Pure Consciousness

The spiritual meaning of life lies in the holistic understanding of consciousness. In this, the knowledge and experience of pure consciousness is key.

When the individual mind, in deep meditation or prayer, settles down into silence whilst remaining awake, pure consciousness is experienced.

Usually, the experience is temporary and after some time in silence one returns to the world of thought and action.

The experience of pure consciousness transcends the activity of the mind and reveals the innermost aspect of one’s own self.

Regular experience of pure consciousness reveals it also to be the source of thought, the source of one’s own creative intelligence and the basis of reliable knowledge and effective action.

For most people, pure consciousness is hidden from view. This leaves the mind to be constantly busy in the world, with no chance of the refreshing experience of wakeful silence.

In that case, one’s “self” remains defined in terms of external factors – my name, my job, my role in the family, the health of my relationships, what I like doing in my free time, what others think of me, etc. All these things are subject to change and so my sense of self is vulnerable.

Pure consciousness awakened in your life provides stability in the face of change, giving you the ability to be calm and settled inside, even in the most challenging of external circumstances.

Your "self" becomes identified with pure consciousness and functions from that steady and powerful level of life.

The cosmic value of consciousness

Consciousness itself is created not in the mind and body, as considered in science, but exists independently as a Cosmic value of Self.

The Cosmic value of Self shines into every individual mind and body creating the basis for individual consciousness.

Of course it is true that the individual aspect of consciousness is then modified according to the detailed functioning of the brain and nervous system. So that it appears (to scientists) that consciousness originates in the brain.

Wakefulness is one kind of thing and the functioning of the brain is another completely different kind of thing. The basis of our ability to know, the basis of our own individual consciousness is then on one side of a divide and the functioning of the brain is on the other side. Yet, of course, they are inextricably linked.

This is a puzzle to scientists and philosophers who think that everything is made of matter and energy. This puzzle is sometimes called the mind/body problem, or the "hard" problem of neuroscience.

The spiritual understanding is that pure consciousness is the basis of individual consciousness and that the light of pure consciousness comes from a Cosmic source.

This truth about life begins to become clear through frequent experiences of pure consciousness as the innermost, transcendental, value of one's own self.

Pure consciousness for the individual is found at the meeting point between the innermost aspect of one’s own self and the reality of the Cosmic Self.

The reflection in the glass of water

The Sun shines brightly in the sky and reflects within a glass of water.

The Cosmic Self is like the Sun and the individual self is like the reflection in the glass.

There can be many such glasses and many such reflections but there is only one Sun.

If the water in the glass is impure, the impurities in the water dim the reflection. If the water in the glass is purified, the reflection shines brightly, like the Sun itself.

The purification of the water in the glass is an analogy for the purification of individual consciousness. From a scientific perspective this is equivalent to the purification and integration of the different ways in which our brain and nervous system work together to reflect and create our own individual consciousness.

This of course requires a purification of both mind and body.

Making pure consciousness clear

The experience of pure consciousness is itself intensely purifying. The clouds of stress and ignorance are dispersed by even a momentary experience. Yet the experience cannot be forced. When the body and mind are "pure" then pure consciousness is naturally experienced.

There is a paradox here. Pure consciousness is a purifying influence. Yet in order to experience pure consciousness we need to remove impurities. So it seems that we must use other methods first, to purify our mind and body before we can begin to glimpse the "treasure within" that is pure consciousness fully unfolded to view.

However, as explained below under Transcendental Meditation, it is possible to experience pure consciousness for a brief moment and thereby gain a degree of purification. Repeated such moments can be used to construct a program for developing the full experience.

Whichever method we use, the requirements are two-fold:

1. The dissolution of deep rooted stress in the body. This kind of stress is caused by certain kinds of intense experience which leave a permanent  mark.
2. The application of mental techniques that allow one's attention to dive deep within the mind.

Yoga

The Vedic approach is exemplified by Yoga, of which there are a number of different systems.

For example, Hatha Yoga works primarily through the body, Mantra yoga through the recitation, verbally or mentally, of mantras, Raja Yoga through the development of fine levels of discrimination. Transcendental Meditation works through the process of transcending thought on a regular basis.

Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation is a special kind of Yoga which works through the mind and body simultaneously. It is the simplest and easiest approach for people who are busy in the world.

In Transcendental Meditation, a mantra is used as a vehicle for the attention to dive deep within the mind. Both the mantra and the technique to be used need to be correct for Transcendental Meditation to work.

Maharishi equated the impurities that inhibit the prolonged experience of pure consciousness with "deep-rooted stress". He also stated that deep-rooted stress is deposited in the body through intense pressure of experience.

So here we have a vicious circle. Deep-rooted stress prevents the mind from experiencing pure consciousness - lack of experience of pure consciousness prevents the mind from finding a stable and happy basis for its own existence - an unstable and unhappy mind is satisfied only with intense experience - intense experience leads to more deep-rooted stress.

How to break this vicious circle?

A dive within the mind

Transcendental Meditation facilitates a dive within the mind towards the experience of pure consciousness. The experience of even a moment of pure consciousness purifies the mind and body of deep-rooted stress. This more purified mind and body facilitates longer and clearer experences of pure consciousness.  What was a vicious circle is turned into a virtuous one.

It is an elegant and clever application of the principles of consciousness carried in the central core of the Vedic tradition.

Transcendental Meditation was taught by Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math in the Himalayan region of India between 1941 and 1953. From his teaching, his disciple Maharishi Mahesh Yogi structured a program of Transcendental Meditation that could be practised by anyone, however active in the world.

Maharishi's work, from 1955 to 2008, created 40,000 teachers and many hundreds of teaching centres around the world. You can find a teacher here.

Self-realisation

The practice of regularly exposing oneself to the experience of pure consciousness not only provides a lively and stable basis to one’s individual life but opens oneself to the reality of the Cosmic Self.

The act of linking one’s individual self to the Cosmic Self is called Self-realisation. We could say that the individual self gets “yoked” to the Cosmic Self. This process of “yoking” is called “Yoga”.

Aspects of yoga are now widely practised in the west, largely for good health, flexibility of the body and a peaceful mind. However, practitioners interested in spiritual development aim for Self realisation.

Benefits of Self-realisation

Why bother? Here is a list of key benefits:

• an immovable and indestructible inner self
• a clear and lively mind
• enhanced creative intelligence
• improvement to both mental and physical health
• the ability to focus on giving rather than receiving in relationships
• establishing the basis for the growth of higher states of consciousness.

Modes of Consciousness

In the description of consciousness given above, the individual spirit is appreciated as a part of the cosmic spirit which is the source and holistic essence of everything. In a deeply spiritual sense, we could say that consciousness is all that there is.

To understand the details, we will have to consider three different modes of consciousness which work together:

• the individual mode
• the cosmic mode
• the collective mode. 

Also, this spiritual exploration of consciousness describes seven different major states of individual consciousness not just the three  of waking, dreaming and sleeping. To those three we must add four more:

• transcendental consciousness, the state of consciousness when all activity of the mind has been transcended. Transcendental consciousness includes both pure consciousness and the state of Absolute Being, in which the mind is opened to the absolute silence of pure existence. 
• cosmic consciousness, in which the mind is awake to transcendental consciousness on a permanent basis - during activity, meditation, dreaming and deep sleep. The Self is present but independant from the experience of the world by the self.
  
• god consciousness in which the light of pure consciousness fills the mind at all times. The world is experienced in terms of bliss-consciousness.
  
• unity consciousness in which everything is seen in the light of God. Life becomes a complete whole, in which God becomes a living reality. 

[These descriptions have been extracted from the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]

These seven states together create a progression of meaning for the evolution of individual life. Spiritual growth can be described in terms of the development of consciousness through these seven states.

Therefore, the spiritual exploration of consciousness provides the means for finding your real purpose in life.