The Highest Level of the Super-conscious Mind: The "Subtle Causal Mind"

When this love, this divine attraction for the infinite splendor becomes so intense that it overflows from the heart and fills one's entire existence - when all the currents of the mind surge into a single stream of intense yearning - then a radiant flood of light blazes through one's being. This is the highest level of the super-conscious, the "golden realm" of the mind.

Sometimes, the body even reflects the effulgence of the mind. In this state, the complexion of the Saint Ramakrishna becomes so luminous - like a "golden amulet" - that it drew attention everywhere. He wrapped a sheet around his body and prayed to God, "Take back this outward beauty and give me inner beauty, give me purity of spirit!"Repeatedly stroking his body, he cried, "Dive inward! Dive inward! Until his exterior again became dull. This is the path of the saints - ever inward.

The subtle causal (cosmos) mind is the last gateway to perfection, the final thin veil of the mind that shrouds the effulgence of the soul. When the brilliant golden glow of this layer of mind is experienced, one feels very near to the infinite self within, and the desire for supreme union becomes almost unbearable. One saint described that burning attraction. "You cannot imagine my agony at separation from the Supreme. Suppose there is a bag of gold in a room and a thief in the next, with only a thin partition in between. Can he sleep peacefully? Will he not run about and try to force the wall to get at the gold?"

Once a disciple asked his master, "When will I attain self-realization?" His master told him, "Later I will show you." That afternoon when they went to the river to bathe, the master grabbed his disciple, plunged his head beneath the water, and held him there. The disciple soon became desperate; his mind was riveted on his one desire - for air. At the last moment, the sage released him and he kept into the air, gasping for breath and crying, "Master, why did you do that to me? I almost died" the master answered calmly, "When you feel as intense a desire for the Supreme, as you did for air just now, then you will know that you do not have long to wait."

Thus, mystics from age to age have expressed their yearning in the language of lovers, for no other language can express the ecstatic agony, the sweet intimacy, the flame of desire burning so intensely inside them. The pangs of separation torment their hearts, and they feel around their necks and noose of Love Miira,