William Butler Yeats’ Theory of Reincarnation – V
Nor are there really three levels of quotidian consciousness; it can’t be divided up as neatly as we are accustomed to thinking. We are accustomed to believing that there is a big difference between waking and dreaming, but from a light fiber point of view – i.e. seen from the point of view of the feelings involved – we are only really awake when we are thinking. If we are not thinking, we are actually dreaming, whether our bodies are nominally awake or not. The point is that there are no hard and fast division lines between waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep: they shade into one another. It’s merely our prejudice that seems to keep them distinct – our prejudice to believe that what we experience when we are awake is real and what we experience when we are dreaming is unreal. As we are able to activate our higher Faculties in our quotidian lives more and more – which means feeling the underlying feelings of everyday life instead of reacting to the thought form events (as society has taught us to do) – then our daily lives become more dreamlike and unreal. The belief that there is such a thing as an outside reality is what’s unreal – it’s a distortion or obfuscation of the feelings which are actually going on (are calling up that reality).
What separates the Four Faculties is forgetfulness or disconnectedness. Forgetfulness (and with it, focus) increases as the descent is made down the cone from its base to its apex, from Creative Mind to Will:Will forgets everything but this immediate line of memory;Body of Fate forgets everything but this particular incarnation;Mask forgets everything but the individual self.
Just as the division between waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep is not as distinct as we usually imagine, neither is the division between the Faculties as hard and fast as shown above. For example, the difference between probable realities in this lifetime (BF) and other lifetimes (Mask) is not as distinct as we think. Master magicians lose their sense of separation between this lifetime (Will), other probable realities (BF), other lifetimes (Mask), and other people (CM). This is because they can feel the light fibers directly (the light fibers to which these particular thought forms are attached). They can feel those feelings directly, so they don’t get hung up in the individual thought forms by reacting to them with their lower selves – by taking personally the things that happen to them rather than just accepting them detachedly. Grabbing onto a particular thought form is what keeps us centered in a particular moment of time.
Mind and time arise together. This is a symbolic view of what our waking consciousness does: it imposes a flow of linear temporality on ineffable feeling in order to make some sort of sense out of it – to make it seem real; just as dream consciousness imposes an orientation in space on unbounded chaos in order to make it seem familiar. But things making sense (importance) or seeming familiar are not innate parts of the universe – they’re a blip. Things don’t make sense; and nothing is ever the same. Things making sense or seeming familiar – reified as time and space – are a matter of Will alone. So, if we are going to utilize our three higher Faculties, we have to come to a point in our daily lives in which we don’t care so much about whether or not things make sense – whether or not there is any rhyme or reason for anything. We have to feel comfortable feeling disoriented – not worry so much whether things are under control or not. We have to let go and relax. Master magicians feel that they are totally disoriented every second; that they are in the midst of a maelstrom which is swirling them about in complete chaos. They’ve just become accustomed to this feeling, so they don’t wet their pants about it like most of us would.
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