1. We are what sentience is, and we do not know what sentience could be other than our psycho-physical apparatus which experiences it.
We are the presence of what we appear to be; what each of us appears to be is his presence, and what dualistically (as an object of subject) we imagine each of us to be is other than what each other of us is.
We are presence, therefore presence of an absence that we know must necessarily exist as counterpart of our presence, but which we are unable to perceive and of which we know nothing. Therefore we know our absence as Void.
2. That is why we sentient beings are everything we can know, and how we must be everything, because without our presence nothing whatever could be seen or be known.
We are manifest, but how or why such manifestation occurs we do not know.
3. Our functioning, though apparent, is inexplicable, but it has been called prajna, of which the static aspect has been called dhyana. But we are unable to imagine what kind of 'thing' this could be.
What we are is different from what everything else is, and everything is different from what we are. Therefore we are all separate beings or things.
4. This is how we are, but we do not know why, nor whence we derive, except that we think it must be from God.
We cannot find or know what we are, for we are merely present, and our presence is all that we seem to be.
5. Looking for ourselves is finding our presence. There is some thing sought and someone seeking, some thing seen and someone looking, because what is sought for is the presence of someone acting, and what is seen is the presence of someone seeing.
6. All this can be said and known by us because objects are the presence of the objects of subjects that are present, presence itself being the presence of objects, and absence their absence. Whatever is present is positive, and is the absence of whatever is negative - and such is What We think that we Are.
7. That is how we sentient beings see and know everything that 'is', how everything 'is', and why all that we 'are' is what our sentience reports via our senses.
Note: Did the implication of par. 3 of No. 1 above reach the bull's eye? We are conditioned to think of 'absence' not only as of what is not here or not there but also as of what is not anywhere, of pure vacuous not-ness, the void of annihilation, despite being told by the Masters that the Void is a Plenum. Here our presence is presented as the persona or mask of what, of all that, we truly are - which is what lies behind that persona or appearance. Behind a Greek mask lay an actor: the mask was appearance, phenomenon only, all else lay behind, invisible. About one-seventh of an ice-berg is visible, six-sevenths lies hidden beneath the surface. What is apparent is positive and present, what is not apparent is negative and absent.
Always it is the non-apparent that matters most, always the phenomenal that is merely an appearance of what lies behind it. The negative, the noumenal is the source, origin, substance (sub-stance: what stands beneath); and the positive is the surface appearance. There could not be anything but Absence. Always Absence - that which negates the superficial, the positive and present and phenomenal - is what IS, i.e. what every sentient being may say in the words I Am This I Am.
The supreme error consists in mistaking positivity for all that is.
