Some of these same techniques would have to be applied to enable the mind to observe itself. This is the fundamental distinction between the Puranas view of life and the conventional (modern) view of life. 

In many ways, loss of self awareness is a step in the right direction towards self realization.  This appears to be an inherent contradiction.  The mind perceives an object, becomes completely engrossed in it, and becomes, momentarily, unaware of its own existence.  If the mind is captivated by an object, it is only because of a desire to either experience a pleasant smell, a visually captivating scene (such as a mountain range), or the pleasant sensation of touch,(such as playing with a pet).  All these are desirable because they appease the mind......TEMPORARILY.

Also, when self awareness is lost due to fascination with a physical object, primarilyas a result of desire to experience sense pleasure, the imbalance in the mind is not lessened. In fact, the imbalances are increased even further, and the de tachment of thought from the self, can be continued to be maintained only if the experience of sense pleasures also increase continually.  So the mind begins to demand more pleasant smells, more fascinating colors and even more heightened sense of touch.

Such an accelerated growth in sense pleasures will not occur, and the Mind then loses its fascination for the objects and returns to its original sense of despondancy and inadequacy.  The "self realization" was very fleeting (which is not "realization" at all).

If a Rishi, one who is well vetersed in the teachings,  saw the flower, he would be turned inwards and the observance of the flower would be understood to be a reflection of his own inner self.  He would not perceive it as an object that exists outside of his own self. He would look at the flower as a creation of his "own" senses, and he would understand clearly that the flower is only an aspect of his "own" perception.

Looking at the flower as a product of his perception (from which he would be detached), the thoughts induced in him would not be one of beauty and admiration. 

He would instead focus on those  aspects of his own mind that represent the permanent aspects the perception.

He would mentally offer the flower to Easwara, the creator, to whom the rewards of the creation truely belong. There would be no inclination to take possession or ownership.

The Rishi would feel no pleasure or pain from the visual, simply because his thoughts are not motivated by the need to experience pleasure to remove pain. His thought process has already transcended that rudimentary mental state of being driven by the opposing forces of pleasure and pain.

Conventional view would be to perceive the flower as a real object. This "real" object is then used to feed our imagination of pleasure. The Rishi would view the flower as an illusion and our ability to perceive it as real and permanent. 

While the conventional intelligence would take possession of the flower and attempt to perpetuate it.  The Rishi on the other hand would consider the flower to be an illusion and consider his own thought which produces the illusion as the only real object. 

His Gnanam (or knowledge) would then turn to take control of his own perception that produces the illusion of the flower and he would recognize that the illusion should not be allowed to control the real, the atma which is inside him.  The illusion would only bring to his notice the reality of the Atman.

The Rishi has developed the capability to "observe the observer" within him. The Rishi is said to have attained the state of self realization.

The Mind observes all sense objects in relation to itself.  The measures used are relative - as it relates to people and leaving beings, measures such as faster, stronger, brighter, are used to evaluate and to build up the desire to emulate. As it relates to inanimate objects, attributes such as - ability to generate a pleasurable sensation, useful/useless  etc.

As it observes its own Karma, the artifical identity "I" acquires a number of qualities from the lessons that it learns about itself.  In other words the "I" undergoes transformation from the observation of its Karmic events. These qualities can generally be split into two parts - such as kindness, consideration, compassion,