There are three states of a man: the awake state, the dream state and the sound sleep state. In the awake state, man uses his gross eyes for seeing, gross ears for hearing, his gross nose for smelling, and so on for all other senses. In the dream state, man uses his subtle body, and not his gross body, for all actions in the dream state. Thus in a dream, he uses his subtle eyes for seeing, subtle ears for hearing, and so on. In the sound sleep state, man’s mind is completely at rest.
There are six stages of consciousness:
(1) Unconsciousness; (2) Sub-consciousness;
(3) Consciousness; (4) Sub-superconsciousness;
(5) Superconsciousness; and (6) God-Consciousness.
In the Beyond-Beyond state of God, there is unconsciousness, but everything comes out of this state. In the subconscious state, there are seven stages of gaseous existence. Consciousness begins from the stone form, where it is very rudimentary. During the evolutionary process of seven stages of forms, culminating in the human form, consciousness is fully developed. But due to the accumulation of sanskaras during the evolutionary process, man does not become conscious of God.
Had there been no accumulation of sanskaras, man would have become conscious of himself as God as soon as he took the first human form. But due to innumerable sanskaras, the wheel of birth and death rotates in a zigzag fashion. That is, the soul takes the male form, then the female form, good-bad, ugly-beautiful, king-beggar, and so on in the process of reincarnation. And after every death sanskaras are shaken up.
At last the process of involution begins when the mind’s consciousness becomes subtle. The mind persists up to the fifth plane [in the form of thoughts]. In the fifth plane mind works through itself. In the sixth plane, mind does not work, but feels. Mind becomes the inner eye and sees God face to face. In the sixth plane there is superconsciousness. In the seventh plane the mind is annihilated and man achieves God-Consciousness.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 18, p. 6200.