Consciousness!

 

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Consciousness!

Many of us wonder about consciousness – what is consciousness? Is there a source of consciousness? And so on…. Let us make an attempt to understand consciousness. Consciousness as explained by various Masters is the source of everything – consciousness is the stuff existence is made of. But there is no source of consciousness itself. Consciousness is another name of God — a better name, more scientific, less mythological.

We never ask for the source of God, do we? We know that God is the source of existence, but never ask for the source of God, believers just accept that God exists. The religions have been saying that existence cannot be without a creator; nothing can be without a creator — that has been the argument of all the religions for centuries. 

Gautam Buddha, who had a greater clarity than anybody else ever had, said that bringing God in is absurd. Existence has always been here. Nobody has created it, and nobody can destroy it. But that does not mean that Gautam Buddha is an atheist. It simply means he has a more scientific and less mythological approach.

He says existence consists of consciousness. Existence itself is made of consciousness. And consciousness has always been here, is here, will be here. It can be asleep, it can be awake, but it is consciousness all the same. When it is asleep you work blindly, unconsciously. When it becomes awake you are enlightened. But there is no source of consciousness. Consciousness itself is the very foundation of the whole of existence. Nothing is deeper than that. We cannot go beyond consciousness.

There are degrees of consciousness. Man is the only being whose unconsciousness has allowed a little bit of consciousness to arise and to be awake. Now this little piece, this little layer of consciousness is enough, if we use it rightly, we can bring more and more of our unconsciousness into a state of consciousness.

As of now, it is one tenth of our whole consciousness. The day it becomes all consciousness and no unconsciousness within us, a pure awareness from abc to xyz, from the beginning to the end - we will find all questions have disappeared, because we are in a state of knowing without questioning. We are consciousness itself and we know that it is the source of everything; it does not need any source for itself.

Even the criminal, even the worst criminal has a little consciousness. But he does not allow his consciousness to grow. On the contrary, he allows his unconsciousness to use his consciousness. The unconscious remains the master and consciousness is being used as a servant.

The day we became sadhaks, the day we embarked on the spiritual path, we took a quantum leap and affirmed: “From now on consciousness will be the master and unconsciousness will be the servant. I will not allow unconsciousness to infiltrate into my consciousness. Howsoever small my consciousness is, I must work only consciously so that slowly, slowly it becomes stronger, more crystallized, and capable of making unconscious parts of me also join hands with it.” People use their consciousness occasionally, but it is not the active part of their being twenty-four hours a day. A sadhak must be conscious twenty-four hours a day. At least he must make the effort.

Slowly, slowly consciousness goes on seeping into the unconscious layers of our being. And it is not just a philosophy or an imaginary idea, because thousands of people have become totally conscious. Those who have become totally conscious have bloomed into blissfulness.