Question::
Can “group consciousness” help mitigate the sense of “helplessness”?
(or)
How come “change in outlook” is a necessity?
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When does one try to attempt to transcend the constricting life of the ego?
(or)
How can one find “peace”?
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Why can’t one surrender to a Master, at a stretch?
(or)
When does “consciousness” arrive at its final destination?
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When can ‘consciousness’ be termed SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS?
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How come one attain “unlimited power” in super-consciousness state?
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It is said that– in the state of ‘super-consciousness’, one doesn’t need sleep. Is it true? How so?
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How is ‘super-consciousness’ different from ‘ordinary waking consciousness’?
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How come ‘ordinary waking consciousness’ is a form of ignorance?
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Why ‘super-consciousness’ is termed SUPRA-WAKING?
(or)
When can ‘ordinary waking consciousness’ gets transmuted into “super-consciousness”?
Answer::
(Extracted from Meher Baba’s literature, which is a copyright of Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust(©AMBPPCT), Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, Bharat/India)
In spite of the periodic RELEASE and REFRESHMENT that deep sleep supplies, the mind continues to be dissatisfied. Driven by need to escape from the burden that ‘finite consciousness’ imposes upon him, man associates himself with like-minded individuals. By merging himself in a group that has similar problems, he hopes to fortify himself against his growing sense of dissatisfaction.
But his hope is ill-founded. He finds no more redemption by identifying himself with the “false-we” than by identifying with the “false-I”. The increased strength of the group is nullified by increased expectations. Instead of finding his powerlessness mitigated, the individual finds that it is merely shared by many others. His sense of helplessness is accentuated through participation in the group consciousness for he shares their collective feeling of helplessness as well as his own.
Although occasionally, a means may be found to eliminate some one worry in life, the final solution to recurring problems remains to be found. Suppose, for example, that a man is extremely miserable because others in his office seem to be given better treatment than he. Then suppose that he is suddenly relieved of all his worries by indulging in himself a studied indifference to his surroundings.
This may give him a temporary feeling of release from his problems, but since his troubles are really caused by lack of understanding of ‘himself’ and ‘environment’, his cultivated indifference really leaves the situation completely unchanged. Sooner or later, when his forced indifference cracks and he again becomes emotionally involved, his ‘old worries’ return to disturb him as before. His attitude of detachment fails to effect a permanent change in his consciousness because it is not based upon the truth that– there is but one “infinite Self” which is the Self of all.
To know oneself honestly and understand one’s environment requires a radical change in outlook.
Mechanical coercion of the mind into a temporary attitude is not sufficient, for the mind has a tendency to revert to its age-old inclinations (habit patterns; sanskaric patterns) and free itself from any position into which it may have been forced.
Unless the mind achieves intelligent discrimination based on “lasting values”, it is inevitably harassed by its self-created worries. Again and again, man must seek the ‘oblivion of sleep’ as a necessary respite from participation in things of little satisfaction.
Man clings to the palliative experiences of the gross world even though they augment the very worries, sufferings and defeats from which “consciousness” desires to escape. Only in the extremity of ‘despair’ does consciousness gather sufficient momentum to try to break through the constricting web of “ego-life” and into the life of lasting freedom.
When man realizes at last that his ‘helplessness’ is the product of his countless cravings, he tries to find peace by renouncing those “cravings” and accepting life in a spirit of “resignation to the divine will”. Until that moment of ‘supreme self-determination’ occurs, however, he finds himself persistently haunted by an overpowering ‘desire’ to perpetuate his self-created ego-life.
Although, he tries desperately to break through the self-centered ‘isolation’ that this life fosters, it is only when he surrenders to a Perfect Master that he is initiated sooner or later into the path of redemptive love.
Surrender to the “will of the Master” is in itself very difficult, but it becomes more so under the gaze of friendly onlookers. To them the actions of the spiritual aspirant often seem incomprehensible, as if he were sacrificing his most precious possession– his free will.
Often it seems to the onlooker that the Master aims only to increase his own prestige by directing the ‘actions’ of those who surround Him. This falls far short of understanding the work of the Master.
Just as it is necessary for solder to be fluxed in a salt before it can join the two metal parts together, it is necessary for the soul of the seeker to be bathed through self-surrenderance in the light that the Master affords.
The Master gains nothing; it is not His purpose to gain. Certainly his “ego” cannot be exalted, for if he is a Perfect Master, he has already lost it.
When a man determines to find ‘peace’ and ‘fulfillment’ through the renunciation of ‘cravings of the ego-life’, he finds that his ‘new decision’ is challenged more by the deep-rooted compulsions of his own mind than by any obstructive factors in external environment. Although he now longs to love the Master whole-heartedly as the “divine-beloved” and tries to surrender completely to him, he is far from being master of his own mind. He cannot even surrender the ‘things’ he regards as his own, despite his sincere decision.
Like Janus, the aspirant has two faces– one looking longingly at ‘truth’, the other at ‘ignorance’.
On the one hand, the aspirant yearns for the saving grace of the Master and to be completely lost in the “unbounded truth” that he senses in the Master. On the other hand, his false, separative ego tries to perpetuate its existence by all available means.
But with the first surrender to the Master, the death knell of the “ego-life” is sounded, and though it continues to struggle for survival, its days of dominance are numbered.
If a person is caught in a quagmire, he instinctively tries every means to get out of it, but the very effort he makes thrusts him deeper into it. The more he struggles, the further in he sinks. Help must come to him then from someone who stands on firm ground, and who can only be of help when the struggling man has ceased to struggle long enough to look about for aid.
There is a certain similarity between this situation and the case of the individual who has surrendered his life to the Master.
The false, separative ego tries its utmost to postpone its own dissolution by resisting the divine love of the Master. It struggles in the quagmire of ‘existence’, but each act of ‘ego-affirmation’ invites a ‘reaction’ of deeper surrender to the ‘beloved’s will’.
This in turn brings with it the clearer realization of the Master as being none other than the irresistible truth, that is the Self of all selves and the ONE REALITY in the apparent multiplicity of individual souls.
Truth-realization is born of such complete surrender to the engulfing love of God of which the Master is the ‘physical symbol’ and the ‘channel’.
The finite self has now not only recognized itself as ‘hopelessly limited’, but also as ‘utterly false’. It ceases to make any claims or to protest in its own right, offering itself instead to the infinite truth. This offering of ‘purified will’ redounds to its own advantage.
When ‘finite consciousness’ of the mind in its stark awareness of ‘futility’ and ‘falseness’ capitulates wholly to the “infinite truth”, the ‘soul’ becomes consciously one with that truth in self-realization. Only then can ‘consciousness’ be said really to have arrived at its final destination.
Originally absorbed in the infinite, ‘consciousness’ is now absorbed by the ‘infinite’, now consciously experiencing its own unlimited power, knowledge, bliss and scope.
In being absorbed by the ‘infinite’, consciousness is completely freed of one and all ‘illusions’ and can be called ‘super-consciousness’, in which state its former ‘unlimited helplessness’ is transmuted into unlimited power.
The aim of life, and the real goal of all creation, is to achieve true Self-consciousness.
When the “mind of man” is transformed into “super-consciousness of the soul”, it inherits the treasure of ‘omnipotence’ and there is no recurrence of that sense of ‘helplessness’ that had haunted his dreaming and waking states.
No longer is there need for ‘consciousness’ to be submerged into the ‘oblivion of sleep’ in order to achieve unconscious union of the self with the ‘universal Self’.
The conscious union that the ‘individual self’ has now established with the ‘universal Self’ is an unfading attachment that persists forever.
In the unlimited abundance of super-consciousness, the freed soul experiences no curtailment or cessation.
In super-consciousness, the soul experiences itself as all-mighty, its bliss is unbounded and its continuous awareness of itself as the ‘infinite truth’ admits no slightest interruption by the “self-forgetfulness” of the ordinary-sleep, dream or wake state.
Ordinary waking consciousness of the mind is not only INCAPABLE OF realizing the “true self”, but is deluded to accept the false, limited self and false multiplicity of the phenomenal world as real. It is therefore, a form of “ignorance”.
“Super-consciousness” may be termed “supra-waking”, because
- this state has transcended all normal limitations and has become truly whole in the sense that it retains no element of illusion.
- It is the opposite of ‘ordinary sleep’, for ‘oblivion of the truth’ is complete in ordinary sleep, while ‘awareness of truth’ is complete in super-consciousness.
When “waking consciousness” invades and consciously illumines the depths of forgetfulness, ignorance and illusion, it becomes transmuted into “supra-waking consciousness”!
– Meher Baba
Source ::
Listen Humanity, Pg:: 123-127
© AMBPPCT, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India/Bharat
