The New Psychology and the Evolution of Consciousness - Part 7

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

i hope you have been enjoying " The New Psychology and the Evolution of

Consciousness " which i posted into 7 parts for shorter, easier reading.

Hopefully it was not too heavy. i feel there have been some very interesting

points made. Take what is of help, and leave the rest, is my advice. Just to jog

your memory, here is what we ended with in Part 6:

 

" The subtle level is also the world of elemental spirits. The ancient peoples

were aware of the world around them as inhabited by spirits; in other words,

they were as much aware of the psychic world as of the physical. Their knowledge

of the physical world was of a limited kind compared with ours today, but they

had a vast knowledge and experience of the psychic world and they communicated

this in the form of images. We must not be misled by the idea of angels with

wings and devils with horns and hoofs; these are only images which the psyche

[soul] calls up in different forms in different people. The Hindu people, for

instance, represent gods with many arms. These, and all the other

representations of the gods, are simply images but behind the images are the

powers, the elemental powers of the universe, which St. Paul calls the

'stoicheia'. These are, first, the ever-present elemental powers of earth,

water, fire and air. Then there are the powers of plant and animal life, of

ghosts and ancestors. At a higher level the powers of heaven, the angels and the

gods, and finally the supreme God, the supreme Person beyond. In this way the

whole religious world was built up through psychic experience. In the Bible this

psychic element is always present; for instance in Exodus, when Moses saw the

burning bush, it was a psychic experience. The column of fire and of light which

followed the Israelites through the wilderness was a psychic or subtle

phenomenon. Again when Elijah went up into the mountain and there was thunder

and lightning, and an earthquake and finally " a still, small voice " , the

experience he had there of Yahweh was in this higher, subtle level of

consciousness. There is evidence (P.52} of this kind of experience right through

the Old Testament and the figure of Yahweh was a development from experiences at

this level. We must distinguish b between the subtle, or psychic, and the

spiritual, and we shall see how the subtle level of consciousness is the basis

for, and is followed by, the spiritual level. "

 

Here then is Part 7 and concludes " The New Psychology and the Evolution of

Consciousness'. There is more to come with " The Eastern Vision of the Universe "

which is also very interesting. A lot of what is written in this book is similar

to what Shri Mataji also taught; in fact complements what Shri Mataji taught.

Some bits may be slightly different, but that is to be expected as everyone sees

things slightly differently. We can see how the knowledge is being integrated

today between science, philosophy and religion and it does the heart good, to

see that! Shri Mataji said that this integration of science, philosophy,

religion, etc. would happen. We can be part and parcel of that process too, i.e.

letting people know about this integation.

 

love to all,

 

violet

 

 

The New Psychology and the Evolution of Consciousness

 

(Part 7)

 

 

(Page 52} But we must always remember that on the psychic [soul] level there are

both good and evil forces. Just as there is violence and destruction on the

physical plane, so there are forces of violence and destruction on the psychic

plane. The gods and angels are symbols of cosmic powers, which work through the

whole universe and through human history. These are the " principalities and

powers in high places " of which St. Paul speaks. When these forces are subject

to the Supreme Power, they act as creative forces in nature and in history. But

when they become separated from the Supreme and act independently, they become

demonic and destructive. A beautiful illustration of this is given in the Kena

Upanishad, where it is said that once the gods won a victory over other powers

and attributed the victory to themselves. But Brahman, the Supreme Power, then

appeared to them and revealed that it was through him alone that they had gained

the victory. In the Hebrew tradition also the " gods of the nations " are seen as

fallen angels, daemonic powers which have rebelled against the Supreme God. It

is always by rejection of the Supreme Being, the ultimate Truth, that human

beings become subject to daemonic forces. In modern times Hitler and Stalin can

be seen as instruments of these daemonic powers.

 

This then, was the world of the gods and the angels, leading up to the Supreme

God and the function of all the prophets was to assert the authority of the

Supreme Being over all other gods. In Israel Yahweh was realised by Moses to be

the Supreme God. In Greece Zeus was understood as the Supreme God who was seen

by Aeschylus (P.53} as essentially a moral being, though Zeus could never attain

to the level of a fully transcendent god. In Islam the Supreme Being was

revealed as Allah and Islam has borne witness to the One God ever since. But in

our understanding and interpretation of the Bible it is important to be aware of

the development of this psychic dimension and of the images to which it gave

rise in the unfolding of ancient religion.

 

This whole stage of psychic [soul] development belongs to what Wilber, using

Buddhist terminology, calls the 'sambhogakaya'. In this system there are three

levels corresponding to the three bodies of the Buddha, the 'nirmanakaya', the

'sambhogakaya' and the 'dharmakaya'. The nirmanakaya was the body of Buddha's

manifestation in this world and is what is called the gross body. Then the

Buddha had the subtle body of the sambhogakaya level. The bodhisattvas and the

dhyani buddhas also belong here to the sambhogakaya. In philosophical terms,

these psychic [soul] powers were conceived as the world of ideas. Plato, for

instance, held that while matter and forms together structure the physical world

the source of form is what he termed the ideas, and they are eternal. Eternal

ideas of all things exist in the eternal world and are reflected in this world,

in our human experience and in the physical world around us. Plotinus, in the

Neoplatonism of the third century AD, developed Plato's philosophical

understanding and speaks of two levels here, the world soul and the 'nous'. The

world soul is the power which brings into being and sustains the universe and it

is intermediate between the 'nous' and the physical world. In the 'nous' the

forms of all things exist eternally, prior to being manifested in the temporal

world through the world soul, in the forms of nature and of man. In Hinduism the

psychic [soul] world, the world of the gods, is known as the Mahat, the Great

World, and the world soul is conceived as Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Seed. A

similar understanding with variations is more or less universal.

 

Thus in the perennial philosophy there is the concept (P.54} of a physical world

based on matter and of a mental world of forms and concepts comprising the whole

realm of human understanding, and then beyond that the world of ideas, the

transcendent reality. At this level there is still duality; it is still a matter

of this world and the world of " ideas " , for the sambhogakaya is not the final

stage of consciousness. We can go into that state of consciousness, and

initially in meditation the aim is to go beyond the nirmanakaya to the

sambhogakaya, beyond gross experience to the subtle. We can go through various

levels of the subtle to experience the presence of God and the angels and

saints; all this belongs to the sambhogakaya. But beyond the sambhogakaya is the

dharmakaya, the body of reality. The Buddha's supreme being is the dharmakaya

and this is the supreme consciousness.

 

It is the view of Wilber and others that there is, as it were, a spectrum of

levels of consciousness, from the basic oceanic [womb] consciousness, through

all the levels right up to the supreme consciousness. The levels are

hierarchically structured in such a way that the lower levels are integrated

with the higher. At every point of transcendence there has to be differentiation

from the previous level and integration of it. So at the level of mental

consciousness one differentiates from the level of the imagination and one opens

oneself to the world of concepts, logic, reason, science and philosophy, then

one has to integrate the previous level of the imagination, and the senses.

There should be no rejection of the other levels nor should they be left behind.

Particularly, in going beyond the mental consciousness into the sambhogakaya,

there must be integration of the mental consciousness. If the mental

consciousness is not integrated, the result can be madness. Exploration of this

psychic [soul] world of angels, spirits, demons and other entities, without

retaining and integrating mental consciousness, can result literally in losing

one's reason. Because of this it is very dangerous to enter into the

sambhogakaya without proper guidance.

 

(P.55} That is why in meditation when one goes into that subtle world it is

important to have a teacher, a guru who will guide and direct progress. But in

meditation the aim is always to go beyond this subtle psychic [soul] world, the

world of ideas, of gods and angels, and to enter the dharmakaya, the realm of

ultimate reality, which is beyond duality. In the ultimate reality all levels of

previous experience are integrated. This means that, just as mental

consciousness has to be transcended and integrated in experience of the

sambhogakaya, so when one goes beyond the sambhogakaya, that level also has to

be integrated into the experience of the transcendent. The importance of

integration is often misunderstood, and it is frequently thought that on

reaching the level of non-dual awareness everything disappears and there is

simply pure identity of being, 'saccidananda', being, knowledge, and bliss,

without any differentiation. But the truth is that all the lower levels of

consciousness have to be taken up into the Supreme and that is what constitutes

total realisation, that is, realisation of the total reality. Boethius, the

great sixth-century Christian philosopher, said that eternity is 'tota et simul

possessio interminabilis vitae', the total simultaneous possession of unending

life. The total reality is present simultaneously. On reaching that final state

a person " realises " the whole creation. At the lower stages we know the forms of

things but our knowledge through science, philosophy and ordinary experience is

always of objects and persons separated in space and time. When we enter into

the sambhogakaya, to a higher, more subtle level of consciousness, we get a

deeper awareness of the reality of these forms and their ideas; we discover the

eternal realities behind the forms. But now we can go beyond the ideas into the

Godhead itself, the Ultimate, and there all is gathered together in the One. The

Godhead is the Supreme Reality in which the whole creation and every human being

in the creation and every experience in the whole universe is gathered into

total unity. (P.56} This is what Nicholas of Cusa called the 'coincidentia

oppositorium', the " co-incidence of opposites " in ultimate truth. And that is

the ultimate goal of life, to reach that total unity where we experience the

whole creation and the whole of humanity reintegrated in the supreme

consciousness, in the One, which is pure being, pure knowledge and pure bliss,

'saccidananda'.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith)

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

Pgs. 52-56