Note that aparokṣānubhūti, the immediate experience of self, is not a discrete experience. It is precisely the absence of concrete experiences such as fear, otherness, separation. It is the experience of the full freedom of standing alone non-dually as existence itself, radiant as consciousness. It is the experience of being the experienceless’. Experiences continue to appear, but have no reality value. It is indescribable in itself.

For the experience of the full nature of the self, no derived or sensory knowledge is needed. Self-awareness is so close because we are it.

It is this direct recognition without (a-) intervention of the senses (pratyakṣa) or a derivative thereof (parokṣā). So Pratyakṣa is knowledge based on direct sense perception. Parokṣā denotes recognition of relative phenomena, without directly perceiving them. For example, the smell of smoke means the presence in the vicinity of fire, even though the sight (√īkṣ) is not there. Para īkṣa or its derivative ukṣa thus means in a broader sense ‘beyond, para’ to the senses, but knowable because of knowledge rather acquired through the senses. Aparokṣā is neither pratyakṣa nor parokṣā.

For aparokṣā immediate self-knowledge is needed, vṛtti vyāptiḥ. Knowledge without sensory information, which riddles the whole mind (vyāpti). Then the vṛtti, the thought, is also let go and one is what one understood before.

In the first instance, it was recognized through knowledge that everything is an object, a form of expression in consciousness of consciousness. There is no need for a second step in the process of observing objects: phala-vyāptiḥ, where a means of knowledge must indicate the object.

Aparokṣā is “just I am what I am.” No more and no less.