Happy People Are Dangerous
In the beginning was the word, or the logos. The same cannot be said about consciousness, because in the beginning unconsciousness was also there. Consciousness is just a part of your reality, the reality of the inner. Unconsciousness is also there. So there was not just consciousness in the beginning. Unconsciousness was also there, as much as consciousness. Or you can say that in the beginning something was there in which both consciousness and unconsciousness are involved.
That is the meaning of God. God is not only consciousness: God is consciousness plus unconsciousness. God is the dark night and the bright day, both; summer and winter, both; life and death, both. God is the beginning and the end, both. God is beyond duality. And the duality is intrinsic in him: he is both matter and mind, the manifest and the unmanifest.
Consciousness is just a part of the great oceanic unconsciousness. Consciousness is just on the surface. Deeply hidden are layers and layers of unconsciousness. One has to transcend both to know that which was in the beginning, which is God.
“Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego?” One part of you is conscious: one tenth. Nine tenths of you is unconscious. If the conscious part thinks itself to be the whole, it becomes the ego. Then it forgets about the unconscious; then the part imagines itself to be the whole. Then it is the ego.
If the conscious also becomes aware of the unconscious.. That is the whole effort of religion, that is the whole effort of meditation. If the conscious turns back, looks back, and also becomes aware of the unconscious – the dark night within – then the conscious knows that, “I am conscious. I am also unconscious, and my consciousness is just a wave on the ocean. The unconscious is vast.” Then the ego disappears. Ego is the part thinking itself to be the whole. Non-ego is the part becoming aware of the whole. Then the ego disappears.
How to define the nature of consciousness? It has never been defined, it will never be defined, because who will define it? To define it you have to be away from it. To define anything you have to stand outside it; you need a distance. The perspective will not be possible if the distance is not there.
You are consciousness, you are unconsciousness. There is nobody who can stand outside and define it. You can know it but you cannot define it. That’s why all religion is mysterious, mystical, vague, cloudy – because no term which is very basic to religion can be defined.
The subject cannot be made an object. I cannot put myself in front of myself, so I cannot define: neither has Buddha defined, nor Jesus. Definition as such is debarred by the very nature of the phenomenon. Everything else can be defined, because consciousness is the definer. Everything else is before consciousness. The consciousness can know, go around, watch, observe, experiment, define, dissect – but who will define consciousness? You cannot get further away from it. You are it. You can know it, but you cannot define it. Knowledge is not possible, only knowing.
Excerpted From Come Follow To You, Vol. 2 CH: 2
