We have to adjust our subconscious to the idea that we are a superconscious being, rather than an instinctive being or an intellectual being driven by the impulses of the five senses. Awareness is the core of us. If we dropped off this physical body today, we would be a superconscious being without a physical body. If we stepped into another physical body tomorrow, we would still be a superconscious being, but with another physical body, different than the one we had yesterday, with an entirely new subconscious and new external environment. ¶I would like you to visualize dropping off your physical body and going over to, say, Sri Lanka or Bosnia to pick up a brand new body. See yourself stepping into it, adjusting your nerve currents within it, getting up from the battlefield, putting it into the hospital and healing it up and going home to its parents with a medal of valor. ¶You would have a new physical body, a new subconscious mind and a new external environment to adjust to. In this new body you would soon forget that you are a superconscious being. You would be so involved in being Ananda from Toronto who recently arrived there as a refugee from the war. But the superconscious being of you would know that it was a superconscious being, and finally Ananda would begin to know it, too. New rays of light would be coming through Ananda’s aura. The subconscious would be reprogrammed quickly, and pretty soon Ananda would become a man who meditated, in the very same way you meditated before you dropped off your old body and picked up Ananda’s body on the battlefield. There would not be much of a break in continuity. This gives you a brief look at reincarnation. Your subconscious can readily adjust to this simple concept. ¶There is one theory of reincarnation that holds we do not have to incarnate as little babies, but that we can incarnate as full-grown people when we know how it is done. More evolved souls can do this because they know the inner laws. Less evolved souls must incarnate through the womb, because this is the process that is most instinctively natural. This is one of the fringe benefits of becoming conscious in the superconscious body. Become consciously superconscious. That is the goal.§
It is easier to know when you are not superconscious than when you are superconscious, because your superconsciousness is such a natural state. It is such a beautiful state. It is such a full, wholesome state to be in, that you are not aware generally that you are superconscious. ¶When you are not feeling too well within yourself, you are not superconscious. When you are feeling really good and satisfied within yourself, you are superconscious. When your timing is right, when everything is happening just right during the day, you are superconscious. When nothing seems to be happening right, then your awareness is flowing through one of the congested areas of the thought realm. When everything seems to be going wrong, you are flowing through an instinctive area or a congested intellectual area. ¶When you are arguing with yourself, you are not superconscious. You are flowing through an area of the intellectual mind, taking two points of view and flowing from one to another. When discussing something with someone, you are not superconscious, for superconsciousness is a one-way street. You speak right from the core of existence without really thinking about what you are going to say. You just speak out and hear what you said afterwards. ¶When you are arguing with someone, you are not superconscious. You have moved into a congested area of the thought strata of the mind and you are verbalizing it, and are congesting the aura, too. Then awareness has to be unwound from that area of the mind and directed back again to superconsciousness. When you are disturbed about yesterday, or even have a consciousness that there was a yesterday, you are not in a superconscious state. When you are afraid, you are not in a superconscious state. When you are peaceful, when you are calm, when you are in the eternity of the moment, when you feel secure on the inside of you, you are in a superconscious state. Superconsciousness is not something you will get, because you have never been without it. You are superconscious this very minute, and functioning in all five states of the mind.§
Become aware of the totality of Being. This does not take a lot of time. The easiest way, the simplest way, is to be aware of the spine and the energies within the head. Locate the consciousness of energy. Be aware of energy. When you are aware of energy, you automatically forget what you were previously aware of and it fades away. You leave the consciousness of the instinctive-intellectual area of the mind and move into superconsciousness. If you can remain totally centered in awareness of the energy within your spine and the energy within the head, you become aware of the same energy within everybody and everything you see. You are immediately in a superconscious state when this happens. ¶Therefore, the simple goal is, stay in this consciousness of energy for the rest of your life. It is just that easy, but it is not quite that simple to accomplish, because you have already trained your awareness to move into other channels of the mind, and it will do that automatically as soon as you cease to be aware of the energy within the spine. Then you forget that you are a superconscious, immortal being and begin to think you are only temporal. You may begin to think that there is a past, or that there is a future, and begin to feel that the eternal now is an insecure time. You may find yourself beginning to lean on other people rather than on your own spine. When you discover this happening, then begin to meditate. Go deep within yourself again and find superconsciousness. Seek the company of people who center their awareness within. This will make it easier for you to do so. Being around people who center awareness in the external areas of the mind is difficult because they draw your awareness into the external areas of the thought strata. ¶People who really value awareness being “hooked,” shall we say, into the inner areas of energy, and have studied that function of energy, draw your awareness into it. When this happens, you begin to see from inside out. You actually see from the inside of everything that you look at to the exterior of it. You look at a tree. You first see the energy within the tree. The bark is the last thing you see. When you are in an outer consciousness, first you see the bark of the tree and then you intellectually surmise that there must be energies within it because you happen to notice that a leaf is growing and assume that it must be alive. How awkward awareness is when it is stumbling around in the external area of the mind. And how smooth awareness flows freely when it is dynamically cruising into inner layers of inner space. ¶We shall now compare the superconscious mind to an onion of seven layers, each interior layer more subtle than the outer ones. 1) Experiencing the consciousness of the eternity of the moment, as if the world was revolving around you; 2) Experiencing a cosmic energy, a divine force, flowing through your external mind which is more real to you than the external mind itself; 3) Experiencing hearing voices singing, music playing—the divine sounds of the flute, mṛidaṅga, vīṇā and tambūra—while in meditation or early in the morning just before awakening; 4) Experiencing seeing the faces of Gods or devas, or a ṛishi’s face, looking into yours while in meditation or early in the morning just before awakening; 5) Experiencing the peace and inner poise of the all-pervasive Satchidānanda; 6) Experiencing the ānandamaya kośa, the body of the soul, as it comes into conscious union with the physical body; 7) Experiencing being on the brink of the Absolute, Paraśiva, the void, having lost consciousness of the physical body and of being any of the five states of mind. These seven states of superconsciousness are only a few, to be sure, of this vast area of mind. §
You must not think the superconscious mind is way out of your reach simply because of the word super, because it is quite the contrary. It is within you. It has always been within you. All you have to do is to reprogram the subconscious a little and move awareness out of the conscious mind, and your journey is within. You are superconscious now. You have to accept that. You do not have to “get to be” superconscious. This is not something that is going to happen to you all of a sudden and then cause you to be different. The thing that is going to happen to you is that you will release your individual awareness from the so-called bondages of the habit patterns of the external mind that it had been accustomed to flowing through. Once it is released, you will automatically flow into other inner areas of the mind because you have been studying about them and now have the map clearly outlined for you. ¶You might be wondering why, if you are supposed to be superconscious right now, you have not had the wonderful experiences that I have told you about. This is easy to answer. You may be superconscious now but not consciously superconscious all of the time, or even for long enough periods to have these beautiful experiences. So when I say you are superconscious right now, that is true, or you would not even be hearing about it. ¶It is no accident our meeting in this way to share some of my inner life and this particularly deep subject matter. It is providential, I would say, and has occurred at the proper time of your unfoldment on the path. Though you are superconscious right now, awareness is still externalized enough that you touch into it only a little bit and then are pulled back to the subconscious or to the conscious mind. ¶Through regular practice of meditation, one learns to move awareness through the superconscious areas like a dancer learns to move across the stage according to the rhythm of the music. It takes much practice for the dancer to acquire the technique in the preparation of himself to fulfill his calling. He has to live a disciplined lifestyle. It is the same for the contemplative. He has to work with and exercise the currents of awareness so dynamically that he can flow into a superconscious area and remain there long enough to look around a little bit and enjoy it.§
Intuition is the natural way in which man expresses himself on Earth or any other planet on which he might find expression of his being. This natural flow of mana, the Polynesian word for prāṇic śakti, from and through him only becomes inhibited when he disconnects from the nerve system of the celestial into the nerve system of the animal. When this occurs, there, therefore, is a disconnect between superconsciousness and external consciousness. Man’s individual awareness is either captured by the nerve system of external consciousness, of the successive animal bodies which his soul inhabits as a vehicle to live on Earth in, or man’s individual awareness is captured by his celestial nerve system, matured on aged planets in the galaxy prior to arrival here on Earth. This, then, is superconsciousness—the natural expression of the transcendental soul known as man. ¶Intuition day by day occurs spasmodically, but it does occur. And systematically one can gear his observation of his own intuitional faculties and find out exactly when these intuitive functions occur within him. It is a well-defined fact that we have the faculty of precognition of coming events. It is also concurrently known that feelings of fear may precede impending danger. It is for the individual to disentangle and sort out within his own daily experiential pattern which is which. In this way he becomes knowledgeable in the great university of his own mind as to what is a daily intuitive occurrence and what is not. ¶How does one distinguish between intuition and usual thought-feeling processes? Desires come through feeling, warmth of emotion, as do thoughts, schemes, ways of manipulating the media forces for one’s own personal benefit or that of a loved one. This is contrary to the power of intuition, which runs cold and is direct, like a bolt of lightning in the inner sky or the subtle rainbow of an etheric aura which bypasses the processes of current thinking, giving answers before the question and solving problems before they have accrued. ¶It is only through sādhana and divesting oneself—in order to perform sādhana—from the social structure of the conglomerate of mortals that surround you that you will actually be able to prudently delineate between true intuition and the imposing factors of need and greed that often seem paramount when living up to the externalities of the instinctive nerve system. §
Here’s a fine example of the use of intuition. You have often been in a situation in your own mind where you felt a subtle, direct impulse from deep within you as to how you should proceed. Most probably you denied it as fantasy and commenced in a logical way to fulfill your impulses and desires from previous patterns of experience, only to find that you would have traversed agonies and confusions had you followed the subtle impulse of direction which was rejected to enhance established patterns of procedure. But I might add that that first impulse must have registered itself as cold and clear, direct and profound. Only if it did would it have indelibly imprinted itself within your memory patterns, clear and sharp, thus distinguishing itself clearly from all warm, emotional feelings that appear to be reasonable and totally in line with the current pictures of the day. ¶In current events, most people guide their lives on prior reasonable patterns. This knowledge is only prophetic. It has absolutely no relation to the other courses of action entered into by intuitive decision, which in turn would encase man’s individual awareness into the strong, dynamic superconscious being that he ever was, is now and always will be. ¶Though we often use the terms “unfolding intuitive faculties” and “developing intuition,” they are only used in an effort to encourage the aspirant on the path to work within himself in subduing his intellect so that he can actually observe the already functioning totality of the intuitive area of the mind. ¶In order to subdue the intellect, that conglomerate of thought patterns and established modes of procedure according to the culture of the day, it is first quite necessary to inwardly observe how one’s acquired intellect actually functions. Observation is a faculty of the intuitive area of the mind, and this particular aspect of observation that I have just described comes into usage only after regular periods of meditation have been maintained over a long period of time. True, our intuitive faculties do constantly mingle through thought sequences each day, but our ability to distinguish one from another is accrued only through regulated discipline of our individual power of awareness. Once an inkling of success comes in knowing intuition and how it differs from reasoning, emotional impulses and pre-programmed patterns within the subconscious, the contest is won. Then and then only we must persist to sustain this knowledge and dive deeper into the inevitable, all the time losing the future and the past, and loosening the reins of the intellect. §
When you begin to sense this changeless existence within, your intuition begins to awaken, and if you function through the use of your intuition you are able to clear many misunderstandings about the experiences of life. In this clarity, intuition is born. Right now you perhaps think you are the mind; you may feel remote from your Inner Being, but ask yourself each time you think you have found yourself, will this change? You will find that every image you hold of yourself is subject to change—even your soul, or your superconscious mind, is subject to change through evolution and, therefore, is impermanent. Only the Self, the very core, is eternally the same, eternally Real. Find your Inner Being through feeling; realize it is closer to you than your hands or feet, closer to you even than your breath. Your mind will want to leave this consciousness as soon as you attain it, but gently guide your mind back through the channel of concentration until once again you become rejuvenated, uplifted in the awareness of That which has never changed. That is your very Self, and That is God. ¶Jnanaguru Yogaswami said, “Search without searching.” By this he meant that as long as we are searching for God in meditation, there are two—God and the seeker. He did not mean that we should stop looking for God, stop meditating or stop striving and live an ordinary life or give up sādhana. He was saying that to deepen your meditation, while seated in the lotus position, doing prāṇāyāma, to deepen this state, stop looking and begin to realize that you are That which you are looking for. As long as there is searching, Paraśiva has not been found, for searching is two, and It is one. But you must keep searching until It is found. How to attain That? Satguru Yogaswami said, “Stop looking, and just be.” Give up consciousness which is seeing and registering that which has been seen. Become the sound, nāda; just be and merge into the Ultimate Quiet. When the disciple is on the brink of the Absolute, the timeless Paraśiva, twoness disappears in the overpowering presence of Śiva, and consciousness is absorbed and annihilated in His transcendental Being, which is nondifferent from the disciple’s. However, if the disciple continues looking for this experience and thus, in the act of his search, solidifies himself and the sought-after experience as two different things, he becomes the obstacle and the problem to be eliminated. In the end, the Great Mystery is known as one, as two, as neither one nor two.§