2021-11-15 Mechanicality and Consciousness

Inner Octaves, Michel Conge

Consciousness and Mechanicality

What is meant by a ‘machine’?

First of all, the whole universe is a machine. The Creator created a machine. He Himself is Consciousness; He is Being; by definition, HE Is. He has allowed, He has willed that an organization, an organism, be created. Everything, absolutely everything, from that moment on, is a machine.
…man is a machine, too. ‘Machine’ means, organization willed by the Creator, fulfilling certain purposes, endowed with a certain potential, capable of certain movements.

Man is a transformer…

The transformer plays its role as part of this larger machine that is the universe. It has its place in relation to the need for transformation of the substances that are required through the action of the Will of the Creator. And this transformer also has two currents, two directions; and many other things can happen beyond this simple role that has been allotted to us on Earth, a role we cannot escape, one we are really obliged to play because that is how we are made.

…I am an ‘organization’ that enables the transformation of substances, such that the possibility of evolution is built into the machine itself. It is because I am a machine incorporated into a whole set of circuits for transforming substances that I have this incredible good fortune: I can gradually find and know states of being that are totally different from those I experience today, and I can reach Consciousness, that is, enter into the communion with the Divine that all religions call for and all teachings propose.

If I were not a machine, that is, if I were not organized so as to transform these substances, there would be no hope for me other than to exist on a given level forever. Not all machines have this capacity, nor are they created with this potential… we are machines, and therein lies our possibility.

Try to understand this point: consciousness and mechanicality are found on exactly the same line. They are not conflicting ideas; they go together. Consciousness cannot flourish if there is no organization to enable it to do so.

…(I)f I come …to love the fact that I am part of the current of consciousness, and also the fact that I am an organization, and that, that’s what makes all transformation possible; if I love my conditions as they are, not only my limited personal conditions, but also my conditions within a universal organization; if I love all these things, I will find the strength to which I aspire.

What Evolves?

…evolution is the evolution of consciousness, the evolution of will.,,
…Consciousness and Will are attributes of the Absolute.
…It is a two-directional machine. We haven’t become aware of that yet; and I allow this machine to function only in the direction of depletion and destruction. But the machine is also made to work in the other direction.

In Search of the Miraculous

Chapter 15

“…there is nothing accidental or unnecessary in nature and …there can be nothing; everything has a definite function; everything serves a definite purpose. Thus organic life is an indispensable link in the chain of the worlds which cannot exist without it just as it cannot exist without them. It has been said before that organic life transmits planetary influences of various kinds to the earth, and that it serves to feed the moon and to enable it to grow and strengthen. But the earth also is growing; not in the sense of size but in the sense of greater consciousness, greater receptivity. The planetary influences which were sufficient for her at one period of her existence become insufficient, she needs the reception of finer influences. To receive finer influences a finer, more sensitive receptive apparatus is necessary. …This means that in order to answer its purpose, organic life must evolve and stand on the level of the needs of the planets, the earth, and the moon.

The Reality of Being

#7. Can we become conscious?

The work to be present is in the direction of consciousness—that is, a special kind of perception independent of the activity of the intellectual mind, a perception of oneself: who one is, where one is, and then what one knows and does not know. In the moment of consciousness there is the immediate impression of a direct perception. This is quite different from what we usually call “consciousness,” which operates more like a reflection faithfully accompanying what I experience, and representing it in my mind. When this consciousness reflects the fact that I think or feel something, this is a second action that, like a shadow, follows the first. Without this shadow I am unconscious of and ignore the original thought or feeling.

#17. The awareness of “being here”

I believe I can look for consciousness, see con­sciousness, know it. We take consciousness as an object of observation. But we cannot see consciousness. It is consciousness that sees and that knows. I realize this if I experience it as coming from behind my body or from above. There is no observer, there is a knowing. Yet if I experi­ence consciousness as in my body, it seems that the “I” is the body and consciousness an attribute of the body.

#12. The sacred manifests as inner consciousness

…The sacred manifests as inner consciousness. The divine, God, must be found within. Truth, the only truth, is in consciousness. Everything that exists is constituted of three forces. …The force that descends is the one that wishes to return, to go back up. In man it is the mind that is opposed to the body. The neutralizing force is the wish that unites them, connects them. Everything comes from the wish, the will. To represent God, it is necessary to represent these three forces. Where the three forces are reunited, God is. Where our attention is, God is. When two forces are opposed and a third unites them, God is here. …Our aim is this, to contain, to unite these three forces in us … to Be.