“Change thy character, beloved, change it through intelligent action, free from the battle of the opposites.
I am talking to you about the path of action, free from the painful battle of the opposites.
When the doors of fantasy are closed, the organ of intuition awakens.
Intuitive action leads us by the hand toward the awakening of the consciousness.
Let us work and rest happily, abandoning ourselves to the course of life.
Let us exhaust the turbid and rotten waters of habitual thinking. Thus, into the emptiness Gnosis will flow, and with it, the happiness of living.
This intelligent action, free from the battle of the opposites, elevates us to the breaking point.
When everything is proceeding well, the rigid roof of thinking is broken.
Then the light and power of the Inner-Self floods the mind that has stopped dreaming.”
– Samael Aun Weor, Revolution of the Dialectic
This magnificent quote from Samael Aun Weor is always a source of personal inspiration and motivation when I feel disoriented or weary on the spiritual path.
The Awakening of Consciousness is the Birthright of Every Human
It is the true purpose of life, and it has nothing to do with our ideas or concepts of awakening. Sleep of the consciousness is the familiar life that we all live: the physical habits, the unhappiness, the thoughts, the fear of the future, the regrets, the hoping for something in the future that will make it all worthwhile, the constant distractions to keep us from the present moment.
The sleep of the consciousness persists throughout our day, and when our physical body sleeps, we enter into the astral plane with the consciousness also asleep. In the astral world we are in a dimension of more rarity and lightness and a self-awareness or even small awakening will dramatically alter our experience in the dream world.
We wake up in dreams, in the astral, by waking up in the physical world, in our daily life. The battle of mental opposites keeps us trapped, we yearn for the consciousness to be free. But in order to be free we must be nothing, be empty, and prepared for the light of the consciousness that floods into that emptiness and repose.
The consciousness itself is an attribute of the Essence, that which permeates every cell of our body, which animates us, the seed of the soul. What a precious moment to feel ourselves as a small soul before God.
The Four States of Consciousness
There are four states of consciousness, or four levels of awakening, called in Greek: Eikasia, Dianoia, Pistis, and Nous.
Eikasia is the most mechanical and unconscious state of the psyche, it relates to when we lay down at night and are asleep, completely unconscious to the world, and in the dream world not knowing where we are or what we are doing.
Pistis is where we find ourselves in our waking life, in what should be a state of vigil awareness, but sadly, is also a state of sleep.
Dianoia is a state of raising and changing our level of consciousness with self-remembering, an awareness of our internal state and the outer event in which we find ourselves.
A continued and sustained practice of dianoia will bring us to the experience of Nous, which is objective, or awakened, consciousness. Here we have our center of gravity in the Being, by remembering ourselves, without distraction and disorganization of attention.
It is important to remember that each state of consciousness has many states within it, so that we are always striving to access the awakened state, wherever we are.
The Allegory of the Cave
In The Republic Plato has a chapter called the Allegory of the Cave where he describes the state of the sleep of humanity under the power of the demiurge. The demiurge is the architect of creation, the false work in which we sleep, and who has a vested interest in us staying asleep.
Plato describes a humanity who has lived their entire life within a cave, where they are chained and positioned in such as way as to face the wall of the cave and only see shadows. They believe this is the only world that exists, and here is humanity in the state of sleep, eikasia.
Within those shadows are people who move in a state of vigil, pistis, but are not conscious of their reality and end up serving the demiurge rulers because they still sleep psychologically.
Then there those who struggle to leave the cave and eventually glimpse the light of the outside world, and begin to comprehend that there may be another world different that is from the one he has been submitted to. This is the state of self-consciousness or dianoia.
This person has the option then to return and remain trapped, or to find a way to go back secretly and help the others to awaken and leave the cave, but he risks being called insane because the world he describes is so foreign to what people know.
Finally there is the fourth state of objective consciousness or nous, where the person knows that there exists a whole world, a real Sun and the fullness of life outside the cave, and who knows and experiences reality.
“Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer.
There is no ‘other world.’
I only know what I’ve experienced.
You must be hallucinating.”
–Jalaluddin Rumi