A Third and Fourth Presence

A Third and Fourth Presence

“Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman—But who is that on the other side of you?” —TS Eliot

In May of 1916, Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton and his crew were miraculously rescued from a 22-month harrowing test of survival after their fatefully named ship, the HMS Endurance, could not endure the heavy pack ice that bounded and crushed their vessel in the freezing Antarctic waters. In their last bleak and exhausting 36 hours, traversing mountains thousands of feet high covered in glaciers, Shackleton and two other men reached a whaling station on Elephant Island to get help for the rest of the crew.

[T]he three men had to cross the island’s mountainous interior with just a rope and an axe, in a journey that few had attempted before or since. By reaching Stromness they managed to save all the men left from the ill-fated Imperial Transantarctic Expedition. [W]eeks later all three men reported an uncanny experience during their trek: a feeling that “often there were four, not three” men on their journey. The “fourth” that accompanied them had the silent presence of a real person, someone walking with them by their side, as far as the whaling station but no further. Shackleton was apparently deeply affected by the experience, but would say little about it in subsequent years, considering it something “which can never be spoken of.—An excerpt from an article in The Guardian

The Third and Fourth States of Consciousness (Higher Emotional Center and Higher Intellectual Center) are difficult to speak about mostly because of our inexperience with these states, but also partly because when we do speak of them, we are limited to words and descriptions that come from our lower centers. In other words, even the King of Diamonds and the King of Hearts are still a part of our lower functions trying to explain the higher dimension. To make it more confusing, the Third and Fourth States of Consciousness work in tandem, so they are not easily distinguishable one from another.

These “accidental” higher states (referred to in our School as Uncreated Light) are most often associated with times of physical and emotional extremes, insurmountable challenges, dangers, emotional upheaval, ecstatic joy or when large buffers are broken down and we see our internal contradictions and multiplicity. In Schools devoted to consciousness and presence, the Work becomes removing what prevents the emergence and recognition of Higher Centers (our mechanicality) and discovering through self-observation what intentionally might evoke and sustain these higher states (self-remembering).

Waiting around for physical and emotional tumult to awaken higher states is not an option if we desire to make this state permanent, because these accidental circumstances occur so rarely and randomly in life. These states are a gift but cannot be relied upon. To observe and become aware of our mechanicality and to gradually replace those mechanics with self-remembering makes higher states possible through our own effort (Created Light). Schools of the past have left us keys to the door of Higher Centers, and it is the student’s Work to unlock their potential with the help of Influence C and sustain this “silent presence beyond the whaling station.”

“Fortitudine Vincimus,” (through endurance, we conquer).—Sir Ernest Shackleton’s family motto

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Angel (detail) by Pesellino, Uffizi