' The Seas' of Consciousness '...

At the top is the Grand Sea of Infinite Consciousness, inexhaustible and without bounds. This is the seeming Emptiness that actually is the Fullness of the SELF-Pure Divinity, the Base of all else and the Final Resolution of all things.

The next is the plane of Cosmic and Transcendent Consciousness. Here the One is also a Brotherhood. Likewise, permanence stands united with evolution.

Below there is a gulf, not easy to cross; a gulf that mankind, in its folly, has widened while the Few, dedicated through Love to that mankind, strive ceaselessly to bridge the chasm. The third sea is the level of egoistic, or subject-object, consciousness in its highest state of development, the genuine upper-class of egoistic humanity.

Here is the consciousness if those who move on the higher levels if love and intellect, but still within the limits if subject-object consciousness. These form the real "Chosen Race." Without them, the gulf would be impassable for the great human mass, and then, ultimately, all would sink down and out through the sluggish sea of ignorance.

Of the human whole only a handful, relatively, abides in the third sea, yet they are the immediate sustainers if all civilizations, the real burden-bearers if this outer life. From among them also come the recruits that, now and then, succeed in crossing the gulf.

The fourth sea is of narrow limits, but heavily crowded with a large proportion of humanity. These are the quasi-intellectual, the semi-cultured, the mass that has become conceited with a little knowledge and does not know the saving humility of much knowledge. On this level are the senseless disputations fraught with emotion and passion. This is where the surgings arise that cause the turmoil of nations and classes.

Yet there is some Light here, and the energy generated by Desire, the latter, to be sure, untrained and poorly directed, but still affording a force that eventually may be harnessed and guided. There still remains much hope for these, despite their great folly.

The fifth sea, shallow and very constricted, is densely crowded with the greatest mass of all. These are the sodden ones, drugged from drinking the final dregs of passion, those who bear little of the burden, but who are themselves the great burden. This sea is murky with the stirred-up mud of the depths, so there is only a dim twilight of the self-conscious light here.

Yet there is a degree of self-consciousness, and so this lower realm does stand above the animal, even though sinking, in many respects, deep into the animal consciousness, and, by this illicit union, producing something lower than the animal.



-Franklin Merrill-Wolfe from Pathways Through Space