Speaker 1: 0:52

So yeah, in light of consciousness awakening, evolution, Pablo and Shavar and I were talking yesterday a very interesting conversation. We were discussing the various stages of awakening and we were just curious what stages this could be. And I personally read a book on this by Jeffrey Martin. It's called Finders, and he basically interviewed a lot of supposedly awakened humans and found some some continuity on within that journey that it's not like an absolute. The light switch goes on and and and. There we are. We are awakened, um, until the day we die or until the day we we choose to to let go of our body yes but he found that there's much more of a.

Speaker 1: 1:52

He called them locations, and there's no end of a. He called them locations, and there's no end to the locations he's found. I think he went up to like 20 locations that he's been able to locate or like sort of write about. I was just curious if there's a concept about this in the Vedic teachings.

Speaker 2: 2:11

Yes. So at the center of it, everything is always in reference to the advancement of human consciousness. And to put it in its simplest terms and by the way, I go into great detail in this it's kind of a shameless plug for a new course that we're about to release called Living the Veda, which is probably a 40-hour knowledge course, which gives you the kind of 101 of the Vedic worldview but from a very practical, pragmatic standpoint the development of human consciousness and how we bring that into relationship. So anyway, there's the end of my plug. Now I'll give you a short version of it. So the understanding is that there are seven states of consciousness that are blocks, if you like, and those blocks gradate, but we can demarcate them conceptually based on the characteristics of those states of consciousness, but really they're on a beautiful gradated spectrum and the acquisition of high states of consciousness isn't just a general movement forward. It's like the lapping of a shoreline where the tide is rising. You know it goes back and forth, back and forth, but the tide is rising back and forth, back and forth, like this. And, yeah, it's important that when we're attempting to understand all of this, that we're not looking at it through a very sort of rigid, blocked perspective.

Speaker 2: 3:51

The seven states of consciousness the first three are very easy. There's sleep state, where, while we're asleep, the relative consciousness experience is blackout. The soul is having an experience in a subtler celestial realm, but the relative consciousness state has no capacity to detect that and so the relative experience is just blackout. The body's getting some rest. It's pretty useless, but you know we're getting some rest. The next is REM rapid eye movement, or dream state, where the psyche is processing experience that it's had with its eyes open. So there is some degree of sophistication in the way in which the mind and consciousness is metabolizing, meaning and advancing. We advance in our dream state right. Then the next is waking state. Ta-da, we're all here. And the waking state is also a very relative thing and serves as the foundation for the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh states of consciousness.

Speaker 2: 4:57

And the fourth state of consciousness is referred to as turiya. Turiya is the experience that we have when we transcend the relative, gross position of our individuality into a deeper, transcendental position where we can detect that we are not our mind, we are not our body, we are something beyond that, and that is a visceral experience that we gain through transcendence, of which all of you have experienced. And turiya, when repeated, begins to become stabilized in the consciousness repertoire. That is to say that when we open our eyes, it's not just something we're experiencing with our eyes closed, we notice that it's there. When we open our eyes, oh, what do you know? That vast, quiet, expansive is there. I can think about what I'm going to make for dinner tonight and I can still detect it. But in the early stages it's there for about 30 seconds after we open our eyes for meditation, and then it dwindles and then we're like oh no, I'm just completely about what I'm going to eat tonight. And then, um, over time, this vast expansiveness lasts for longer periods of time post meditation. And then we notice, even when we're not meditating, it just kind of appears and then someone will trigger us and then it disappears. And then it reappears and it disappears and it fluctuates and it's kind of like. This is where we start to notice the lapping of the shoreline in the direction of the tide rising. It's there and then it's not. We remember and we forget, we remember and we forget, we remember and we forget.

Speaker 2: 6:42

And as this fourth state, a fifth state of consciousness, so turiya is the fourth. The fifth, the stabilization of turiya with the eyes open is referred to as cosmic consciousness. Cosmic refers to everything consciousness as turiya becomes increasingly more sorry, cosmic consciousness becomes increasingly more stabilized, that is, with the eyes open. We begin to detect that in this gross physical world there is subtler dimensions, and it first happens with our eyes closed. Where we can detect it and the way that we refer to it is celestial, that it has an illuminous, divine nature that reveals, in the direct perception of it, the nature of reality. What we begin to perceive is how this reality emerges, what is at the foundation of it.

Speaker 2: 7:47

There is a celestial framework that is filled with personality that we refer to as the devas, beings of intelligence that are the intelligence that gives rise to this, the laws of nature, and we can become in direct contact with these laws of nature and establish a relationship. And when we continue establishing our relationship with these laws of nature, we are led into greater dimensions of complexity through the relationship. The relationship informs the way in which consciousness expands into ever-increasing layers of subtlety. And as consciousness becomes more subtle, it becomes more complex. We can contain more information, and the other hallmark of this sixth state that is emerging is that we can simultaneously contain awareness and interact very well, integrated on the most gross level. You know, and you know, take out the trash, wash the dishes, you know, put the kids into the shower and make the dinner and put them into bed, and simultaneously continue expanding ever deeper into these celestial layers that reveal ever more the nature of reality and the nature of self. It becomes increasingly more expansive, cohesive and complex, and the experience is an energetic intelligence that enables us to perceive reality accurately and interact with it with a dynamism that causes elevation.

Speaker 2: 9:50

What we notice as a hallmark of our presence in this state is that whatever we give our attention to, it tingles and it causes expansiveness. It causes the effect Our consciousness starts to transmit into the consciousness of others. So we become very powerful as a function of nature, proliferating its divine design, and this is actually what we were designed to do. So this sixth state is referred to as God consciousness. We are moving in the direction of becoming conscious of God and then becoming conscious that we are God, and when one has sufficiently immersed themselves in this experience, it's said that one merges with the direct experience of supreme being, and there is no distinction between the individuality and supreme being Unity. The seventh state is called unity and there are subgrades of well, not subgrades, but subtler grades of unity. I won't go into that tonight because it's a much bigger conversation, but that's basically the Vedic worldview on it.

Speaker 3: 11:10

We say we're in Kali Yuga, but I would put it that we are actually in the tide rising state, that we're moving between the fourth and the fifth state. There's more and more evidence of that happening in so many ways and I think the blessing of the whole COVID thing was it was just doing a mass wake-up for so many people, just like shaking their little tree and they're going oh, there's more here. So it's like the wave is gaining momentum in an ever-increasing way.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Yes, and the perspective of the Vedas with regard to that is that we are in a sub-yug of Kali-yug, which is Sat-yug, sat-yug. You'd already said it. We're in Sat-yug and we've actually entered into Sat-yug. Sat means truth and light, actually entered into Satyug. Sat means truth and light. So we have moved into an epoch of time, a small little epoch of time within a much larger epoch of time of Kali Yug. So it's a Yug within a Yug, and it's understood that an age, a yug, just means age, a period of time.

Speaker 2: 12:29

We have moved into an age where it's said that awakening is its most effortless and spontaneous, to wake up in an age of darkness. Under the full moon. There's darkness everywhere, but there is this magnificent bright light that you cannot mistake and it's very easy to determine that that's the light and this is the darkness. So it's easy to just stay with that. And the conditions of the darkness create the impetus, the pressure, because it's easy to just stay with that. And the conditions of the darkness create the impotence, the pressure, because it's uncomfortable in the darkness. So we're just going to stay with the light, stay with the light, stay with the light, stay with the light.

Speaker 2: 13:11

That's the thing that can cause the awakening. So we're in a, a sathya, within khaliyug, and so it makes it easier, and so we're noticing all of these things, events, events happening in the world that is enforcing awakening. You know, this is all just the mechanics of Satyug at play within the Kali Yuga, you know, but it's a force of darkness, you know, that is causing the awakening to happen, which is a very interesting thing to consider. Yeah, so that's the basic model, and you know, we can extrapolate and really riff on each one of those states of consciousness to really understand the mechanics of reality, because the map or the trajectory of the state of consciousness actually also reveals the nature of reality, what we're awakening to.