Concentrate on the following aphorism and try to ferret out its deepest meaning. Begin by breathing diaphragmatically for a few minutes until you feel relaxed and at ease. “There is but one mind. The consciousness, or ego, functions within the mind’s various phases. The one-tenth of the mind of the conscious plane, in ramification, is carried on by its own novelty. The object is to control the conscious mind and become consciously conscious.” After looking deeply into this aphorism from within yourself, write out your own explanation of it on a piece of paper and keep it for future reference. When we are functioning in the conscious mind, we must not totally identify with it, but hold on to our individual awareness as the watcher and controller. Think deeply on this as you concentrate on the aphorism and realize that in our study of the one mind we are moving along an ancient path to enlightenment which has five sequential steps: attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation and God Realization. ¶Mind is vast, and from a mystical point of view it includes everything, even encompassing the elements of the physical plane. Mind and matter are not two different things. Matter is simply one phase of the mind, and it is in the conscious mind that material existence has its existence. Expand your concept of the mind to include the entire universe, from atom to galaxy. Then realize you are that mind, and that its outer manifestation is but one-tenth of the totality of the mind. ¶When we live in the conscious mind, we are aware of other people’s ideas. We listen with our ears, we see with our eyes, we feel with our fingers. We are involved in our physical senses, functioning instinctively as far as the physical body goes. We are functioning intellectually as far as our education goes, and we are dealing and working vibrantly and vitally in the world of external form. We can live in the conscious mind and be aware of that area of consciousness life after life after life after life, because the conscious mind is ever changing, perpetuated by its own novelty. One thing or idea leads us to another, and then on to another and another and another. We listen to people talk, and we want to know what they will say next. ¶The conscious mind is very curious. We taste something and we want to taste something else. We see something and we want to see something else. We feel something and we want to feel something else, and we go on and on, completely dominated by our five senses. This domination by the senses makes up the totality of the conscious mind. These five senses are constantly active, as energy continually flows out into the external world through them. The conscious mind makes up what is called the external world, and the external world is the conscious mind. We are all participating in making our own conscious mind as we go along through life. ¶Though the conscious mind is only seeming, it is very real while we are in it, as it glorifies in adding to itself. This process is called the intellect. As concepts and partial concepts are added one after another, the average person develops his or her intellect, and if it is not balanced by inner knowing, it holds the person firmly in the external realms of consciousness. Many people are trained to think, having had their conscious mind programmed in such a way, that the superconscious mind is nothing but a farce, that it doesn’t exist at all, that the only reality is the external world, and pleasing the external senses is what life is all about. They are coached to believe that anything of an inner life or an inner nature is just pure fantasy, imagination, which only weak-minded people believe in. Many people live this way, with their awareness bogged down in the conscious mind—believing reality to be outside their physical body. The object of spiritual unfoldment is to transcend the conscious mind into superconsciousness and beyond.§
When we are in the conscious mind, we are like a donkey with a carrot in front of our nose. We are always walking to try to get that carrot. We are never satisfied, and we are never happy. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. No matter how much money we have, we want more. No matter how many clothes we have, we need more. No matter how many television programs we watch, there is always a better one coming up. No matter how many sights we have seen, the next one may surpass them all. No matter how much food we eat, there is always the next big wonderful meal to enjoy. No matter how many emotions we experience, the next set of those emotional experiences will be the high point of our entire life, and we are sure of it. That is the conscious mind. ¶When we live in the conscious mind, we only surmise. We make guesses. We are never quite sure if we are right. Therefore, we are insecure, because the conscious mind only knows what has gone before it. It is certain only about the past. If it has been provided with a good memory, then it knows the past very well. But without a good memory, the conscious mind doesn’t know the past well at all. So, when we are in the conscious mind, we have one predominant and solid quality that we really can be sure of, and that is fear. We are afraid! We’re afraid of the future. And many of the things in the past petrify us, for we don’t want them to happen to us again. We don’t know quite how to avoid them, because with awareness caught in conscious-mind concerns, our superconscious faculties are temporarily cut off. The superconscious mind is seen as a figment of imagination, a product of superstition. ¶The conscious mind is the real enemy, the real barrier, the real distractor to someone on the path of enlightenment. It is intriguing. It is the temptress. It leads us on and on and on, life after life after life after life after life after life after life. It is a wonderful state of mind, however, as long as our superconscious faculties are also available for awareness to flow into once in a while to become refreshed and renewed by a change of perspective and influx of energy. Otherwise, the conscious mind is a difficult and onerous state of mind in which to live, day after day after day. The spiritual path leads us out of the morass of the darkness of the conscious mind into the mind of light, which we call superconsciousness.§
It really hardens a person to live in the conscious mind all the time, because he has to build an ego shell around himself for protection, and that makes him insensitive and rough. One of the biggest protective influences of the conscious mind is anger. Anger makes a person cunning in his thinking, and of course the predominant underlying quality of anger is fear. He is always afraid of something. It is generally something that may happen or is going to happen. He is always in conflict with someone. These are the motivating forces of the conscious mind: anger and fear. Most people live in the conscious mind unconsciously. ¶The conscious mind is the area of the mind where memory and time are Gods, and reason is the Supreme Ruler. “If it is not reasonable, it is not acceptable,” declares the conscious mind, and “If we can’t measure it, it does not exist.” That is the conscious mind. It is active. It is alive. The conscious mind perpetuates itself, and we all help it to do that. It is carried on in ramification by its own novelty. We can always find in the conscious mind some distraction to please us, to intrigue us, to dominate our awareness of other states of consciousness. And we don’t have to look very hard to find it. ¶The mystic’s goal is to control awareness while he is in the conscious mind—to know where he is in consciousness. When he finds he is aware in the conscious mind, and the five senses have become his ruler, he then controls his awareness within the conscious mind itself. He does this in a number of ways. One way is through the control of breath. Breath is life, and life is breath. Breath is the controlling factor of awareness. Awareness rides on breath. Breath is also a controlling factor of our willpower. A seeker must develop a dynamic will to walk the path of enlightenment, so that he does not stumble or falter, but continues onward no matter how difficult the path seems to be for him. ¶The mystic loves the conscious mind, for he sees it like an adult sees the toys of children. An adult does not take children’s toys too seriously, but the child does. Meditate on that comparison. Meditate also upon the conscious mind while you are aware in it. Write down on a piece of paper the various areas of daily experience over a period of three days to which you are most attached. Then meditate on those time periods until you are able to see the chemistry that makes the conscious mind appear to be what it is. When you live two-thirds within yourself, even physical things begin to look transparent to you.§
Spiritual unfoldment leads us along the path into the illumined knowing of where we are in consciousness at any point in time. There are many methods through which this may be accomplished. Carefully choose one path and then stay with it with extreme loyalty. For this a preceptor is needed, a spiritual guide to answer questions, to raise questions for you to find answers to within your meditations. It is an arduous journey. The rewards come only near its end. ¶To live positively in the conscious mind each day, exercise at least a half hour. Keep the vital energies of the body high and healthy. Eat simply and follow a vegetarian diet, feeding the stomach rather than the mouth. Be considerate of others always and live inconspicuously, almost transparently, by not ruffling your surroundings, by keeping the home neat and clean, by passing through a room or place and leaving it in a nicer condition than before you arrived. Seek fresh air and learn to breathe deeply. Get out in the sun. Move the physical body, walk briskly, dance, keep the energies vibrant and buoyant. Be close to nature. Grow food. Develop an art or craft so the hands are active, creative. Of course, being neat and attractive in personal appearance keeps the thoughts of others toward you positive. This is the way to live in the conscious mind. Try to live life as though you are walking in the rain without getting wet, or carefully writing on water. No ripples, no disturbance, no reactionary residue that has to be faced at some future date. ¶When we live unconsciously in the conscious mind, we most often look at the physical body as who we are. We say, “I am hungry,” “I am happy,” “I am not feeling well,” “I want to go to America” or “I have just come to Bangalore.” Instead of “I am not feeling well,” we mean our physical body is not feeling well. Instead of “I want to go to America,” we mean we want to take our physical body to America. Our language is a conscious-mind language. The perspective of our language is constructed to make the conscious mind the real thing, the entire reality of the world. From little children we have been taught that the conscious mind is real and that anything other than this real, solid, conscious mind is to be doubted. ¶The mystic walks in the opposite direction. He goes against the crowd. He learns to swim upstream. It is a little more difficult for him, but oh so worth it. The seeker has to learn that the conscious mind is only a vast dream created by many, many people who are dreaming openly. They are dreaming, and every mystic knows it. They are forming the dream by what they say, by their emotions, by what they think and by that in which they involve themselves. The mystic knows there is no enduring reality to the vast dream made up by people themselves, by their desires, their relationships, their cravings and their insecurities. §
If we were alone in a desert, there would not be much of the conscious mind present. Our emotions would subside. Our perceptions would be keen and uncluttered. Our senses would awaken. Our reality would be mostly an inner reality. We would have to call upon our inner resources to subsist. But as soon as a city grew up around us with hundreds of people in it, we would experience the development of a vast conscious mind, for everyone would contribute just a little bit to it. Problems, projects, confusions and involvements of every kind would assert themselves, absorbing our awareness. ¶Most of the inner resources we relied upon formerly would be forgotten as we ceased to depend upon our own strength and innate intelligence. We would begin depending upon a rule book. We would rely on what someone else thought, on what was taught in the universities, stored in the libraries, legislated by politicians and promulgated by the news media. We would follow opinion religiously and develop an intellect. And one by one, all of these layers of the conscious mind would cover the soul, making the outer more evident than the inner. ¶The beautiful, radiant body of the soul would be covered in the very same way that we would take a gorgeous lamp glowing with light and put pieces of fabric over it. First we would put a yellow piece of fabric over it, an intellectual coating. Then we might argue about some intellectual concept. Others would say, “I don’t believe you.” And you say, “I know I’m right.” Then we would put a pink piece of fabric over the lamp. Pink is the color of emotion and self-aggrandizement. Perhaps we would continue trying to help our friend, and he would say, “I don’t want any help. Get out of here!” We might become angry with him and put a red piece of fabric over the lamp. And when we are depressed amid all these mixed emotions, we cover the light with a black piece of fabric. When jealous of our fellow man, we drape a dark green piece of fabric over it. Where is the light of the body of the soul, that crystal-clear light? It’s there, temporarily covered. ¶The body of the soul actually looks like a plastic body filled with light. You have seen mannequins with arms, legs, torso and head made completely out of transparent, neon-like plastic. If you were to put a light in such a mannequin, it would glow. This is what your soul body, your psyche, looks like. The conscious mind has truly become a reality for those who have layer upon layer covering this body of the soul. They are living with all of those emotions vibrating in them. Greed, hate, resentment, jealousy and anger are all totally alive on the inside. Yet, plastered on the outside of it all are beautiful, superficial emotions.§
Remember, the sum total of the conscious mind only knows what has preceded it, what has gone before it—the past, what it can remember. It will only accept that which seems to be reasonable. So when the process of going inward persists, the sheaths have to be removed, one after another. The senses have to be quieted, the subconscious mind reeducated. This is how the conscious mind and the subconscious mind work hand in hand. ¶The subconscious mind is like a great computer. It responds to the programming that has been set in motion through all the previous lives. Our reaction and habit patterns of this life form our tendencies of the next life, and the tendencies of our last life make our reactions and habit patterns of this life. Life after life after life, we have been programming the subconscious mind. It has been mainly programmed by awareness caught in the instinctive emotions of the senses of the conscious mind itself. ¶The conscious mind can become just as vast and wonderful, or as terrible, as we want to make it. It is not to be feared. It is not to be ignored, either. It is to be understood. The conscious mind is a state of mind just like all the others, for there is only one mind. Our individual awareness flows through the various phases of that one mind. ¶The conscious mind is primarily an odic force structure. Odic force is the emanation of actinic force through the physical body. Hidden tendencies, repressions, suppressions and reactionary habit patterns accumulate in the subconscious mind and give enough ballast of odic force for awareness to be neatly attached to everything of which it is aware. We are then in the conscious mind most of the time, and not inwardly oriented. ¶When people are caught in the conscious mind and believe it to be absolute, they believe in finite terms such as: “When you’re dead, you’re dead. So live your life and really get as much as you can out of it, because when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s the end of it.” They believe that the external world is absolutely real, and that anything of an inner life is simply imagination. They live a rather shallow life, perpetuated by their emotional habit patterns and reactions. They anger quickly. They are quick to become jealous. They are suspicious, and they become emotionally attached to other people, with whom they later argue or fight. They love to be entertained. They seek entertainment, trying to get more of everything that is possible to get. Their desire nature is never satisfied in their conscious-mind experience. Awareness has been enmeshed in these conscious-mind desire cycles for such a long period of time that to release it and dive deep within, we must first gain mastery of awareness through attention and concentration. ¶After awareness is wise to the conscious mind and the subconscious has been positively reprogrammed, attention and concentration bring us into subsuperconscious states. We begin to breathe regularly and diaphragmatically. We become aware of only one thing at a time in the physical world, allowing one thing to attract our attention, rather than continuing to ramify. This practice begins to weave awareness into subsuperconscious, perceptive states. §
You have heard the statement “Being in the world, but not of it.” This is done through detachment. It is an attitude. It is a perspective. It is how we hold ourselves within that really matters. Basically, that is the only difference in the beginning stages between one who is on the spiritual path and one who is not on the path—it is how awareness is held within, the perspective from which the conscious mind is viewed and responded to. ¶The conscious mind is created and ramified by man himself. It is carried on by its own novelty. It goes on and on and on, and awareness can go on and on and on and on in it. Only in those quiet moments of retrospection does someone who lives in the conscious mind relax, turn inward and understand a little philosophy. This pondering gives release, a new influx of energy. The object in being on the spiritual path is not to have just a little influx of energy, but to be the energy itself—consciously. The object is to have awareness basically attached to the primal life force, and to see that and experience that as the real thing, rather than be attached to a collection of possessions and memories in the material world. ¶Anyone who is strongly in the conscious mind has a feeling of possession and a feeling of fear. We’re afraid of losing possessions. We own something. We love it! We break it! We cry! Our nerve system hurts when the odic force detaches. It was attached to that which we owned. Emotional involvement is a function of odic force. Holding awareness within the higher states of mind does not mean we cannot own anything. It means we will love it more when we do, but we will not be attached to it to the point that we become emotionally torn when it goes away. ¶Understanding of the forces comes as we unfold on the path. Someone who is not involved deeply in the conscious mind is not subject to as many instinctive emotions. He is more of a real person, more himself. Most people think of the conscious mind as the entirety of the mind. But actually it is only one-tenth of the mind’s entirety and, therefore, should not frighten us in any way. Nor should we wish to retreat from the conscious mind. The only retreat is simply to detach awareness from that which it is aware of and allow it to go soaring within to that indefinable source from which all energies spring. Dive into the source and lose awareness within it and attain your ultimate goal. §