After this initial experience of cessation, it is possible to be the absolute reality and to have pure consciousness arise without ceasing to be the absolute reality. Consciousness arises inseparably from the emptiness. This happens when there is awareness of manifestations, of the forms arising within the consciousness. Thoughts arise, and you see the whole world as a bubble and everything as images reflected in the walls of the bubble. Some teachings refer to this perception as the great sphere, the totality that contains the whole universe. This also leads some traditions to say that this world is a dream. The world appears ephemeral, like a hologram. But this is not because the world is not real, but because we are seeing the world inseparably from its absolute ground, the nonbeing of consciousness. We can arrive at this true perception of reality through many routes. If we arrive through the heart, we are burned with passion. If we arrive through the mind, we are eviscerated with clarity. We feel absolutely clean, so clean that we don’t recognize ourselves. We are so pure, so crystal clear, that there is no sense of it at all. This is what living in annihilation means. The moment consciousness arises in absence, there is perception and thought. If we get caught in the concepts of these thoughts, then duality arises. The Absolute is the nonduality of absence and pure consciousness, nonbeing and presence, the unity of emptiness and awareness. The absolute is aware in one direction only because it is not self-reflective. There is nothing to reflect back to, for its inner self is absence, nonbeing, emptiness. The Absolute only sees what is in front. It is like the back of the universe. Sometimes the back becomes what is in the front; the nonbeing and the being become one. If you look to the back, there is nothing to perceive. It is not that you feel nothing or see nothing, but there is simply no perception. At the edge of this no-perception there is a sense of absolute clarity and purity. However, the Absolute in its absoluteness, apart from manifest phenomena, is unfathomable. You cannot know it because the consciousness cannot go there without being totally annihilated.