Consciousness as used in Infinity in a Drop
author: Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: December 1969
This text is still in process: many more links are to be added to the chapters of Infinity in a Drop where each of these issues has been discussed.
- Consciousness is awareness.
There is a transitive and an intransitive form of this:
one can be conscious of something, or one can consciously be something. - Consciousness is power.
Cit is cit-tapas; consciousness is not only passive, but also dynamic:
it can reject, sanction and work to manifest something.
- Consciousness is the source of identity.
Consciousness is one with being:
we are our consciousness.
- Everything is conscious.
Consciousness is part of the very stuff of existence.
- It is the consciousness in things that gives them their qualities.
Each centre of consciousness has only those qualities that it selected out of the infinite qualities of the Divine by its power of exclusive concentration.
- Consciousness always goes with Joy.
- Consciousness always goes with Love.
Love is the dynamic side of joy.
- Consciousness is one.
Each centre of consciousness is in it's core still one with the original consciousness that manifested the world out of and within itself.
- Consciousness is none, one and many.
Each centre of consciousness can (but need not) contain a complex reality within itself.
- Consciousness is transcendent, cosmic and individual.
- Consciousness is both static (beyond time) and evolving (in time).
- Consciousness is (ultimately) free.
"Most bound most free"
All this follows directly or indirectly from the ancient Indian idea of saccidānanda as the ultimate nature of reality: everything that exists must be conscious, as otherwise it would not know how to be, and joyful, as otherwise it would not want to be.
To go back to how this conceptualisation of consciousness relates
to the way the term is understood in other knowledge systems:
To proceed towards a discussion of how the idea of
an ongoing evolution of consciousness works
as meta-narrative for psychology: