1 result for (book:ss AND session:571 AND stemmed:soul)
[... 13 paragraphs ...]
Beyond this are states in which the symbols themselves begin to fade away, become indistinct, distant. Here you begin to draw into regions of consciousness in which symbols become less and less necessary, and it is a largely unpopulated area indeed. Representations blink off and on, and finally disappear. Consciousness is less and less physically oriented. In this stage of consciousness the soul finds itself alone with its own feelings, stripped of symbolism and representations, and begins to perceive the gigantic reality of its own knowing.
It feels direct experience. If we use joy as our example, all mental symbols and images of it would finally disappear. They had emerged from it, and would fall away from it, not being the original experience, but by-products. The soul would then begin to explore the reality of this joy in terms that can hardly be explained, and in so doing would learn methods of perception, expression, and actualization that would have been utterly incomprehensible to it before.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
At different levels, consciousness works with different kinds of symbols. Symbols are a method of expressing inner reality. Working in one direction the soul, using its consciousness, expresses inner reality through as many symbols as possible, through living, changing symbolism. Each symbol itself then is to its own extent conscious, individual, and aware.
In so doing, the soul continually creates new varieties of inner reality to be explored. Working in the opposite direction, so to speak, the soul divests itself of all symbols, all representations, and using its consciousness in a different way learns to probe its own direct experience. Without symbols to come between it and experience, it perfects itself in a kind of value fulfillment that you presently cannot understand except symbolically.
[... 28 paragraphs ...]