Drawn from Gurudeva’s 12-hour Audio Cassette Edition of
The Master Course (1970) and earlier manuscripts§
When your awareness is in superconsciousness, you see yourself as pure life force flowing through people, through trees, through everything. I have seen myself, in a certain state of samadhi, as pure life force flowing through a jungle, through trees, through plants, through water, through air. That is superconsciousness. It is so permanent. It is so real. Nothing could touch it. Nothing could hurt it. In this state we see the external world as a dream, and things begin to look transparent to us. People begin to look transparent. This is superconsciousness. When we look at a physical object and we begin to see it scintillating in light as it begins to become transparent, this is superconsciousness. It is a very beautiful and natural state to be in.§
Occasionally, in deep meditation we see the head filled with an intense light, and we know that that is the natural state of man. This is superconsciousness: when we can look at another person and know what he is thinking and how he is feeling and how his subconscious is programmed. While we are looking at him, all of a sudden he can be seen in a past life, or in the future, or in the eternity of the moment. You are so naturally, without striving, in the superconscious area of the mind. No technique can give you these experiences that you unfold into as you walk the path toward merger. You come right into them, and the experience is how you are. Occasionally, when you close your eyes in meditation, you may see the face of your guru or some divine being that possibly once lived on Earth, and now just the shell of his subtle body remains vibrating in the ethers. You see superconscious beings while in the superconscious area of the mind. Occasionally you clairaudiently hear voices singing, music playing, just as Beethoven heard his wonderful symphonies that he recorded like a scribe. It is the superconscious mind again, so near, so real, so vibrant.§
And when you are in contemplation, so engrossed in the energies within you—within the physical body and the energy within that, and that within that—that you become totally engrossed in the peace of the central source of all energy, that too is superconsciousness. Being on the brink of Self Realization, having lost consciousness of the physical body and of being a mind, you are only conscious of a vast, bluish white light. You get into this through going into the clear white light and out through the other side of it. Then you come into pure consciousness. It is a vast, pure, pale bluish white light—endless, endless inner space. It is just on the brink of the Absolute, just on the brink of the fullness of Self Realization. When you are in this beautiful, blissful state of pure consciousness, you are barely conscious that you are there, because to have a consciousness of being conscious, you have to be conscious of another thing.§
These are some of the wonderful signposts on the path, all within your immediate grasp in this life, just as the ability to play the vina or the flute beautifully in this life is within your immediate grasp. It takes practice, following the rules and then more practice.§
Maturity of Being§
Now we begin to see the vastness and yet the simplicity of the superconscious mind as awareness flows through it. Nothing is there for awareness to attach itself to. When aware of something other than itself, awareness is in its natural state in subsuperconsciousness. Occasionally in superconsciousness we can feel and actually inwardly see the inner body, the body of the soul, and we can feel this body inside the physical body. This is the body of light. Then we know through feeling and seeing that this body has existed and will exist forever and ever and ever, and we enjoy moving within the energies of this inner body. As we feel them, we become so quiet, so centered, that awareness is aware of itself so intently that we are right on the brink of the Absolute, ready to dissolve, to merge, into That which is man’s heritage on Earth to realize, the maturity of his being, the Self God.§
We grow up physically. We grow up emotionally. We acquire a lot of knowledge. We must acquire the best knowledge, the cream of all knowledge. This is the knowledge of the path to enlightenment. And then, as awareness soars within, we begin to experience the realms of superconsciousness, man’s natural state. Then we have our ultimate experience, awareness dissolving into itself, beyond superconsciousness itself.§
After Self Realization, you are looking at the film, the movie of the actors and actresses, including yourself, previously seen as real, being more subsuperconsciously conscious of the light projected on the back of the film than of the pictures displayed, which were seen as real before this awakening. §
Willpower Is the Fuel§
You need a tremendous, indomitable will to make a reality of your quest of realizing the Being within. Unfoldment doesn’t take a lot of time. It just takes a lot of willpower. Someone can go along and sit at attention, and concentrate and meditate for years and years and years and, with a minimal amount of willpower, constantly be distracted, constantly be complaining and constantly be unsuccessful. Another person can have the exact same approach and over a short period of time be extremely successful, because he has will. The previous way he lived his life, the previous things that he did, he handled in such a way that that willpower was there, or his awareness is a manifestation of willpower, and he goes soaring within on this will.§
Will is the fuel which carries awareness through all areas of the mind, that spirit, that spiritual quality, which makes all inner goals a reality. Unfoldment does not take time. It takes a tremendous will. That will has to be cultivated, just as you would cultivate a garden. It has to be cultivated. Those energies have to all be flowing through, in a sense, one channel, so that everything that you do is satisfying, is complete, beautiful.§
Discover the will. Back to the spine. Feel the energy in the spine. There is no lack of it, is there? The more you use of it, the more you have to use of it. It is tuned right into the central source. When you become aware of the energy within your spine and within your head, you have separated awareness from that which it is aware of, for that is awareness itself, and that is will. We are playing with words a little. After awhile we will gain a new vocabulary for this kind of talk, but right now we are using our old-words’ way of looking at it, because our subconscious mind is more familiar with these words. Energy, awareness and willpower are one and the same. When we are subconsciously conscious that we are a superconscious being, and the subconscious mind has accepted the new programming that energy, willpower and awareness are one and the same thing, when the subconscious mind has accepted the fact that the mind was all finished long ago in all its phases of manifestation, from the refined to the gross—then the subconscious begins working as a pure channel, so to speak, for superconsciousness. Awareness can then flow in a very positive, in a very direct, way.§
You want awareness to be renewed. The first step is—don’t try to go to the Self; you haven’t realized it yet—go to the spine. Feel the spine. After you realize the Self, you go deeper than the spine, you go into the Self and come back. Before you realize the Self and have that samadhi—attention, concentration. Concentrate on the energy within the spine. Go in. Awareness, energy and will are all one. Come slowly out again and you have all the willpower you need to finish any job that you’ve ever started, to make decisions, to do things and handle your external life in a very positive way, so that it does not capture awareness and hold it steadfast for a period of time, deterring you on the path of enlightenment.§
Realization Requires Will§
Work with willpower, awareness and energy as three separate items first. Feel awareness and discover what it is. Use willpower and discover what it is. Feel energy and analyze energy and discover what it is. Then separate the three of them in your intellectual mind and experiential pattern. Then, after you’ve gotten that done, you will begin to see inside yourself that the three are one and the same. And it is actually the beautiful, pure intelligence of the immortal soul body, that body of light of you, on its path inward into its last phase of maturity on this planet. This inner body of light has been maturing through many, many different lives.§
If you would like to know how it came along, for instance if you had ninety lives on this planet, each life the body of light matured one year. So your body of light would be ninety years old, so to speak. You can look at it that way. That’s not quite the way it actually is, but looking at it that way gives you an idea of the maturing of this body of light. The pure intelligence of it is your awareness—which is energy and which is willpower—that life after life becomes stronger, more steadfast. Finally, in your last incarnation on the Earth, you merge into its final experience, that great samadhi, the Self, beyond the complete, still area of consciousness. You go in not knowing what you are getting into, and you come out wise. Your complete perspective is changed, and you only talk about it to those that are on the path of enlightenment, as they are the only ones steady enough or free enough to understand the depth of this realization.§
Here are the ingredients: attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation, samadhi. Willpower is the fuel. It does not take time. Someone asked me, “Do you think I can have this samadhi, realize the Self, in ten years?” I said, “I certainly don’t. I don’t think you have enough willpower to realize it in a hundred years, because it doesn’t take time. It takes will. If you had the will, you wouldn’t add ten years on it. You would simply be telling me, ‘I am going to have this realization.’ And I would believe you because I would feel your will moving out of every atom of your body. But the mere fact that you take an intellectual approach, I have to say no, because whatever I did think wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other. You are not going to get it with an attitude like that, because it’s not something you go out and buy. It’s not another getting, like ‘I have a car. I have clothes. I have a little money. And now, after I get my television paid for, I think I’ll get the Self, because that is the next thing to get. It’s really great. I read about it. I heard about it. I heard a speaker speak about it. I’m all fired up to get this Self, and it’s next in the line of getting, so I’m going to get it!’ §
It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get that which you have. You can’t get that which you have. It’s there. You have to give up the consciousness of the television, the money, the clothes, the people that you know, the personality that you thought you were, the physical body. You have to go into the elements of the physical body, into the elements of that, and into the energy of that, and into the vast inner space of that, and into the core of that, and into the that of that, and into the that of that, and finally you realize that you have realized the Self. And you’ve lost something. You lost your goal of Self Realization. And you come back into the fullness of everything, and you are no longer looking, and you are no longer asking, and you are no longer wanting. You just are.” When you get tired of the external area of the mind that you are flowing through, you simply dive in again.§
