Cosmic Zoom: The Supra-Conscious

In 1915, Sigmund Freud explicitly condemned the word, “sub-conscious”. He clearly indicated that there is no “subterranean consciousness”. He posited that we are either conscious OR NOT. When we are not aware that we are fully conscious he called that the “unconscious” or “pre-conscious” state.
Many New Age practitioners, and particularly hypnotherapists, erroneously believe and espouse that it is important to get in touch with this fictitious projection dubbed the “sub-conscious”. Many practitioners take a few brief courses in psychology or hypnotherapy and then put up a shingle proclaiming that they can help you understand and assimilate your “sub-conscious”. Like Freud, I purged this word from my speech and all my articles many, many years ago. When I first heard of it in high school, I felt that it was mechanistic and false. Only in recent years did I learn that Freud himself totally rejected this concept.

I share with my Partners in Healing (clients) that there are four levels of consciousness:

SIMPLE-CONSCIOUSNESS – The lowest level of consciousness of all animals, except human beings. There is no “cellar” below it!

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS – We humans have had this UNIQUE mutation take place in our early evolution. No other animal has attained this ability to reflect upon itself and to utilize choice.

SUPER-CONSCIOUSNESS – This is the TEMPORARY state of consciousness that is induced by drugs, alcohol and chemicals. Note that superman inevitably “crashes” whenever he gets near kryptonite. The same is true for all artificial stimulants. For example, cocaine users, or “wizards”, ALWAYS crash.

SUPRA-CONSCIOUSNESS – This is the state of being nearly continuously aware of being fully conscious. It is Theta State or Enlightenment. It is what Plato, Aristotle and Hippocrates called Psyche. Psyche is the whole cosmos holographically connected.

In his book, “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man”, James Joyce, depicted the character, Stephen Dedalus, as being capable of supra-consciousness and Joyce called this trait “cosmic zoom”.
Freud was heavily influenced by Plato, Aristotle and Hippocrates.
He was intrigued by the concept of Psyche in which an individual is totally immersed in their environment. It is virtually impossible to be depressed, anxious, alienated or feel detached when one is totally connected with everything. There is then literally no “inside” and “outside”. The ancient Greeks used the purple ergot fungus from barley crops to make a low dose hallucinogenic.
This was the earliest use of LSD. At many of the 400 asklepions, or healing centres, across Greece this ergot was used in ritual initiations to give the participants a “taste” of the supra-conscious experience. This was done only in the initial phases of Spiritual growth and then the drug was discontinued.

For Freud and his contemporaries, the drug of choice was cocaine rather than ergot or LSD. Unlike cocaine, LSD is non-addictive. In his day, Freud, and countless others, became constant users of cocaine. In 1884, Freud wrote a paper called “On Coca” in which he raved about the virtues of cocaine. His colleague, Dr. Koller, also extolled the wonderful effects of cocaine. Perhaps cocaine was the “top secret” original ingredient in the first “coca coller” elixirs? The “real thing”, eh?

We now know how to attain supra-consciousness and generally stay in Psyche without ergot, cocaine, etc. If we stay radically present and master the art of total acceptance of all situations and events, we are then fairly close to nirvana. Staying in this state is probably the greatest challenge. I truly wish and hope that you experience this wonderful state of supra-consciousness without addictive drugs! Namaste…………