Theosophical Study Paper No 04

Author(s): Theosophical Society in Australia
Publisher: Theosophical Society in Australia

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for, whatever experience he may have had, whatever progress he may have made, is this l-sense; it is dangerous, and will cause him to fall. It is very difficult to describe the change of dimension brought about by a new quality of consciousness. A hologram demonstrates that a part represents the whole. That is true of life also. In every part of life, the whole exists in all its fullness, and it is a little bit of this that some people have experienced as a new level of awareness, an 'expansion of consciousness'. Expansions of consciousness vary in degree and duration. Trouble arises when, after experiencing a little, people begin to feel that they are very special and spiritual. Such 'ego trips' destroy the possibility of further progress. After the stage which in Buddhism is called srotāpatti, there is that of the sakridāgāmin or kutichaka who has come near to the end of compulsory incarnations. At this stage, there is said to be a wider vision of the meaning, beauty, and truth of existence. Much of manifestation is incomprehensible to us. We see suffering and cannot understand it. But a person undergoing the second initiation begins to realize the beauty of its meaning. The third stage is that of the anāgāmin or hamsa whose karma has been wiped away and who is not, therefore, under compulsion to return into a physical body. The compulsion of karma is the compulsion of one's own thirst for experience. At this stage the last shred of desire dies. Light on the Path describes how ambition can take new and subtle forms and ambition for worldly things may turn into ambition for the spiritual. In the same way, yearning for liberation can be a form of ambition. But when the sense of unity is fully established, what is there to be ambitious about? Ambition and desire die, even desire for the spiritual.
It is said that there is a difference between the Buddhic · consciousness and the Nirvānic. The Buddhic consciousness is a wonderful feeling of unity with everything - with the grass, sand, animals, human beings, even with what before seemed disgusting or painful. There is oneness with the suffering of those who suffer and with the joy of those who are happy. But in the Nirvānic consciousness there is no trace of the feeling that 'I am one with the other.' There is undivided unity, deep and steady.
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