The Omnipresent Nature of Consciousness
A talk by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi given on August 22, 1970 at Humboldt College, California
Audience question:
“We said that Being is pure awareness, and also we have said that everything that exists, by virtue of its existence, is made up of Being. Does everything that exists have awareness?”
Maharishi:
“Some less and some more. This is relativity. Somewhere less, somewhere more, but awareness is there. Do you see the petal? (Maharishi shows a flower.) If you see it closely, you can see the nervous system of a petal.
And it grows and something like that. People have found, if you love a flower when it is coming up, blossoming from the bud, and somehow, people even say—if you play some music to the flower, like that, like that, like that, it thrives more in the fields. Your love is even felt by the trees, by the plants, by the flowers, by this and this. Everything in creation has Consciousness. Somewhere less and somewhere more. See, it’s like the sun shining everywhere and reflecting from a clear water, from a diamond piece, from green water, from yellow water—reflection. That reflection is called Consciousness.
We have a nervous system, the trees have nervous system, everything has a nervous system. And then feeling, all the animals—cows feel good with their calves, calves feel good with their mother cow. In the herd of 1000 cows, you leave a calf, and it will keep on growing, growing, growing, and here it stands. Nine hundred ninety-nine cows will be eliminated, and it just finds its mother. So, there is that affinity, affection, feeling, recognition, understanding—all these values of consciousness found everywhere. In some nervous systems, Consciousness reflects more than in the other.
The same omnipresent Being reflect as Consciousness, individual Consciousness, from individual nervous system systems.”
Audience question:
“I was thinking about things like inanimate objects, such as rocks and other things that don’t have nervous system as we know it.”
Maharishi:
“You look at the rock and it has a nervous system. Biologically, we may not call it a nervous system, but in a general sense, if nervous system could mean a structure of existence, in a general sense, then everything has a structure. And that structure is the boundary of its individuality. And if there is something as Being omnipresent, then that Being reflects from it.
Now, if the reflector is not good enough, reflection will not be good enough. We look there on the wall, and there on the wall, and there on the wall. We don’t see any reflection of ours. But if you put a glass here, and a glass there, and a mirror, and then we are able to see the reflection. So, the reflection has always been there. But because the quality of the reflector was not refined, so we couldn’t see the reflection.
But because we couldn’t see, it doesn’t mean it was not there. Only we couldn’t see. So the reflection of Being, we see in an animal, ant, elephant, man. We can see them going here and there. But everything we can also see growing, growing, growing, growing.
Everything grows, grows, grows.
Something may not be growing. It may remain stagnant—inertia. But that is that nervous system which reflects zero value of Being. But only in the sense of activity, in the sense of existence, we know it has an existence. A sand particle—it has an existence.
And then, now with physics we know everything has great activity. All the fine particles with electrons going around with such great speed all the time, we don’t see. But even activity is there. So, and for existence, activity doesn’t have to be. For evolution, activity is necessary. And because anything that exists, exists in change. And change has a value in evolution.
The force of evolution gives evolutionary direction to change. Otherwise, one change and the existence will drop. But it doesn’t drop. It continues and continues and continues and continues. Medical people tell us that in about seven years or so, all the cells change. Not that suddenly they change at one time, but all the time they are changing, changing, changing, changing. So, this continuity through change is the characteristic of force of evolution.
Existence, because it is always changing, if it were not appeal by the force of evolution, in one change the whole thing will drop. So, when we say existence, the value of evolution is imbibed in that. Existence is possible only on the platform of evolution.
Everything that exists, exists because it is evolving, evolving, evolving, evolving. In the relative field everything is changing, but it is evolving. And this is the strength of existence. And wherever there is existence, there is Being—Being, whether it is active or non-active.
Maybe the outer surface of every being is non-active, but deep within it everything is active. So, what we learned from this is that the same being is being reflected by virtue of individual nervous system as individual being, individual consciousness, individual awareness. Now whatever the quality of awareness, whether hundred percent pure awareness, 90% pure awareness, 50% pure awareness, one percent pure awareness, .000009% of pure awareness—whatever small or big quantity of awareness is lived by that, that individual existence, whatever, but that is due to its structure, it’s nervous system. Same sun being reflected as green reflection from green water, yellow reflection from yellow water—like that, different, different qualities of reflections, depending on the differences of the reflector, but that which is reflecting is the same—Being is the same.
So, that settles it?”
Develop your consciousness to its fullest potential. Contact a TM teacher.
About the Author
Janet Hoffman is the executive director of TM for Women Professionals, a division of TM for Women in the USA
