Course I - Teaching 14: Consciousness and Will

The universal movement continuously oscillates between a force that drives creation and activity, and a force that attracts annihilation and relaxation.
These two great cosmic movements are Consciousness and Will.
Consciousness could be defined as the amplification of a being from atom to Macro-divinity. And the Will can be defined as the universal force made concrete to the being.
First Movement: Consciousness.
This cosmic passivity that, as a mother far from her child, calls from Infinity the fruit of her bosom for the Great Cosmic Store restored, becomes apparent in life through the lifeless consciousness of elements; and this very slow progress, this extended evolution of minerals and worlds, is like a passive fight of monads to go on forward and to return to the starting point.
It is as if consciousness of what is, refused to become.
It is as if the very wide circle made efforts not to be reduced from the Eternal Circle to the personal circle.
This concept of Eternity, this sense of immensity, cannot be deleted, even through a descent; and a being, still locked in the deep prison of his conscious mind, preserves this inborn principle, this Secret Tabernacle, of what could be rather in essence than in potency, and than men call vaguely consciousness.
Of course, here consciousness is nothing else than a distant flash of this hidden passive power which has to return its pristine essence to the soul.
We are told that consciousness is the concept of good related habits, laws and ethics of men. But ultimately, if a man properly analyzed this matter, he would see that consciousness is not a good related to his outer life but the essence of good related to his grade of evolution.
When consciousness opens to the inflows of the spirit, then it becomes wider and reaches the infinity because consciousness is a virtue that breaks bonds and, like an overflowing sea, overcomes every limit, fills every cave and void, and returns the liberated soul, there, at that Gordian and vital knot, which is harmony between the Eternal Spirit and the soul who knows what is and who is.
Second Movement: Will.
According to texts, the worlds and planetary systems have been created by a pure act of Will; and these texts say well because Will is Cosmic Energy condensed on certain point.
In the fantastic descent of the soul from infinite to finite, one source, which is unique and unbreakable Will, brings all beings, from those beings without circle to the far reduced circle of life.
And this will makes of every atom a being, of every molecule an entity that is different from others, of every entity a personality, a world apart, a power separated and different from all the rest of powers.
In the elevation of beings to the conquest of the conscious liberation, the will ever plays a very important part.
So as consciousness widens, the Will reduces; but in reducing, it gives the weapon of power.
The unconscious entity that went out of the Eternal Being, will be returned to Eternity never losing that principle of consciousness and potency which is different of all the rest of potencies that he has acquired in his pilgrimage through the worlds.
Meanwhile, the power, the fiery sword, the sacred power of Kundalini, stays there, motionless, waiting for the Will to control it, and to dominate and become the absolute sovereign. Because Will is essence in itself of every one of the personalities of beings, being completely different from all the rest; and as man does not know how to use it, he will not achieve the Highest Realization, because men know that Will is an impulse to do what is seemingly impossible sometimes, but they do not know that this impulse must be of oneself and not of others in order to be effective.
Men do not possess the Will, although they know it, because they seek in sources of others. In short, they believe that Will is to do what other person wants, what is pleasant to other, or what other people has taught or said.
Since man is mentally a slave, and blindly takes the Will of others as his own Will, he does not achieve the triumph, because Will is a faithful lover that only listens to the call of his real husband.
A man should try to want what he wants, and to seek not what the entangled ideas of others have shaped in his mind, but what is a natural, mental and spiritual inclination in him; so he will see how his mind responds to the call of the Will and how the Will raises that strange personal power which is the power of his very being.
So God made the Universe, manifesting his Own, Only and Absolute Will.