 35. Consciousness (Two Forms) |
This is not merely a philosophical proposition, a trick of language. It Is Self-Evidently the Case. It is a Pointing to Reality Itself - the Reality That Is Self-Evident, if you will rightly inspect It.
Human beings are always babbling about "the body" and "things" and "the world", but that is not your actual "experience". Your "experience" is of Consciousness Itself. You do not "experience" anything "objectively" (or separate from Consciousness). Anything you "experience" is "experienced" only As Consciousness. Whatever you "experience" is Pervaded by Consciousness. Whatever you "experience" is within Consciousness. You cannot "experience" anything if there is not Consciousness first.
Therefore, Consciousness Itself is the Principle of all of your "experiencing". Consciousness Itself Stands Prior to your "experience". No matter what arises, you are Conscious of it, you Are the Witness of it. You "experience" everything as a mode of Consciousness.
Examine anything in the room - even the room itself, in its totality. You are Conscious of it. The room exists for you only as a mode of Consciousness. The room is perceived as a Conscious "experience", not as an "objective thing" separate from Consciousness.
It is not the case that "things" are. "Things" exist only as "experiences" in Consciousness. Therefore, Consciousness, rather than "things", is What is to be investigated and Realized.
If you investigate "things", you become more and more divorced from Consciousness. That is bewilderment, bondage, illusion.
If you investigate Consciousness, you transcend all illusions. You see "things" as they are, and you transcend "things" in That Which they Are.
Your problems and your questions only arise because you forget Consciousness and egoically "self"-identify with "objects" - first the body, then everything else. You presume you are the body -- but, in Reality, you are only Witnessing the body. You are aware of the body as something in Consciousness. You do not "experience" the body itself as a "thing" in and of itself. You are Conscious of the body.
Therefore, Consciousness Itself is first -- not the body. Then there appears to be the body, and you contract and egoically "self"-identify with it, and forget Consciousness. That is how Consciousness Itself becomes the unconscious: You presume to be the body, and you imagine Consciousness is to be found somewhere else. You presume that you have to search within the body for Consciousness. You go within the body to find It. That is nonsense. You Always Already Are Consciousness Itself. You cannot find Consciousness Itself by searching among or within the "things". You cannot find Consciousness "outside" the body or "inside" the body.
Consciousness Itself Is Always So. Consciousness Itself Is Always Already The Case. If you seek for It, you lose It -- because you separate yourself from the Position of Consciousness.
This is the error of all seeking: You leave the Place Where you Are, in order to find It.
- F. Jones
To arrive at self knowledge is to arrive at God-realization. God-realization is different from all other states of consciousness because they are experienced through the medium of the individual mind, whereas God-consciousness is not dependent upon the individual mind. A medium is necessary for knowing anything other than one's self: for knowing one's self no medium is necessary. In fact, the association of consciousness with the mind is a hindrance to the attainment of realization. As the seat of the ego the individual mind is conscious of being isolated. From it arises the limited individuality, which at once feeds and is fed by the illusion of duality, time and change. To know the self as it is, consciousness has to be freed from the limitation of the individual mind. In other words, the individual mind has to disappear while consciousness is retained.
Throughout the life history of the soul its consciousness grows "with the individual mind and the workings of consciousness proceed against its background. Consciousness comes to be firmly embedded in the individual mind. So when the mind is in abeyance consciousness also disappears. The interdependence of the individual mind and consciousness is illustrated by the tendency to become unconscious when there is any effort to stop mental activity through meditation.
- meher baba
