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Auther

Ramakrishna Ananda

The Delightful Search

Tips for finding your path to higher consciousness

Now the search begins in earnest. It would be wonderful if finding your higher consciousness were as simple as getting on a freeway and staying on the road until the destination is reached. While “road, path, freeway,” are excellent ways of describing the quest for fulfillment, we must now go beyond this analogy. It’s fair to compare the quest for consciousness to a freeway but, of course, the matter is not that simple.

Keys to Higher Consciousness, Seeking

When you are moved, for one reason or another, to seek higher consciousness, an exciting part of your life begins. New delights are brought before you, vistas you never dreamed of come into your view. One young man found such excitement at this stage of his life that he read into the wee hours of the night. Early each morning he awakened refreshed and with a sense of wonder. His work life became exciting and enchanting. His enthusiasm was charming to his employers. During lunch hour and after work, he rushed to be with teachers and fellow participants in the realms of higher consciousness. He strived to be in tune with everyone and with nature herself. He reported that, despite living in a rather damp climate, he never got rained on during the first six months of his quest! He said he somehow sensed the activity of nature and was able to so attune with it that the rain always occurred while he was indoors or inside his car. Even during a rainy day when he made a short jaunt from his apartment to the store, he would find that for one reason or another the raindrops seemed to await his convenience. Then, after six months, he was rained on in a regular manner — like an ordinary mortal. However, he still enjoys reflecting on the extreme delight and excitement of those beginning days.

Enthusiasm

When you start to sense the higher consciousness and the vast potentiality available to you — furthermore, when you sense you can definitely experience and know the higher consciousness for yourself — you get a tremendous rush of enthusiasm and a feeling of gratitude for life. Life becomes more like a dance. Beauty, unseen before, now reaches out to your appreciative eyes most everywhere you go. The heart and mind glow with eagerness. Aspiration comes easily and dwells for long periods. Inspiring experiences abound.

One day, as a beginner on the path, you will see your first aura, the electromagnetic field of energy surrounding some particularly fine person. At other times your dreams may seem extraordinarily fascinating and profoundly symbolic. Your vitality level seems to double. Well being comes easily.

“Now your heart pounds with respect in the presence of those true teachers who seem to know everything! There’s always something new to talk about, something engrossing to think about, some new state of love or concern to dwell in your heart. You feel you’re coming up out of the grave, coming into life. You sense a rebirth will definitely occur. Who knows when? Perhaps today. You find it ever so tempting to get gushy and romantic, or to laugh too long and happily at an inane joke. At times you feel a strong desire to close your mouth and savor the sweetness which seems to radiate from roses within.

A Two-Fold Effect

The early delight in the quest can have a two-fold effect:

  1. People who experience the initial delights sometimes believe the phenomena they’ve experienced indicate they’re enlightened. Yet such “aspirants” will likely be somewhere else, practicing sword fighting or mountain climbing by next year. They often feel they’ve received in a few months what people generally have to labor years for and, now that they’ve gained “the illumination” or know what’s what, there are other more interesting and exciting fields to move into.
  2. The early and usually joyous beginning of the quest prepares one for the greater joys and challenges ahead. Work and effort will be required. An intensity will be necessary in order to transform old habits into refined tendencies and attributes of character necessary to actually experience the higher consciousness and ultimately abide in it. If the beginning of the path is to be more than an adolescent romance or crush, the forward momentum will have to be maintained. Higher consciousness requires those who want more than early thrills to begin — in however much delight — a very serious undertaking: You must now determine the best path for your fulfillment in higher consciousness.

Seek Earnestly

You must earnestly seek the best means, the best way, to go from where you are this very moment toward realization of your higher consciousness. Just as choosing a career involves a lot of pressure because a bad choice can saddle you with years of misery or frustration, so too the correct selection of your particular path is crucial not only to your success but to your happiness along the way.

Curiously, however, as many ministers have observed, most people take more care investing one hundred dollars than they do investing their lives. People look more deeply into the security and investment of a small sum than in examining the crucial issues of personal security and fulfillment.

“The world is full of long-term seekers who are always beginning over again as they drift from one teacher to another. They drift from guru to master, from mystic center to ashram to pagoda, from one sect which claims it alone knows the truth to another sect which makes similar claims. These drifters never succeed. They’re always starting. They never finish. They’re called “tramps,” and are a sad sight on the path. They’re so numerous that you will meet many of them. You may probably wonder why they don’t persist, why they don’t go forward and succeed. Simply, they’re refugees from their own private civil war. They have somehow been inwardly restrained from succeeding or fulfilling their quest.

Tramp Seekers

“Tramp seekers” often know more techniques and are personally familiar with more important people than you know, but tramps are very dangerous to follow. If you give these unfortunate people much of your time and attention, they will likely confuse you. They make it difficult for you to choose your particular way and succeed. These tramps often want to pull you away to another teacher, to another school of thought. They continually create a conflict of choice within your mind. To follow them is to become a tramp at an early stage. You will be doing something else next year, feeling that having higher consciousness is not that important. Perhaps next year you will feel it doesn’t even exist. Or worse, you may advocate from within the large tramp chorus that your fantasies are “true reality,” and imagination is higher consciousness!

However, with this precaution — “beware of tramps” — clearly in your mind, the time has come for you to actively search for the best means of realizing your higher consciousness. Hardly ever can you achieve it by sitting in your room reading books or meditating in an untutored way. Even these lessons can at best be only a guide, only a friendly help, along the stages of your quest. Hopefully, this website will enable you to find the means — the right teacher, the right form of study, the right form of discipline — such that you can make rapid progress and fulfill your earnest desire to know your higher consciousness.

“When You Are Ready, Your Master Will Appear”

A friend of the author’s from India related that as a young man he searched throughout his country in the hope he would find a true Guru who would initiate him and help him realize higher consciousness. Unfortunately, all he found were fakes interested only in his money and, after a few years, he abandoned the search. Later, when he was doing engineering work and other activities in the San Francisco area, he found his Guru, who quickly helped him realize higher consciousness. His Guru was from India and had been living only fifty miles from my friend’s home in Bombay!

You will often hear the phrase that “When you are ready, the master will appear.” If, as you begin your quest, you do not find a capable and worthy teacher who lives what he teaches and practices what he preaches, then look to your readiness. You are probably not ready. It is a law: When you are ready, your master will appear.

What’s My Path?

If you 1) prepare yourself and 2) are wary of tramps, you are now ready to ask the basic question: “What is the best way or path for my discovery of higher consciousness?”

At this stage in your life a lavish banquet is spread before you. Numerous ways to higher consciousness look delightfully appealing. But you must sample the various offerings with a view to selecting one soon. If you go about the early days of your sublime banqueting with an attitude that you are truly seeking to find the best means for your discovery of the higher consciousness, you will be guided safely through an amazing array of possibilities. You will find some possibilities are genuine and profound but they don’t suit your nature; you will also find other possibilities are definitely wacky and not worth much of your time.

Also keep in mind that you are daily seeking to become more conscious. You will find it a safe rule of thumb that during this sampling and tasting phase of your exciting new life you can easily determine whether a particular path or school of thought or teacher is good for you if you truly become a more conscious, better person as a consequence of your contact.

“You will likely find a number of fake teachers who want to convince you to follow them. Usually they treat you in a manner that satisfies or exalts your ego — your desire to be important. Fake teachers often feel that if they convince you how great you are, you will then — feeling great and important — be willing to do whatever they say or imply. Flattery on this path, as in any other area, is poison. There is a distinct difference between flattery and praise. Flattery will tend to puff up your ego; praise will make you humble and appreciative. Beware of flatterers — especially on the quest of higher consciousness which has so much latitude for fluffy nothings.

A great deal of emperor’s clothing is being sold by the yard in little booths alongside the various paths today. But don’t be discouraged — be forewarned. Be aware of your joy; resonate with the thrill of your aspirations. Just don’t be a naive, unconscious person. Don’t be childish at a time like this. You are seeking the greater values of life. The places you look, the people you meet, should reflect your higher values.

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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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I Commit to Serve

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