假装喜悦，真作快乐

摘自《灵魂永生》第十八章 

 意识的各阶段，象征和多重焦点

不论你知不知道，你意识的所有刻面都汇聚在你的人格内。

显然，意识能转向许多方向，包括向内和向外。你对正常意识的波动有所知觉，如果多加注意，其间的某些波动会变得十分清晰。你不断地扩大或收缩注意力的范围。有时，你可能心无旁骛地关注一个对象，连自己所处的房间也浑然不觉。

你可能对记忆里的某件事如此在意，反应如此强烈，以至于对眼前的事不太觉察。你视所有这些意识的波动为理所当然，它们不会令你困扰。如果你一头扎进书本而暂时忘了周围的环境，你不会担心当注意力转回现实时，世界会消失不见。在白日梦里，你通常也不会担心能不能回到当前这一刻。

上面都是些小例子，在某种程度上说明了意识的机动性，以及你是如何收放自如地运用它的。奇特的是，“象征”往往可以被当作某种样本，代表你在不同的意识层次中的感知方式，而“象征“””变换的伪装形式则可作为提示。比如说，“火”就是由某种“象征”转化而成的景象；在实际世界中的“火”，是你用物质导向的意识所感知的“现实”；而一幅想象中的火景，则自动说明了意识所涉及的是其他的层面。

一场脑海里看见的火，温暖却不会烧毁东西，则显然表示另一些事。所有的象征都是在表达感受——那些不能用语言来适当表达的感受。象征代表感受的无穷变化，而在意识的不同阶段，这些象征会以不同的方式出现，它们永远伴随着你。

不过，也有几种例外，在纯粹的知识和感受中象征已没有必要。意识的这些阶段是很少有的，而且很少被转译为正常的有意识形式。

让我们拿一种特定的感受为例并追踪它，看它在意识的各个不同阶段如何表达。以一种喜悦的感觉开始。在正常意识状态，此人会以一种迥异于低潮状态时的方式去感知切身环境。喜悦之情改变了物体本身，因为感知者以更加光明的眼光去看待它们，以便更生动地创造出形象鲜明的物体，于是环境回馈以美，似乎更加强了他的喜悦。但是他看见的仍是具体的物质世界的物体。现在，假设他开始做白日梦而进入幻想。物体、人物或事件的画面和象征呈现于内心，它们也许来自过去、现在、或将来的想象，此时的喜悦在精神上有更大的表现自由，但都是以象征的形式来表现的。

可以说，这种喜悦之情延伸到将来，照耀进过去，可能涵盖了比当时所能具体显现的更大的范围。再来想象这个人从幻想进入出神状态或深度睡眠中，他可能看到对他来说十分具有象征意义的喜悦或丰富精彩的影像。逻辑上讲，它们之间可能没多少关联，但在直觉上这种关联是很清楚的。他现在进入了比幻想状态更深的精神体验，可能有一连串的梦来表达和分享他的喜悦。

但他仍然是在与物质性取向的象征打交道。现在，既然我们用了这个例子，我们就继续以此来讨论。这个人可能会形成非常快乐的梦中城市和人物的影像，他的快乐情绪转译成对他有意义的任何象征。洋洋喜气可能转译成嬉戏的动物、空中飞人、奇美的动物或风景。再次强调，这些仍然是缺乏逻辑性关联的，但所有片段都将被这种情绪串连起来。

与此同时，身体会受益良多，因为那有益的感觉自动更新并加强了身体的康复能力。喜悦的感觉可能会带来基督、佛陀或先知的形象。这些象征是意识在各个不同阶段转换的特有场景。这些经验应该被看作是创造，是意识在不同阶段天赋的创造行为。

超越这种状态后，象征开始渐渐消失，变得模糊而遥远。此时你开始进入那种象征越来越不必要的意识区域，而这的确是个人烟稀少的区域。表述闪烁明灭，最终消失不见。意识离物质世界越来越远。在意识的这个阶段，灵魂发现自己单纯地与自己的感受在一起，剥除了象征与画面，开始感知自身所是的庞大实相世界。

它感受到直接的体验。如果我们继续用喜悦作例子，这时所有的精神性象征与形象都最终消失。它们从喜悦中来也从喜悦中去，因为它们并非原始经验，却只是副产品。于是灵魂开始以几乎无法解释的方式探索这种喜悦的实相世界，在这个过程中，它将学会以前完全不能理解的感知、表现与实现的方法。

Within your own personality all facets of your consciousness converge, whether or not you are aware of it.

Consciousness can be turned in many directions, obviously, both inward and outward. You are aware of fluctuations in your normal consciousness, and closer attention would make some of this quite clear. You expand or narrow the scope of your attention constantly. You may focus upon one object almost to the exclusion of everything else at times, so that you literally are not conscious of the room in which you sit.

You may be “conscious” and reacting to a remembered event so strongly that you are relatively unaware of present events. You take all of these fluctuations for granted. They do not disturb you. If you are lost in a book and unaware momentarily of your immediate environment, you are not afraid that it will be gone when you want to turn your attention back to it. Nor in a daydream do you usually worry about returning safely to the present moment.

To some extent, all of these are small examples of the mobility of your consciousness, and the ease with which it can be used. In a strange manner, symbols can be regarded as samples of the way you perceive at various levels of consciousness. Their changing guises can be used as signposts. Fire, for example, is a symbol made physical, so a real fire tells you obviously that you are perceiving reality with your physically attuned consciousness. A mental picture of a fire automatically tells you that another kind of consciousness is involved. 

A fire mentally seen that has warmth but does not burn destructively obviously means something else. All symbols are an attempt to express feelings, feelings that can never be expressed adequately through language. Symbols represent the infinite variations of feelings, and in various stages of consciousness these will appear in different terms, but they will always accompany you.

There are several exceptions, however, in which pure knowing or pure feeling is involved without the necessity for symbols. These stages of consciousness are infrequent and seldom translated into normal conscious terms.

Let us take a particular feeling and follow it through as it might be expressed at various levels of consciousness. Begin with a feeling of joy. In normal consciousness, the immediate environment will be perceived in a far different manner than it would be, say, if an individual were in a state of depression. The feeling of joy changes the objects themselves, in that the perceiver sees them in a far brighter light. He creates the objects far more vividly and with greater clarity. In feedback fashion, the environment then seems to reinforce his joy.

What he sees, however, is still physical, the objects of the material world. Pretend now that he begins to daydream and falls into a reverie. Into his inner mind come pictures or symbols of material objects, people or events, from perhaps the past as well as present and future imaginings, the joy now being expressed with greater freedom mentally, but with symbols.

The joy stretches out, so to speak, into the future, sheds also its light into the past, and may cover greater areas of expansion than could be shown in physical terms at that moment. Now imagine that our individual from his reverie falls either into a trance state or into a deep sleep. He may see images that are highly symbolic to him of joy or exuberance. Logically there may be little connection between them, but intuitively the connections are clear. He now enters into his mental experiences far more deeply than in the reverie state, and may have a series of dream episodes in winch he is able to express his joy and share it with others.

He is still dealing with physically oriented symbols, however. Now since we are using this discussion as a case in point we will continue to follow it even further. He may form images of dream cities or people that are of a very joyful nature, translate the emotion itself into whatever symbols are pertinent to him. An exuberance may be translated into images of playing animals, flying people, or animals or landscapes of great beauty. Again, the logical connections will be lacking, but the entire episode will be connected by this emotion.

The physical body all the while is greatly benefitted, because the beneficial feelings automatically renew and replenish its recuperative abilities. The feelings of joy now may lead to images of Christ. Buddha, or the prophets. These symbols are the changing scenes characteristic of consciousness at various stages. The experiences are to be considered as creations; creative acts all native to consciousness at various stages.

Beyond this are states in which the symbols themselves begin to fade away, become indistinct, distant. Here you begin to draw into regions of consciousness in which symbols become less and less necessary, and it is a largely unpopulated area indeed. Representations blink off and on, and finally disappear. Consciousness is less and less physically oriented. In this stage of consciousness the Soul finds itself alone with its own feelings, stripped of symbolism and representations, and begins to perceive the gigantic reality of its own knowing.

It feels direct experience. If we use joy as our example, all mental symbols and images of it would finally disappear. They had emerged from it, and would fall away from it. not being the original experience, but by-products. The Soul would then begin to explore the reality of this joy in terms that can hardly be explained, and in so doing would learn methods of perception, expression, and actualization that would have been utterly incomprehensible to it before

编译：   /Laujenny婷    美编：周周

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