1-416-561-5780Consciousness permeates all beings, all creation, all existence — everything that is. Consciousness and energy are not separate phenomena. Consciousness is a creator of energy and energy has consciousness. There are various aspects of consciousness, perhaps “variations” of consciousness, as well as degrees. There is energy in every thought, feeling, intent, attitude, belief. Every thought is energy. You experience this energy as feeling.
You must also differentiate between cut-off thought and abstract thought. A cut-off thought is a defense against feelings and undesirable aspects of the self. An abstract thought is a result of a highly integrated, spiritual state. A purely abstract thought would create a feeling or energetic experience of immense peace, of an intrinsic understanding of universal law that is bound to induce joyousness and bliss. Both are connected to feelings, which are energy.
Even a dry, cut-off feeling holds energy. The feeling of boredom contains an energy of fear; fear of knowing all you can know now about yourself and your relation with the universe. The more subjective the thought is, the more tainted with negativity the feeling becomes. A subjective thought is one that is created from personal desire and personal fear, from a state of egotism and separation — me versus the other. It is therefore never in truth.
Like thought, desire can also be of two different kinds. Desire stemming from the ego and its distortions alienates you from the core of your being. Such desire often contains pride, self will, fear, lack of trust in the universe. It creates a tense, contracted energy system and prevents the flow of the life force. But the kind of desire that contains faith in the possibility of attaining a better state, courage, patience and commitment to motivates an individual to muster the courage, perseverance and steadfastness necessary to grope one’s way out of darkness and suffering is a different, higher level type of desire.
Here you have a typical example of a dualistic confusion that arises when you say that it is either right or wrong to have desire, depending on which aspect of it you perceive. You can transcend the painful, confusing and limited state of dualistic consciousness only when you see beyond the either/or and see the true and distorted possibilities of both apparent opposites. Rarely if ever is anything in itself good or bad. It depends on how it manifests, what the true underlying motivations are.
States of consciousness can roughly be differentiated into the following three groups:
1) Slumber: This is consciousness without self-awareness, the consciousness of a being does not know it exists. It has no self-awareness. It can feel and move and grow, and even, to an extent, think, but below the threshold of self-awareness, like a mineral or a plant. Although dormant, the energy-consciousness does exist in such a being. This dormant consciousness does not want to know about itself and its relation to the surrounding universe.
2) Self-awareness: This state begins at the human level. Awareness of “I am,” “I exist,” “I can think,” “I can feel,” “I can make a decision,” “My decisions have impact,” “My thoughts have effect,” “My feelings reach other beings.” In this state self-responsibility begins. The awareness of having an effect on the world around the self must result in accountability and the seriousness of choosing thoughts, attitudes, actions and responses. Within the human state of consciousness, of self-awareness, there are many degrees and variations. You have human beings who are as yet unaware of their power to create, change and affect. There are others who know quite well that they have the power to choose, to create and to affect. They are self-responsible and accountable for their decisions to think one way rather than another. There are also many gradations between those two different levels of human consciousness. The human state of self-awareness lives within its self-created dimension of time. Thus the sense of past, present, and future awakens in the human mind. This is a state of “becoming“, which precedes the timeless state of “being“.
3) Cosmic consciousness: This is the state of “being”. In this state all is one, there is no separation, all is known. The innermost self is known, the God-self is known. The God-self of the personal entity, as well as that of other entities is known. The truth of being is known. In that state of consciousness you live in a state of being. But on this level of development the state of being surpasses self-awareness. It has reached universal or cosmic awareness. To put this differently and possibly more accurately: the self is recognized as being in all that exists. This is a timeless state of consciousness.
Evolution of the state of consciousness can only be attained in accordance with the state of purity of each individual being. If consciousness could expand without the simultaneous expansion of the self-purifying agents, evil could destroy the divine. So, as an in-built protective mechanism, negativity closes the perceptive organs: blindness, deafness, dumbness, and numbness set in.
Evil does not and cannot destroy — it can do so only temporarily and within a framework where all negative manifestations, no matter how cruel or unjust they may seem, are self-created medicine for the purpose of ultimate purification and ultimate bliss.
The only way to come out of this state of impurity, where protective ignorance, limitation, powerlessness, and severance from the nucleus where there is all-connecting life set in, is by the consistent attempt to know yourself, to know where you are now — not to know the universe or anything outside you. That comes later — gratuitously, as it were. To concentrate on that would be pursuing a delusion.
You can be sure that when you are in a disharmonious state, you are not as aware as you could be. To become more aware often requires intense groping and searching. And that is indeed part of your life task.
The disharmonious state, the anxious state, the unhappy state, the depressed state, the state of unrest and fear and negative, contracted pain is always a reflection of something you might know right now, but choose — yes, literally choose — not to know. That choice creates a very potent negative energy field. This path helps you to deactivate these negative energy fields by changing the consciousness content in them.
Behind a superficial feeling of “I can’t” there is a choice of “I don’t want to”. The first vital step here would be to transform the “I do not want to know” into an “I want to know,” and follow it through.