Can We Realize Truth Without The Mind?

Question:

Dear Ariel,

How can anyone come to truth by not using their mind? Yes experience, peace and oneness are wonderful things but has it ever come to your mind that those experiences are illusions? All it really is is shifting your brain into altered states of delta, and alpha states. Shifting your brain states with a brain that eventually does turn to dust.

The mind and the brain are tools that we can use to play in this physical dimension. It’s not who we are. THAT is the key point. Disidentification with the mind.

Thanks,

M.

My response:

My question is how CAN you come to the realization of Truth by using the mind?

If you sit around and think and think and think all day, will you one day discover the truth of what an apple tastes like?

No, you have to EXPERIENCE the taste of an apple in order to know its taste.

Is it necessary to think about the apple while you’re eating it? Not at all. You can simply sit in silence and enjoy the taste of the apple as it is chewed around in the mouth. Whether you’re thinking about the apple, thinking about what you have to do next week, or thinking about nothing at all, your senses are STILL going to register the taste of the apple.

Most people are under the belief that thought is the only way to discover Truth. Either we have the right thoughts about it and thus know it, or we are lacking the correct thoughts and thus don’t know it. Therefore we have to either learn about it, imagine it, or discover it. When the mind is seen as the sole source of authority, to know about something is the same as to actually know it. This is a delusion.

Have you ever had a bad feeling about something? I don’t mean a fear of doing something, but just an intuitive knowingness that something’s just not right. It you drive down this road, you’ll suddenly discover exactly what the “bad feeling” was telling you. How did you know? There was no possible way the mind could have known what was to come, nor any external hints to point out the danger. At first it may be just random chance, but when one starts to experiences a few of these strange “coincidences”, then dozens, then hundreds… it becomes really difficult to truly brush it off as mere chance.

What about the little children who are born and at the age of 3 or 4 can already play the cello like a master, recite major historical facts, and demonstrate other amazing talents that no one can quite pinpoint from where they were developed?

What about those situations when you’re in a state of “flow” with life. You don’t know what’s to come or what to expect, yet everything seems to happen perfectly. You naturally say the right things, doors open up for you, situations somehow fall into place effortlessly, you just so happen to keep making the right decisions. This state of flow may only last for a short period of time, but there’s clearly something that’s been tapped into.

There’s other seemingly mystical sources of knowingness. (Mystical is nothing magical. It simply implies that which is unseen, perhaps undetectable by our physical senses.)

The mind is not the only source of knowledge for us to tap into.

In fact, it’s a pretty lousy tool to discover truth in the first place.

Let’s say an attractive woman on the street shoots you a flirty look. What does the mind immediately proceed to do? Figure out WHY she did that. Maybe she thinks you’re hot stuff. Maybe she just happens to be in a great mood and is nice to everyone. Maybe she’s looking to cheat on her spouse. Maybe she’s looking for validation and gets her sense of self-worth based on how many guys hit on her. Maybe she’s doing a psychology experiment to see how people react to flirtatious glances.

WHATEVER.

The thing is, we just don’t know. Nevertheless, the mind will still buy into some sort of belief based upon the unknown. Maybe the mind will say the look meant that you shouldn’t propose to your fiance quite yet because you might find someone better. Maybe the situation confirms the pair of socks you wore today are indeed your lucky socks. They’re all just made up beliefs no matter how believable or how absurd they sound.

Nothing has any real meaning except the meaning we give it.

As we start to recognize that ALL our beliefs are made up and not actually based on anything solid, we start negating our flawed belief that this world is actually the way we perceive it to be. What we see is not what is.

What happens is that when you KEEP negating your thoughts and beliefs, it will eventually go quiet as a consequence of no longer being energized or seen as a valid source for answers. It will be a tool that is not needed at the moment for the current task and thus set aside.

When this happens, you don’t go brain dead. Reality doesn’t stop. Death doesn’t occur.

In fact, quite the contrary!

When you stop telling life how it SHOULD be, life will show you how it ACTUALLY is!

You’ll experience Ultimate Reality being infinitely more real than the reality as filtered through the mind. EVERYTHING is infinitely more rich, colorful, and wonderful. Everything is seen as valuable and lovable for the simple fact that it exists as the One. Love flows through the One and the All, unconditionally.

Instead of labeling and identifying things in this world, they are simply absorbed into the awareness without being first filtered through the mind’s distortion-creating veil.

In fact, it is ONLY possible to experience Truth by bypassing the veil of the mind. It can never be experienced through the mind, through words.

For example, saying the words “I Love You” thousands of times is still not as good as experiencing the presence of Love flowing through your whole being, wouldn’t you agree?

It’s not just about shifting the brain states into firing alpha or delta waves. That change is simply a natural side-effect that occurs, not the cause of the experience.

The “cause,” if you will, is that the brain is experiencing the True Self instead of the false self. The body responds very differently when in the presence of the Self, of Love.

Enlightenment is NOT an altered state of consciousness.

It is a state of PURE consciousness, untouched and undistorted by the thoughts of the human mind.

One is in Love with “another” because they are Love itself, not because of the feel-good chemicals that are released in the brain. The cocktail of chemicals released in the brain is an effect of the presence of Love. The chemicals affect the feeling of the body, but they are not the cause of Love.

Some people try to induce states of altered consciousness through chanting, music, drugs, mind control, and so on, but none of these activities lead to true awakening, enlightenment. Enlightenment is ONLY about transcending the ego by letting go of all resistances and thus seeing through the illusions of the world of form to realize one’s true nature as the One.

You don’t need the mind to be consciously thinking and running around to continue to exist. The great thing about meditation is that you can learn to quiet the mind and come to the direct experiential realization of truth this for yourself.

Ultimate Reality arises from beyond the mind.