Think of yourselves as both unit and as member of a larger-order unit, and as a unit that is a higher-order to lower communities.
Hold an image of yourselves, if you can, of yourself as, at one and the same time:
- A higher-order organization of lesser units of a different kind.
- A unit among other units of your same kind.
- A constituent member of an organization that is superior to yours, a higher order than yours.
In other words, a unit made of communities of cells, a human among humans, and one cell in a higher-order being.
Yes. At the same time. You have been given the invaluable guide: As Above, So Below; cling to that guide, do not let awareness of proportion slip away.
In each of your three roles, different realities seem to apply. That is to say, reality seems different at any given level we examine, it’s only natural. Liver cells don’t experience life in the same way wild horses running do, nor daydreaming teenagers, nor consciousnesses aware of 3D as only one facet of reality. But it all goes on together, of course.
And your mentioning the horses reminds us (and was intended to remind us, I imagine) that trees and mountains etc. also contribute their forms of consciousness to the full picture.
Everything is made of consciousness. Perhaps instead of thinking of it as you do, you might look at it from the other end of the pipe. Or, let’s say, hold an idea of it both ways rather than only one.
Hmm. I almost get what you mean. It’s cloudy, though. And yes, I’m recalibrating to facilitate intuitive insight.
When you try to envision everything being built of consciousness rather than of matter – that is, when you see that atoms and molecules etc. are intermediate stages, not primary ones – your first impulse is likely to be to try to imagine how the vegetable kingdom experiences life, how a mountain could possibly experience the world. We have touched on this and until now have generalized the question away, by saying that every class of thing has its own form of consciousness, divisible into the equivalent of the kingdoms scientists used to discuss: Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, Human, Celestial. This isn’t wrong but it is not complete until you also look at it the other way. All these are examples of how consciousness expresses.
I get: Wait a moment and let intuition explore that thought.
Yes, because logic alone will not lead you to the same place, not a destination but a readiness.
All right.
The very word “Consciousness,” like “Awareness” or “Mind,” is misleadingly concrete, but this is a problem with language. Technical descriptions may be found within esoteric disciplines, but what good is that to people like you? And that is not meant as a joke, much less as an insult. It means, you can’t understand quantum physics or Hindu metaphysics if you haven’t spent years acquiring mathematics or Sanskrit or whatever language is necessary as an analytical tool. So, we’re approaching it in another way, along another route. Try to remember your ignorance and at the same time your potential.
That is, that we don’t know but can learn?
Not quite. That you don’t have certain valid analytical tools but that you may proceed along a different but equally valid path.
Consciousness, awareness – or rather, that which consciousness and awareness are conscious of, aware of – expresses through the 3D world as you experience it.
Think of it as light, shining through lenses or through translucent screens. The light per se does not alter, but it is experienced as if modified. No one sees the light as it is.
“The light that puts out our eyes is darkness to us,” Thoreau said.
Exactly. But the light is all the light there is. It is what is, but it is seen through screens and filters and lenses, so it would be true to say you have never seen the light (in any sense of the phrases) but only the shadows it casts.
Thus, the various kingdoms reflect the light each in its own way. You may regard the various kingdoms as subdivisions of a spectrum, so that mineral is in effect infra-red and celestial is in effect ultra-violet. This is an analogy, but an instructive one. If you can even foggily grasp the idea of the various kingdoms as colors, you may get the sense of their underlying order, their interrelation, their complementary expression, and, of course, the incompleteness of any one of them, or any four out of five of them.
This is seeing color as a definite band along the electromagnetic spectrum.
Yes. Divorce color (for the moment, only) of emotional or aesthetic connotations, and see it as one position along that spectrum, and the analogy may be clearer.
So, you as part of the human kingdom express the human-kingdom part of the spectrum. Vegetable representatives express a different part of the spectrum. But the entire spectrum is represented, because rainbows don’t appear with gaps in them. A spectrum is a spectrum.
We’re close to missing something.
Color isn’t as definite as it can be described to be. Green shades into blue. How many shades?
As many as we care to distinguish, I suppose.
Consciousness isn’t any different. Vegetation shades into animal into human, etc., depending upon how closely you look. But it is worthwhile to establish gross distinctions before proceeding to subdivide into sub-categories.
I still have the sense that we’re missing something.
Of course, because this doesn’t seem to apply to you in fact, only as concept.
Yes, I think so.
Go back to where we began today; don’t revert to thinking of yourselves only as 3D-units. You are that, but you are not only that. And this will lead you to realize that the consciousness you partake of – that you often think of as your particular possession – is not only 3D-human but is also other things. You are way more extensive, interrelated, complicated, than you commonly think; hence, you have only a poor approximate idea of what you are.
And if we don’t know what we are, we can’t possibly know what it’s all about.
We pause at that statement. It could be taken so many ways, and could lead in so many directions. You might ponder it – mull it over – and see where intuition and fancy take you. But meanwhile let us say, this is why logic and thought devoid of intuition and insight can never bring you where you want to go.