Functions versus States
- 18 hours ago
- 3 min read
Functions versus States
The following selections are from Girard Haven’s book, Creating a Soul, available on Amazon.com.
To be practical, [the Work] must start from where we are, teaching us to walk and run before showing us how to fly. Consequently, our initial work focuses on functions, that is, on improving the being of the machine as a machine. It includes work to minimize false personality, to develop true personality and essence, to balance and control the four lower centers, and so on. It is a process of healing, in which personality acts on essence to restore it to its right functioning.
The highest function of the soul of man is the perception of truth. —Al Ghazali
Indirectly, this includes work on consciousness. Taken simply, consciousness is the means by which we are aware. For the machine, this is equivalent to attention, and since all work on the machine involves the use of attention, work on functions includes work on consciousness in the form of work to control and intensify attention.
However, since our aim is the development of consciousness independently of functions, work centered on functions must eventually prove inadequate. When one begins to see this, it means that work on the being of the machine—that is, work on functions in which work on consciousness occurs as a secondary effect—has produced results sufficient to make direct work on consciousness possible, using work on functions as a tool to achieve it.
You do not need brilliant functions to be a conscious being. You just need presence of third eye. —The Teacher
First, there is the work to render personality passive .… Next, essence becomes the first force when one begins to concentrate more on being oneself than on changing oneself …. Finally, it is necessary to add consciousness as the third force.
When work on functions is undertaken as a means of achieving states of consciousness rather than solely to improve the machine, the results are different. By focusing on states, one learns how the machine can be used to increase them in frequency, duration and intensity, and one begins to collect moments of consciousness rather than merely accumulate mechanical changes.
Work on consciousness begins with the study of states in oneself based on practical observation. It must be kept very simple. Sometimes one is aware of more or aware more intensely. These are moments of greater consciousness. They can be evoked by efforts, particularly efforts to work on oneself, and they can be evoked by unusual situations such as moments of great danger or great beauty. And sometimes, they simply come and go with no apparent cause. But in all cases, they share the sense of increased awareness, of being more awake, and they all create memory.
Through divided attention and self-observation one also becomes aware of the functions as they perceive. But, to separate consciousness entirely from functions, it is necessary to be aware of something that is itself separate from functions. Consciousness is the one thing we have that fits this description. By being aware of itself in addition to functions, consciousness has a means of manifesting which is not entirely dependent on functions and, since one’s sense of identity is determined by what one is aware of, this means that one begins to have a sense of oneself which is separate from the machine.
Our work is to realise conscious harmony. First in oneself individually. Then in one's group. Then gradually between groups and so projected infinitely out into the world. Individually, we must realise harmony between all our functions. —Rodney
Collin
Sunrise in Karnak, Egypt. Photographed by Frank Helmholz
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