We experience our very
consciousness itself as a problem. Everything we perceive in ourselves
and out there in our life, is “problematized” and filled with unanswered
questions. We believe that deep inside, we ourselves are an unanswered
question. And we are convinced that we have too many inner problems to
be able to answer our own deepest questions.
When we form 'relationships' they too quickly become filled with
problems unanswered questions and conflict. In every area of life we
sadly discover that we are unable to establish the right relationship with "them".
There is isolation and alienation. We try to establish a real
relationship with life. We become involved with the spiritual hoping
that its insights will help us to overcome our problems, our alienation
our lack of right relationship to others and life. Yet the question of our
own deepest existence remains.
Sometimes we think we find the answer to this question.
There are moments when we feel we understand life in its wholeness, we
are filled with joy, and a profoundly positive awareness of being, in
the right place at the right time. In such a moment of releasement we
are most wholly ourselves. For a moment everything is so completely and
inevitably clear and deeply understood. And then that moment passes and we
forget.
But when we remember the moment of profound wellbeing we wonder if it is
possible to cultivate this natural state of wellbeing.
We can hear the call of
the spiritual in these two essential ways: either as the attempt to
escape from the pain of a problem filled existence, or as the
inspiration to cultivate wellbeing and natural wholeness. Most people in
this age hear the call of pain first.
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL
CONSCIOUSNESS?
This issue, the issue of the nature of consciousness, has a long, long
history in every culture, in every age, and has taken on many cultural
forms. Amazingly, there have been cultures where consciousness has not
been problematized. We have no modern record of that now because we only
know how to see problems in ourselves and in the history of culture.
In the Ancient and Classical Greek culture, and before it in Egypt,
India, and many different cultures, certain wise people decided to
create an entire explication of the totality of Being and consciousness,
and we know of that as Universal Wisdom.
Under the name of Theosophy, H.P. Blavatsky and several other spiritual
Initiates re-explicated ancient and classical Theosophy to the modern
world through the founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875 and
through H.P.B’s extraordinary and compelling writings.
In Theosophy, the human being is understood as the “higher self” and the
“lower self”. Theosophy says that the human being is the microcosm of
the macrocosm, and that all life is a spiritual event. It says that the
higher self is the eternal you and the lower self is an extension into
the everyday world, a state of consciousness that is also you, but not
the whole you.
There is a bridge that joins the lower self and the higher self. The
task of spiritual awakening (development) will be the crossing of that
bridge, which is called, in the old, Indo-European language, Sanskrit,
Antahkarana. It’s a bridge; you are a bridge. The spiritual reality is
that if you know the right things, and if you practice the right
spiritual disciplines, the right way of life, you will cross that
bridge, the bridge across from being a mortal lower self to being an
eternal higher self.
As you may know, there are many different ways, directions, techniques,
and methodologies described in the literature of the traditions. Whether
we are speaking of the original and real Universal Theosophy of H.P.
Blavatsky, or of the various 'neo-theosophies', such as the Germanocentric Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, the Arcane School of A. E.
Bailey, or Eurocentric Rosicrucianism, which is a form of neo-theosophy,
they all describe different methods for becoming spiritually awakened:
methods of meditation, dietary directions, i.e. that perhaps you should
be vegetarian, the practice of certain kinds of disciplines in the way
you think and in the way you look at the world, and the way you regard
yourself and your neighbor, how you should conduct your sex life, and so
on.
Spiritual seekers learn about these methods often from books and
sometimes from teachers. They attempt to apply these methods and
experience the slow- growing disappointment that comes, as the years go
by, of realizing that one has not understood something essential, that
one is still on the way towards wholeness, and that, in fact, none of
the instructions given for the passing from the outer, lower self to the
inner, higher self actually take you there.
Yet we remain convinced that there is a reality behind the illusion,
behind the appearances of our everyday experience. We practice
meditation, we have discovered the stress free peace and calm of the
fundamental mind. In odd moments we have realized the self as a
different quality of whole awareness, there is the moment of radiant
illumination, wellness and joy and then that wholeness slides away from
us. But it is these illuminated moments, these brief
glimpse-enlightenments, which encourage us to keep going.
Let’s say, just as a way of talking about consciousness, that there
really is an outer and inner self. Let’s say that the outer self is
right here in this room. This is it. When we start to examine the nature
of this experience of the “being here”, we become aware that this state
of consciousness that we are here re-presents everything around us, to
us, as if in a mirror. It’s like a reflection. There is each being’s
private, subjective self, which is involved in two states of subjective,
spatial consciousness simultaneously: one that is involved with the
apprehension of what is “out here” in this room, the other involved with
your private thoughts, reflections, associations with the
“being-out-here”. We are here in a specific way that is called “being
together as a spiritual group”. In this specific context, we are present
in both “inner and outer space” in a more intensified way. We gather in
this context with a particular kind of readiness, a readiness to become
aware of what is essentially true.
There is this split-space mirror consciousness, which is an aspect of
consciousness, and the mirror reflects all of these people who are
ostensibly present, and then there is the fact that I am also present in
this mirror as a subjective self, as a self which is apparently just
like the other selves in the room. This subjective, separate self is
busy evaluating, agreeing, disagreeing, comparing.
There is also a quality of an “about-to-be” break-through. In this
context, we have the expectation that we are about to become enlightened
in some way. We become aware of the separate, subjective self that is
here in the mirror of consciousness, and it is that which we normally
call “I”. It is the person whom I take myself to be in the everyday
world. It has an inventory; it has a name. It was born somewhere. It has
experience. It has likes and dislikes. It is a compilation of all these
fragments and each fragment calls itself “I”.
This separate, subjective self, who is in the mirror, who is an
incomplete memory, refracts all other beings, all other images, through
itself. So it is not as if what is being seen or perceived is being seen
clean and clear. This person, who is in the mirror, who is, in a sense,
myself, my separate subjective self, my “mirror self”, refracts and thus
distorts each word and image as it appears. There are instantaneous
associations, judgments, evaluations, likes, dislikes. They may be
subtle, but nevertheless automatically operational. The separate self,
the person in the mirror, is quality-controlling the situation according
to its value-judgments, based on experience, which seems fair enough.
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