Consciousness spectrum

According to K. Wilber, consciousness has evolved from an original, all-inclusive, timeless and non-dual awareness, through various levels of [maya]

or illusion; each of these levels brings further separation and increased appearance of duality as the individual equates his own identity with the self (and everything else as not-self), as his body, as his ego, and finally as those facets of the ego he is prepared to accept. The spectrum of consciousness is a representation of these "identifications" of absolute subjectivity with one "set of objects" compared with all others; each set of bands being more narrow and exclusive than the last.

The separation inherent in maya can be considered as the setting of limits or boundaries, that within the boundary is one and that outside the boundary is another; in order to consider the one, the other is dismissed. This is the second or "existential" level of the spectrum, where the organism is felt and believed to be distinct from its environment. At this level the awareness of space and of time (the latter being an avoidance of death inherent in identification with the body - there is nothing before the birth of the body nor after its death) are generated. The anxiety caused by the fear of death leads to the next level, where the organism is further divided as ego and body, identification being with the ego which has, not is, the body. Between the first level (of mind) and the existential level are the [transpersonal bands]

, the collective unconscious: astral projections, extrasensory perception and so on occurring at this level, where duality is not totally experienced. Communication among individuals may be at any of the consciousness levels described, or a combination of some or all of them. Misunderstanding of such communication leads to further duality, as the self-image built up by an individual as acceptable to himself rejects parts of the ego, which are retained as the "shadow".

In order to escape from the smaller and smaller view of the self that the individual creates one has to regain the sense of the timeless "now" - which is actually always present. This cannot be done by trying to retrieve what is already there but by removing what is not there: by active attention; by stopping the mental chatter and background "noise"; and by passive awareness - all leading to the end of the sense of "I", to "ego-death". Virtually all systems of self-realization and spiritual development have this aim in view.