Every second, 7 bits of inform­a­tion pass through our con­scious mind, while 55 tril­lion bits pass through our uncon­scious mind! Are we able to dir­ect and con­trol this flood? Hardly. The con­scious mind is not a bad instru­ment of know­ledge, but its capa­city is dwarfed by that of the uncon­scious. That is, bey­ond his con­scious intel­li­gence man has a fur­ther instru­ment at his dis­pos­al, his intu­it­ive, spir­itu­al intel­lect, which is orders of mag­nitude broad­er and subtler than cog­nit­ive func­tion. The con­scious mind is fit for examin­ing whatever lies with­in its view, namely whatever stands on a ‘lower’ level than the mind, where­as for phe­nom­ena high­er and subtler than the mind the fit­ting instru­ment is pre­cisely the intu­it­ive, sub­con­scious – or indeed super­con­scious – mind. This fac­ulty, which seems incred­ible, even non-exist­ent, is for most of us an undis­covered terra incog­nita. Here the thought of Her­ac­litus is apt: ‘The soul of man is a dis­tant coun­try, inac­cess­ible and unex­plor­able.’ We may sup­pose that the con­scious indi­vidu­al self, once we have taken pos­ses­sion of it, is able to enter into con­tact with the Imper­ish­able high­er intel­lect, the divine intel­li­gence. In other words, it is through his soul that man can come to know the Soul, for he can approach divine facts only through a fac­ulty of like nature.

Mind (manas) – the inner sense, the sur­face of con­scious­ness in con­tact with the outer world, react­ing impuls­ively to stim­uli with­in the bounds of lik­ing and dis­lik­ing, its chief func­tions being thought, will­power and feel­ing.

Intel­lect (buddhi) – intel­li­gent con­scious­ness, over­rul­ing and con­trolling the impuls­ive mind, the calm dir­ect­or of the work­ings of con­scious­ness, the per­son­al, indi­vidu­al reflec­tion of the cos­mic intel­lect.

Sense of self (ahamkar / aham) – under the influ­ence of mat­ter, in its dis­tor­ted form, the ‘made I’, that is, false self-iden­ti­fic­a­tion (when the etern­al, indi­vidu­al spark of con­scious­ness iden­ti­fies itself with the tran­si­ent and chan­ging per­son­al­ity determ­ined by mat­ter), the root cause of mater­i­al exist­ence; in its pure form (aham), pure self-aware­ness, the etern­al iden­tity of the indi­vidu­al soul.

Con­scious­ness, intel­lect (chitta) – the widest field of con­scious­ness

In gen­er­al we are steered by the beliefs that shape our sur­face aware­ness, until we devote ourselves to the high­er, tran­scend­ent real­ity. Man can free him­self from a par­tic­u­lar influ­ence – in this case the influ­ence of mater­i­al impres­sions and out­ward aware­ness – by sub­mit­ting him­self to a dif­fer­ent, purer, high­er and stronger influ­ence. We can dir­ect neither the ever-swell­ing flood of inform­a­tion from the outer world nor the pro­cesses at work in the sub­con­scious, but we do have one chance – we can puri­fy our con­scious­ness. This is the art of mys­ti­cism.

Mys­ti­cism is at once bond and free­dom. True mys­tic­al exper­i­ence brings about a far high­er order of com­mit­ment than any­thing else in the world, quite simply chain­ing man to the high­er real­ity. This seems to cost the indi­vidu­al his free­dom, but in real­ity it is only then that his free­dom truly unfolds. That is, the vol­un­tary sac­ri­fice of sup­posed free­dom becomes the pledge of a high­er free­dom.

What can man hope for from recog­nising the order that under­lies the world? Not merely a single spir­itu­al exper­i­ence, which might make his life more peace­ful and wiser. A more respons­ible way of life may take shape, in har­mony with the order of the uni­verse, one that stirs up less res­ist­ance, and so the labyrinth of exist­ence becomes nav­ig­able. Above all, how­ever, man gains a way to tune in at any moment to the wavelength of the high­er world – wheth­er we call it a psi-field, enlight­en­ment or a liv­ing and lov­ing exper­i­ence of God.