Wheels of Life

by Anodea Judith

  This place within is the seat of consciousness and the origin of our manifesting current. All acts of creation begin with conception. We must first conceive of an idea before we can enact it. This begins in the mind and then descends through the chakras into manifestion. Conception gives us the pattern and manifestation fills it with substance, giving it form. Pattern implies order. To the Hindus, order is the underlying universal reality. Indeed, if we look at nature and the celestial universe, the apparent intelligence of its exquisite order is astonishing.

  Pattern relates to the word for father, pater. The father gives the seed (the DNA), the information or pattern which stimulates the creation of form. Conception begins when a pattern is adequately received. It is then the maternal aspect that gives substance to the pattern (as well as half the DNA). Mother comes from mater, as does the English word: matter. To make something matter, it must materialize, manifest, be "mothered." In this way, Shiva provides the form or pattern, while Shakti, as the mother of the universe, provides the raw energy that materializes the form.

  We may think that consciousness is invisible, but we only need to look around us-at the structure of our cities, the furnishings in our houses, or the contents of our bookshelves-to see the incredible versatility of consciousness in its manifested form. If we want to know what consciousness looks like, our world-both natural and manmade-is its expression. Consciousness is the field of patterns from which manifestation emerges.

  What, then, is "higher" consciousness? Higher consciousness is the awareness of a higher or deeper order-one that is more inclusive. Higher consciousness is sometimes called cosmic consciousness, and refers to awareness of a cosmic or celestial order. Where the lower chakras are full of millions of bits of information about the physical world and its cycles of cause and effect, cosmic consciousness reaches far into the galaxies and beyond, opening to the awareness of unifying truths. It is the perception of meta-patterns, overarching organizational principles of our cosmic ordering system. From this place we can descend again to lesser orders with an innate understanding of their structure and function as subsets of these meta-patterns.

  At Sahasrara, we are furthest removed from the material worldand with it the limitations of space and time. In this sense the seventh chakra has the greatest versatility and can encompass the greatest scope of any of the chakras, hence its state of liberation. Within our thoughts we can jump from ancient Stone Age to visions of the future. We can imagine being in our backyard or think of a distant galaxy, all in a mere instant. We can create, destroy, learn, and grow-all from a place existing within and requiring no movement or change without.

  Some say Sahasrara is the seat of the soul, an eternal and dimensionless witness that stays with us throughout lifetimes. Others say it is the point through which the divine spark of Shiva enters the body and brings intelligence. It is the master processor of all awareness-the gateway to worlds beyond and worlds within, the dimensionless circumference that encompasses all that is. However we choose to describe it, we must remember that its scope is far greater than our words can convey. It can only be experienced.

  CONSCIOUSNESS

  The Universal Force is a universal Consciousness. This is what the seeker discovers. When he has contacted this current of consciousness in himself, he can switch on to any plane whatsoever of the universal reality, to any point, and perceive, understand the consciousness there, or even act upon it, because everywhere it is the same current of consciousness with different vibratory modalities.

  -Satprem, on Sri Aurobindos

  Each of the chakras is a manifestation of consciousness at different layers of reality, with earth being the most dense, and the seventh chakra, as its opposite, the pure unmanifest consciousness, known in yoga philosophy as purusha. At chakra seven we must now ask the questions: What is this thing called consciousness? What is its purpose? How do we tap into it?

  These are certainly big questions, and ones which have been asked by men and women since the beginning of time. And yet, to enter our last dimension-the dimension of mind, awareness, thought, intelligence, and information-we must begin the inquiry, for the very faculty that is asking is consciousness itself-the object of our quest.

  It is when we ask ourselves, "Who is minding the store?" that we look inside and notice the awareness within. It does little good to gripe about the store's contents without asking this question. If we want a change, we must be willing to take it up with the manager. Some call this the witness, an aware being that is always present in the mystery of the Self. To witness our own awareness is to begin to fathom the mysterious possession of consciousness.

  This phenomenon is nothing short of miraculous. A faculty that we all have-but cannot see, touch, measure, or hold-is the indelible reality that makes us alive. Its enormous capacity for regulating the body, playing music, speaking multiple languages, drawing pictures, reciting poetry, remembering phone numbers, appreciating a sunset, solving a puzzle, experiencing pleasure, loving, yearning, acting, seeing -the faculty of consciousness is endless in its remarkable abilities. To really turn our gaze of attention upon this miracle is to enter the endless unfolding petals of the lotus, and the true source of the Self.

  That Self maintains a storehouse of memory, a set of belief systems, and a capacity to take in new data, while somehow integrating all this information into a coherent sense of meaning. This search for meaning is the driving force of consciousness and the search for the underlying unity of experience. When our own lives have meaning, they become part of a larger structure. When something lacks meaning, it doesn't match up with anything. Meaning is the pattern that connects. It brings us closer to unity. Meaning links the individual to the universal, the true meaning of yoga. I believe this search for meaning is the basic drive of the crown chakra in all experiences prior to samadhi, (where meaning becomes obvious).

  From the mundane to the mystical, the search for meaning is behind most activities of the mind. If your boss is cross with you, you might ask, what does this mean? Is she having a bad day? Is it something you did wrong? Is she expecting too much from you? Are you in the wrong job? When people have accidents, illnesses, or auspicious coincidences, they search for meaning to help integrate the experience. As a therapist, I am told daily about events that occur in my clients' lives. Again and again, they ask the question, "What does this mean?"

  Once we discern the meaning of a situation, we know better what to do, or how to operate, and we can again flow with the situation. This gives us our basic operating system. It connects us to an overarching sense of order, which can then integrate the rest of our experience into wholeness.

  Consciousness is a force, related to the sattva guna. This force is one of unity, order, and organization. It is the design, the pattern, the intelligence. From crisscrossing wave forms in the brain to the structure of molecules, buildings and cities, consciousness is the ordering principle inherent in all things. Existence itself is but a vortex of conscious organization.

  Tapping into this great field of consciousness causes it to descend, where it wraps itself around existing structures and becomes information. Information is the perceived lines of order that make up one's personal operating system. The very act of thinking is the process of following lines of order. As vehicles of consciousness, our natural inclination is to express that information-to use it and manifest it. The ultimate expression is physical form, yet it is the most limited. Because of its limitation, consciousness, after manifesting, wants to free itself from the binding of the physical and return again to its source-the nonphysical, where it can play in its infinite diversity. So the nature of consciousness is to both manifest and liberate, the eternal dance of Shiva and Shakti.

  TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  That within us which seeks to know and to progress is not the mind but something behind it which makes use of it.

  -Sri Aurobindo6

  Awareness implies the focus of attention. You may speak to me while I'm asleep,
but I'm not aware of it-my attention is focused elsewhere. Scenes may drift by while I'm driving, but they escape my awareness and may be unfamiliar next time I see them. To open awareness we must notice where our attention goes. Then we can expand or focus it at will.

  Information is around us in great multitude every moment of our lives. In order to use this information, we focus our attention on small amounts at a time. To be reading this book, you are focusing your attention on it, and away from other things, such as traffic, noisy children, or nearby conversation.

  The consciousness of the crown chakra can be roughly divided into two types, depending upon where our attention goes: That which descends and becomes concrete information, useful for manifesting in the world, and that which expands and travels outward toward more abstract planes. The first is oriented toward the world of things, relationships, and the concrete self. It is a result of limiting attention. It is the consciousness that actively thinks, reasons, learns, and stores information. It is our Cognitive Consciousness. We can think of it as the lower focus of the crown chakra, organizing finite bits of detail into ever larger structures.

  The second type of consciousness I call Transcendent Consciousness. It interfaces to a realm beyond the world of things and relationships. It is consciousness without an object, without awareness or reference to the individual self, and without the wide fluctuations that occur in the logical and comparative thought patterns of Cognitive Consciousness. Instead, this form of consciousness floats in a meta-awareness, encompassing all things simultaneously without focusing on any objects in particular. It floats because it lets go of the normal "objects of consciousness," and thus becomes weightless and free.

  Cognitive Consciousness requires that awareness be focused on the finite and particular, sorted and assembled in logical order. Transcendent Consciousness requires opening awareness beyond cognition. To perceive higher order implies a greater distancing from the minute and particular. Paradoxically, this opening beyond cognition has the result of increasing the scope of our focused attention. By emptying the mind, that which remains is more pronounced, like watching someone alone on a field of snow as opposed to finding them on a crowded street.

  INFORMATION

  Space/time coordinates are not primary coordinates of physical reality, but are organizing principles invoked by consciousness to put its information in order.

  -Robert Jahn'

  Through our experiences, each one of us builds a personal matrix of information within our minds. From the first glimpse of our mother's face to our doctoral dissertations and beyond, we spend our lives trying to piece together some sense of order from what we see around us. Each bit of information we receive gets incorporated into that matrix, making it ever more complex. As it grows more complex it tends to periodically "reorganize" itself, finding higher levels of order which simplify its system. The bottom falls out, restructuring occurs, and with it a more efficient use of energy. This is the familiar "aha" reflex-the little enlightenments that come when some piece falls into place, allowing a new wholeness to be perceived. Enlightenment is a progressive understanding of ever greater wholeness. In our holographic paradigm, each new piece of information allows the basic picture to gain clarity.

  Matrix structures are created from the meaning we derive from experience. They then become our personal belief systems and the ordering principles of our lives. We are part of this order and we organize all that we encounter according to this matrix, preferring to keep our inner and outer experiences coherent. If my belief system says that women are inferior, I will manifest that in all my actions, including finding people to corroborate it. If I believe this is my lucky day, I am more likely to manifest positive things in my life today.

  Our belief systems are comprised of the various bits of meaning we have derived from our experience. If we repeatedly fail, and we tell ourselves that it means we are stupid, we eventually generate a belief in our own stupidity. These belief systems form the matrix into which all other information is funneled. If I tell you a bit of feedback, you run that piece of data against your background of knowledge and add it to your belief systems. You might say, "Oh, I can never do anything right or, I can never please you." That is a belief taken from what meaning you derive. Another person, with another belief system, may derive an entirely different meaning.

  The relationship between meaning and belief is so strong that if some piece of data does not fit our inner matrix, we might say, "Oh, I don't believe you," and discard the information entirely. If I told someone I saw an extraterrestrial (I haven't), most people would not believe me, for they have no matrix for such an experience. If I told the same information to someone at a UFO conference, they might indeed believe me, or give the experience an entirely different meaning.

  This is one of the traps of the mind. How do we take in new information and expand our consciousness, if we reject anything that does not fit the current inner paradigm? And if we disregard this inner matrix, how do we discern truth from fiction, or organize the vast amount of information that we receive at each moment?

  The best answer to this lies in meditation, for it is a practice that allows the mind to sort through its data, discard outmoded belief systems and unnecessary information, and reset the personal matrix with an underlying unity. (Meditation is like defragmenting your hard drive -it leaves more room to operate and record new information without crashing your system.) It is meditation that allows our crown chakra to open the awareness ever wider without getting overwhelmed or lost in the infinite. It helps us retain our center, which is the primary organizing matrix of the Self.

  Downloading Information

  Parapsychological research, past life regression, and other studies have shown that there are certain qualities of the mind that exist independently of the brain. In some cases of past life regression, people have been able to remember facts that are objectively provable. They accurately describe a house they have never seen, they speak a foreign language, or they describe events that are later documented by journals, letters, or books. Obviously, since the human body/hardware has been completely made over, some information exists outside of the brain.

  All this data implies that there is some kind of information field existing independently of its perceiver, much as radio waves exist independently of radios, or the Internet exists whether or not you have a computer. The body, with its amazing nervous system and reactive capacity, is the receiver of this information, just as your computer can receive and download information from the Internet.

  This field, though it may be immaterial in the physical world, is nonetheless a very real and causative factor, just as an invisible magnetic field causes metal shavings to take a certain shape. This is why the higher planes are often called causal planes. When we "tune in" we can tap this information field and enter the realm of causality.

  The biologist, Rupert Sheldrake, has coined a term that at least partially describes this phenomenon, called "morphogenetic fields," from morphe, "form", and genesis, "coming into being" The theory of morphogenetic fields postulates that the universe functions not so much by immutable laws as by "habits"-patterns created by the repetition of events over time. The repetition of these habits creates a field in a "higher" dimension which then increases the likelihood that events will fall into that pattern. Morphogenetic fields are characterisitic of objects and behaviors, and may explain much of what is called instinct.

  The morphogenetic field for rabbits, for example, is created by the sheer number of rabbits that exist and have existed in the past. Anything that is coming into being that even closely resembles a rabbit will fall into the high probability of "rabbitness" created by that field. If you walked into a hardware store and said you wanted something with a handle that could drive nails, the likelihood that the manager would say "hammer" is very high-because so many already exist. Now that nail guns are more common, it's more likely, that, too, might be suggested. Twenty years ago it would have been unlikely,
because there weren't very many nail guns.

  Morphogenetic fields pertain to the relationships between consciousness and manifestation as they form a two-way link between the two worlds. The field is built up through what occurs in the tangible world, through repetition and habit. Then the field, once established, dictates future forms in the material world. The tendency to conform varies with the strength of the field. Says Sheldrake:

  It wouldn't be possible for a new field to set up in the presence of an overwhelming influence from a pre-existing habit. What can happen is that higher level fields can integrate lower level habits into new syntheses .... Evolution proceeds not by changing basic habits but by taking the basic habits it's given, and building more and more complex patterns out of them. 8

  An example of this is the overweight person who loses fifty pounds and has an insatiable desire to eat until just that amount of weight is regained. Have you ever noticed how heavy people tend to stay at about the same amount of heaviness most of the time, despite dieting or binges? The morphogenetic field of the body wants to maintain its familiar form. By reaching into a different level, "thinking thin" has been a more effective way to reduce, for it is changing the field that is causal to the form of the body.

  When beliefs are held by large numbers of people, their field is stronger, lessening the chance for the survival of opposing beliefs. The field created by the belief in male supremacy is a primary example because it has been instilled so completely into our culture over the last several thousand years, offering greater advantages to men, who are then able to achieve more. As more women find their power through feminism, another field is being generated that allows the cultural belief system to change form. But this takes a long time and many, many women and men to involve themselves in building up the new field. As time goes by and the field gets stronger, it makes it easier for the next generation of women and men to hold a new belief system.