Brother N. N.: I think it is important for our younger brothers and sisters to understand the significance of your last statement. During the practice of some of our exercises, especially visualization, we stress how important it is for you to stop thinking about your picture and release it with confidence into God’s Hands for fulfillment. You are told to be totally passive, without normal thought, for several seconds during the release of the thought forms. In the beginning, this period seems void of consciousness, but in actuality, this brief hiatus of mind activity causes the seventh state to appear. It is during this moment of Cosmic Illumination that the visualization is born and grows. As you progress in your studies, eventually, you will dwell continuously in this state of materialization of thoughts as a conscious being.
Cognitor: My dear Brothers, as lofty as the seventh state is, at least one higher, supreme consciousness may be available to the actualized Individual God Self. This state was attained by the Buddha when he crossed over the river from the Manifest to the Unmanifest. It is That which cannot be named, about which nothing can be said, about which nothing can be known, which can only be spoken about in terms of what It is not. It is the state typified by the Kabala as that beyond the Veil of the Negative Existence.
This is the time when for each Individual; Temu, the Supreme, Hidden, Creator God of Ancient Egypt, the biblical Spirit moving upon the waters of Creation merges, again with the primordial Void. This is the time when Vishnu, the Highest God of the Hindus, blends with the Serpent supporting his body. This is the timeless, spaceless, nothingness, where all distinctions cease to exist. Where a man dissolves into the Supreme Realization.
A. Minor: Concerning the goal of our Studies I am now clear; but, how is it obtained?
Solator: The obstacles to progress are many.
According to the ancient Tradition, Cosmic Illusion or Maya causes the ordinary human being to experience the world in such a way that he or she is generally content with his or her situation, attains a certain amount of pleasure and enjoyment, and finds life tolerable without progress toward self-realization. This feeling of contentment keeps one from striving for higher levels of consciousness, insuring he or she will continue to serve nature’s immediate and general evolutionary purpose, much like any other species of flora or fauna. The delusion of contentment arises from the effects of the intrinsic design of the human brain with its mortal and unreal personality. This feeling of unrealistic contentment makes him forget about the terrors of mortality, of his utter helplessness and aids his lying to himself about his true condition.
Obstacles to higher consciousness are abundant in daily life; moreover, they are frequently a legacy from past generations and the false beliefs planted into our minds as children. Perhaps the most central obstacle is our tendency to identify ourselves with our automatic behaviors and beliefs.
Identification is the opposite of self-consciousness. In a state of identification one fails to remember oneself. One is lost to one’s true and eternal I. Attention is directed outward, and no awareness is left over for inner states. An ordinary life is almost totally spent in states of identification.
Identifying with other people’s expectations is called considering. We distinguish two kinds of considering, internal and external. Internal considering is based on the feeling of deficiency that a person in a less developed state feels when people fail to give him or her sufficient attention or appreciation. It is keeping internal accounts of what we have given and what is, therefore, owed us. This state keeps us feeling bad, stepped upon, and hurt when others won’t pay up.
External considering, on the other hand, is the practice of empathy and tact. It is true considerateness. It is dependent, therefore, on a certain reliability and consistency of attention and effort on the part of the one who aspires to practice it. Interestingly, attempts at external considering often turn into internal considering when the person making the effort to consider another in the external sense finds no gratitude or caring given in return. External considering must be its own reward and can expect nothing to be reciprocated.
Lying is another inevitable aspect of the ordinary waking state. Lying is speaking about that which we do not know ourselves. Lying is present in the chatter of the clergy and in the pontification of those who know only partially or theoretically and yet profess to have real understanding. Since all knowledge is interconnected, the presentation of one aspect of truth usually involves lying.
Our Teachings differentiate between knowledge and understanding, and this distinction is relevant to the idea of human lying. Knowledge–the acquisition of facts, data, information–is useful in human development only to the degree that it is absorbed or assimilated by one’s being; that is, to the degree to which it is understood. If something is known, but not understood, there will be lying about it, for one cannot convey a truth one does not understand.
The thinking of ordinary people occurs when something “occurs to one.” It is mechanical chatter, colored by lying, which is not under any control. The automatic self is incapable of comprehending orders of truth higher than the dualistic. He sees things in terms of opposites, good and evil, truth and falsity, seeing duality but not trinity. Since, as we have seen, the laws of nature are trialectic rather than dialectic, lying and all other mechanical thought must be considered serious impediments to self-development.