Higher States

Higher States

From our friend, Charles R.

Higher states are inherent in every man, woman and child. Every person on the face of the Earth, at one time or another, experiences higher states of consciousness. But these higher states come few and very far between, and are, unfortunately, completely and utterly misunderstood when they appear. Rodney Collin observed that all men have the birthright of a soul in embryo, that is, the possibility of a permanent connection to higher centers. He goes on to say that ‘….this embryo must in some way be fertilized to start the process by which it can become conscious and develop its full stature.’ Only when we remember ourselves, refrain from expressing negative emotions and transform suffering does this ‘fertilization’ occur.

Some of the efforts needed to separate our Higher Self from the lower self consists in learning the difference between consciousness and functions, and when efforts are sincere and consistent, higher centers are accessible. But even with a detailed description of how to introduce and prolong a higher state, the question remains, how can a higher state be portrayed?

This was Peter Ouspensky’s dilemma when he began to experience higher centers and realized that there were no words to describe the experience. “I now come to a most difficult thing because there is no possibility whatever of describing the facts themselves. Why? I have often put this question to myself. And I could only answer that there was far too much in them of what was personal for them to be made common property. And I think that it was so not only in my case but that it always is so. I remember that assertions of this kind always made me indignant when I came across them in the memoirs or the notes of people who had passed through any sort of extraordinary experiences and afterwards refused to describe them. They had sought the miraculous and, in one form or another, they thought they had found it. But when they had found what they sought they invariably said: "I have found it. But I cannot describe what I have found."—It always seemed to me to be artificial and invented. And now I found myself in exactly the same position. I had found what I sought. I saw and observed facts that entirely transcended the sphere of what we consider possible, acknowledged, or admissible, and I can say nothing about them.” Obviously words are unable to describe a wordless state.

The arts however offer us the possibility of approaching a description of higher centers. William Blake, seemed to have envisioned beautifully a fully awakened man. Looking at his painting Glad Day, the expression on the figure’s countenance and his posture are bereft of any inner-considering of his naked state, rather as if he’s celebrating his freedom from the ‘clothes’ of the lower self. Walt Whitman said as much in his epic poem Song of Myself “I celebrate myself….” The very title of the painting ‘Glad Day’ suggests a positive shift from the ‘dark night’ of unconscious mechanicality to a permanent ‘sunlit’ conscious principle.

The rock that the figure stands upon may be how Blake experienced or envisioned the difference between higher centers and the lower self. The figure appears before a backdrop of a multi-colored sunrise ablaze with a seemingly divine energy that also evokes a sense of the difference between higher centers and the second state.

When we ask the question, ‘Is it possible for us to live in a state of awakened consciousness that exponentially surpasses the mechanical energy of the Sun and will outlive the stars?’ The answer we receive is, this is the raison d'être of a school, where possibilities become probabilities.

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Image: William Blake Glad Day, British Museum London