The average individual at this point on the evolutionary cycle is conscious only of being a single unit, separated from all other units of the human race. One sees oneself as one unit among many. Believing this to be true, one lives for oneself in everyday waking consciousness, and perhaps adding to this in the daily round of experience, the glimmer of recognition that somewhere there is a Supreme Being Whom one acknowledges theoretically as omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. One may label this recognition as God, Absolute, Nature, Allah, Brahma, Yahweh, or simply, the Great Spirit.
Between this vague recognition of ‘God transcendent’ and the more advanced stage of ‘God immanent’, there are numerous shifts in consciousness that must be experienced before one recognises the fact that far Superior Beings exist in the universe. This revelation of truth marks a high point in the evolutionary process and a permanent shift in consciousness. One’s vision changes significantly. ‘One comes to recognise, in the process of Life, one’s Higher Self as the true Self, and from that stage passes on into that of group consciousness’.
At the stage of group consciousness comes the recognition of universal Brotherhood, in which one knows oneself to be non-different from other beings regardless of outer appearances and differences. With consciousness awakened to higher truth, one merges in time within the human race as a collective unit, the heart opens and wisdom is bien, for one knows now, as a result of a long series of expansions, that one is in fact a very real part of a greater Whole. These expansions take place in time and the realisations are felt in ‘the thinking, waking consciousness’ of daily living.
‘The whole matter resolves itself (in time) into the expansion of the mind until it dominates the lower, and into the faculty of abstract conception which results eventually in physical plane manifestation. It means making the highest theories and ideals demonstrable facts . . . and is the equipping of the lower until it provides a fitting expression for the Higher’.
The practice of meditation plays an intrinsic part in securing these higher recognitions.
Every man/woman entering upon the path of inner development and aspiring toward the Higher Self, has passed the stage of the average person who regards the self from the separated standpoint, working only for what is good for the little self. The aspiring individual ever aims at something higher than the little self, ever seeking to merge with the Higher Self and with all that is entailed in this endeavour.
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