In Search of the Miraculous

instinctive and the moving centers. The lower story can exist by itself, because the

three centers in it are the conductors of the three forces. The thinking and the

emotional centers are not indispensable for life."

"Which of them is active and which is passive in the lower story?"

"It changes," said G., "one moment the moving center is active and the instinctive is passive. Another moment the instinctive is active and the moving is passive. You

must find examples of both states in yourself. But besides different states there are

also different types. In some people the moving center is more active, in others the

instinctive center. But for the sake of convenience in reasoning and particularly in the

beginning, when it is important only to explain the principles, we take them as one

center with different functions which are on the same level. If you take the thinking,

the emotional, and the moving centers, then they work on different levels. The

moving and the instinctive—on one level. Later on you will understand what these

levels mean and upon what they depend."

Chapter Seven

ON ONE occasion while talking with G. I asked him whether he considered it

possible to attain "cosmic consciousness," not for a brief moment only but for a longer period. I understood the expression "cosmic consciousness" in the sense of a higher consciousness possible for man in the sense in which I had previously written about it

in my book Tertium Organum.

"I do not know what you call 'cosmic consciousness,' " said G., "it is a vague and indefinite term; anyone can call anything he likes by it. In most cases what is called

'cosmic consciousness' is simply fantasy, associative daydreaming connected with

intensified work of the emotional center. Sometimes it comes near to ecstasy but most

often it is merely a subjective emotional experience on the level of dreams. But even

apart from all this before we can speak of 'cosmic consciousness' we must define in

general what consciousness is.

"How do you define consciousness?"

"Consciousness is considered to be indefinable," I said, "and indeed, how can it be defined if it is an inner quality? With the ordinary means at our disposal it is

impossible to prove the presence of consciousness in another man. We know it only in

ourselves."

"All this is rubbish," said G., "the usual scientific sophistry. It is time you got rid of it. Only one thing is true in what you have said: that you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say you can know, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that

very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has

been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it

disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you are

nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in

yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably

see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of

consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely

unconscious, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can

think, feel, act speak, work, without being conscious of it. And

if you learn to see in yourselves the moments of consciousness and the long periods of

mechanicalness, you will as infallibly see in other people when they are conscious of

what they are doing and when they are not.

"Your principal mistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present,

now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of

consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be

understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case

and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to

define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness. We have-only the possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is."

I cannot say that what was said about consciousness became clear to me at once. But

one of the subsequent talks explained to me the principles on which these arguments

were based.

On one occasion at the beginning of a meeting G. put a question to which all those

present had to answer in turn. The question was; "What is the most important thing that we notice during self-observation?"