Tag Archives: Satchitananda

Operating on All of Your Cylinders

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By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: What does the expression, to operate on all cylinders, mean?

A: We can draw an analogy between the awareness and functioning of human beings and the operation of a 12-cylinder car, like a Jaguar. These inner shifts in awareness and functioning appear to take 12 postures:

  1. Only senses function – You are aware of your body and the world around you. You dwell in the world of consensual reality at your waking state of awareness.
  2. Senses interface with memory – You activate the faculty of imagination. You are able to tell stories and express your creative ideas.
  3. Ego activation – Your desires are highlighted. The world revolves around you. You may wish to present the best impression of yourself to others, which may engage your defenses and lying to not show others any weakness or vulnerability.
  4. Mindfulness – You are able to collect your attention and observe the contents of awareness. You become aware of what is arising in the present time.
  5. Attentional travel – You are able to shift your attention and examine the focal points within your mind, and consciously shift perspective.
  6. Third eye opening – You awaken as the attentional principle, and you are able to use intention and suggestion to work on your life issues.
  7. Conscious life direction – You awaken the Self, which directs your entire personality through volition. You take charge of the direction of your life.
  8. Awakening of the heart – You become aware of your spirit. You awaken your inner wellsprings of love and devotion.
  9. Archetypal identification – You awaken a nucleus of identity and identity with it. You express the native virtue, abilities, and intuitive knowledge that this essence holds.
  10. Enlightenment – You become aware of the Soul and identify with it. You experience enlightenment and Gnosis.
  11. Higher octave awakening – You awaken an ensouling entity, spirit, or nucleus of identity in the Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, or Transcendental bands of the Continuum. You identify with the essence and express it.
  12. Satchitananda – You awaken as the Infinite Consciousness, and behold each of these other octaves within you.

Those that meditate open the possibility to activate cylinders four to twelve; those that don’t awaken their witnessing faculty, commonly are delimited to operating only with their first three cylinders. We teach you how to awaken cylinders four through ten in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We introduce you to cylinders eleven and twelve in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Through awakening your awareness and learning how to do inner work, you can activate each of your human and spiritual potentials, and begin functioning on all of your cylinders. If you are interested in learning how to do this, we can teach you how.

Why Mystics Don’t Identify Consciousness with the Brain

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By George A. Boyd © 2017

Q: Many scientists say that consciousness is a product of neuronal functioning. They purport to measure it through the electrical currents emanating from the brain. They say there is no Soul other than an evoked potential of the word, “Soul” in the brain, and no God but the evoked resonance of the word, “God” in the brain. How is it that mystics testify to the existence of a Soul and the all-pervading Presence of God, when this cannot be detected in the brain?

A: Science objectifies phenomena, and only considers that which the senses [or their technological extensions] can detect, that reason can verify, and that the intellect can represent and manipulate as words, mathematical formulas, symbols, and models of correlated ideas.

For this reason, scientists cannot detect attention, the attentional principle, the spirit, or the Soul. They cannot examine the strata of the mind. They cannot explore the Continuum of Consciousness. They cannot find God in neurons, in the logical circuits of reason, and the problem-solving strategies of the intellect.

To have the experiences of the mystics, who encounter the Soul and God, you need to have a subjective experience, drawing attention along the thread of consciousness, where it can detect the focal points at each layer of the mind, unite with the essences of consciousness—attentional principle, spirit, and Soul—and follow that thread into the presence of the all-pervading consciousness of God.

This withdrawal of attention from full brain identification to union with the highest state of consciousness, Satchitananda, appears to pass through seven steps:

  1. Consciousness appears to be a product of brain activity.
  2. You observe the activity of the brain as a detached witness, from the standpoint of your attention. You collect attention into a sphere and become present and aware. This stage is the beginning of mindfulness. It appears that your attention is the carrier of consciousness.
  3. You gain the ability to follow the thread of consciousness with your attention to observe the content at the different levels of the mind. You may variously experience this material at each level of the mind as a seed atom upon which you contemplate, a field of phenomena, a form or vehicle of consciousness that has discrete functions, or as ever-changing content that arises in the present time. It appears that your attention is the carrier of consciousness, and it perceives the content that is present in altered states of awareness through shifting its focus.
  4. You move along this thread of consciousness with your attention until you unite with the attentional principle, and as you gain union with this essence, you shift into its perspective. It appears consciousness is innate to the attentional principle.
  5. Your attention travels further up the thread of consciousness until you gain union with the spirit. As you contemplate this spiritual essence, you merge with it and view from its perspective. It appears that the spirit also has innate consciousness.
  6. Your attention rises up into the Soul and you gain union with it. You become aware that your Soul is also a conscious essence.
  7. Your attention follows the thread of consciousness up to the highest stage of consciousness, Satchitananda. You become aware that the energy that animates the Soul and activates it emanates from this source. You become aware of the eternal source of consciousness, Satchitananda.

The methods of the scientists use senses, reason, and intellect to gather data, to organize that data into the schemas of knowledge, and to use that knowledge to predict phenomena and to invent new technology, methods, and products. Since attention cannot be reduced to neural functions, the scientist must shift from brain awareness to witnessing mind (attention) to begin the journey of meditation—to embrace a subjective, non-empirical way of knowing that the external senses cannot detect, that reason cannot verify, and that the intellect cannot fully comprehend.

You can only understand the ways of the mystic through adopting his practices. You cannot know it from without, only from within. You must shift from an objective orientation to the world to a subjective one, and journey into the depths of that subjectivity to encounter the Soul and God.