We have to adjust our subconscious to the idea that we are a superconscious being, rather than an instinctive being or an intellectual being driven by the impulses of the five senses. Awareness is the core of us. If we stepped into another physical body tomorrow, we would still be a superconscious being, but with another physical body, different than the one we had yesterday, with an entirely new subconscious and new external environment. You would have a new physical body, a new subconscious mind and a new external environment to adjust to. In this new body you would soon forget that you are a superconscious being.
When Are You Superconscious?
It is easier to know when you are not superconscious than when you are superconscious, because your superconsciousness is such a natural state. When you are feeling really good and satisfied within yourself, you are superconscious. When your timing is right, when everything is happening just right during the day, you are superconscious. When nothing seems to be happening right, then your awareness is flowing through one of the congested areas of the thought realm. When everything seems to be going wrong, you are flowing through an instinctive area or a congested intellectual area. When you are arguing with yourself, you are not superconscious. When discussing something with someone, you are not superconscious, for superconsciousness is a one-way street. You speak right from the core of existence without really thinking about what you are going to say. When you are disturbed about yesterday, or even have a consciousness that there was a yesterday, you are not in a superconscious state. When you are afraid, you are not in a superconscious state. When you are peaceful, when you are calm, when you are in the eternity of the moment, when you feel secure on the inside of you, you are in a superconscious state. Super consciousness is not something you will get, because you have never been without it. You are superconscious this very minute, and functioning in all five states of the mind.
If you can remain totally centered in awareness of the energy within your spine and the energy within the head, you become aware of the same energy within everybody and everything you see. You are immediately in a superconscious state when this happens. You may find yourself beginning to lean on other people rather than on your own spine. When you discover this happening, then begin to meditate. Go deep within yourself again and find superconsciousness. Seek the company of people who center their awareness within. This will make it easier for you to do so. Being around people who center awareness in the external areas of the mind is difficult because they draw your awareness into the external areas of the thought strata. You actually see from the inside of everything that you look at to the exterior of it. You look at a tree. You first see the energy within the tree. The bark is the last thing you see. When you are in an outer consciousness, first you see the bark of the tree and then you intellectually surmise that there must be energies within it because you happen to notice that a leaf is growing and assume that it must be alive.
Learn to Move Awareness
All you have to do is to reprogram the subconscious a little and move awareness out of the conscious mind, and your journey is within. You are super conscious now. You do not have to “get to be” superconscious. This is not something that is going to happen to you all of a sudden and then cause you to be different. The thing that is going to happen to you is that you will release your individual awareness from the so-called bondages of the habit patterns of the external mind that it had been accustomed to flowing through. Once it is released, you will automatically flow into other inner areas of the mind. Though you are superconscious right now, awareness is still externalized enough that you touch into it only a little bit and then are pulled back to the subconscious or to the conscious mind.
Through regular practice of meditation, one learns to move awareness through the superconscious areas like a dancer learns to move across the stage according to the rhythm of the music.
The Use Of Intuition
Intuition is the natural way in which man expresses himself on Earth or any other planet on which he might find expression of his being. This natural flow of mana, the Polynesian word for prânic sakti, from and through him only becomes inhibited when he disconnects from the nerve system of the celestial into the nerve system of the animal. When this occurs, there, therefore, is a disconnect between superconsciousness and external consciousness. Man’s individual awareness is either captured by the nerve system of external consciousness, of the successive animal bodies which his soul inhabits as a vehicle to live on Earth in, or man’s individual awareness is captured by his celestial nerve system, matured on aged planets in the galaxy prior to arrival here on Earth. This, then, is superconsciousness—the natural expression of the transcendental soul known as man.
Intuition day by day occurs spasmodically, but it does occur. And systematically one can gear his observation of his own intuitional faculties and find out exactly when these intuitive functions occur within him.
How does one distinguish between intuition and usual thought-feeling processes? Desires come through feeling, warmth of emotion, as do thoughts, schemes, ways of manipulating the media forces for one’s own personal benefit or that of a loved one. This is contrary to the power of intuition, which runs cold and is direct, like a bolt of lightning in the inner sky or the subtle rainbow of an etheric aura which bypasses the processes of current thinking, giving answers before the question and solving problems before they have accrued.
It is only through sâdhana and divesting oneself—in order to perform sâdhana—from the social structure of the conglomerate of mortals that surround you that you will actually be able to prudently delineate between true intuition and the imposing factors of need and greed that often seem paramount when living up to the externalities of the instinctive nerve system.
Subduing The Intellect
Though we often use the terms “unfolding intuitive faculties” and “developing intuition,” they are only used in an effort to encourage the aspirant on the path to work within himself in subduing his intellect so that he can actually observe the already functioning totality of the intuitive area of the mind. In order to subdue the intellect, that conglomerate of thought patterns and established modes of procedure according to the culture of the day, it is first quite necessary to inwardly observe how one’s acquired intellect actually functions. Observation is a faculty of the intuitive area of the mind, and this particular aspect of observation that I have just described comes into usage only after regular periods of meditation have been maintained over a long period of time. True, our intuitive faculties do constantly mingle through thought sequences each day, but our ability to distinguish one from another is accrued only through regulated discipline of our individual power of awareness. Once an inkling of success comes in knowing intuition and how it differs from reasoning, emotional impulses and pre-programmed patterns within the subconscious, the contest is won. Then and then only we must persist to sustain this knowledge and dive deeper into the inevitable, all the time losing the future and the past, and loosening the reins of the intellect.
Excerpts from “Merging with Siva” by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami