All in all, at this second, seldom reached stage, the two consciousnesses’, the old common and the new enlightened, live side by side, complementarily, with one constructively feeding off the other. Even, in a sense, learning from the other, but above all thoroughly enjoying its juxtaposition to the other. What would be the point of being awake if you were not still in bed with a sleeper. Where’s the fun of being able to see if you are not with the blind?
You can never get away from you. You cannot destroy the consciousness you were born with: asleep and confused. All are born, and asleep half the time. Even the awakened remain so, but even when original, dense consciousness is momentarily center stage, a man with a self-produced new consciousness is never fooled. He knows it is all just a play being acted out on the stage of his consciousness, and his new consciousness never loses awareness of itself as a hip audience who no longer takes the merely entertaining act seriously, as does everyone else.
So, all of the few inescapably initially believe the goal is to do away completely with their old, sleeping, unenlightened consciousness, and replace it permanently with a new awakened one. Then, have they had any success in the matter, one day a non-standard consciousness suddenly appears in their brain which sees exactly what is going on in itself; which explains everything that is going on in life. Then the two compete for time in control of the operations in the brain that produce thoughts and result in overall consciousness. Then sometimes a man is awake and sometimes asleep; sometimes in the dark again, sometimes in the light. But always still struggling, and always bothered by not being able to completely do away with the inferior consciousness, his head tells, then listens to and accepts self-deluding stories, that purport to explain away this unacceptable conflicting condition.
But if he would persevere, far beyond any point he has ever heard about in descriptions of this wild adventure, he might discover a place wherein the “dumb” lion still lies down next to the “enlightened” lamb, and now the wooly one wallows pleasurably in the situation, and indeed benefits from its proximity to the beast in a way no man can describe.
From attempted replacement
to being in competition,
to complementing one another,
and thus completing a man’s consciousness.
J,