Let's summarize the topic of attractions into four categories. Everyone can identify with one or another of these levels.
First, 1% of the population experiences the Absolute. People who choose to adopt an approach of auditory and visual contemplation benefit from the support of experiences, transformations or transcendences that occur in contact with the creative form.
Secondly, 4% of us are capable of discerning subtlety. In different ways and with varying results, they often engage in a moralistic, secondary, symbolic, or subjective form of spirituality, like the base of a pyramid supporting the higher levels. The link between the first and second spheres remains complex, however, due to our greatest amplifier: our ego. It is primarily at this stage of the two levels that spiritual transformations can occur.
Thirdly, although we are still novices, 45% of us manage to recognize the positive and negative aspects of the ephemeral structures of duality. It is rare for people to succeed in overcoming this barrier. Semi-consciousness evolves towards connection, a subject we will explore later, as interrelation. Let's consider them synonyms for now.
As for the rest, which represents about 50%, it is of a cyclopean nature. To make it less harsh, let's say that many cannot fully open their vision.
The difference between consciousness and unconsciousness.
Consequently, 5% of the population would be conscious, while 95% would be either in a state of semi-consciousness or interrelation, or in a state of unconsciousness. This is similar to whether intelligence and consciousness are located on opposite sides of a tree trunk.
A return to our origins is essential to understanding the nature of our humanity. Contemplative meditation practices support the idea that human beings are conceived as vessels capable of receiving divine energy. This volume is dedicated to the study of auditory and visual contemplation, designated by the terms Shabda and Tejas, considered an effective method for freeing oneself from attractions.
Unlike contemplative practices, materialism distances man from his spiritual nature.
Percentages. No study measures "levels of consciousness" as percentages of the population. The figures in the text therefore stem from symbolic intuition, not data. Humanistic psychology (Maslow) also estimated that self-actualization concerned a tiny minority, without providing a rigorous measurement.
Attractions. In neuroscience, attraction corresponds to "incentive salience" (Kent Berridge's wanting): a dopaminergic circuit that drives us toward an object without guaranteeing actual pleasure. This mechanism explains why we are attracted to what does not fulfill our needs.
Degrees of consciousness. Science distinguishes between states (wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia) and models of consciousness such as the global workspace or integrated information (Tononi, Koch). Cognitive psychology also describes two modes of thinking, one fast and automatic, the other slow and reflective (Kahneman). None of this forms a four-level pyramid, but the idea of degrees is accepted.
Contemplation. Research on meditation shows a reduction in the activity of the default mode network (linked to self-centered inner chatter) and attentional training. Sustained listening (singing, sound) and visual fixation are classic attentional aids. The effects on well-being are documented, but science does not establish the receipt of "divine energy."
Materialism. A distinction must be made between methodological materialism, which is the working principle of science, and existential materialism, which is the pursuit of possession. The former does not assert that nothing else exists; the latter is what psychology associates with a lower life satisfaction.
The Gita (7:16) names four kinds of devotees: the sufferer, the seeker of knowledge, the seeker of wealth, and the sage. Ramakrishna distinguished four classes of souls: bound, aspiring, liberated, and ever-free. The Mandukya Upanishad describes four states: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and turiya, the “fourth.” The Gita (7:3) emphasizes the rarity of those who truly know.
The Buddha compares beings to lotuses in a pond: some remain underwater, others reach the surface, and a few rise above and bloom.
Tradition speaks of the thirty-six hidden righteous (lamed-vav) who sustain the world: a tiny minority.
The parable of the sower (Mark 4) distinguishes four types of soil: the path, the rock, the thorns, and the good soil.
“Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14).
Sufism distinguishes between the common believer, the elite, and the elite of the elite; the three degrees of faith are islam, iman, and ihsan.
The Allegory of the Cave (Plato, Republic VII): most see shadows, few turn toward the light.
Every being is attracted. By pleasure, by the image they have of themselves, by what shines and what resonates. Attraction is neither a fault nor a virtue: it is life's primary movement towards what fulfills it, or deceives it.
Four depths can be discerned. In a very few, attention has turned toward the Absolute and allows itself to be transformed by contact with the creative form. In a slightly larger number, it perceives subtlety, but the ego, a great amplifier, still obscures the passage. In most, consciousness oscillates between yes and no, pleasure and fear, in the movement of ephemeral forms: this is semi-consciousness, already seeking connection, interrelation. And beyond that, a sleep so profound that it is unaware of being asleep.
No one is judged by this picture. Everyone can recognize themselves in it, and also recognize that the level is not a prison, but a position on the trunk of the same tree, where intelligence and consciousness grow on both sides.
Human beings are vessels. What fulfills them depends on what they allow in: the material world distances them from their true nature, while contemplation restores it. Listening to the sound that is not merely noise, gazing at the light that does not simply illuminate: Shabda and Tejas are not techniques for escaping the world, but two windows to liberate oneself from it without denying it.
Thus the attraction is calmed, not by force, but by the discovery of a broader attraction.
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