Posts Tagged ‘cosmic consciousness’

The Eye of Dreams

By Tony Crisp

It took me forty years of experience and exploration to write this book.

The reason is that I was constantly exploring the limits or boundaries of the mind. In fact in recent scientific statements I see some of the findings I defined many years ago now stated – but in what I have written in this book I go steps further.

As I say in the introduction: The journeys I took, alone or with others, led into realms of experience that comparatively few people know exist. They are realms in which the world, our life and preoccupations, are seen from completely new perspectives. In those realms we move beyond thoughts and conjectures, interpretations and dialogue, into the jungle and mountain peaks of the direct experience of what was previously unknown to us – into passions, torrents of energy, oceans of awareness, castles of ancient defence and aggression, into the river of time. They are realms of experience that are incredibly creative, containing treasures equally as fascinating as any tomb of Tutankhamen.

Read this book! Buy the book in hard copy from Amazon UK and USA also in Australia – Brazil – Canada – China – France – Germany – India – Italy – Japan – Mexico – Netherlands – Spain Also in Barnes and Noble. Or in Kindle eBook format from UK and USA and all the other countries You do not need a Kindle to read Kindle publications, you can get them and read them on your PC or Apple machine by clicking Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac.

Fundamentally the book takes us to the frontiers of human thought, and it is that that brings us freedom – freedom from the habits that rule us, release from the fears that dominate us even in our dreams, the freedom from the thoughts and beliefs which are our masters, the awful ordinary lives that are the causes of so much pain.

Chapter Headings

Through the Eye of Dreams – How dreams can be as valid a means of exploration and discovery as the microscope or telescope. 

The Standing Wave – Our body and mind are like a standing wave that persists although it is constant change

Liberation – Liberating ourselves from the crushing habits, the prison of beliefs and fears is possible.

Religion Society and Identity – We as a person are not the the independent being we often like to believe. We are made up of what we surrounded by; social beliefs, parental influence and religious beliefs – even though we fight them.

Sex, Marriage and Relationships – A critical look at what constitutes love and relationships

Growing up – The Maturing Process – The most important task that faces us in transforming our selves and the world.

Work, Destiny and Meaning – Many of us fail to find that all consuming interest; yet we all have it.

Secrets of Mind and Spirit – Many of us live a life within tight walls we cannot see beyond. Here is proof that we are more than we ever believed.

The Way In – The ways to find liberation and seeing beyond the walls of our physical senses.

Enlightenment

The Next Step in Evolution

Enlightenment is a process of personal growth that is possible for many today. Just as humans started their journey as an animal with no speech and no rational mind, and moved on into what we know today as self awareness; so we are ready to take another step in our evolution. This is called Enlightenment or Cosmic Consciousness, and is a growth in awareness as far ahead of self consciousness as self consciousness is of primal animal consciousness.

Chapter Headings

1. What part do thoughts and feelings play in enlightenment?

2. Is enlightenment a state of mind I can develop?

3. What is the Experience of Enlightenment like?

4. Why is Enlightment Sometimes Called Liberation?

5. Are Heaven and Enlightenment the Same?

6. How Can I Know Enlightenement?

7. Is Enlightenement the Same as Awareness of God?

8. Toward the Light that is My Self

9. Teaching of Yogu Trime Lodro

10. Some Teachings of Zen Masster Dogen

11. Enlightenment Today

12. Suzanne Segal on the One Life

13. A Dream Points the Way

14. What is it Like to be Enlightened?

15. Enlightenment – Being or Becoming?

16. Jesses Journey Through The Mind

17. A New Look at Enlightenment

18. A Personal View

19. For a wonderful handbook by the founder of Enlightenment Intensive Charles Berner – please click HERE.

20. Modern Approach

 

What is it Like to be Enlightened?

Enlightenment – Part 13

Tony Crisp

Many people have had an experience of enlightenment. It simply means they transcend the limitations of thought and conditioning for perhaps a moment in time. These moments or periods of enlightenment usually leave a marked impression or leave deep insights into the nature of oneself or of life.

There are stages in the process however, and the very beginnings are in an extension of intuition, or the transcendence of the senses and physical boundaries created by your body. One of the stages for many people is a sort of cleansing, a discharge of what has been called in the East as Karma – influences from the past we still cling to or are held by. In todays terms this would be thought of as clearing out old traumas and cultural conditioning.

A next step might be a growth of intuitive knowing and for some a wonderful experience that is like a continuing synchronicity. This gradually extends into a sense their personal awareness expanding and so they know, as through an intuition, so much more about their place in the universe and what it means.

Often this brings crises of change and of massive ‘spiritual’ experiences. Maybe their body vibrates as the inner changes are occurring. And in a way it is all only an extension of what is normal; for being self aware is a form or enlightenment. So any so called enlightening experience are footsteps on an endless path of discovery.

But to be enlightened in a grand sense will mean that you have moved beyond time and space in a demonstrable way. The limitations of the physical senses and the body will no longer hold you to the same degree. Your ego will have melted its boundaries and incorporate more awareness of all living things. The ability to place your awareness at any point on the globe or universe, or to tap into a cosmic fount of knowledge, to be able to heal or have profound insight into the body and mind of others will be available. This does not mean you will be ‘famous’ or widely known. The enlightened person may live simply and be the person you know down the road. This was demonstrated in the life of Edgar Cayce.

But the above description does not mean an enlighten person will have all the things listed. More likely they will have a greater sense of transcending the five senses and will live a life with certainty there is no death. They will obviously be seen as different by those close to them. As one person said, you are not like other people, and I love you.

In the end, the physical body will be transformed, so there will be nothing of it left to die.

But the spirit of Life, The Tao as it is called in the East, is infinitely creative, so there can be no end defnition to enlightenment. No beginning – no end. Not this. Not that. Action in non action. See Peoples Experience of Enlightenment.

This life – of enlightenment – is just a describer, and one of the things it sees is that this state does not belong to anyone. It’s not something you can get from someone. It’s who everyone is. From here, the highest volume is the sound of the infinite ocean that we all are. Suzanne Sega.

Since there is nothing to meditate on, there is no meditation.

Since there is nowhere to go astray, there is no going astray.

Although there is an innumerable variety of profound practices, they do not exist for your mind in its true state.

Since there are no two such things as practice and practitioner, if, by those who practice or do not practice, the practitioner of practice is seen to not exist, thereupon the goal of practice is reached and also the end of practice itself.

-Padmasambhava

Liberation is achieved by the practice of non-activity, say the Masters of the Secret Teachings.

What is, according to them, non-activity?—Let us first of all notice that it has nothing in common with the quietism of certain Christian or oriental mystics. Ought one to believe that it consists in inertia and that the disciples of the Masters who honour it are exhorted to abstain from doing any­thing whatever?—Certainly not.

In the first place, it is impossible for a living being to do nothing. To exist is, in itself, a kind of activity. The doctrine of non-action does not in any way aim at those actions which are habitual in life: eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, reading, studying, etc. In contradistinction to the Taoist mystics who, in general, consider that the practice of non-activity requires complete isolation in a hermitage, the Masters of the Secret Teachings, although prone to appreciate “the joys of solitude”, do not consider them in any way indispensable. As for the practice of non-activity itself, they judge it absolutely necessary for the production of the state of deliverance (tharpa).

They never tire of repeating the classic simile of the two chains. Whether one is bound by an iron chain or by a golden chain means, in both cases, to be bound. The activity used in the practice of virtue is the chain of gold while that utilized in evil deeds is the iron chain. Both imprison the doer.

What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain?—It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon. (Quoted from The Secret Oral Teachings of Tibetan Buddhist Sects – ByAlexandra David Neal and Lama Yongden).

A man’s experience:

“Now a most extraordinary thing happened. I experience feelings of being made love to, but not through the genitals, but through my head right the way through my being down into my genitals. For a long time it felt as if I didn’t need to breathe, and in fact I seemed to exist without breathing for quite a long time. There was a feeling of tremendous quietness. Inside something gently moving through the openness in my head down my being, flowing to my genitals. Once there it was like it opened something. It changed something. Then, gradually, that influence of change started moving up my being. I could feel it particularly touch and change things in places like my solar plexus and my heart. When it reached my throat I could feel it tickling and opening something there. It really felt painful as it went through these places, particularly as it reached into my head. It wasn’t a physical pain, but it felt as if something deep inside me was being stretched and opened, and that stretching was painful at a subtle level. I cried out in the pain. I wept. I cried out in pleasure – the mixture of pleasure and pain, just as if I were being made love to in a wonderful and delicate and yet painful way. As it touched and passed through my head I cried out, “Why? Why?”

“It is finished. I love you.”

Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 14

A New Look at Enlightenment

Enlightenment Part 15

Tony Crisp

What follows is part of a long interview with Tony Crisp led by Chris Campbell

Chris: So what do you think of people who are considered very enlightened or who have special healing powers that have proved to be valid?

Tony: I think they have simply grown a bit more than we have. We have very definitely grown from seeds — the sperm and ovum — and from what I have seen, general human life is expressing only a tiny fraction of what our potential is. We can see this as we witness the growth from conception, where we see the process of evolution in a speeded up form. So some people have managed to extend their growth much further than the rest of us, expressing more of what is latent in their seed.

I do believe though, that the word enlightenment is deeply misunderstood. I very much go along with the description given by Richard Maurice Bucke in his book Cosmic Consciousness. He says that at one period of time early in the development of the human being there was no self-awareness. The early human beings, or the prototypes of human beings, did not have self-awareness. This view is not one simply stated by Bucke, it is fairly general among people who tried to define the history of consciousness, or the evolution of self awareness. So Bucke says that early human beings had what he called animal consciousness. In other words they lacked self-awareness and the critical faculties that come from language and being able to use language to reason. So they existed purely out of their instincts and thereby had a spontaneous relationship with their environment. They could not ask such questions as, “Who am I? What am I? What is the meaning of life?” This means that they could not look back on themselves, or analyse their own behaviour, as we have the possibility of doing.

Bucke goes on to speculate about what it must have been like for the very first of the human beings who achieved self-awareness. Of course he is not alone in such speculations. Carl Jung has written about this also. What Bucke says is that the first human beings to achieved self-awareness probably did so in their prime, not in their childhood as we do. Also, to wake up to itself in that way must have been an extraordinary experience. It may even have been felt as a sort of possession by some spiritual being. Perhaps it was like a taking over of what had existed, what they had experienced, by this new impulse and awareness. It is interesting that the word identity has in it the word entity, because prior to self awareness there would have been an absence of a clear sense of identity.

We have some ability to grasp what this must have been like from the life of Helen Keller who did not attain self-awareness until she was 11. This because she lived in the untutored world of the deaf and blind. So when she attained self-awareness through learning language, she says that she was born on that day; that previously she did not exist as a person.

But the point I am moving toward is that Bucke says we now achieve self-awareness fairly early in our life. It is commonplace, and we can see the condition has huge variety. Because we are self-aware it does not make us Saints. It does not make us particularly wise, despite the attainment of this extraordinary type of awareness, there is still an immense variety in human nature.

Bucke goes on to say he believes that when we achieve cosmic consciousness, or as we more frequently call it now, enlightenment, there will be just as much variety as there is in the attainment of self-awareness.

So the attainment of self-awareness was probably just as extraordinary an experience, a religious experience perhaps, as enlightenment is for someone today. What Bucke points out, and is one of the major themes of his book, is that just as self-awareness arose out of an evolutionary process, and was at first rare, and has gradually become commonplace, so enlightenment was at one time very rare, and is gradually becoming more common in our times. Nevertheless, it is, dare we say, simply a process of further growth, of another level of human maturity. It is to be doubted that it is the final step in human evolution, the final attainment of all that a human is capable of. It is also fairly obvious that the people we acknowledge as having attained enlightenment, are, as Bucke suggests, incredibly varied in the ways they express or live it.

The attainment of self-awareness brought extraordinary new powers and new abilities. In its wake arose all the arts and sciences, the self-examination, the philosophers, the religious beliefs, and the variety of human societies. With it came the ability to question, to explore, to imagine in a way that may have been impossible previously. Because of it the wonderful arts arose. Music came from the stress and awareness of individual existence, along with architecture and the written word. Those are extraordinary abilities that we perhaps take for granted today, but were certainly not open to our very early forebears.

So, enlightenment will also bring extraordinary changes in the way we see and relate to the world. It will bring abilities and powers and new forms of creativity and exploration. It must be remembered however that no one person has achieved any fullness of the human potential. In fact some enlightened beings such as Aurobindo, and also Edgar Cayce in his writings, suggest that we remain under development until we can completely transform the human body and the world around us. Christ’s Ascension, according to this view, is a map of the way forward. When we can transform the body into cosmic existence, then we can begin to feel we have achieved some level of mastery in the physical world.

Therefore, if we see enlightenment as the extension of self-awareness through a further maturing of our individual self, just as adolescence arises through maturing of the child self, we will look to those around us who have achieved some degree of enlightenment as our older brothers and sisters. We will move toward our own enlightenment by working with our own processes of growth and maturing.

There is a wonderful description in Ronnie Laing’s book Politics of Experience of Jesse Watkins experience of enlightenment. In the chapter ‘A Ten Day Voyage,’ Dr Laing quotes Jesse Watkins’s own description of his inner experiences. The barriers between Jesse’s known self, and wider self had been broken down by overwork, fatigue, a dog bite, and a visit to hospital. Below is quoted some of his description of what he saw of himself.

“But I had a feeling at times of an enormous journey in front, quite, er, a fantastic journey, and it seemed that I had got an understanding of things which I’d been trying to understand for a long time, problems of good and evil and so on, and that I had solved it inasmuch that I had come to the conclusion, with all the feelings that I had at the time, that I was more—more than I had always imagined myself, not just existing now, but I had existed since the very beginning, from the lowest form of life to the present time, and that that was the sum of my real experiences, and that what I was doing was experiencing them again. And that then, occasionally I had this sort of vista ahead of me … ahead of me was lying the most horrific journey, the only way I can describe it is a journey to the final sort of business of being aware of all—everything. It was such a horrifying experience to suddenly feel, that I immediately shut myself off from it because I couldn’t contemplate it, because it sort of shivered me up—I was unable to take it…”

He goes on to say, “I had feelings of gods, not only God but gods as it were, of beings which are far above us capable of, er, dealing with the situation that I was incapable of dealing with, that were in charge and running things and, urn, at the end of it, everybody had to take on the job at the top. And it was this business that made it such a devastating thing to contemplate, that at some period in the existence of oneself, one had to take on this job, even for only a momentary period, because you had arrived then at an awareness of everything. What was beyond that I don’t know. At the time I felt that God himself was a madman… because he’s got this enormous load of having to be aware and governing and running things—and that all of us had to come up and finally get to the point where we had to experience that ourselves.., the journey is there and every single one of us has got to go through it, and everything— you can’t dodge it… the purpose of everything and the whole of existence is, er, to equip you to take another step, and another step, and another step, and so on.

As Jesse says at the end, “I was suddenly confronted with something so much greater than oneself, with so many more experiences, with so much awareness, so much that you couldn’t take it.” As I pointed out in another part of this series, those who think they have reached enlightenment in one experience need to think again.

As a further note, I experienced feelings and images leading me to the sense that enlightenment in our times is still about evolution. It is about touching that core of potential to find an adaptation to the present circumstances and situation. The present situation is not simply an economic, a political, or a social one. It is also a biologic one. It is also an individual, and a psycho sexual one. It is a matter of finding one’s way in these situations. We need to make use of whatever is at hand. Past approaches do not necessarily fit our need. We are in different times, a different cultural setting. We cannot depend, as some of the great Indian gurus did, on the support of our culture and individuals within that culture. It is not there in our own culture to support us in that way. We are not allowed to go defiantly mad in the same way that India allowed its gurus. Today the total withdrawal that Ramana Maharshi exhibited prior to his own enlightenment, would be rewarded in our culture with hospitalisation and drug therapy. To explore, to have that freedom, we have to find a way of doing it in the here and now without that cultural support. We need to find the people and the situation in which quite powerful psychological experiences can take place. I do not mean by this that we can simply advertise to find such people, or such a situation. I doubt very much that approach would work. Usually, when we are ready to undertake the confrontation with what might be quite extraordinary experiences, the right people and circumstances often present themselves.

Enlightenment had a place in the structure of some other cultures. It doesn’t yet have such a part in the structure of social life, in business life, or in the concept of what maturity means, in the West. It is beginning to, as businesses recognise that individuals must touch that raw potential in order to innovate, in order to reach into the new and the unknown. Part of the experience of enlightenment for many people, is that they feel in contact with something that frees them from old forms, from habitual approaches. They feel in contact with the power to make choices, the power to change. In fact one of the words describing enlightenment is Liberation.

Another part of the experience of enlightenment is that of being at one with the naked core of life, of consciousness. One of the most pronounced features of life is its ability to evolve – its ability to fail and learn from failure, and of course to build on success. To be out of touch with that incredible possibility within us, to be out of touch with that process of life that can meet change and disaster, is to be out of touch with one of the most amazing resources open to human beings. Exposure to the lessons learned from millions of years of adaptation, of change, of survival, is part of a prolonged experience of enlightenment. If we lose that resource, if we fail to use it, we lose something very precious. No wonder past cultures have seen this as the highest goal in human life.

For full account see http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/jesse-watkins-experience-of-enlightenment/

Link Back to Chapter Headings

Creativity – Doorway to the Wonderful Fire

While staying in London with one of my sons I had the following strange dream and experience. In the dream I was a young man living in Italy. The surroundings gave me the impression of it being during a period several hundred years ago. I was walking through the streets of a town. As I did so I was thinking about the liver disease I had and about my plans to move to another town where a learned doctor lived that specialised in liver complaints. I wanted to not only be his patient but also his student, to learn what he knew about liver illnesses.

As I walked I started to sing Ave Maria – I believe it is Gounod’s version. My singing was beautiful, exhibiting wonderful voice control and expression of emotion. I am not sure of the sequence of this but there was a building I was looking at. People wanted to have the building restored but could not raise the money. So I had painted a huge mural on the building depicting scaffolding covering the house. This attracted public attention and interest in the house, and so money was raised. I realised that I was not just an artist but also an architect and musician.

It was on this thought, and with Ave Maria still sounding its lovely quality that I realised I was dreaming and became awake enough to observe and think about what was happening. I realised that as a musician I had very great ability as a composer, and decided to compose an ‘Ode to Mozart’. No sooner had I decided this than the music poured through my consciousness. So much so I heard it as if listening to an orchestra or record. The music soared and moved in a wonderful expression of human vision and transcendence. As this occurred I could observe the process of creativity or composition, which was spontaneous to an extraordinary degree. It appeared that by asking for or seeking the composition I had opened a window in my mind. Through it I could observe a huge and unlimited sea of mind or consciousness. In it was all that has ever existed, merged and yet distinct. Every human talent and thought was in it alive and vital. My ‘Ode to Mozart’ drew on this unfathomed depth of being. I knew as I observed this that the music itself, although precise and clear and Mozart’s own work, proclaimed the human ability to leap beyond boundaries into this immense and apparently limitless world of experience – to allow the mind to soar and fly, to move beyond its own conceptions and rejoice.

I wanted to test this amazing ability and asked the huge mind how I could compose ‘modern’ music. What followed was like being instructed. The thoughts arose as if I were being told, that music was a reflection of basic life processes. Using the example of a simple life form in the beginning of evolution, such as a single celled creature or a crystal, this was like one note sounding over and over. After doing this over and over for infinite repetition, the process of life stumbles upon or manages a slight change in itself. This is when the single celled creature develops other attributes and moves toward multiplicity of cells. This would be like the playing of different notes over and over. Then maybe another basic process has learned to play three different notes, and if these two meet they play a more complex music together.

To this meeting was added theme upon theme until an orchestral music was built up, and I was told, “This is your body, with its many different processes playing together.” Or it could be likened to society in which so many opposing ‘themes’ in the end form a whole.

The Collective Unconscious

Some thinkers, like Jung and Sheldrake, see individual human consciousness like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. Above the surface of the water – waking self-awareness – there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is thought, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us.

In recent years there has been a lot of research very strongly suggesting that the quantum level of the universe is such a universal memory and consciousness. See Physics – new physics and the mind

Jung describes the collective unconscious as the ‘inherited potentialities of human imagination. It is the all controlling deposit of ancestral experiences from untold millions of years, the echo of prehistoric world events to which each century adds an infinitesimal small amount of variation and differentiation. These primordial images are the most ancient, universal, and deep thoughts of mankind.’

However, such ideas have been stated long before Jung and modern psychology. Eastern philosophy has talked of the akasha, the fundamental substance that holds in it memory of all that has happened. In Western occultism levels of awareness have been defined for hundreds of years. At the end of the 19th century Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke wrote about Cosmic Consciousness that was described as having the same universality as the collective unconscious.

A lucid experience describes this very clearly:

Now it seemed as if my awareness went beyond the frontier. This was a very visual experience. I was seeing a vast desert and I knew this represented immense periods of time, perhaps what we call eternity. So it could be called the Desert of Eternity. Here and there in the desert were huge rock formations, a little bit like what one sees in Monument Valley in Arizona. But these rock formations were not plain or slightly coloured rock. Also they were immense. They had the appearance of massive mosaics – brightly coloured mosaics. But the mosaics did not form illustrations or patterns. However, some pieces of the mosaics were larger than others. And each piece might be in itself multicoloured and a sort of miniature pictograph.

As I looked at these massive formations I understood that they had been carved or created through events in the passage of time. Each mosaic, each part of the overall mosaic, had been formed by enormous creative acts, or by long-standing actions. So these latter were like ideograms or archetypes. So, for instance, mother creatures have cared for, fought for, died for their young. This pattern of behaviour has been so enormously potent and perhaps we can use the word successful, that it has created, shaped aspects of eternity. It has left its pattern, its artwork, on time itself. Thus eternity honours that pattern by giving it a place in the very structure of itself. No one being created such a mosaic in the formations. Such a mosaic was large and had in it the essence of all the lives that formed it.

So the rock formations and the mosaics on them represented influences that will flow into the future. They were sources of power or influence that shaped the phenomenal world. They were the body under the coat so to speak. See Archetypes – Links to

This explains some forms of intuition, as one person’s mind is said to connect to all others beneath the surface in the unconscious. In this way, questions or inquiry about a particular person will draw information pertaining to them from the enormous collective unconscious. In fact Einstein said that “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust – we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper”. So our individual consciousness is rather an outcrop of a huge and ancient collective consciousness.

Edgar Cayce discovered in his adulthood, that he could put himself at will into the state of mind in which he could tap this unconscious reservoir of knowledge. Because he could diagnose people’s illness without examining them, his work was supported by doctors. Investigators of psychology and philosophy also sought him, and he dictated 14 million words while in this state of wider awareness. His findings suggest that we all have this ability to tap the wealth of unconscious information – truly a collective unconscious – but few of us can bring it to waking awareness. His biography, There is a River, and Seer Out of Season, are astonishing and inspiring books to read. See: Edgar Cayce.

We see this markedly in animals that are largely instinctive. Birds have no present memory of how to fly or build a nest, yet when the time comes they draw on something that enables them to express the collective experience of their species.

I am a Child of the Universe

If this connection is a fundamental part of everybody’s life, the waters of self and the waters of the ocean are not separated. Jung called this universal consciousness the collective unconscious. Other cultures have given it other names – the ocean of Brahm for instance in Hinduism. Within Buddhism there is also the phrase, ‘the dewdrop slips into the shining sea’. Australian Aborigines call it The Dreamtime.

The image of the dewdrop slipping into the ocean illustrates the individual becoming aware of melting the boundaries of their personal awareness, and becoming aware of the ocean of sentience within which they exist.

When we first begin to ‘hear the voice of God’ again – i.e. feel the immense power of the collective unconscious, the foundation of our awareness – we are often afraid, even terrified, as the story of Adam and Eve depicts. The fear arises because whether we admit it or not, we feel we might be swallowed up, be lost in the immensity. Basically it is a fear of death. See What Happens When I Die?

 Reaching the shore of consciousness

Looking back at the psychological history of humanity, at their emergence of identity out of an animal level of awareness, all consciousness was originally merged, as it were, in a great ocean or pool. At that point no creature had crawled out of that pool. Nothing had arrived at self-awareness. No sense of separateness or identity had emerged. Then out of that ocean onto the shore of self-awareness, perhaps for moments only at first, a daring creature crawled and said – ‘I am’. Doing so they left a mark – footprints, two stones rolled together, scratches on a rock, a cave painting. And those creatures still in the ocean looked out upon others and wondered, until a spark was struck in them too. Perhaps struggling for a closer view they emerged and gasping also exclaimed – I am – and added another rock.

So the ocean is the world of sleep, babyhood, life of the nameless herd, consciousness immersed completely in the streams of instinct, reproduction, eating, sleeping and the senses, the collective unconsciousness. But the shore is the pathway of consciousness, the spoken word, art, drama, music, education and questioning enquiry. We all take this path if today we can say ‘I am’! We too, in our infancy, emerged from the collective consciousness. We too were gained a soul, an identity, when we were given a name and speech. You too stepped out of the great waters of life – and will meet them again at death. See Programmed 

As already quoted, Jung describes this as the ‘inherited potentialities of human imagination. It is the all controlling deposit of ancestral experiences from untold millions of years, the echo of prehistoric world events to which each century adds an infinitesimal small amount of variation and differentiation. These primordial images are the most ancient, universal, and deep thoughts of mankind.’

What this means in practical terms is that through our dreams, or through any of the ways people access this immense reservoir of human experience, we can find patterns of behaviour – archetypes – and whole memories of people who have lived through and found solutions to the problems we face, or defined the understanding we are seeking. Also, Cayce found actual details of medicines and techniques that had been used successfully in the past and were part of the memory within the collective unconscious.

In trying to present this to sceptical colleagues and intellectuals and scientists of his time, Jung tried to explain his observation of a strata of being in which individual minds have their collective origin in a genetic way. This seems unlikely, and Rupert Sheldrake sees it as a mental phenomena. Dr Maurice Bucke called it Cosmic Consciousness. J. B. Priestley saw it as ‘the flame of life’ which synthesised the experience of all living things and held within itself the essentials of all lives. If we think of it as a vast collective memory of all that has existed, then we can say the life of Edgar Cayce exhibited a working relationship with it.

Such a collective level of mind would explain many things, such as telepathy, so called out of body experiences, life after death, which have always been puzzling because it is difficult to explain them using presently known beliefs. Mostly this difficulty has been because our language and the concepts arising from it insist of a duality of mind and body. However, researches into the nature of fundamental particles – quantum – show us that such divisions do not exist, except in our limited sensory view of the world.

For more information See: Quantum Physics; Levels of Awareness – Levels of the Brain – Consciousness – The Brain Mind Split;  Cayce, Edgar; archetype of the self; religion and dreams; sea; Dimensions of Human Experience

The Astral Body, Astral Travel and the Dream Body

The term ‘astral’, ‘etheric’, or even ‘dream’ body, refers to the theory that human consciousness can become completely separate from the body, and in this form be free of the limitations the body has. The astral body is said to appear very much like the physical body, with all the features and limbs, but be made of subtler material, or even of thought and emotion. This concept of a finer body most likely arose out of two basic human experiences in the earliest period of human thought. Because while dreaming it is common to be in places far distant from where one is asleep, it was thought that the dreamer actually visited that place while they slept, or that a finer spiritual body had travelled away from the corporeal self and gone to a heavenly or spirit world. Also early human beings, just as occurs today, experienced impressive out-of-body events which at face value again show a distinct self moving at a distance from, and having a life completely independent of, the physical body.

This concept and the experiences it arose from, have led to the development of whole belief systems, such as that of spiritualism and occultism. If you have a good grounding in what is understood about dreaming these are fascinating areas of human thought and experience to explore, as they illustrate the variety of ways human experience can be described and theorised about. See What we need to remember about dreams.

In spiritualism for instance a whole heaven world, or life after death state, is said to exist around the concept of the subtler bodies. With these subtler bodies, it is said we can exist after the death of the physical body, and have total and fascinating involvement in the different dimensional worlds these bodies exist in.

In occultism there is an attempt to define the function of the astral body in the overall process of human existence. Rudolph Steiner, stating his doctrine of occultism, says of the astral body that as long as a person has no organs of perception that can sense the subtler aspects of human nature, the only apparent world is that of the physical body. He goes on to say that during sleep ‘the soul is fully active’… ‘but a man can know nothing of this … as long as he has no spiritual organs of perception through which he can observe what is going on around him and see what he himself is doing during sleep as easily as he can observe his daily physical environment with his ordinary senses.’ In this supersensible world, Steiner says, the astral body is that which brings consciousness to the otherwise vegetative existence of our body. Without the process that the astral body produces, we would exist in a similar way to a plant, in a sort of sleep without traces of self-awareness. To quote Steiner more extensively, he says –

Man has his physical body in common with the minerals and his etheric body with the plants. In the same sense he is of like nature with the animals in respect of the astral body. The plant is in a perpetual state of sleep. Anyone who does not judge accurately in these matters may easily fall into the error of attributing to plants too a kind of consciousness such as the animals and man have in their waking state. But this mistake is only possible when one’s idea of consciousness is inexact. One may then aver that a plant too, when subjected to an outer stimulus, will perform movements, just as an animal will do. One will refer to the ‘sensitiveness’ of many plants, which for example contract their leaves when certain outer things affect them. But the criterion of consciousness does not lie in the fact that to a given action a being shows a definite reaction. It lies in this, that the being has an inner experience, and this is a new factor, over and above the mere reaction. Otherwise we might as well speak of consciousness when a piece of iron expands under the influence of heat. Consciousness is only there when for example, through the effect of heat, the being inwardly experiences pain.

Quoted from Occult Science – An Outline by Rudolph Steiner, Translated by George and Mary Adams, published by Rudolf Steiner Press, London. See Rudolph Steiner’s Philosophy of Life and Death.

This is not, however, the general view of the astral body in popular spiritualism and alternative thinking. In these the astral body is a vehicle through which one can experience awareness separated from the physical body. Through this one can travel anywhere in the world and beyond in moments, and witness what is happening at a distance. One can meet and commune with other individuals who are also projected from their body, as well as meet people who are dead and therefore have no physical existence at all.

The reasons or causes for this projection from the body may be due to an induced trance, an anaesthetic or other drugs, or an illness or the approach of death. A fascinating account of the experience of astral projection and the world one exists in is give by William Lilley, a renowned spiritual healer working within the belief system of Spiritualism. He says he was able to consciously ‘leave his body’ and visit the ‘Beautiful Place’, where he meets the dead. His description of this is typical of many other peoples, even to the ‘going through the mists’.

When I am going into trance, I breathe in the Yoga method shown me by Dr. Letari. Immediately I get a sensation as though I am falling, or being pulled backwards. As this sensation comes to a climax, I seem to be travelling through space at terrific speed.

I have opened my eyes many times but the only vision I had was of passing through a dense fog; then, quite suddenly, the fog clears and I am at a stile. I climb over this stile and immediately there is a voice speaking to me over my shoulder. This voice is always with me, explaining everything I see and everyone I meet. The stile seems to be on the edge of a large field, which rises gradually to the form of a hill. I walk up the hill, and beyond it I visit many places.

I have been to the Children’s Land many times and have spoken to children with whom I used to go to school, many of whom I did not know had died until I met them. I have paid visits too, to the Halls of Learning, which seem to me more like the Acropolis at Athens.

It is always the same stile, the same hill, the same voice, and it just seems like a large country with so many different towns to visit.

The most interesting and remarkable experience I ever had during these visits into the Spirit, happened before I went into trance. Several sitters had been speaking of consciousness. They had asked me to describe the Spirit. Was it solid? Did I appear solid? I promised the Sitters that if I could, I would find out.

I arrived at my stile, the voice came to me and it evidently knew my desire because it said ‘Feel the earth!’ I did. It was solid. ‘Feel the grass beneath your feet!’ I did. That was solid too, and even had dew on it. ‘Smell these flowers!’ They were perfectly natural and had the usual perfume. In fact, everything around was natural. Then I was told, ‘Feel your body’. I did so. It was as solid as I am materially.

The voice then said, ‘Close your eyes; make your consciousness passive’, or as one would do when preparing for a trance state. ‘Now feel the earth beneath your feet!’ There was nothing. ‘Open your eyes’. It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t light. ‘Feel at your body’. It wasn’t there. ‘Such is Spirit’ said the voice. ‘Just a consciousness holding within it all experiences of your lifetime, all the joys and sorrows, your desires, achievements and failures, whence comes spiritual evolution. In your world of the material, you are able to examine matter; everything is matter. When you think of the spiritual, naturally you build in your consciousness another material world.’

Here is an experience of an out of body experience. Sir Auckland Geddes, an eminent British Anatomist, describes his own OBE, which contains many of these features.

Example: Becoming suddenly and violently ill with gastro-enteritis I quickly became unable to move or phone for help. As this was occurring I noticed I had an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ consciousness. The ‘A’ was my normal awareness, and the ‘B’ was external to my body watching. From the ‘B’ self I could see not only my body, but also the house, garden and surrounds. I need only think of a friend or place and immediately I was there and was later able to find confirmation for my observations. In looking at my body, I noticed that the brain was only an end organ, like a condensing plate, upon which memory and awareness played. The mind, I saw, was not in the brain, the brain was in the mind, like a radio in the play of signals. I then observed my daughter come in and discover my condition, I saw her telephone a doctor friend, and saw the doctor also at the same time.

The extraordinary experiences we can meet are here so clearly describe. Geddes is not only aware of his physical body but observes it in a way he had never before perceived. His brain was only an end organ, not the originator or thoughts; he could see his whole surroundings, garden as well without moving; he witnessed his daughter and the doctor without travelling anywhere; here and there were the same place for him.

Spiritualism, through the experience of people like Lilley and Geddes, tells us the ‘dead’ have a subtle body and live in worlds in many ways similar to physical life, except in their beauty, colour, lack of sickness and pain, and without war and in its possibilities. In these worlds we can fly like birds, swim underwater like fish, communicate with others heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul, without the use of clumsy words. We have a body, but it is a body at its prime, without weight or tiredness. We have clothes, but they are creations of our thoughts, and we are clothed by our own love and wisdom. We experience heaven or hell, not as punishment or reward, but because we create our own environment by our own thoughts and emotions. Here we explore music, the arts, creativity, knowledge, relationships, without the limitations the body imposes, and with the added wonder of a new dimension of experience. Our senses are extended so that when we look at someone, we see not only a body shape and their posture and expression, but also we perceive their quality as a person, perhaps through a surrounding field of colour or emanation from within. When we consider a painting in this world, we not only appreciate the colours and forms, but we commune with the artist through the work, and experience for ourselves the artist’s vision and feelings, their unique quality and spirit.

With the development of the theory attached to Quantum Mechanics – The New Physics – a very different view is emerging of time, space and human consciousness. This vastly subtler view of the cosmos and our place in it brings a shift also to the way we can look at experiences such as the projection of the astral body, or the concept of the astral body itself. These shifts appear to offer an open door to greater freedom of experience within these areas, and an entirely new way of explaining them. Well, perhaps not entirely new, as many of the subtlest of thinkers of East and West have already written much about these subtlest aspects of ‘Reality’.

As Lilley’s inner voice had said, ‘Close your eyes; make your consciousness passive’, or as one would do when pre-paring for a trance state. ‘Now feel the earth beneath your feet!’ There was nothing. ‘Open your eyes’. It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t light. ‘Feel at your body’. It wasn’t there. ‘Such is Spirit’ said the voice. ‘Just a consciousness holding within it all experiences of your lifetime, all the joys and sorrows, your desires, achievements and failures, whence comes spiritual evolution. In your world of the material, you are able to examine matter; everything is matter. When you think of the spiritual, naturally you build in your consciousness another material world.’

In other words we create in those subtler dimensions of experience replicas of what we have known in the body. But as we accept the growth beyond limitations we can drop those physical forms and operate as formless and genderless beings. This does away with the need to feel that we travel anywhere and have moved away from the physical. My own experience tells me that our consciousness is all pervading and so called astral travel is not travelling, but tuning into a particular tiny area of the cosmos, and becuase of our physical experience of travel needing to move our body, we create the dream of travelling..

See Levels of Awareness in Waking and Sleeping; consciousness – the body mind split; esp in dreams; out of body experiences; paralysis while asleep; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-dreaming/#Paralyzed.

Anaesthesia the Mind and Dreams

Although anaesthetics are often thought of only as a means of reducing pain, several drugs used as anaesthetics may also produce powerful psychological effects. Winston Churchill reported an extraordinary vision experienced during anaesthesia. During it he reached a state of mind in which he felt that his awareness encompassed all that existed and was to be known. In this exalted state he was gradually aware there was another horizon forming beyond his present knowledge. Then he broke through to this new realm, gradually reached the point of once more feeling he encompassed it all, only to find another horizon.

Modern research tends to call this experience the ‘ecstatic state’. Other terms for it are ‘cosmic consciousness’, vision or revelation. William James, when experimenting with nitrous oxide, reported a similar experience. During it he felt he knew the secret of the universe and all in it. On awakening however all he could recall in detail was the verse – ‘Higamus Hogumus women are monogamous – Hogumus Higamus, men are polygamous.’ As he was an influential thinker for many years this led to the standpoint that such experiences were of little value. See: a new look at enlightenment; secret of the universe dreams.

On going into or emerging from anaesthesia some people report the remembrance of dreams that had occurred in the past, or the recurrence of a nightmare which had been previously experienced. In the latter situation the nightmare is usually one which expresses some traumatic past experience, such as an actual battle scene or motor accident. In my own observation of such trauma being re-presented in dreams or in abreacted experience, this appearance during anaesthesia once more suggests a link with a self-regulatory process active in the psyche. See: Life’s Little Secrets; compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy.

Quite a number of people report the experience of standing apart from their body during anaesthesia. This out of body experience – OBE – is now well documented, and cases have been followed up by investigating the circumstances and the information provided by the person experiencing the OBE. In several cases for instance, the person under anaesthetic is taken into a room they have never seen before and operated on by people they have not met. They experience the separation of their awareness from their anaesthetised body and not only observe the people in the room and their actions and conversation, but also sometimes go exploring adjacent rooms. Their descriptions have frequently completely tied in with the facts of the location they were operated in, the people present, and the adjacent rooms.

See: Going Beyond – Dimensions of Human Experience;  Talking with Dead; near death experiences; esp in dreams; out of body experience.

In the book Ishi – The Last of his Tribe, by Theodora Kroeber, Ishi, a Native American unspoilt by exposure to Western life styles, was allowed to witness a tonsil operation on a child. He was horrified to see the child put into a sleep state by a man who had not himself been initiated into consciously entering the inner worlds of the unconscious. He was vitally aware that without such knowledge the anaesthetist was exposing the child to many real dangers. In fact many people have been left with psychological scars from lack of awareness on the part of surgeons and anaesthetists, of what is being experienced by the person being anaesthetised. See: The Labours of Hero Cules, a straightforward description of what it was like to remember an actual tonsil operation.

A patient under anaesthesia for a short operation told of ‘a complete revelation about the ultimate truth of everything. I understood the ‘entire works.’ It was a tremendous illumination. I was filled with unspeakable joy.’

But another description of a child being anaesthetised during a nose operation:

Example: As I explored the dream it worked out as my struggled to avoid the rectal anesthesia as a child. I didn’t experience the emotions of that, only the movements and intuitions about its connection with the dream. That is, I kept saying, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t.” This was expressive of a sense that the pain inflicted to my face (nose) during the operation, must be because I had done something wrong. I could see that I associated inflicted pain with the punishment a parent gave because of some “bad” action. I could not understand why the pain had been inflicted on me.

Also, I felt that religion itself was a projection out of the unconscious, from such fundamental premises. In other words, inflicted pain equals punishment. Pain equals God’s punishment.

Because I felt I was dying during the anesthetic, the sense of death equated with pain and people hurting one. At the time of the anesthetic my conscious identity had been plunged with awareness deep into the unconscious. The loss of shape or senses was felt to be death. So a conditioned reflex had been set. During anesthesia I had fought desperately with the nurses – for my life. What I was fighting for my life and kicked and struggled so much I had kicked the bottle of anaesthetic out of the nurses grasp and it broke. Then I was held as a fresh bottle was used and the anaesthetic was poured into my rectum – it couldn’t be given by nose – and I have a memory of the nurses saying, “Don’t do that!” To me it was like a hypnotic command saying, “Don’t fight for your life. Give up!” That was kept in me till I relived it using LifeStream.