Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 3: Oneness and Irreconcilability

 

5. Consciousness and the First Step out of Ego

(Further Considerations of the Psyche)

Most of the abilities human beings now possess are only shadows of their real strengths. The human spirit knows, loves, and creates. These are its unequivocal Functions in Heaven. All of the current abilities of human beings are equivocal, or open to question or doubt. This is because people are no longer certain how they will use their abilities. In this state their unequivocal Functions slumber. Human beings in this state are therefore incapable of Knowledge because they are uncertain. They are incapable of true loving because they can perceive lovelessly. They cannot create surely because their perceptions can deceive, and because illusions are never sure.

Perception did not exist until the separation introduced aspects, intervals and degrees into experience. The spirit has no levels, and all conflict arises from the concept of levels. Wars can even emerge from conflict when some regard others as if they were on a different level of existence. All interpersonal conflict arises from this fallacy. Only the Oneness of the Divine Trinity is free of conflict where levels seem to be involved.

The levels that came into place as a result of the separation are disastrous. They cannot but conflict. This is because each level is essentially meaningless to the others. Freud realized this perfectly, and that is why he conceived as forever irreconcilable the different levels of the psyche. As he conceived them they were conflict-prone by definition because they wanted different things and obeyed different principles.

In this Course’s presentation of the psyche, and its levels of consciousness or awareness, there is an unconscious or subconscious level, which properly consists only of the miracle ability that should be under superconscious control and my direction (and will be whenever miracle workers remember to invite this direction), and a conscious level, which is aware of impulses or inspirations from both the unconscious and the superconscious, and perceives accordingly. (The superconscious is a level of mind or psyche but transcends the individual human psyche.) The unconscious and the superconscious are the sources of the impulses or inspirations the human psyche receives. Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but not of Knowledge. Knowledge belongs solely to the superconscious.

Again, to perceive is not to know. (In this connection, Cayce’s conception was more accurate than Freud’s.) Consciousness and its levels of the human psyche was the first split that the separated ones introduced into themselves. The human being thus became a perceiver rather than a creator in the true sense.

Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain that the ego operates in. Jung was right indeed in insisting that the ego is not the self, and that the self should be regarded as an achievement. He did not recognize (a term that was clarified previously) that the achievement belongs to Spirit. In a sense, the ego was a human-made attempt to perceive oneself as one wished, rather than as one is. This is an example of the created / Creator confusion touched on previously. Human beings can in truth only know themselves as they are, because that is all they can be sure of. Everything else is open to question.

The ego, temporarily operating in consciousness, can perceive but cannot know. It is the questioning compartment in the post-separation psyche that human beings made for themselves. It is capable of asking questions but not of receiving valid answers, because these answers are cognitive and cannot be perceived. Therefore the ego cannot access them. The endless speculation about the meaning of the mind has led to considerable confusion because the ego compartment of the mind or consciousness is confused. Only the One-Mindedness of the superconscious is without confusion. A split, separate, or divided mind or psyche must be confused. A divided mind is uncertain by definition, and therefore cannot know, and cannot receive valid answers. It has to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself.

Internal or intrapersonal conflict arises from the same basis as interpersonal conflict. One part of the psyche perceives another part as on a different level, and does not understand it. This makes the parts strangers to each other, without recognition. This is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack is always possible.

Human beings have every reason to feel anxious as they misperceive themselves. This is why they cannot release themselves from fear until they know that they did not and could never create themselves. They can never make this misperception valid, and when they at last perceive clearly, they are glad that they can’t. Each person’s perfect creation by the Divine is beyond their own capacity for error, however great this capacity may be, and this is why every single human being must eventually choose to heal the separation.

Right-mindedness shouldn’t be confused with the knowing mind (which is part of the superconscious), because it is applicable only to right perception. A person can be right-minded or wrong-minded, and this is subject to degrees, a fact that clearly demonstrates a lack of association with Knowledge. The term “right-mindedness” is properly used as the correction for wrong-mindedness or judgment and its subsequent fear, and applies to the state of mind that induces accurate perception. It is miraculous because it heals misperception, and healing is indeed the result of a miracle in view of how humans often perceive themselves. Only the sick need healing. The spirit does not need healing, but the divided mind does.

Freud gave a very graphic but upside-down account of how the divisions of the mind arose from the “bottom” level up. This is actually impossible because the unconscious cannot create the conscious. Just as the Divine created Its Children through knowing them, no Child of the Divine can create something they can’t know. Freud, being very intelligent though misguided, was greatly worried that the unconscious cannot create the conscious, and attempted to get around this fact by introducing a number of “borderline” areas into his conception of the psyche, an attempt that merely resulted in his conception being fuzzy. This was particularly unfortunate because he was capable of conceiving on a much higher level if he had not been so afraid. This is why he kept pulling the mind down into his conceived darkness instead of raising his conceptions up.

The ego did not arise out of the unconscious, though this is the way the structure of the psyche appears if pictured from the bottom up. Just as the unconscious cannot create the conscious, a lower-order perception – looking with the body’s eyes – cannot create a higher-order one – seeing with the spiritual eye – because the lower-order perception doesn’t understand the higher-order one. But a lower-order perception can come from a higher-order one when the lower-order one is understood in terms of misperception.

Perception always involves some misuse of will because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power. When part of the mind willed the separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, all of the mind willed only to know. Afterward, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of this ambiguity became clear perception, or tracing its steps backward step by step out of the detour it had entered.

The ego is as frail as Freud perceived it. Later consciousness theorists tried to introduce a less pessimistic view, but sought in the wrong direction for their hope. Any attempt to endow the ego with the attributes of the spirit is merely confused thinking. Freud was more clear-sighted about this because he knew a “bad” thing when he perceived it. His error was in failing to recognize that a bad thing cannot exist in Reality. It is therefore entirely unnecessary to try to figure one’s way out of it. The thing to do is simply to conceive and perceive it rightly. As has been correctly observed, the thing to do in a desert that isn’t able to provide one with nourishment is simply to leave it.

The mind returns itself to its proper Function of creating only when it wills to know. This places it in Spirit’s Service, where perception with the body’s senses alone is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of mind that wills to do this. Freud’s equivalent level, the superego, was particularly distorted on this point, because according to his own perception he was getting too far “up” or close to the Realm of the Divine for comfort. But he was right in maintaining that the “parts” of the psyche cannot be correctly perceived either as things or as entirely separate. His wording would have been better if he had said “entirely separated.”

The mind did divide itself when it willed to create its own levels and the ability to perceive them. But it could not entirely separate itself from its spirit, because it is from its spirit that it derives its whole power to create. Even in miscreating, will affirms its Source. Otherwise it would merely cease to be. This is impossible because will is part of the spirit, which the Divine created, and which is therefore eternal.

The ability to perceive made the body and the entire physical world possible, because to perceive you must perceive something, and with something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which Knowledge doesn’t need. The interpretive function of perception, which is actually a distorted form of creation, then permitted human beings to interpret the perception of the body as if the body was them, which, although depressing, was a perceived way out of the conflict they had induced. (This process was explored in some detail previously.)

The superconscious, which knows, could not be reconciled with this loss of will-power because it was incapable of darkness. This is why it became almost inaccessible to the mind, and entirely inaccessible to the body. It therefore became perceived as a threat because light does abolish darkness by establishing the clear fact that darkness isn’t there. The Truth will always abolish error in this sense, though this is not an active process of destruction at all.

The fact has already been emphasized that Knowledge does not do anything, though it is active in the process of true creation. Knowing, or the superconscious, can be perceived as an attacker by the ego (which always feels its existence under threat), but knowing cannot attack. What a person perceives as the superconscious’ threat is their own recognition of the fact that knowing can always be re-membered because it has never been destroyed. This is not a literal “remembering” as in having a memory again of a thing or a perception, but a “becoming a member with again.”

The unconscious should never have been reduced conceptually to being the “shadow” or a “container” for the waste products of conflict. Even though human beings currently perceive their psyche unconsciously in this way, every level of consciousness or awareness still has a creative potential because nothing the human being creates or even miscreates can entirely lose this potential.

The Divine and the Minds It created as Its Children remain in Certainty and therefore they know that no miscreation exists, or can ever exist. I was a human being who remembered my spirit and its knowing. When you refuse or will not to misperceive you are indeed behaving as I behaved. As a human being I did not attempt to counteract error with Knowledge, so much as to correct error from the bottom up first through right perception. By uniting my will with that of my Creator I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body and the Power of the healed mind, which naturally remembered the spirit and its own real Purpose.

Truth waits on wills that are as yet unwilling to give up error, because It wills only to join with wills and not to block them out or cancel them. I cannot unite your will with the Divine’s for you, but I can help you erase all misperceptions from your mind if you will bring it under my guidance. Only your misperceptions stand in your own way. Without them your own choice is certain. Sane perception induces sane choosing. My setting the Atonement into motion in time was an act based on true perception. I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice.

“Many are called but few are chosen,” should be stated, “All are called but few choose to listen. Therefore, they do not choose correctly.” The “chosen ones” are merely those who choose correctly sooner. This is the real meaning of the Celestial speedup. Strong wills that learn not to be conflicted can do this now. And then you will find “rest for your soul.” The Divine knows you only in Peace, and this is your reality.