The Book of Life: Stages of Consciousness and the Path to the Collective Unconscious
Most people live their lives assuming consciousness is something static—something we either have or don’t. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Consciousness unfolds in stages, and each stage is delivered to us through evolution, mapped onto our brain structures and capacities. Just as the body evolved over time, so too has the mind—and with it, our access to deeper layers of reality.
Across cultures and spiritual systems, these stages have been hinted at: the chakra system in Hindu philosophy, the Tree of Life in Kabbalah, the concept of “stations” in Sufism, and the seven heavens in Islam. Carl Jung’s work brought one of the most powerful concepts to light: the collective unconscious, a vast psychic reservoir shared by all humanity, lying dormant beneath our personal ego-awareness.
The ancient metaphor of the Book of Life speaks to these stages as seals—layers of awareness, each guarding a deeper truth. In this article, I will walk you through the first five of these seals. Why just five? Because the fifth seal is the threshold: it is the collective unconscious itself. The final two—if one dares to go further—deal with bringing that collective awareness into conscious form.
Let’s dive in
The First Seal: The White Horse – Survival and the Reptilian Brain
Victory, intention, movement.
The journey of awakening starts in the most primal territory: survival. This is the domain of the Reptilian Brain, our oldest structure, located in the brainstem. Fast, blunt, and utterly decisive, it doesn’t deliberate—it reacts. Friend or enemy. Eat or be eaten. Fight, flight, or freeze.
In this stage, consciousness is binary. Black or white. Safe or dangerous. Much of our political discourse, advertising, and tribal thinking still operates here—triggering the survival reflex. The ego rides the White Horse, believing it is in control, setting out to “conquer” the world. But its victories are driven by fear. Identity is rigid. Boundaries are absolute.
Whenever life feels reduced to either/or, we are living from this brain.
The Second Seal: The Red Horse – Emotion and the Mammalian Brain
War, conflict, division.
With the rise of the Mammalian Brain (limbic system), evolution gave us the capacity for emotion, bonding, and memory. But it also gave us the capacity to suffer emotionally.
Here, the soul becomes aware of its inner world—but it experiences it in extremes: joy vs. sadness, rage vs. depression, fear vs. desire. This brain divides the emotional spectrum into “good” and “bad,” often unconsciously flipping between them. We become split inside ourselves—happy one moment, hopeless the next.
The Red Horse rides in bringing conflict—not just outward war, but the inner war of contradiction. We feel torn, reactive, vulnerable. The ego begins to understand it is not a lone conqueror—it is a divided kingdom.
Most modern relationships, art, and politics remain at this level: fueled by emotional opposition and longing for resolution.
The Third Seal: The Black Horse – Will and the Neocortex
Famine, imbalance, measurement.
Now the intellect awakens. With the development of the Neocortex, especially in the parietal and temporal lobes, consciousness becomes even more complex. We acquire language, logic, analysis. The ego becomes refined—but still divided.
This is the brain of thought, comparison, and ego identity. Here, the world is measured. Resources are weighed. Control is pursued. We want to understand and master life through thought. It is a famine not of food, but of meaning. And so, the intellect compensates—seeking control, perfection, power.
The Black Horse signifies a consciousness obsessed with “balance”—but balance is imposed, not lived. Here, we are the most “rational” and yet most alienated from the mystery.
This is the domain of modern society: intellect without wisdom, logic without love.
The Fourth Seal: The Pale Horse – Ego Death and the Frontal Lobes
Death and the underworld.
To go further, the ego must begin to die.
The Frontal Lobes, especially the prefrontal cortex, allow for higher empathy, long-term vision, and moral intuition. But they only come fully online when the ego surrenders control. Here begins the shift from fear-based awareness to heart-based awareness.
The Pale Horse brings death—not physical, but existential. This is ego death. The structures of meaning we’ve built begin to collapse. Love emerges, not as an emotion, but as a field of being. True spiritual life begins here, but not without a cost. All that is false must be faced.
This is the dark night of the soul. The descent into the underworld before rebirth.
The Fifth Seal: The Martyrs – The Collective Unconscious
Souls crying out from beneath the altar.
At this stage, the voice of the soul emerges—not just your soul, but the soul of humanity. This is the Collective Unconscious, described by Carl Jung as a deep psychic reservoir shared by all people, containing archetypes, ancestral memories, and the blueprint of human myth.
The “martyrs beneath the altar” symbolize our own inner voices—truths we’ve buried, intuitions we’ve ignored, patterns passed down for generations. Here, consciousness begins to rise from individual identity to collective awareness. We realize we are not alone in our suffering or our yearning.
This is the call to speak truth, to integrate shadow, to live from a deeper knowing.
The Sixth Seal: Cosmic Shaking – Awakening Through Collapse
The sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The stars fall.
At the edge of the collective unconscious, the psyche cannot remain unchanged. When the Fifth Seal opens, the truth begins to rise from the depths—and with it, the illusions we’ve built our lives on begin to crumble. This is the Great Unveiling. The ego, which has survived through division and control, cannot withstand the truth of unity.
This stage corresponds not to a new brain structure, but to a collapse of identification with all brain structures. The mind shakes. The heart burns. The nervous system may even go into chaos for a time. It feels like death, madness, or complete disorientation.
And yet—this is the shaking of the soul’s foundation before a new way of being is born. Jung called it enantiodromia—the breaking down of one extreme so the opposite can emerge. In Eastern traditions, this is the Great Doubt, just before enlightenment.
The darkness is not the end. It is the womb.
Here, you may lose faith in everything—religion, identity, even yourself. That’s because something deeper is preparing to awaken.
The Seventh Seal: Silence – Pure Being, Non-Dual Awareness
There was silence in heaven for half an hour.
This is the final seal. Not an event, but a condition. Not something to achieve, but something that has always been here—beneath the noise, beneath the mind, beneath the self.
When the seventh seal opens, we enter pure awareness. No division. No observer and observed. This is non-dual consciousness, the silent recognition of Being itself. In Dzogchen, it’s called Rigpa—awareness recognizing itself. In Christian mysticism, it’s the Cloud of Unknowing. In Zen, it’s Satori. In the Upanishads, it is Tat Tvam Asi—Thou art That.
No longer needing to name or divide experience, we return to what we always were. And from this ground of silence, we can finally live—not from fear, not from ego, not from inherited programming—but from direct, present, compassionate being.
You no longer need to ride the horse. You become the sky through which all horses ride.
Jacob’s Ladder – Building the Bridge Between Ego and the Divine
What is Jacob’s Ladder?
In the Book of Genesis, Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending. It’s a mysterious image, often taken as a symbol of divine connection, spiritual ascent, or the soul’s path through different levels of reality. But beyond metaphor, Jacob’s Ladder is a real inner structure—something we must build within ourselves.
And here’s the key:
We build it through skill.
To reach the fifth seal—the threshold of the collective unconscious—we must have the previous stages integrated. The survival brain, emotional intelligence, and intellect must be functioning in harmony. Only then can we begin to consciously build the ladder.
But what exactly are we building?
The Skill as a Ladder
Every human being is born with at least one gift, one passion, one deep source of energy that—if followed—leads them out of the false self and toward something higher. This is not just a hobby. It is a craft based on creativity. It could be art, healing, music, writing, teaching, building, design, storytelling—anything that stirs your soul.
To build Jacob’s Ladder is to devote yourself to this gift. Not in a superficial way, but with the discipline of a monk and the fire of a mystic. Ten, twenty, thirty years. Slowly, steadily, refining the skill until it becomes a vehicle of transformation.
Most of us never do this. We compromise. We get jobs. We make money. We forget.
But your skill is the ladder. It is the way the ego begins to serve something higher, something real. It is not about escaping the world—it is about creating from your true nature. Skill grounds the sacred. It gives form to the formless.
The Heart as the Architect
The ladder is built not from the mind, but from the heart. The frontal lobes, the inner vision, and the emotional body must align around what is truly meaningful to you. This is why the heart must be open.
You can’t build Jacob’s Ladder if your heart is shut down—if you’re stuck in fear, anger, cynicism, or bitterness. The heart is your compass. It tells you: This is the thing. This is the work that calls you. It may terrify you. It may ask everything of you. But it is the one thing you cannot ignore.
Without the heart, the ladder becomes just ambition. With the heart, it becomes ascension.
Jacob’s Dream Was Your Reminder
When Jacob saw the ladder, he woke from sleep and said:
“Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.”
That place is you. That ladder is yours. It has always been waiting for you to remember. To feel. To build.
So: what is the skill you abandoned?
What is the fire you buried?
What would you build, if you followed your heart all the way?
That is Jacob’s Ladder.
The Ladder Is Real – A Personal Encounter With the Divine Concert Halls
For me, the ladder was music.
I picked up the guitar at 14. Not because someone told me to—but because something in me had to. It wasn’t long before I began composing. Not just playing songs—but birthing sound from silence. It became a passion. An obsession. A calling. I played in bands, built a recording studio, composed and recorded endlessly. It wasn’t for money. It wasn’t for fame. It was for that place I reached while creating—where time folded, where something other came through.
Then, in 1995, something happened. I was 35. Two years into meditation, I found myself on retreat. After the final session, I returned to my room—just 10 square meters—and sat down on the bed. Suddenly, I heard it. A cello and a cembalo, playing from right behind me. Crystal clear. Surrounding me. I turned, startled—nothing there. No speakers, no instruments, no people.
But the music continued. For 15 seconds, I was immersed in the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I didn’t listen to it—I was inside it. It didn’t come from outside. It came from within the space itself.
It was like the wall of reality had cracked.
And then… it was gone.
Those 15 seconds haunted and inspired me. I returned to my job. I continued making music. But now, I was chasing that glimpse—reaching toward the Divine Concert Halls, as I now call them. It didn’t happen again until 2001. But this time, I was allowed to stay longer. Sixteen hours. I downloaded a three-minute piano piece I could not have composed otherwise. I didn’t even play the piano—but I recreated what I heard using my computer.
Then, another decade passed.
And again, the gate opened—but differently. It wasn’t through meditation this time. It was through relationship. A dear friend once told me:
“I do not see any arrogance in you, but that might be because I can see through your outer walls.”
Those words cut through me. Not in a wounding way—but in a liberating way. Something inside, long restless, finally relaxed. I dropped the act. There was nothing left to protect. And suddenly, access returned—not just for seconds or hours, but at will.
I became able to enter and leave the divine concert halls freely.
This is one of the profound examples of how Jacob’s Ladder is built through sincere devotion, heartbreak, discipline, and surrender. This is a description of what mystics and visionaries have touched throughout history: direct contact with the Creative Logos, the divine sound, the music of the spheres.
The Cosmic Field of Music – A Living Archetype
I have come to see this not as imagination, but as direct contact with a cosmic field in the collective unconscious. Music is not just vibration. It is a living archetype—a reality that exists in higher dimensions of consciousness. These fields are organized. Some are dark. Most are unconscious. And because of that, they often affect us in negative, unseen ways—through fear, addiction, confusion.
But some are pure light. And one of them is a creative field of divine music. That is the field I touched. Or rather—it touched me.
And once you’ve been touched, you can’t go back.
Jacob’s Ladder Is Built Through Devotion
My music was my ladder. Not just a skill, but a spiritual organ of perception. A bridge between my ego and the divine. It took years of quiet labor. Of heartbreak. Of inner surrender. But every note played, every moment spent creating, was a step upward—toward something greater.
I didn’t climb it by ambition. I climbed it by surrendering to what was already inside me.
And you—whoever you are—have a ladder too.
It might not be music. It might be painting. Or healing. Or raising children. Or building communities. It doesn’t matter what the form is.
It matters that it’s real.
That it comes from the heart.
That it’s built with your life.
Bringing Heaven to Earth – The Light in the Fields
We are all connected to the collective unconscious—whether we know it or not. This is the crack Leonard Cohen sings about:
“There is a crack in everything… that’s how the light gets in.”
But here’s the secret: not everything that comes through the crack is light.
When the collective remains unconscious, pain, fear, and suffering leak through just as easily. The fields we live in—the energies we bathe in every day—are not random. They are generated by us. The field is us. Our love and our hate. Our creativity and our numbness. Our healing and our wounds.
The collective fields are living energies, shaped and sustained by human experience. Just look around:
- The massive, unresolved trauma field from WWII still weighs on Europe and beyond.
- The field of violence, sexual assault, and exploitation of women and children stretches across centuries.
- The field of greed, fear, war, racism—they’re all there, alive, because we haven’t yet healed them.
You want to find a negative collective field? Just look at the world’s greatest problems.
You want to find the positive ones? Look where love and creativity flow freely.
This is how the unseen becomes visible.
But something else is happening now—something evolutionary.
Since WWII, something subtle but world-changing has begun: the rebalancing of the masculine and feminine. Men and women are starting to awaken each other’s essence. Feminine strength meets masculine vulnerability. Hearts are opening. And when the heart opens, the Ladder appears.
Because this is the real secret:
The collective unconscious is not a place—it’s a stage of consciousness.
You don’t “go” there.
You become it.
And once you touch it—once you enter the divine fields—you’ll know your role:
To bring heaven to earth.
Not because you’re forced.
But because your soul longs to.
Because doing so is what makes life meaningful.
Music as a Field of Light
The field I connected to—the great Creative Field of Music—is a bright one. It was shaped by countless composers and musicians who offered their craft to the divine: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, Haydn. They didn’t just compose—they contributed to a vast, shimmering field of inspiration that still lives and breathes today.
How could Beethoven write his final symphony while completely deaf?
Because he wasn’t listening with his ears.
He was listening in the field.
To access that kind of music, you don’t need hearing—you need connection, discipline, and craftsmanship. You need to build your Ladder, so when the music comes, you’re ready to receive it and give it shape. You become the bridge. The conductor of divine resonance.
The Shadow Fields—and How We Transform Them
But not all fields are light.
The dark collective fields—of war, violence, greed, abuse—they shape our thoughts and actions more than we dare to admit. We think we are free to feel and think as we like—but we are not. We are deeply influenced, even manipulated, by these unconscious realms. And they have one secret wish:
To be seen. To be loved. To be transformed.
One person’s healing might seem like a grain of sand. But if a thousand, ten thousand, a million people begin to touch these wounded fields with awareness and love, they start to change.
And here’s the true surprise:
The most powerful act of transformation is not fighting the darkness.
It’s bringing love into it.
To enter the field of abuse and offer light.
To meet the energy of greed with truth.
To touch the wound with compassion.
This is how you shine.
This is how we clean the waters of the collective.
Not by escaping the world.
But by transforming it—from within.
And so, you have your Ladder.
You have your field.
You have your creativity.
Now the only question is:
Will you climb? Will you shine?
Because heaven is waiting to come to earth.
And it’s waiting on you.