12.  New Life with Higher Consciousness

I was amazed in India to discover that most of the teachings written down 5,000 years ago by Ptanjali have yet to be translated, which gives some idea of the amount of knowledge that is still available to us.  We have accepted the attitude that we know all there is to know.

There are at least six levels of consciousness that man can reach.  It is hinted in the East that the real meaning of God, the Creator working six days to create the ear, and resting on the seventh, really means the creation of six levels of consciousness and resting unmanifest in the seventh level.  It is like a man living on the basement of a seven story building, as Gurdjieff puts it, not aware that the house has six other floors.  This is why I have always rejected Darwin's theory of evolution, because of the fact that man uses less than ten percent of his brain; in other words, we carry an organ between our shoulders which is only utilized to the extent of less than 10 percent.  Therefore, the other potential of ninety percent already exists if we can find the keys to unlock it.  We are not evolving in the sense that we are acquiring this additional potential; that potential actually exists.  It is now the question of unlocking the energy we all possess to be able to utilize this additional huge untapped reservoir.  The secret of miracles is the secret of this additional utilization of energy.

One Indian holy man explained levitation, which would also explain Jesus' miracle of walking on the water, as the ability of the mind through the change of vibrational levels and body levels and body weight to levitate the body out of the gravitational pull, which would, of course open up undreamt avenues.   The miracle of the fish and the bread is the manifestation of material exactly by the same principles that I saw demonstrated by Sai Baba in India.  The Indian mystics explain that some people have these psychic gifts and are not aware of how they work.   In the case of Sai Baba, apparently on some days he can perform these acts, but on other days he cannot.  It is all part of the promise that all of us have the potential to exceed even the wonders performed by Jesus.  Once we have discovered how to control and develop our energy and vibratory rates, it is not inconceivable in the future that man can change from one dimension to another, although this thought is mind blowing to our present consciousness.  It would have been mind blowing to explain the possibility of television or even radio to somebody 200 years ago.  Right now all of us know that the very room we are reading this book in has dozens of television and radio signals passing through it and if we have a receiver tuned to the proper frequency, we can pick them up.  Our mind is such a receiver.  Creative people who can compose great works are picking up from cosmic consciousness.  They are receivers tuning in.   Yet their ego makes them only too willing to accept the works as their own.   This is true of all works and all the inventions that we have manifest on this material level.  I am sure this statement, like many in this book, will result in a great how of derision from those unwilling to entertain such a thought.  It is an example of the peeling away of a buffer before the mind is willing to accept it.  Yet how else could simultaneous inventions happen in distant parts of the world?

There is a yogi technique that if practiced for a number of months can bring in numerous sounds including celestial music.  But here again the individual must experience it through his own efforts.  The knowledge that it exists and the method for receiving these sounds is outlined in any number of yogi books for those who have the ears to hear.  It is all part of the unfolding of new knowledge which is coming into the Western world at a phenomenal rate and will change in a very short number of years every theory we now have.

The new American youth will accept what I have said as simply recognizable information which indeed many of them already possess beyond anything I have discussed in this book.  There are undoubtedly large numbers of enlightened individuals now on the planet.  Many of them for obvious reasons prefer to remain silent with their own knowledge, living in various communities, not wishing to draw attention to themselves because those around them would put them in the category with those who are insane, just as a few hundred years ago they burnt witches and pilloried anyone who did not accept the traditions and theories of the day.

Our educational systems are still to a large extent operating on MacLuhan's theory of the rearview mirror.  We keep repeating old methods and old accepted theories and thereby perpetuating wrong thinking.   MacLuhan has been savagely attacked for simply expanding truisms just as Buckminster Fuller has, and others in the past.  Our history is filled with the martyrdom of advanced thinkers who dared to express their visionary thoughts and paid the price.  Fortunately their words were preserved, and in the course of time, long after their deaths, they were acknowledged by a more enlightened population.

It is difficult for a man to project new, advanced thinking because he is up against a stone wall of established thinking that means economic survival to a huge number of people.  To accept the new which means a new area, energy has to be expanded; as well, the previous theories and beliefs have to be discarded.  Man's landing on the moon for example, resulted in the abandoning of a large number of theories that for years had been the accepted norm among many scientists.   This is but one small example of the difficulty in opening men's' minds.  It is a monumental task and it is easy for men or large groups of men to ignore information that is contrary to their accepted theories, and they have strong vested interest in maintaining the veils over their eyes.  Many of them, to be totally realistic, are incapable of the personal self-discipline that is necessary to develop and utilize the energy within themselves, which must be unlocked if they are to raise their consciousness.

It is also true that each man is tied down by a tremendous need to provide material goods for his family.  A man spends most of his life giving almost his total energy to obtain these material goods by spending his energy, at whatever job he is doing, so that a very small part of normal physical energy is left over for him to utilize for his own fulfillment.  This is why there is still in India, to a diminished degree, a tradition that a man at the age of fifty withdraws from the material world, leaves his family, and spends the rest of his life wandering through India, contemplating, and using his full energy for his own personal development.   It is, however, impossible for most Westerners to follow such a practice.  Our whole society is geared for material accumulation.  Our country does not have the interior of India and the Himalayas where one can suddenly disappear for a number of years to find enlightenment.  But it is true that if a man can detach himself from all materialism, he is then free from the yoke and free to turn his development inward.   Only the very fortunate or the very wise in our Western society can reach this stage.

A man does not have to give up his possessions in the literal sense.  He has to give up his attachment to his possessions, so that he becomes truly free of the worry of such possessions.  It is a question of giving it all up so you can have it all.  When one is not attached, one enjoys his possessions a great deal more because he is no longer worried and fearful of losing them.  It is a "question of balance" to use the words of the Moody Blues: the ability to keep one's feet on the ground and one's head on the subtle level so that the aim of his life becomes one of service.  And how better can he serve than by developing and expanding consciousness?  Then the service becomes truly one of selflessness and all who come in contact with such a man feel good vibrations and renewed faith.

It is not a question of being simply a do-gooder.  That in itself can become a bondage.  It is a question of being completely yourself, not afraid to say exactly what you think even if that makes you unpopular and all of us have known the terrible desire to please and be liked until we discover the insidiousness of comprising with our own thoughts.  It is never easy to be oneself in the Western world.  Even the way we dress or the length of our hair or whether we wear a tie or not are reasons for withholding jobs in many companies.  The pressure to conform is monumental; yet by conforming we give up our individuality.   Fortunately, the trend now is to more and more individuality.

This is not something that will happen overnight, but it is already happening among the young people of North America.  Yet they are still looking for leaders who can translate this new culture and who are willing to change the entire social structures to emphasize the quality of living, rather than the quantity of living.  But here again mankind is stuck with the work ethic that has been imposed since the industrial revolution, when large amounts of physical energy were needed for the spinning wheel and for the factories.

We have now conditioned the masses that it is not honourable not to work, that welfare, rather than being a redistribution of taxes, is a degrading thing and those who receive welfare are conned into a state of mind that instead of thinking of themselves as leisure citizens who can develop their own creative talents, they see themselves as the poverty-stricken who sit around idly and feel sorry for themselves.  Man no longer needs thousands of slaves to pick cotton and thereby burn up their energy; he now has developed cotton machines.  It is also true that we have developed machines that can literally feed and clothe, through semi-automation, almost our total population.  Those who fear that a guaranteed annual wage will destroy man's initiative simply lack the consciousness to understand that only through leisure can man enter the golden age.  It requires leisure to develop our creative talents.  We can now utilize the machines and free man from slavery.

On the most realistic level, man cannot continue to provide full employment.  Advanced technology eliminates millions of jobs.  Man has the technology to free the slave, which is himself.  But he cannot comprehend the freeing of himself, because he does not acknowledge that he is a slave.  He lives in his own illusions.  Any computer can project that our increase in population makes it impossible for us to simply absorb the new workers with meaningful jobs in the next quarter century.

New thinking, possible only through higher consciousness, must now emerge.  But we see that any politician who even dares to question the work ethic is immediately attached by his opposition in the most ferocious way.  The opposition acknowledges the ease in which it is possible to arouse the emotions of the workers by suggesting that the more enlightened politician is not in favour of full employment.  It is exploitation of the workers' limited consciousness.   Yet it is being perpetuated by some politicians because they themselves cannot entertain the fact that new thinking is an essential ingredient.