Expanding Consciousness: from ‘i’ to ‘we’ to ‘oneness’

Expansion of Consciousness

Part 2:  From ‘i’ to ‘we’ to ‘Oneness’

Over time, I have come to appreciate that I can cultivate expansion of consciousness through Heartfulness meditation, practiced with interest. This is such a complex and profound topic, that I have divided my thoughts into several blogs.  The first blog summarized some thoughts about what expansion means in terms of the early steps of moving 1) from thinking to feeling to being to beyond; 2) from intelligence to intuition to wisdom, and 3) from arrogance to humility and ultimately to love. That blog focused on the earliest stages – thinking to feeling; intelligence to intuition; arrogance to humility.  But what about the rest of the journey – moving to being and beyond, to wisdom, and to love? 

I am part of a team that has been studying consciousness for the past three years, grappling with how to define consciousness, measure it, and study it in context of Heartfulness practices.  One of us described this process as follows: 

‘We start our journey from high levels of individual consciousness (individuality), where I am conscious only about me, my-self, my career, my pleasures and pains, etc. Our individual consciousness starts expanding when we start feeling connected to (or appreciating) something more than just me. It may be my family, my country men, the humanity, etc. Yet ‘I’ is still active as you can observe; it has only expanded from ‘me’ to ‘my others’ be it family, country, world. If we continue to expand beyond, should we, not then, feel connected to dimensions beyond the boundaries of self (me and my-self), the life that is larger than self and so on, the whole of creation. We can say that we have surpassed different spheres or dimensions of existence. We start with high levels of individual consciousness (feeling of separateness or individuality) and move towards more connected (united) consciousness (feeling less and less of separateness from rest of life) and finally arrive at a state of absolute unity (all life is united). Thus, we travel from individuality through varied levels of unity and then to absolute unity. This journey (or expansion) happens in the super consciousness.’  (Krishnamurthy Jyanna, used with permission)

I have long mulled over how these changes are expressed in daily life and have found it difficult to put words to this part of the experience of expanding consciousness.  Recently I began a serious study of ‘The Authentic Yoga –Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ by P Y Deshpande.  This book has given me some words to express how this aspect of expanding consciousness is expressed in a practical sense.  Central to the sutras* are two concepts that I have found to be particularly compelling:  ‘not choosing’ and ‘seer’ versus the ‘seen’. 

The concept of ‘not choosing’ was a particularly challenging thought for me, given my deep training in the use of inductive and deductive reasoning to make all kinds of life decisions from the smallest to the largest.  How could I let go of choosing?  And what would that feel like?  How on earth could I wrap my mind around the possibility of ‘not choosing’?  This sutra indicated that one needs to let go of this habit of choosing and just ‘be’, letting that which is necessary happen. That seemed to me to be improbable – maybe impossible.  How would I ‘know’ whether what was happening was the right thing or the wrong thing if I didn’t direct it?  Deshpande’s explanation helped me to understand what not choosing entails and why choosing to not choose is critical if I want to move from ‘we’ to ‘Oneness’. The clarity that came from reading his commentary is that every thought and impression that I have necessarily arises from past impressions. Hence my thoughts and interpretations are not ‘reality’.  They originate from the perceptions that came through the filters that developed because of past experiences.   My strategy of using deductive reasoning to know what will happen is based on the past; my use of inductive reasoning to infer the future also is grounded in the past.  And so long as I am grounded in the past, I am never in the present, yet that is where reality resides. 

I have come to understand that the only way to be in the present is to listen to my heart, where wisdom resides and to appreciate my heart’s wisdom as ‘consciousness of what is needed’.  Thus ‘not choosing’ happens when I am willing to let go of intellect and access the  ‘wisdom’ of my heart.

Having thoroughly understood the limitations of thought, I was faced with a real dilemma – Where does the courage come from to let go of a long-held strategies of life?  How can I know if I am listening to the wisdom of my heart and that my thoughts aren’t tricking me.  Here are some strategies I have used.

First, in terms of ‘listening to my heart’, I have learned to pause until I am sure.  My first spiritual teacher, Chariji, taught me something critical which I paraphrase here:  The heart always knows, but often we don’t want to hear what the heart is telling us.  If one has a decision to make, wait until there is only one clear option. If one is weighing pros and cons, then one is listening to thoughts, not to the heart.

I have found that when I truly listen, an inner feeling tells me – ‘yes – this is what you must do’. I have learned to accept that inner feeling. In part 1 of this series I gave an example of listening to the inner feeling when I sold my house in Denver.  So, yes – I can do this sometimes, when I really stop and ask ‘what should I do’ and then truly listen.  But how can I master living in this place of ‘not choosing’ always?

A second strategy is to watch how I proceed through the day from the simplest activities to the most profound and to adjust my choices when they are directed by my thoughts instead of my heart.  For example – For a while, I paid a lot of attention to what I ate for breakfast.  Why do I have one thing for breakfast instead of something else?  Is it habit?  Desire? (I love toast with butter!)  Or what I need at this point of time?  I was puzzled for a long time by Babuji saying that he couldn’t even take a drink of water without his spiritual guides’ permission. Clearly Babuji didn’t call his teacher to ask if he could take a drink.  Over time, I came to understand that Babuji drank water when it was needed, when prompted by his heart – and not because he had a conscious thought that ‘maybe he should have water now – I will ask Lalafji [his spiritual guide]’.  Similarly, I am learning to let go of my conscious thought processes to choose to eat oatmeal for breakfast today instead of, for example, a protein drink. I am learning to act based on what my heart prompts. The practice of observing and waiting to decide even the simplest activities is just that – practice.

A third strategy (and the most critical), central to learning to hearing what my heart prompts, is all the cleaning and meditation that provide a platform for expanding consciousness. The Heartfulness practices gradually remove old impressions.   This helps me to focus on my heart so that I can hear its wisdom over the chatter of my mind.  When I consciously remove the load of impressions formed daily and meditate with a trainer (or ideally directly with my spiritual teacher) to remove the old and hardened impressions, I can begin to see more clearly.  When I meditate with regularity, I develop the habit of listening to my heart and gradually become more adept at hearing its wisdom when I need to act. 

Deshpande’s second point that spoke deeply to me is the difference between the ‘seer’ and the ‘seen’. This concept was hard for me to articulate until I thought of a simple analogy:  When I get up in the morning, I might put on jeans and a comfortable shirt – or maybe a suit – or maybe my exercise clothes.  I put on the different clothes, depending on what I need to accomplish at that time.  The clothes don’t change who I am; I am still ‘me’.  In an analogous manner, I may be someone who writes blogs and makes podcasts; you might be an IT specialist; and another person might be a naturopath.  Yet we are all part of something bigger than our external beings – we are part of a single ‘oneness’.  The ‘oneness’ has lots of different personifications because of all the different roles that are needed in order for the world as we know it to exist.  Action requires personas, but they are just personifications, needed for the actions that are required for life. 

The problem for our spiritual evolution comes when we equate the personification with our true ‘self’.  Just as the clothes that I put on in the morning are just outer coverings, separate from who I ‘am’, so too the personalities that each of us puts on and the roles in life that each of us plays (the seen), are just coverings of the oneness that is all of us (the seer). 

Accepting that I am analogous to a pair of jeans, or a suit, or exercise clothes takes me quite a bit of ‘letting go’ – letting go of the idea that I am someone unique, special, and individual.  But I have come to fully appreciate that until I am truly willing to let go – fully willing to become insignificant – I can never be a pure part of oneness.  This takes two things:  First, I have to be willing.  Without willingness to entertain the possibility that I am insignificant, I will never become that.  And second, it takes total humility – something I continue to work on daily.

Here's what I now understand about moving toward ‘being and beyond’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘love’:  One doorway to embodying these characteristics is to combine ‘not choosing’ with an appreciation that I need to let go of ‘seeing myself as real’ and to let go of a desire to be ‘seen’ if I want to transcend my ‘self’ to be a pure expression of the whole. These two concepts are intimately related to moving from thinking to feeling to being and beyond, from intellect to intuition to wisdom, and from arrogance to humility to love.  To complete this journey requires a leap from living in a world of ‘I am-ness’ to being one with all. This is not trivial to say the least. 

This whole understanding leads to two final thoughts about expanding consciousness.  First – what does it mean to move from humility to love?  And second – what it the ‘anatomy’ of this journey from ‘i’ to ‘we’ to ‘Oneness’ or ‘universality’?  These two issues will be the topic of the next blog.  Stay tuned!

* The term ‘sutra’ refers to pithy observations of wisdom that offer guidelines to living a meaningful and purposeful life. Patanjali identified eight limbs including restraint, observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal from the senses, attention, meditation, and stillness. His sutras, which are short but complex statements, cover these topics. Deshpande’s commentary discusses the importance of each sutra, clarifying the meaning and helping the reader think about how to apply these sutras to daily life.