My family moved to Canada from Finland when I was five. I clearly remember an experience that started developing from this time, where I could see an unmoving sphere, or bubble, of comfortable light, or consciousness, that surrounded my body. If I moved my hand outside this safety net it looked somehow darker and I would draw it back to safety. In this space, I always felt that I could do no wrong since I was just flowing along without making any effort.
As I grew older this experience expanded and remained abstract for many years. I, of course, thought nothing of it, even though it was obviously a very basic aspect of my existence. When I was about eight or nine years old, I started experiencing what can only be described as a mixture of intense energy and overwhelming happiness. Every day I would have to leave the house and run/walk around the block for several hours until it was manageable again. I would have long, grand insights that I felt completely unable to express out loud, along with apparently extended physical abilities, foresight, and streams of vision that I could not explain. The school I was attending at the time insisted that I demonstrate these physical abilities on stage; no one, including me, could understand how I could jump so high. People felt that I was in the air just a little too long for my own good.
I noticed in high school that I never actually fell asleep at night and that nights and days just blended together uninterruptedly. This went on for years. When I would wake up in the morning I felt like I was falling asleep and when going to sleep at night I would seem to wake up.
When I was a young adult I started Transcendental Meditation, and then my personal experience really took off. I started first intuiting—then hearing, and seeing—the subtle fabrics of the quietest levels of my own consciousness: pure abstract knowingness, from within its own nature, revealed its unified, wonderful structure of wholeness.
About 30 years ago, I began to hear the hum of existence as layers of knowledge. I could see the divine heavens; I started experiencing the relationships that rendered everything experienced as one unified wholeness of multiplicity. And ultimately how, even daily life, far from being the football field of turbulent change, is nothing but the greatest expression of divine-to-Absolute-self-awareness.
And yet here we all are, essentially no different from each other. Nothing much changes. My experience is that all this is true for everybody. The “sphere of consciousness” around me as a child, is still there but has expanded to include all the different layers of my awareness.
Book: The Landscape of Enlightenment: With Doors and Windows to Our World
Websites:
harriaalto.com
aaltodesign.com
Other interviews
2nd BatGap Interview with Harri
3rd BatGap Interview with Harri
Harri Aalto, in Panel Discussion on Refined Perception
Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.
Transcript of this interview.
Interview recorded 3/22/2014
Recent note from Harri:
Discussion Group Invitation
I've been hosting consciousness discussion groups for several years and invite you to join. Learn more on my Facebook or website.
These groups uniquely blend people experiencing realized states with seekers at various stages, accelerating everyone's growth. I've observed that simply discussing these experiences creates immediate positive shifts in participants' awareness.
What makes our groups effective is the multi-perspective discussions that foster rich exchanges between participants.
Participant Feedback:
"The discussions have gradually opened me into both a felt sense and ever-deepening understanding of the eternal oneness." —RL
"I feel more awake, alive and curious... increased power and stability in my Presence." —JB
"I now appreciate that self-realization is not only natural and simple, but I have had this experience for quite some time and just didn't know it." —WH
"I have recognized that I am in this surrounding love all the time in various degrees of clarity." —LVT
"My primary insight was that I, and many seekers, have already realized the experience of the Self without being aware of it." —ATL
For more content, visit my YouTube channel.
YouTube Video Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction and Response to First Interview
00:05:01 - The Ocean of Consciousness and its Fluctuations
00:10:00 - Recognizing Consciousness
00:15:21 - The Speech of Enlightenment
00:19:34 - Unity of Pure Consciousness and Daily Life
00:26:07 - The Mechanics of Creation and the Nature of Consciousness
00:31:58 - The Continuum of Consciousness
00:37:26 - Infinite Intelligence in Creation
00:42:54 - The Continuum of Consciousness
00:47:36 - The Illusion of Subtle Layers
00:52:46 - The search for the self
00:57:43 - The Value of Experience Within the Self
01:03:10 - The Structure of Consciousness and Pure Consciousness
01:07:16 - The Silence of Pure Consciousness
01:12:24 - The Evolution of Consciousness and the Presence of God
01:18:04 - Connecting with the Growth of Love
01:23:31 - The Reverberation of Pure Consciousness
01:27:36 - The Function of Memory and Consciousness
01:32:30 - The Resonance of Truth
01:38:04 - The Universe and Consciousness
01:43:27 - The Question of Free Will and Determinism
01:48:44 - The Elephant Analogy and Overcoming Personal Challenges
01:54:29 - The Function of Subtle Levels of Creation
01:58:50 - The realization of being everything and writing a book
02:01:52 - The Potential for Self-Realization
02:05:33 - The Joy of Exploring the Possibilities Within Pure Consciousness
02:09:50 - The Unfolding of Experience
02:13:15 - Embracing Different Perspectives
02:17:17 - The Experience of Pure Consciousness and the I-ness
02:21:27 - Concluding Remarks
02:24:59 - Wrapping Up the Podcast