Symbol, Ritual, and Consciousness
Quitting the Mind
Sound and Entrainment Conscious
Exteriorization Dreamwork Gateways of Dreaming Planes
of Consciousness
Spirit and Matter Merge
Four Zones of Consciousness
According to various beliefs, there are roughly seven centers of consciousness in four zones. The seven centers are commonly referred to as Chakras or energy centers. These energy centers may be examined as being a part of one of the four zones. One, Aurobindo calls the Superconsient, or spirit area, with a center a little above the top of the head. It controls thinking mind and communicates with higher mental realms. The second zone he calls The Mind. It has two centers. One rests between the eyebrows and slightly up into the forehead. It controls will and dynamism of mental activity and the subtle vision. We sometimes call this the third eye. The second mind center is at throat level and controls mental and verbal expression. The third zone is what is referred to as The Vital, and represents our actions in the world. It has three centers, the first is at heart level, controlling our emotional being and the second, at the level of the navel, controls our impulses for domination, possession, conquest, and ambitions. A third sits between navel and sex center. This center controls jealousy, envy, desire, greed, anger. A fourth zone is The Physical which rests at the base of the spine and controls physical being and sexual impulses. This center opens up to the lower subconscious regions (Aurobindo).
Work within these four zones provides a pathway for the ascent into consciousness. This also may be called awakening the Kundalini. This path takes us through the Chakras. Chakra knowledge comes to us through age-old wisdom from the East. The word Chakra means ‘wheel’. Chakras are energy centers present in two forms, one positive and one negative. Living organisms obtain their pranic force through their ethereal body which like the physical body assimilates and dis-assimilates. Chakras are organs of the ethereal layer of the body. There are physical yoga postures to facilitate activation of these wheels. Physical postures, verbal sounds, musical sounds and colors ... or combinations, are ways of activating these centers of energy called Chakras.
Super-conscious Connection - above
the head
7. Crown - Sahasrara - Top of the head - Continuity of Consciousness - Supreme Consciousness. It perfects and completes faculties. This is our connection with Supreme Consciousness. Its sound is “Mm”. The associated color is violet and its tone is ‘B’.
The Mind Connection - third eye and throat
6. Third Eye - Ajna - Between the eyebrows center - Clairvoyance - Spirit - Higher mind
sight consciousness. It corresponds to the pineal gland and the brain in the physical body. An indication of the perception of Ajna may be phenomena like the feeling of warmth, the appearance of a luminous point or a brilliant eye, or concentric rings of color, usually yellow and violet, breathing rhythmically with your breath. “Ee” is the sound of this wheel. The associated color is indigo and its tone is ‘A’.
These two sounds and these two wheels form the “OM” sound. This is vocalized A U M. We open the mouth wide with the sound A, gradually reduce the size of the mouth cavity to produce the U, and finally close it with the M sound (Peter Hamel). This is the expression of the highest consciousness. A is walking consciousness, U is dream consciousness and M is the consciousness of deep sleep ... (and death) ... OM is the all embracing “cosmic” or “fourth” consciousness which transcends all words (Lama Govenga). OM signifies the energy of existence (Tarthang Tulku).
5. Throat - Vishuda - Throat Center - Clairaudience - Ethers - Circle. Ethic and astral healing come from this center. It corresponds to the thyroid gland in the physical body. This may be felt like a sensation of a radiating light. “Aye” is its sound. H A M is its pronouncement. The associated color is blue, its tone is ‘G’.
The Vital Connection - heart,
navel and solar plexus
4. Heart - Anahata - Heart Center - Understanding - Air - Hexagon. It is here we have comprehension of astral vibrations. We have consciousness of feelings of others. “Ah” is its sound. Y A M is its pronouncement. The associated color is green, its tone is ‘F’.
3. Solar Plexus - Manipura - Navel Center - Feeling - Fire - Crescent moon.
The solar plexus us located under the navel. It is associated with our Vital energy. It is our place of our vulnerability. It is where we recognize our true name. It is the location of general sensitiveness. It is here we feel astral influences. “Oh” is its sound. R A M is its pronouncement. The associated color is yellow, its tone is ‘E’.
The Chinese refer to “Chi -
‘Don Tien’” energy. It is known as a ball of energy. The objective is not
to try to cure something, it is finding balance and through stepping into that
balance you will be healed. To do so we must be confident and sincere in our
pursuit. We learn to send energy with will.
External ‘Chi Gong’ is a way of projecting energy to change energy.
“Some things (Chi gong) can be
sensed but not felt” (Chinese proverb).
2. Spleen Center - Svadishtana - Traveling - Water - Triangle. It is the path of the Vital. Our sense of competition begins is this area. It is our deep river, our white water, our calm lake. Our true nature, our ego, our true personality is centered here. It is here we have power to travel consciously and memory of astral journeys. “Oo” is its sound. V A M is its pronouncement. The associated color is orange, its tone is ‘D’.
Organic life depends on the three Chakras listed above; Heart, Solar Plexus, and Spleen (above the sex organs). The Solar Plexus has a directing function. This is what we have referred to as the ‘Vital’. The vital like the mind can be ‘quieted’, and is integral to the voluntary pursuit of consciousness.
The Physical Connection - base of
spine
1. Base of spine Center - Muladara - the sacral plexus - Sexual Center - Earth - Square. This is the core of our physicalness. This is the seat of Kundalini energy which goes to each center in turn and vivifies it. It is from this base we learn to walk our path without fear. “Oo” is it sound. L A M is its pronouncement. Red is its color, its tone is ‘C’.
A conscious perception of the Chakras is possible because unconsciously we are already in communication with these organs of the ethereal body through certain non-physical sensations. These sensations can be made conscious through passive receptivity ... quiet mind ... suspension of the thought stream. In the spine is a channel called Sushumna, within that another channel called the Vajrini, and within that is another channel called the Chitrini, and upon that are threaded the chakras. With meditation, or focused consciousness, the Kundalini rises ... a little at a time. As each Chakra is awakened the down turned Chakra turns upward. Then the Kundalini returns back by the same path leaving each center energized. This is the “fire of our consciousness”.
Individualization of Consciousness
These centers of consciousness, exist ... and have been described by many in equally many ways. Multitudes of teachers use these centers to teach about human energy and how to use it. Energy may be creative or destructive, healing or revitalizing, active or neutral.
Consciousness exists also, more and less, higher and lower, internal and external and makes use of energy. Our most used realms of consciousness are usually focused on extremes. We are conscious of discomfort ... a room too hot, a shirt too tight, a paper cut, sleepiness, a crying child, a barking dog. These things are difficult to ignore. Comfort is more difficult to bring to active consciousness. Pleasant temperature, a good fit ... no cut ... being awake and alert, a sleeping child or dog, all remain unnoticed. We have the same response patterns to emotional comfort and discomfort. Lack of fear gets no attention. Fear ... and we are immediately engaged, consciously and physically. Normal workings of our internal organs go unnoticed. Only pain or malfunctioning brings our body’s performance to our consciousness. We have an ongoing awareness of trees, grass, dirt, mountains, rocks, sunlight, insects, animals ... but barely ... we give them attention only if there is something unusual or threatening about the situation. They remain unnoticed expect through the eyes of casual observation. They become part of sensory memory, there for a portion of a second then dismissed. Exceptions are limited to specific times. We go on a vacation to see the Redwood Forest, give it our most in-depth attention, tire of it and move on to the next spectacular sight. Not only is consciousness in and out as a faculty of awareness, it also remains very surface ... something on the fringes.
We are already aware of consciousness and conscious processes. It comes and goes. It calls our attention when needed or when directed. So why pursue further expansion of levels of consciousness? What are levels of consciousness. Consciousness is a force, an element of force ... an elemental force ... an energy. It can keep us in a state of apathy, indifference, mundanity or it can warn of extremes ... of dangers, of something ‘out of step’, of something that requires immediate attention. Or, it can open doors to previously unseen realms, to new dimensions. It can keep us in a focused perspective or accept ‘peak experiences’ as they are available to us.
The force of consciousness
determines our function in the world. In
biology, degrees or levels of consciousness determines position on the scale of
evolution. Earthworms and amoebae are very low, birds in the middle, mammals are
high and humans ... homo-sapiens are at the top of the scale. This elemental
force manifests in absorption with process, oblivious to everything beyond its
physical being. An ant can remain unconscious of a high-rise building “next
door”. The ant may even have its tunnel home under the foundation of the
building and the building has no relevance to the life of the ant. Our limited
levels of awareness are the same. The difference is that we have the capability
of recognizing our small individual world and still be aware that the larger
world is just “next door” to us if we care to look at it. Evolutionary
progress is measured by the capacity to extricate and free consciousness from
its elemental, its rudimentary, force .. from its limiting boundaries, to see
the big picture. So we break free of
the muck. This is our ‘individualization
of consciousness’.
At this point, with
individualization of consciousness, through
becoming conscious of consciousness
and it multiplicity of inherent possibilities, we are ready to begin to learn to
quiet the MIND, to quiet the VITAL and to quiet the PHYSICAL. This quieting is
not putting a stop to, it is transcending to something beyond mental, vital and
physical. It is a process of moving through. We don’t need to stop thought, but to go past thought. We
need not suppress the vital energies of life, but we must move past the control
they exert on us. Physical does not need to be eliminated but does need to be
quietened in order to move past physical to spirit. Only then can we bring
spirit to matter and merge into unity.
Mind Layers
The mind layers addressed here are not the actual physical layers of the brain placed one upon the other ... but are layers of ‘mind’. We begin through The Silent Mind. We learn to quieten our mind and listen to the sound of silence. “Silence is the great revealer,” says Lao Tsu. Silence is not merely the absence of noise or sound ... it is a positive and specific state of consciousness (Halpern). “When there is no sound, hearing is most alert” (Indian mystic, Kirpal Singh).
But before we can begin to silence the mind, we must first understand aspects of the layers of the mind. The first layer is the intellectual layer ... the place of daily life; ideas, philosophies, theories, religions, logic, rational thought, etc. This is our thinking place. It frequently becomes an unending chatter ... fragmenting into tiny bits. All that must be silenced before going any further.
The next layer is the emotional layer (feeling or reaction). This is our mental area. When the intellect clears a bit, the emotional aspects begin. This is something like flypaper. We easily get stuck to our emotion. We begin to think ... to feel that we are our emotions. We define ‘self’ as a set of emotions and mental processes which control our every action and reaction. We become addicted to our addictions in order to maintain our emotions, our mental constructs. Then we say, “I can’t help it.” “This is what I was given by me parents, by me grandparents, by all my ancestors.” This too ... must be silenced. This too must be brought to a direct consciousness rather than all the pushing and pulling. Silence.
We can go back to story of the pearl and the ideal parents. The parents in the tale are what we each longed for in our own earth parents. Some of us found something close to that ideal and others missed the mark by a great distance. Almost everyone would have asked for a bit more of a perfect parent if it had been possible. If our parents were less than ideal we could justify our longing for better caretakers. If they were really bad, we could live for years on the blame and shame caused by those bad parents. Those of us with really good parents could create a pretty good case of guilt for every negative thought about our good parents.
Carl Jung addresses this issue as a process of ‘outgrowing’. Jung states that, with development of new levels of consciousness ... with higher and wider interest arising on the horizon ... through widening views ... insoluble problems lose urgency (we become less fixated). They are not ‘solved’ logically in our own terms of understanding and processing ... but fade when confronted with new, stronger life tendencies (higher consciousness). In other words, we do not repress, do not make unconscious, do not process endlessly, do not require ‘treatment’ for our problems and ‘addictions’. They simply appear in a different light ... from higher levels ... like a storm in a valley ... as viewed from a mountain top. When we are in the midst of the storm, lightening threatening our every move, thunder pounding our hearing senses, rain pelting our skin, hail bruising our bodies ... we cannot help but remain focused on the difficulties. When we climb above the storm and look down on all the commotion, we see it from the God perspective. We rise above the immediacy of the storm. We are both the valley and the mountain in relation to the psyche (Jung).
To feel oneself above/beyond what is human ... we feel the effect and feel higher consciousness ... we grow beyond ourself because of unknown potential (Jung). All problems are in a certain sense insoluble. They express necessary duality ... polarity ... inherent in every self regulating system. They are not solved but outgrown.
The third layer of the mind is the sensory layer. Until the first two layers are silenced the third, the sensory layer is unnoticed. Sensory mind has been blended so thoroughly with intellect and emotion it may have been forgotten or we may fail to see our senses as something separate. Actually, all our data ... our information about the world comes to us through our senses. We perceive then we interpret and put into action. Some of this sensory input can be better understood through examination of a model, a way of thought. First is Single Vision. It is physical eyesight, hearing, etc., which reflects the worlds consensus as to reality, our agreed upon definition of what is real. Second is Twofold Vision. It is a manipulation of imagination, a use of allegorical meanings. Imagery is still bound by existing definitions of reality. Clouds look like fluffy, white, sheep grazing. It is in single and twofold vision where we perceive, where we conceptualize and interpret. It is here we make judgments. There are no facts ... we create facts. We define facts according to our perceptions and our interpretations.
Then there is Threefold Vision. This includes regions outside conscious ego, outside ordinary consciousness. In threefold vision we begin to tap the undefined, and experience occasional ‘peak experiences’. Finally, we have Fourfold Vision. It is a step beyond, a transpersonal vision characteristic of mystics, seers and prophets. All our sensations; life, fear, joy, pain and pleasure, sleep, fatigue and sleeplessness, liking and disliking, holding and letting go, wanting and rejecting, and many other sensations have been so connected to emotions and thought, we failed to recognize them. They too must be silenced. To silence the sensory mind we must reach a state of transparency or neutrality. Any processing any naming or labeling, is putting up a wall, it is creating a definition that becomes a barrier.
These layers of vision can also be conceptualized as ‘seeing positions’. First position is seeing through ones own eyes. This is surface sight and includes our ordinary tangible observations. Second position is seeing through another's eyes. This gives us empathy, ‘as-if’. Third position moves us to the observer self. We are able to perceive through third person ... objectively ... as a watcher of both first and second position. Fourth position is viewing from the perspective of the ‘big picture’. It is the view of the cosmic self able to perceive the cosmic plan with its dualities. It is where we can recognize that even things defined as ‘bad’ have ‘good’ outcomes, and we can cease to define it as good or bad. Fifth position is Oneness. It is ‘seeing’ simultaneously the All and the part ... from the viewpoint of the All and the part. It is ‘seeing’ that the worship, the worshipped and the worshipper are the same. It is also ‘seeing’ that the gas, the gassed and the gasser (from the holocaust) are also the same. It is the viewpoint of non-duality, of unity, of emptiness and of fullness. It is the creation of transparency, of true clarity.
The fourth mind layer, after the sensory layer, is the physical layer. When we have silenced the first three layers we begin to recognize the physical layer and can begin to silence it. This process may feel as if we are destroying the body. It is only through hindsight that we can begin to understand what has transpired.
How can we begin to silence the mind? One ... Music can be used to prepare for deep silence. Music can quieten the body, the mind and open the spirit to be present to the divine (Halpern). Two ... Thought watching can be cultivated. Begin by being quiet, relaxed ... meditative ... and begin to be aware of thoughts. It is a process of ‘seeing’ them come in from a distance. When they are ‘in’ we can either roll them around in our thoughts or we can acknowledge them and release them. We can allow them to pass on through. It is important to remain non-judgmental. Just keep repeating the release process. Three ... Thought focus is a valuable training skill. Begin by staring at a candle flame, a small stone, or some other simple object, OR ... focusing on silent sound, such as a hum, or white noise, or an internal tone. These techniques allow us to focus on the fullness of consciousness.
The Silent Mind .....
Causal
Mental/Intellectual
Psychic
Emotional
Etheric
Physical,
Sensory
Quitting the Mind
- planes of the mind
When these layers are quiet, when the mind is silence, we can begin to recognize the energy body of the mind. The energy body, the energy field, is the counterpart of the physical body --- the energy body has appearance but no mass and can perform acts beyond the possibilities of the physical body. The physical mind activates the energy mind the intangible aspects of mind. The energy body can see ... it can perceive energy as it flows. The energy body can use energy to boost itself into unexpected areas. It can move into the immediate ordinary reality, our familiar consensual reality. It can travel to some other place within ordinary reality. It can move into other dimensions, into other levels, into the abstract ... the intangible. The energy body can perceive as we ordinarily perceive the world, and it can ‘see’ the world as light or vibrating current.
This progress begins to manifests outwardly, the wall between inner and outer ... grows increasingly thin, slowly losing its consistency. We recognize our physical body, its abilities and limits and we come to recognize our energy body and the expanded abilities it has. We discover how our intangible energy body is the force behind all our physicalness. We recognize our transparency and begin to move comfortably in that transparency. We find the very texture of our Being becoming lighter, more porous, more receptive to direct consciousness. We become able to move into the various positions of seeing, quickly and easily.
As we begin the path of silent
mind, we discover that thoughts of others come from outside, comes from our
energy force beyond our physical. But more importantly, we discover that our own
thoughts come from outside. This is part of the dissolving of self importance.
This is not necessarily, or only, rising to a higher or more rapid vibrator
mode, it is merely a change of consciousness, a shift into a new way of knowing.
This way of knowing can be discussed as Planes of the Mind. This can be equated to the layers of the
mind. This is the layers or planes of the ‘energy mind/body’. All of these
concepts can not truly be separated. It is all the Whole.
We separate into pieces ... only for the purpose of discussion and
explanation.
Our ultimate goal is the super-consciousness but before reaching this plane, we, as a seeker will cross various mental layers or worlds .... the ordinary mind, the higher mind, the illumined mind, the intuitive mind, and the overmind. This is our energy mind which is part of the energy body. The quality of vibration is essentially what distinguishes one mind plane of consciousness from another. “Everything” is vibration. The frequency and quality determine appearance of physicalness and the position in consciousness. Altering or ‘raising’ the vibration is expanding consciousness so we may recognize and utilize more of who we are. The following descriptions are how they are seen through our energy senses by someone who can see the energy of the planes of the mind.
The Ordinary mind is a grayish mass with lots of darker little spots ... representing their thousand and one thoughts. Occasionally a little burst of light descends from above, a little joy, a little flame of love dances in that grayness, then flickers and goes out.
The Higher Mind is like the mind of philosophers and thinkers. It appears less opaque, freer, with bluish tinge. Little descending bursts of light are less quickly swallowed up, more intense, abundant, and frequent. Joy tends to last longer, love tends to be broader. One begins to know what joy and love are in themselves, without a cause.
The Illumined Mind accepts silence and gains access to the domain of illumination. What previously came one drop at a time now streams in providing a state of enthusiasm. a constant state of awakening, as if the whole being were on the alert, suddenly endowed with a very fast rhythm, with new values, new perspectives, and unexpected clues. Everything is connected within a great joyous vibration ... somewhat as if it could feel truth everywhere.
The Intuitive Mind ... differs from illumined mind in its clear transparency. Knowledge springs from silence ... not higher or deeper, there, just before our eyes. It is a direct knowing as the Buddha spoke of ... it has always been, it has been beyond our consciousness. With intuition comes a very special joy, a sort of recognition, as if there were always two of us, light living in light and a shadow, ourselves, living below, groping awkwardly in the dark, repeating all the gestures and movements of light, imitating knowledge, but in a shabby, stunted, clumsy way. Then all of a sudden, with consciousness and the intuitive mind there is coincidence, and we are one. We are one in a point of light. We discover only oneself, there nothing else to discover. The mind seizes on the intuition and makes at once too little and too much of it. Instead of letting the flash quietly illuminate and clarify our substance, it immediately sizes it, coats is with a layer of thought and no longer understands its light except through the intellect. This understanding through intellect creates another box, confining the illumination inside. We find ourself trapped once again.
The Overmind is the rarely attained summit of human consciousness. It is a cosmic consciousness, with no loss of the individual. It is the ultimate duality ... the state of non-duality. Consciousness of the overmind perceives the same light everywhere, in all things and all beings, everything is bathed continuously in a single substance. This being feels universal love, understanding, compassion ... for all other ‘selves’ who are also moving towards their divinity. This is a of state of being beyond judgment. This being is becoming the light that they are.
Relevance can be self-verified with a simple test, the appearance of a new mode of knowledge. We know a thing because, we are that thing. Consciousness can move to any point of universal reality. Everything now takes place inside, nothing is outside or separate. Nothing can be defined as good or bad. It becomes merely another part of the duality that comprises the Whole.
We emerge in another dimension. We feel ourselves as old as the world and we feel ourselves eternally young, eternally birthed. This life, we recognize as one small link in an unbroken chain. Everything expands to a level of global consciousness. We begin to remember who we are. To remember we must stop being amnesiac. We must put aside that state of forgetfulness we agreed to before our birth and begin to wake up. We must begin to contribute our share to the process of evolution.
Planes of the Mind;
Ordinary Mind, Higher Mind,
Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind.
We have silenced the mind. We have explored layers and planes of the mind. We have recognized the ‘beyond’. The next step in consciousness is the Vital.
The area referred to as the vital is located between the heart and the sex center in the physical body. It is vital to our physical life. The internal organs we refer to as vital organs are located in this area of our torso. In establishing defensive protection, the energy aspect of our vital jams communication from outside, from above, from all sources. This is done in an attempt to retain focus at the level of the ordinary. It is one of our survival skills. This is intended to provide safety from harmful external influences but in doing so, it serves to block consciousness. It keep us mired in mundanity. It is a place of experience, a place of pleasure/suffering, pain/joy, a place of many afflictions and disturbances. It keeps us focused in the present physical reality. The vital identifies with everything that comes out of it ...’my’ pain, ‘my’ depression, ‘my’ joy. It claims ownership and creates the ‘my’-ness focus we live in. It also attributes ownership ... ‘your’ pain, ‘your’ depression, ‘your’ problem. We move through the ‘my’ and your’ to greater unity recognition.
It is also a source of great energy, physical and psychic. We learn to move through ... to quiet the physical vital and move into the conscious vital. We still have protection, survival but we have ‘more’, we have access to energy and consciousness. Many traditions have attempted to cope with these troublesome ‘vital’ issues by suppression and rejection. This is part of the traditional Christian viewpoint. We, being viewed as sinful creatures, must suppress those negative aspects of ourselves. The thought seems to be, if we can deny, we can make it go away. This is a bit like the child who covers its own eyes and thinks it is hidden and unseen. Or, we attempt to bottle it, to keep any fragment of it from slipping into our moral self or our moral actions. If we succeed and impose our mental and moral rules on the vital center of us, we dry it up. We take away its breath, its color, its sound. We kill its life.
When we can be silent within, we can perceive that none of these ‘my’s’ or ‘your’s’ belong to us individually. We can recognize that it is unnecessary to hide. We can cease taking in all the vibrations of others and the world. We can own ourself as part of the whole. Our practice of silence creates a transparency around us allowing us to see ... to use the seeing positions to recognize all that ‘external stuff’ coming in at us and we can make the choice to reject it.
Divine qualities of the vital, the energy consciousness qualities, include loving kindness, compassion, equanimity (impeccability), and an open mind and heart. We become more transparent. We receive life with balance and harmony. The enemy qualities of the vital are attachments; need, desire, wanting, longing. They also include pity; indifference and apathy which keeps us separate from each other. Quieting the vital, finding a stillness of the vital allows us to touch the divine with all its transparency.
Tibetan Buddhism sees this duality of energies of the awakened consciousness and describes it as the five tathagatas, the five Buddha families. First is Vairocana, confusion and ignorance balanced with limitless wisdom. Second is Aksobhya, aggression balanced by uncritical wisdom. Third is Ratnasambhava, pride and materialism balanced with the wisdom of equality. Fourth is Amitabha, passion and detached serenity that transforms into compassion. Fifth is Amoghasiddhi, envy and ambition which transforms into the wisdom to accomplish. This path places great emphasis on meditation, sitting, walking and living. These teachings are core to the Shambhala training established by Chogyam Trumpa and to the philosophies of Thich Nhat Hanh. Both these paths bring alternatives for us to consider in quieting the mind, the vital and the physical body. Matter ... our physical being ... turns out to be the place of greatest difficulty, also the place of victory.
Quieting the Physical
When we find our physical balance and harmony we arrive at balance and harmony with non-physical spirit. We gain an sense of expertise in both through consciousness. Almost all our ‘usable’ information comes through physical sensory input. This is body information. We see, touch, taste, smell and hear our way through life. Other not so obvious sensory input gives us additional information. Balance keeps us upright. An internal awareness of thirst, hunger, temperature, etc. keeps us in homeostasis. This sensory input combined with our emotions, drives and needs, guides and/or pushes us through life. We can gain an independence from ordinary physical sensory input and can allow sensation from beyond. It is possible for the mind to take direct cognizance of the objects of sense without the aid of the sense-organs. Why would we want to do this? Through quieting ... moving past physical we can step into a level of consciousness where we can see beyond ordinary vision, hear beyond ordinary hearing, and know through a direct connection far greater than physical sensing. We can greatly expand awareness when we move beyond the controls of physicalness.
Ultimately evolving in transparency will require alteration in the physical. For the present time it is sufficient that we learn to allow our physicalness to be put to the side ... to quieten it to a level of silence in order focus, to go past body. Then we are ready for transparency or at least less opacity. Mental, vital and physical transparency is the key to a two fold independence; First, from sensation, disconnected at will from a particular point ... from discomfort, from physical pain, from suffering, from desire, from anger, from frustration and many other undesirable sensations. Second, from the sense organs. The consciousness-force is now released. It can extend beyond body physicality and can contact beings, observe distant events and forces through a kind of inner projection or a projection of the energy body ... leaving physicalness behind.
Inner Silence
When the inner silence is well established, we are capable of perceiving mental and vital vibrations at the edge of our periphery of self, the etherial body. We can recognize and reject the emotional ‘stuff’ of others, whether it is directed or inadvertent. We are similarly be able to feel the vibrations of illness and drive them out before they can enter us. These vibrations of ‘illness’ are most commonly recognized as colds, viruses, aches and pains ... similar afflictions.
The vital and the senses also open us to the ‘illness’ of emotional and mental distress. While we may not want to define this kind of malady as an illness, it is probably the worst kind. We recognize that physical illnesses exists and we quietly accept and tolerate ill health as fact of life. Emotional and mental illness is presumed to be ‘in charge’, something we cannot control. It is the great manipulator and energy vampire. Not only are we emotionally sucked dry, we expose our jugular vein, smile at our mental tormentor and embrace it as a lover. Then we express the statement; “I can’t help it.” Through Consciousness, through inner silence, through quieting the mind and the vital and the physical ... we come to a space of stepping beyond the external influences. I do not suggest that we will never again have a cold, but be can be much less susceptible as be become more aware, mote conscious. Just as we are able to recognize and reject a cold or flu, we become able to refuse emotional pain.
Rejection of these vibrations is not the same as covering them with a layer of whitewash. Hiding and denying is not sufficient, they must be rejected. They must be literally and consciously turned away. This is not a simple undertaking, but an effective one. These familiar vibrations, like habits, hang around waiting to enter once again. With patience, and commitment we can outwait them. They finally dissolve away into neutrality. Another kind of illness is one that can result from a difference of development between the higher levels of consciousness and our physical consciousness. Our mental or vital consciousness may widen substantially and receive new kinds of intensity while our physical consciousness lags behind in the old vibratory movements and cannot withstand this increased intensity. This imbalance frequently manifests as a life threatening problem or severe illness. That is one very important reason to work on mind, vital and body all at the same time and to call on our higher consciousness, our ‘God’ awareness to oversee our growth. Shaman and medicine people have recognized and utilized this kind of illness as a prelude of ‘special’ powers, powers that allow a connection with consciousness outside ordinary limits. One positive outcome of the life threatening problem is ... it does get the physical out of the way so that consciousness develops.
Without development of our physical body, matter, we might well be able to go into ecstasy and soar straight into the Absolute, but we are unable to bring the intensities and fullness of the Spirit down to our ‘lower’ kingdoms, the mental vital and material realm.
Fundamental Stillness
Behind this restless, protective and easily exhausted, vital, we find the true vital ... a vital that contains the very essence of the Life Force, the energy of the vital. We enter a state of peaceful, spontaneous concentration, like the sea below the movement of waves. We find the fluid flow, the silent pulse of consciousness. We create the ability to touch this flow and to draw from it. This fundamental stillness is not a dulling of our physicalness, just as mental silence is not a numbing of the brain, it is a basis for action. It is place from which we can expand.
Stillness and silence is an act of moving ‘through’, beyond ... thought and action. It cannot be attained through ‘trying harder’, or being more diligent. Discipline and diligence is necessary so is allowing. It is a result of focused surrender. It is moving the physical and mental ‘us’ our of the way for the Self to be. “It is resting in the nature of the mind” (the Venerable Traleg Kyabgon). It is an experience that can be described by someone, but you must experience it personally to know it. Fundamental stillness ... silence ... quietening, can be sought and can be experienced. It is one of many skills which move us toward a consciousness we call Super-Consciousness.
Part of quieting ... of silencing is bringing sensation more fully into conscious awareness. Through expanding sensory awareness we can learn to bring sensation into our conscious or shift it out of conscious, by choice, or we can move through and then past sensation to a broader experience of all kinds of sensory input.
Many belief systems recognize and use; sound ... color ... light ... music ... sensory deprivation ... all kinds of sensory input, to improve mental and physical health. Human retinal vision in only a limited light-spectrum, between ultraviolet and near-infrared, seen in binocular fashion. Hearing is a similarly limited capacity. Yet, vision and hearing have profound effects on us. Psychology therapies recognize music, art, movement and sound as part of expressive arts therapies. They are used by therapist to induce behavioral changes, adaptation to society, to produce mood changes, expand horizons and widen perceptions. It is useful in hypnosis, guided imagery, relaxation training, stress management and other therapeutic processes. We can be taught to hear and meditate to an internal high frequency personal sound. We can gain awareness of the sound of color. The term for hearing color is synesthia. Even at the deepest atomic, cellular, molecular level we experience sympathetic resonance. This is also called entrainment or resonance. When two or more vibrating bodies ... realities ... come into step, a process of harmony results.
Sounds and Vibrations
There are common, ordinary sounds that allow us to connect with the fire of our consciousness, laughter, crying, the sounds made during sex, and simply producing tones or vibrations. Flowing tears, sobs, body shaking, moans, orgasmic spasms, deep intense breathing, the belly quivering guffaws ... can open emotional centers and spiritual channels. It cleans the system, triggers endorphins, provides a relief from stress and tension. These sounds and movements provide healing; stimulates the diaphragm, thorax, abdomen, heart, lungs. They clear the respiratory system, speed circulation, increase heart rate, alter the brains chemistry ... producing catecholamines and endorphins ... and use it to our benefit.
To experience hearing your own sound, place the pads of your index fingers flat over the tab of skin and cartilage just in front of the ear canal and press gently. This will create a slight air pressure in the ear canal. Remain silent and listen. The first sound you hear will resemble the sound of the ‘ocean in a sea shell’. That is the sound of your physiology at work. Continue to listen and you will begin to hear an ultra-sonic type sound. It will sound as if it is located in the center point of your head. Imagine a line from the crown down to the top of the spine .... and a line from the top of each ear to the other ear ... then a line from the bridge of the nose to the back of the head ... where these lines intersect will be where the sound seems to originate. Some experience it as a flute like sound, others a a single tone, still some one else may think it sounds like a cricket. Your sound is uniquely yours.
Music, sound, color and light all produce physiological and psychological changes. They create changes in posture, pulse, physical activity and in breathing. Deaf individuals respond to frequency vibration of sound and music in much the same manner that hearing persons respond. Music/sound/color can create destruction and discord or can energize and bring balance and order. It can calm or stimulate, create a sense of well being or one of agitation. It can strengthen or it can weaken. When one is in harmony with surrounding energies a state of expanded awareness is formed.
Entrainment is a term to express how the human body responds to sound, color, light, music, all types of sensory input. The body assumes a sympathetic resonance with stimuli much the way a tuning fork or a musical instrument come into resonance. This process of entrainment keeps us in resonance with the planet. When two or more vibrating bodies or realities come into resonance they create a process of harmony. Many of us watched as a teacher struck and rang a tuning fork. Then they would place another tuning fork near it and it would begin to ring also. This was our early introduction to resonance and entrainment. Unfortunately, we tended to forget its lessons. Recall of the results of being near a resonating vibration can remind us that we are continually resonating with our environment. Developed, this can lead to harmony. Harmony facilitates greater power and wisdom as well as fuller health and vitality.
Hara-laugh
T’ai Ch’i sages speak to a ‘hara-laugh’. This is a laugh from the center of one’s being. It is a laugh, a consciousness center to be cultivated. Laughter is a created resonance with life, matter and spirit. Frequently it causes a resonant laughter response in those nearby.
Al Huang, in the book, Quantum Soup: A Philosophical Entertainment reports that the Chinese calligraphy character for laughter is a figure, arms and legs flung outward, head up to the sky, “vibrating with mirth, like bamboo leaves in the wind”. He gives instructions to “grow a proper laugh”. Briefly ....
1) imagine a baby bamboo shoot pushing up through earth (the idea of a laugh)
2) let the thought of laughter grow
3) feel the beginning of a genuine smile
4) widen the smile until you feel the tickle of sound in of laugh in the back of the throat
5) feel the sound begin to bounce in the chest
6) picture growing bamboo stalk rising toward sky, leaves rustling in air, the laughter taking form
7) allow the body to follow leaves of the bamboo stalk
8) expand (self) in all directions - breath is bigger, deeper, wider ... stretch, let it grow, watch it as it grows - give it life
9) give it its sound to match it life
10) feel the shoulder shake - let the belly quiver
11) the sound from the center of Being escapes - quakes, shakes, blows
12) “toes, kneecaps, hips and lips become the sound of laughter”
All this brings balance and harmony to the mind, body, and spirit. Consciousness is reachable. Laughter heals, balances and establishes resonance with the universe.
Toning
Another skill to practice to simply explore sound and its effect is to learn to tone. Spend time making sounds ... use different vowel sounds. Open your mouth and let sound emerge. Then change the volume and/or the tone of the sound. When the vibration is centered in the mid-point of the skull, the brain, and it feels as if it originates there, then be conscious of different affects on body, mind, and sprit from different sounds. Touch the top of the head, feel the vibrations. Change the sound and touch the body to feel where the vibrations are centered. Use intuitive sensing to be aware of the color and the light of the sounds. Then sense the sound, the color and the light of silence.
All levels of beings and consciousness have varying intensities of luminosity. These luminous vibrations are all characterized by sound vibrations or rhythms which one hears when the ear of consciousness has been opened. Less consciousness is a form of fragmented light and sound. This is part of our vital, and is discordant and jarring, aware of broken and highly colored rhythms. As frequency comes into cosmic resonance, we move into higher levels. The rainbow of resulting color turns to pure white and ultimately crystal clear with the sound ... OM ... the sound of the upper fire, the sound of light, the sound of Super-Consciousness..
By combining certain sounds we can achieve specific powers. Whenever we focus and use this current, we find it contains an extraordinary energy, limited only by our own possibilities. This power is unlimited. It can disable, cure, start a fire, protect, cast spells, modify our own and others sense of well being. This is at the Vital level and like many powers may be misused. Because of its potential misuse, this discourse will not delve further. There are teachers who work with sound , imagery and movement. they can take you into these teachings in a responsible manner.
At higher levels, planes of consciousness, this power of sound vibration manifests as poetry, music, mantras of the Upanishads and the Veda ... or the songs of the Navajo ... or Gregorian Chants ... or sacred sounds of the Tibetans ... or the hymns of the Christians ... or the sounds and colors the way the Sufi use them ... these are conscious manipulations of higher vibrations. It opens gates in consciousness. All vibration is energy and all energy is vibration. Color, music, sound, and light are all energy. Form and matter are expressions of energy.
Color
Color like has a significant influence on us. It influences our mood, our emotions, and our actions. Each of the Chakras has a color associated with it. The color corresponds to the energy of the Chakra. Color has frequency and vibration just as sound does. Each is located differently on the Electromagnetic Spectrum. Think about your favorite color or colors. What is it about that color that you like? How do different colors effect your feelings and your attitudes. It is difficult to think about red without the association of intensity. That definition of intensity varies some. For some individuals it may indicate anger. For others it may suggest sexuality. There are equally varied responses to other colors but some commonalties. Red is intense. Blue is calm. Yellow is light and sun. Green is growth and plants. Native American cultures associate specific colors with the teachings of the directions. Different tribes place colors differently but there is always a logical, practical reason for the color.
Experiment with color. Try them out in your imagery and in your clothing. Think back to different stages, different passages of your life. How did your color taste vary? Many times they reflect the patterns of our lives. Purposely try wearing a color that is one of your least favorite colors. Take note how your attitudes alter. The psychology of color is also active in the business world now. Our spending patterns are influenced by the colors and the decor of commercial enterprises. Food establishments are designed to either move us quickly through or to encourage us to linger and spend more. Music combined with color does a doubly efficient job in influencing our subconscious. Increasing conscious awareness of surroundings and actively changing surroundings to reflect our objectives helps us achieve and accomplish what we want.
Light
Natural light is perhaps the strongest influence on our consciousness levels and all its dualistic partitions. It has an equally strong effect on our physical body. It stabilizes vitamins use, provides vitamin E, dramatically influences vision and color, controls our circadian rhythm, and its lack can cause depression ... Seasonal Affective Disorder.
When we enter Super-Consciousness, we no longer see and hear with ordinary limited senses. Our senses become more vivid, more intense, have more depth. Vibrations of consciousness take possession, enter the cells and spirit of the seeker. They enter consciousness wrapped in color, images and sounds. This is expressed by the priest, the poet, the artist, the musician and others as they translate sensations into ordinary reality through creativity. When consciousness is clear, and is in harmony, its translation is Beauty. Beings, forces, sounds, colors, lights, rhythms and dimensions are just so many vibrations. They are various vibratory forms of the One vibration of consciousness. Conscious individuals can recognize and draw these vibrations into this ordinary reality, into our physical form. We feel their energy, their luminousness, their
The result of harmony, of resonance, of consciousness manifest on two levels. The first level reflects well being, delight, spiritual ease, pleasure ... a virtuous , moral life ... happiness. Our life is uplifted even if we go no further in our Quest.
At the second level we find liberation. We discover an openness of the whole world of inner-ness and outer-ness. We begin to recognize non-duality. We recognize and face pleasure and pain equally and without judgment. We look directly into light and into the shadow of our heart and our mind.
Another way of gaining independence
from the body is called
conscious exteriorization. Many recognize this event as being ‘out of
body’. A few people do this
spontaneously, others learn the skill. Still
others, many people, wonder why anyone would want to step outside their body.
This separation occurs very naturally as a component of sleep and dreams
common to everyone. If you have not
brought this experience into your awake state, recognize it as natural and do
not allow yourself to become fearful. It
is also becoming familiar as a component of ‘near death experiences’, and
surgery memories. This
exteriorization during dreams can be a learning technique to gain voluntary and
consciousness independence from the body. This
separation from the body is one more way of quieting the body to become more
fully conscious.
This can be experienced through a form of self hypnosis, self guided imagery. It is a process of stimulating all physical senses in the internal ... mentally physical. It is creating internal experience. Use positive images, phrases and suggestions. Create an attitude of positive expectancy. Set the mood. Example terms to reflect on:
peaceful content reflective joyous gladness freedom
safe secure comfortable protected delight confident
strong capable intelligent eager energetic graceful
wise energy enthusiastic satisfied healthy in control
warmth coolness resourceful willing intuitive accepted
aware conscious awake calm at peace compassionate
It is important to keep this a positive experience. It is not a time to do deep therapy or family history work or to processing past events and situations. The objective is to establish an atmosphere of reinforcement and safety. In this safe and sacred space we can allow conscious exteriorization. In the beginning stages this is much like elaborate day dreams and are created ... elicited by self suggestion.
Begin with setting a variety of images to stimulate all sensations. Some individuals are visual, some are auditory, others might work more effectively with touch and feel. Suggestions should include some of all available sensory influences. Examples of sensation and of settings follow. Select a garden, or a beach or a meadow or a fantasy spot ... then experience as many different sensations as possible.
GARDEN
BEACH MEADOW
MOUNTAIN
CRYSTAL CITY
MOVEMENT walk sit ride horse climb glide on lightbeam
SMELL flowers ocean grass pine, sage fresh air
HEARING
birds
gulls wind
leaves rustling flute
music
FEELING
breeze
sun mist
cool shade
crystal
TASTE
berries
salt
wild mint
spring water water
fountain
SEEING
plants
waves trees
snow peaks glass
buildings
TOUCH
flowers shell
moist earth
pine needles cool
surface
BECOME
songbird shark
sparrow
eagle
crystal
SENSE singing gills nesting soaring stone-ness
Using breathing techniques is helpful in eliciting images and breath can also be a primary focus for the attention to help step outside the physical body. One technique uses four stages of breath; indwelling, holding, outgoing and holding. Each of the four breath stages has a distinct tonality (sound). It also has a beat, a cycle, and an electromagnetic pattern. The breath controls temperature, oxygenation and the transfer of pranic energy (Marcel Vogel).
Indwelling breath - builds patterns of thought, develops intention and programs action for transfer to body cells.
Holding one - time for the physical exchange ... the transfer of prana, intention, oxygen and thought to the bloodstream and cells; and for carbon dioxide, CO2 and other waste products to be gathers for release form the body
Outgoing breath - kind, gentle release of the breath that completes the Yin/Yang, male/female, positive/negative energy and creates a balanced whole.
Holding two - the pause which allows preparation for the cycle to begin again.
A common meditation technique is to follow the breath ... in and out. Each time a thought appears, label it as ‘thought’ then return to the breath. Do this for a time period of ten minutes to one or two hours at a time. This changes body awareness to a one-pointed focus of breath.
Each of these techniques allows conscious exteriorization. Then the consciousness-force becomes still, quiet ... like a transparent, weightless mass taking up no space. It feels almost nonexistent. We learn to elicit the exteriorization. Breathing subsides, the heartbeat becomes faint, then we may experience a sharp release and find ourselves ‘elsewhere’. We discover that we are in the subtle physical, in the luminous sphere, the energy dimension. This ‘place’ can still be defined as a place but it exist beyond three dimensional reality, our consensus reality. We find ourself someplace other than our body. The most immediate elsewhere borders our physical world and resembles it. This independence comes to be the normal attitude of the whole being. The physical body comes to feel as something external and detachable. It becomes something we can take off and put back on at will. We may even feel that the body is non-existent and unimportant except as a partial expression of vital force and of our mental and emotional expression.
As we continue to step more fully into Super-Consciousness we are able to ‘wear’ both simultaneously. We can be in physical body and in other realities at the same time. We see and experience the opposites ... the dualities from any and/or all of the seeing positions. We acknowledge the duality from the position of non-duality.
Sleep and Death
Sleep and death as well as being in the body and out of the body, become intertwined in the same consciousness. In full consciousness we recognize that each utilizes a freedom from physical limits. In the little death we call sleep, we can escape into awakness. If we have a nightmare we can awaken, if we do not like our dreams, we can awaken. With conscious exteriorization ... out-of-body experiences, we can escape into awakeness. In the ‘grand death’ of the physical body, there is no place to return, no escape. Consciousness remains the same, our mode of communication, of interaction ... must change.
This level of consciousness exist as strongly while we reside in ... while we use our physical body in consensus reality and consensus time. While we are fully in matter we can learn to utilize awareness and consciousness. We can learn to ‘see’ everything, with vision more insightful than our optical vision. We can learn to allow an internal, intuitive seeing, an equivalent hearing and sensing that extends far beyond physical sensory input. Our sensory system, by its incapacity, invented darkness. In truth there is nothing but light, only it is a power of light either above or below our poor human visions limited range (Aurobindo). We learn to walk in the light through Consciousness.
Meanwhile we live, sleep and die with much unconsciousness ... as if continually on auto pilot. If we live to 100, at the end we find that we have slept 30 years of our lives with no connection between sleeping awareness and waking awareness ..... Another 60 years has been consumed with acquiring means. Again, very little expanded consciousness is developed or used. We have 10 years or less to be spiritual, to evolve, to be aware, to be ‘conscious’ unless we develop consciousness at all levels; all levels of sleep, all levels of daily life, and all levels of death. Then consciousness survives and thrives unendingly as our energy survives endlessly. We assist in the evolutionary merging of spirit, energy and matter.
To correct this imbalance, this exaggerated state of unconscious, we must recover our entire universal reality, our universal consciousness. Three methods may be used. First is sleep, second, conscious exteriorization (out of body experience) and/or deep meditation. Third, we learn to see everything without sleep, or meditation, with our eyes wide open, in the middle of other activities. We recognize that there is no separation between worlds ... except for our lack of consciousness. We have no need to escape for we have arrived. We have always been.
In our sleep we have ordinary sleep, conscious sleep, the sleep of experience and sleep of action. We dream in each of these sleeps and the dreams may be ‘ordinary’ dreams, ‘unconsciousness’ dreams, ‘conscious’ dreams and/or ‘lucid’ dreams.
Ordinary sleep and dreams is what we are most familiar with. We slip into a state of non-awareness at night and return to physical awareness in the morning and resume our unconscious living. Even if we have experienced phenomenal bliss, or unbearable pain, or great enlightenment during our sleep, it remains unavailable to us. With focus and commitment we can begin to learn to be aware of sleep and the events occurring during this time. We can begin to remember what happened during sleep. Sleep of action becomes the process of learning to ‘use’ the dream time for purpose. Dreams occur for each of us about every 90 minutes throughout the night. Our awareness of them and our utilization of them varies. Lucid dreaming is awareness that you are dreaming while you are in the dream. It is here we can begin to take charge of the dreamtime.
One place to explore the possibilities of ’more’ is the Sleep of Experience. This is Conscious sleep, or dreams in which we remain conscious ... lucid and return to physical awakeness with awareness of sleep awakeness. We learn to do without sacrificing the rest our body needs. Sleep is our first tool, it is something we all do. One can become increasingly conscious during sleep, conscious on this level of reality as well as other reality levels. A new mother hears the steady breathing of her baby but is undisturbed by a siren outside. This is selective attention. We chose our awareness. We become aware of immense and countless worlds that suffuse, envelop and overshadow our little earth.
To begin to experience sleep awakeness, we must have clear austerity, including the absence of desire and a silent mind. Trying harder is counter productive ... we get in our own way. After we learn to have dream awareness it is time to build bridges between planes and levels. One bridge is the bridge to waking consciousness. We learn to being the dream into this reality ... we remember it when we wake up. Thought has no place in the remembering process. If we try and try, this pushes the memory of the dream farther away. If we remain mentally quiet on waking, as if floating on a silent sea, we can begin to feel intuitively the dream and its meaning. With patience we draw forth images from the quiet waters of forgetfulness. We learn to find the thread in the silence and pull gently without trying to think or understand. Patience and persistence will prevail. We can and do learn to remember our dreams.
Another skill we can recognize and develop is the use of ‘formations’. Formations are something we make ... literally. A familiar variety of formation is our inner clock. We create a formation to wake at a certain time ... and we do. Formations are desires and thoughts fulfilled. Sometimes this happens much later, even when we have forgotten and no longer want them. It is the basis of the saying, “be careful what you wish for, you may get it.” They can be more or less durable. Many times these formations come into being many years after the thought. Other times they may need to be recharged and continued.
In pre-sleep, dream awareness we can create the formation, the suggestion of dreaming and waking to acknowledge the dream. This allows us to record or to mentally set the dream in memory so that it can be recalled more easily the following morning. In sleep/dreams of experience we remain passive witnesses. We watch and remember.
Sleep of Action
Action sleep is bigger, richer and more intense. Ordinary dreams are passive. Moving into the action of dreams allows integration of sleep and conscious. Awareness of multiple realms follows. We begin to learn to tell ordinary dreams from dream experiences. The quality of light of the dream changes and we become aware of the changes and the differences. We learn that we can step into the dream, be awake in the dream and manipulate the dream and its outcome. We learn to create our dream realities to the point that our created dream realities can be visited regularly and by choice.
In our Sleep of Action we discover that our dreams are made up of fragments. They are little vibrations which disperse and run all over in thousands of tangents. The physiology of the brain weaves these fragments into story form. When these fragments are not integrated around the individual center, our psychic center, we cannot control them. Without direction we go to our lower vital (navel and sexuality). These are our more base instincts and leave us vulnerable to attack by the fragmented random elements. This is often experienced as a nightmare. We can escape by returning to our body. With integration, when we develop that ability, we have psychic light, a fragment of Supreme light. With this beam of Supreme light adverse forces vanish. Remembering ... calls the true vibration. This true vibration has the power to dissolve or disperse all vibrations of lesser intensity. This nightmare stage is a transitory stage, a stage we learn to move quickly past.
Negative events and positive events in a dream have the potential to facilitate negative events or positive events in our three dimensional reality. They have the characteristics of ‘formations’. Being actively conscious and balanced causes dubious energies to withdraw. “A conscious being, no larger than a mans thumb, stands in the center of our self; he is Master of the past and the present ... he is today and he is tomorrow,” says the Katha Upanishad (IV. 12, 13) {Upanishad means ‘sitting near’}. Developing this Master ability can increase our focus on positive energy creations and disallow the power of the negative. Numerous experiences with dreamwork allows us to better understand to what extent dreams are not dreams. Dreams can be a window into alternate realities and the window can be transformed into a doorway.
Action is intimately connected to integration. As our being becomes integrated around our psychic center, we move from passive to active sleep. Active sleep is dreamwork.
This integration moves us to an awareness of all realms. Premonitions begin to occur more frequently in our dreams. This frequently means that something already exists on a dream reality plane before it gets here in this reality. We have created it in one realm and then pull it into here and now. With consciousness and harmonious balance we can change or recreate that which exist and is moving toward us..
Our DREAM CONSCIOUSNESS begins to develop. When we step beyond the limits of physical reality we begin to recognize the special nature of dreams. Many visible, external changes are preceded by inner change and pre-reality awareness through dreamwork.
There are many reasons we dream. Some of the reasons are:
1) To re-create three dimensional reality through fantasy, for entertainment, to rehearse future events, to problem solve, to re-live and perhaps reframe past events.
2) To provide a message pathways from the subconscious, from the unconscious, from the collective unconsciousness and to provide connection with Super-Consciousness.
3) It is a way toward know what we cannot know through ordinary mind consciousness.
4) It is a Dimensional Gateway.
5) It can be used to stimulate the immune system and other healing mechanisms of the physical body.
6) It is a way to experience the feeling of separation between body and mind, to experience externalization from the body.
7) To gain insight into our personal range of symbols and feelings.
8) To facilitate thought formations.
9) To develop integration of sleep and consciousness.
10) It is a way to bring together spirit and matter.
There are many ways of developing dream consciousness. One way is a progressive technique of perfecting dream skills in a progression of dream exercises (Harary and Weintraub).
1. In alert relaxation the body becomes increasingly relaxed while the mind remains alert. This is a state very much like deep hypnosis. The physical body seems to fall into a deep sleep without losing consciousness. Do and practice this. Seek special feelings of transcendence. Note shifts in waking and sleeping and in the intermediate states. In the learning process, practice this many times and maintain alert relaxation for 20 - 30 minutes. Record all experience in a dream journal.
2. The next step is one of creating adventure, free forming fantasy. A surrealistic cartoon or a nature film can be good facilitators. Music can also help stimulate imagery. About three hours before bedtime, do the alert relaxation and then allow spontaneous or self generated images to form. This may be done by playing a part in the movie or other creative ventures. Practice 30 - 45 minutes.
3. Developing hypnogogic imagery is the next step. This occurs naturally in the ‘twilight’ area between sleep and awakeness. It can also be an elicited state. It a condition of vivid and conscious mental pictures that emerge in the state of ‘twilight’. Be a witness to the dream but not participate in or control it. Follow the hypnogogic image into a full lucid image. Do this about one hour before bed time. Music or a video can be used. Maintain awareness. When sleep is felt to be near, say, “I am now entering a dream.”
4. Repeat the process. This time study the scenario and remind self that the dream is a product of creativity, memories, and imagination. Note general and specific aspects. Then begin to change something. ‘Something’ might be a color, the weather, the temperature, time, smells, tastes, or anything else. If you wake up, continue to play out the end in a semi-conscious state of deep relaxation.
5. Repeat the process again. Enter alert relaxation without music or video this time. Allow the hypnogogic image to form. If they do not form spontaneously then create them through imagery. This time shift the entire dream. This can be done by selecting an object, then shift the object to a different setting, a different dream.
6. Repeat. This time pay special attention to the characters. If you are alone, walk around or do some other activity until some life form appears in the dream. Each form is some representation of your inner self. You ... play each and every part. If you wake up, play out at least one part in the state of semi-consciousness.
7. Prepare earlier in the day for this dream exercise. Prepare by observing and being aware of your relationship with others and the world. Take note of feelings about life in general and about specific situations, themes and patterns that motivate or hinder you. Imagine a life form to represent higher power and wisdom. It may be human or animal or fantasy. Reflect on this at least three times during the day while relaxed and comfortable. Do this for about 1/2 hour each time. Before bed time, gather tangible symbols of these issues and place them on a table near the bed. Contemplate them before bed. Incense and/or music may be used. Enter alert relaxation, contemplate mentally the objects, then enter lucidity, directly from waking consciousness. In the dream look for the symbolic representation of higher power and wisdom. Converse.
8. Repeat, but this time imagine a personal healer who monitors and enhances physical health. Prepare by waking in the morning taking special notice of feelings and emotions. Notice the body and feeling throughout the day. Allow these feelings to come and go. Don’t hold or analyze them. Choose objects to represent the issues and then contemplate the object. Express the concern on paper. Dream. In the dream, request a symbolic healing of the issue. Say before and in the dream, “I am overcoming ............................ in my dream.”
9. Expand consciousness. Prepare through asking, “Who do I seem to be?” “What is my path?” ... other significant questions of self awareness. Then, “Let my deepest self find expression in my dreams.” Go into alert relaxation, induce lucid state, look at feelings about identity of self in dream, allow exploration. Call on your dream to alter itself with the question, “Who do I seem to be now”, with each alteration. Carry this knowledge into awake world. Ask, “Is there a broader reality beyond this ... beyond my everyday perceptions?” This question can be asked in and out of the dream.
Gateways
of Dreaming
Another way of entering the gateways of dreaming is to associate the steps of dreaming with the
medicine wheel and the teachings of the directions. The first direction
is the South. It is here we learn
to become aware of falling asleep. One
indication of sleep is a feeling of being suspended in darkness accompanied by a
sensation of heaviness as though
gently floating downward into a dark sea of unconsciousness. Dreaming begins with a feeling of lightness, of floating
toward an energy images. We
discover currents of energy, like fibers reaching toward other levels, to dream
realms. This is our energy body.
Begin by focusing on one of these threads of energy and follow it into a dream reality. Maintain awareness of the energy and the dream. Be aware of reaching the energy body. It may ‘appear’ ghost-like, a luminous sphere configuration of pure energy. This luminous ball of energy becomes more supple and coherent with practice of dream exercise. The energy body perceives energy of the dream and of energy even when in ordinary reality. The energy body uses energy for action and movement in the dream. The energy body perceives as we ordinarily perceive. The energy body can ‘See’ energy as a light or vibrating current and can ‘Feel’ it as a jolt or sensation.
The second direction to the dream world is the West, the place of change. The dream gateway is learning to change energy threads, thereby purposefully shifting dreams and doing so in an orderly precise manner. We collapse one dream and one thread by shifting to another energy thread and we find ourself in another dream. It is a bit tricky to recognize this as another dream, one that we have chosen. This happens fairly commonly for many people when they wake up in a dream from another dream. In the new dream they think they are in ordinary waking. They may proceed as usual ... get ready for work or school, eat breakfast then wake up again and find they have done none of their morning activities. In ordinary reality we know this only through hindsight after we have awakened in ordinary reality. Moving through the West gateway is learning to do these movement consciously. It is necessary to use focused intent.
The third direction is the North, the place of wisdom. It is here you can find yourself staring at someone who is asleep and then discover that the someone is you. With this recognition of being outside your body you can begin to consciously move around. You move with deliberation. We can begin to merge dreaming reality with daily reality and begin to complete the energy body. We consolidate and dream with direction. We direct the dream.
The fourth direction is the East, the place of the Dawn. We begin to walk into the light of creation. We consciously create the dream. We project our intent, create the dream and walk in the dream ... awake.
The fifth and sixth and seventh directions deal with Mother Earth (inward, internal movement), Father Sky (outward movement), and the Gateway ... the center point where all directions become Oneness. These directions utilize more advanced ‘dream’ skills and will not be addressed here.
As we become more conscious, we discover there are many layers of consciousness. We identify Planes of Consciousness. The entire Universal Reality of the planes of consciousness embraces all we can conceive and more. Out task is to reclaim, to remember, to recover this universal reality. As we accomplish this task we awaken ourselves, but equally importantly we continue to contribute to the evolution of humankind. Some methods of achieving this task have been presented: sound, music, color, light, sensory explorations. Reclaiming skills include the techniques presented here and more; sleep, conscious exteriorization (deep meditation), and deliberate and conscious shifts of consciousness. These purposeful shifts can then become a continuous ability and then become an ongoing state of being. We become any and all states of consciousness simultaneously.
The boundaries between these planes exist only through our presumptions and definitions. There is actually no separation except for our lack of consciousness. The many planes, levels, or worlds coexist. They constantly and consistently intermingle. It is only different ways of perceiving and defining, different ways of understanding and building little boxes of definition around ‘reality’.
Sat-Chit-Ananda
Releasing the boundaries allows us to reach toward, Sat-Chit-Ananda. Sat-Chit-Ananda is existence, it is Consciousness, it is Bliss ... it is Light. Saint Paul spoke of “the Christ within”. Saint John said, “Is it not written in your law ... I said, ye are gods.” Saint Luke said, “Behold the kingdom of God is within you.” To real-ize Cosmic Consciousness is to real-ize Oneness. In this Oneness we find God, we find self, we find the entire world, we find the infinite, all contained in this Supreme Oneness. We have it All. If real-ization of this Oneness was the pinnacle of accomplishments it would be beyond highest hope, beyond highest expectation. For many of us, it is to be enough. Others of us, small beings on this planet, continue to reach beyond, even this profound level. There is still more, and more after that.
We are taken to the point where there is recognition that form is emptiness and emptiness is form, then ... Shunyata ... nothingness, voidness. So form is empty. Empty of what? Form becomes empty of our preconceptions, empty of our judgments, empty of partiality. They are what they are. Form is empty if we see it in the absence of our
own personal interpretation of it. Emptiness is also form .... When we attempt to cloth form in emptiness, emptiness is a concept so form returns as a concept of emptiness. So we are left with the conclusion that form is just form and emptiness is just emptiness. It all is just ‘is-ness’.
Meditation is sometimes used to mean contemplating an idea or an object. It is meditating on something. Often we can meditate on a problem or a question and find a solution through meditation. Sometime meditation is used to achieve a higher state of mind, a trance, or an altered or expanded state. It might be called a meditation of concentration. It is focusing the mind on a particular point so as to be better able to control the mind. It is goal oriented and accomplishment focused. It is based on subject and object rather than transcending the dualistic view of life. Concentration meditation practices are largely ego reinforcing rather that ego freeing.
Shambhala meditation is an unconditional meditation. It is training our state of being so that our mind and body are synchronized. Through Shambhala meditation one can learn to be without deception, to be fully genuine and alive.
Shambhala meditation is a sitting meditation. A cross-legged sitting posture is assumed and simply by being still and simple recognize dignity. The posture of meditation includes sitting erect, the posture of a warrior. Sit with back straight, a natural comfortable uprightness. Legs rest comfortable. A sense of assuming your spot naturally is felt. Gaze is directed slightly down and forward, jaws relaxed, mouth slightly open. It is a universal posture. Go out with the out breath and dissolve. The in-breath occurs naturally. Mind works with breath. Mind and body work together. An ideal state of tranquillity comes from this synchronization.
Shamata is a basic meditation practice. It aim is to quiet the mind and focus it free from distraction. Shamata means peacefulness and its focus is seeing the precision of situations at every moment. It is an attempt to see now-ness in action. When you see the now-ness of the very moment, there is no room for anything but openness and peace. It lays the foundation for vipashayana.
Vipashayana - Having calmed the mind through Shamata meditation the practitioner may begin to have insight into an unimaginable experience of the qualities within one. This clear seeing of the patterns of mind is known as vipashayana. It expands into wisdom. It is viewing situations in a more panoramic way. Awareness is not only of the precise details but also of the situation as a whole. Vipashayana leads to Mahavipashyana.
Mahavipashyana meditation is awareness of the overall pattern rather than details. There is a vast expanse of space between us and objects. We are aware of the space and anything can happen in that space. We do not impose our conceptualization of the space. It remains open to all possibilities. It is allowing things to be as they are ... no effort.
Tonglen is a meditation practice for developing compassion. It begins with aspiration to help others. The way to help others is to develop sympathy and friendship for yourself then to extend that out. Your greatest obstacles ... anger, poverty, frustration, pity ... become your link with understanding the confusion of other people. In shamata practice you learn to work with these things by training yourself not to dwell on them, but to see them with tremendous precision and realism. In tonglen practice, that precision and realism continues but with an emphasis on the heart. It is a heart matter, not a head matter. Tonglen practice develops the heart. As always ... aspiration, willingness, and practice are necessary as is basic goodness.
Tonglen practice has three stages. Stage one is “flashing openness”. It is the “Ah” experience of recognition. It is spaciousness. Stage two is texture, breathing in black, heavy and hot; breathing out white, light and cool. It is the expression of space, of openness. It is the synchronization of the in and out breath. Stage three is work with suffering, a personal sense of pain and suffering and then a sense of suffering of all sentient beings. Practice consists of extending compassion through sitting meditation.
Mahamudra is a high level of mindfulness. It is embracing and being mindful of all daily life. It is the ultimate nature of mine. It is another name for enlightenment. Mahamudra is a fundamental understanding of self through sitting meditation, shamata, quieting and focusing the mind then insight into self qualities. This clear seeing and non attachment to the patterns of the mind expands into wisdom, into consciousness. Wisdom is real-ized through confusion not through abandoning emotional conflict. Mahamudra is transcendence ... not from the world but transcendence as the world. Four yoga’s of Mahamudra are 1) focus on an object, 2) use breath and object of focus, 3) learn to remove obstacles, 4) accommodate obstacles. Two obstacles to be aware of are dullness ... stupor (may be mistaken for meditative state) and mental agitation.
Objectives are clarity and luminosity. Luminosity is awareness, consciousness even while in confusion.
Samsara is a vicious cycle of transmigratory existence characterized by suffering. Nirvana is cessation of ignorance and conflicting emotion. It is freedom form compulsive rebirth. Mahamudra is recognizing that Samsara and Nirvana are not different.
Tantra
Mahamudra ... ‘Great Symbol’ ... is the first half of Tantric practice, Lower Tantra. It is demonstrating the qualities of what is. It is the enlightened Wisdom of Equanimity. It provides the vision “... to see not only the absence of complexity, the absence of duality, but the stoneness of stone and the waterness of water .... precisely as they are ... in the physical sense and in their spiritual sense (Chogyam Trungpa)”.
Tantra is the vehicle of direct
energy. After cutting through fixed
concepts with (prajna) transcendental knowledge, we have the ability to see
situations as they are. We do not
need to paste our projections over situations or over our ego.
We find the nature of ego is nothing more than our creation.
We no longer have to maintain ego. Having
moved beyond ego we discover Shunyata - nothingness, emptiness, voidness, the
absence of duality and conceptualization ... form is form and emptiness is
emptiness. Then comes the last
stage of the path ... the death of Shunyata and the birth into
luminosity.
Previously, wisdom was experienced as an external discovery. Samadhi, a powerful jolt, a state of total involvement, was necessary to recognize and participate in the state of being wisdom rather than knowing wisdom. This is the awakening, the entrance into Tantra ... into luminosity ... into working with energy. Energy is ‘that which abides in the heart of all beings, self existing simplicity, that which sustains wisdom ... it is the energy of great joy ... it is the sustainer of the primordial intelligence which perceives the phenomenal world (Chogyam Trungpa). This energy gives impetus to both the enlightened and the confused state of mind. Then ... surrender and then ... work on the Shunyata principle of seeing beyond conceptualization and seeing that form is form and emptiness is empty. Then leave all that behind and see the luminosity of form. Then, all experience is direct ... there is no veil between.
Shambhala calls this self-existing energy windhorse. Wind is the energy of basic goodness. It is strong, exuberant and brilliant. It radiates tremendous power. This wind energy can be ridden. This is the principle of the horse. Following the path of the spiritual warrior, you can harness the wind of goodness, not tame it but ride it. Riders may occasionally be unseated but quickly regain their position. They re-seat in the place of surety and power.
This energy is a joyous energy. We are completely interested in the creative patterns of our life. Life is opened by generosity, activated by morality, strengthened by patience. Then comes joy. Life is lived open minded and with intense interest. Life is not evaluated. Life is seen beyond concept and evaluation.
form
is emptiness and emptiness is form
duality
is non-duality and non-duality is duality
opposites
define each other
Existence
* Consciousness
* Bliss
* Light
THE
SECRET
The Secret ... duality/non-duality
If there is a secret ... to be shared with the seeker on the path, it is one of duality ... then non-duality ... then duality again ... luminosity. The secret is that there are simultaneous truths. Perceived opposites are the same and different, both at the same time. We can not only move upward. We must make the return trip. Many of us want to move only upward and leave our fellow beings in ‘Plato’s Cave’. That is not possible. We must move in a whole. The movement is toward light, into consciousness. Then we re-enter the darkness. This is the ascent and the descent. These two movements mirror each other. And, the height of the ascent is matched by the depth of the descent. This is not a Yoga for the weak. None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell (Aurobindo). Three ways of Yoga are action, devotion, and knowledge. We must work in all these ways. Our way of participating in the world as a warrior or a dreamer is reflected in the other. Our reflection of our Super-Consciousness evolutionary future is reflected in our immediate past as well as our distant evolutionary past. All of our impulses, fears, drives, and forces are retained in our human-ness through our evolution. The closer we come to a beginning of Truth here in earthly matter, the more we uncover an unfathomable wisdom. The farther one descends, the more powerful the light needed. Know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can understand the lowest (Aurobindo). We must bring the light from the ascent into the depths. We must thin the veil between. We must merge spirit and matter.
The wounded gloom complains against the light ..... This is the first lesson .... each step upwards is necessarily accompanied by a step downwards ... this dual movement of ascent and descent is the fundamental process of integral yoga ... on each height we conquer we have to turn to bring down its power and its illumination into the lower mortal movement (Satprem).
The reversal of consciousness is curious, like going from a lighted room to the same room darkened, from a joyous room to the same room ridden with pain. Everything is the same, yet everything is changed. It is as if the force were the same, the vibratory intensity the same, perhaps the vibration itself is the same, but suddenly with a minus sign in front of it. The same thing only reversed (Satprem). So, life will never be transformed, unless we bring consciousness into the darkness. Discovering the higher states of bliss is one half of the process. We must bring the light of experienced ecstasy into the equal depths of physical matter.
We realize that a thread runs through our life, pointing to a particular path. We uncover difficulty, which seems to be in direct opposition to our goal. It seems as if we bear the exact shadow of our light The clearer the goal becomes ... the stronger the shadow .... We have met the Foe. On each height we conquer we have to turn to bring down its light and its illumination into the lower mortal movement (Aurobindo).
Recognizing the duality within leads us to explore our own body. How and where is this knowledge stored? The organs and cells of our body have their own type of highly organized and efficient consciousness. This consciousness knows how to form, how to be what it was meant to be. Cellular consciousness knows how to keep our bodies operating. Our cells know how select, receive or reject. At the very bottom of physicalness, where every form of consciousness or memory seems to die out, to return to nothingness, one reaches bedrock ... the fundament ‘death’ from which life tore itself free. This is a wall --- or a door. It is a place on the circle that begins us on our next round.
At the wall, the door, we find ourself imprisoned in Matter ... in the black egg. There are only two ways of getting out, sleep and death ... all degrees of death. In the depths of this ‘unconscious’, in the blind cells of this body, we are thrust into the Supreme Light, without trance, loss of individuality, or cosmic dissolution, eyes wide open.
We have reached the next round, the Super-Consciousness, not a more ethereal consciousness, but a denser one, the vibration that endlessly organizes and reorganizes matter and worlds, it is a consciousness that can change the Earth.
Through special teachers, special conditions ... symbols of transformation ... we go beyond meaning, beyond intentionality, beyond self actualization, beyond self autonomy, beyond separateness ... then ... the transpersonal level opens. We find consciousness and super-consciousness.
Super-Consciousness
Super-Consciousness is difficult to define in mental terms, for it is non-mental by definition and defies all our three-dimensional laws and perspectives. All descriptors will be just that, a set of words to attempt to describe something indescribable. Super-Consciousness is a mass of stable light. All the lower planes are defined by their light or lack of light. Even the more luminous of the lower planes are mere flashes of light, or spotlighted vision. The spotlight effect creates contradictions as a result of the lack of light. We interpret these light and non-light viewpoints as opposites. These become our defined dualities. They are viewed as negations rather than as elements of intensity, differences within cosmic harmony. Everything has its place and purpose. This is a unifying conscious. However, as long as we can see only the differences and the gaps ... the opposites, we can not comprehend the unification.
When we recognize and walk in Super-Consciousness, the divine is no longer a concept, but something seen, something touched, something we have become. We recognize divinity - Consciousness - because we have become It. Here we see the same light everywhere. It is in all things, in all beings, in ones self. No more gaps remain in the light to separate and be perceived as opposites. We experience universal love and compassion for all selves who are on the way to becoming light, even when their path was formerly viewed as darkness.
There are two aspects we can examine. One is the aspect of consciousness of vision and, Two is the aspect of power (the mental trap again). Consciousness is vision, it is power, it is an active, powerful vision, and once again words become insufficient ... another language would be needed to adequately speak of either.
Super-Consciousness Vision is global vision. The Super-Conscious, sees not only the whole world of ‘things and beings’ within a single vision, but also the point of view of each separate thing.
Fortunately, before we step into super-consciousness, we lack power. If we had power, we would, with the best of intentions, make a terrible mess, through ignorance & short-sightedness. Our personal wants, desires, and wishes would color our interactions and we would see only a portion of the vision. Power has the ability to free the good perceived within evil. When used with super-conscious vision, it applies its force and its light to the dark half of things, so they may become their luminous counterpart.
The seeker ... spontaneously lives each second, each object, as well as the immensity that contains all seconds and all objects; and these are two simultaneous ways of experiencing and seeing the same thing (Aurobindo).
Super-Conscious Power is the vehicle of change. Without power nothing can be changed. The immobility within movement is the basis for change. The immobility of inner stillness has the power of dissolving vibrations. If we are able to remain perfectly still inside, we can even stop attacks by animals or by man. This is also called Chi or Ki. We acquire this perfect stillness only when we have started to come in contact with the great Silence of the Supreme. Immobility is the basis of super-conscious power, but silence is the condition for its perfect operation. When we have learned to silence the mind, silence the vital, and silence the physical we can begin to step into the higher layers, into the overmind. Then we can begin to recognize the super-conscious. After the super-conscious is real-ized, we can take the next step of evolution. This is known as Chi in China and Ki in Japan.
Evolution
Evolution is the outcome of Super-Conscious power and Super-Conscious vision. It is the ultimate reason, our process and purpose. Once the step of evolution is recognized we can seize the lever of our own dynamism and accelerate the evolutionary process. We can accelerate the evolution of self and the evolution of the whole. It does not matter what we call this lever. I choose use the term Aurobindo used and refer the to lever as Agni, the consciousness-force. Aurobindo describes Agni’s journey in four movements, involution, devolution, involution, evolution. I use his terminology. This process is Pure Being, Pure Consciousness, the Great White Silence where all is in a state of involution, self-dominated, still formless. Force separates from Consciousness, She from Him, and Agni’s journey begins. But this beginning is perpetual, it is not situated anywhere ... this ceaseless movement from Being to Becoming is what Sri Aurobindo calls devolution (this is moving into ... matter).
At the “top” of this devolution course stands the Super-Consciousness-Force, which encompasses in a single glance all the infinite possibilities of the Becoming. Then comes the Overmind this is where the “great cleavage” of consciousness begins, the rays of the Sun, fragments of Light, branch off. The single Consciousness-Force is henceforth scattered into trillions of forces, each seeking its own absolute realization. Consciousness scatters, forming layers or worlds peopled with their own beings and forces. All traditions have described this process of separation, the fall from grace, creation.
Consciousness, Supreme Consciousness, shrivels, crumbles and falls to dust. Super-Consciousness falls to Overmind. Overmind falls to intuitive mind, illumined mind falls to higher mind, to ordinary mind then to vital, and subtle physical ... into ever increasingly small survival oriented tropisms, until its final dispersions in Matter in which everything is fragmented.. Devolution is complete ... the plunge of Light into its own shadow (Aurobindo) is done.
We are now between two poles.... At one pole the Force seems annihilated in a luminous Nothingness, a gulf of peace without a ripple. Everything is self-contained, already there, in complete fullness and simultaneous emptiness. At this pole there is no need for even the slightest movement in order to be ... EVERYTHING ALREADY IS.. At the other pole, where Consciousness seems to be sunk in an obscure Nothingness, an abyss of blind Force forever engrossed in its own dark whirl ... NOTHING IS. Each fragment is an inexorable and ceaseless becoming with awareness of being obliterated in forgetfulness and self importance. This first duality necessarily leads to all other duality, spirit and matter, form and formlessness ... the savior and the crucified.
The
laurel and not the cross should be the aim of the
conquering human soul .... but men are still in love with grief ....
therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem (Aurobindo).
One way of coping with this state of duality is to ‘tolerate’ the physical state until we can earn our way into ‘heaven’ or return to Supreme consciousness. This is the focus of Christianity and some other beliefs. Another coping skill is to deny all spirit and all ‘beyond’ matter, and live only in recognition of physical matter, “what you see is what you get”. All of ‘life’ must be lived in the here and now on this planet. There was nothing before and there will be nothing after. This is part of the duality ... one or the other ... black or white ... light or dark ... good or evil ... male or female.
Consciousness does not contradict Force, nor Matter the Spirit, nor does the Infinite contradict the finite ... nor the top ... the bottom, each extreme conceals its eternal Companion ... (Satprem). Opposites explain one another ... the tree and its branches are contained in the seed.
Ordinary mind is filled with thousands of thoughts and has rare
bursts of light. Higher mind is less opaque and its bursts of light last longer.
Illumined mind is a place of silence and connection.
Intuitive mind is a place
being ‘One in a beam of light’, but intellect gets in the way.
Over mind is the summit of human consciousness, cosmic whthout loss
of the individual self.
THE
SEED
The
father said to Svataketu, his little son:
“Bring me a fig, from that fig tree yonder.”
“Here is one, sir.”
“Break it.”
“It is broken, sir.”
“What do you see there?”
“Some little seeds, sir.”
“Break one of them.”
“It is broken, sir.”
“And what do you see now?”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
Then
the father said to his son: “Of that subtleness which you cannot see is the
great fig tree made. In that
subtleness all that exists has its essence.
That is the True, that is the Self, and Thou are That.”
From the Chandogya Upanishad (Alain)
This is what Sri Aurobindo calls “involution”. This is a simultaneous duality ... the sameness of seeming opposites. The ‘nothing that contains the all’ is the involution. Involution above, is followed by a new involution below, everything, latently contained within the Night, the way everything was contained latently within the Light. Agni, the consciousness force, is there “like warm gold dust” (Aurobindo). It is like liquid sunshine. When we are in the joy of being fully, in all that is, has ever been, and will be, here, elsewhere, and everywhere ... then evolution shall emerge from the Night to enter the Light ... mankind will at last be ... normal, for to be normal is to be divine.
We can be conscious
collaborators in our own evolution. We
can accept the challenge or let it pass us by.
It is the Fire we must seize, it is
the thread, the lever, the secret evolutionary trigger, the soul and flame of
the world (Aurobindo). The next
step is evolution, we evolve into a new life force.
We transform ordinary physical matter ... us as humans ... into a
Super-Conscious Matter. We become
evolved beings.
Transformation
The essential feature of Super-Conscious Matter is receptivity ... it is being capable of responding to the conscious will and of changing according to its dictates, the way clay responds to the fingers of a potter. Conscious malleability will be the essential attribute of Super-Conscious Matter (Satprem). In other words we must come to accept self as is ... then, recognize necessary alterations in physical being ... then, become this new individual.
This requires conscious surrender. Super-Consciousness is not man climbed to his own natural zenith. It is not a superior degree of human greatness, human knowledge and power: super-human intelligence, stronger will, improved character, greater genius, dynamic force, saintliness, love, purity or perfection. It is not super-mind or super-mentality ... it is something beyond mental man and beyond the limits of ordinary physicalness. It is actual transformation.
If our mental possibilities are not adequate, even at their zenith, our vital and physical one are even less so. Super-Consciousness will require a new physical body to occupy and to interact in this and in other worlds. The old body no longer works sufficiently to function in the new evolutionary state. If ... as we posit, ‘transformation’ is inevitable, then we must develop into a new way of being in physicalness. Our choice at this point in our consensus space/time reality is to accept the challenge of evolution and transformation or to let it pass.
If we as species collectively decide to not transform, what might happen? First, we might just continue to live as we are now. Technology continues to progress. Divisions between cultures, societies, and beliefs continue to survive in stalemate conditions. Or, in ongoing power imbalances. Dualities as we define and understand them continue to dominate life and action. Life goes on. Or, perhaps life as we know it on this planet, will crash and burn, re-creating a spectacle of life and death as has been experienced in other times. In that case we simply begin once again, we start over.
To accept the challenge, we must consciously surrender to the transformation process ... to modify the form we have or to change to a new form. This is our discovery of what matter is and the multiple parts spirit play in merging matter and spirit. Matter is the physical manifestation of energy. This energy takes many forms. Energy may express in physicalness as we recognize it in this space-time-matter-spirit reality which we agree to share. Energy expresses itself in other defined realities. Energy remains unlimited as a source of creativity. Energy also contains dissolved former realities. The flux and flow of energy remains as we might best understand as fluid.
In order to be in George Leonard’s Silent Pulse ... we must open our restricted thinking to consider options and alternatives. We must take the lid off our self created and limited boxes. It is necessary to broaden our perspective and examine ‘ways’ not ‘one way’. We have reserves of unlimited resources. It is only our self imposed limits which keep us from movement in new realms.
One way this can happen is through Cellular Consciousness. Remember, each cell of our body has a self-consciousness. It knows what to do and does it without our prompting it. Science is supporting the concept of conscious alterations in physical reality. This is really quiet common. Each of us has had the experience of thinking ourselves ill. We can come in contact with someone who is ill and catch it because we expect to. Other times we dread something so much we create a thought formation of being too sick to participate. And ... we get sick. We have each had the converse experience ... we are simply to busy to get sick ... so we do not. These are simple examples, but the theory is the same. With our thoughts, we alter our physical being. With active participation with our activated Consciousness, what cellular changes might we set into place? Evolution through thought. Is it at our fingertips?
Perhaps
If we retain a semblance of physical body, if we choose to keep our physical matter in our current physical body form ... changes would then be necessary. Interesting how we can only relate to the idea of other life forms ... from other dimensions or other realms ... in the limited context of our own physical body forms, with arms, legs, eyes, a mouth, hearing and speaking ... communicating as we humans do. How would we alter ourselves to accommodate the new ways of being if we had all potential available to us? It is quiet fortuitous that we have been denied the God ability of self creation previously. What a mess we would have made. My hope for this evolutionary process is that ... as we grow in our capability to create, to change and alter who we are ... we are again kept in check by that divine Oneness and not allowed to make too many mistakes. Although I fail to see how we could do much more damage to ourselves and the planet than we have thus done.
Of available changes, we could become more computer-like with ever changing programs and bionic parts. We might be put in a position of deeper understanding of our human-ness. We absolutely would have to re-examine our definitions of life and death. We would by necessity come to see ‘death’ as a progression from one area on a life circle to another direction. Perhaps:
* Our brain, as we now know it, would become a channel for communication with direct connections with other ‘brain’ energy sources, without physical means, directly from mind to mind ... a kind of thought transfer.
* Our heart would be an equally direct communication channel and medium of interchange for the feelings and emotions, those energies unique from thought concepts, we now describe as love and compassion. Heart would reply directly to heart without regard to differences or distances. Many beings without any external communication could meet, simultaneously, in the light of one divine center.
* Our internal organs would be replaced by a dynamic functioning of our centers of consciousness or chakras. This is our actual transition ... cellular and genetically ... from the animal-man conceived by the lower evolution to the conscious being of this new transformation-mankind. The development of these Chakra-organs would allow new kinds of physical matter being.
* Genitals? How could our sexual energy be channeled. Could conception and birth be performed beyond physical means? Do we want to? Could sexual energy have the same transformation qualities that we might ‘dream’ about for other physical correlatives. Some of these thoughts come from Ken Wilber, from Sri Aurobindo, from spiritual emergence supporters and others.
Satprem in The Mind of the Cells: or Willed Mutation of Our Species relates the perspective of Mother Mirra Alfassa, born in 1878. She met Sri Aurobindo ‘in a dream’ ten years before beginning to work with him. She continued his work after his death and Satprem continues their work today. These perspectives reflect the possibility of willed cellular changes occurring. Science attributes change to random errors in the copying process of DNA or to cosmic rays ... both being forms of chance. Could it be that a cell wills its own mutation through consciousness. “... Maybe the species itself... participates in the evolutionary push ... collaborates with it ... and lets it mold a new way of being inside its own material self ... until a new equilibrium is reached. Is there a functioning in the body that would enable us to remain contained in layers of cellular walls, while being simultaneously ... elsewhere ... another species and another realm ... (Satprem)”
The possibility of changes such as these are beyond actual comprehension and planning. However, mankind has been considering this kind of forward movement almost as long as man has been in existence. We strive ever forward. Successful growth seems closer than ever before.
Vertebrates began ... came into existence ... four hundred million years ago. Evolution has been moving along steadily ever since. In 1953, biophysicist discovered how the DNA molecule copies itself. This process will continue indefinitely in a positive manner, provided we do not destroy ourselves and the planet. It took thousands of years for the human population to reach the one billion mark in about 1830. Only one hundred years later we had doubled that (1940). Thirty years later we had tripled (1943). And fourteen years later... 1957 ... we had the fourth billion! Today ... ??? Even with efforts at population control we pass the eight billion mark. Darwinian natural selection does not account for these dramatic changes. Are there ‘bursts of evolution’ as is currently posited? If this theory is considered, what could be the causes these ‘bursts’?
“A new world is born. It is not the old world that is changing, it is a new world which is born. And we are right in the middle of the transition period, when the two overlap, when the old is still all-powerful and entirely controlling the ordinary consciousness. but the new slips in, still very modest and unnoticed ... for the moment it is imperceptible in the consciousness of most people ... but it is working and is growing (Mother Mirra).” The new element is the ‘mind ‘of the cells. It is consciousness. It is cellular consciousness, genetic consciousness, physical consciousness, mental consciousness and spiritual consciousness.
Remember, we are co-creators of this new transformational being. We are becoming Super-Consciousness beings. Choice belongs to each of us. We become what we as a whole ... a total God Being ... are creating. And, this is a collective decision, just as this collective consensual reality was created by the total of us. It is also movement into Carl Jung’s collective unconscious ... into the Akashic records of existence We are making the unconscious, conscious and utilizing our Super-Consciousness to co-create.
If we actively co-create this evolved being at some point in the future ... if our mind ... our body ... our spirit ... our emotional self ... our personality ... our unique selves step into Super-Consciousness, where is it we might be stepping. Of all the indescribable concepts that have been described in this book, this is the most indescribable of any. This movement would be so far-reaching, so expanded beyond what we are capable of imagining that it is impossible. Still, this questing spirit of ours continues to look toward what cannot be imagined, and wants to talk about it. So lets talk about it a bit and see if your own imagination begins to shift.
Chat With God
In October 1994, I had a chat with God about impersonal love. A chat with God might not seem unusual to someone professing Christianity. Prayer is a common occurrence for many people, Christians and others of different beliefs. Prayer is generally considered talking to God, asking for things, giving thanks. I refer to a two way conversation. Having long ago set traditional systems aside ... in order to quest after all I recognize as possibilities, this chat seemed a bit unusual to me. The topic, our discussion of impersonal love made it even more unusual. I view love as good and absence of love as negative and have no conceptual understanding of how love can/could be impersonal.
When I speak of this ... and other ... experiences, I usually refer to them as vivid dreams of the lucid type. I remain unsure if I use the ‘dream’ explanation because I doubt the ability of others to understand or, if I continue to question my own sanity. Perhaps I simply do not have a better way of understanding the experiences and ‘any and everything’ is allowed in a dream. My psychology background and college teacher image keeps me cognizant of disturbances such as: Schizophrenia ... delusions, hallucinations, inappropriate affect ... Obsessive Compulsive Disorders ... Conversion Disorders ... Psychotic Breaks ... and more. Then comes Delusional (Paranoid) Disorders ... are “they” out to get me because I am acting and thinking strangely? Or, Grandiosity... possessed with some great, but unrecognized, talent or insight or has made some important discovery. I remain familiar with the DSM III R. I probably could worry myself into craziness.
These ‘dreams’ do take place in an altered state of consciousness. In ordinary mind consciousness I cannot consent to these experiences. Rational thinking stops my understanding. I must step through ... beyond my ‘logic’ self in order to open my higher states of mind-being to a point of receptivity. I must be in a ‘sacred space’ ... as holy people of past times ... in order to accept these experiences. I must surrender to a higher power ... higher than my mind or my logic is capable of. Recognition of my self-insignificance keeps me from acceptance.
My walk with divine beings, God and the representatives of God ... Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Angels ... left me with more questions. Awareness of just how incomprehensible this new way of being is to be ... is out of my grasp, beyond my limits. Of course, the ultimate question ... “what does it mean?” ... remains prime.
Jesus Christ, Buddha, God, Angels ... others beyond human description .... conversation without words ... communication beyond thoughts, through ideas, images, direct transfer of knowing .... Is this the beginning of insight into God-mind, into what I cannot comprehend in physical mind? What does this communication consist of? Is it a component of Impersonal Love? What is this life beyond this dimension? What is the ... ‘seeing’ past the veils all around .... What cubby hole of my mind could this fit into?
Just as radical a difference as my new understanding of consciousness is ... so will be my new understanding of Love .... impersonal love. I remember wondering, as a child, if everyone saw color the same way I did. Is ‘red’ red for everybody or do some people see it differently? I can’t seem to move into thinking about what impersonal love is or would feel like. I know I was given hints during my chat with God, I was told about it ... but it seems so distant a concept beyond my words or thought, I can’t ‘think’ about it. In my walk and talk with God, it was explained to me. In that ‘setting’, I clearly understood. However, it must have been my transformed self that could understand, because this ordinary human can’t seem to grasp the concept.
In my understanding ... loving
is a directed (toward someone) pleasant feeling and is desirous of more ... of
extending of that emotion, feeling, sensation of pleasure.
I have many directed feelings ... of pleasure, of joy, of ... .Love.
If love is defined as impersonal, how can love be directed? Is impersonal love the same thing as compassion or universal
love? Could this be my
unsophisticated understanding of the concept of God-Love?
Is this Love for all ... loving equally without prejudice and preference?
Does loving impersonally mean loving equally?
Is consciousness, in its fullest understanding, an expression of
impersonal love? My mind is lost in
a whirlpool of questions. “The faster I goes ... the far-rer behinds I gets.”
Consciousness is an awareness ... awareness of environment, of movement, of sensory input. Consciousness is transferring external (and internal) information into a way of thinking about that information. Conscious is defined as having awareness of one’s own existence and environment. Consciousness-raising is defined as a process of achieving greater awareness of one’s needs in order to fulfill one’s potential as an individual. Aware is mindful or conscious of, or cognizant.
Super-Consciousness encompasses connection ... touching in some way. The divine tells me of impersonal love. The idea of an impersonal love is frightening to me. Love feels very personal, and I am reluctant to think of giving up the personal aspects of love to experience impersonal love. Is this one more of the ‘old fears’ that I continue to hang onto? Impersonal Love ... Conscious Love? Impersonal love seems to be directed toward the whole rather than the part. If love were equally directed to all segments of the whole could any love be special? If love were equally directed would there be any need of special love?
Consciousness is total. Yet, equal contact with every segment of existence isn’t possible under current understanding of physicalness. Is Super-Consciousness an awareness of equal intensity, of touching everything. Contact with everything is, but we can select and choose to give a specific contact special attention. Would the same be true of love? I can give an equal attention (emotion?) to everything in existence. Is that true? I am connected with a leaf ... equally to a bug ... equally to a person ... to an object sitting on the table ... even a man-made object. The connection to each is the same. Can the emotion be the same. Can I love the bug, the spoon and the man equally and impersonally? Each object has an impersonal connection ... the connection is not more with one object than another. True! The connection is the same. The emotion is different with each .... or so I have believed ... until my chat with God.
Is Consciousness moving past emotion. I don’t want to give up emotion ... I don’t think. How would it be to have emotion the same with each and every cell, atom, individual, etc. in existence? That would mean that one would love the beautiful the same as the ugly, the kind as well as the hateful, the wise as well and the ignorant. Possible? My, my ... what a tangled web we weave ... even when we have no intention of deception. I can ‘almost’ conceive of the concept ‘intellectually’ but transferring that concept to ‘heart’ does not seem possible ... or perhaps I should say ... it does not seem simple.
Impersonal love would have no space for hate ... or judgment ... pain. Would it be full or empty. If my chat was with God, and I believe it to be, how could it be anything but a greater fullness than has been in my ‘consciousness’ ... ever before. “God” can only love equally. Impersonal love would have to be a step closer to God Love. It would have to be a greater merging of matter and spirit.
I can be conscious of pain and of joy. Can one steal my attention temporarily? Of course. Can I choose to focus on one or the other for a time? Of course. Neither can ‘consume’ my consciousness unless I allow it. Would ... could I choose impersonal love? Yes!
Matter and spirit merged actually means human and God merged. Do we ... do I ... want to be one with God? Do I want to be God? Would being God be being everything equally? Does movement toward “universal” mean movement toward what we define as human reality ‘death’? Must we die to be universal? If so, would that be ‘bad’?
There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body .... “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven ... And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of he heavenly ...” (I Corinthians 15: 44-49).
So here I am ... more puzzled than ever. I look and I see through my narrow viewpoint, through my tunnel vision ... a flash of light at a time. Many have looked before I came around to looking. Plato’s Cave tells of moving into the ‘light’. William James spoke of unseen layers of reality all around us. Maslow spoke of self Actualization. Humanisitic psychology refers to human potential. The Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Torah ... and all holy books and sacred paths point to paths of enlightenment and awakening . The list is unlimited.
I am learning to be awake, learning to be consciously aware during a state of sleep. In maintaining a lucid awareness while asleep, I am able to merge this reality with others and to remain conscious ... aware of both simultaneously. This holds true until I begin to think. The moment thinking begins, other realities slip out of my awareness.
I do not ignore the problems and difficulties of the world; wars, starvation, homelessness, gangs, violence, drugs, prejudices. I do not choose to focus my attention on the negatives ... the doom and gloom, burning in the eternal lake of fire, sinful mankind, suffering .... as a path of change. My path is to work with those issues through forward movement, through recognition of a beam of light ... a beam of light available to each and everyone. And .... this forward movement can be accomplished in a manner suitable for each individual cell of this total being we are. We can tailor make our personal path to wholeness ... to total light.
The act of thinking as a function of brain is a simple concept. Is non-thinking also a function of brain? This book has been about stepping beyond thought, beyond vital, beyond physical and bringing all we find there in the ‘beyond’ place back to what we know as matter. Merging ‘here and now’ with all we previously consigned to spirit ... is my quest.
Lakota Medicine man, Fools Crow spoke of spirit travel and the Purification Lodge. The willow branches, the covers, the sage and rocks and the heat ... all above ground mirrors the lower half ... earth ... so that a ball is formed. It is the whole of everything, the four directions, above and below, the center, the gateway. It is one way of being surrounded by power. He said, “When I am surrounded by the Higher Powers, I call their powers in to me. But when I am enclosed with the Higher Powers, (in the lodge) I can go to where they are and visit with them” (Fools Crow as told to Thomas E. Mails). Fools Crow calls this ‘spirit travel’ and tells that he ‘sees’ these spirit Powers as ‘lights’. Consciousness manifest.
Maintaining this space of overlap of physical reality and spiritual realities is where I am most able to retain awareness of dimensions and the ‘beings’ which reside there. My experiences thus far tell me that there are many places similar to here, no better and no worse. Other experiences have led me to believe there are places ‘off limits’ to us human beings ... perhaps because they are what we would define as ‘bad’ or perhaps they remain ‘off limits’ because we cannot comprehend the ‘purpose of these places. Other places are opening to us as we are ready.
I am is great quandary. I want to tell of places which are, places I have experienced ... but can not describe in words. I ask that you expand every descriptor word in your vocabulary and assume that I mean much more than the word I use and much more than your expanded vocabulary.
A frequent occurrence is finding myself surrounded by entities ... beings of some kind other than human. Form exceeds description so my ‘mind’ comes as close to an understanding as my thought can comprehend. Sometimes this is a resemblance to an animal form, other times it is a nebulous energy field, something unseeable. My mind attempts to comprehend within ‘reality definitions’ but that is seldom sufficient. Touch is the closest to human senses I have experienced. In a moment of ‘terror’ (because I could not frame the experience in my understanding of reality), of what I could not comprehend, I asked to be allowed to touch. My physical sensory input was a bit like new stubble on a man’s face ... new stubble with a small current of electricity. The allowed touch comforted me somewhat but the terror of the unknown overpowered me. I fell into deep sleep (safety? understanding? acceptance? avoidance?) then came fully awake and called family for help. Even when someone was there with me, I could still not be sure of what ‘reality’ I was in.
Another time I awoke in the midst of deep screaming ... only to realize it was me screaming. I was just conscious enough to tell myself I needed to stop screaming. I did. Then I interpreted the cause of my fear as a bear in the room. It was much more. Dreams told me of early contacts with other realities at my Grandparents house. Many of these contacts were explained as animal dreams. Many other people understand these experiences as alien contacts. Almost all have elements of pain and terror. The terror is because we have no way of understanding. It is so foreign that we cannot fit the experience into any kind of description. As I have stepped past the fear and I accept the inevitable ... for it is coming ... it is here ... I can step into the experience without the fear.
I am convinced that ‘fear’ is our interpretation of what cannot be incorporated in ordinary understanding. Broadening our sensory and emotional experiential abilities will enable us to embrace new realities and possibilities. Heads hidden in the sand can never see beyond the sand.
One experience had the feeling of geometry ... no, I cannot explain how it is like geometry, but that is the feeling I had. Geometry was my only translation into this reality. I do not understand with my mind, but my true self, my whole-self experienced it. Another time was like being in the space between molecules that make up everything. The feeling was one of being the ‘space’ which is not nucleus, or electron, or proton, or neutron. It was ‘being’ what ‘is not’ and has no name. It was an experience of dimension such as postulated in ‘string theory of modern physics. Many other times I am aware of energy beings in the room with me. There is a form, a shape, a light ... but it is unlike any other form, shape or light. No one denies the existence of energy. It is a commonly recognized phenomena. We simply do not recognize our ‘experience’ of energy and forces. Gravity is a familiar force ... yet we never speak of our experience of gravity. We talk of the energy and power of spirit and cannot measure or define it. We do not deny it. Group energy is recognized and utilized. It too cannot be measured, contained, or manufactured. Love, hate, anger, compassion, joy ... are all forces and energies we cannot see or measure yet we accept without question. What more can we allow when we remove our self-imposed restrictions.
When I am nearer the dream state, my subconscious puts some sort of form around these beings. This is done for the benefit of my conscious thinking. When I am in lucid sleep, and can refrain from thought, then I can come closest to experiencing what is actually there.
Rinpoche Traleg Kyabgon talked about Mahamudra meditation and the process of ... in some way resting in the nature of the mind, that is being without thought and allowing the thought ... being fully in the thought without any attachment to the thought or having any fixation to the thought. The pupil is taught to concentrate on the ‘light of the inmost region’ and, while doing so, to ‘free oneself from all outer and inner entanglements’. The nature of the mind is the Oneness with the Totality.
Christianity and the Bible speaks of being one with God through Jesus Christ ... “we have the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16). “Now, he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour” (I Corinthians 3: 8). It is a Oneness. “... opened he their understanding, that they might understand ...” action of Christ after his return to the ten ... after his crucifixion (St. Luke 24:45). “And it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up unto heaven” (St. Luke 24: 51).
In the Sorcerers’ Crossing. the subject of ‘another place’ is a total and complete endless void. This void is ‘blacker than blackness’ and ‘deeper than depth’, and extending infinitely into space, all beyond any way of understanding. How it is seen is dependent on inner silence and balance. According to Taisha Abelar, it can be perceived because of funding enough energy to expand perception. It is releasing trapped energy. This great void is the ‘motherwomb’ of everything ... eternally pregnant with everything.
The Shambhala Story is of a society where each and every individual became enlightened beings and through their enlightenment shifted their energy, their vibration into something that exist outside this reality that we live in, stepping into a different vibration. They are still conscious of us. The Rigden Kings continue to watch over us and guide us. We are not conscious of them in the same way they are conscious of us. Ancient Shambhala teaching remain for selected, devoted individuals and are not published for casual reading.
A Crystal Skull thought to be at least 12,000 years old was found by Anna Mitchell-Hedges at the age of 17 on her birthday. Anna found the skull at an archeological dig in British Honduras in 1924 at a place Mike Hedges, her adopted archeologist father called Lubaantun, just south of Belize city. The city of Lubaantun was one of the last Mayan centers built around the 8th or 9th century A.D. The city covered about seven and one-half acres. This crystal skull is significant for many reasons. The Mayans of that time period and area stated that it had been in the care-taking of the Mayans long before the building of Lubaantun and that it was a repository of information about how ancient ancestors of the Mayans had left this ‘time’ period behind and had crossed over into another ‘dimension’. This skull was said to be a storehouse of history about how to make that transformation. Other ... scientific investigation, states that it holds ... it is ... a holographic memory computer of the collective conscious and unconscious knowledge and experience of this planet.
An additional part of the Mayan and many Native American stories is that it is one of 12 skulls on this planet which is one of 12 planets inhabited by star people from Sirius ... or the Pleides ... or other extra-terrestrial origins. Every indigenous culture in the world has stories of origin, of coming from places we cannot comprehend. Every culture has realms of existence beyond this ordinary one we live in.
The Mayan Great Cycle calendar or simply the Mayan calendar is the most accurate of all calendars. It is postulated that this calendar began with the destruction of Atlantis just as the Christian calendar began from the birth of Christ. It is believed to be a time-line for the development of universal consciousness. Jose Arguelles, in The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology, explains that the earth entered a galactic beam, August 13, 3113 B.C. The purpose of this electromagnetically charged beam is to accelerate the evolution of human DNA into a planetary exo-nervous system. When this nervous system is in place, acceleration becomes exponential and phases into synchronization which manifests as a sensitive, unified, planetary consciousness. This will unfold into telepathic synchronicity. With this growth we will be able to recognize and be a part of Universal Consciousness. August 16-18, 1887, the Harmonic Convergence, is the point at which we began to accelerate into planetary synchronization, December 21, 2021 is the projected time of universal synchronization.
Francis Joseph in The Destruction of Atlantis, pieced together a historic trail leading from Atlantis to the Crystal Skull found at Lubaantan. Edgar Cayce, a bible reading fundamentalist, known as ‘the sleeping prophet’ had predicted (in the 30’s) that ‘initiates’ of Atlantis engineered and manipulated power crystals for the production of ‘energies’. Misuse of these crystal energies were responsible for the destruction of Atlantis (reading number 440-5, 1933). Some Atlanteans escaped to other parts of this planet. Others escaped dimensionally. Francis Joseph believed this Crystal Skull was a historical remnant of Atlantis protected by generations of descendants of Atlantis. The Skull would be the ‘connection’ between the dimensional Atlanteans and the people who remained in this earth reality.
The Celestine Prophecy describes a series of ‘insights’ left behind long ago in South America to promote our awakening in this time. The ending presents the ninth insight which reveals a process of changing vibration of people and surroundings to the point of disappearing from sight in this reality into something else. The thought behind each of these thoughts is the idea that somehow we can not only travel to other dimensional realities but are able to bring to ‘here and now’ what we glean from the other side.
“Our destiny is to continue to increase our energy level. And as our energy level increases, the level of vibration in the atoms of our bodies increases.” “It means that we are getting lighter, more purely spiritual .... Once (we) reach a certain level, (we) will suddenly become invisible to those who are still vibrating at a lower level (James Redfield)”. Redfields ninth insight says that this will not happen to until we become fearless ... and maintain a ‘sufficient vibration’ in all situations. We must walk our talk at all times. He leaves us in anticipation of the tenth insight, to be revealed in the next book.
Medicine men and medicine women in various cultures have had different, various techniques for moving into a spirit world in order to glean knowledge to bring back. Evidence is profoundly supportive of the fact that this is actually done. Yes, there are charlatans which fool and misuse. That fact does not negate the truth of genuine experiences.
Yuwpi medicine people move into other realities, and call entities from other realities to here. Many individuals testify to experiencing these energies. Navajo medicine people, Star Gazers, Crystal Gazers, Singers ... use powers from the Holy People to heal individuals in this, our ordinary reality. Navajo people all over the reservation follow this belief and feel no need to prove it to others ... it just is.
A Navajo friend told me what her Grandmother had told her about coming changes. Her tale correspond closely to the stories related by others. She was told, “just look into the sky and see, the new ways are coming ... new ways of being in the world ... and will be so different that we can not begin to comprehend these changes.” The Grandmother saw this as moving from this world to the next, in proper sequence. “We began in the black world, moved to the blue world, to the yellow world, to the white world, and we now move to the glittering world.” My friend asked, “Grandmother, what do we do in the meantime?” ... and was answered, “... we herd our sheep”. This exemplifies for me the perfect blending of great expanded possibilities far beyond comprehension and the ordinary necessities of here and now. We chop wood, carry water and herd sheep.
Assorted notes occur to me.
I leave then as seeds of thought for you.
Evolution is the eternal blossoming of a flower that was always a flower ... even before it was a seed.
It is possible to amass knowledge endlessly, cycling it again and again, through mind and thought, a human need ... much as a cow needs its cud to chew. The question remains, how do we aspire toward what we cannot conceive.
Symbol and ritual are ways of creating a model, a depiction because the big picture is too BIG to conceive. We need them.
Opening of the aperture ... passage from a linear and contradictory consciousness to a global consciousness. The secret is to find timelessness amidst time, the infinite in the finite and the encompassing wholeness of things in the most obscure fraction.
If we attaches this new power to
ego instead of soul we becomes a Nietzschean superman, not a God ... we
do not need a super consciousness ... we need another
consciousness.
When you are far above in consciousness, you see things, you know things ... but, when you come back down into Matter, it is like water entering sand. When the circle is truly completed and the two extremities are joined, when the highest manifests in the most physical --- the experience will reach its true conclusion.
Read the Stan Grof book on Spiritual Emergency.
Find out what Synchroniscity is ... experience it. Learn about Psychosynthesis, Roberto Assagoli.
I think about all this and about how I step into another reality, into another space. I think about what I want to bring back. Ultimately, I want to bring back a higher consciousness for myself, my loved ones and to anyone wanting it.
I listen to a program about Christianity on TV. The Christian idea is that human beings are basically sinful and we must spend our entire life rising above that sinful nature. I believe that we are basic goodness. I want to bring that goodness of spirit back into this reality.
Impersonal Love ... Duality ... See the Duality from both ends at the same time. Or, pick which end of the duality we are going to be at, at any given time. I don’t know yet but I am moving toward that.
As the background music I am listening to changes, I am reminded about Latergic Dance, about movement and prayer state. I want to pursue that more fully. Statues and fetishes from long ago are reproducing postures instrumental in matching physical and spiritual states. Dance ... movement, physicality ... takes us into spirit.
The Discipline Hindrances
recognition desires, wants
commitment aversion, anger, judgment
openness apathy, lethargy
walk/live the path agitation, restlessness
allow doubt, excuses
Is some of this the same thing as recapitulation?... Is there a way ... through symbols ... otherwise ... to leave the old behind? What, if anything, does this have to do with surrender ... with focused surrender? Does this refers to the leaving behind we must do?
I have many questions ... more questions than answers. It often seems that my quest takes me ever farther from ‘absolute truth’.
“I know it is true because my father told me” (Tsonakawa). Is it? Who is my ‘father’ ... who is my mother? How many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters ... do I have?
Carol WhiteWater Dawn
Navajo Reservation
Carol’s Declaration
(so I will remember who I am and where I am going)
I choose to
change my nature and my being,
this
one-pointed, linear thrust is no longer sufficient.
I embrace
everything.
I
contain everything in full consciousness.
It is not to
acquire extraordinary power;
it is actual
transformation I seek.
I undertake
Movement impeccably and fearlessly,
with unbending
intent, in focused surrender, and
with no
attachment to outcome.
Everyone
experiences pain,
suffering is
choice.
I choose
freedom from suffering.
True knowledge
is attained
beyond thought.
It is what I
am.
It is what I
become.
It is Conscious
Being.
I contain and
know the divine.
All teaching is
revealing.
All becoming is
an unfolding.
It is not
enough
to experience a
tiny point of cosmic consciousness
then return to
ordinary reality.
I must carry
the cosmic within me.
I walk fully in
consciousness in the midst of the ordinary.