Universal and Personal Consciousness

It has been said that the history of the study of consciousness is the history of religion, philosophy and science. These fields concern the power to know, the means by which knowledge is attained, and all the other ramifications by which reason and judgement can be derived by these experiences of awareness. Some of the early modern philosophers were of the opinion that the term "consciousness" should be dropped entirely as it had developed around itself such a wide array of different meanings that it was no longer possible to use the term intelligibly. Today it means almost anything that the individual wants it to mean. He applies it to every type of cognition, and he involves it also in nearly all of his spiritual and religious ideas and beliefs. Semantically the word has lost boundaries and since the nineteenth century has been in comparative chaos as to internal structure.

I do not agree, however, that we can afford to drop it, or to seek for a substitute. Rather, I think we must clarify in so far as we can the essential meaning of our term and try to rescue it from the involvements into which it has fallen. Our first duty is to define the term, "consciousness". Trying to discover what it actually means, what do we discover?

Apparently the term consciousness is most generally used to cover the field which we call "awareness". It is a power or faculty by which we are aware. By "awareness" we mean "awake-ness". We mean that these faculties are in a position or in the condition to accept the stimuli that may come to them from a variety of sources, external or internal. Awareness, therefore, is the state of being in the presence of a recognised phenomenon of some kind. We are aware of things around us, and this brings us to the first question that has been asked: "Is man aware of the fact that he is aware?"

Up to recent times there has been every reason to doubt that. Awareness was an acceptance. The individual turned his attention from one thing to another, and accepted into his nature the testimonies of his senses - things seen, heard, touched flowed into him, but he was not aware of himself in relation to these things. He was not aware, for example, that his own consciousness accepted or rejected these phenomena by intent or purpose. It was merely something forever available to become aware of whatever stimuli were brought within its range. Gradually, however, the investigation of phenomena has led to the conclusion that whether we are aware of out own awareness or not, that there is a certain continuous activity from within ourselves, even in the more simple problem of seeing. Seeing is not merely the sense of sight registering its own testimony upon something within man. Seeing involves a motion within man, a motion of experience. A motion of inevitable and intuitive recognitions. The individual seeing, whether he is aware of it or not, immediately begins to pass judgement upon the thing seen, and this judgement is nearly always based upon experience. Based upon memory or upon previous incidences where similar things have been seen. Perhaps upon comparisons, or upon the sense of the utilities involved. Whether we know it or not, like it or not, we always see with a certain appraising power. We are constantly passing some sort of judgement about the thing seen, accepting it, rejecting it. Liking it, disliking it. Responding to it pleasurably, or without pleasure. Actively or passively.

Thus there is something within the individual that responds to the pressure of sensory perception and causes awareness to be immediately specialised into a series of judgements, conclusion, attitudes and opinions. Yet this process, almost occurring too rapidly for us to estimate it, still does not cause the individual to experience that fact of his own participation in awareness. Most persons, being aware of something, are not aware of their own faculty procedure. They merely accept things seen, assuming that this is a natural and normal procedure. It is only after the rise of man's philosophic life, when he began to question the methodology of things that happened to him, that he began to get frustrated over the problem of his own awareness. Prior to this time he simply was glad that he had this awareness. Gradually, however, the problem of how to understand it intrigued his mind, intrigued his reason.

Why should man wish to know how ad why he is aware? Probably the answer lies in the arising within him of the fallibility of his own judgements. He realised that he could be mistaken. That due to the pressure of some psychic factor within himself, he could not depend upon the validity of his own sensory perceptions. He learned that he had a power by which he could pervert things seen, things heard, whereby he could interpret into something that which was not in it, or interpret out of it, something that was in it. He learned, therefore, that this process was not necessarily valid.

When he began to experience this, he began to experience the need to rationalise this awareness process, to discover if possible where his own mistakes were. He began to realise also that he could not depend upon the sensory perceptions for final judgement on important problems. He could believe, as the ancients did, that the Sun moved around the Earth, because it appeared to do so. When it set in the evening, it simply went under the Earth, to light the world of the dead. He had a good deal of phenomenal evidence to sustain him, but he learned gradually that his senses were wrong. That what he appeared to see was not the truth. He learned in many ways that appearances could be deceptive, and by degrees he lost faith in the absolute validity of the initial impact of awareness. He became aware, for example, that people who looked nice and were well-garbed could cheat him. He found that individuals who looked very healthy could drop dead five minutes later. That what appeared to be a great bargain was wonderful only on the surface, and that appearances, therefore, could be very deceiving. He began to become suspicious of surfaces, and of appearances, and sought stronger and more positive instruments by which he could judge value.

The moment he began to search for judgement about value, he discovered that he had to use certain internal faculties. That he had to weigh and ponder and consider. He hereby divided his mental life into two parts - a concrete, or objective mental life dealing principally with phenomena, and an abstract mental life which was subjective, which dealt almost totally with principles themselves.

Principles themselves were difficult to deal with, and man has never quite succeeded in dealing with a pure principle. He has never been able to separate a value completely from association with objectivity. If you wish to, for example, try to estimate in your own inner awareness the nature of a completely honest person, you are out after a quality, after the quality of honesty. You want to construct for your own purpose an archetypal image of total honesty. It is utterly impossible for you to do so, without some recourse to objective symbolism. Man primitive in his thinking first decided that his way to discover that honest man as to find one somewhere in the world around him, and to then use this person as a pattern for all other honesty. We have done the same thing in religion - taken the one good man and made him the archetype of an ideal humanity. We have taken one virtuous man and made of him, virtue. We have taken him gradually out of it, but we have never lost sight of the example which he gave which becomes the standard for the estimation of an abstract value. Thus, our search for honesty has our centre in the honest man. Our search for truth has to be seemingly centred in a person who possesses this power, this invaluable treasure, to a pronounced and outstanding degree. Truth without a truthful person or situation became unthinkable. We were never able to get away from our dependency upon the records that our awareness brought to us. Today when we think of good, we must associate it with good persons, good conditions. We say that something fortunate that occurs to ourselves is good. We must tie it with some phenomenal thing.

Thus, as psychology has pointed out, we are not yet able to say that what we call consciousness is an arbitrary something within us which judges all other things. We are not able to say that consciousness is something in us forever judging righteous judgement. We would like to say then, that we are not able to prove this either in our own living or through the compound example of life around us. We must in absolute honesty therefore say, that consciousness as awareness is an absolute honesty therefore say, that consciousness as awareness is an awareness capable of error, an awareness which merely is awareness, but is not able to pass final judgement upon the qualities of which it is aware.

This brings us to what you might consider as the Scottish metaphysical position of this, namely that consciousness per se, and substantially represents the divine in man - a god-given attribute inscrutable because it is divine. Beyond definition because it is a spiritual thing which utterly transcends all of our objective and material experiences.

This causes also a moment of pause, because we now know that we are in the presence of a dilemma of some seriousness. If consciousness is inevitably divine, then we must explain that margin of error which we find in it, because we are not able to assume that there is a margin of error in the consciousness of God. Consequently, if consciousness is inaccurate, if man can come to certain conscious conclusions which are not true, then consciousness cannot be totally and completely divine, because if it is we associate it inevitably with the flawless quality of being infallible. We know that the noblest aspects of consciousness as defined today will be subject to modification in the future. We know also that things which today we disregard may be accepted as superior those we regard now. Thus consciousness cannot be more or less than a conditioned kind of awareness. What religion tries to tell us is that we really have no definition, no true and complete explanation, for this fact, that fact that we are aware. Once we are aware, we can assume that of what we are aware can be confused by mind and sense. Thus, the awareness of man recording any phenomenon may be subject to error due to false or inaccurate recording due to a sense defect. This can and does leave the root of awareness as an energy, a kind of spiritual electricity or life power by which awareness is possible. This life essence, prior to its entanglement in judgement or its extension into awareness may be regarded as a sacred or divine agent or element, especially in the compound of man.

Science in tackling this problem has multiple theories which it has developed up until the present time. One of these is that consciousness is actually a by-product of body, that it in some way arises within body. That it is due to the chemistry of the kind of creature we are, and that no other ind of creature could have our kind of consciousness. If this is true however, that consciousness arises from a complete chemistry of the body, then it would naturally follow that any change in the body would alter consciousness and this is not the case. In wartime there have been soldiers who lost both arms and both legs (nearly 50% of the body entire), yet there is no evidence that their consciousness changed in any way. They did not experience any change within themselves as centres of awareness. Their trauma and handicaps did not change their basic consciousness. Also it has been noted that consciousness is removed from any area of the body that is separated from the circulation of the central nervous system. Therefore it is stated that consciousness moves through and within the body by means of the central nervous system. Therefore if consciousness be regarded as an attribute of body, then the alchemy must take place within the central nervous system so that the bodily contribution ass through certain changes, refinements etc. in these areas, before they can generate a conscious reaction.

In more recent years the problem has changed complexion again. We now have less emphasis placed upon the consciousness being a product of base biological function. We are again thinking of consciousness as something imposed upon body, something separate from and superior to body either arising in a psychic field which is an overtone to body, or in a soul sphere which is an undertone of spirit and is itself superior to body. All these theories and problems and postulations have their strong advocates, but an advocate does not necessarily possess the full answer.

For this evening and for this series of lectures we are going to try and summarise and explore the field of consciousness as it is understood in both eastern and western religion and philosophy, and as far as we can in the terms of psychology, and in comparative standards which have arisen in the past several thousands of years of human intellectual contemplation.

We first explore consciousness as the subject of its own object. Consciousness was, to most ancient people, regarded as subject, and therefore identified with self, or identified with "I". Consequently in seeking for early definitions of consciousness it was customary to associate this power with the existence of a "self-ness" or even a "self-hood", within the composition of man. Consciousness then became the primary attribute of self. "I Am" being perhaps one of the most simple and ultimate statements of consciousness. This statement which has gone on unchallenged for the most part through the ages, endures because no one can make sense of of a conviction, "I Am Not". It sounds and feels very frustrating and is very difficult to demonstrate. This is because the very statement of the individual that he "is not" implies that there is something in the position to make the statement, which immediately nullifies because the statement cannot emerge from that which "is not". The man can deny, but in his very denial he proves that which he seeks to deny. He must use his own statement to deny his own existence. This becomes illogical and primitive man even at an early time was not that foolish. He outgrew this situation rather quickly. So he came to the conclusion that in some mysterious way consciousness was man;s statement of his own existence. That man knew he d was the primary proof of consciousness. How he knew, what he knew, why he knew, these questions have never been answered. But that he knew became a self-apparent fat, against which there seemed to be no possible attack. The individual attempting to demonstrate his own lack of existence found that it was impossible to make a demonstration without making use of the very elements which he sought to deny, so he was forced to give it up.

We find in religious writings therefore, quite frequently some simple statement such as "I Am". And we find this in the story of the visit of Moses to the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. When Moses and Aaron wanted to have the authority to appear they wanted to know who had authorised them, to go before Pharaoh. God answered to them, "tell Pharaoh, I Am hath sent thee." "I Am" therefore primarily being a statement of divinity. This "I Am-ness" simply allowed man to remain for a very long time basking in the fact of his own existence.

The fact that he existed, however, rapidly led him into complications. As this sense of "I Am-ness" began to develop, man could not therefore develop his own "self-ness" except by the creation of a dynamic comparison. "I Am" also implies the inevitable existence of that which is "Not I". "I Am" makes a little wall around something which we call ourselves, and gives to that which is inside the wall a peculiarity which is not given to that which is outside the wall. Therefore the individual can turn toward himself and he can say "I Am". He can turn away from himself and he can say "this is Not I". So man developed a universe in which all things ultimately resolved themselves into two groups, "I" and "Not I". "I" was a very small group, consisting of one unit only, and the "Not I" was everything else that existed. Therefore we may say that the "Not I" was in an overwhelming preponderance. Also this recognition of the "I" and the "Not I" led to a further complication - namely, that man could not and did not live by "I" alone. If the individual could have lived totally within "I", being an entirely self-sustaining creature, if he could have fed himself from within himself, clothed himself. If he could have reproduced his kind alone and without reaction from any other creature, if he could have created his own empire for one being and one being only, and have lived without any dependence whatever upon nature around him, he might have gone on in blissful indifference to the "Not I" forever.

But he could not do this. He came upon another dilemma. Namely, that in his experience nearly everything that he wanted, everything that he needed, nearly everything necessary to his survival belonged in the world of "Not I". He had to go out and cut down a tree when he wanted a little wood. The tree was "Not I". He went fishing and he caught a fish that was "Not I". He ate the fish and something happened wherein the fish became a vital factor in the perpetuation of the "I". The bones, however, he threw away. They were still "Not I". He had a family. He was very fond of this family in a primitive manner, whatever that may be, but that family was "Not I". And he gradually discovered also that the most difficult and terrible interval that exists in nature is the interval between two creatures with the same kind of "I". He didn't have nearly as much trouble understanding the animals because he thought of them as he wanted to and if he was wrong they could never correct him, so everybody got along well. But the moment that he tried to explain another "I", another self, he found himself in conflict with a being like himself with purposes and principles which might not agree with his own. So man struggling against this "Not I" discovered that himself as a subject was under the almost continuous tyranny of the world around him of not-self, an object.

And we find this arising not more distantly than in our evening paper, tonight. We discover in reading the paper that there are many things happening in the world that we do not like. If we had anything to say about is they wouldn't happen, according to our way of thinking. We feel, however, that these things are being caused by "Not I", by somebody else, and that as sure as we are here we must suffer from the happenings and doings of some great "Not I" which is not ourselves. Thus, we have gradually grown to the conviction that we are all victim to the collective objective, the thing outside of ourselves, and remain as passive observers having a continuous awareness that things around us are going contrary to our inclinations, and that there is nothing we can do about it. This is quite a confusing and totally crippling recognition. Man had it for a long time, however - this is not new with us though it is new every time it happens.

We have, then, man as "self", looking around him into a world in which most of the values are very difficult to understand and most of these difficulties arise from the action of other selves than his own. He may abstractly conceive of the fact that for everyone else he is also one of those selves, and that therefore the universe is composed of an infinite number of selves, each one unique to the one it belongs to, each one almost impossible of comprehension by anyone but itself. This curious psychological situation has always been a cause of difficulty and probably always will be, so long as it continues, because it places the human being in a strange, fatalistic and frustrating relationship with everything else that exists. Consciousness begins to tell us these things as we use it in terms of awareness. We therefore come to the conclusion that consciousness is in some way a rather individual thing, that it has to be the sum or substance of something.

So, we then go to the next step - namely the possibility that behind each of the forms in nature there is a separate, conscious entity. The moment we do this we come into religion, for now we find the body to be possessed by a spirit, or occupied by a conscious being that has an existence of its own apart from body, but which is brought into a relationship with body during the phenomenon which we call physical living. We now have, then, conscious beings who have dispositions, characteristics and attitudes which they impose upon body. Body then, now becomes the victim of spirit, or of the spiritual entity. The psychic being becomes the mere instrument for the expression of consciousness, whether this consciousness be good or bad, depending upon the nature of the being which inhabits the body.

What do we have in support of this concept? One thing strongly in support is the ultra-individuality of selves, the apparent, hopeless separateness of selves. The situation which we see around us in which we are not understood by others, that the purposes sacred to us are meaningless to others, that basically we have great difficulty understanding and just as great a difficulty being understood by any other being. Under such conditions it seems like we can demonstrate that consciousness is a series of individual units, each one encased in some kind of form or body, and that these individual units are irreconcilable in themselves, having different origins and different destinies. This seems from a phenomenal standpoint reasonably conclusive, but it presents us with another rather abstract (but important) dilemma. This dilemma is that we observe everywhere in nature that things in their ultimate states are not separate. We recognise, for example, that this solar system of ours is all to a great degree bound under the luminosity and energy of one Sun. That this one Sun, or one life, or one light illuminates all things, sustains them, nourishes them and is present in their compounds. If this be true, we see in the power of the Sun one life-light susceptible of infinite differentiation. We know not only that the energy of the Sun not only moves planets and causes the grass to grow, inspires the poet and the mystic, but also sustains the worm and the insect, and makes the earth fertile, the very water we drink suitable to our use. Thus this life, though infinitely separate in its manifestation, appears to us to be one essential substance. Man contemplating on this in the golden age of philosophy came to the conclusion that the life in man must be essentially one substance, on the simple empiric, logical premise that there cannot be more than one life, because life is not a separate thing but life is the common denominator of all of them.

Therefore life is a universal, even though living may be a particular experience. Thus, the ancient contemplating this came to the conclusion that as life is able to support many things in no way resembling each other, and at the same time not resembling life itself, which is totally invisible in its own essence, so consciousness can be one thing although it is manifested as many different things with apparently little similarity and with the same attribute life possesses, namely that in its substance it is invisible. Thus consciousness is one kind of energy, itself never to be experienced totally apart from a conditioning, a modifying agent. That it is conceivable that life might ultimately be experienced apart from form, this cannot be denied, but such experience is not yet available to us as the basis for the estimation of value. So philosophy advises us to contemplate that while consciousness as it relates to our personal life, is highly individual, that it is sustained by a common energy which is the root and source of it, and that this is a universal thing. That while man in particular may be conscious of many things, he has no facility by means of which he can be conscious of conscious life, in itself, apart from any modification or form which it may assume. Out of this type of thinking, perhaps, developed the theories of yoga and vedanta, these theories being built very largely upon the recognition of a common universality of life, and that therefore all individualities, all personality, all separateness must exist within one common energy, which in actuality is a most uncommon energy, in as much as it is the pure energy of divinity itself. This of course led from a concept immediately to a precept, and vedanta developed along the idea that having confirmed the existence of a universal transcendent energy, in this case a universal energy consciousness, that it was the privilege, duty and responsibility of the human being to so integrate and organise his own resources that he could become increasingly conscious of this universal agent. That he therefore made his own way of life a means to achieve the experience of universal consciousness.

This universal experience of consciousness, the modern psychologist warns us, is not quite as simple as religion makes it seem to be. Because actually, how are we going to discover the validity of our own mood? Supposing the individual actually has what he regards as a genuine experience of cosmic consciousness. How does he know that it is cosmic consciousness? By what comparison, or by what value within himself is he able to judge the merit of extension of his own consciousness beyond his own experience? This becomes a very difficult situation. We may have an experience which seems to us transcendent, but how transcendent is it? We may feel at any given moment that we have been elevated into a universality. Have we? Or are we merely drawing upon our own symbolism, and simply projecting a mental image of a statue, a state which has become familiar to us through reading, through thought, through study or through contact with some outstanding system of religion and ethics? I know for example that we all have studied what we might term, consciousness dreams - dreams in which the individual appears to move into a more superior state of consciousness than that of his daily living. He feels quite certain that he has entered into spheres of reality transcending anything that he knows here, but has he actually entered them? Or has he merely visualised conditions which he has hoped could exist, or would exist? Has he actually escaped the tyranny of his own mind, or has he merely come under the more subtle influences of that tyranny, therefore a worse victim than before?

This is hard to say without a very careful analysis of a particular incident under discussion. But it is a well-known fact that the individual can create a mirage, move into it, feel himself to have had an extraordinary extension of consciousness, when in reality he has only intensely visualised certain mental patterns which he has previously experienced and accepted. All this causes us to be to a measure, careful in our estimation of what this consciousness experience can actually mean to us. We have to be very thoughtful, very wise, and not allow ourselves in the moment to become too optimistic in our examination of these factors.

The fact still remains, then, that we are aware, and that this awareness troubles us is apparent to the degree that we seek to find out how we are aware, and why this is. And perhaps, in going into this situation as thoughtfully as we can, there is another approach that might be worthwhile. And that is the approach of the mystic. And the mystic, seeking to discover consciousness strives to do so by suspending the function of everything that is not consciousness. He does not attempt to storm the gates of Heaven. He does not attempt to push his own conviction into the world of causes. He does not seek to dictate to the universe how it exists or what it is like, nor to impose any concept of his own upon universals. He takes the attitude that if he imposes no content, if he suspends all of his own personal attitudes, that which remains will form a kind of "door" by means of which the impersonal at the root of himself may come through into manifestation. In other words, if he can prevent illusion, prevent himself from distorting his own mind, prevent himself from allowing the mind to dominate his spiritual conviction, that in this way by suspending mind he can come into the direct presence of consciousness itself. That the thing that blocks consciousness in man is mental activity. The ancients, of course, assumed that two things blocked it - mental activity and emotional activity. That wherever the individual was under mental or emotional pressure, he could never be honest, he could never see anything as it truly is, and he could never be still and permit the internal to move through him. Thus the Quaker, the Quietist, the Sufi, all of these types of mystics assumed that consciousness could best be discovered through the total suspension of all function. And this was to a measure behind the meditative disciplines of eastern religion, as well as the monastic disciplines o the western church.

Out of this experience, however, came a series of consequences which also have to be estimated in terms f value. One thing we do know, namely that the suspension of the objective faculties of the individual certainly did have a particular and definite result. This result was a distinct ennobling of his nature. The individual who was able to suspend his own selfishness, for example, exhibited a larger measure of unselfishness. The individual who was able to suspend worry found greater internal organisation. Therefore we can say that the person who is able to suspend negative processes in his own psychic life certainly gains a considerable amount of insight, or releases superior quality of insight, as the result of escaping from, or overcoming negative, or lesser degrees of insight. Thus in the experience of the mystic, there seems to be an increasing godliness, an increasing sensitivity to value as the individual slowly relinquished those attitudes which were the most likely to bind him to false concepts and standards. Here we have, then, perhaps the whole explanation throughout the entire world, of the mendicant attitude towards religion. Namely, that man, not being able to serve two masters, so seeking God must first renounce the world.

This renouncing of the world was only symbolic, however. It was the renouncing of the entanglement in which the sensory perceptions, attaching themselves to objects, became hopelessly involved in these objects and in the destinies of these objects, to the degree that there was no longer any possibility of attaining a tranquillity because of the non-tranquil nature of attachment. Attachments are always related to improvement or loss of their object. They go forward and backward, they become more or less. Attachments never seem to stand still, and the individual captured in the moods and constant motions of these attachments must also bear their commotion, and the confusions which arise within them. So the mystic simply takes the attitude that if you can suspend worldliness, that which you have left is god-consciousness. The individual who has no consciousness of his own, by that very fact becomes aware of universal consciousness. That universal consciousness and human consciousness have a common root, but that the one cannot be manifested (the universal) until the personal has been suspended. This again is the idea that man cannot serve two masters. Therefore he cannot serve the ego and God. Somewhere he must make the decision, and if he decides to serve truth then he must gradually detach his awareness from all these pressures which cause illusion or have a tendency to distort the testimonies of sensory perception. The story we have of Dante and his contemplation in the city of Florence follows in this thinking also. Namely that the mystic, having impersonalised his faculties is able to perceive all things in a more universal way. He is no longer concerned with wealth or poverty, youth or age, attachment or loss. And being free from these pressures, he seems to gain a kind of tranquillity, a suspension of pressures, and this suspension of pressure has always been an essential part of the phenomenon of mysticism.

We then begin to say "what does this mean in terms of consciousness?"

It means a stillness where consciousness would otherwise be constantly moving, so that awareness is no longer bombarding the centre of itself with an endless stream of testimony. Western man, confronted with this problem, takes the attitude that to suspend these faculties will mean to reduce the consciousness itself to a non-entity. What he is trying to tell us is that the consciousness has no existence apart from stress. That it exists primarily because it is challenged, and that consciousness is man's reaction to challenge. That it leads to the gradual strengthening of faculties and the intensification of energies, the development of the power of the will and the gradual integration of resources against adversity. Therefore that if we suspend the problems around man, we isolate him, and his consciousness simply goes to sleep because it is not challenged. That the consciousness in man, therefore, is something which rises primarily to challenge, and has no existence apart from the need for itself, which man experiences in daily living. This, however, is not quite rational either. It is subject to a great deal of controversy and debate, on a number of grounds.

First, if consciousness is dependent upon phenomenon, such as man's association with the immediate problems around him, and consciousness represents (as we have a tendency to believe it represents) one of the highest existing forms of energy in space, then it leaves universal consciousness, dependent upon universal action, and causes God to become totally dependent upon his creation for his own existence. This opens another question. It opens the problem as to whether the divine nature in this respect is identical with human nature. Man is dependent for certain experience upon his environment. Is this also true of deity? Is deity aware of its own existence only because of the struggles of creatures such as man, who must in some way find the solution to their own mystery, and in so finding it, do they contribute to the ultimate discovery of the mystery by deity itself?

The ancients were disinclined to this viewpoint. They were more inclined to view a middle attitude as one, perhaps, or greater accuracy. Admitting that consciousness is dependent upon phenomena in its manifestation, the ancient also affirmed that it had an existence and subsistence apart fro phenomena. Therefore that if the individual does nothing, in no way stirs mentation or emotion, suspends every faculty of observation and power that he possesses, that he does not in doing so destroy consciousness, or cause it to cease to exist, or to cease to have a faculty of its own. The ancients were inclined to assume that consciousness has an existence in itself, and that this existence in itself is perhaps the supreme mystery of all mysteries in the universe.

Let us assume that an, with personal consciousness, becomes by means of it able to understand a personal world of particulars all around him. Yet with this particular personal consciousness man is not capable of understanding universal mystery. Man is only able to totally understand an a level, and here is something that is important to bear in mind. The moment the individual ascends above his own norm, his power to understand slowly decreases. The moment he descends below his current norm his understanding also decreases. If, therefore, man contemplates any form of life essentially less than his own, he contemplates it with no more assurance than he contemplates a life superior to his own. Man is therefore "locked" on a level. We might say, for example, that man's body, containing within it all of the working parts of its elaborate economy, that man should be capable of the experience of the parts of his own body, but he is not. Man is utterly incapable of experiencing the problem of his own heart. He is not able to experience in participation the problem of digesting his own food. To him, the mystery of his own digestion must be studied out of a book, as though it belonged to someone else. He cannot experience the process of his own digestion. The only way that he can gain a kind of experience here is when he has indigestion. It is in this instance he discovers that he is aware of something, but even this awareness does not prevent him from repeating the mistake that caused the indigestion. Man is aware of discomfort, but not the process. He cannot be very quiet, and very still, and experience his own digestion. He cannot be very quiet and very still and experience what happens to a nerve within his own body. He must consider even his own body as something separate from himself. Something he has to study, to go to school with others and study the structure of the body in common, before he is able to examine his own. Yet this body belongs to him and its energies are sustained by his life. But he cannot share in it. If he goes up into the world of more rarefied conditions of consciousness, he cannot, spying inward, discover the nature of his own ideas. He cannot actually experience his own ideals. He cannot contemplate a superior state of himself, nor can he for one moment experience the consciousness of the orders or hierarchies which he believes are above himself in nature. It is very difficult for him actually to experience the wisdom of one of his own kind, slightly wiser than himself. and he certainly has difficulty in really appreciating one of his own kind who is a little more foolish than he is. He is locked within a very narrow gamut, and his consciousness does not simply escape, either upward or downward, under the normal functions of living.

If, however, he enters a state of contemplation, and he detaches himself from all worldliness around him, trying to absorb himself into the most subtle pats of being, can he conceivably then be sensitive enough to experience the functions of his own body? Eastern yoga tells us that, he in fact can. This requires a tremendous amount of discipline, however, and a very highly developed state of awareness superior to his present state, requires a very high advancement in the yogic art. These things will not happen by accident. But they will all happen gradually through evolution. Man is growing into new spheres of experience continually. Until he actually experiences these things, he cannot cope with them. consciousness as consciousness does not fill this interval. It does not make it possible for him to simply do that which is otherwise impossible. But the potential of consciousness seems to allow its extension, allow it to accept growth by experience, so that experience itself never outgrows consciousness, but becomes a new instrument for its manifestation on a higher level.

All these factors, then, bring us to another point - thinking of personal consciousness, the individual, following the old concept of microcosm/macrocosm analogies which dominated thinking for a thousand years in Europe, comes to the next conclusion - is his own state of consciousness a key to the relationships of universal consciousness? If for example, man is personal, and the universe is bigger than man, must support many men, many beings, many creatures, may we justly ascribe to the universe a universal consciousness, even as we ascribe to the person a personal consciousness?

We may certainly do so, but when we define consciousness from personal to universal, what do we experience in the process of so doing? Do we know any more than we did before? In the majority of cases we do not. Universal consciousness simply becomes our consciousness, applied or projected by ourselves, toward a state which we have not experienced but which we must conclude is bigger than our state. Therefore we come up with the idea that universal consciousness is greater. Because this consciousness is associated with God, it is better. Because deity is presumed to be all-knowing, this universal consciousness is omniscient. Because God is everywhere this universal consciousness is omnipresent. And because God does all things, this universal consciousness is omni-active. But when we have said these things, what have we said? We have only tossed long words around. We have not actually experienced any of the factors involved. We have simply projected our own state upon the universe and assumed that as man has the awareness of self within his own nature, that the universe is ruled by a being also possessing a sense of self. Awareness of self in man is called cosmo-consciousness. Awareness of self in deity is called universal consciousness, because deity, being the totality of existence, is implied to have total consciousness.

Yet, self-awareness as applied to man does not imply total personal consciousness. We are to assume that deity by its consciousness is aware of the sparrow's fall. But man, with his world, by his personal consciousness is not aware of the infirmities of his own flesh. He may sicken and die before even recognising the symptoms. Man id not aware of the burdens placed upon the blood vessels of his own body. He does not have to carry the load of the smallest cells as a conscious experience in his own life. Yet man, as a person controls a body of which he is unaware and therefore which he is unaware and therefore which he frequently perverts to his own ambitions. Had he the consciousness of it he would not do so.

How, then, shall we affirm that universal consciousness is actually aware of us, any more than we are aware of the cells in our own body? We affirm these things but we do not know them to be true. We also affirm them on the testimony of certain experiences. We do not deny these experiences, but until they can be so standardised that they can be examined by more than the handful of isolated witnesses, we cannot on the other hand totally accept without question findings about which we have inadequate information or substantial knowledge. We must keep many of these point in comparative suspension because we simply do not know. I have a feeling however that if we are to search for an answer to these things, and psychology is desperately looking for answers today, perhaps more than ever before and in the future even more avidly than now, that we have to recognise that consciousness as we wish to understand it is more than merely universal cognition. I do not think that the actual definition of consciousness in terms of universal consciousness means universal cognition. I question if we will be able to supply evidence that consciousness is directly associated either with cognition or awareness. But these terms represent our efforts to explain an aspect of consciousness rather than the total nature of consciousness itself.

In all probability, consciousness, as far as we are able to estimate, is not conscious. In other words, consciousness is in itself an infinite potential which is capable of infinite unfoldment from within its own root. But the root itself is so completely remote to our experience, that we have no adequate way of defining it. This does not mean that consciousness does not have substance, but rather that what we know of as existence is not enough to involve or enclose our concept of consciousness. Our word existence does not go far enough. No thought or term that we have, goes far enough. No state of being that we can experience is close enough to consciousness to give us any clue to its essential nature. Perhaps the nearest clue that we have is this process of suspending function that is not consciousness. For out of this suspension we arrive at a total suspension. We come into the presence of a timeless, a being-less-ness, in which according to the ancient testimonies and records of those who have experienced these things we gradually lose sense of self-existence. That true nirvana as taught in Asia is the complete suspension of the sense of self-existence. The individual reaches a state in which he is not aware. Furthermore, by this means he also has reached the state in which he is no longer aware whether he is aware or not. The complete suspension of the state of knowing awareness. Therefore in this instant, the individual escapes time and place totally. Consequently what we call awareness is related to time-place association. We are aware of time and place. Of the relationships of these things upon each other. Time-place-thing. All these are essential to awareness. The suspension of time, place and thing suspends awareness. In that instant, man is unaware of his own existence or non-existence.

Examining this problem as carefully as we can, to discover if we can, what the individual is cognisant of, while he is not aware. That is a pretty problem. In other words it is the extension of the idea of what he is thinking about when he is not thinking. In the experiences of eastern mystics there is a peculiar term which comes in. One which has not been discussed much in the west except by some of the old medieval saints. The reference is to "blessedness", to bliss. and to a state of almost perpetual ecstasy. It is the ark of a profound, mystical, a-perceptive mood in these saintly persons. Having transcended all personality, time, place and condition, there sees to be described a state of bliss - measureless, being-less bliss. Now this has been explained ans studied, particularly in your oriental philosophy, to find out how an individual can be so blissful when he doesn't know that he exists. But he comes back with an answer which confounds the elders and leaves the entire situation in very much of a dilemma. Namely, that bliss exists. That he has discovered that a condition exists but he does not, which is the exact reverse of everything we know. Are we, then, to affirm that consciousness in its own nature, a priori, is the exact reverse of everything that we know? Is consciousness the opposite of every definition we have ever given it? Is consciousness, therefore, by its very nature completely contrary in substance to the extensions of itself in matter? Is anything which appears to be good at one pole, bad at the other? And is this consciousness which we know as the continual urge to be aware, the opposite of true consciousness which is the suspension of awareness? Presenting to us some dimension above awareness, beyond anything we can conceive of with our present faculties and our present knowledge?

Buddha took the position that true consciousness was not only incomprehensible to us, but different to anything that we have ever experienced and making use of a series of instrumentations which we have no awareness of. That true consciousness is not extinction but can only be discovered by the total extinction of every process that we use to attempt to attain consciousness. In as much as every process that we use creates pressure, creates intensity, and builds a greater wall of illusion or misinterpretation around our awareness problem. So he took the simple answer that universal consciousness can never be known until it is experienced, and that when it is experienced it is discovered to be perhaps what the mystic said - not the individual aware of something, but condition itself aware of the individual. That there is a positive polarity in space, and that true consciousness is the universal being aware of the particular, whereas consciousness as we know it is man, a particular, forever seeking awareness of universals, or that which is separate from himself. Man is seeking to understand what is separate, whereas consciousness is forever moving through that which is not separate, but is the same. Consequently true consciousness is the discovery of sameness, or the total experience of sameness. Whereas our analytical type of consciousness is constant awareness of difference.

Socrates and many of the Greek philosophers worked very hard on this problem of consciousness, although the term was not very well known to them as we use it today. In fact, the type of consciousness we refer to was unknown to them, because they had an entirely different attitude toward this subject. They held it to be self-evident among the Greek idealistic school, that man was a stranger coming into this world, arriving here, having his internal, psychic life drowned or intoxicated by matter, and that therefore he lived in this world in a kind of stupor in which he could only be released by discipline or by initiation into the mysteries. That if by virtue or integrity he lifted himself above the restrictions of his own body, gaining during life victory over his emotions, sense and desires, that he might then return again to the spiritual estate from which he had come. This concept was an almost complete pattern. The Greek mind did not go further than this, because it also dealt with the concept of metempsychosis or rebirth, assuming that the individual would have to be reborn many times before the ultimates of consciousness would be of any importance to him. This left the situation almost untouched, except that Socrates and most of the Greeks, including Pythagoras, pointed out clearly that the road to consciousness was the road to separation between worldly and divine matters. And that every individual seeking consciousness must attain this separation between the two parts of himself, restoring to value those things which were valuable, and relinquishing such things and attachments that might interfere with the ultimate victory of the soul over circumstance. Thus in the Greek we have the beginning of the idea that man must attain some kind of a victory over natural habit or inclination before he could experience the true mystery of consciousness.

In the east today as of long ago, this consciousness problem presents itself in a variety of ways. Zen has one approach to it. Lao-Tze in his Taoist approach had another approach. But all of these approaches had to do with certain things. One of the points always emphasised was discipline. Now how shall we understand discipline in relation to consciousness, being as it is more or less polluted by the condition under which he exists, placing upon him or making available to him a discipline superior to his own state? Yet we know this to be the case in the ordinary life of man. We know that a man who has lived a corrupt existence, becoming aware of this fact may place a resolution upon his own nature by which he is going to correct these faults of character and restore his integrity as a person. Thus man, by perceiving those around him and being inspired by conduct superior to his own, or finding that his own conduct is no longer suitable to his nature, may improve or change himself. Discipline implies this particular kind of a judgement. Discipline is the mature person placing certain restraint upon his own conduct. One kind of discipline is called lawfulness. It has to do with social adjustment, in which the individual restrains his conduct because certain conduct is dangerous and detrimental to society and opens him to punishment. There is another type of self-restraint which is imposed upon the individual who has discovered that excess is dangerous to his own nature. He has discovered that unhappiness, misery, sorrow, pain - these things have arisen from his own conduct. Therefore he is inspired and impelled to make certain changes within his own nature.

Go further into this policy and you come to the same philosophic theory. Namely, that discipline philosophically imposed is man's recognition that it is possible for him to impose upon his own nature certain rules suitable for the improvement of his own total being. And that such discipline, or it may be termed penance, or many be applies by an obligation or an oath or by a voluntary commission. All these things, ancient peoples understood, and they made certain vows, and they took certain rites by which they dedicated themselves to the better conduct of their own lives.

So in yoga and in most of the eastern disciplines and in the Christian monasticism, rules for the refinement of self were taught, and were imposed upon those who desired certain spiritual advancements. And I think that in the majority of instances these rules, though perhaps difficult, had numerous virtuous connotations. I think the loss and complete lack of self-discipline which has so distinguished our modern age is responsible for a large part of the trouble that we are now in. The individual failing to accept a responsibility to himself has lost the wonderful privilege of being stronger than his own desires. And lacking this experience he has been unable to face adversity with the strength and courage and dedication which perhaps was present in civilisation less advanced technologically than ours.

So that the possibility of self-discipline as found in Zen, or in Taoism, must be given due consideration. Self-discipline in terms of consciousness is the individual, assuming that there is a life within him that is part of a universal life, and that this life is by substance and nature either greater than the common life of the person or else in potential is capable of greater advancement, or of being able to support more adequately the improvement of the individual if he will make an effort in that direction, so the disciplines of consciousness assume that there is something in man which is capable of a better knowing of things, a better acceptance or a better understanding or appreciation than that which is common available. Ancient man then began to study (and modern metaphysics followed in the same pattern) the effect of the mind upon the man, and had come to the conclusion that the mind, as the Indian classic says, can be and frequently is the slayer of the real. That man's mind setting upon him personal patterns and habits causes him to develop a kind of characteristic, or false kind of personality or temperament, and that the findings of this false temperament pass as findings of consciousness when they are not. And that when the individual says "I think", he is not stating the truth. He is saying what he is saying without consideration. For what he means is, "the mind thinks", and instead of the mind being used to actually think, by the "I", the mind is used as its own master and is imposing its own requirements upon the self.

Therefore as Buddha points out the individual says "I want". This is a lie except in one particular. Buddha says that man can say "I want" only in one way and make it honest, and that is that "I want liberation." That any other desire except complete spiritual emancipation is not a desire of the "I". Therefore that the "I" does not want. The individual says "I like". Buddha says this is a lie. It is only applicable under one condition. When the individual declares a fondness or a liking for absolute truth. That nothing else arises from a proper level to say "I like", "I want", "I believe". To say "I possess" is false. And if there is a consciousness in man, this statement is an absolute contradiction to that consciousness. To say "I possess" is a false statement, because "I" cannot possess. The only thing that can possess is the body. And to say that "I possess" is to assume that my body is "I". To say that "I want" is to assume that my emotions are "I". To say that "I think" is to assume the thinker is the self. All these assumptions are not true. Therefore the terms which we commonly use and which are constantly fortifying our own psychology, these terms are false. The longer we become addicted to them and the more strenuously we exert them, the the more completely confused we will become. This is apparently true because we have finally reached the pinnacle of all confusion. There is no way in which we can estimate greater confusion than that which we have now, except by waiting until tomorrow. Then we will have a new experience of just how much worse it could get. But now, we have reached the apex of the conceivable.

But actually, consciousness is not any of these things. Consciousness impels none of these thoughts. Because in the substance of consciousness they are useless. Actually everything that the individual does, he does for one of two purposes. One, the positive and the other the negative. Everything he is doing is either in order that he may approach reality or that he may depart from unreality. Everything that we do, we do in order that w shall be more happy or less unhappy. That we shall be more popular, or less unpopular. More successful or less unsuccessful. Everything is either a positive or negative effort to move from an unsatisfactory condition to one that is satisfactory. How, then, can consciousness, which is total satisfaction, have any motion in it whatever? How can consciousness be escaping from anything or desiring anything? How can consciousness desire to be more than it is or to have anything that it does not possess? Havelock Ellis points this out in his dream mystical experience description. That in this transcendent moment, he was desireless. That he lived or existed in a state of such complete adjustment with existence that he realised that there was nothing missing. Nothing could be added. Nothing could be taken away. Therefore everything for which we exist, which is to add or to take away, must cease to be significant, and the motivations that move all of us become non-cooperative. What is man to do, therefore, when all his familiar motivations cease to motivate? he apparently is suspended in nothing. But actually in that state of suspension he is for the first time at the end of a journey from unsatisfaction toward something.

Now we do not want to assume and cannot for a moment take for granted that the universe ends in a stasis. That all dynamic is eternal we are reasonably certain. That forms and types of energy can constantly change we know, but that energy itself can cease, we greatly doubt. We know that it may be subject to modification, that it may go on into forms which are beyond our comprehension or conception, but that it shall cease once it moves is beyond out certainty, at least. Therefore we have no reason to assume that man ends in a suspension of a heavenly state of bliss which leaves nothing to be desired. This would be a complete suspension, a complete end of everything. What we are therefore probably dealing with is that we are bringing the individual out of the well at the bottom of which he has been existing, as in Plato's legend and fable of the well. That what we call nirvana, or total extinction of man's escape and defence patterns is actually the release of man's consciousness as fact. And therefore at that time and that time only is the truth available, in as much as error has ceased. That actually under those conditions man passes from some kind of a pre-natal state which is the one he is now into a condition of birth, being born out of ignorance into a state of reality. So that state of reality is therefore comparable to our concept of consciousness, but under the present condition we are simply unaware of it, being no more able to remember our own states before birth. Yet that we had a state, we know. What it was, we do not know. That we have a state beyond us superior to our present we are convinced by instinct within us. What it is, we do not know. But we can assume that it is more than the absence of itself. That whatever is less perfect is moving towards a condition superior than its own state.

We do not wish, however to be caught in the thought that the pushing of the present condition into the future makes it perfect. Nor that the complete satisfaction of any pattern that we now hold means security. What we are trying to achieve is the realisation that there is an integrity, whether we know it or not, like it or not, believe it or not, accept it or not, and that it is towards that integrity that we are moving. This integrity may or may not agree with anything we as human organisms now believe, but that we are approaching it by trial and error regardless of any other efforts that we make. Your disciplines imply that it can be approached by discipline also, discipline simply meaning the exhaustion of error by character rather than by accident. Under these conditions man is capable perhaps of so suspending error in his own thinking and in his own formulas that he is capable of the experience it completely in body is unlikely. But that he can experience a shadow of it, a sensing of what lies beyond it, is conceivable if he performs these disciplines and follows in the footsteps of those who have led the way to these supernormal experiences of awareness.

This brings us then to the next step in our problem. What is the difference between universal consciousness and universal mind? Universal mind, apparently has always been held as a demiurgus or secondary deity. The universe, brought into existence as a mystery of consciousness which is creative in its essence, and creativity being the principle difference between consciousness and intellect (intellect is not creative, intellect is). Wherever intellect seems to create it is because of consciousness content that is behind or operating in a pattern with intellect. But universal ind becomes the regulator, the administrator of the world in which man exists and is therefore sometimes referred to as the third logos. It is the world mind or intellect. The imposer of regulation, rule and statute, and the world under its intellect becomes a rational animal moving in space. Plato so defined the world. When the Greeks referred to the world, they referred to what we would call the solar system, or perhaps even the universe in some of the connotations they had of the term. So the world as a mental entity is a mental autocracy in space, even as man, as a thinking or mental creature, is a self-governing unit governed by reason, intellect or mind. Governed according to the quality and capacity of individual and collective intellect. The mind in turn deriving its authority, substance and essence and energy from world-mind. Man with ind can become the thinker, but mind has never yet satisfied the inclination of man in his search for truth. The mind is not capable of the experience of truth. The nearest that it can come to it is the organisation of reasonable facts. Therefore the mind can discover the reasonable, the emotions can discover the good, but only consciousness abides in the substance of the real. And reality is beyond that which is either reasonable or good. The reasonable may be reasonable only in terms of relativity. The good may be good only in terms of relativity. But the real is unchanging, the root behind all change and phenomena.

Therefore in classical thinking consciousness is associated with reality, and that being is said to be conscious is that being is capable of a-perceiving reality. And that being is considered to be enlightened whose true nature is regulated by the reality locked within itself. This reality is not mental, for man has created a false reality which he has imposed upon himself. And perhaps the false reality which he has imposed upon himself. And perhaps the false reality which he has imposed is best exemplified in his materialistic culture. For in materialism he has established a world ruled over by the concrete faculties of the mind, which have become a despot of realism on a material level. Realism as opposed to reality, for they are not the same thing. Materialism, rationalised, has become our way of life, and is also threatening to become our way of death. This carries with it the ancient belief that consciousness differs therefore from reason in its experience factor and its creativity.

A thing thought out is not a thing lived through. Thought is a kind of vicarious laboratory process. The individual can think about any things which he has not experienced and will not experience, because he can read about them and think about his own thoughts. Consciousness however is rooted in an experienced reality. It is rooted in the individual's power to say, "I know", without exaggeration. The power to know Is not the power of reason. The power to know is a sensitive field within the individual which either can receive the total impact of a fact or else is so capable of energising its own nature that it can discover the fact in things around itself.

Therefore the question has been asked, and perhaps with validity, is the difference between objectivity and subjectivity in this sense, that error is the result of external things moving in upon the individual, and reality the result of the individual moving out upon things? This could be a valid comparison if we do not push it too far. I think there is no doubt in the world that consciousness discovers value in things and that it does so by an intentional purpose. That consciousness coming in when intellection ceases searches for that which the intellect cannot find. Intellect, for example can discover character and motive. Consciousness however, seeking reality seeks the experience which led the individual to conduct. And as we go further and further in this we find that the mind judges, but consciousness does not. That in some mysterious way we find the same thought that Jesus gave to his disciples: the mind says judge righteous judgement. Consciousness says judge not at all. "To whatever measure ye judge, so shall it come unto you. Condemn not, lest ye be condemned!" In other words, mind passes judgement but consciousness suspends judgement. And there is a constant situation that this suspension is not merely a result of the individual following the rule not to judge. Consciousness in some way takes the edge out of judging. It takes the pleasure out of judging. It lifts the individual from the mental exercise of the "either-or", Aristotelian mode, and causes the intuitive recognition of value so deep that the individual no longer feels qualified to judge. Therefore persons with least mind have the most fixed opinions, whereas those whose knowledge is greater hesitate to express an opinion. This is simply because the more they know the more they are aware of what they do not know, and how much more that there can be to a problem than they can possibly perceive. Thus, as consciousness increases, man's immediate mental certainties decrease. You can have a mental bigot but you cannot have a bigot in consciousness. Because consciousness is a thing in itself impersonal and bigotry has to be intensely personal.

So whatever we contact consciousness as we know it, or as we perceive or believe it, we observe one thing - that there is a great motion of humanity. We come back to Bacon's concept that observation is one of the surest instruments of knowing. There has been a great motion of mankind from the beginning of time, a motion in which man has sought to discover reality as it is referable to himself. We have observed also that in this time certain beliefs, attitudes and doctrines have come forth, and that down through time we have gradually come to most admire, most revere and regard with respect, and consider as admirable persons with certain attitudes. We have also gradually come to observe that persons with those attitudes have been vindicated by history. That with the gradual passing of time these persons have been proved right, whereas those with different attitudes have not been proved right. Thus we have an experience framework through which to indicate the general motion of man's awareness. We know in general the kind of awareness that has enriched other people. We know the kind of awareness that has enriched other cultures, and has given us all that we have of nobility, truth and beauty. We know the kind of awareness that survives death and causes persons to be discovered, honoured and revered centuries after they are gone. We also find that this kind of awareness is seldom accepted by their contemporaries, and that whereas those popular in their own day have disappeared or been forgotten, those clinging to certain broad, unchanging patterns have been remembered after their own time and still are remembered. And that certain among those with these attitudes, the immortals of our remembering have been selected. And that these persons continue to influence the world and have always influenced, since their own time.

We know for example, that Plato is read today a million times more than in his own day, whereas many great names of his time are not even remembered to us. Thus certain types of thinking have not only moved individuals but have contributed to the permanent motion of peoples, of cultures. Have led to the gradual building of sciences, for upon the certain foundations that must have been true, the sciences that we have gradually developed were developed. Had they been essentially false we could not build upon them. So there are attitudes, beliefs and teachings which have survived simply because of a strange integrity locked within them.

These patterns give us some concept of what constitutes the direction in which man is presumed to be moving. We know that such consciousness as this, such attitudes as this are exemplified in the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus. By the worlds of the prophets of ancient Israel. By the wonderful discourse of Mohammed at Mecca. Also by the first sermon of Buddha seated along the side of the Indian road, and in the wonderful works of Confucius and Lao-Tze. That these have all struck certain identical cords, and that man has instinctively known that these were right, regardless of how he conducted himself. Thus out of this direction has caused us for some reason to admire the most those, who forsaking all other things have clung to truth, and those departing from all personal or selfish ends have dedicated themselves to the service of their fellow men. These persons have lived. Therefore the search for consciousness or the experience of consciousness is bound into this pattern so far as we are able to understand it. And if there is a way towards consciousness for man, it is in this way of gradually decreasing selfishness, decreasing personal ambition and the gradual elevation of universal value above all else in terms of personal value.

That such a compromise of position, such a change from our common pattern has caused great sorrow and misery to these people we know, yet in themselves they were greater than their sorrow or their misery. And out of them has come historic martyrdom. Individuals who were perfectly willing and gloriously ready to sacrifice their lives to protect others, to preserve principles and convictions which they regarded as greater than life. Thus we find the evidences of the courage, internal resource and strength bestowed by certain convictions as opposed to the common weaknesses resulting from certain other convictions. From these broad factors we must come finally to the conclusion that man has accepted subconsciously, whether consciously or not, that there is a consciousness superior to intellect. That this consciousness is impersonal, universal and in its essential ideals and principles seeks to bind up all differences. Unite all discords and reflect or reveal the common unity within life and living. That this consciousness has to do with the mending of broken things. The overcoming of all separateness. Man's outgrowth of egoism, selfishness, ignorance and superstition. And that within man is the vision of this need, and that discipline comes to him as he gradually clarifies disposition and seeks to gain the strength of internal resource available to him once he begins to move in harmony with it. The search for consciousness for man today seems to be the result of a dedication by which he resolves to move himself with consciousness, towards consciousness, and dedicates himself to those ends which to the best of his convictions lead to the ends of consciousness, as differentiated from the intellectual and emotional ends which he has previously cultivated and which he sees have led to discord and disaster.

So we have this experience of consciousness, that man seeking to do those things which man's universal experience has determined to be right, does gain greater courage and greater internal strength, and from these circumstances may assume that at this present stage of his growth this is the direction that is proper for him to take. Therefore, he gains the support of consciousness by dedicating himself to those universal values which he senses within himself, and which, if they have any origin at all, certainly originate in consciousness rather than in the selfish, separating factors of his ordinary existence. So the individual, dedicating himself to his super-ordinary self, to that which is beyond his common, daily purpose of self, finds that he gains greater strength, greater ability, greater respect and honour, and achieves greater good. For these reasons he assumes that such motion on his part is motion towards consciousness, or with the approval of consciousness, and that he is rewarded by the release of greater understanding from within himself. This understanding being that the part of consciousness which he conceives it to be possible, to sense, know and understand.