states of human consciousness

There is vertical thinking and horizontal thinking.

Horizontal thinking proceeds on a straight and narrow line (sometimes widening) from premise (one's starting point) to conclusion (a satisfactory, for the moment, end result). One feels satisfied. One has "thought it through."

Horizontal thinking is just like it says, concerned with the horizon -- a point "over there" (considered to be in "the future") that one wants to reach. Horizontal thinking is ratio logic, estimating odds and probabilities, the ratios of various indicants to "success" to indicants of "failure." Ratio logic, hence called "rational."

Horizontal thinking is considered to be rational thinking, not just in the ratio of success/failure sense I have just described, but also in the sense of a value judgment. To be thought rational is a social judgment that brings its own rewards. Horizonatal thinkers often do not engage (at least on purpose) in vertical thinking, considering it as irrational, fraudulent, untrustworthy, and suspicious.

Vertical thinking disregards linear time, realizing and experiencing now as the only time there is. All knowledge is present now. What one needs to know is present now. We are already at the horizon, all horizons. It is called vertical thinking because we plunge into its depths and open to its heights of conscious awareness. Vertical thinkers can and do think horizontally but tend to regard it as an overly simplified procedure that has little bearing on the vibrant world of everchanging possibility.

Each of these two ways, admittedly oversimplified in my presentation, is a form of consciousness, a consciousness state. Both consciousness states can be cultivated and there are valid and honorable ways of doing so.

I wish to point to a third way. I call it cosmic thinking, or cosmic awareness. Horizontal thinking has a definite linear point of view. "I" am "here," at "this point," and wish to get "there," at "that point." Vertical thinking has a curvilinear point of view. I can "rise above" my situation and see the arc of its significance. I can "sink below" my situation and see the roots and soil of its beginnings and its nurturance. With horizontal or linear thinking, I am more fixed in time to comprehend my situation and its solutions. With vertical thinking, I exist, am fixed, more in space.

With cosmic thinking/awareness, I am neither fixed in time nor space. I am an omnipresent being and all "problems" and "solutions" continuously flow through. This state of consciousness has variously been called kensho, Christ consciousness, Lila, and what the old Zen master Bankei referred to as the realm of the Unborn. This state of consciousness, no matter what label we give it, will at one point become the normal consciousness state of humankind.

As my friend Ken McIntosh says, compassion is the key.

Where compassion drops off, consciousness stops. Compassion for one's own linear situation helps produce linear or horizontal thinking. Compassion for all below and all above helps produce vertical thinking or consciousness. Compassion for and with the entire cosmos, infinite and in every "direction," helps produce cosmic consciousness.