From chaos to zeroness - the ascending levels of consciousness ||Acharya Prashant, on Lao Tzu (2015)

The highest virtue is not virtuous Therefore it has virtue The lowest virtue holds onto its virtue Therefore it has no virtue The highest benevolence acts without purpose The highest righteousness acts with purpose The highest ritual acts, but since no one cares, it raises its arms and use force

Therefore when The Way is lost there is virtueWhen virtue is lost there is benevolenceWhen benevolence is lost there is righteousnessWhen righteousness is lost there are ritualsRituals are end of fidelity and honesty and beginning of conclusion.

Lao Tzu, Tao-Te-Ching (Chapter – 38)

Speaker: There is ‘the way’, then ‘virtues’, then ‘benevolence’, then ‘righteousness’, then ‘rituals’, and then ‘confusion’. What are these? These are nothing but ‘levels of consciousness’, states of mind.

The mind that lives in absolute duality, sees only a multitude of objects, all around. For such a mind, for such a consciousness, there is the subject, and there is an abundance – a sea, a plethora of objects all around. He looks around, and sees objects and objects. Who is he, is defined, by the object he is looking at, at that particular moment and place.