We talk a good deal about raising or developing or elevating consciousness. Let us now take a closer look at what this means.
First of all, it is not really our consciousness that needs raising; it is our personal, individual state of consciousness. Consciousness itself needs no improvement, for it is already perfect. It is the divine life housed within us. But as human beings we have the capacity for self-will and choice and that includes being able to stifle or ignore our endowment of divine consciousness in favor of other priorities, such as socializing, pursuing prosperity in the world, etc. So, often our state of consciousness is stunted and debased because of these dynamics. And that is why it needs raising.
Next, let us examine what a stunted state of consciousness looks like. The fact that some of us choose to ignore our faculty of spiritual consciousness does not make it disappear. It only causes it to become neglected and weak, like a muscle that has atrophied due to lack of exertion. And why would we choose to do such a thing? It is not because we have anything against consciousness. Rather it is usually a case of believing that consciousness is nothing more than a biological function of mind—a function that is the same in all people and therefore does not need our individual attention. This belief is an integral aspect of the collective consciousness and in all likelihood came to us via our infantile conditioning. The fact is that we have all held to it to some degree because we were born into the collective consciousness and had it drummed into us from our infancy onward. What we failed to take into account is that this collective consciousness is neither highly evolved nor enlightened. And so our situation in relation to consciousness prior to embarking upon the spiritual path was probably one of acting out from wrong belief—a stance that we took because we had yet to learn the truth and begin developing our own individual endowment. Thus we were probably also ignorant of the fact that the quality of one’s state of consciousness directly affects one’s life experience. We probably were not even aware that we had borrowed the collective’s consciousness; nor did we make the connection that a state of consciousness that is rife with wrong beliefs, such as the collective is moving in, would adversely impact our own circumstances.
My first awareness of this dynamic came from reading and studying the Bible. For in the Old Testament’s opening pages we are introduced to an archetypal character named Adam and taught that Adam’s experience with consciousness in the Garden of Eden was subsequently passed down to all men as a kind of genetic inheritance. In other words, the state of consciousness that Adam adopted and began moving in became the collective consciousness of mankind. Then the narrative goes on to give us a brief but poignant description of this state of consciousness. We learn that it is a state that is characterized not only by wrong belief but also by the sense of separation, alienation, and fear. It promotes a dualistic view of life, a wrongful identification with and relegation of the human body and mind, and false beliefs about both man and God. It is a state of consciousness that fully embraces the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest and, in so doing, pits men against one another and makes our topmost priority one of self-preservation. Thus in this little allegorical story we are taught not only where the collective consciousness came from and when it began; we are also given insight into how it operates and the effects that it typically has upon the human life experience.
Prior to undertaking our spiritual practice therefore we were in all likelihood moving in this collective state of consciousness, rightly called Adamic. This meant that our overall orientation to life was to view ourselves as an isolated life fragment, separate and cutoff from God and our fellowman. This self-view necessitated that we fend for ourselves in what we perceived to be a hostile, oppositional universe. It also gave rise to the perspective of duality, in which evil is seen as a rival power to good, thereby making fear our most constant and dominant emotional state. Our lives became a passion play of self-preservation. And all of this was the result of something at work inside of us that we were probably completely unaware of—that is, our state of spiritual consciousness.
But there was even more to this equation. As it turns out, the Adamic state of consciousness is not only stunted and dark; it is also unlawful—that is to say, it goes against the created order of our universe, an order that is characterized by truth, oneness, and non-duality. So in addition to reaping the outworking of a dark state of consciousness we also found ourselves swimming against the strong current of universal law. No wonder we were so tired and discouraged. No wonder we were sick and hemmed in by a sense of lack and limitation. No wonder we were obsessed with death.
This willful disregard of the law of the universe not only causes individuals to suffer; it also sends waves of discord throughout the entire human community. That is why the collective is so prone to wars and inequalities. It also has rendered all of our well-meaning attempts to become a civilized and tolerant society futile and misdirected.
Isolated and discordant, human beings have fallen prey to many false beliefs
about life. Truth has become a subjective and arbitrary concept to us. Then in this climate of make-your-own-truth Darwinism the strong among us rise to positions of power and wield their narrow-minded version upon the masses. And so wrong beliefs have become legitimized and commonplace, and the collective consciousness has become inundated with them.
One such belief involves the powers that act upon us here on the earthly plane. Instead of knowing and living by the truth that there is only one power operating in our universe (that is, the power of God-good), we all came under the belief in many powers. Judging by our own isolated life experience on this plane, we decided that God was nowhere to be found, whereas powers such as sin, disease, lack and limitation, and death were iron-clad and binding upon our experience. Then holding this belief close to us and fanning it into flame through our hyperactive emotion of fear, we all began to manifest or demonstrate it in our life experience. In other words, we became sinners; we became diseased; we became hemmed in by lack and limitation, and we became obsessed with death. Our wrong belief commandeered our experience, and that was where most of our suffering came from.
Seeing life through the lens of dualities also had a major impact on our well being. Though the collective tried to convince us that the ability to judge between good and evil is a highly evolved state, our experience told us just the opposite. For by viewing evil as a rival power to good we actually made it into the power that our fears imagined it to be. And once that happened, evil, which has no existence in truth, became a constant force to be reckoned with, thereby demanding much from us in the realm of time, strength and energy. In fact, the war against evil has become such an obsessive priority in human society that we have even become more than willing to sacrifice our children to it.
All of this has befallen us on account of our conditioned tendency to ignore our own individual endowment of consciousness and view it as a function of mind. But then when we set out upon the new frontier of spiritual practice, things began ever so slowly to change for us. At first, we may not have realized that spiritual practice had anything to do with consciousness. But as we continued in our practice eventually consciousness came into the forefront of our experience. And when that happened, we saw how greatly our lives have been impacted by our state of consciousness and understood that the raising of that state was not only important; it was actually the goal of our practice.
As confirmation of this directive we can again learn from the Bible. For there we see not one testament but two—an Old Testament and a New Testament. And though these writings appear to be about many varied subjects, we can actually discern one dominant theme—the theme of consciousness evolution. This is because of two main characters: Adam and Jesus—Adam being the main character of the Old Testament and Jesus being the main character of the New Testament. These two characters represent two distinct states of consciousness—Adamic, which we have already examined and Christ consciousness. Adamic consciousness comes first. It is the old or original state of human consciousness, whereas Christ consciousness is the new state to which we are evolving. Or another way to view it is that Adam’s state of consciousness was only intended to be a seed state, while Christ consciousness is the fully evolved, fruit-bearing plant. Throughout this age all we have known is seed consciousness, but when Christ consciousness comes to the human scene as a collective reality the age of Adam will pass away and a New Age will dawn. The first man Adam will have an evolutionary son, and it is for this reason that Jesus most often referred to himself as the Son of Man. As a prophet he was envisioning that which we are only now beginning to experience as a collective two thousand years later.
As the dawning of the New Age comes closer and closer, more and more people are experiencing the evolutionary thrust of consciousness from Adamic to Christ. And though they may not think of it in these biblical terms, this transition is actually a universal one and has been decreed by created law. It is not just some arbitrary transition from one time period to another. It is the evolution of human consciousness coming to fruition. And whenever any true evolutionary process takes place in our universe, there is always a legal basis to it, which means that there will be no reversing of the process. That was what Jesus meant when he said, “It is finished.”
To best understand what the new consciousness of man is going to look like, all we have to do is look at Jesus. For, he was not the only Christ. He was the first of many to come. In the same way that Adam’s consciousness became the consciousness of the collective in this age, so will Jesus’ consciousness become the collective’s in the New Age. And just as Adam’s consciousness brought with it a distinct quality of life on earth, so will Jesus’.
Whereas Adam’s consciousness was one of separation and self-preservation, the new consciousness of man will be one of union and rest. Whereas Adam’s state promoted false beliefs, the Christ state will bring the pure light of truth to the human scene. Whereas Adam’s state was mired in dualities that turned us into a race of fear mongering beings, in Christ there will be no more dualistic thinking and emoting. Evil will be seen for the phantom that it is, and only good will remain. Whereas Adamic consciousness wrongfully elevated body and mind to the point that they consumed our identities, Christ consciousness will rightfully relegate these strictly biological functions and turn them into the useful servants that they were created to be. Whereas under Adam the human psyche was routinely overrun by foreign elements and defiled, under the dominion of the Christ the psyche of man will once again be pure and free. Whereas from Adam’s perspective the powers that bind us on this plane are sin, disease, lack and limitation, and death, from the perspective of the Christ these so-called powers will give way to One power—the universal power of God-good.
So it is that human consciousness in the New Age will be nothing like it has been in this age. All of the plagues that have plagued us will disappear and be utterly forgotten. And none of this will come about by man’s own strength. Rather it will come through the evolution of consciousness. For, the New Age will not be an age of human strength and initiative like this one has been; it will be an age of God’s glory—when men no longer serve and work for themselves but rather all is done according to the divine will and for the collective good.