Connected Consciousness
The Big Bang. Was it a Bang? Or was it a flow of primal energy. Using your power to visualise, see a point which contains a dream, a very complex dream, of a Creator Who sends out the content of that dream into space and time. We dream and it is said that our dreams take place in an instant, even though they may cover a very wide span of experiences that could encompass years of time. What follows is an attempt to explain consciousness and what it means to us in our present stage of evolution.
What is Consciousness
Dictionary meanings of consciousness also include awareness, the two meanings being virtually interchangeable. It is the state of being conscious, awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts and feelings. A secondary meaning is the thoughts and feelings collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people. There are many levels of consciousness ranging from an electron to the most highly developed human being. Extrapolating from this it can be stated that there are no limits to what consciousness can develop into.
In The Consciousness of the Atom (p99) Alice Bailey said, in a talk, "To-night we will only touch upon three types of consciousness, which we might enumerate as follows: Absolute consciousness, universal consciousness, and individual consciousness, and of these three it is only possible, really, to define two in any way with clarity.
Absolute consciousness, to the ordinary thinker, is practically impossible of recognition. It has been defined in one book as, "That consciousness in which everything is, the possible as well as the actual," and concerns everything that can be possibly conceived of as having occurred, or occurring, or going to occur. This is, possibly, absolute consciousness, and from the standpoint of the human being is the consciousness of God, Who contains within Himself the past, the present, and the future. What, then, is universal consciousness? It might be defined as consciousness, thinking time and space, consciousness with the idea of location and succession involved within it, or, in reality, group consciousness, the group itself forming either a greater or a lesser unit. Finally, individual consciousness may be defined as just as much of the universal consciousness as a separated unit can contact and can conceive of for itself."
To say that an electron possesses consciousness may seem to be an overstatement of what consciousness is but electrons possess at least awareness, and when one particle of a pair changes its 'spin' the other immediately reverses its 'spin'. There is a connectedness between them. Recent thought though has moved from "particles" to this interpretation which is quoted from Science as Oneness by David Wilcock - "Indeed, this new "physics of the 21st century" tells us that the very building blocks of mass, the atoms and molecules themselves, are not particles at all. Instead, they are ultimately nothing more than spherical whirlpools of energy in this flowing river of aether. And the aether itself provides the most tangible, scientific way to define, explain and even engineer the Mind of God."
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The Entire Creation - One Consciousness
Visualise, if you will, that first instance of the beginning of a universe. The Big Bang of the astronomer is the release of a wave of consciousness which is, in its essence, a stream of particles of energy (see the new definition above), the quantum world of the present-day physicists. Research continually attempts to define consciousness and find its place in the human body, but it fails to find where it is located. When that first emanation of consciousness began it contained within itself many layers from the extremely high vibration of the purest form down through the layers to the lowest vibration. In esoteric terms there are seven major layers, or planes, of vibration, each of the higher being responsible for the formation of the plane below it. Each of the Seven Planes has seven sub-planes. The Beings in the first plane are the Seven Spirits before The Throne, the Seven Rays, etc.
The Creative Force itself is a fragment of the Prime Originating Cause. It was noted above that we dream but our dreams are not a part of us, our dreams are something that we create in our sleeping consciousness and they then cease to exist whereas we remain, with the dreams becoming merely a memory.
Consciousness is energy and it is neutral in the sense that it is neither good nor bad. The closer the consciousness to the source the purer it is. As it descends through the planes it begins to take on the ability to determine its own course of progression; choice begins to be a part of the consciousness which exists in the forms that are created by the higher energies (consciousness) above.
As above, so below, is often quoted to state that there are similarities between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic worlds. Consciousness pervades the entire cosmos and is the medium which connects all life, at all levels. This awareness, that is a quality of life, is of ascending comprehension from the lowest form of a quantum particle (or spherical whirlpool of energy) to the originating Creative Source. Each ascending plane, with its particular forms of life, includes the forms below as part of its being; our physical bodies for example include trillions of cells, bacteria etc., with their lower level of awareness (consciousness). Out of that it can be said that all Life is one, we are all part of larger more complex life-forms and it is evident that there is a requirement that we all work as one or suffer the consequences if the body in which we live has to take steps to preserve its own integrity. A rough analogy is what happens in our own bodies if the various organs do not work together to maintain a healthy state of being.
The idea might now be extended somewhat, and we might consider that great Entity Who is the informing life of the planet, and Who holds all the different kingdoms of nature within His consciousness. May it not be possible that His intelligence, as it informs the totality of all groups and kingdoms, is the goal for man, the human atom? Perhaps as time progresses the scope of His present realisation may also be ours, and for His, as for all those great Lives Who inform the planets of the solar system, there may be the attainment of that tremendous reach of consciousness which characterises that great Existence Who is the ensouling Life of the solar system. May it not be true that among the different grades of consciousness, extending, for instance, from the atom of the chemist and physicist, up to the Logos of the solar system, there are no gaps, and no abrupt transitions, but there is ever a gradual expansion and a gradual evolution from one form of intelligent manifestation to another, and always the life within the form gains in quality by means of the experience.
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Creativity
We cannot, in any way, probe into that originating consciousness, it is too deep, too complex in much the same way that a primitive man would be unable to comprehend modern man and his accomplishments.
There is much discussion, today, of the role of intelligent design and evolution. In the United States this question is being settled by obtaining a legal outcome, the result of the arguments put up by the pros and the cons. The question remains, however, of how human contestants in a court of law can really arrive at the meaning of creation. It is a case of one side being deemed to be the more reasonable without any real appreciation of what life is.
A more likely situation is that both intelligent design and evolution exist concurrently. Darwin was quite correct in stating that life-forms evolve but the situation goes beyond that. Using rational thinking and taking into account that the recent investigation of marine life has come up with the statement that one million different species is a reasonable estimate and we are also informed that on the surface the different species of plants, animals, birds, insects, reptiles etc., runs into the millions, can it be assumed that this fantastic variety of life originated from the 'primeval soup'. Logic would indicate that the creation of existing life-forms, plus the many that have become extinct in past ages, including many that are symbiotic and can only exist together to maintain their lives, is a virtual impossibility without the intervention of a creator. After the co-discoverer of human DNA, Francis Crick, refined his thoughts he calculated the molecule is infinitely more complex than could ever have occurred via random evolution in the necessary allotted time.
The Bible contains references to Angels, the Eastern religious books refer to Devas, Islam has its Genies or Jinns, and indigenous peoples have their spirits in plants and animals. These entities came into being to create the myriads of life-forms and maintain them subject to evolution as the surrounding conditions require.
These higher forms of consciousness are free of the conflicts which mankind is subject to. They apply their energies neutrally leaving it up to the life-forms to accept them in either a positive or negative way. If you happen to have read any works by Rupert Sheldrake you will be aware that his hypothesis is that of an electrical field (morphogenetic field) which contains a particular species. The field has been created by one of those angels, devas, etc., and contains the forms created by the force field (aura?) of the Being responsible. As evolution proceeds the force field undergoes subtle changes in order to pass on to succeeding generations the revised form of the life's energy field. A morphogenetic field can also explain why wildlife can follow the life pattern of the species without any formal training by the parents. Human beings also show a tendency to this inherited field as new techniques and knowledge are rapidly taken up by the new lives that are born into it. One very relevant example, to my mind, is the difficulty that older people have with electronic equipment, especially computers and the more involved technical requirements of TV's, DVD's etc. The children seem to have acquired the facility to cope with them almost as if they had been pre-wired. And perhaps that reference to pre-wired may not be far from the truth as the morphogenetic field is electricity, or consciousness.
The Creative Force sent out its consciousness so that its need to know itself would be a result of the evolutionary energies acting within the total force field that It created. There is a Plan, there is an end result that will eventuate, but the means of getting there is not known because the created energy forms have free will. According to the Bible man was given dominion over the natural world because man himself is a creator. We think, we plan, we produce. There is a need for guidance, however, to ensure that the main route back to the Creative Source is not too far from the course that will bring perfection. Those intuitions, dreams, visions etc., are therefore a result of a flow of higher consciousness to the lower and to ensure that the progressive change occurs more than one person will pick up that transmission. That is one reason why some new development can spontaneously arise in more than one country. Many, if not all, of the individuals who have made great contributions to our understanding of the universe and its constituent parts and the Laws which are discovered that have relevance to the continuity of expression and process have stated that they were given the answers in a dream, or a vision, an instant recognition of what they were looking for, an intuition, and other like means by which answers are conveyed.
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Growth in Consciousness
An individual consciousness is said to be part of the universal mind, all of us take part in it and we are all open to communicate with one another provided that our development has created that ability. Telepathy is a good example of this, as many experimenters have found. If we are all truly in an integrated consciousness it would be a matter of common-sense to say that we therefore have a potential to transfer thoughts through that consciousness to one another and also to other species. The degree to which that ability can be expressed depends on the particular stage of development that we have attained.
Analogies can be a useful way in which to illustrate a theme and in the present case the energy strengths, or vibrations, of signals sent out by radio transmitters can be likened to those sent out by the minds acting on brains. All the radio receivers set to that particular wavelength will receive the signal. A faint signal can be amplified by a receiver to allow the desired volume level. In a similar vein more distant stations can be contacted if the power of the receiver is increased so that a truly powerful one can draw in a multitude of transmitting stations.
Taking humanity as a whole it can be reliably stated that consciousness, or the ability to access increasingly complex thoughts, has been increasing steadily throughout the ages. Throughout history many individuals have attained great heights of consciousness and in our present days it is becoming more common and acting in groups, such as the so-called 'think tanks', the power to access information from the universal mind is amplified.
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The Seven Planes
Humanity and the three lower kingdoms are based on the seven sub-planes of the Cosmic Physical Plane, the lowest of the seven planes, leaving six higher planes with their seven sub-planes yet to be accessed. These seven sub-planes are the levels of aether in which our Solar System was created, and exists.
Is anything known about the higher six planes, each with its seven sub-plane divisions? The Tibetan's books appear to contain no reference to the six planes above the cosmic physical plane and this may be because there is no knowledge of what exists at higher levels of consciousness than that.
Recent speculation by George Smoot (Nobel Prize in Physics) and Saul Perlmutter (cosmologist) who have recently announced a discovery that 'dark matter' is 96 per cent of the universe may throw some light on these unknown planes. They have decided that only 4 per cent of the matter provides what we presently know as the matter that comprises the universe that we are aware of. The rest of the matter lies outside the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It doesn't interact with electricity or magnetism and can rarely interact with protons and neutrons. The term 'dark matter' is just a way of saying we don't know what it is.
One can speculate that the higher six planes are contained within the 96 per cent of the unknown aethers and probably, as consciousness evolves to higher levels, the next higher plane will be accessible and will then reach another sector of 'dark matter' which cannot be accessed until a further expansion of consciousness.
And that leaves you, the reader, to ponder on the nature of consciousness as it relates to you. Is it possible that you can achieve a higher degree of consciousness? Do you want to? From the Wisdom of the Ages the conclusion is that meditation is the way to contact that higher part of your being, the soul, and move on to a level of consciousness that will enable contact with that greater life in which you have your being. If that target appears to be unreachable at this stage in your life it can be reached through persistence and the knowledge that whatever is achieved now will form the basis for continued work in the next life, and the next, and the……
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