Page 5 - NAMAH-Jul-2019

The reversal of consciousness*

To live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness is needed. This cannot be compared in
any way with the different faculties or possibilities one has in the mental field. It may be
said of someone that he hasn’t much mental, vital or physical capacity, that his possibilities
are very limited; in that case it may be asked how these capacities may be developed, that
is, how new ones may be acquired, which is something rather difficult. But to live the
spiritual life is to open to another world within oneself. It is to reverse one’s consciousness,
as it were. The ordinary human consciousness, even in the most developed, even in men
of great talent and great realisation, is a movement turned outwards — all the energies
are directed outwards, the whole consciousness is spread outwards; and if anything is
turned inwards, it is very little, very rare, very fragmentary, it happens only under the
pressure of very special circumstances, violent shocks, the shocks life gives precisely with
the intention of slightly reversing this movement of exteriorisation of the consciousness.

But all who have lived a spiritual life have had the same experience: all of a sudden something
in their being has been reversed, so to speak, has been turned suddenly and sometimes
completely inwards, and also at the same time upwards, from within upwards— but it is
not an external “above”, it is within, deep, something other than the heights as they are
physically conceived. Something has literally been turned over. There has been a decisive
experience and the standpoint in life, the way of looking at life, the attitude one takes in
relation to it, has suddenly changed, and in some cases quite definitively, irrevocably.

And as soon as one is turned towards the spiritual life and reality, one touches the Infinite,
the Eternal, and there can no longer be any question of a greater or smaller number of
capacities or possibilities. It is the mental conception of spiritual life which may say that
one has more or less capacity to live spiritually, but this is not at all an adequate statement.
What may be said is that one is more or less ready for the decisive and total reversal. In
reality, it is the mental capacity to withdraw from ordinary activities and to set out in
search of the spiritual life which can be measured.

But so long as one is in the mental field, in this state, as it were, on this plane of consciousness,
one can’t do much for others, either for life in general or for particular individuals, because
one doesn’t have the certitude oneself, one doesn’t have the definitive experience, the
consciousness has not been established in the spiritual world; and all that can be said is
that they are mental activities which have their good and bad sides, but not much power
and, in any case, not this power of spiritual contagion which is the only truly effective
power.

*Heading provided by the Editor

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