Consciousness is the key to everything, in fact to all authentic change. It is consciousness that enters the forms and inhabits them, identifying and limiting it appropriate to the form it inhabits. Human beings have the possibility of changing it by awakening a fire of aspiration accompanied with faith in the needed change that the mind envisages. This happens because in human beings the contents of consciousness are under the leading and influence of the mind. By directing the thought in a certain direction, by meditating upon an Idea, the rest of the consciousness begins to undergo a corresponding change. That is the whole purpose of meditation. Whatever our mind tends to think about, the idea it meditates upon with faith, whatever we will persistently, in that direction our consciousness begins to change.
There is another way. It is to being our consciousness in contact with things, people, books that embody the consciousness that we want to acquire. That is the value and power of satsang, of collective congregations (provided they are genuine), of uplifting books such as certain scriptures or words of realised beings. They act like mantra to open doors and windows within us so that it comes in contact with higher states of consciousness that the words hold in it or the saint and seer embodies.
There is a yet simpler way. It is to love God or His human representative, the Guru for our consciousness soon begins to identify and grow one with the object of our love and begins to spontaneously acquire the consciousness of the person whom we deeply love.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
