Consciousness is doubled by awareness. Being engaged is being consciously engaged as if that is what consciousness is for, to make engagements of thought, will, attention, desire, action etc. And however you are so engaged it is always possibly to become aware that you are so engaged, which lessens or ends that engagement and replaces it with another that peels of like a skin from the original act. It is not a different perspective, as if seen from further back in an ideal space, but an infinitesimal distancing, a tiny and energetic gap, the force of which is felt, with a slight shock, as self. This operation on ongoing experience need not be explicit, it can be present but suspended all through the event, giving to even the most unreflected consciousness a peculiar multiplicity, as of layers upon layers. That in it which gives rise to the sense of self is its being understood as perfect freedom in relation to experiencing; the shift is not given in any direction internal to experience, is not of a nature that depends on the type of experience involved. If it has a direction it is orthogonal to all possible experience and is always of equal measure.