A map is only an indicator of the territory. A map of Brazil is very different than the experience of going to this country, walking its streets and seeing its people.
We build a map of our personal experience moment by moment with several layers of perception, cognition, affect, and memory.
You may see a picture of a vacation spot in a book or advertisement, or maybe a road map of this place. You decide you will take a trip to this city.
When you finally arrive there, you begin to gather sensory impressions of the place: sights, smells, and sounds of the people and the environment.
You then have an emotional reaction to this place based on these sensory impressions: “oh, I really like this place, I want to move here.”
You also form certain beliefs about the city based on your experience: “The people are friendly here. There seems to be little evidence of crime—I don’t see much graffiti. The city seems to be well maintained.”
You also store all of this data in memory. It becomes part and parcel of the running chronicle of your life. If you take pictures, when you pull them out in 20 years, it will bring back the memories of your visit to this city.
Each of these layers is accessible from the Conscious mind. We do not have to leave our waking consciousness to have these experiences.
Neurologists tells us that these layers of experience are anchored in the physical nervous system. If a doctor went in with an electrode and touched a certain brain cell, purportedly you would remember the sensory impressions of this place, your feelings about it, your beliefs.
Spiritual Maps
Spiritual experience is not quite like this. We can’t touch a brain cell and make you remember the Abstract Mind Plane. Here you form impressions in a much subtler way.
Like the street map of the city you visited, we can make a map of different landmarks we experience when we go inside in meditation. This is called a map of consciousness.
We can say, there are different Planes, different regions within you, and give them all names. But this is not the same as you traveling there in meditation.
People who use certain meditation techniques to focus their attention on certain bands of this Great Continuum of Consciousness gather a lot of spiritual experiences for that location. But their experience is limited to that area.
To create this big map, we have built it out of a lot of smaller maps. We will outline this structure below, so you can see how it was constructed.
| Subconscious Mind | |
| Chakras | Mirror development in the Planetary Realm. |
| Astral Body | Mirrors development in the Cosmic Sphere. |
| Causal Body | Mirrors development in the Supracosmic Sphere. |
| Toruses of Purpose | Mirrors spiritual development in each of the twelve domains. |
| Metaconscious Mind | |
| Intuition | Mirrors all centers in the Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind. |
| Superconscious Mind | |
| Subtle Seed Atom | Gives Path knowledge of the Subtle Realm. |
| Buddhic atom of the Soul | Gives Path knowledge for the Planetary Realm. |
| Monad | Gives Path knowledge of the Transplanetary Realm. |
| Astral Soul | Gives Path knowledge for the Cosmic Sphere. |
| Supracosmic Seed Atom | Gives clues to your development on any one of the 73 Supracosmic Paths. |
| Supracosmic Soul | Gives Path knowledge for your appropriate path in Supracosmic Sphere and your development there. |
| Transcendental ensouling entities | Gives Path knowledge for the Bridge Path and Transcendental Paths one through seven. |
| Great Continuum of Consciousness | Gives information about each of the bands of consciousness from waking awareness in the Conscious mind to the highest Plane of the Seventh Transcendental Path. |
If you focus in your Subconscious mind, you will see the mirrors of your development in higher spheres. If you focus on your ensouling entities in each realm, you will see your actual spiritual evolution there.
The Supracosmic Sphere is an interesting situation. There is something we call the Supracosmic Seed Atom, which is a nucleus of identity for each of the Supracosmic paths. By certain spiritual practices, you can awaken these Seed Atoms and start to open that path.
It’s important to first figure out, though, whether that Seed Atom is aligned with your Supracosmic Soul. Otherwise, you’ll wind up being a Sufi when you were supposed to be a Zen Buddhist. It creates a lot of confusion when you do this…
The big map of the Great Continuum of Consciousness was constructed by putting each of the little maps together. You can see the general layout of this map by clicking here.
In our two-year Mudrashram® Correspondence Course, we go into this big map in exquisite detail. If get this, you’ll be able to meditate on each and every level of the Great Continuum of Consciousness—from your waking awareness to the highest Plane of the Seventh Transcendental Path.
If you do the correspondence course, plus take the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation, you’ll really be cookin’ with gas! You’ll get the map, plus the guided tour. You’ll get to go to the higher Planes and learn the techniques so you can take yourself back there.
So…there’s the story of how the big map of the Great Continuum of Consciousness was developed. Pretty neat, huh?
The Mudrashram® Correspondence Course was released on June 23, 2006. To take this course you must first complete either the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the Accelerated Meditation Program.]
