A Quote by Swami Vivekananda
This world, this universe which our senses feel, or our mind thinks, is but one atom, so to say, of the Infinite, projected on to the plane of consciousness; and within that narrow limit, defined by the network of consciousness, works our reason, and not beyond. Therefore, there must be some other instrument to take us beyond, and that instrument is called inspiration.
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You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.
We've been proceeding so long on the plane of consciousness, we don't realize we are spiritual beings. Our minds, our senses, and the society around us all say, "Come on, you're getting into fantasy.
In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.
Prayer is not a way to get what we want to happen, like the remote control that comes with the television set. I think that prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way. It can take us beyond fear, which is an attachment, and beyond hope, which is another form of attachment. It can help us remember the nature of the world and the nature of life, not on an intellectual level but in a deep and experiential way. When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves. We change our consciousness.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence.
Today, when we look at a brain, we see an intricate network of billions of neurons in constant, crackling communication, a chemical labyrinth that senses the world outside and within, produces love and sorrow, keeps our hearts beating and lungs breathing, composes our thoughts, and constructs our consciousness.
The first spiritual law of success is the Law of Pure Potentiality. This law is based on the fact that we are, in our essential state, pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is pure potentiality; it is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity. Pure consciousness is our spiritual essence. Being infinite and unbounded, it is also pure joy. Other attributes of consciousness are pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity, and bliss. This is our essential nature. Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality.
Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void.
The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.
Evolution is fundamentally creative, and when we align ourselves with the evolutionary movements of consciousness, the universe itself puts wind in our sails. Quantum thinking goes beyond the thoughts we're aware of; it includes unconscious processing, which doesn't just expand our boundaries, but can also free us from the suffering that conscious processing (sometimes known as 'the monkey mind') creates.
One way of saying that is that there is an objective reality beyond our mind. A way to think of this in a philosophic sense is to look between the two great extremes: the idealist philosophy that says mind and consciousness is the only thing and that matter is simply an illusion, or a Maya, the product of mind; and the other extreme, a strict materialist determinism, which says that mind and consciousness is a secondary phenomenon of the collision of matter.
Obviously, therefore, we must be able to transcribe what is in us into our mental and objective consciousness, by establishing a relationship between the life in us and observation of that life in Nature. This we find supremely well expressed by the ancient Egyptians. It is a knowledge of magic, pure and sane, which can lead rapidly toward the spiritual goal of our lives, owing to the fact that we can evoke, by means of the sympathy of analogues in our surroundings, the consciousness of the heart latent in us.
We take for granted that we need to take showers, clean our house, and wash our clothes. Yet the mind and its thoughts need cleansing and ordering as much as our bodies. While few of us would consider eating dinner on yesterday's dirty dishes, we think nothing of tackling our problems with yesterdays cluttered minds.... The purpose to any meditation technique is to move beyond the normal contents of our consciousness, empty your mind of its habitual chatter, and concentrate your attention for the purpose of experiencing a higher state
I believe consciousness is non-local and a big part of what we experience with near death and past lives. It's the consciousness that has come into us from other experiences and our consciousness that we remain aware of when we leave our bodies and they communicate with us through dreams, and even through drawings which I do a lot of work with myself.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.
Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must be continuously on watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.
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