Gnostic Question of the Week

The four states of consciousness explained.

Answer from the V.M. Samael Aun Weor and the magazine.

Whoever wants to awaken consciousness here and now must begin by understanding the three subconscious factors called: Identification, fascination, and sleep.

All types of identification produce fascination and sleep. You are walking down a street, and suddenly you come across crowds protesting something in front of the president's palace. If you are not alert, you identify with the demonstration, you blend in with the crowds, you become fascinated, and then sleep comes. You shout, you throw stones, you do things that in other circumstances you wouldn't do for a million dollars.

Forgetting oneself is a mistake with incalculable consequences. Identifying with something is the height of stupidity, because the result is fascination and sleep.

It is impossible for someone to awaken consciousness if they forget themselves, if they identify with something.

It is impossible for an aspirant to awaken consciousness if they allow themselves to be fascinated, if they fall into sleep.

Samael Aun Weor. The Buddha's Necklace.

Answer from the magazine "The The wisdom of the Being.".

In this way, our life is full of pain and suffering. When we are on the first level, which is Eikasia, our physical body sleeps in bed. Our soul separates, leaving the physical body, trapped in different psychological aggregates, and travels and visits different places, sees people, talks, or works. We always live within our dreams, where there is no logic, continuity, cause, or effect. All psychic functions work without any direction, and in our dreams, subjective images appear—incoherent, vague, and imprecise scenes. When we wake up, we sometimes remember the places we went, who we talked to, etc., but depending on the level of sleeping consciousness, we may not remember what we dreamed.

The second state of consciousness, called Pistis or the waking state, tells us Master Samael—the misnamed waking state—is when we wake up, get out of bed, prepare to go to work, and begin our ordinary lives. But sadly, we continue dreaming in this waking state, which should be about being vigilant, attentive to our duties, working, studying, eating, walking, and so on. However, unfortunately, we continue dreaming in every activity we perform, and this waking state is another form of dreaming. We dream while awake, living in the world of dreams. The poet rightly said that life is a dream.

It's like when the sun rises; the stars seem to hide, but they don't cease to exist. Dreams are like that in the waking state; they continue secretly. We never stop dreaming. In this misnamed state of wakefulness, we must learn to use the 3% of consciousness that is not trapped in the egos, that is free but dormant.

The master recommends that we always be in intimate remembrance of ourselves, that we never forget ourselves. He has also given us several keys to awaken our consciousness, such as discernment, the key to dividing attention into three parts (subject, object, and place), etc.

To know the third floor of the house, or the third state of consciousness called Dianoia, it is essential to stop dreaming. We must awaken our consciousness; we must work with consciousness here and now. We must learn to live on that second floor in constant vigilance of our own lives, consciously monitoring every thought, every feeling, and every action. We must stop being mere machines at the service of the ego, stop being mere sleeping robots, believing that we think, feel, and act, when sadly, it is the egos that direct our lives.

The third state of consciousness is self-awareness. It is essential that we truly work on knowing ourselves. We firmly believe we know ourselves, but the reality is that we do not. The maxim at the Temple of Delphi tells us, "Man, know thyself." To know ourselves, we need self-observation, to monitor ourselves, to discover and understand our way of thinking, our feelings, and our actions. Cultivate the habit of daily meditation on the death of the ego; in this way, we will gradually eliminate the defects we discover and understand. When a defect dies, a virtue, a value, a certain percentage of trapped consciousness is freed.

When we manage to free all trapped consciousness—that is, when, with the help of our Divine Mother, we manage to put to death each and every one of our psychological aggregates—little by little, we will attain that self-awareness. We will be living on the third level, in the third state of consciousness, gradually eliminating the psychological aggregates.

By completely eliminating the ego, we will have the right to move to the fourth floor of the house, that is, to conquer the fourth state of consciousness, also called NOUS.

The fourth floor of the house is truly formidable. Only those who reach objective consciousness, the fourth state, can study things in themselves, the world as it is.

The Magazine "The Wisdom of the Being" 109: "The Four States of Consciousness."