BREAKTHROUGH CONSCIOUSNESS

Exploring Who We Are and Why We are Here

by Sharon Janis

BREAKTHROUGH CONSCIOUSNESS brings a combination of spiritual, psychological, metaphysical, philosophical, and scientific teachings that can help readers expand and open their minds into new possibilities and worldviews.

Chapter 4

Mind at Large

Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most (of it). According to such a theory, each of us is potentially Mind at Large.

-- Aldous Huxley, "The Doors of Perception"

Neuroscience has suggested that we humans use less than 10% of our brain. Some estimates go as low as 3%, but lets give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. After all, we are including use of the brain not just for thinking, but also for all the sensory, expressive, interpretive and experiential pathways, as well as the voluntary, involuntary, sympathetic, parasympathetic, willful and automatic functions of the body. Still, some have posited that we use less than 10% of this wondrous three pounds of jelly known as the brain.

A certain amount of this discrepancy between the amount of brain that exists and the amount of brain that is actively used can be explained by the phenomena of redundancy. Because of redundancy, an injury or lesion to one part of the brain can often signal other areas to take over necessary functions that were not previously their responsibility. You could say that the brain is overstaffed in case of emergency.

However, even with redundancy, it is difficult to believe that only 10% of our actual brain potential is being used. Logic dictates that if only 10% of our brains were being used, the extra 90% would not be there. If you think the Republicans are stingy, look at nature. Anything non-essential or unused is bred out via natural selection. When amphibians moved to land and no longer needed webbed feet, they slowly disappeared. When Man no longer needed ape-like fur, it was bred out over time. . . well, except for a few guys here and there . . .

Regardless, it is not like nature to create an extra 90% of brain to sit around unused for centuries upon centuries. And it certainly isn't nature-like to keep expanding the brain as it has from the reptilian to the mammalian, to the ever expanding outer coating which then convoluted into many fissures to increase its surface area even more, unless this new brain area was being used somewhere.

Let's consider the possibility that this great expanse of brain is being used, however not by us, or rather not by what our egocentric minds limit and refer to as us.

To leap from this conceptual cliff, we have to make an adjustment in our thinking. For our entire lives, most people have thought and structured our impressions of reality in very egocentric ways. Just as a small child thinks of each situation only in terms of how it affects him and his comfort and desires, we -- having all been children -- also carry this template and foundation for our personal structure of reality. Even as adults, we often look at the world through childlike eyes, acting as though our perceptive mechanisms of sight, hearing and touch are the definitive peepholes through which to observe the unfathomable, limitless universal energy. We want so much to think we have it right, because feeling this confidence in our world view brings a pleasurable sense of security and helps to alleviate the pain of uncertainty. And we know what slaves to pleasure and pain human beings can be, as documented by behaviorism studies that control behavior through rewards and punishments. If it feels better not to know about something that exists, you can bet that our minds will see to it that we most likely will never see even a glimmer of that information.

Egocentric structuring is the way of human life. Even our geniuses do it. For example, Freud structured his organization of the human psyche in this way:

We have a conscious mind. Beneath this conscious mind are preconscious layers. Under the preconscious layers is the subconscious mind. Below the subconscious mind is this vast unconscious.

The conscious mind, we know. It is our experience of each day. "He said this to me and then I said this back . . . I can't wait to go on that vacation . . . Don't forget to pick up milk on your way home," and so on.

The preconscious mind records an image of the person standing next to you on the bus who you don't really consciously pay much attention to, but whom you would be able to identify if questioned by police later that night after he mugs a fellow passenger. Your preconscious layers noticed, but did not focus on that particular set of information until it was later requested and brought into the conscious mind.

Our sub-conscious mind is much bigger than the preconscious. It contains a great deal of information in the form of memories, both experienced and imagined. The subconscious mind notices things like body language and other symbolic expressions through writing, speaking, and other forms of action. Subconscious information can often be accessed via various contemplative or hypnotic techniques. The information in this level is potentially but not generally available to our conscious minds.

The unconscious mind exists beneath the sub-conscious mind. This is where we dream. It is a very symbolic, pattern-heavy space, existing in a format completely different from that of our conscious minds. It is the stage upon which are enacted our nightly dreams, and even when we are awake, the unconscious mind is fueling our experience from beneath the folds of time and space. In the unconscious mind, many levels of communication go on all at once. Most are far beyond our comprehension, or at least beyond the comprehension of that less than 10% of the brain that we're supposedly using. In Freud's topological theory of the organization of the psyche, the unconscious mind is a dark, murky, deep ocean of connective psychic tissue.

Much about Freud's model can be applied to our experience, although, as with any model or map, it labels and represents, or "re-presents" our perceptions to us, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The model or theoretical map through which we view reality also molds reality to some degree. Or as the scriptures of India declare, "The world is as you see it."

In spite of their inherent insufficiencies, Freud's theories explain and reveal a great deal more about the human psyche and experience than was known before his time. The only problem is that Freud's model is upside-down.

In the view of ancient spiritual science sages, our conscious minds are not the center of our being, just as the sun and galaxies never really did rotate around the earth, in spite of outer appearances and the socially-accepted certaintly of our ancestors. In the same way, it is that which we call the unconscious mind, looking from our conscious awareness down into this deep black hole of the unknown, which is the greater, infinitely expansive reality. THAT is the center. That great space of beingness is not inside of us, rather we are inside of IT. WE are the branch of THAT tree.

All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind,
because there are more plans than it looked for.
So with the Great Dance.
Set your eyes on one movement
and it will lead you through all patterns
and it will seem to you the master movement.
But the seeming will be true.
Let no mouth open to gainsay it.
There seems no plan because it is all plan:
there seems no center because it is all center.
Blessed be He. . .

-- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

We can keep uncovering layers upon layers of ever-expanding and increasing knowledge; but the infinite continues to be infinite, and our finite knowledge cannot do anything more than touch or allude to it -- and keep growing within it. Though this idea may be frightening to a person who needs to feel control over his or her world, it eventually, with time, becomes a comforting cradle that whispers to us, "Everything is fine . . . All is as it should be."

In fact, the act of letting go into "not knowing" can be a powerful tool in opening up our consciousness into higher realms of experience and understanding. An Indian scripture states, "He who thinks he knows, knows not; and he who thinks he knows not truly knows".

None are more hopelessly enslaved
than those who falsely believe they are free.

-- Goethe

There may be an initial discomfort in having the egocentricity we've always depended on proven to be a myth, just as when we first realize as a child that our parents are not perfect or all-powerful. The truth is that we'd like to think we know what's going on around here, and it takes a leap of faith to let go and float in the space of knowing unknowingness -- knowing that we do not know.

This knowing unknowingness necessitates living on more than one level of awareness at once, and the ability to do so is part of the ongoing evolution of the multifaceted human brain and consciousness.

With knowing unknowingness, You still change the oil in your car, you still go to work, and you continue to live your life as though it were the reality you always thought it was. But at the same time, you maintain a connection with your higher knowledge, your awareness of the infinite. You have built a bridge -- perhaps many bridges --between your normal waking state consciousness of worldly affairs and the vast inner expanded space of pure knowledge, pure existence, a reality beyond conscious comprehension.

All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication.
Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will.
The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space,
older than time, wide as hope, rich as love.
Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn;
they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes,
and goes through universal love to universal power.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Even with a connection to the higher realization of knowing unknowingness, we still have to maintain the conscious responsibility of taking care of our daily activities. We can't just say, "Well, there is nothing to be done, I am not the doer, and anyway I don't really know what all is going on here.    I'm just a drop in the ocean of consciousness, so I'll just sit here and do nothing at all."

The trick is to live in the higher understanding and the lower understanding at the same time, oscillating back and forth so quickly as to be perhaps imperceptible, in essence having a dual or plural experience of whatever circumstances come our way. However, this dual awareness is not some kind of dysfunctional personality fragmentation. Rather, we identify with the unmoving witness consciousness even as we play on all the different levels in whatever way is compatible with each level. In the ancient Shavite philosophy, this dual experience is described as the play of Shiva and Shakti, with Shiva being the unmanifest essential source of all creation and Shakti being his outer movement and expression in and as this world and everything in it.

Mastering this dual experiencee gives us greater ability to express freely on the more egocentric levels that can be beneficial to certain situations, while remaining anchored in the higher truth beyond ego and the world webs it weaves. We are better able to express ourselves according to the circumstances, resonating and moving in harmony with the waves of nature. When it is time to work, we are up and ready to move. And when it is time to sit quietly, even if it is in the midst of rush hour traffic, we blend seamlessly into our destiny as it unfolds around us.

Many people think that the spiritual path makes you some kind of unemotional zombie. It is true that a seeker should ultimately become free from ephemeral, external, and egocentric desires and frustrations. Yet, the full palette of interaction is available to the soul artist, from which we can paint whatever landscape is right for the time. So if someone does something offensive, we can feel upset or even angry toward them, and express whatever egocentric resentment we may be feeling. But then, after making our point -- and with practice, even while making our point -- we can retreat into the higher spaces, whether through meditation or just a flick of the will, and use the pure energy within those emotions of anger, fear, or love to propel us even further into a peaceful place of emotional freedom and higher knowledge. Then we enter the realm of Spanda, or divine creativity.



In that state is the Spanda (universal creation) principle firmly established
to which a person is reduced when he is greatly exasperated or overjoyed,
or is in impasse reflecting what to do, or is running for life.

-- Spanda Karikas

The Spanda throb of universal creation is full and complete. Even as it unfolds, it is not unfolding. It is beyond time and space. It is completely ever-existent, now and forever. It is we who are traveling through time and space via the instruments of our brains and bodies, therefore the world around us appears to be unfolding.

We come to accept that we exist perfectly within a perfect universe -- inherently, without trying to become anything different than what we are. Even if we do make efforts to change our approach or actions, there is an awareness of the imperfect as being perfectly imperfect within the grand dance of universal perfection.

We were born into this family of universal perfection, and do not need to know why or how or exactly what the rest of this family of perfection is doing at all times. Our job is to play our small role with mastery, playing our musical instrument within the greater symphony.

Just as the electron of an atom in a molecule of a fiber of the wood used in the construction of the desk upon which the Declaration of Independence was signed does not need to know about free speech and free will, about the colonies, the King, or religious freedom, but still performs its function perfectly in the entire process -- in the same way, we don't have to understand the full extent of why we're here or what exactly we are here to do.

And if it so happens that this entire universe we have perceived, with all its galaxies, solar systems, planets and life forms taken together, are all the components of one molecule of the garbage can under the desk of some creature far beyond our conceptual abilities -- then so be it.

Without the constricting ropes of egocentricity controlling us, demanding the assertion of our individual self-importance, this idea that all we know could be just one molecule of something inconceivably bigger can actually bring a smile to our face and a peace to our heart.  As our awareness expands into these different realms and folds of reality, we have a chance to participate beyond the usual 3 - 10% usage of the brain as posited by some neuroscientists, and into a less egocentric, more universal view of life.

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Breakthrough Consciousness

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