Posts Tagged ‘Mind’
We tend to think that there’s an objective world out there and that we can affect and are affected by this outside world. There is a world “out there” that we are born into and interact with.
If we like the interaction between us and the outside world, we call this “good.” If we don’t like it, we call it “bad.”
The above drawing (awesome, I know, thank you 
) is how we typically perceive the world.
Notice that there is a “me” independent of the outside world who is perceiving what’s happening in the outside world. There is a sense of separation.
What’s actually going on is quite different. Let’s take a look.
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Let’s talk about the imagination and take a look at how it’s actually far more real than we give it credit for.
Your true nature is Consciousness itself.
Existence or Consciousness is the only reality. Consciousness plus waking we call waking. Consciousness plus sleep we call sleep. Consciousness plus dream, we call dream. Consciousness is the screen on which all the pictures come and go. The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it.
-Ramana Maharshi
You are the screen upon which various realities are projected. The thing is, and this is something that people don’t fully realize, all projections are JUST AS REAL in the experiential sense! Paradoxically, they’re all equally FALSE, depending on how you want to look at it for there is a deeper reality that is infinitely more real than “real life.”
Most of us tend to think that when we’re awake in “real life,” that’s “real.” On the other hand, when we’re visualizing in a non-physical plane or dreaming at night in our imaginations, that is somehow “less real” since our physical bodies were not in the experience.
What’s real is actually the Consciousness upon which all illusion is projected.
Consciousness experiences, but is not affected by all forms of illusion that is displayed upon it.
Coming back to a little more down-to-earth way of talking about it, let’s now look at the imagination.
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People have been trying to do this for thousands of years, haven’t they?
People have even gone to war and killed one another based on their ideas about the existence of God and what he wants.
Still, to this day, no one has been able to definitively say that they’ve come up with proof that God exists in the first place, and there’s been some pretty smart people over the years. Scriptures, miracles, messiahs, imagination… the mind can take all of these and use them as a evidence to both prove or disprove the existence of God, to say he is or isn’t real.
Let’s take a look at how we (as intelligent human beings) would traditionally define something to be real or not.
1. The physical and tangible is real.
If I can hold it in my hand and touch it, it’s real.
A cup, a person, a bird. These are all real. I can play with this physical thing and thus it must be real.
But wait, some things are a little more abstract, like color, and even though I can’t hold color in my hand, it’s still real.
2. That which I can scientifically measure is real.
Wind may not be as tangible as a solid physical object, nor electricity or gravity, but I can still feel the effects of it. It certainly influences my life. I can measure how strong the wind is blowing, the current and voltage of electricity, or the pull of gravity.
So even if I can’t hold it in my hand, like color, I can still devise a tool to quantify the amount of something.
This is the level of today’s scientific world. It’s the level of reason, the dominance of the intellect.
What happens when one tries to measure something such as Happiness, Peace, or Love? Can you really measure Love?
When two people are madly in Love with another, we could measure their heart rate, perspiration levels, pupil dilation, how much time they spend together.
But these things aren’t actually Love. They’re something we could measure when Love is or isn’t present. They are the objective characteristics that may change in the presence of Love, but they are not the subjective experience of Love. There’s a difference between a direct experience of the actual thing and a measurement of the results that happen in the presence of that thing.
Not only that, but trying to scientifically ANALyze Love in this way really takes a lot of the magic out of it, don’t you think?
You see, feelings and states of being are not experienced through the mind, can not be adequately described through the mind, or measured by any physical tool.
Thus we can not use the mind or any tool to prove or disprove Love.
It’s like trying to measure the speed of a racecar using a thermometer. A thermometer measures temperature, not velocity. It’s simply the wrong tool for the job. It’s in the wrong domain.
The mind is the wrong tool for the job when it comes to knowing God.
Does Love exist? Sure. We can all experience it in our own Lives and verify it through our own personal experience.
Experience is necessary. The feeling of it is necessary. Words are empty and pale in comparison to direct experience.
When a little child asks his parents what Love is, often times the answer is something along the lines of, “When you experience Love, you’ll know. I can’t tell you and make you understand.”
You can read every book on the subject and listen to every poem and song inspired by or talking about Love, yet until you experience it, it’s all a poor substitute and will never lead to true knowingness.
God, Peace, Love, and Joy are all the same way. They can be experienced and felt, but never proven through the mind, through simply reading about or talking about.
People have been trying to prove or disprove the presence of God for thousands of years and to this day people still quarrel.
So how do we know something not provable through conventionally accepted means?
Who does one have to be to know Peace? Peaceful.
Who does one have to be to know Love? Loving.
Who does one have to be to know Happiness? Happy.
Who does one have to be to know God?
In a recent comment here on this site, Anthony brought up an excellent point. It is so important that it’s worth dedicating a post to. Let’s see what Anthony has to say:
Here’s a fun little dialogue/monologue that went on in my head just now as I kept questioning my beliefs. The beliefs that pop up within me aren’t really taken all that seriously these days…
A: “I know what God is. God is infinity.”
B: “Oh? God is the word infinity?”
A: “No, God is that which infinity points to. It’s everything I can imagine.”
B: “You can imagine everything in the universe?”
A: “Oh, well, God is all the stuff I can’t imagine too.”
B: “Well if God includes all the stuff you can’t imagine, all the stuff you don’t know, how can you say you know God?”
This is just a friendly reminder to keep questioning your understandings.
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.
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Dear Ariel,
You said that the mind have has absolutely zero capacity to know absolute truth.
Is that an absolute truth?
The law of non-contradiction is the foundation of all truth. Any statement that contradicts itself (such as yours here) is obviously not truth.
MS.
Hey MS,
You have found the fundamental flaw of using a dualistic tool such as language to attempt to verbalize a nondualistic Truth such as God has no opposite. There is no opposite to Truth.
How would you describe color to a blind person? You could try to describe it, but no matter what you say, your descriptions and explanations will always come up short. The best thing to do would be to show the blind person how to see, to experience the colors for themselves. Then no explanation would be needed.
The original statement I made above is an attempt at verbalizing the direct experience of Oneness, an experience which is utterly beyond description. It is truly an experience out of this world.
When one experiences this, it becomes stunningly apparent how REAL Allness/Nothingness is and how unreal this whole world of form is. This world may feel real, but it’s like a dulled out bland dream compared to ultimate reality. I promise you.
I can not convince you of what I say, nor is my desire to convince you that I am “right.” Why? Because even if you DID believe me with all your heart, it would still just be another belief, another layer of the egoic onion, and beliefs are a poor substitute for knowingness and experience.
In order to understand absolute Truth, one must rise above the level of consciousness that allows for duality in the first place, the level where we can have two opposing beliefs such as good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, religion vs. science, and experience higher levels of consciousness in which nonduality, the level beyond opposites and the only True Reality, is one’s complete and total experience. It is only from this place that one can stand and look back at the world and fully recognize illusion as illusion.
In order to do this, one must completely transcend their own ego and see through the lie that says the mind is a valid tool to discern ultimate Truth. Truth can never be understood by attempting to going through the mind. The mind, plain and simple, CAN NOT KNOW TRUTH.
Thanks for your question.
Excerpt from the book “Peace of Mind in Daily Life”
© Copyright Remez Sasson
(Ariel’s note: I haven’t read this book, but this excerpt is pretty awesome nonetheless.)
Pupil: You have earlier said that I am not the mind, but a power above it, could you please clarify this point?
Teacher: The fact that you can give orders to the mind, act contrary to its dictates, and reprogram it in accordance with your own will, proves that YOU are indeed NOT the mind.
Pupil: Your words confuse me. Until now, I had no doubts that my mind and myself were the same entity.
Teacher: This is what most people think. Let me clarify this concept. To operate a machine or drive a car, there must be someone in charge to make them work. A machine or a car cannot work on its own, is it not so?
Pupil: Right.
Teacher: If it is possible to change the programming of the mind and calm down its restlessness, it means that the power that is making this possible is something separate or higher than the mind, exactly as the one who operates a machine or drives a car is separate from the machine or car, right?
Pupil: Yes, this makes sense.
Teacher: There must be something or some sort of subtle power separate and higher than the mind, which is able to reprogram it and change its habits. If it were not so, it wouldn’t have been possible to gain peace of mind.
If you are able to say to your mind, “Be quiet”, and it obeys you, especially when its desires are different from yours, it means that you are the one giving the order, not the mind. It cannot order itself to shut up. There must be something or someone else who gives these orders, and this someone else is YOU, THE REAL YOU. Read More …
It is helpful, Anthony, if you truly want to awaken, to let go of any identification with the mind.
photo by SantiMB
You have probably discovered that trying to replace negative mental noise with positive mental noise is still just noise. Instead of enjoying life as it is in this moment, a delicious meal, a deep massage, or whatever else, the mind is thinking about how great it is, how wonderful life is, how appreciative it is, all the wonderful things it’s going to manifest, and so on. Just be quiet and enjoy the moment!
As you said, it is possible to tell the mind to be quiet for a moment and experience that. The thing is, however, and this is very subtle: you are not the one telling your brain what to do! You are not in control of the brain. It is thought directing thought, but thought is not you!
There’s this trick where the mind can tell itself to be quiet for a moment, and it will. Then it gives “you” credit for this action. By giving you credit, it gives you the impression that you are in control of the mind and if you engage in this game more and more, you can (theoretically, with enough practice) get to the point where you can overcome the mind. You can dominate and win, given enough practice.
However, any time you try to go to battle with the mind, you lose. It’s a game you can not win.
Why? Because there is no “you” to win the game! The “you” who thinks it’s in control of the mind is still only a thought in the first place!
There’s a “you” who doesn’t exist competing against a mind who also is not you. There is no “you” involved in the game at all!
So if you’re not even playing the game, how on earth do you ever expect to win?