It is better to say of experiencing that it is of a soul than of a subject, and so not at the source of what is, but related in a mysterious way to that.

Descartes did not discover a truth hidden from everyone since the dawn of consciousness, but rather invented a new twist, a 'meme' that the times were ripe for and which proliferated like a sudden crystallisation. A subtle veil was added, not taken away. What was it like to be awake in the world before that time? How did things glow and seem to come forward to the encounter? The world Giotto shows au awakens an obscure nostalgia.

In the foreground of your attention retaining the intention to observe whatever comes up in thought or feeling or bodily sensation without choice or initiation of a response, and in the background of your attention the continuous question as to what can this be such that an experiencing of this kind is not only possible but seemingly natural, and in particular such a doubled 'attention'. The foreground is practised so that the background can silently emerge.

- Much of your own volitional behaviour is revealed upon examination as mechanically programmed, conditioned responses whose volitional quality which is what makes it seem uniquely yours is merely an efficient mode of self-awareness - taking the intentional stance with respect to yourself. Where this complex system breaks down, producing errors, blocks, vacillations and ambivalences, is seen as further evidence for subjectivity - preserved in the 'unconscious' is lost to the conscious. The firs cause of volition remains unknown but is somehow equated to consciousness itself or to life, the two being seen as interchangeable. Perhaps the whole thing would not 'work' with out these misprisions, just as your own life would not had gotten underway without the various illusions and foolishnesses that you started out with.

The plain being of things is an embarrassment to the mind so it tries to replace it by the complete system of relations, its 'connectome' as it were, and find what being there is in some relational term, value or intentionality. The drive to carry this replacement to completion has its greater and its lesser failures, the former births monstrosities the latter wonders.

The subject of experiencing is not at the source of consciousness, its dialectic play with its object from which it appears to be separated, now by a great distance and now so close as to almost be at one take place within the boundless field of consciousness, like a sort of streaming mandala of which it represents the centripetal pole and the object the centrifugal. What is called consciousness here has none of the characteristics usually ascribed to it. It doesn't change with waking or sleeping or other states of the experiencing, it is pure self disclosure without time or space. It is the sublime and terrifying real of what the subject recognises as consciousness but cannot fully sustain.

The 'stream of consciousness' for all its self-referential complexities is a completely flat network, linking together past and future, dream and awakening, broad and narrow perspectives, but without any underside or hidden depth. That is the trick, 'there's no there there' because it is all here here. Again, all the modalities are merely thoughts.