SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS: THE CENTRAL REALITY:- Consciousness, in its pure state, is absolute: more absolute then the speed of light, which slows on entering a material medium such as the earth’s atmosphere; more absolute than the existence of matter, which is only a manifestation of energy; more absolute than energy, which is itself a vibration of consciousness. We’ve been taught to think of consciousness as the product of brain activity. To Descartes, this activity was the final proof of existence. “I think,” he wrote, “there-fore I am.” He was mistaken. It isn’t thought that produces awareness. It is awareness produces thought. It takes consciousness to think. We are not less aware when we aren’t thinking, nor more aware when our brains are very active. Many people have experienced moments of intense awareness, and have discovered at those times that their minds were more than ordinarily still. I can’t imagine this degree of awareness in a restless mind. MEDITATION PRACTICE:- Plumb the depths of intuitive perception within you, at the calm center of your own heart. If any restless or disturbing feelings arise there, withdraw deeper still—to the very center of feeling, as if to the calm eye of a storm. As any period on this page might be reduced indefinitely in size, even to the point of becoming invisible under the strongest microscope, without ever ceasing to exist, so there is no limit to how deeply you can withdraw into the center of your being.Try to find the innermost center of intuitive perception in your heart. If you experience the slightest disturbance, go deeper still. Finally you will enter a vast hall of calmness. That center is the center of everything, everywhere. This, not intellectual analysis, is the way to attain perfect insight into people and events—into any difficulty that you face in life. This is the way of intuitive understanding. Your intuition must be cultivated—not abstractly, but with kindness toward all, with acceptance of whatever happens, and with perfect love for all life. This is also the way to banish pain, both physical and emotional. Focus with calm feeling on your inner center, then project that center into the pain; visualize yourself at its center, and concentrate there. If you can penetrate deeply enough to its center, it will cease to exist. You will find, then, an ability to cope with any trauma. When you can understand everything from its center, you will find that you can turn even major setbacks in your life to good advantage. RAISING YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS:- One often heart references to “altered states of consciousness.” Implied in the expression is a suggestion that higher states of awareness are anomalies. Actually, there is only one state of consciousness: superconsciousness. The conscious and subconscious minds are our “altered states,” representing as they do the downward filtering of superconsciousness through the brain. Superconsciousness is, forever, the reality. It is our true and native state of being. STILLING THE WAVES:- Meditation has much in common with science. Both strive for objectivity, and both depend—far more than most scientists realize—on intuition. Moreover though meditation takes one beyond logic, it cannot do so if it ignores the reasonable checks of common sense. The German philosopher Hegel stated the creed of rationalism in these words: “All that is real is rational, and all that is rational is real.” The fundamental hope of rationalism is that by seeing the reason behind things you will understand them and, with that understanding, be able to control everything. The expectation of rational thought is, ultimately, to learn all there is to know—an intolerable burden for the finite brain!—and thereby to predict everything accurately. Physicists, unfortunately for that expectation, are discovering more and more that there exists a fundamental that makes it impossible to be absolutely sure even of such things as measurements. Scientists no longer expect to be able to predict the future, no matter how complete the information available to them. Nor, they now realize, could any imaginable formula make it possible for some super-being to replicate the universe: Rationalism is simply not an adequate tool for arriving at the final explanation for anything. KARMA YOGA:-The term karma yoga means “to behave in such a way as to direct our energies Godward.” The classic teaching regarding karma yoga is found in the Bhagavad Gita; “nishkam karma” (“action without desire for the fruits of action”). People who say “I am practicing karma yoga” to excuse the fact that they don’t meditate, when in fact they may be busily engaged in amassing a fortune, are practicing karma all right, but not karam yoga. Karma yoga intends to cut the bonds of ego involvement by acting out, in the right way, impulses that were set into motion in the wrong way in the past. Spiritually harmful impulses can be redirected into constructive tendencies. Avarice, for example, can be overcome by practicing generosity. The wish to harm other can be purified by serving them selflessly. BHAKTI YOGA:-The practice of bkakti yoga is intended to awaken the emotions to calm and focua them, not to them. As floating debris is drawn into the wake of a ship, so the desire for worldly satisfaction is drawn into the “wake” of intense devotional yearning for God. Again just as our daily responsibilities pale into insignificance before some overwhelming tragedy—the death, for example, of someone dear to us—so our lesser attachments loosen their grip on our minds when we are overwhelmed by intense pangs of separation from God.