Part of the Casswiki article series Fourth Way
Being is the togetherness of experience. Being has an objective and a subjective aspect. The subjective aspect of Being can be defined as CONSCIOUSNESS. The objective aspect of Being can be defined as MATERIALITY. Materiality is the ‘stuff’ of our experience. Thus Being has both its material (existential) and non-material (essential) aspects. Being can be viewed as an organized complexity abstracted from what it does (functionally) and from it’s initiating power (will). The greater the Being the greater the possibilities.
Being can be conceptually represented as the intensity of illumination in a room. Being can be experienced but it cannot be known. Being determines the togetherness of our experience. It is the ‘glue’ of our experience that holds it together. Self observation (attainable by special training) will show fluctuations of this inner togetherness in both our sleeping and our ordinary waking states. The level of our Being attracts our life, we can only change our external situation by changing ourselves internally. Being is that reconciling force in the triad of our experience. Being is what reconciles our inner will with our outer functional instruments.
Mouravieff states in Gnosis:
“The problem of making a unity of oneself, starting practically from nothing, brings us once again to examine the question of Being, but in a slightly different way. It acts, to use the language of the Alchemists, by a TRANSMUTATION, a transformation of our factitious existence—whose value is no more potential — into real existence. This happens through realization of that potential. It acts by progressively raising the level of our Being. This work is to be done in stages according to a definite programme. We recognize four distinct levels of Being, correlated with the four levels of consciousness: a higher level of Being and three lesser one’s.
”As with consciousness, the higher level of Being rests upon the lower levels. The lowest of all the levels belongs to every living body, but extends over a wide scale of values. Certain animals, especially among the higher mammals, touch the next higher level, that of humans."
"Thus, for example, most mammals can and do have REPRESENTATIONS of objects and phenomena, a function which properly belongs to the lower level of human waking consciousness. But they can go no further; they do not have the faculty of generalization by which man forms his notions. The third level of Being, which corresponds to the consciousness of the real ‘I’ is that of esoterically evolved men, properly called ALIVE; that is, of those who have acquired permanent, unshakable real ‘I.’ Lastly the fourth level belongs to the perfect or complete man: he who has arrived by his esoteric development at the summit of evolution possible within the conditions of the planet.”
See also
- Consciousness
- Materiality