THE SUBSTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Like all real light waves, the local modes of transcendental light may be viewed as having transverse waveforms, and like all real sound waves, the nonlocal modes of transcendental sound have longitudinal waveforms.
In spite of their differences in waveform (transverse and longitudinal) and speed (local and nonlocal), however, the ancients—especially Hermetic sages—held that these two types of modes are not separate. One sage described his initial experience of enlightenment this way: “I beheld a boundless view; all was changed into Light, a mild and joyous Light; and I marveled when I saw it.... And... from the Light there came forth a holy Word [Logos], which took its stand upon the watery substance; and me thought this Word [Logos] to be the voice of the Light.... They are not separate one from the other.”2This amounts to an intuitive cognition of the virtual quantum vacuum experienced as a field of pure consciousness. The modes of light and sound are said to have their basis in a watery substance, which serves as their underlying medium. This is consistent with the fact that in virtually all of the ancient traditions, the field of pure consciousness was assigned a fluidlike nature. For example, in the ancient Egyptian tradition the field of pure consciousness was called the nun, the “watery abyss.” The metaphysical Logos, which takes its stand upon the watery abyss, was called the Duat, or “underworld”—that is, the invisible virtual world that underlies the visible universe.
In the Vedic tradition, the field of pure consciousness was identified with God, the Supreme Being, in his form as Narayana, “the abode of the waters.” The metaphysical Logos was called the Veda—the indestructible structure of pure knowledge inherent within the field of pure consciousness, which serves as the basis for the observable universe. The fluidlike substance of the field was called dravya, from the root dru, “to flow.” A fluid is defined generally as any substance that has the ability to flow, but the fluidlike substance of pure consciousness was conceived not as a physical substance, but as a metaphysical one—literally, the substance of consciousness itself.
Although pure consciousness is not a material substance, the Vedic seers held that it could nevertheless be compared to a material substance in that it has the ability to move and flow: “It is pure consciousness, [which is] birthless, motionless, and nonmaterial, as well as tranquil and nondual, that has the semblance of birth, appears to move, and simulates a material substance.”3
In the Hermetic texts the metaphysical substance of consciousness was called Mind—the very substance of God. “Mind... is the very substance of God, if indeed there is a substance of God, and of what nature that substance is, God alone knows precisely.”4
In spite of its abstract and metaphysical nature, the substance of consciousness was compared to a fluid in that it has the ability to flow in both streams and waves.