SOME REMARKS ON CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONSCIENCE
Consciousness is 3D; the brain and the lower mind–2D. It’s as if those who insist “it’s just the brain” are like Flat Earthers. Like our planet, consciousness is a globe. Literally, it is a globe shaped field. It’s part of something bigger, but also self-contained in itself. Sort of like a bubble in a sea, but not so fragile.
I just used the term mind-bending casually today, as if bending minds is a good thing, and I asked myself: How bent do I want my mind to be? I picture my mind as stainless steel, and use input to bend it this way and that, to try to get it into a certain shape. Someday I’ll do it. It’s a pronged shape.
What is conscience, really? Is it just an uncomfortable feeling you get, a twinge when you do something selfish? That kind of “conscience” is fallible, and subject to your social conditioning, to the fears imprinted on us in childhood, and to biases.
In esoteric spirituality schools, especially those influenced by Plotinus and Gurdjieff, conscience is something we don’t have–despite the occasional twinge–until we gather enough authentic selfhood through self-observation, non-identification with automatic mental processes, self-knowledge, and an increase of consciousness itself. Then, it’s possible step back, within oneself; to open one’s attention, to tune into a higher mind that is part of the overmind of the cosmos. The higher mind adds its intellect to ours, so we have a real and infallible guide. It’s us and it’s more than us. It’s real conscience–arising from real consciousness.