Recognizing Consciousness

What is consciousness, and how do we recognize it?

All of us human beings have an endowment of spiritual consciousness housed within our psyche as part of our created makeup. But from our Adamic perspective there are a few important points to this definition that are easily overlooked and perhaps need clarifying and emphasizing. For one thing, consciousness is an independent function—one of four dominant independent functions operating in our psyche. These four functions are consciousness, soul, mind, and body. This is according to our created blueprint and has always been with us. Why is this important? Because in our Adamic state our tendency has been to lump consciousness and mind together and view consciousness as a function of mind. But this is a foundational error that will undermine all of our attempts to learn the truth about what consciousness is and how it functions.

Knowledge of our original created makeup is foundational knowledge. It is one of the keys to understanding not only how we human beings function, but also to coming to an acceptance of what manner of creatures we are and being at peace with that. Only when we get it right will we be able to rest with our findings.

The human psyche has been misperceived. It is generally thought to be simply another word for mind. But the human psyche is much bigger than that. It is like an inner field within each of us, wherein a veritable multitude of functions and activities are housed and take place. In this sense it is like a microcosmic universe. Meanwhile, our tendency to view all this simply as aspects of mind greatly limits our created capabilities and potentialities. It turns both consciousness and psyche into small, compartmentalized functions that are greatly overshadowed and restricted by mind’s biological qualities.

Jesus once said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” (John 14:2). This is another excellent way to describe the human psyche. It is a part of God’s house because God created man in His own image. Therefore our inner world as human beings is actually a divine phenomenon. It is a spiritual house that can stretch its boundaries infinitely and eternally. And within that house there is a created structural framework, as well as a legal order—that is, an order of function ability governed by universal law.

Consciousness, like soul, mind, and body, is a definitive psychic function of man’s divine inner field. But it is important to differentiate between these dominant psychic functions, not only so we can understand which function does what but also so that we can make a clear delineation between the spiritual-eternal functions and the biological-temporal functions. Why is this important? Because the eternal functions cannot die, while the biological functions invariably go the way of all matter. They decay, die, and dissolve. This becomes even more important on account of our Adamic impulse to attach our sense of self to one of our psychic functions. For, this conscious act of identification determines a great deal about our life (and death) experience. Because it is actually an act of consciousness, we end up becoming what we identify our sense of self with. So if we identify ourselves with mind and body we suffer their biological fate. We decay, die, and dissolve. And since we have taken this route as a collective, our entire race has been given over to mortal death—an experience that does not actually kill us, but it certainly impacts our life experience, usually making it astronomically harder and more painful. Whereas, if we were to identify with our spiritual functions of consciousness and soul, our life experience would no longer include mortal death. Our mind and body would still be subject to their biological fate of decay, death, and dissolution, but we would be completely detached from that fate, thereby simply observing it from a transcendent viewpoint. Mortal death would lose its sting and become nothing more than biological death—a natural phenomenon of our created universe.

In Adam we feel compelled to attach our sense of self to some psychic function, but to attach it to our biological functions has been one of the great travesties of this Age of Adam. The correction of this travesty, however, is much easier than we think. All we have to do is to shift our identification from off of mind and body onto our spiritual psychic functions of consciousness and soul. The main difficulty for us in doing this is that we have, up until now, had a false idea of how our psyche works. We have viewed mind as its most dominant function and consciousness and soul as nothing more than aspects of mind. This has made it impossible for us to identify with consciousness and soul as independent eternal functions. In other words, if consciousness and soul are mere aspects of mind, we cannot help but identify with mind and therefore have no recourse but to continue to go the way of mortal death.

And so a great liberation awaits us simply by gaining the knowledge of the rightful workings of our psyche. For to recognize spiritual consciousness and soul as independent functions not only frees them from their former mind-subjection; it automatically elevates them to an ascendant place in our psychic order, thereby replacing or dethroning mind. This then makes it easier to attach our sense of self to our spiritual-eternal psychic functions and put mortal death to flight. Mind continues to be a psychic function, but it assumes its rightful (by law) created order, serving consciousness and soul, instead of lording over them.

Consciousness then is not only a prominent independent psychic function; it is also meant to be our most ascendant psychic function. This is the right order of our makeup, according to universal created law. Therefore when this right order is achieved, not only is consciousness set free to shine in all its glory; it also makes everything else about our inner function ability come into the right order. But it is up to us to first, learn the truth about our created psychic makeup and then, to go in with the authority of that truth and correct the aberration of mind’s former ascendancy. And if we still feel the Adamic compulsion to identify with one of our psychic functions we will then be free to identify with consciousness and thereby lay hold of eternal life.

So consciousness is meant to be ascendant and it is meant to shine. And bringing this to pass will drastically alter our human experience. Not only will it remove the scourge of mortal death, but also many other benign outworkings will follow. With this one adjustment bringing us into harmony with universal law and the positive results of that harmonious alignment being so clear, we will naturally seek to bring all of our awareness and behavior into harmony, thereby putting an end to sin. Then the revelation will follow that this movement toward the harmonious alignment of our being with universal law is actually the road to perfection for our species—a state of being which by its very nature cannot give expression to death, disease, war, poverty, etc.

When this overall harmonious realignment of our being takes place, we begin to know consciousness in a way we have never known it before. And we realize that human life has always been set apart by the workings of spiritual consciousness, even when it was subject to mind through our own ignorance. In fact, it might be said that this particular created endowment best defines what it means to be a human being. Ever since Adam awoke to his endowment of consciousness in the Garden of Eden our species called Homo sapiens has become like a race of gods. But our confusion about this has, of course, been very debilitating and demeaning for us. Why has this happened? Because among other things, our endowment of consciousness is an evolutionary endowment—one that has not yet reached its full flowering and fruitfulness. The state of consciousness that we have been moving in (ever since Adam awoke) is a seed state—and as such, it has needed time and karmic experience in order to evolve and come into full fruition. But even this lowly seed condition has not been able to dim consciousness’ astounding capabilities. We have seen what consciousness can do and how it has impacted the human experience, but we have been too ignorant to attribute the workings of this human wonder to their rightful source. In moments of grace we could see that human life is unique and amazing, but we have not recognized that it is our endowment of spiritual consciousness that makes it so.

So, what is it that consciousness does, and how does it set us apart? First of all, it is a creator, just as God is a creator. We have already seen this power of creation at work in the exerting of our Adamic sense of self. The act of identifying ourselves with our biological psychic functions as a collective was an act of consciousness—an act that ended up creating the experience of mortal death. And because consciousness’ creative powers act without making a distinction between good and evil, benign and troublesome, etc., in this case consciousness created a reality that has been very trying and detrimental for us. But that was not consciousness’ fault; it was our fault. Consciousness shined in the act of creation, but we ended up bringing judgment upon our heads.

Another example of consciousness’ creative power is the manifestation of our world. We did not create our world through human vision, hard work, and ingenuity. Rather our endowment of consciousness created it as a reflection of our state of consciousness. That is why our world is far from perfect. Like our Adamic state, our world is reflective of a seed state, both in its appearance and function ability. It is not reflective of the glory of the Christ; it is reflective of all the difficult outworkings of Adamic consciousness. What did consciousness do to create this vast intricate reflection? It did not do anything. That is the wonder of consciousness. It just is. And its power is so great that simply by being itself it creates. But as an aspect of our humanity it creates a reflection of its present evolutionary state. In this same way God created the universe. But God is consciousness in its perfected infinite form, without evolutionary states coming into the picture. That is why God’s creation is not only infinite, eternal, and perfect; it reflects only justice and glory. And in contrast, it was our Adamic state of consciousness that created our world, and that is why it is so blighted and unjust.

Consciousness is also an intensifier. The human experience includes many functions that other creatures share, only more intensely. For example, many species have intelligence and emotion. But human intelligence and emotion are unique, in that they can be extremely strong and expansive. The capacity of human intelligence far surpasses the intelligence capacity of any other creature in the known universe. And human emotion is so intense at times that we feel like we’re going to explode. On the one hand, expressing an emotion like love through consciousness is a great power for good. But on the other hand, our emotions of hate, fear, jealousy, and resentment have led more than a few into the abyss of unlawful and self-destructive behavior. In other words, on account of our endowment of consciousness these difficult emotions become so intensified within us that they have the potential to completely consume us—to overpower our perspective, faculty of reason, and intelligence.

And so at this point in time consciousness’ influence in our lives is not always benign and friendly. It is a power. But if we are moving in Adamic consciousness, within the dualistic framework of good and evil, we can just as easily create a circumstantial outworking of evil, as we can of good. This being said, when we evolve out of the Adamic seed state and into the Christ state our consciousness will no longer have the recourse to attach itself to evil impulses because there will be no more evil. It will continue to be a creative power but it will be strictly a benevolent creative power.

Therefore when Adam awoke to his endowment of consciousness in the Garden of Eden and entered the seed state that now bears his name human life did not immediately display all goodness and glory. Rather it displayed our potential as creators, which we then proceeded to use sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. It displayed our ability to build our own world, which we quickly came to recognize not as an automatically benevolent outworking but rather as one that required tremendous responsibility, nobility of character, and vision. And it displayed a level of intensity in our new human experience that had the potential to completely cloud our perspective and turn us into reactionary monsters.

Up until now we have neither associated these taken-for-granted human attributes with consciousness nor comprehended the great responsibility that awakening to consciousness introduced to the human scene. The evolution of our endowment of consciousness will one day take us to the Christ, but the ignorance that has been a mainstay of the Adamic state has turned our endowment of consciousness into a very dangerous force. This has been true throughout the duration of this age, but with the age now reaching its climax it is more evident than ever. The world we have created now stands on the brink of destruction. The relations between humans have become strained to the point of uncontrollable enmity, and the emotions that we routinely feel as human beings have become so intense and complex that even the threat of destruction cannot bring us to our senses.

In our delusion we still believe that human ingenuity is the solution to this increasingly unmanageable state of human affairs. But the truth is that without a change of consciousness things will only continue to deteriorate. Consciousness has played a role in our demise, not because of its evil intent but rather because our evil intent has tapped into it as a source of power. Unwittingly, we have evoked the power of consciousness for our own evil schemes, and because consciousness is an impersonal force it has been unable to distinguish between good and evil.

In all the universe there is no such thing as evil except in the hearts of Adamic men. We gave rise to evil through our dualistic Adamic perspective. And then, because of our lack of nobility and irresponsibility we breathed life into this Frankenstein monster, until at the end of the age it has now risen up to destroy us. And along the way we discovered the power of consciousness, only to then use that great power for evil instead of good. But if there is any irony to this sad predicament, it is that the same power of consciousness that we have used for evil will one day become our savior. This will happen naturally as human consciousness is allowed to evolve. For, its evolutionary thrust will most certainly lead us to the Christ. And when mankind embarks upon that threshold consciousness’ role will never again be in doubt. It will continue to be a great power in the human scene, but it will no longer be tainted with an association with evil; because evil will no longer exist.