27. CONSCIOUSNESS — Part Three
Jim Marion is a public policy lawyer in Washington, D.C., who spent eight years studying for the priesthood and pursued divinity studies at Hartford Seminary Foundation. A mystical experience that rocked his being as an adolescent has kept him attentive over the years to the depth-charge of spiritual renewal. He is a mystic and defines a mystic as “a person of prayer and meditation who has been blessed by God with a certain amount of psychic ability, the ability to ‘see,’ ‘feel,’ and sometimes ‘hear,’ beyond the spacetime world we ordinarily perceive with the physical senses.”
As a public policy lawyer from 1973 to 2004, Marion served in the Carter Administration and as counsel to a congressional committee. In addition, Marion has spoken about spirituality, mysticism, and human consciousness development at many conferences, workshops, and churches. His book, Putting on the Mind of Christ: The Inner Work of Christian Spirituality, includes his perspective on consciousness. I cannot endorse all that Marion writes, but I do think that a summary of parts of his perspective will add food for thought in this week’s CLUE search.
Citing Biblical support, Marion views the higher levels of consciousness as allowing God to transform us inwardly by the complete renewing of our minds. He refers to this renewal as Christ Consciousness. He agrees that consciousness itself is a non-linear experience, but he views the path to the higher levels of consciousness to be a step-by-step process, the end of which is full spiritual maturity. He views this transforming process to be a work of Divine Grace, another name for the Holy Spirit who guides evolution from within.
Marion views the Kingdom of Heaven to be a here-and-now experience characterized by the documented experiences of those who report their near-death experiences as being filled with love, light, peace, and joy. He also affirms that when we experience the Kingdom within, there is no longer a separation between God and humans. In fact, it was this union that enabled Jesus to heal the sick, multiply fish and loaves of bread, and raise the dead. The Kingdom within also means that there is no separation between human beings as documented by the ways that Jesus broke down human separations and hierarchies of his day. This Kingdom is a non-dual consciousness.
“All growth in consciousness is a lessening of self-centeredness, a ‘death’ to the old self-centered way of looking at the world and a simultaneous ‘rebirth’ into a less self-centered way of seeing things.”
Marion takes on quantum thinking with the following statements: “Most of mainstream science has yet to affirm that consciousness or intelligence is inherent in, and underlies, all energy, including the solidified energy we call matter, but many of the leading quantum physicists are now aware of this truth. Matter (molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles) have a slight amount of innate Spirit, intelligence, and ‘awareness’ of surroundings, but compared with mind, for example, matter’s amount of ‘awareness’ is minuscule.”
Consciousness, according to Marion, evolves from the early state in infancy to what he calls rational consciousness that is the level more or less attained by the average adult today. This includes the ability to think abstractly and in accordance with the rules of logic. And then there is what he calls vision-logic consciousness. “It is the consciousness of many great artists, writers, international financiers, scientists, and philosophers. Vision-logic’s primary characteristics are the identification of the self with the abstract mind, and the ability to think from many different perspectives. … Like great thinkers such as Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, or Theodore Roosevelt, we are not only capable of abstract reasoning, but are capable of taking many different perspectives, integrating them, and putting them together in new and surprisingly creative ways. … It is the first level of consciousness at which it can be said that we have successfully integrated body, emotions, and mind.”
“As we near the end of the vision-logic level of consciousness, we begin to transcend the mind itself. … Because the vision-logic level of awareness is one of integration, the culture that vision-logic awareness will produce will be concerned with ‘wholes,’ e.g., global integration in finance and politics, holistic approaches to medicine, and systems theory in the sciences. … At the psychic level of consciousness we no longer identify the self with the rational mind. Instead, we identify the self with the inner witness that observes body, emotions, and mind. This inner witness is the permanent self, the part of self beyond spacetime.”
“As we move into the psychic level of consciousness, the sixth level of human awareness, we will gradually become more consciously aware of information coming from beyond the five physical senses. We will develop what is sometimes called extrasensory perception (ESP). Extrasensory perception is normally not exotic or sensational as the media often portrays it. It is simply the ability to obtain information that the five physical senses cannot.”
“At the psychic level of consciousness we may begin to open regularly to those peak experiences that are often called nature mysticism or cosmic consciousness. For example, we may be lying on the beach gazing into the sunset when, suddenly, we are caught up in an awareness of oneness and unity with the sea and sun, sky and sand.”
“Clairsentience allows us to take the sense of people we meet, to let us know if someone is trustworthy, a possible friend, a possible lover, or someone to be avoided. Clairaudience allows the ‘voices’ of our own higher self (the voice of conscience), our guardian angels, our spiritual masters, and our various spiritual helpers and guides to come to us more clearly.”
“Clairvoyance may allow us to begin to see the energy bodies which surround the physical bodies of all living beings. This energy body, usually called an aura, is made up of energies that vibrate at a rate higher than the physical.”
“Whenever we are reborn into a new level of consciousness, we feel that we have finally discovered the truth. We always feel that we have finally come home. We always feel psychologically stronger and more integrated.” Even after a higher level of consciousness, we may experience what Marion calls the Dark Night. But emerging from that, we experience radical faith and trust in which “The universe we formerly saw as full of threats of every sort is now seen as a non-threatening place, one full of gifts, abundance, and blessings.”
At the level of Christ Consciousness we experience a spiritual union with God. “The person with Christ Consciousness sees all other human beings as the Christ and treats them accordingly. This is the level of true Christian love, which is spiritual love identical to what the Buddhist masters call true compassion.”
For Marion, the mystic, there is yet more. There is a level of consciousness in which we become a realized divinity. “It is consciousness at the level of the soul, i.e., individualized Spirit.” We love as God loves us. Realizing our union with God, we work in selfless service for others. Grounded in the experience of this level, we may ascend to the highest level of consciousness, which is not a level but an experience in which we know the divine ground of being that underlies all the levels.
Q: To what extent do you identify with Marion’s view of consciousness?
