The superconscious mind and the body of the soul have been around a long time. This immortal body of yours has been around a long time, and it’s seen many lives come and go, many experiences pass by the windows of its eyes. Some need no explanation, because they are the playing out of vibrations. Others do need an explanation, the explanation that would come and impress you intellectually from your superconscious, would give you power maybe to face an experience that was yet to come. So, don’t analyze every nuance of a reaction or try to anticipate the next series of experiential patterns, for life is a series of experiences. They are all great experiences. ¶Hold your center. Find the place within you that has never ever changed, that’s been the same for many lives, that feeling that has been the same within you since you were a little child up to this very time. Find that! Catch that vibration, and you’ve caught the vibration of the soul and identified it to your intellectual mind and your instinctive area of the mind. Then build on that. Work with that. Say to yourself, “There’s something within me that never changes, no matter what happens.” ¶Work on the analogy that if your foot hurts, your head doesn’t hurt. If you have a pain in your stomach, it doesn’t mean that you have a pain in your hand. In the very same way, if your emotions are upset and you’re suffering, there’s an area within you that’s calm, peaceful, dynamic, vibrant, watching. That’s the body of the soul. Work with that. Find that within you that has never changed, never will change, cannot change. All it can do is become more than what it is. This will give you understanding. This will allow you to innersearch, because you have an inner anchor which you’re always trying to get into. You have identified the core of yourself very, very thoroughly. And each time you have unwound the emotional patterns and the intellectual patterns of an experience, you’ve graduated out of that classroom and you’re on to greater and fuller experiences in this lifetime. If you would like to live a lifetime where you have no experiences at all, because you don’t like experiences—you’ve had a lot of experiences that have been distasteful to you—you cannot do it on this planet. Lifetimes don’t come about that way on this planet. But the core of you is the observer of all experience of the emotional, the instinctive, the intellectual areas of the mind.§
Be That which never changes. Then what happens? When we become this spiritual body and grasp that infinite intelligence of it, we’re just in a state of pure consciousness and we come into the clear white light. We have a wonderful foundation, the only foundation necessary for Self Realization—at that point piercing the last veils of the mind, for even light is mind, and consciousness is, of course, the mind itself. And then we merge with the Self itself. ¶So, that is the path: experience, harnessing the reactions to experience, becoming the body of the soul, merging that body with the physical body after the instinctive and intellectual elements have been harmonized, coming into the clear white light, and then the realization of the Self. It’s a beautiful path. It’s a challenging path, and it’s the path that you’re on; otherwise you wouldn’t be here listening to the story about the path. ¶See awareness as a lotus flower. The lotus flower goes through many, many experiences. A few weeks ago in Bangkok, on Innersearch, we drove out into the Thai countryside and we saw many, many lotus flowers growing wild. They’re just beautiful. See awareness as a lotus flower. First awareness is a seed, and it’s breaking out of the instinctive elements, the hard shell of the seed. But it’s living right within the seed. It is dynamic life at that very time, tuned in with the central source of energy. Then it breaks out and it becomes roots, and then awareness becomes a stem, becomes conscious of water all around it. Finally, the stem emerges above the water, and awareness has leaves and a bud. It’s still limited awareness, because it’s not in its fullness. But as that awareness expands, it opens up into a beautiful lotus flower, then creates more seeds for more flowers. This is the path of awareness. Become acquainted with the awareness, that one beautiful, pure element of the soul, your superconscious body, which is easily found and easily discovered by simply closing your eyes and opening them and saying “I’m aware,” not necessarily of what you are aware of. Close your eyes. Say, “I am aware.” Awareness is closely identified to the realms of sight—hearing, of course, too, but more predominantly sight. As awareness expands and as awareness contracts, we find that we have power over awareness. It merely becomes a tool. The underlying power of awareness is the blissful state of the spiritual body of man, pure consciousness, the central source of all energies, in its blissful, calm state. Meditate on awareness being like a lotus flower. §
Meditate on man being like a lotus flower. He comes through the mud, his instinctive mind, and he’s aware of the things of the instinctive mind: hate and greed and love and passion, and jealousy and sorrow, and happiness and joy and excitement. He comes into the intellectual mind. He becomes aware of ancient history and predictions about the future, politics, all sorts of systems, all sorts of organizations, institutions and opinions of other people. And this consumes and overshadows the soul, life after life after life, just as the desires and cravings of the instinctive mind overshadow the soul life after life after life after life. But all this time, the body of the soul is growing up. It’s getting stronger. It’s absorbing the reactions of each lifetime, drawing more energies from the central source of energy to build up and absorb these reactions; and this is food for the soul. Then finally awareness comes into its bud state. It says, “Here I am, a bud, and I’m out of the mud, and I’m out of the water.” We’ll look at the mud as being the instinct, we’ll look at the water as being the intellect and we’ll look at the air as superconsciousness. “Now I want to unfold and be of service to mankind and everyone else who is unfolding, I see them all down in the mud, caught in the mud like I was at one time. I want to help them out of the mud. Then I see hundreds of people caught in the intellect. They’re all in the water. They think they’re a stem, but I know I’m a bud.” Then begins the process on the path of enlightenment for this bud unfolding and awareness expanding. First it becomes aware of the inner processes of the body and how breath controls thought. Then it becomes aware of the inner processes of the mind, how light moves through the body, how the mind of light begins to work, and it goes on unfolding and unfolding and unfolding through the ages. ¶If we look at the past as a catalog and the future as a planning book, and now as the only reality of time, we have dodged the past and we have dodged the future, because we have brought them both into the eternity of the moment. The mystic on the path of unfoldment doesn’t allow his awareness to go into the past and flow through all the yesterdays and relive in his mind what formerly happened to him physically. The mystic doesn’t go into the future and live emotionally experiences that may or may not happen to him. The mystic remains in the present, right now, using the catalog of the experiences of the past and a planning book for his future. This makes him wise, for intellect when it is correctly used at the right time is wisdom. ¶Holding the eternity-of-the-moment feeling and the feeling of the being within that has never changed, finally you don’t even say it’s a being within. That in itself is duality. You just identify it as you, an immortal being who’s lived for thousands of years, which never changes except it unfolds more, and it lives now. The past and the future are only intellectual concepts that we live with and have been developed by man himself in that particular area of the mind. §
Life is a series of decisions also. One decision builds into another. To make a good decision, we have to again bring our total awareness to the eternity of the moment. If we project ourselves into the future to try to make a decision, we do not make a decision with wisdom. If we project ourselves into the past and in that way formulate our decisions, again they are not necessarily wise decisions, for they are decisions made through the powers of the intellectual or the instinctive area of the mind. The best decisions come to us when we hold the consciousness of the eternity of the moment and go within ourself for the answer. ¶The best rule in making a decision is: when in doubt, do nothing. Have the subject matter so clearly in mind, so well thought out, that soon the answer will be self-evident to you. There will be just no other way to go. Good, positive decisions bring good, positive actions and, of course, positive reactions. Decisions that are not well worked out—we jump into experiential patterns haphazardly or emotionally—bring reactions of an emotional nature that again have to be lived through until we cease to be aware of them and experience them emotionally. ¶Each time we have a decision to make, it’s a marvelous test in this classroom of experience. We can make a good decision if we approach it in the eternity of the moment. And, of course, there are no bad decisions. If we make a decision that is different than what we would make in the eternity of the moment—we make it through the instinctive area of the mind or the intellectual area of the mind—we’re not sure, totally, of ourself. We do not have enough information to make a good, positive decision. ¶So, when in doubt in making a decision, that’s the time to know we have to collect up more information, think about it more. Each decision is the foundation for the next series of experiences. When you are in a sequential series of experiential patterns, you are not making decisions at that time. Only when one experiential pattern has come to an end, and you’re ready for a new set of experiences in certain areas of your life, those are the times when you make new decisions. Weigh carefully each decision, because that is the rudder that guides your ship through the whole pattern of life. ¶Think it over carefully. Go in for intuitive guidance. And nobody knows better than yourself, your own superconscious being, what is to be the next set of experiential patterns for you to go through in your quest for enlightenment. It’s all based on decisions. Don’t expect someone to make decisions for you. They are second-hand, not the best. Others maybe can give a little bit of advice or supply a different perspective or added information for you to make a better decision. But the decision you make yourself in any matter is the most positive, most powerful one, and should be the right one. Do it from the eternity of the moment. That is the state of awareness to hold. §
There are several ways we can make decisions, and there are guidelines to help us. There are basic principles that we can follow in life that other people have followed which helped guide their decisions along. It worked out fairly well for them, so we can follow those basic principles, too. And we’ll go in after a while to outlining some of these basic principles that help us make good, positive decisions, for we can learn by observing other people, the decisions they have made, the reactions and experiential patterns that followed. We can learn by observing other people. ¶The first faculty of the expression of the inner being of your immortal soul is the great power of observation, to learn through observation, as your individual awareness detaches itself from that which it is aware of. You have tremendous powers of observation, for you are a free spirit. You’re just here on this planet to observe. And through your powers of observation you can go through the experiential patterns of other people by observing what they’re going through without having to go through them yourself. Some mystics live several lifetimes in one in this way. ¶Living by basic principles keeps awareness clean-cut, pure, direct and positive, out of the areas of the mind that are confused, unwholesome, unhealthy—areas that react back upon the nerve system of the physical nature. When we are clean-cut, our perceptions are precise. We make our decisions from an up-down point of view, and our path through life is guided by each decision that we make. ¶When we make a decision, it has its reaction. If we do not make a decision, that has a reaction, too, for then decisions are made for us by circumstance, other people, situations or confusion. The confusion becomes so intense that finally we’re forced into a decision. When we become accustomed to making one decision after another from an up-down point of view, our lives are guided in a systematic, positive, clean-cut, beautiful way. Who does the guiding? You do, with your awakened perceptive faculties. §
Basic principles for a good foundation in our lives can be established through consistency. The consistency in approach to what we are doing—a good habit pattern in living our life, as we approach our inner life, the understanding of our inner life, the study of it and the experience of it—has to be on a day-to-day basis. Developing a contemplative lifestyle that is sensible, that is positively worked out, and programming that into our complete pattern of daily life gives us a foundation strong enough to face decisions and the ensuing experiences and the reaction to those experiences in a way that they enhance our spiritual unfoldment. Remember, the lifestyle that we now have was programmed for us by mothers, fathers, religious leaders, teachers, people that we had just met along the way, and good friends. It’s not a particularly good lifestyle in which to hold the perspective that we’re an immortal being. It’s a great lifestyle to hold the perspective that we’re a temporal being, and we’re only here a few years and then we die. ¶To develop a whole new lifestyle takes thought. Our desire has to be transmuted into doing that. In the ordinary lifestyle of human consciousness, our desires generally are for things, for emotional experiences, for intellectual knowing. And that’s all good, but they’re not organized. We have to organize the tremendous power of desire so that it’s transmuted, and we desire the realization of the Self more than anything else. Then you’ll have enough desire left over to get things, to get happiness and to get all the getting that humans want. ¶But the tremendous force of desire is transmuted. The perspective is changed. We see ourself as an immortal being, and we work consistently with our lifestyle, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. Each decision that we make is an easier decision to make, and each reaction that we face, we face it joyfully. Each meditation that we hold is more profound than the last, and the spiritual being, the soul body, begins to merge with the physical body, as the elements of the instinct and the elements of the intellect that have been supreme life after life after life begin to give up and transmute their energies into the immortal body of the soul. §
Look through your entire life and make a memo of each major experience in this life. Then surmise how many major experiences you have had for the last ten lives. All the accumulative experiences have brought you to the point where you are now, ready to turn inward and realize your infinite being. They have all been good experiences. The reaction to the experience has also been good. It brought you to the point where you are, ready to sit down and say to yourself, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the power of That which has never changed, which I am and can feel in every cell of my body? Where does the clear white light come from? What is the underlying power of pure consciousness out of which awareness emerges?” All of this and more, too, you will ask yourself and get answers from within yourself, as you, your awareness as the lotus flower, begins to unfold. Always try to remember the reason why you are here. You are here to separate awareness from that which it is aware of and gain your own independence, your liberation, from the instinctive area of the mind. ¶When we’re in it, we believe that everything we’re going through is us. The intellectual area of the mind—when we’re attached and in it strongly, we believe that that is us. When we’re in the superconscious area of the mind, awareness is detached from that which it is aware of. We see ourselves as the traveler traveling through all areas of the mind, not getting stuck in any one area. Then we’re here to go in, to take awareness off the surface of the Earth into outer space, or out of the instinctive and intellectual areas of the mind, into pure superconsciousness, into the clear white light, so it permeates every cell of the body. ¶We’re here to realize the Self, to have that one dramatic experience where everything that we thought was things is turned upside down, and our whole perspective afterwards changes. That is the purpose for living on this Earth. That is the purpose for being here this very moment. That is the purpose for my speaking to you in this way, to impress upon you very thoroughly that you are here for Self Realization, walking on this planet. Get it. Direct all your energies toward it, and then the tremendous power of desire will be for the one goal, not for the many goals toward which desires usually flow. When that happens, Self Realization will come to you. It’ll be very easy. One day, you will be Self Realized.§