I don’t understand quite where this author is coming from, but the last two paragraphs make a lot of sense.
Regrettably, this area of consciousness studies has been neglected by scientists (although artists have been involved with it since art began). I cannot claim to be more than an amateur myself. All the same, I will not hold back from telling you my own main conclusion from a lifetime's interest in what consciousness does. I may shock you by what may seem the naivety of my conclusion (I've shocked myself): I think the plain and simple fact is that consciousness—on various levels—makes life more worth living.
We like being phenomenally conscious. We like the world in which we're phenomenally conscious. We like ourselves for being phenomenally conscious. And the resulting joie de vivre, the enchantment with the world we live in, and the enhanced sense of our own metaphysical importance have, in the course of evolutionary history, turned our lives around.
I listened to the rest of the Ishwar Puri video and found the time spent to be quite worthwhile. His exhortation to listen for the sound behind the eyes is an intriguing ‘trick’ for getting past some of the verbiage of our minds. Ishwar’s notion that mind is a tool of consciousness rather than consciousness being a by-product of mind is spot on.
It would seem that our understanding is always mediated through form. The forms derive meanings through associations with other forms via intellectual structures that provide correspondences between the various forms. Some very wise folk seem to feel a need to ‘return to the One’, so as, it seems to me, to transcend inherent limitations of this form based world.
My opinion, and this is not said simply to be the contrarian that will fulfill your image of me, is that these otherwise very wise folk are wrong.
I feel that they take one part of ‘the great project’ and claim it as being the whole thing.
The first part of ‘the great project’ is for the soul to reach for spirit. Many people do this quietly and in many ways during the course of mundane life. Others have formulated a bit more of a fast track for refining the ‘spiritual impulse’ and along the way have come to advocate for the soul to disavow physical attachments.
But, if everything vibrates and resonance is a significant element in how the possibilities within reality play out over time, then it may be that ‘soul energy’ is better spent trying to become a proper receptacle for spirit, here and now like, rather than going on about the inherent limitations illusions and injustices of Maya.
We create the openings for Source to feed our imaginations with all varieties of soul reaching for spirit, hell even the atheists do it. But we pervert the message according to the pretences of our minds. Ishwar Puri says that the mind is a tool of consciousness. Then the mind does not ‘have’ consciousness and we did a deep brainwash on ourselves when society accepted Descartes dictum of “I think, therefore I am” rather than the equally plausible ‘I am therefore, I think. It’s more likely that consciousness uses the mind to assist evolution. By creating ‘meaning’ as the OP author suggests perhaps.
Potential expressions of consciousness evolve. Freud, Jung and Reich show us potential gains from integrating the various layers of psyche. Many innovators help mind evolution along as imagination seeks to create new correspondences (connections) for our field of categories (forms).
Its my opinion that if we become welcoming vessels for spirit, then the ‘greater works’ might be fulfilled and ‘spirit’ will inform us with progressively deeper levels of understanding.
The ‘lesser works’ are critical to making space for the ‘greater works’, but the real fireworks start if we choose to light the fuse for the greater works to commence.
Peace and Happy New Year
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