the suffering of every living creature, and feel the pain they experienced as my own - I do not suffer from it.

A few loose ends to wrap up before I call it a night:

Linear time is seen though - I experience one long moment that has never stopped except for cessations and bardos like sleep. When I remember something, or envision the future, that is seen as an aspect of the present moment. My consciousness is not perceived to be contained within my head, but is non-local - it's not anywhere (though sometimes I imagine it's in the sky).

That's all I can do tonight - more tomorrow if I think of anything...

"There was no longer any anxiety about my personal death"

Yeah, I still don't fully grasp this curious fear of death that seems to stalk western culture. Perhaps it really is hype, influenced by existentialist writing and thinking, and so on. People don't seem to grasp, that there are two real options - if your dead, and you litterally cease to exist, you won't know it, since there is no one that exists any longer to know it or freak out - no great blackness; and if you continue on in some form, fine, your not really dead, then are you! As to being denied the good life, by death, well... whose good life would that be, exactly?? ;-P But I digress...

Ongoing, eternal suffering in some kind of unending hell is an absurdity; and worrying about a future death, that by definition has not happened yet, and is subject to the previous possibilities, is foolish at best. Fear of a painful death, is of course, entirely rational - which is more acurately presented as fear of acute pain and suffering - and that may or may not involve death - so we are all subject to that possibility at any time - but that is somehow missed, or suppressed, at least. So that is not a popular phobia, curiously. Death, in such a way, is likely to be short and sweet, at least at the very end - which is distinct from a painful and slow deterioration - for which there are often, but not always, options.

So, in conclusion, as per the famous Greek question - is death a harm to the one who dies? No. I guess expecting an irrational fear to be responsive to rational reasoning is too much, however, cognitive interventions work on that principle, amongst others. Perhaps it is more about a fundamental intuition - following from view - knowing - and reasoning is merely besides the point? Similar to what you've been pointing to, Dave. But that is just me...

Great stuff Dave! So this change mostly took place around 18?

"
Great stuff Dave! So this change mostly took place around 18?"

Yep, and I'm not sure what other period of my life I would have found this amount of time to meditate. I was pretty bored with school, I didn't study, and I boycotted homework. That gave me time to meditate 3-5 hours every day from the age of 15 - it's pretty clear I went through a dark night period, and had my first life changing experience around 18 - these continued to evolve for another year when I was a freshman in college.

Yeah - I think the thing with my personal death was more along the Heidegger lines of a personal eschatology - an absolute time limit. Heidegger claimed that when we consider our own death, the mood of anxiety is present because it becomes immediately obvious how we are failing to be ourselves. Something like that - the thought that I could die tomorrow, or the next five minutes, and that's all there was, I found pretty heinous. After the experiences it was clear that the part of me that was most important, the universe at large, would carry on just fine after my death.

Probably here is a good time to talk about how I framed the experiences. At the time I was certainly influenced by Zen, as well as Taoism. But there was no understanding that the Zen masters were literally enlightened in the way the Buddha was. I thought they were deeply intuitive and spiritual beings who had worked things out existentially - but literal enlightenment - as far as I knew, that was mythological. So, it certainly occurred to me that I had become enlightened - but I didn't jump on board with that. A very judicious and disciplined use of psychedelics every few months was part of my program - and I was very proactive about thinking critically about my experiences as I *really* did not want to go insane.

I also knew that if I declared myself "enlightened", people would think I was crazy.

More importantly, people who had power over my life would think I was crazy. That would lead to unpleasant experiences that might impact me for a long time, I reasoned. So I decided to not be "out with it."

More likely, I continued to reason, I was just so screwed up before, that this was the normal reality most people experienced - even if they weren't aware of it fully. (I'm realizing as I write this, that that doesn't make much sense). The thing that made me believe that was that a. I was a lot more unhappy than most prior to the experiences. b. most people seemed to have learned to integrate their emotional experience better than I had prior to the experiences. c. I realized that all these perceptions had been taking place under the surface all along, but that I was so identified with my thinking that I couldn't pay attention to them. Ergo, most people had grasped this stuff and it was a normal part of their existence - that's why they seemed happy and got along with other people.

Now if I had really thought about it, there were definitely some discrepancies with that viewpoint, but I had always been a little different from others anyway, and had some capacities other people did not - so I explained it away that way.

I actually had no desire to pursue further spiritual insight - the fundamental questions had been answered - but I was still interested in the nature of reality, and metaphysical stuff, meditation, etc - so I got very interested in magick at this point, mostly from an intellectual level - I wanted to figure out how it worked, because I found it fascinating - and so I went on a 20 something year tangent into that stuff.

When I entered into a debate with Alan and Duncan over the possibility of enlightenment, I never would have guessed I would have wound up here. At some point I offered my opinion that most spiritual experiences were worthless...

"
When I entered into a debate with Alan and Duncan over the possibility of enlightenment, I never would have guessed I would have wound up here. At some point I offered my opinion that most spiritual experiences were worthless..."

(I had had many such experiences since all that as side effects of working magick) -and Duncan said something like "Oh yeah - well have you ever had a fruition?" I had to look it up.

Yep - I had had those - those were the one's that I had when I was 18. And now I was forced to admit that the pursuit of mystical spirituality actually could lead to "persistent changes in the structure of consciousness."

When they suggested I was enlightened or partly enlightened, I was actually a bit horrified, and not a little bit upset
Enlightenment is for pussies in my crowd. Plus it meant that most people probably experienced reality similarly to how I did before the experiences - and that *sucked*.

More in a bit.

"and that *sucked*."

Lol! Suck it does!!

Interesting contextual stuff to Buddhist practice generally, and Rigpa non-dual, non-practice specifically. Would you say the more recent "mystical spirituality" life-stage has had further structural changes in consciousness / apprehension of reality?

Lovin it!

" Would you say the more recent "mystical spirituality" life-stage has had further structural changes in consciousness / apprehension of reality?

"

Honestly, no not really. I mean, I've still got it, if that's what you mean. It's easy for me to meditate for well, as long as I like. I can't do the full lotus anymore for very long though.

Everything is exactly the same. When all that happened, the existential crisis was solved, I'd experienced Ultimate Reality - there just wasn't any more need to seek, which is why I started concerning myself with more practical applications for the concentrative technologies. I mean sure, there is no *need* to do anything, but why not anyway - why not make your reality really cool, for both the pure beauty and for the other people in your life - it's making Art.

I guess in a way it's made me reconsider those realizations and to bring them into the foreground of my awareness again, to stop taking them for granted.

Since I've been around these forums I've focussed more on understanding what's happened to me from a theoretical orientation rather than plunging back into practice. A lot of it has been spend trying to make sure I've left nothing undone (e.g. - where I am on the map). I'm still figuring out what the deal is.

I'm trying to think what else is my normal awareness - I think I resonate with Shinzen Young's description of shifting back and forth between formless experience and mundane identity/considerations many times a second. I have a concrete experience of Qi or energy - while I may intellectually question it's existence, the experience of it seems very real. I can access deep states of trance in seconds, and I can do open-handed magick pretty much on demand.

(Note: I'm getting pretty burnt on posting - so after this one it's someone else's turn, to either describe their reality and changes or make comments, or ask questions)

One issue is, that since I didn't do this within the context of any tradition, I developed my own idiosyncratic metaphors and terminology for thinking about it. I used to think of the way I experienced reality is a constant state of "Flow" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) - really trying to find a way to express non-dual experience. I also use musical metaphors a lot.

No - no real self that I can put my thumb on - most of the time that sort of thing doesn't come up for me anyway. Definitely an embodied experience - and there's one guy who figures prominently with this one particular body. I'm not sure what the deal is with that - but I can tell you I'm not *not* controlling him either - I'm an expression of a creative process. The time thing could be expressed another way as well - not just the "there is only now," but also "we're always experiencing past present and future all at once, but they are all mutably changing all the time."
I don't completely buy into the "everything is appearance" model - in that case, then everything might as well be real. I do see that the fundamental underlying reality - the common inside - transcends individual forms. I side on the everything is infinitely important camp.

Sources of confusion: What is meant by "experiencing emptiness in real time"? I might know what that means, but then again, I have no idea. Also - what is the Dhamma eye?

How would I know if I was really seeing things "as they are?"

I share just a few of the things you've posted, David:

1. I think I'm a process. A unique view of a commonly accepted universe. I'm also non-local as of late in that I seem to be in the place that depends on where my attention is focused. It's been kind of freaking me out but maybe it's okay, huh? I'm certainly not free of my body but it's not THE locus of everything as it was once upon a time, which was actually just a few weeks ago.

2. I can track and "read" other people, with uncanny accuracy, in real time. It's a kind of empathy on steroids.

3. I used to obsess, literally go bonkers, over the thought that I would fail - fail publicly at some task or be perceived to fail at some task. I have a visible job in which I'm responsible for publishing industry information on a regular basis to Wall Street firms, economists, analysts, CEOs, blah, blah, blah. I used to agonize over it. That agony, the projections, the fear, the worry, all of that is gone. It was that fear that lead me to this practice. It was perceived as PAIN. Major, unrelenting and obessive PAIN that would literally take over my life for long periods of time. Days. Weeks! I WAS that pain.

4. I don't BS myself much. I know that I'm a walking bundle of unbelievable nonsense. Jabbering thoughts. Weird glandular urges. Fantasies that put me at the top of the heap, make me the best, ruin people I don't like. It goes on and on.

5. Control - I have none. Don't really make decisions. Don't attend to the vast majority of what goes on in my universe, phyically can't anyway, and it all goes on without me and I rationalize it after the fact.

Grain of Salt Disclaimer: much, if not all, of what I just described could be wishful thinking, the product of aging and experience, illusion, insanity or something entirely unrelated to my practice.

Hey Dave!

"I'd experienced Ultimate Reality - there just wasn't any more need to seek"

From all that you've said, it is starting to sound like a completion of 4th path, way back when, at 18; as per Kenneth's definition.

I suspect you have that sense too. Right? To have that sense, I think is perfectly harmless, and not a pompous claim to enlightenment (as secretly reveled in by ego identification), as I see it. However, we can also see there is a difference in 4th path energetic completion and the realization of Rigpa, as per Kenneth's recent clarifications.

We have recently spoken of Rigpa, so those experiences of phenomenological shift in 'view' - as per noticing the periphery of awareness - are more recent, or is it rather that they were recognized for having been ongoing throughout past experience also?

'emptiness in real-time': real-time present moment apprehension of insubstantiality of ego and phenomena - non-identification with an Atman-like independent object-self, relating to other independent objects of reality - rather, the direct apprehension of the play of process - which is insubstantial, and thus by definition, empty.

Your reference to experiences reality as process may cover this. I'd love to hear from Kenneth regarding this point.

In kind regards,

Adam. Edited for clarity.

David,
Wonderful posts! Thanks for sharing with us your experiences and insights. Many of us recognize these from our own lives, including the permanent transformations. But the fact that your began at age 18 is really something special.

Much could be said or asked about specifics, but I'll limit myself to one question. What do you mean by:
"I can do open-handed magick pretty much on demand."

Is this manipulation of natural energies? Influencing the perceputual systems of other people? Or something else?

Regards,
Gozen

Hey Guys,
I'll take Adam's questions first:
"From all that you've said, it is starting to sound like a completion of 4th path, way back when, at 18; as per Kenneth's definition."

It's beginning to look that way, and I didn't mean to sound cavalier about the "ultimate reality" thing (though that is sort of how I thought of it). I'm not quite ready to state that definitively yet. Part of the reason for hanging out on these forums has been to figure that out. To summarize, I pretty much feel whole and have all my existential questions answered, but if there's any more to come, I want it, given how liberating it was for me at the time.

It should be noted that none of this makes me a perfect person or super-human by any means which I could go into great detail about. But I am happy.

I'd provisionally agree with Rigpa as a kind of 5th path that doesn't seem to have much to do with other aspects of psycho-spiritual development. Interestingly I encountered it, or manifestations of it when I was recovering from the entity attack thing and feeling that I had to rewire my neural circuitry - I kept seeking sensations of clarity, and this seemed to be very healing. I didn't really understand it's significance at the time - as you say, it's the simplest thing.

Chris,

Very interesting! Let's take this point by point. We have some stuff to talk about. How clear are you on formations and what they are? Can you identify them in your own experience?

Ok more point by point on Chris's comments:
1. If you think about it, it doesn't make sense to think about consciousness having a "location" - it may be related to the notion of "space" itself though. Not only does it not have a location, but it's not really unique to "you". It's totally ok. It always was like this, actually, but you just thought of it being limited to your body, so you experienced it that way. You can actually change your experience of it - contract it to a point, make it real big, confine it to your hand, put it outside your body, put it in a plant (sometimes you get information about the plant that way), or something else. Play with it.
2. "Empathy on steroids" (!) I love it! Yes! I highly recommend that you read Adyashanti's "The End of Your World" - I just read it, and wish I had had it way back when. This has become less overwhelming to me over the years. One thing Adyashanti says is "You don't have to experience everyone's emotions. You don't have to feel the emotions of people walking down the street you don't know." Excellent point. You can choose not to. Also it's very important to set boundaries - you have to accept that people suffer, and that you can't help everyone. You'll go crazy trying. Ultimately, people have their own crosses to bear. *But* this is still a pretty cool ability and can greatly increase your enjoyment of life. Try out how it works with animals - and then plants - and then after you've done that, inanimate objects. I know it sounds weird, but trust me. Plants will tell you what they want, or rather, you just know. I recommend a very old inanimate object to start with that you can handle - just try to feel empathy for it -see what you get back (usually information about it's history - this is the beginning of clairvoyance). This has some practical application