Q: I’m not clear about how the attentional principle gains a greater ability to perceive and operate in meditation. Can you describe how the experience of the attentional principle changes with greater inner development and how it gains enhanced facility for meditation?

A: There are three major stages of experiencing the attentional principle:

Perceptual Union – At the first stage, your attention gains union with the attentional principle. With practice, you begin to be able to see and hear what the attentional principle is seeing and hearing in the present time.

Conscious Intentional Activity – At the second stage, you become aware of your attentional principle’s activity. For example, you become aware that your attentional principle is intending your transformational mantra; it is receiving the Light and sending this out via an attunement; or it is traveling in full consciousness through the dimensions of the upper Subconscious, the Metaconscious, and the Superconscious mind.

Independent existence – At stage three, you become aware that your attentional principle operates 24 hours a day, whether you are awake, dreaming, or are in sound sleep.

Regarding the progressive development of your encounter with the attentional principle, we can characterize a spectrum of states where your experience of this conscious essence deepens.

1. Initial discovery of the location of the attentional principle (passive) – Through the use of hypnosis, psychoactive drugs, or reception of an attunement, you experience temporary union with your attentional principle. However, you cannot under your own efforts, return to this experience.
2. Discovery of the attentional principle (active) – You move your attention through the focal points of the Conscious and Subconscious mind until your it reaches the feet of the tiny form of the attentional principle behind the pituitary center of the system of chakras of the Subconscious mind. After some practice, you can replicate this at will. We call this method, Purusa Dhyan. We describe this method in our article, “How to Open Your Own Third Eye” on our website. This meditation is the precursor to the more advanced practice of Raja Yoga, which we call direct projection.
3. Fusion with your attention with the wave of consciousness – This state marks the dawning of stage one. When you achieve this level of control over your attention, you can experience what your attentional principle is sensing in the present time.
4. Awareness of the intentional activity of your attentional principle – This deeper level of perception marks the beginning of stage two. You become aware of your attentional principle using its intention to travel through the inner Planes of Light, to activate your transformational mantra, and to make attunements. In this state, you become aware that you are doing conscious inner work; you can detect that you are consciously meditating.
5. Microconcentration on the activity of the attentional principle’s chakras – In addition to intention that operates through the point between the eyebrows chakra of the tiny form of the attentional principle (Purusa), in this state you become aware of the activity of the other chakras of this form. In the throat center, you become aware of its ability to receive intuitive and telepathic impress. In the heart center, you become aware of its ability to contemplate. In its solar plexus center, you become aware of its ability to anchor suggestions in the vehicles of consciousness of the mind and in the unconscious mind. In its navel center, you become aware of its ability to empathically enter the experience of others. At the center at the base of the spine, you become aware of the attentional principles ability to marshal its forces to affirm and create what it wishes to manifest.
6. Encounter with the guide – At this state, you become aware of your attentional principle’s dialog with an inner guide and its reception of guidance from that guide’s form. You become aware that your attentional principle is listening to the guide’s discourse and it is speaking to the guide through silent, telepathic thought. When you are able to maintain your attention in union with the attentional principle in this state, you experience conscious encounter with the inner guide, which we call Guru Dhyan.
7. Enhanced noumenal experience – In this state, you have a heightened awareness of your attentional principle’s experience on the higher Planes, and you are able to clearly cognize what it sees and hears. You may become aware that it is attending inner schools or Temples of Wisdom. You may behold it carrying out directed Light Ministry under the aegis of the Masters. You may discover it is consciously communing with Masters of the Hierarchy of Light or Initiates of other spiritual traditions. You make this initial discovery of your attentional principle’s activities when you are meditating while you are awake.
8. Turiya – This is the start of the third stage of experiencing the attentional principle, where you realize it has a fully independent existence. You become aware that your attentional principle is inwardly awake during all states of consciousness—waking, dream, sound sleep, coma, and death—and you experience your attentional principle is immortal, eternally conscious, and has full remembrance of its experiences on the inner Planes. You realize that its activity is not governed by where your attention is focused—rather, it has the ability to allow your attention to become aware of what your attentional principle is experiencing, and it has the ability to direct your attention to any focal point within the personality or any nodal point in the Superconscious mind, up to the attention’s origin.
9. Spiritual empowerment – In this state, you become aware of the attentional principle’s ability to guide the attentional principle of others on the inner Planes. In the Mudrashram® tradition, this ability first dawns when we train advanced disciples, who reach the Form of the Disciple on the Bridge Path, to bestow the Raja Yoga Attunement during Teacher Training One. This ability is significantly augmented during Teacher Training Two, which occurs when disciples reach the Mahatma Stage on the Bridge Path, and they learn how to manifest the guide form to the attentional principle of others.
10. Maha Chaitanya Samadhi – In this deepest stage of meditation, you gain the ability to return attention (chittam) to its origin, the form of the attentional principle (purusa) to its source, and the wave of consciousness (chetan) to where it originated in the Infinite Stage.

During the neophyte phase of spirituality, you may have the passive experience of your attentional principle of state one. You do not have control over this experience, but it shows you aspect of your mind beyond the confines of your Conscious mind.

The aspirant phase of spirituality activates states two through five. You become aware of your attentional principle and its abilities.

In the disciple phase, you have a heightened experience of your attentional principle through states six through eight. You are able to commune with the guide, have full awareness of your attentional principle’s adventures in the inner Planes, and finally realize it as an immortal, eternally conscious spiritual essence.

When you become an Initiate, you activate state nine. Here you are empowered to send the Light to awaken and guide the attentional principles of others.

You can learn to consciously encounter your attentional principle in state two through using the Purusa Dhyan technique. This allows you to open the inner seeing of your attentional principle, and experience what mystics call the opening of the third eye.

We teach you how to activate states three through five in our intermediate mediation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We teach you how to activate state six, which enables you to commune with the inner guide (Guru Dhyan) in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Steps seven and eight mark the attainment of advanced discipleship. This comes about gradually after several years of meditation, as your ensouling entity progressively opens deeper and deeper bands of the Great Continuum of Consciousness. Regular practice of Raja Yoga is key to this enhancement of your attentional principle’s experience; those who ignore this important aspect of core Integral meditation practice often lag behind in their ability to experience these more profound stages of attentional principle development.

Those spiritual traditions that grant the ability to bestow the Raja Yoga attunement can awaken and guide the attentional principles of others—these can demonstrate state nine. We empower out students to make this attunement in our advanced Teacher Training programs.

You experience state ten when you complete your spiritual journey in Mudrashram® and you arrive at the Infinite Stage at the top of the Seventh Transcendental Path. This is the most profound state of the experience of attention and the attentional principle, where you consciously experience their origin—where they originally came forth from the Divine.

If you will learn the steps of Raja Yoga meditation and practice it regularly, you will in time experience states two to ten of the development of the abilities of your attentional principle. Your meditations will become ineffable immersion in boundless vistas of sublime knowledge and endless love. And God will not be an abstraction: you will know the Divine As It Is.