高等意识手册

HANDBOOK TO HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESSKen Keyes Jr.ForewordMillions of years ago when our animal ancestors had to survive in the jungle,it was necessary to have an instantly effective fight or flight mechanism.When a tiger was about to spring, an automatic emotional response was a lifesaver. A nervous shock was needed to squirt adrenalin into the blood so thatmuscles became jet powered. Emotional alarms were needed to commandfull attention. When a tiger was ready to jump, there was no time to admirethe beautiful sunset. As a jungle survival mechanism, our animal ancestorswere programmed for automatic duality - automatic feelings of otherness,threat, and paranoia. Survival required instant domination of consciousnessto meet the perils of the jungle.We are the pioneers in the evolution of human consciousness. It was onlyabout 10,000 years ago that our ancestors built the first cities. As civilizationgrew, survival no longer depended on the instant fight or flight of the jungle.Survival and happiness now depend on tuning in to the overall situationinvolving ourselves, the people around us, and the total environment of thehere and now. Perceptiveness, wisdom, and oneness are now the ingredientsof effective and happy living. But our biocomputers are still programmed forjungle fight or flight - for a fast release of adrenalin into the blood stream,and for rapid heartbeat - for automatic anger and fear. In our socialinteractions, our consciousness magnifies molehills and makes them intomountains - and this constant distortion destroys our energy, our insight, andour ability to love.Thus survival in the jungle meant that we had to be programmed for instantparanoia - instant fear - instant anger - instant perception of duality.Survival in our world today means that we must have instant perceptions ofoneness - of love - of compassion with everyone and understanding ofeverything around us. When we learn to cut through our paranoid jungleprogramming, we are on our way to higher consciousness and happiness.Evolution is now working to remedy this primitive jungle alarm wiring in ourbrain that tends to hold us on lower consciousness levels. Paranoid, dualisticindividuals who cannot love themselves and others tend to get heart trouble,ulcers, other psychosomatic diseases, are accident-prone, etc. Perhaps in100,000 years, through the ruthless survival of the fittest, humans may havenervous systems that are automatically structured to produce instant insightsthat facilitate love and oneness. But that doesnt help you and me. We needthe Living Love Way to show us how to live in higher consciousness as soonas possible - to override our jungle programming so that we can enjoy livinghere and now.We have escaped from the domination of instincts (inflexible unlearnedbehavior) that guides animals through their daily life situations. Since theyoung human is not provided with a full repertoire of automatic fixedresponses, we are unable to independently cope with life for a number ofyears after birth. This long period of plasticity and openness to learningcomplex life guidance patterns helps us avoid fixed preprogrammed behavior.For example, this long nurturing period lets us learn complex languagesystems - and our flexibility is such that we can learn to communicate inSwahili as easily as in English or any other language.Instead of a complete pattern of animal-type instincts to provide survivalresponses to life situations, the young child uses ego mechanisms backed byhair-trigger emotions to develop security, sensation, and power magnificationof the moment-to-moment sensory inputs. Our personal development intofulfilling, happy lives (as well as the progression of civilization beyond thedangerous power consciousness) depends on our getting free of our egobacked,subject-object, me-them, security-sensation-power hang-ups.It may be helpful to see this progression of consciousness in outline form asfollows:ORGANISM METHOD OFPROTECTING ANDENHANCING THEORGANISMAnimal Relatively fixed lifestyle based on instinctor unlearnedpreprogrammedbehavior.LowerConsciousnessHumanEgo-directed, subjectobject,emotion-backedsecurity, sensation, andpower consciousness(increasingly involvingthe rational mind) thatmakes us inflexiblyguard and protecthabitual folkways andpersonal patterns.HigherConsciousnessHumanThe ego-driven negativeemotions have beenreplaced by wideranginginsight and deepintuitive understandinggiving full flexibility toflow in mutuallysupportive and lovingways with no inflexiblefolkways and personalpatterns.The biocomputer with which you are equipped is the most remarkableinstrument in the universe. Your only problem is to learn to use it properly. Itis capable of handling two million visual inputs and one hundred thousandauditory inputs at any one time. Your biocomputer operates continuallythroughout all of its parts and is capable of making millions of simultaneouscomputations. It operates with enormous power primarily on unconsciouslevels - with only a tiny proportion of its activity rising to the level ofconsciousness. The conscious level of your biocomputer is analogous to theprint-out of the man-made computers. Your journey into higherconsciousness is a matter of your learning how to properly program yourremarkable biocomputer. When you really learn to operate your exquisitemechanism, you will be able to fully realize your potential for a happy life.A wonderful thing about life is that it is naturally good. Life is set up to work- to produce love, fulfillment, and happiness continuously. However, varioussituations during your first years of life conditioned you in the methods ofconsciousness which continually generate unhappiness in your life. Yet everycurrent experience can aid you in your growth toward higher consciousness ifyou know how to use it.This Handbook will explain how you have been creating the experiences thatyou have. It will show you exactly what to do to break out of the traps inyour mind that are the cause of all the unhappiness that you have experiencedin your life! When you apply the Methods in the Handbook you will be ableto turn your life around. The continuous experience of love, serenity,happiness, joy, effectiveness, perceptiveness, and wisdom that you have hadonly in bits and pieces can now be available to you all of the time.You will learn how to experience the world as a friendly, loving place that hasbeen designed to give you everything that you need. You will develop amiraculous quality in your life. Beautiful things will happen socontinuously that you can no longer ascribe it to mere coincidence. Youwill experience that you can create more love, happiness, and serenity thanyou need for living a thoroughly fulfilled and enjoyable life.While this was certainly not your intention, you will become aware of howyou have been turning yourself off to the energies of the world around you.Your mind has been programmed to process incoming visual, auditory, andother information in ways that continuously alienate and separate you frompeople. You will realize that you have been unconscious of what you havebeen doing to yourself. it is as though you have been born with eyes that seeonly with great distortion - but which give the illusion of seeing sharply andclearly. This handbook will help you become aware that the only realproblem in your life involves how consciously you use your mind - and itgives you clear instructions for carrying out the inner work necessary tobecome an energetic, perceptive, loving being.Living Love is a positive cure for all of the suffering and unhappiness in yourlife and that of all humanity. The Living Love Way offers mankind one of themost powerful tools for emerging victorious in the race between higherconsciousness and the suffering of atomic annihilation, ecologicaldegradation, prejudice, and the thousand-fold ways we separate ourselvesfrom each other.Chapter 1Why This Book Was Written For UsMost of us, said the cosmic humorist, go through life not knowing whatwe want, but feeling damned sure this isnt it.Over 99% of the people in the western world live on lower consciousnesslevels characterized by trying to find enough security, sex, groovysensations, ego rushes, prestige, money, power, and status. This endlessstruggle yields lives of constant resentment, worry, suspicion, anger, jealousy,shyness, and fear. Everything people tell themselves they must do to behappy ends up yielding more frustration than joy. The more successful aperson is in making money, collecting skills and possessions, developingexciting sexual relationships, acquiring knowledge and degrees, and achievingpositions of status, power, and prestige, the less loving, peaceful, andcontented he may find himself or herself.And yet it is not these things in and of themselves that create an unhappy life- it is the internal mental addiction or desire for them that minute-by-minutekeeps one from enjoying life. Addictions (or emotion-backed demands) bringfear of non-fulfillment; jealousy that someone may steal our source offulfillment; anger when someone thwarts us; cynicism if constantlyundersupplied; paranoia if constantly threatened; boredom if were making noprogress toward satisfying our addictions; worry if we cant see a steadysupply; anxiety if were worried about being worried; and unhappiness whenthe outside world does not supply us with whatever it is we are addicted to.Since the nature of life is such that we win some and lose some, an addictedperson has no chance of living a happy, loving, peaceful, conscious, wise andeffective life. And the addictive programming is not necessary to find andenjoy that which we prefer in life.You are ready for growth into the happiness of higher consciousness whenyou realize the utter futility of trying to live a beautiful life by your efforts torearrange or change the world of people and things outside of you to fit youraddictions and desires. You will find you have only to rearrange your ownpersonal, automatically programmed responses to life situations - most ofwhich are childhood hangups.As you work toward higher levels of consciousness, you will find that youhave always had enough to be happy. It is the patterns in your head thatmake you unhappy, although you usually blame the people and conditionsoutside you for your unhappiness. Your journey into higher consciousnesscan enable you to be loving, peaceful, wise, and free of a constant barrage ofunpleasant emotional feelings.Living Love offers you four advantages in your adventure into higherconsciousness:1. For many people it can be one of the most powerful and rapid ways forgrowth into higher consciousness that has ever been available to mankind.2. It does not require you to detach yourself from your present life. LivingLove can be used most effectively if you stay with your present business,personal life, and other conditions until you have grown to a high enoughstate of consciousness to be fully perceptive of the arbitrary mores,folkways, and social roles you are guarding and living out.3. Once you thoroughly understand the system, it is not essential to have ateacher for continuing your growth. Your life will be your best teacher, foryou will discover that you are always putting yourself into learningsituations that are ideal for your growth. The programming that you mostneed to change has an unerring way of putting you into life situations thatcan make you aware of the exact inner work you should be doing.4. When you use the Living Love Way to find the love, inner peace, wisdom,and effectiveness of higher consciousness, your inner work on yourselfimmediately adds to your enjoyment of life. With the Living Love Way,happiness is not a distant goal - it is an ever-growing part of your hereand now.Think of the energy you now put into the up-and-down hour-by-hour copingwith your feelings while you continually try to rearrange the people andsituations in your life so that you can then be loving, serene, effective, andhappy. And yet year by year your quest for happiness is as elusive as findingthe pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Since almost everyone around youseems to be having similar trouble in becoming a happy, loving being, youmay have lowered your standards and decided that continuous happiness isprobably not realistic.The Living Love Way invites you to set the highest imaginable standards oflove, serenity, peace, wisdom, effectiveness, and continuous happiness foryour life. and then you are ready to begin your journey into higherconsciousness.Chapter 2Secrets of HappinessWhy do we have lives filled with turmoil, desperation, and anxiety? Why arewe always pushing ourselves and others? Why do we have only smalldribbles of peace, love, and happiness? Why is it that human beings arecharacterized by bickering and turmoil that make animals relationships withtheir own species seem peaceful in comparison? The answer is so simple -but it is sometimes difficult for us to really understand because almost everyway we were taught to work toward happiness only reinforces the feelingsand activities that make us unhappy.This is a central point that must be understood. The ways we were taught tobe happy cant possibly work. Unless we see this point clearly, we cannotprogress to higher consciousness. Heres why.Most of us assume that our desires (backed up by our emotional feelings) arethe true guides to doing the things that will make us happy. But no one hasyet found happiness by using emotion-backed desires as guides. Flashes ofpleasure, yes; happiness, no.Our wants and desires are so seductive . . . They masquerade as needs thatmust be satisfied so we can be happy at last. They lead us from one illusionof happiness to another. Some of us tell ourselves, if I can just get to bepresident of this corporation, I will be happy. But have you ever seen areally happy president? His outside drama may feature beautiful yachts,Cadillacs, Playboy bunnies - but is he really happy inside? Has his ulcergone away yet?We constantly tell ourselves such things as, If I could just go back to schooland acquire more knowledge - perhaps get a Masters degree - then I willbe happy. But are people with Masters degrees or Ph.D.s any happier thanthe rest of us? It is beautiful to acquire knowledge but it is misleading toexpect it to bring us peace, love, and happiness. We tell ourselves, If I couldonly find the right person to love, then I would be happy. So we search forsomeone who our addictions tell us is the right person - and we experiencesome pleasurable moments. But since we dont know how to love, therelationship gradually deteriorates. Then we decide we didnt have the rightperson after all! As we grow into higher consciousness, we discover that it ismore important to be the right person than to find the right person.We must deeply understand why all of our negative emotions are misleadingguides to effective action in life situations. Our negative emotions are simplythe result of an extensive pattern of scars and wounds that we haveexperienced. And these emotional wounds lead us to perceive differencesthat make us uptight instead of similarities that enable us to understand andlove. The present programming of our emotions makes us perceive otherpeople (and the conditions of the world around us) as threats - potentiallydangerous to our well-being. We then respond with adrenalin, fasterheartbeat, increased blood sugar, and other jungle survival responses thatprepare us for fight or flight. We are trapped in our ways of perceiving theworld around us.But no one (or no situation) need be felt as an emotional threat or dangerwhen we see things with the clearer perception of higher consciousness.Think of the most threatening situation you have felt in the last day or two.Are you about to lose your job? Is the person for whom you feel the mostlove paying more attention to someone else than to you? Do you have unpaidbills that you cannot take care of? Do you have a pain that could be cancer?Now, these problems either have solutions - or they dont. Either you can dosomething about them here and now - or you cant. If you can do somethinghere and now about them, then do it - even if its just a first step. It sapsyour energy to be worried or anxious about a problem. Do what you can do- but dont be addicted to the results or you will create more worry foryourself. If you cant do anything about a problem here and now, then whymake yourself uncomfortable and drain your energy by worrying about it? Itis part of the here and nowness of your life. Thats what is - here and now.Worry, anxiety, or other unpleasant emotions are absolutely unnecessary -and simply lower your insight and the effectiveness of your actions.You must absolutely convince yourself of the lack of utility of these drainingemotions. You must see your unnecessary worrying as depriving you of theflowing effectiveness and joyousness that you should have in your life. Aslong as you think that these negative emotions have any function whatsoever,you will retard your growth into higher consciousness. If you do not hassleyourself emotionally when the outside world does not conform with yourinside programming (your desires, expectations, demands, or models of howthe world should treat you) you will have so mu