Part of the Casswiki article series Cassiopaean Experiment, Fourth Way and Psychology
Concerning consciousness, Rodney Collin Smith, in his book The Theory of Celestial Influence, said that a cat is an experiment in consciousness. He said:
On a hot day a dog will sprawl in a passage-way, allowing its limbs to dispose themselves as they will, and regardless of the possibility of being trodden on. It quite evidently does not know where all the different parts of its body are. Such behavior is impossible for a cat, which is always careful to arrange its own body; and which equally evidently never quite loses the sense of this body as a whole. Nature appears to have played a very curious trick upon the cat. If a dog is an experiment in the function of smell, a cat is an experiment in the function of consciousness. But it is consciousness unrelated to mind, without meaning, and without the possibility of development. Comparing cat and man we begin to understand how consciousness can exist without intelligence, and intelligence without consciousness.
Thus this is a curious irony of Nature that man has to acquire by hard work what a cat enjoys naturally. The difference is that man has to acquire it, knowing that he is acquiring it, knowing why he is acquiring it, and knowing that it is a necessary step to something else. To no other creature in the world of Nature is such a possibility open.
Concerning the unconscious, the noted Swiss psychologist, Dr. Carl Jung said: “the beginning, where everything is still one, and which therefore appears as the highest goal, lies at the bottom of the sea, in the darkness of the unconscious.”
Thus, from Jung’s point of view, the darkness (unconsciousness) gives birth to the light (consciousness).
Concerning consciousness, David Bohm, a physicist, has also theorized that consciousness must have something to do with quantum theory. According to Bohm, consciousness and quantum theory are two areas that cannot be reduced to simple algorithms as can other natural phenomena; therefore, the two must be related and as such consciousness is at the basis of quantum mechanics.
Bohm also sees consciousness as that which links the part with the whole. Bohm states:
“It is clear that thought, considered in this way as the response of memory, is basically mechanical in it’s order of operation”
But then Bohm links this to what he calls the universal flux (wholeness):
“Intelligence and material process have thus a single origin, which is ultimately the unknown totality of the universe. In a certain sense, this implies that what have been commonly called mind and matter are abstractions from the universal flux, and that both are to be regarded as different and relatively autonomous order within the one whole movement.”
For Bishop Theophan the Recluse consciousness was spoken of more in transcendental terms when he stated: “The way to perfection is the way to Consciousness.”
So everything is really a form of consciousness, from its formless higher transcendental aspects to it’s lower derivatives that take an innumerable number of different forms. Thus all is consciousness, from the unconditioned to the conditioned, from the infinite to the finite, from the whole to the part, from the macro to the micro, from Bohm’s explicate order (actuality--- derivatives of consciousness) to his implicate order (potentiality--- integration of consciousness). Thus consciousness is that which connects All. All is connected with consciousness. All is consciousness.
The problem with how consciousness is ordinarily viewed is that those who study consciousness fail to see that there are different LEVELS of consciousness. This failure to see this important point, the assumption that we already “possess” consciousness and that it is “free,” allows for much cointelpro disinformation relating to this subject resulting in a mixing of levels which generates endless noise and “gnashing of teeth”.
Boris Mouravieff states in his book Gnosis “Gnosis (book trilogy)”), Vol. I p.13:
“We do not possess Consciousness. What we call consciousness is only one of its derivatives, but it is all that is accessible to man as he is born of woman.
”All in all there are four levels of consciousness. Consciousness called----‘Absolute’-----and it’s three DERIVATIVES:
1) Absolute Consciousness
2) Consciousness of the real ‘I’
3) Waking consciousness
4) Subconsciousness
”Starting from the bottom we have in the first instance subconsciousness. This is the twilight consciousness which we have for example during sleep, where it controls the organism without being interrupted. This subconscious direction of certain functions of our bodies continues during the waking state.
”The domain of subconsciousness is vast and very little about it has been studied. We sometimes treat it as if everything that does not enter waking consciousness is in the subconscious. We not only attribute the reflexes and the general functions of instinctive life to it, which is correct, but also the lightning ideas which come from higher spheres and which we call by vague terms such as: intuition, sixth sense, etc., which is erroneous. The reason is that we consider waking consciousness, clear consciousness as it is sometimes called, to be the peak of consciousness.
”Esoteric science however distinguishes two levels of consciousness higher than waking consciousness. We do not have these by right of birth, nor do we acquire them by normal education or instruction. But they can be reached as a result of special efforts properly directed.
”The first higher level is that of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS: alternatively called the ‘consciousness of the real ‘I’. Above that, there is the level of CONSCIOUSNESS---in the full sense of the word.
”From bottom to top we can define the four levels in other terms, as follows:
4) Subconsciousness is the twilight of the body. It’s force does not depend on the cultural level of the individual. We often find that elementary or primitive beings have a much stronger consciousness of their bodies then intellectuals.
3) Waking consciousness is the daytime consciousness of the personality. Putting pathological cases aside, its scope and its amplitude develop with the cultural development of the individual. It is the SUBJECTIVE consciousness of ‘I.‘
2) Consciousness of the real ‘I’ is the consciousness of the INDIVIDUALITY, otherwise described as objective consciousness of the individual ‘I’.
1) TRUE Consciousness is absolute consciousness: consciousness of the Absolute.