Seven stadia of Consciousness

Table of contents

• The first stadium: Not thinking
• The second stadium: unconscious
• The third stadium: the subconscious
• The fourth stadium: the conscious
• The fifth stadium: the sub super conscious
• The sixth stadium: the super conscious

The first stadium: Not thinking

The first stadiumm is not thinking. Not thinking means that the spirit is in a deep sleep; muladhara?.In the rock God is present, in a deep sleep. In human he is a little bit awoken, only a little bit, but not very much. Rocks are beautiful this way, in deep silence, no fuzz, no restlessness, no need to go anywhere. This is no thinking. Spirit is there, but not yet manifested himself. Spirit is still a seed. His dawn will come, and the rock will become a bird; the tree will blossom.

The second stadium: unconscious

The second center is the unconscious. In the trees spirit is already there, but not like the rock. Trees feel. They can’t feel that they feel though. Notice the difference. When you hit a tree, he will feel that, but he won’t feel he feels that. He has not that consciousness. But the feeling is there. Spirit is there but almost as someone who sleeps. In the morning you can remember it’s been a lovely night, but this you remember in the morning, not the moment when you were sleeping. It only functioned as a memory, afterwards.

The third stadium: the subconscious

The third stadium is the one of the subconscious. We notice the subconscious in birds, in animals. It is like dreaming. In a dream you are a little more conscious, then in your sleep. One might say rocks are in a coma. They don’t even remember anything in the morning , how deep the sleep has been.

The fourth stadium: the conscious

The fourth stadium is the conscious. This is the human state. He is not yet very conscious, not more then a flash, not more then a little wave of conscious, in a situation of great danger for example. Thinking stops, in a seldom moment, the other moments you are sleepwalking.

The fifth stadium: the sub super conscious

The fifth stadium is the sub super conscious. All religions move in the area between conscious and the super conscious. All yoga techniques serve nothing more then to transform your consciousness into the super consciousness.Gurdjieff calls it self remembering. Kabir calls it surati-yoga. Surati means remembering. . Jesus? says repeatedly: be conscious! Be alert! Look! Boedddha? says: be on your guard. Krishnamurti? repeatedly mentions awareness. The whole message is contained in that word; that word is the bridge between the conscious and the super conscious.

The sub super conscious is a part from you, but you can still loose it sometimes. Not in your normal behavior, when you are awake, but when you go to sleep, you can loose it. The sub super conscious helps you when you are awake and can even be with you in your dreams. Krishna says in the Gita: The yogi is awake, even when the whole world sleeps. Then he refers to the sixth stadium, the super conscious.

The sixth stadium: the super conscious

Even when he sleeps deeply, the consciousness doesn’t leave him. This is the sixth state. From that sixth spontaneously, the seventh grows, you don’t have to do anything for it.

---