' Consciousness '...

We read in the Bhagavad Gita of Arjuna's cosmic vision.

He was given a glimpse of a part of the universal order, the World-Design, the World-Idea. Others who have had this glimpse saw other parts of it, such as the evolution of the center of consciousness through the animal into the human kingdom, an evolution which is recapitulated in a very brief form by an embryo in the womb.

Consciousness may expand into infinity or contract into a point.

Some have had this experience through mystical meditation and others through physical chemical drugs, but the point is that they are temporary experiences of the fact that we live in a mind-made world, that the time orders and space dimensions are mental constructs and are alterable, that consciousness is the basic reality, that it can assume many different forms, and that ordinary, average human consciousness is merely one of those forms.

This tells us why the insights of the seers like Buddha differed so greatly from those of ordinary human beings.


-- Notebooks Category 22: Inspiration and the Overself >
Chapter 6: Experiencing a Glimpse > # 368 Paul Brunton