Chapter XIX (part 5)

The "seeing" changes with the changes of the state of consciousness in which it is proceeding. But what forms of consciousness exist? p. 239 Hindu philosophy makes the division into four states of consciousness: sleep, dream, waking, and the state of absolute consciousness— turiya . 1 ( The Ancient Wisdom , Annie Besant.) G. R. S. Mead, in the preface to Taylor's translation of Plotinus ( Bohn's Library ) correlates the terminology of Shankarâchârya—the leader of the Advaita-Vedânta school of ancient India—with that of Plotinus. The first or spiritual state was ecstasy; from ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep; from profound sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself, into the internal world of dreams; from dreaming it passes finally into the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense. Ecstasy is the term used by Plotinus; it is entirely identical with the term turiya of Hindu psychology. The consciousness, which is in a waking condition, is surrounded by what constitutes its sense-organs and receptive apparatus in the phenomenal world; it differentiates the "subjective" from the "objective," and differentiates its forms of perception from "reality." It recognizes the phenomenal objective world as reality, and dreams as unreality, and includes along with it, as being unreal, the entire subjective world. Its vague sensation of real things, lying beyond that which is apprehended by the organs of sense, i.e., sensations of noumena, consciousness identifies as it were with dreams—with the unreal, imaginary, abstract, subjective—and regards phenomena as the only reality. Gradually convinced by reason of the unreality of phenomena, or inwardly sensing this unreality and the reality which lies behind, we free ourselves from the mirage of phenomena, we begin to understand that all the phenomenal world is in substance subjective also, that the great realities lie deeper down. Then a complete change takes place in consciousness in all its concepts about reality . That p. 240 which before was regarded as real becomes unreal, and that which was regarded as unreal becomes real. 1 This transition into the absolute state of consciousness is "UNION WITH DIVINITY," "VISION OF GOD," EXPERIENCING THE "KINGDOM OF HEAVEN," "ENTERING NIRVANA." All these expressions of mystical religions represent the psychological fact of the expansion of consciousness, such an expansion that the consciousness absorbs itself in the all. C. W. Leadbeater, in an essay, Some Notes on the Higher Planes . Nirvana ( The Theosophist . July, 1910.) writes: Sir Edwin Arnold wrote of that beatific condition, that "the dewdrop slips into the shining sea." Those who have passed through that most marvelous of experiences know that, paradoxical as it may seem, the sensation is exactly the reverse, and that a far closer description would be that THE OCEAN HAD SOMEHOW BEEN POURED INTO THE DROP! The consciousness, wide as the sea, with "its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere," is a great and glorious fact; but when a man attains it, it seems to him that his consciousness has widened to take in all that, not that he is merged into something else. This pouring of the ocean into the drop occurs because the consciousness never loses itself, i.e., does not disappear, does not become extinguished. When it seems to us that consciousness is extinguished, in reality it is only changing its form, it ceases to be analogical to ours, and we lose the means of convincing ourselves of its existence. We have no exact data at all to think that it is dissipated. In order to escape from the field possible to our observation, it is sufficient for consciousness TO CHANGE ONLY A LITTLE.