The Nine States of Consciousness

Wakefulness is Life

WAKEFULNESS IS THE WAY TO LIFE.
THE FOOL SLEEPS
AS IF HE WERE ALREADY DEAD,
BUT THE MASTER IS AWAKE
AND HE LIVES FOREVER.

HE WATCHES.
HE IS CLEAR.

HOW HAPPY HE IS!
FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE.
HOW HAPPY HE IS,
FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE AWAKENED.

WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE
HE MEDITATES, SEEKING
FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.

SO AWAKE, REFLECT, WATCH.
WORK WITH CARE AND ATTENTION.
LIVE IN THE WAY
AND THE LIGHT WILL GROW IN YOU.

BY WATCHING AND WORKING
THE MASTER MAKES FOR HIMSELF AN ISLAND
WHICH THE FLOOD CANNOT OVERWHELM.

Modern psychology has discovered a few things which are significant; although they have been discovered only intellectually, still it is a good beginning. If intellectually they have been discovered, then sooner or later existentially also they will be experienced.

Freud is a great pioneer; of course, not a buddha, but still a man of great significance, because he was the first to make the idea accepted by the larger part of humanity that man has a great unconscious hidden in him. The conscious mind is only one tenth, and the unconscious mind is nine times bigger than the conscious.

Then his disciple, Jung, went a little further, a little deeper, and discovered the collective unconscious. Behind the individual unconscious there is a collective unconscious. Now somebody is needed to discover one thing more which is there, and I hope.... Sooner or later the psychological investigations that are going on, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, are bound to discover it - the cosmic unconscious. Buddhas have talked about it.

So we can say: the conscious mind, a very fragile thing, a very small part of your being.

Behind the conscious is the subconscious mind - vague. You can hear its whispering but you cannot figure it out. It is always there, behind the conscious, pulling its strings.

Third: the unconscious mind which you come across only in dreams or when you take drugs. Then, the collective unconscious mind. You come across it only when you go into a very deep inquiry into your unconscious mind; then you come across the collective unconscious. And if you go still further, deeper, you will come to the cosmic unconscious.

The cosmic unconscious is nature. The collective unconscious is the whole of humanity that has lived up to now, it is part of you. The unconscious is your individual unconscious that the society has repressed in you, that has not been allowed expression.

Hence it comes by the back door in the night, in your dreams. And the conscious mind...I will call it the so-called conscious mind because it is only so-called. It is so tiny, just a flicker, but even if it is just a flicker it is important because it has the seed; the seeds are always small. It has great potential.

Now a totally new dimension is opening up. Just as Freud opened the dimension below the conscious, Sri Aurobindo opened the dimension above the conscious. Freud and Sri Aurobindo are the two most important people of this age. Both are intellectuals, neither of them is an awakened person, but both have done a great service to humanity.

Intellectually they have made us aware that we are not so small as we appear from the surface, that the surface is hiding great depths and heights.

Freud went into the depths, Sri Aurobindo tried to penetrate into the heights. Above our so-called conscious mind is the real conscious mind; that is attained only through meditation. When your ordinary conscious mind is added to meditation, when the ordinary conscious mind is plus meditation, it becomes the real conscious mind.

Beyond the real conscious mind is the superconscious mind.

When you are meditating you have only glimpses. Meditation is a groping in the dark.

Yes, a few windows open up, but you fall back again and again. Superconscious mind means samadhi - you have attained a crystal-clear perceptiveness, you have attained an integrated awareness. Now you cannot fall below it; it is yours. Even in sleep it will remain with you.

Beyond the superconscious is the collective superconscious; the collective superconscious is what is known as "gods" in religions. And beyond the collective superconscious is the cosmic superconscious which even goes beyond gods. Buddha calls it nirvana, Mahavira calls it kaivalya, Hindu mystics have called it moksha; you can call it the truth.

These are the nine states of your being, and you are just living in a small corner of your being - the tiny conscious mind; as if somebody has a palace and has completely forgotten about the palace and has started living on the porch - and thinks this is all.

Freud and Sri Aurobindo are both great intellectual giants, pioneers, philosophers, but both are doing great guesswork. Instead of teaching students the philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, it would be far better if people were taught more about Sri Aurobindo, because he is the greatest philosopher of this age. But he is completely neglected, ignored by the academic world - for a certain reason.

The reason is, even to read Sri Aurobindo will make you feel that you are unaware; and he himself is not a buddha yet, but still he will create a very embarrassing situation for you. If he is right, then what are you doing? Then why are you not exploring the heights of your being?

Freud was accepted with great resistance, but finally he was accepted. Sri Aurobindo is not even accepted yet. In fact there is not even any opposition to him; he is simply ignored. And the reason is clear. Freud talks about something below you - that is not so embarrassing; you can feel good knowing that you are conscious, and below your consciousness there is subconsciousness and unconsciousness and collective unconsciousness. But those states are all below you; you are at the top, you can feel very good. But if you study Sri Aurobindo, you will feel embarrassed, offended, because there are higher states than you - and man's ego never wants to accept that there is anything higher than him. Man wants to believe that he is the highest pinnacle, the climax, the Gourishankar, the Everest - that there is nothing higher than him....

That's why the modern man wants to deny God, because to accept God means you have to accept something higher than you. And the modern ego is so puffed up that the modern mind says there is no God and there is no beyond and there is no afterlife. And it feels very good - denying your own kingdom, denying your own heights, you feel very good. Look at the foolishness of it.

Buddha is right. He says:
THE FOOL SLEEPS
AS IF HE WERE ALREADY DEAD,
BUT THE MASTER IS AWAKE
AND HE LIVES FOREVER.

Awareness is eternal, it knows no death. Only unawareness dies. So if you remain unconscious, asleep, you will have to die again. If you want to get rid of this whole misery of being born and dying again and again, if you want to get rid of the wheel of birth and death, you will have to become absolutely alert. You will have to reach higher and higher into consciousness.

And these things are not to be accepted on intellectual grounds; these things have to become experiential, these things have to become existential. I am not telling you to be convinced philosophically, because philosophical conviction brings nothing, no harvest.

The real harvest comes only when you make great effort to wake yourself up.

But these intellectual maps can create a desire, a longing in you; can make you aware of the potential, of the possible; can make you aware that you are not what you appear to be - you are far more.
THE FOOL SLEEPS AS IF HE WERE ALREADY DEAD, BUT THE MASTER IS
AWAKE AND HE LIVES FOREVER.

HE WATCHES.
HE IS CLEAR.

Simple and beautiful statements. Truth is always simple and always beautiful. Just to see the simplicity of these two statements...but how much they contain - worlds within worlds, infinite worlds. HE WATCHES. HE IS CLEAR.

The only thing that has to be learned is watchfulness. Watch! Watch every act that you do. Watch every thought that passes in your mind. Watch every desire that takes possession of you. Watch even small gestures - walking, talking, eating, taking a bath.

Go on watching everything. Let everything become an opportunity to watch.

Don't eat mechanically, don't just go on stuffing yourself - be very watchful. Chew well and watchfully...and you will be surprised how much you have been missing up to now, because each bite will give you tremendous satisfaction; if you eat watchfully, it will become more tasteful. Even ordinary food tastes if you are watchful; and if you are not watchful, you can eat the most tasteful food but there will be no taste in it, because there is nobody to watch. You simply go on stuffing yourself.

Eat slowly, watchfully; each bite has to be chewed, tasted. Smell, touch, feel the breeze and the sunrays. Look at the moon and become just a silent pool of watchfulness, and the moon will be reflected in you with tremendous beauty. Move in life remaining continuously watchful.

Again and again you will forget. Don't become miserable because of that; it is natural.

For millions of lives you have never tried watchfulness, so it is simple, natural, that you go on forgetting again and again. But the moment you remember, again watch.

Remember one thing: when you remember that you have forgotten watching, don't become repentful, don't repent; otherwise, again you are wasting time. Don't feel miserable: "I missed again." Don't start feeling, "I am a sinner." Don't start condemning yourself, because this is a sheer waste of time. Never repent for the past! Live in the moment. If you had forgotten, so what? It was natural - it has become a habit, and habits die hard. And these are not habits imbibed in one life; these are habits imbibed in millions of lives. So if you can remain watchful even for a few moments, feel thankful to God - feel thankful. Even those few moments are more than expected.

HE WATCHES. HE IS CLEAR.

And when you watch, a clarity arises. Why does clarity arise out of watchfulness?

Because the more watchful you become, the more all your hastiness slows down. You become more graceful. As you watch, your chattering mind chatters less, because the energy that was becoming chattering is turning and becoming watchfulness - it is the same energy! Now more and more energy will be transformed into watchfulness and the mind will not get its nourishment. Thoughts will start becoming thinner, they will start losing weight. Slowly slowly, they will start dying. And as thoughts start dying, clarity arises. Now your mind becomes a mirror.

HOW HAPPY HE IS! And when one is clear, one is blissful. It is confusion that is the root cause of misery; it is clarity that is the foundation of blissfulness.
HOW HAPPY HE IS!
FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE.

And now he knows there is no death, because wakefulness can never be destroyed.

When death comes, you will watch it too. You will die watching; watching will not die.

Your body will disappear, dust unto dust, but your watchfulness will remain; it will become part of the cosmic whole. It will become cosmic consciousness.

In these moments the seers of the Upanishads DE CLARE, "Aham brahmasmi! - I am the cosmic consciousness!" It is in such spaces that al-Hillaj Mansoor announced, "Ana'l haq! - I am the truth!"

These are the heights which are your birthright. If you are not getting them, only you are responsible and nobody else.
HOW HAPPY HE IS! FOR HE SEES THAT WAKEFULNESS IS LIFE.

HOW HAPPY HE IS,
FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE AWAKENED.

WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE
HE MEDITATES, SEEKING
FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.

Listen to these words very attentively: WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE.... Unless you bring total effort to waking yourself up it is not going to happen. Partial efforts are futile. You cannot be just so-so, you cannot be just lukewarm. It is not going to help.

Lukewarm water cannot evaporate, and lukewarm efforts to be alert are bound to fail.

Transformation happens only when you put your total energy into it. When you are boiling at a hundred degrees heat, then you evaporate, then the alchemical change happens. Then you start rising up.

Have you not watched? - water flows downwards, but vapor rises upwards. Exactly the same happens: unconsciousness goes downwards, consciousness goes upwards.

And one thing more: upwards is synonymous with inwards, and downwards is synonymous with outwards. Consciousness goes inwards, unconsciousness goes outwards. Unconsciousness makes you interested in others - things, people, but it is always the others. Unconsciousness keeps you completely in darkness; your eyes go on being focused on others. It creates a kind of exteriority, it makes you extroverts.

Consciousness creates interiority, it makes you introverts; it takes you inward, deeper and deeper.

And deeper and deeper also means higher and higher; they grow simultaneously, just as a tree grows. You only see it going upwards, you don't see the roots going downwards. But first the roots have to go downwards, only then can the tree go upwards. If a tree wants to reach the sky, then it will have to send roots to the very bottom, to the lowest depths possible. The tree grows simultaneously in both directions.

In exactly the same way consciousness grows upwards...downwards, it sends its roots into your being.

I talked about nine states of consciousness. Your branches of consciousness will go upwards, from conscious - so-called conscious - to real conscious, from real conscious to superconscious, from superconscious to collective conscious, from collective conscious to cosmic conscious. And your roots will be growing from so-called conscious to subconscious, from subconscious to unconscious, from unconscious to collective unconscious, from collective unconscious to cosmic unconscious. The moment your roots reach nature, your flowers start blooming in God. Hence nature and God are not divided - in the awakened one they are bridged.

The really awakened one is not against nature, cannot be; he is all for nature. In fact, he helps you to go both ways - on one side into nature, on the other side into God. That's my effort here. I would like you to be natural, so natural that your roots go to the deepest core of your being - because that is the only way to help you grow upwards.

Roots have to be strongly in the soil, so strong that they can support a high-rising cedar of Lebanon. If it has to go hundreds of feet upwards, it will need great roots. Because of this I am being misunderstood all over this country particularly, and all over the world in general.

Roots have to reach to the sex energy, because that is the lowest, the bottom in you; only then can your flowers bloom in superconsciousness, in samadhi. The lotus can bloom only if it is rooted in the mud deep down in the lake. This is possible only with great perseverance. Man as he is is very lazy; because he is asleep he is lazy.

Buddha says: WITH GREAT PERSEVERANCE HE MEDITATES, SEEKING FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS.

Meditate - meditation means watchfulness - and you will attain to freedom and bliss.

This human being is absolutely needed today, this new human being - homo novus.

Enough for today.

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