So far we have looked at grades of consciousness. We looked at waking consciousness, the subconscious mind, super-consciousness and finally we look at what constitutes the human will. I wish now to go on and look at types of consciousness. My first comparison is the differences between active and passive consciousness.
Active .vs. Passive
Consciousness can be active or passive. What is the difference? The difference is very important when it comes to understanding how we perceive the world around us. When we talk about passive consciousness, the word ‘passive’ implies that there is a lack of power towards self-activity. Passive consciousness can react to external stimuli but can’t stimulate itself into activity, because it lacks the will-power to do so.
Consciousness in a monad awakens slowly from a passive to an active state.
- Primordial Matter is truly unconscious. It exists in the Anti-verse in a state of absolute density and absolute elasticity. It exists in a state before creation so is beyond our capacity to understand what it is all about.
- Primary Matter exists within a manifest universe and is potentially conscious. It can not be acted upon by any other consciousness directly unless that consciousness is vast. There are mysterious forces that must regulate the flow of this matter but I am not aware of how this is done. So we can consider primary matter to be virtually unconscious.
- Secondary Matter is the next grade of matter and the monad has taken a major step in its evolution. It is now passively conscious and is capable of reacting to external influences. It is not, however, able to initiate any activity itself. It just faithfully does what it is told.
- Tertiary Matter is the next step in the journey of the monad. It is no longer involving from Plane-1 to Plane-49. It is now evolving and it can do so because it has an active consciousness. It is able to learn from its environment through repetition.
- Quaternary Matter is the final stage of transformation for a monad. It is now self-active, as well as being conscious. It has two vital ingredients enabling it to generate self-directed activity. It has consciousness as well as will.
Development of Consciousness
I wish now to look at how active and passive consciousness plays a role in our development. When a human monad enters incarnation, it has a pool of latent consciousness. This is consciousness that it has already been developed in the monad’s previous incarnations. However, this consciousness has not been utilised yet. These can be considered as potential ‘talents’ that we have bubbling under the surface.
Where does this consciousness show itself? It does so in the activity of the molecules that go to make up its subtle bodies. We have already discussed how as a monad progresses through the First, Second and Third Kingdoms of Nature, it slowly isolates itself from the group-soul and encases itself in successive subtle bodies. If we take the average human being today, it is active consciously somewhere in its emotional body, but it also has a mental life.
Are there limits to consciousness? Yes, there are. A monad’s level of consciousness never exceeds the highest active molecule in any envelope. This means if the highest emotional molecule resonating in an envelope is 48:4, this means the monad is capable of expressing affection and conditional love but is not yet able to express a selfless love for all life around it. In the same context, if a monad has activated its mental molecules up to the level 47:5, it is capable of expressing its thoughts very coherently and in a cultured way. It, however, does not have the capacity yet to synthesise ideas and see the connected nature of all things around it. It does not also have full control of its emotional body yet. This happens at the 2nd Initiation when the mental body is master of the emotional body and not its servant. Notions of having a ‘higher self’ are just that, notions. As already stated, you are not conscious beyond where you are conscious. There is no hidden consciousness. That is not to say you can not be guided by a higher intelligence. You can and you should seek this guidance, it is however just not you.
Consciousness proceeds sequentially. Some people fantasise about being conscious simultaneously in higher kingdoms. This does not happen. You can not be learning your alphabet and writing a dissertation at the same time. Evolution happens sequentially. However, because envelopes on the same triad are capable of communicating between themselves, you are able to advance the focus of your consciousness in three places at once. The limit is set, as already mentioned, by the level of your highest active molecule and this is usually in your mental envelope.
The degree of mental activity at any level of an envelope is also governed by the number of molecules of that vibration that are present in the envelope. You may have conscious focus in your 47:5 molecule. If you have very few of these molecules actually in your mental body, then you are not likely to exhibit much of the characteristics of this consciousness level in your interactions in life. So the proportions of any grade of molecule in an envelope are also very important.
If molecules in use lead to an active consciousness, then inactive molecules can be said to be passively conscious. They may be present in an envelope but they have not started to resonate in a manner that allows them to engage in a thought-form.
When a monad starts a new incarnation, it has to rebuild its envelopes of incarnation. When I say it has to do this, it is really the devas that do this. I mentioned that our passage through the 4th Kingdom is facilitated by a host of devas that manage the etheric, emotional and mental planes. They provide us with our subtle bodies. So as far as we are concerned, the organisation of our subtle bodies of incarnation happen automatically. This process does not stop at birth, it continues until we reach adulthood.
Development of Active & Passive Consciousness
If we are only actively conscious to a certain level in our envelopes, any other molecules that may be present must be there passively. So we can say that our physical, as well as our subtle bodies both, have active and passive consciousness. As examples; sensory perception is passive when a monad’s attention is not present. This happens in the case of olfactory fatigue. You stop noticing the smell in your bathroom as you sit on your throne. Emotions can be considered to be passive when they arise spontaneously when you are daydreaming.
A conscious effort has to be made to maintain awareness of thoughts and emotions. If we do not achieve this, we run the risk of becoming detached from our lives. This results in our subtle bodies reacting automatically to stimuli, both external and internal. We end up being spectators in our own lives. We can speed up our evolution ten times by maintaining an awareness of our thoughts, feelings and emotions. In this way, we stop them from running our lives. Keep your attention focused on the outer objective world and your inner subjective world as well.
Objective & Subjective Consciousness
This leads on to the second two aspects of consciousness just mentioned, objective and subjective consciousness. Objective consciousness allows the perception of external events. Subjective consciousness allows the perception of internal evens within ourselves. Consciousness can be deemed to be objective when it perceives external reality. This can be described as objective knowledge. This is usually only present for the vast majority of humanity on the physical plane of existence. Material reality just beyond the physical plane is perceived subjectively.
There is an interesting relationship between objective and subjective consciousness. Subjective consciousness develops half a plane ahead of objective consciousness. What do I mean by half a plane? If every plane of matter, which can also be considered a plane of consciousness, has seven subplanes, then three and a half subplanes above where you are objectively conscious, you can assume you are subjectively conscious. You could say you are being given hints of what lies beyond your conscious field of vision. This has huge implications on the processes of evolution. If you know there is something very interesting just the other side of the hedge, you are likely to want to explore the possibilities of finding out what that might be. In this way, the monad is drawn relentlessly back up the 49 planes of matter, until it reaches the source of all those planes. We are compelled to evolve. This is the opposite attraction to the one experienced by secondary matter, as it involves relentlessly towards the first, the Mineral Kingdom.
Focus of Consciousness
The result of being subjectively conscious, which has an internal focus, is that you believe your thoughts and emotions are your own. By now I hope it is clear that what we deem to be our thoughts and emotions are very often someone else’s and just happens to be passing through our envelopes. They are also ‘elementals’ on their own mission, to ‘vibrate boldly’, where no elemental has vibrated before! Objective consciousness, on the other hand, being externally focused, recognises that thoughts and emotions are triggered by external events.
When a human monad has its consciousness on higher planes internally focused, it is unable to perceive external objects and events. The reverse is true when the consciousness on the physical plane is externally focused. The monad is now able to objectively perceive external objects, beings and events.
Etheric web
I have mentioned earlier that we have the potential to be objectively conscious up to the highest level of the molecules activated in our subtle bodies. This is the theory and on this basis, most people should be objectively conscious somewhere on the emotional plane. Older souls are objectively conscious somewhere on the mental plane. In practice, however, our waking consciousness is blocked from perceiving into these planes by the existence of an etheric web.
This structure is here for a very good reason. It enclosed the etheric body in a dense layer of 49:1 physical atoms. This prevents emotional and mental phenomena from entering our waking consciousness. If this were allowed to happen, we would be continually distracted.
This explains why most of us only have subjective consciousness of our emotional and mental bodies. They make up part of our thoughts and desires but we can not see these planes or the thought and desire forms we create on them. It would be useful for us to know just what we get up to with our uncontrolled mental and emotional life. However, there are several practical reasons why this should not be the case in our lives at present.
The etheric web protects our physical body from being possessed by entities that dwell on the emotional world. These entities are still strongly pulled towards their past material existence and wish to experience ‘feelings’ and ‘sensations’. These are only possible when you possess a physical and etheric body. So when we are asleep, we would be wide open to attack and possession. Why this is the case is explained in a future presentation.
There does come a time when this protective web is dissolved. This happens when we take what is known as the 3rd initiation and we gain enlightenment. At this time, Kundalini, a subtle energy, which is stored at the base of the spine, rushes up the etheric spine. It bursts through the crown chakra and forms a new protective layer around our physical/etheric body.
When we are in control of our etheric web, we do have the ability to objectively view the emotional and mental worlds. We have to wait until we are enlightened before we are developed enough to be able to deal with the phenomena that exist on this higher planes. It is not all sweetness and light up there! If we did have access to these planes prematurely, we would be overwhelmed by the sights of ‘amazing’ beings and they would offer to control our lives. This breaks a cardinal rule of cosmic evolution, which is that every monad has the divine right to evolve itself, ‘with a little help from our friends’!
The etheric web does not completely hold us prisoner down here on Earth. When we go to sleep, our emotional, mental and lower causal bodies leave our physical/ etheric body. Consciousness is no longer restricted by the etheric web. We are now able to operate objectively up to the highest level of consciousness I have already spoken about.
Sleep Life
Most people have their highest level of consciousness focussed in their emotional body. When they fall asleep, they do not venture far away from their physical bodies. We are not aware of our nocturnal travels, as our brain is not present. Using the word brain means our grey matter implanted in our heads. Upon our return to our body upon waking, our etheric web filters out all the objective and subjective experiences we had during the intervening period. What little is remembered is translated into something the brain can understand. This translation needs to occur, as the brain has no experience of the subtle worlds above the 1st plane. This results in Emotional World objects being substituted with physical objects, people or events. There is often a symbolic substitute made by the brain if no match can be found in its database. This is why dreams often seem so intangible, fluid and symbolic. Emotional world events do not leave a strong imprint on our minds. This is why we forget our dreams so easily.
Damaged Web
If your etheric web gets damaged for whatever reason, this has serious consequences on your emotional and mental health. One way the web can be damaged is if there is an experience of intense emotional shock. This can overload the emotional body. leading to trauma. This is also known as ‘shell shock’. If at this time the etheric web is also damaged, a person is able to perceive the Emotional world. This this often leads to insanity.
Alcohol, tobacco, narcotics and caffeine, metabolise and release volatiles that affect the emotional body. This leads to toxins being expelled from the chakras in the wrong direction. This causes the etheric web to ossify. Eventually a ‘hole’ is burnt into the web. This goes a long way to explain why drunks and addicts have such vivid hallucinatory experiences.
Yogic breathing exercises can damage your etheric web. This leads to the opening of your vision into the emotional plane before you can handle the consequences of this. In the East, such practices were done under the strict supervision of a trainer that understood the consequences of such techniques. Unfortunately these techniques have spread to the West, without the wisdom that is needed to use them correctly. It can not be emphasised strongly enough that chakras develop at their own rate and should not be directly focused on. Everything in its own time and correct manner.
The practice of magic and witchcraft not only damage your etheric web but can sever the connection between the 1st and 2nd triads. If this happens, the monad retards it evolution by billions of years. This is not a sensible life choice.
In the coming centuries, waking consciousness is going to evolve to include the lowest two etheric subplanes (49:4 & 49:5). When this happens, certain etheric phenomena become visible to the viewer.
When a monad has achieved objective causal consciousness, this occurs at enlightenment, the causal and all lower planes of matter are accessible. The Unity plane, the next in the triadic chain, is subjectively perceivable. The principle of being subjectively conscious half a plane ahead applying.
To try and visualise this, imagine that all planes of matter interpenetrate one another. They also overlap half a plane upwards. The subjective consciousness I have mentioned is part of your super consciousness. Monads must be focused in a subtle body and a permanent atom to perceive that plane objectively. Neither of these two conditions are required to survey a plane subjectively. This is why, even though we are focused in our mental bodies, we can not gain direct access to our causal body. Consequently, the abstract thoughts in our causal body on subplanes 47:3 and 47:2, are not available to us. We do not have access to our 47:1 atom. We do however have flashes of intuition and inspiration. This is us subjectively gaining access to this higher wisdom. We feel subjectively what the next plane has to offer and it is the driver for further development of our consciousness.
In the next presentation I wish wish to examine the concepts of collective consciousness and also the various levels of consciousness.
I think, that you are not right. Let’s discuss it. Write to me in PM, we will talk.
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