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Ramakrishna Ananda

The Portal of Higher Consciousness

Want inspiration every day? Try good will meditations

With patient practice, and several repetitions (sometimes even immediately), the flow of your good will can bring you the following experience:

When your good will becomes steadily concentrated on your meditation object, you will become keenly aware. You’ll feel extremely wide awake. The feeling of your radiating good will becomes comforting and calming, very sweet. In this state the world out there begins to feel like a dream.

Growing on the Path, Meditation, Buddhi, Higher Consciousness

Your meditation object may remain clear to you or it may diffuse and leave you sitting there perfectly aware, perfectly concentrated. The world has begun to seem like a dream — free of any pressure, pain, or chaos, but you feel very real and more alive than usual. Your mind is clear and free of ideas. You feel no need to think other thoughts or labor your mind with other images. Yet you sense you are more conscious than usual. Thoughts themselves seem too slow, or perhaps too dreamlike in comparison with the quality of higher consciousness you sense so vividly.

This heightened consciousness abides for several minutes. It flows; it becomes continuous good will. You feel heavenly. No other thoughts or emotions intrude. You are in the Good Will Witness state, the portal of higher consciousness.

Life-Enriching Insights Become Possible

When you can enter the sublime Good Will Witness state easily, you can enjoy it in periods of reflection as well as meditation — meditation being a means of centering in your true nature, while reflection and contemplation focus on ideas, problems, and speculations. This “buddhi state,” as it’s often called, gives great insight for new inventions, compositions, works of art, solutions to personal and global problems. In most of civilization’s advances someone contacted the higher consciousness through the Good Will Witness state.

Depending on your temperament and development, depending on your skills and training, you will sense tremendous inspiration in areas which are important to you. You will perhaps sense musical themes or have direct perceptions — remember, not slow thoughts — direct perceptions of beautiful new works of art, or priceless ideas for new career opportunities. You might also gain amazing insights about how to deal with your daily problems, how to love more, how to overcome obstacles, or how to deal with problem people.

Meditate, Don’t Reflect

On no occasion, if you are able to abide in this borderland of higher consciousness, will negative emotions or worrisome thoughts bully you or flood your mind. If unpleasant thoughts or feelings do occur to you, you have been shot down from your high state temporarily, and you must once again patiently direct your good will toward the sublime state.

For your first few weeks, it’s best to focus on simply entering the Good Will Witness state. Try not to reflect upon your problems or seek specific inspirations while you’re in it. Meditate, don’t reflect.

You won’t be able to enter the state if you’re preoccupied with your problems or if you think of the buddhi only as a place for gathering up bits of information. First become able to enter the Good Will Witness plane of awareness at will. Always be appreciative of your access to this doorway of your higher consciousness. Many new seekers attest that when they take this state for granted or treat it only as a distribution center for personal flashes of wisdom, they soon find great difficulty in entering where they had so easily entered in their more appreciative days.

Beyond Thought

Consider also, while it’s essential to take time each day to think deep thoughts, Witness Consciousness is beyond thought. If you think you’re in the high Witness state but you’re thinking thoughts — even profound ones — you are not in a Witness state, nor in what is called higher consciousness. Beginners often assume they are superconscious when their fantasies or memories are more vivid than before. Remember, thoughts are too slow for higher consciousness. Higher consciousness expresses itself in direct perceptions, flashes of wisdom, which are later translated into words by the mind. But, bear in mind, as long as you are thinking in words you are in some part of your mind, not in higher consciousness. Your profound-sounding words may be valuable insights or they may be worthless, but you are not in the Good Will Witness State.

Also remember that — in being a beginner — your mind may occasionally translate a direct perception from the Witness state incorrectly. Insights from the Witness must be tested in the light of your day-to-day experiences. You learn through practice how to understand and cooperate with your Witness. You become able to distinguish between your flashes and your wishes.

Obstacles To Meditation

As you practice directing your good will toward your meditation object, avoid drowsiness. If you get drowsy — rather than extra-aware and relaxed — lie down to rest or get active by taking a walk or playing tennis. If you try to meditate while feeling sleepy or lazy, and do not maintain your flow of good will, you will allow old memories and subconscious impressions to float into your mind. Your desires will also surface if you’re sleepy or if you let your mind go blank. In fact, your desires to be great or important may become highly charged, glorious ego trips in which you think you’re having a bona fide vision of your greatness and leadership role among mankind.

When thoughts of your great importance or messianic mission float into your meditation they are almost always vivid personal desires from your subconscious — your mental/emotional storage basement. Inner voices and images which proclaim your greatness are not at all characteristic of the humbling and transforming awe which almost always fills you as you draw near true Witness awareness.

How Long Should You Meditate at First?

Abide in your meditation ten or fifteen minutes, preferably fifteen if you’re comfortable. Then slowly release the focus on your meditation object. With an attitude of good will (what else?), return your awareness to your body. Tense and relax your legs and arms. Rotate your head clockwise and counterclockwise, if you can do it comfortably.

Calmly sensing your residual good will, gaze around the room. Linger in the pleasantness. This is an excellent time to think about your daily problems in a calm, clear way. In maintaining your good will, you may find insights will spontaneously come from your higher consciousness out into your mental activity.
As mentioned before, your Good Will Witness state is also called the buddhi, which means the first stage of enlightenment.

May you regularly enter this exalted state of awareness through your thoughtfulness and your good will.

Reflectiom

Without Good Will
I can’t know anyone —
I’m even a stranger
To myself.

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#2 THE MYSTIC GAZE
A Classic Technique

This classic technique is one of the mystic’s greatest treasures.

It is designed to stimulate your mystical faculties and begin the process of spiritual awakening.

With the Mystic Gaze enjoy the developing sense of clarity, coordination and attunement with life in all you do.

  1. Sit calmly and relax your eyes
  2. Gaze slightly upwards 20-30 degrees
  3. Look into space 20 feet or more
  4. Gaze, don’t stare or strain your eyes
  5. Simply observe and appreciate your awareness of space
  6. Enjoy the dawning wholeness for several minutes
  7. Gear down and go about your day

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#7 EXPANSION THROUGH ATTITUDE AND GOOD WILL
Change Your Heart

Your practice of good will cultivates the heart’s truest, deepest feeling:  love.

These good will practices are a boon to mystical study.

The goal of good will practice is the change of the heart.

When your heart naturally and spontaneously radiates forth a palpable good will, then you are a changed person.

  1. Consciously direct your thoughts and feelings toward an attitude of good will
  2. Bring a person to mind
  3. Or place your awareness on a person closest to you
  4. Direct good will toward this person
  5. Feel free to add specific well-wishes like health, love, courage, etc.
  6. Allow your heart to expand, to change

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#6 EXPANSION LEVEL ONE
Quality of Life

Mystics break out of body bondage through numerous expansions of the heart — of the sense of self.

Your feeling of self-awareness imprisons or frees you.

Happily, you can do something powerfully liberating about the state of your heart and the quality of your life.

  1. Sit comfortably for 15 minutes
  2. Choose a person you know
  3. Imagine you’re walking in his/her shoes
  4. Feel you’re inside this person
  5. Say “If I were (name), I’d feel and think…”
  6. Have fun with it and let your heart expand

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#5 THE HEART AND ITS LIBERATION
Your Sense of Self

Mystics break out of mind and body bondage through expansions, expansions of consciousness.

Your “Heart” is your sense of self, your feeling about who you are.

Who are you as a distinct person from everyone else? This is your core individuality, your mystical heart.

  1. Focus on your mystic heart
  2. It is located in the right-central chest or inside the spine behind the heart
  3. Practice The Radiance or The Mist:
  4. Feel that your mystic heart…
  5. Radiates love, light and energy, or
  6. Generates a white mist flowing outward

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#4 THE MYSTIC BREATH
Your Window

Your breath is the key to the mystery of your life. The Mystic Breath is conscious use of this key.

Our individual natures will require different windows — different energy centers — from which to view the life force.

Allow the mystic breath to reveal your personal window.

  1. Stretch and then sit comfortably
  2. Take 5 to 7 deep breaths
  3. Focus on the center of your upper lip
  4. Witness the breath come and go
  5. Let your mind move to a natural center
  6. Watch your breath and the life force from this “window”

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#3 THE ASCENT
The Essence of Your Life

We begin meditation on the Infinite by focusing our awareness on Spirit, the life essence within us.

How can we do something so seemingly abstract? It’s easy. Spirit empowers your breath night and day.

Let the life force reveal itself to you. Sense the higher power which flows through you.

You’ll feel more alive.

  1. Stretch and relax your body
  2. Sit comfortably
  3. Take 5 to 7 deep breaths
  4. Focus on your nostril rims
  5. Witness the breath come and go
  6. Enjoy for 10 to 12 minutes
  7. Inhale deeply and stretch

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#0 THE MYSTIC SELF
Our True Nature

In the view of mystics, the major problem in life for most of us is ignorance of our true natures.

The Mysteries reveal many ways that you can actually contact your mystic self — and the Infinite Consciousness.

Do you, can you, contact your Mystic Self? Yes, indeed!

  1. Practice this anytime you like
  2. Probably your mind wanders quite often
  3. At times during the day, look at your mind and notice when it’s wandering
  4. Then, turn your attention to that part of your consciousness which observes that your mind is wandering
  5. That special overseeing awareness is part of your marvelous mystic self

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#1 MYSTIC AWAKENING
Benefits

Stimulate your mystical awakening.

When you wake up from a dream you realize you were only dreaming.

Consider too that this normal state of awareness in which you live may be a kind of sleep also.

As you do this technique you’ll find the world becomes more beautiful and enjoyable.

  1. Try this many times a day
  2. Whisper to yourself, “Wake up!”
  3. Mentally say, “Wake up!”
  4. Increase your attention, appreciation and feeling of love
  5. Just cheerfully exhort yourself
  6. Wake up!

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How to Succeed

As you may know, we do not charge for our courses. All Yoga World content is free and available to you with our blessings. However, we do have a simple, but important request that’s key to the transformations necessary to succeed on the path.

We ask you to commit two hours a week to selfless service. This service can be anything you choose ranging from helping a family member or neighbor to volunteering at a nonprofit organization.

I Commit to Serve

This commitment is solely between you and your inner self.

Why the Commitment?

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