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Centralising
Stress of Consciousness
If you can grasp that, then it ought not to be
difficult to see further that it [consciousness] can
subjectively formulate itself as a physical, a vital,
a mental, a psychic consciousness -all these are present
in man, but as they are all mixed up together in the
external consciousness with their real status behind
in the inner being, one can only become fully aware
of them by releasing the original limiting stress
of the consciousness which makes us live in our external
being and become awake and centred within in the inner
being. As the consciousness in us, by its external
concentration or stress, has to put all these things
behind -behind a wall or veil, it has to break down
the wall or veil and get back in its stress into these
inner parts of existence -that is what we call living
within; then our external being seems to us something
small and superficial, we are or can become aware
of the large and rich and inexhaustible kingdom within.
So also consciousness in us has drawn a lid or covering
or whatever one likes to call it between the lower
planes of mind, life, body supported by the psychic
and the higher planes which contain the spiritual
kingdoms where the self is always free and limitless,
and it can break or open the lid or covering and ascend
there and become the Self free and wide and luminous
or else bring down the influence, reflection, finally
even the presence and power of the higher consciousness
into the lower nature.
Now that is what consciousness
is -it is not composed of parts, it is fundamental
to being and itself formuates
any parts it chooses to manifest -developing them
from above downward by a progressive coming down from
spiritual levels towards involution in Matter or formulating
them in an upward working in the front by what we
call evolution. If it chooses to work in you through
the sense of ego, you think that it is the clear-cut
individual "I" that does everything -if
it begins to release itself from that limited working,
you begin to expand your sense of "I" till
it bursts into infinity and no longer exists or you
shed it and flower into spiritual wideness.
SABCL
Vol 22 page 237-38
It all depends upon where the consciousness places
itself and concentrates itself. If the consciousness
places or concentrates itself within the ego, you
are identified with the ego -if in the mind, it is
identified with the mind and its activities and so
on. If the consciousness puts its stress outside,
it is said to live in the external being and becomes
oblivious of its inner mind and vital and inmost psychic;
if it goes inside, puts its centralising stress there,
then it knows itself as the inner being or, still
deeper, as the psychic being; if it ascends out of
the body to the planes where self is naturally conscious
of its wideness and freedom it knows itself as the
Self and not the mind, life or body. It is this stress
of consciousness that makes all the difference. That
is why one has to concentrate the consciousness in
heart or mind in order to go within or go above. It
is the disposition of the consciousness that determines
everything, makes one predominantly mental, vital,
physical or psychic, bound or free, separate in the
Purusha or ivolved in the Prakriti.
SABCL
Vol 22 page 235-36
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