Indeed, and there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. If you haven't experienced anything like "pure awareness" then there's no reason for you to believe such a t

Indeed, and there's a chicken-and-egg problem here. If you haven't experienced anything like "pure awareness" then there's no reason for you to believe such a thing is possible, and then you'd have no reason to pursue any practices that might give you any evidence of it. And unlike with other pursuits, you can't really get secondhand evidence. As Sam Harris points out, "beginning meditators often think that they are able to concentrate on a single object, such as the breath, for minutes at a time, only to report after days or weeks of intensive practice that their attention is now carried away by thought every few seconds. This is actually progress. It takes a certain degree of concentration to even notice how distracted you are." Amazingly, most of us are unable to even recognize (with any precision) when we're thinking. And that's a crucial first step in discovering what's beyond thought.