Levels and States
The typical understanding in the spiritual community has been that there are various stages, levels or planes of existence to go through before Awakening happens. It is like going up a staircase from one floor to the next until you finally reach the top floor, and then suddenly—Enlightenment. Everyone experiences broader and more expanded levels of awareness at times, so from the perspective of ordinary waking state consciousness, this reasoning seems to make sense. However, this understanding comes from the perspective of the individual mind that is experiencing expanded awareness, not from the perspective of Awareness itself.
In reality, awakening to who you really are as unbounded pure Awareness can happen at any time regardless of what degree of purity or higher level you may or may not have achieved. Pure Awareness itself is beyond all concepts, feelings, and perceptions, no matter how spiritual and holy they may be, or how unspiritual or unholy they may be. It is that which enables experience to happen.
From the perspective of Awareness itself, there are no levels. There is only one homogeneous wholeness. The idea of going through different levels or states, to become what you already are, is a joke to Consciousness. It is just another concept and a barrier to enlightenment. It is only after Awakening to being pure Awareness itself that you can begin to appreciate what is really meant by higher levels and states of Consciousness.
Before Awakening, we do not know what Consciousness really is. Through various types of meditation, we can have experiences of “transcendental consciousness” (deep physical rest along with expanded awareness and alertness). Consciousness itself is infinitely silent, and infinitely dynamic. We can validly experience deeper levels of its Silence and Stillness, and we can have valid experiences of varying degrees of its infinite Aliveness. But we cannot know what Consciousness itself actually is until we become it. Experiencing it is one thing, but being it is quite another. It is the difference between swimming in the ocean and being the ocean.
The term “Higher States of Consciousness” refers to the increasingly more expanded perspectives that Consciousness experiences of itself after Awakening to being unbounded pure Awareness. It is not the individual mind that awakens to being pure Awareness, nor is it the individual mind that experiences higher states of Consciousness. It is pure Awareness itself, your real Self, that shifts to broader perspectives of itself and reveals finer perceptions of its own divine fullness. It is not possible to understand, or even imagine, what it is like in these States until they are experienced. The mind cannot comprehend that which is beyond its experience and which words are incapable of expressing.
Writing about these states of Consciousness is not meant to add more knowledge to your storehouse of concepts. It is meant to give you an overview of the total reality of your existence. You should know that there are indeed higher states of Consciousness that are not mystical, esoteric, hypnotic or altered states of mind. They are simply clearer states of the experience of reality as it really is. They are revealed in the natural course of the unfoldment of Consciousness to the natural state of full enlightenment that humankind is meant to be living.
Moreover, simply reading about these higher States of Consciousness with innocent openness, can serve as a catalyst for an Awakening to occur. Innocently listening to words expressed from a clear state of Awakening, can trigger the long-lost remembrance of the true unbounded reality of your Being.
These are the words of Consciousness itself, speaking to itself in the innermost core of your Being. That is why something deep within knows when truth is being heard. Your innermost Being is the receiver, not your mind or intellect.
