12. Michael Baxter

bax (or baxishta if he’s feeling uppity) does not consider himself fully awakened, but knows for sure that he’s recognized glimpses of the self.  He says this puts him in an awkward position and insists on starting off with this apology,if what i’ve seen is truethen i’m a hypocriteevery time i speak about itno better than the man whohaving awoken briefly from his dreamrushes back to tell his friends what he saw“you’re all in my mind”he  informs  themand they laugh at him twiceonce for being obviously wrongand once for being rightand therefore talking to himselfmy only defense is thateven hypochondriacs do get sickand even hypocrites do awaken brieflybax’s motto is “self is solid”, and he considers himself a student of Ramana Maharshi, whose favorite description of the self was “a dense mass of self-knowledge”.  He considers himself a post-new age thinker, and feels that most of what is discussed today goes only halfway to Shankara’s great ‘three laws of self-knowledge’.  Specifically, much is said about consciousness but not very much about the self itSelf.