Perceptive ability
Now let’s return to the description of human development towards the living of the basic rights of existence so as to achieve internal harmony. As the next step we would like to consider what actually changes in a person when he fulfills the preconditions for the development, in other words he would like to respect – without preconditions and from his own free will - the basic rights of existence and then take the steps necessary for this.We have seen that we can compare human development with the achievement of virtuosity in a particular activity (for example making music, sport, handcrafts etc.). The basic rights of existence (the equal right of all beings to be on the earth, to develop and to carry out their tasks) must be so strongly internalized that in every situation we automatically act according to these rights without having to think about it. If we wish to pass through this development stage, our subconscious - amongst other things with subjective perception (glasses model) - will help us to eliminate the causes of violating the basic rights of existence. We learn step by step and hence build our own pyramid of human development. Within the scope of our personal development our perceptive ability with respect to everything around us and the important interrelationships in life also increases. In particular our abilities to intuitively perceive and evaluate important information for the respecting of the basic rights of existence also increase.
From our everyday lives we also know of the increase in the perceptive ability for everything which is related directly or indirectly with an activity which is practised like a virtuoso.
A professional chauffeur can take in significantly more information during a journey than an occasional driver. The latter is fully occupied with the activity of «driving a car» whilst in the case of the professional driver «driving is almost automatic».
A good mountain guide will often sense the threat of an avalanche and quite intuitively avoids dangerous slopes. He has learned how he can trust his senses. The occasional mountain climber however is normally more dependent on his intellect, which interprets the avalanche bulletins on the radio, television or in the newspaper. When in the mountains he is less «in his element» and his senses are not so well trained to the perception of the danger of avalanches. Indeed it would be even more dangerous if he was to rely upon his own feelings for danger!
The same piece of music played once by a virtuoso and then by an average player sounds different although both are playing exactly the same notes – the virtuoso can perceive more about the piece and also put more expression into it than the average player. Why would we otherwise go to concerts given by well-known artists, if every advanced music student could play just as well? Why is there a difference between the music on a CD and «live» music?
From the above examples it is clear that the respective person has specially trained himself in certain abilities for the acquisition and evaluation of information from his surroundings for the perfecting of his particular activity. In a similar way the virtuoso appears to have acquired for himself a particular expressive ability or charisma with respect to his activity. The exact senses and information which are concerned here are difficult to judge in most cases. It is also just as difficult to scientifically explain how the information is evaluated or transmitted. The differences in the perceptive and expressive ability between someone who «is» a given activity and who becomes absorbed in it, and somebody who merely «carries out» the same activity, are however striking in the majority of cases.
Awareness - higher consciousness
The same is true for the perceptive and expressive ability in connection with the living of the basic rights of existence. We refer to this ability in the following as awareness. The word «awareness» (to be conscious of something) describes well the interrelationship described above: He who is properly conscious when carrying out a certain activity is very «aware» of all the useful information. Unlike the less well-practised he has trained his senses to be able to take in lots of additional information and to express it. He who lives his life as a virtuoso, i.e. automatically allows himself to be guided in all situations by the basic rights of existence, in other words he who lives the basic rights of existence «is» the basic rights of existence. He becomes virtually «fused» with the law and has similarly trained many of his senses which help him in this activity of living the virtuoso life or even make it possible in the first place. With respect to life he has become aware of «his existence». We would say he has a great awareness or higher consciousness.
We define awareness (or higher consciousness) as the sum of all abilities, which permit us to respect the basic rights of existence in every situation.
With this definition we can therefore also postulate that it is our task in life to develop our own level of awareness further (or higher consciousness, divine consciousness, spiritual growth).
Earlier we compared human development with the building of a pyramid. The more of this pyramid which already exists, the higher is our awareness or consciousness. Awareness can however also be represented extremely well by another model:
The model of the awareness sphere
We can use the model of a bright lamp to represent our level of awareness or consciousness: Our body represents the lamp which is lit ever more brightly as our awareness increases. The brightness of our awareness lights up our surroundings so that we can see and hence perceive additional aspects of ourselves and our surroundings.
The light fully illuminates a space around us which is approximately the shape of a sphere. In the following we will describe this space as the awareness sphere. We can clearly perceive everything within the sphere with our common sense or our intuition. Outside the awareness sphere the brightness of our lamp is no longer sufficient. The further away something is from our sphere the less easy it is to perceive it.
Figure 5: Awareness (higher consciousness) as a sphere of light around our body
The better developed are our abilities to live the basic rights of existence the greater is our «awareness sphere». The light from our body becomes stronger such that it lights up a greater area. At first we can perceive or understand more and more things and interrelationships in ourselves and gradually also in our surroundings either with our common sense or our intuition. We have an increasingly better feel for what we should do or not do (higher consciousness). For example just as we have seen with the virtuoso musician, with increasing development we can not only take in other information, but we can even «radiate» additional information. This is not only true for us human beings but also applies in general to all beings.
The model of the awareness sphere is extremely appropriate for discussing some of the characteristics of our personal development:
As already indicated earlier the development of a human being can only proceed in steps. We can at least partially select the sequence of lessons ourselves, however the extent of learning is the same for all beings. Using the analogy of human development with the building of a pyramid we have already seen that it is sensible to first build the foundation and thereafter each layer symmetrically one on top of the other. It is true that we can try to build up the pyramid from just one side, but this will soon cause us difficulties since the sloping wall will fall down.
Let us consider this step by step development with the model of our awareness sphere: We cannot double the diameter of our sphere in one go without adopting all the diameters between the present state and the new diameter – if only for a short time. As our lamp shines out more strongly the diameter of our awareness sphere becomes ever greater, we cannot «leave out» any diameters. We will return again later to the enlargement of the awareness sphere when considering our development on the basis of tasks in our everyday and professional life (also called inducing consciousness or developing a higher consciousness). Thereby we will see how pointless it is to deviate from our personal training plan, in order – for whatever reason – to perform tasks which are too demanding or too easy.
Figure 6: Enlargement of our awareness - spiritual growth for a higher consciousness
In the next chapter, while considering our responsibilities, we will still frequently return to this model of the awareness sphere.
If someone pursues a goal other than that of personal harmony, he will naturally over a period of time also acquire the necessary abilities for this goal. His perceptive ability with respect to that information which is necessary to achieve his goal, will develop. As examples of the acquisition of such specific abilities we have mentioned a virtuoso musician, a good mountain guide or a dealer on the stock exchange. They all develop their abilities and in particular their intuition, however each one especially for his own task. There is not simply only «the intuition», rather intuition is normally task-specific or target-oriented. Correspondingly there is intuition for mountain climbing, playing the violin or football, share dealing etc. Intuition and all other abilities develop differently according to the objectives striven for in life by a person.
We can also represent the abilities required to achieve the respective goals other than personal harmony as the sphere around a person. These other goals are only those goals which do not lead to personal peace and harmony, in other words those goals which are not compatible with the respecting of the basic rights of existence. Such goals may be for example power over others, high standing in society or revenge for a particular event. With these goals too we develop the corresponding abilities over time, which we can represent in our model as a coloured sphere of light around us. To differentiate between the abilities we will however give this sphere other colours, for example red, green, blue or a mixture of these colours.
If someone strives for several incompatible goals then the corresponding abilities will be developed as far as possible. The abilities of a given person with several goals can thus be represented by several, concentric coloured spheres of light. The size of each of these spheres is then established according to the level of the respective abilities as with the white awareness sphere.
However we continue to describe our awareness (or higher consciousness), i.e. the ability to live the basic rights of existence, with the bright, white light sphere.
When someone makes the living of the basic rights of existence into his greater goal, this means according to our model of the awareness sphere, that he no longer pursues the goals which have led to the coloured spheres. These will as a result gradually disappear, so that one single white sphere remains which becomes ever larger. In our model this symbolizes the increase in awareness (spiritual growth or personal growth for a higher consciousness).