Understanding Consciousness

The principle that governs a man in his entirety is consciousness.

What is Consciousness? It is an awareness; awareness of oneself and awareness of all. All the principles, and the faculties based upon those principles, are activated and governed by this fact of consciousness. It pervades man at all levels of his being, active in varying degrees. Any discipline, any Yoga that aims at the full development of man has go to concern  itself with the development of this activating consciousness. But before one is able to develop it, one must awake to the existence of this consciousness.

Normally, man is lost in the movements of day to day life, activities of thought, life-forces, physical energies and son on. He becomes the activity. He has no awareness of the conscious being in him that is so active. To awake to this existence of consciousness in him, a consciousness that is separate from the mechanical activity of nature is the first requirement. Once awake to it, he has to build and shape it in the desired direction.

In this approach, the consciousness in man is essentially divine. It is something that is, at its core, unlimited, luminous, immortal. But on its surface layers-on which most men live- it is limited on all sides, involved as it is in the densities of the material body, the turbidity  of passion and desires, the agitations and fragmentation of motions of the mind. To stand back from these limiting circumstances of nature and get to the deeper layers where man becomes more and more aware of a freedom, a purity and enlarged effectiveness is the initial movement of the yoga of self perfection.

This leads to the next deeper movement in which, he begins to get conscious of the divine element in himself, the soul, the divine in-dweller, antaryamin at the core of his being.

There are indeed, many steps to be trodden, many levels of consciousness to be awakened and their powers activated- what the Vedas call the rebirth of Gods. In a general way, self-observation, self-enquiry, vichara, meditation, dhanya, discrimination, viveka, between the transient and eternal, the divine and the undivine, daivi and adaivi, are recommended as preparatory steps enablin one to delve into the depths of one’s consciousness  and arrive at the true self, the individual divine within.

Author: Sorcerer

Image Courtesy: Conscious Dimensions