Universal consciousness

“ Every explanation of anything by states of our consciousness, includes as part of the explanation a succession between those states; and it is useless attempting to analyse that which comes out as an element in every analysis we are able to make. Antecedence and consequence, as well as likeness and unlikeness, must be postulated as universal conditions of Nature, inherent in all our feelings whether of external or of internal consciousness.—Ed. ”

“ Hence universal contemplation must comprise the contemplation of as many individuals as the one life has created; and the immediate universal contemplation must extend just so far: namely, to the universal contemplation of all individuals from the standpoint of every single individual. ”

“ The human mind in seeking explanation of the phenomena of its consciousness—presumably a reflex of the universe without—tends to seek a unity of explanation. A unity of explanation requires a completeness in the mental scheme of what is to be explained. Thoughtful men in the Middle Ages craved a scheme of life complete even in detail, which should educe life’s currents from a primal Godhead, and project them compacted, with none left straying or pointing nowhither, on toward universal fulfilment of His will. ”

“ The fundamental elements of the human consciousness are, then, twelve in number. The first universal basis is formed by the eight special faculties, with love as their living center. To these must be added the three principles of the higher inward life—soul, spirit, and the idea of the divine—such as we have accurately defined and characterized it. These together I have called the alphabet of the consciousness. ”

“ This universal, this actually commonplace character of our human form of consciousness, first appears, if you will, as just an arbitrary fact of life. But it gives rise, we have said, to the whole problem of Being, as we men face that problem, and to the various definitions of the ontological predicate. What for us is real, is viewed as an Other that, if in its wholeness completely present, would consciously end at least so much of the finite search as could by any possibility be ended. ”

“ I still defend, and, in the fourth lecture of this volume I expound afresh, the thesis that the contrast between our “descriptive” knowledge of the physical world and our “appreciative” knowledge of the facts of finite life, is determined precisely by this difference between our social consciousness of what is “valid for all individuals” and our personal consciousness of what is valid for the Self. ”

“ In contemplating the relations between body, soul, and spirit, between Universal Mind and individual mind, the methodised study of which constitutes Mental Science, we must never forget that these relations indicate, not the separateness, but the unity of these principles. We must learn not to attribute one part of our action to one part of our being, and another to another. ”

“ Neither abstraction nor experience can bring us back to the source whence issue our ideas of necessity and of universality: this source is concealed in its origin in time from the observer, and its super-sensuous origin from the researches of the metaphysician. But, to sum up in a few words, consciousness is there, and, together with its immutable unity, the law of all that is for man is established, as well as of all that is to be by man, for his understanding and his activity. ”

“ These principles, based on the data of experience,—that is, on sensations the existence of which we know from consciousness, assure us that the objectiveness of sensations, or the reality of the external world, is a truth. ”

“ These sense-impressions, perceptions, ideas, and volitions, which form, simultaneously as well as successively, the elements of soul-life, carrying consciousness upon the waves of many subconscious states, make up the reality of the subject; they are the facts of its existence, and it is the states of consciousness only, not an underlying something, the existence of which is beyond all doubt. They form the basis of all knowledge. ”

“ In this sense, one can then say, the Absolute Unity of Consciousness contains, involves, includes, not merely finite types of self-consciousness, not merely finite contrasts of Self and Other, but the contrasts and the consciousness of its own being as Thinker, Experiencer, Seer, and as Love, or Will, and all of these as essentially interrelated aspects of itself as Unity. ”

“ Chapter 2 The World a Reflex of Mental States What you are, so is your world. Everything in the universe is resolved into your own inward experience. It matters little what is without, for it is all a reflection of your own state of consciousness. ”

“ If, then, we would establish a true science of man, there is no other course open to us than this, to abandon, in the first instance, every consideration of "the human mind," whether it be an hypothesis and a reality, together with all its phenomena, and then to confine our attention closely and devoutly to the examination of the great and anomalous fact of human consciousness. ”

“ As regards the last point, our ordinary consciousness, the often-boasted consciousness of common sense, was found to harbour a widespread, very persistent duplicity towards such vital things as reality, wholeness or unity, space and time, the causal relation, knowledge, moral freedom and natural law; and science, to which many when dislodged from their ordinary standpoint have been accustomed to retreat with greatest confidence and hope, was examined with similar results. ”

“ The acceptance of our natural sciences, as valid interpretations of connections of experience which our form of consciousness forbids us directly to verify, logically presupposes, at every step, that such superhuman forms and unities of consciousness are real. ”

“ If we regard the human subject, in the ordinary psychological way, as a being whose conscious life runs parallel with the highest physical processes of his organism, we get a view of the relation between the intellect and the will which is far more just, at once to the natural history of the mind, and to the deeper meaning of the inner life of our consciousness. View man as a natural being, and you find him adjusting himself to his environment, acting, as they say, in response to stimuli. ”

“ This something—reason, consciousness, soul, call it what you will—unites us to the world; for everywhere in the world reason is at home, and gradually finds itself; it makes us aware of a great order in which we move; it breaks down the barriers of sense between us and the absolute consciousness, the eternal life—"not ourselves," yet in us and akin to us!—whence, if there is any validity in human logic, that order must spring. ”

“ Can we see, then, any way in which a unit of pure experience might enter into and figure in two diverse streams of consciousness without turning itself into the two units which, on our hypothesis, it must not be? ”

“ All knowledge and the varied forms of law, of state mechanism, of moral duties, of religious beliefs, would thus appear to consciousness as necessary elements of the scheme or plan of the ideal world; and the consciousness of this ideal system, which it is the business of speculative philosophy to describe, would be completed self-consciousness. ”

“ For what act can be more vitally practical than the act by which we realise our existence as free personal beings? and what act can be attended by a more practical result than the act by which we look our passions in the face, and, in the very act of looking at them, look them down?
Now, if consciousness be an act of such mighty and practical efficiency in real life, what must not the practical might and authority of philosophy be? Philosophy is consciousness sublimed. ”

“ The attributes of minds, as well as those of bodies, are grounded on states of feeling or consciousness. But in the case of a mind, we have to consider its own states, as well as those which it produces in other minds. ”

“ The universe created, the principles which determined the creation are found still to govern the worlds of matter and mind. Two ideas and their connexion explain the intelligence of God; two laws in their counterpoise explain the material universe. The law of expansion is the movement of unity to variety; the law of attraction, the return of variety to unity.
In the world of mind the same analogy is apparent. The study of consciousness is psychology. ”

“ I name simply the unity of meaning which belongs to these superhuman forms of consciousness. We ourselves partake of this unity, and share it, in so far as, in our lives also, we discover and express, in whatever way our own form of consciousness permits, truth and life that bring us into touch and into harmony with the higher forms of consciousness, that is, with the spirit which, in its wholeness, knows and estimates the world, and which expresses itself in the life of the world. ”

“ Nor is our knowledge of anything we know or feel more, or less, than a knowledge of states of consciousness. And our whole life is made up of such states. Some of these states we refer to a cause we call "self;" ”

“ Upon the foundation of conscious thought, with ideas for his materials, he builds his system of the human understanding, and attempts to account for all its phenomena; and having, as he imagined, from his consciousness, proved the existence of matter, and of a certain quantity of motion originally impressed upon it, he builds his system of the material world, and attempts to account for all its phenomena. ”

“ Such a conception would require that every specific state of consciousness, every idea, every thought, perception, sensation and feeling, after it had passed out of mind for the moment, should enter a great sea of ideas which would be the sum total of all our past experiences. ”

“ Thus we trace the whole of Perception or Knowledge to this power of comparison and noting likenesses, and this we see to be coincident with the organization of consciousness into central meeting-places or ganglia, in which different sensations are presented to a common tribunal and so compared together. We see, therefore, that Perception does not originate consciousness; it only organizes and develops it. ”

“ Now, to render in any degree complete that characteristic of the human mind which it has been our object or endeavor in the previous Lectures to sketch in detail, we were obliged to take in also those higher elements which by many are called in question, and by some positively denied to exist. And herein lay the natural ground and the occasion for our introducing the mention of them, at least as facts of consciousness generally acknowledged by the common-sense of mankind. ”

“ It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call 'something there,' more deep and more general than any of the special and particular 'senses' by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality ”

“ The words "objective" and "subjective" in conjunction with mind are used in a special sense which has to be defined. The world of men has been considered as the psychic environment of the individual mind, and I have introduced a term to denote the power of aggregations of human thoughts and impulses. It has been viewed as an aspect of the universal [Pg xi] process underlying the conative disposition and will-to-power of all living beings, and on account of the mode of its operation it has been termed "cosmic suggestion." ”

“ Well, then, — if the divorce of idea and experience characterises every form of our human consciousness of finitude, of weakness, of evil, of sin, of despair, — you see that Omniscience, involving, by definition, the complete and final fulfilment of idea in experience, the unity of thought and fact, the illumination of feeling by comprehension, would be an attribute implying, for the being who possessed it, much more than a universally clear but absolutely passionless insight. An Omniscient Being could answer your bitter Why? ”

“ This external world as a fact of consciousness is as real as that consciousness and as the individual mind which makes mental experience possible, and is the great All, of which the individual mind is the working and manifestation. ”

“ On the other hand, a traditional doctrine, which has won for itself no small hearing in psychology, regards the volitional, or active, side of our consciousness, not merely as a fact in itself, but as a cause of other facts, both physical and mental. From this point of view, the distinction between intellect and will acquires a fresh importance, and declines to be reduced to that mere distinction of aspects which we have emphasized in the foregoing account. ”

“ The consideration of the mind, as one substance, capable of existing in a variety of states, according as it is variously affected, and constituting, in these different states, all the complex phenomena of thought and feeling, necessarily involves the consideration of consciousness, and of personal identity. ”

“ In opposition to external Nature we find the ideal realm of consciousness [19] , the human soul as the medium [20] for the existence and manifestation of the Absolute. Together with this subjectivity is conjoined the multiplicity and differentiation of individuality, particularization, distinction, action, and development, that is, in general terms the full and varied world of the reality of Spirit [21] , in which the Absolute is known, willed, experienced, and actively present. ”