The Consciousness
People confuse Intelligence with Intellect, and say that a very intelligent or very intellectual person is very conscious. We say that the CONSCIOUSNESS is, in man, beyond any doubt and without any fear of fooling ourselves, a very particular type of “APPREHENSION OF INNER KNOWLEDGE” which is wholly independent of all mental activities.
The faculty of Consciousness allows us to reach the knowledge of ourselves.
Consciousness provides us with an integral knowledge of what is, of where it is, of what is really known, of what is certainly not known.
The Revolutionary Psychology teaches that only man himself can get to know himself.
Only we can know whether we are Conscious or not at a given moment. Only you yourself can know about your own Consciousness and whether it exists at a given moment or not.
Man himself and nobody else but he can realize in an instant, in a moment, that before such instant, before such moment, he was not really conscious, that his Consciousness was fast asleep; he will later either forget this experience or keep it as a memory, as the memory of a powerful experience.
It is urgent to know that the Consciousness in the Rational Animal is not something continuous, permanent.
Usually, the Consciousness in the intellectual animal mistakenly called man is fast asleep.
The moments when the Consciousness is awake are rare, very rare; the intellectual animal works, drives cars, gets married, dies, etc, with a fully asleep consciousness and only in very exceptional moments does he awake.
The human being’s life is a dream life, but he believes he is awake and would never admit that he is dreaming, that his Consciousness is asleep.
If someone managed to awaken he would feel terribly ashamed of himself; he would immediately comprehend his tomfoolery, his own ridicule. This life is terribly ridiculous, horribly tragical and rarely sublime...
If a boxer in plain fight was to awaken all of a sudden, he would look at the honourable public in shame and flee from such horrible spectacle, and all the asleep and unconscious multitudes would be quite astonished.
When a human being admits that he has an asleep Consciousness, you can be sure that he is already starting to awaken.
The reactionary schools of old-fashioned Psychology that deny the existence of the Consciousness and even the usefulness of such term, reveal a most profound state of sleep. The henchmen of such schools sleep very soundly, in a practically infraconscious and unconscious state.
Those who confuse the Consciousness with psychological functions, thoughts, feelings, motor impulses and sensations, are really very unconscious; they sleep very soundly. Those who admit the existence of the Consciousness but flatly deny the different conscious degrees, reveal a lack of conscious experience, sleep of the Consciousness.
Every person who has at least once momentarily awakened, knows very well by personal experience that different degrees of observable Consciousness exist in oneself.
- First: TIME. How long did we remain conscious?
- Second: FREQUENCY. How many times have we awakened Consciousness?
- Third: EXTENT AND PENETRATION. What was one conscious of?
The Revolutionary Psychology and the ancient Philokalia assert that through great super efforts of a very special kind, Consciousness can be awakened and made continuous and controllable.
The objective of the Fundamental Education is the awakening of Consciousness. Ten or fifteen years of study in school, college and university are of no use if when leaving the classrooms we are sleeping automatons?
It is not an exaggeration to say that through a great effort, the intellectual animal can be conscious of himself for just a couple of minutes.
It is clear that there usually are rare exceptions that we must seek with Diogenes’ lantern. Such rare cases are represented by the authentic Men: Buddha, Jesus, Hermes, Quetzalcoatl, etc.
These founders of Religions possessed Continuous consciousness; they were great Enlightened Individuals.
Normally, people are not conscious of themselves. The illusion of being conscious in a continuous manner is born from the memory and all the thinking processes.
A man who practices a retrospective exercise to remember his entire life can truly recall, remember the number of times he married, how many children he begot, who his parents and his teachers were, etc, but this does not mean awakening the Consciousness. This is simply remembering unconscious actions and that is all.
It is necessary to repeat what we have said in previous chapters. There are FOUR STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS: SLEEP, State of WAKEFULNESS, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS and OBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS.
The poor intellectual animal, mistakenly called man, only lives in two of those states. One part of his life is spent in Sleep and the other in the improperly called State of Wakefulness, which is also sleep.
A person who is sleeping and dreaming believes that he awakens after returning to the State of Wakefulness, but in reality he continues dreaming during this State of Wakefulness.
This is similar to dawning, when stars become hidden due to sunlight; but they continue to exist even though the physical eyes cannot perceive them.
In common and normal life, the human being knows nothing about Self-Consciousness and much less about Objective Consciousness.
Nevertheless, people are proud and they all think that they are Self-Conscious. The intellectual animal firmly believes that he is conscious of his self and under no circumstances would he accept to be told that he is asleep and that he lives unconscious of his own self.
There are exceptional moments when the Intellectual Animal awakens, but these moments are very rare. They can occur in an instant of great danger, during an intense emotion, in some new circumstance, in some new unexpected situation, etc.
It is truly unfortunate for the Intellectual Animal not to have any dominion over those fleeting states of Consciousness, not to be able to evoke them, not to able to make them continuous.
However, the Fundamental Education affirms that man can achieve control over his Consciousness and acquire Self-Consciousness.
The Revolutionary Psychology has methods, scientific processes to awaken Consciousness.
If we want to awaken Consciousness, we need to begin by examining, studying and then eliminating all the obstacles that appear on our path. In this book we have taught the path to awaken Consciousness starting from the very school desks.
Samael Aun Weor, Fundamental Education. Chapter XXXVII: The Consciousness
