Grand Is The Seen

Grand Is The Seen

When speaking or writing about self-remembering, what we describe or try to describe is a state of consciousness. The experience, while wordless and definite, is also invisible and indescribable. For those who feel a longing, or who experience an unfathomable yearning for a more meaningful existence, self-remembering becomes the beginning of a new way of living, the portal to conscious evolution.

But here’s the rub. I can tell you about effects on consciousness, the benefits, the efforts and so on and so forth, but a description of the state of presence itself is impossible, so we have to rely on analogies.

We compare impressions we encounter to the state we experience and say that self-remembering is like this, or like that. In actual fact, self-remembering is not like anything. On the other hand, once we begin to remember ourselves and become familiar with this state, various impressions, whether from the natural or man-made worlds, echo or are reflections of the state of self-remembering. Thus when we encounter these impressions, they serve as the third force to engage presence.

Much of our work in the beginning is learning what is not self-remembering. At some point in our evolution, we will encounter our deepest held convictions, opinions and beliefs and understand that these are not the third state. Even the i or desire to remember oneself, is not self-remembering. In some ancient traditions, the third state of consciousness was depicted as a holy person, and it was forbidden to create an image of that individual. In this way esoteric schools taught, without words, that a higher state of consciousness is not visible.

Even so, the more we remember ourselves, and the more we become familiar with this state and live in this state, as we evolve, our more developed higher functions can even begin to perceive presence in others. A swan recognizes a swan when it beholds one.

Through the eons various artists, musicians, poets, monarchs, statesmen, spiritual teachers have crafted descriptions of the state of self-remembering, of higher centers, of the Self. While their works are more often than not understood literally or as refined entertainment, in a higher state of consciousness, speaking the same conscious language, they communicate to us through time and space and we receive their divine message.

Walt Whitman, who rose above an intense life filled with personal and external struggles, sent us the following love letter from a tumultuous United States nearly two centuries ago.

Grand is the seen; And grander by far is the unseen.

Post by Charles R

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Image: Jain icon, India, Rajasthan. 18th Century, Private Collection