inner-mind mind levels emotions freedom
consciousness |
thoughts-
Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.
If you can recognize, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as simply thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-
emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotions
happen — the timeless inner space in which the content of your life unfolds.
The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you:
don’t take your thoughts too seriously. ignore thots not relevant to understanding of mind
it is easy for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons.
The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth.
It ssays: this is how it is.
You have to be larger than thought to realize that however you interpret “your life” or someone else’s life or behavior, however you judge any situation, it is no more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives. It is no more than a bundle of thoughts.
But reality is one unified whole, in which all things are interwoven, where nothing exists in and by itself.
Thinking fragments reality — it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.
The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don’t realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.
mind-levels-
The mind is something whose nature is empty like space, which has never possessed form, shape or colour, and whose function is to perceive and understand objects. There are three different levels of mind: gross, subtle and very subtle. During our dreams, we have dream awareness through which the various kinds of dream things appear to us; this awareness is a subtle mind because it is difficult to recognize. During deep sleep we have only one mental awareness, which perceives emptiness alone. This awareness is called the ‘clear light of sleep’, and is the very subtle mind because it is extremely difficult to recognize.
During the waking day we have waking awareness through which various kinds of waking things appear to us. This awareness is a gross mind because it is not difficult to recognize. When we fall asleep our gross mind, or waking awareness, dissolves into our subtle mind of sleep. At the same time, all our appearances of the waking world become non-existent; and when we experience deep sleep, our subtle mind of sleep dissolves into our very subtle mind of sleep, the clear light of sleep. At this stage, we have become like a person who has died. Then, because of our maintaining a karmic connection with this life, from our clear light of sleep our gross mind, or waking awareness, will arise again and various kinds of waking things appear to us again.
The process of sleeping is very similar to the process of dying. The difference between these two is that when we are dying our gross and subtle minds will dissolve into our very subtle mind of death, known as the ‘clear light of death’. Then, because of our karmic connection with this life ceasing, our very subtle mind leaves this body, goes to the next life and enters a new body, and then all the various kinds of things of the next life will appear to us. Everything will be completely new.
THE INNER MIND-/ subconscious mind
[outer=aware/inner=unaware]
In the inner/sub-C/unaware mind lies stored the sum total of all our knowledge, impressions, and experiences that have accrued since the day of our birth. There they remain dormant until called forth again by a conscious exercise of the memory or the unlocking of the storehouse door with a hypnotic key.
For these reasons the term 'subliminal' meaning ' beneath the surface' is preferable;
Since it will often be necessary to contrast the 'normal consciousness' with this 'other mind', for the sake of simplicity these will be called respectively the Outer Mind and the Inner Mind.
a normal person has one mind, with 2 aspects- an 'Inner' and an 'Outer' aspect which, for the sake of convenience, will be termed ' Mind' in each case. these two ' Minds,' or aspects of The Mind, may operate independently at the same time either in co-operation or in conflict.
Outer/aware Mind- the 'You' which thinks, and acts, and feels during the hours that you are awake.
Inner/unaware Mind- the 'You that you are unaware of;' that part of ' The Mind ' which, as well as being your storehouse of experience, takes care of your organic functions, glandular secretions, and muscular reflexes over which you have no voluntary control.
A simple example of the operation of the Inner Mind in everyday life is the process of writing.
The words which suggest themselves to the Outer Mind are translated by the Inner Mind into the appropriate sequences of muscular movements whereby the letters are formed on the paper without conscious thought.
Similarly, in playing the piano from a sheet of music, the visual image of the stave is turned by the Inner Mind into the highly complex finger movements, required to interpret the printed signs in sound, without the pianist being consciously aware of the process.
A further case of the Inner and Outer Minds working in co-operation may be seen in the mental act of memorizing ;
the act of studying a face or concentrating upon a text book is a function of the Outer Mind - at the same time the Inner Mind is busy pigeon-holing a mental image of the face, or the information contained in the book, so that they may be available for recall when the Outer Mind has need of them.
the Outer Mind may, after a time, lose the way to those particular little pigeon-holes, and a person may think, therefore, that he has forgotten that which he wished to remember;yet the facts are still there and may be found again[ in Hypnosis/meditation].
When, sometimes, the Inner Mind works in conflict with the Outer Mind it may be the root cause of much mental distress.
For instance, a child may be constantly impressed by its parents of the danger of falling and hurting itself if it tries to jump too high; as it grows older, although the child may be physically capable of jumping a height of, say, three feet with ease, and may in its Outer Mind desire to do so, yet the early fear born in the Inner Mind, through the repeated warnings of its parents, may so conflict with this desire as to make it impossible for the child to put forth the requisite physical effort - in other words the child appears to 'funk it.' [conditioning/phobia]
:: The Inner Mind :: The world of the inner mind
Everyday experience shows that we seem to function as thought we have two different minds: one that deals with the ordinary affairs of life in this world, and one that deals with what goes on within. I call them the outer mind and the inner mind.
outer mind
THE INNER MIND-2
The inner mind operates in a world of interior impressions. Its meaningful reality consists of the ideas and images of that world. Everything there seems immediate and self-evident. The inner world is populated by our everyday dreams, fantasies and memories. It may also be the arena of telepathic awareness and spiritual vision, and the place where we may encounter past life memories or near-death experiences.
The inner mind is fully aware of the outer world. It is affected by what goes on there and reacts. But the outer world is not really its sphere. The goals and values of the inner mind may be quite different from those of the outer mind and at odds with outer-world culture. In our culture many things that the inner mind experiences as real are dismissed as unreal. Being a law-abiding citizen of my culture, my outer mind speaks up and rejects those inner-mind experiences--often with irrational fury. The outer mind is our most vocal protector of cultural trance.
The inner mind can sense things not noticed by the outer. It picks up cues, feelings, Avibrations from other people that the outer mind misses. A whole world of communication occurs between the inner minds of people that escapes conscious awareness. I may be overwhelmed by the feelings of silent anger in a friend sitting next to me. I may know Atelepathically what my partner is thinking. I may sense that a certain person is about to phone me. However one might explain these experiences, they do occur, and the inner mind feels very much at home in this intuitive realm.
The inner mind is the font of all creativity and genius. It is the author of artistic productions, the inventor of original ideas, and the source of spontaneous solutions to problems. When it comes to creativity, the outer mind is subordinate to the inner. The outer mind does the Joe-jobs--corrects the grammar, checks the measurements, and smoothes the outer surface of the creative product--but the product itself comes from the inner mind.
The inner mind is where the heart is. It is there that we discover our deepest passions and our most subtle desires. Affection and love arise from the inner mind, as do anger and hatred. When we want to understand the mysterious doings of our emotions, it is the inner mind that we must explore.
Inner-mind reality is completely subjective. It can never be adequately grasped by objective knowledge or directly observed by another individual. We can try to communicate our subjective knowledge. We can describe the inner experience to others or allow our bodies to be hooked up to machines that measure physiological changes as we have our experience, but we cannot pass on the subjective experience itself. In that sense, our inner-mind reality remains totally personal and incommunicable, and when we die, our inner-mind reality dies with us.
Nevertheless, the inner mind's world is very real. Inner-mind realities have a quality of presence and vividness that is every bit as insistent as that of the physical objects and people of the outer world. In fact the inner mind's reality often seems more real than that of the outer mind.Â
INNER-MIND ANOMALIES
We are alwsays dealing with inner-mind realities and usually don't reflect much on them because they have been incorporated as an ordinary part of life. However, some of our inner-mind realities may strike us as unusual--even odd. They involve experiences that our culture does not identify as Anormal, and so when we have them, we are taken aback. I am talking here about paranormal experiences (such as telepathy and precognition), spiritualistic experiences (such as channelling, possession, and communication with the dead), alien-encounter experiences (such as UFO sightings and alien abductions), extraordinary multiple identity experiences (multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder), and unusual spiritual experiences (such as past-life memories and near-death experiences). What these inner-mind experiences have in common is that they are considered bizarre by our society, for we do not have any acceptable cultural category that they fit. Other cultures may readily accept some of these phenomena, but ours does not. This is important: the problem we have with these experiences and the reason we feel odd about them is not that they are a priori impossible, but that they do not fit into our cultural categories. People who have these inner-mind experiences may for that reason feel alienated from other people and society at large. Because these odd experiences are not assimilated into our North American culture, I am going to call them Aanomalous inner-mind experiences.
In calling your attention to anomalous inner-mind experiences, I do not mean to pass a judgment one way or the other as to their Aobjective truth. These phenomena have a personal truth--at least as wsays of explaining the world to those who have them. They are certainly experienced as genuine, and one might say that in a way the experiencer has no choice but to have them.Â
There are those who believe that anomalous inner-mind experiences can be Aproven to be objectively real. They attempt to show that they correspond to outer-mind happenings or that inner-mind phenomena may leave palpable traces in the communally accessible outer world. Perhaps they are right. Personally, I find that research of this kind leaves me unmoved. I believe that much of this kind of investigation, usually done under a banner labelled Ascientific, is carried out in order to lessen that sense of alienation from the broader community that inevitably accompanies anomalous inner-mind experiences. While that may be a laudable motive, research of this kind sidesteps the problem of inner-mind/outer-mind duality that is an intrinsic part of human existence. We have to deal with anomalous inner-mind experiences on their own ground and place them in the broader context of inner-mind realities of every kind. We must better understand the inner mind itself and realize that all of human life--every minute of every day--is lived under its influence. We need to realize that any notion that we are essentially outer-mind beings subject to occasional twinges from the dark inner world is a gross distortion of what it means to be human.
WHEN OUTER AND INNER MIND DO NOT AGREE
As I mentioned above, when a person experiences anomalous inner-mind phenomena, a tension between outer and inner mind frequently occurs. The inner mind has the experience and simply accepts it as reality. Just as we accept our dreams as real while we are dreaming, so also when the inner mind has a past-life memory, for instance, it experiences it as real. But, unlike when we dream, with anomalous inner-mind experiences, our outer mind is not completely out of the picture. Rather, it is present as an observer, offering its opinion about what the inner mind is experiencing, and usually that opinion involves scepticism and doubt.
The outer mind is, after all, a denizen of the outer world with its values and criteria for truth. Because the outer mind is geared to make do in this world, it must conform to reality as determined by its culture. If the outer mind's culture were India, for instance, it would not be inclined to introduce doubt about a past life memory. But in our North American culture the idea that we have lived before and are reborn into various lifetimes is not acceptable to our thinking. Even though one out of four among us believes in past lives, our society as a whole rejects the notion and the scientific community in particular, which is such a dominant force in determining orthodox beliefs, makes it a point to dismiss such ideas as superstition.
Since the beliefs of this culture are so frequently and so forcefully inculcated from every side, and since it has to live and relate in this culture, the outer mind becomes a mouthpiece for cultural orthodoxy, opposing unacceptable ideas emanating from the inner mind.
The outer-mind/inner-mind conflict can make itself felt on the occasion of the experience or it can arise later. One of the criticisms frequently levelled against the validity of anomalous inner-mind experiences is that in many cases people begin with an ordinary experience and, over time, embellish and elaborate it into something extraordinary. It is said, for example, that a person might see an unexplained glow in the sky one night, and by the next day believe he saw a spaceship of some kind. Then, as he describes his experience to friends, he elaborates it further and now believes he saw little creatures alight from an opening in its side. Soon it turns into an alien-abduction incident.
Although I am sure that this kind of imaginative elaboration can occur with certain personality types, I believe that the experience of most people is pretty much the opposite. On a number of occasions people have told me about an anomalous experience of some kind that was so vivid and shocking at the time that they could hardly admit to themselves that it was happening. Then as time passes, they invent all kinds of reasons why it must not have occurred, since it is just too bizarre. Still later, the originally extraordinary experience is reduced to the ordinary and is thus relieved of its disturbing quality. By now the judgment is: "I must have been imagining things." This happens not because of any new insights into the matter, but simply because, when it comes to anomalous inner-mind realities, the outer mind must retain its domination over the inner mind if it is to function unperturbed in our culture.
I believe that because there is such great tension between our outer minds--so steadfastly reflecting the scepticism of our culture--and our inner minds, it will be a long time before we will be able to give anomalous inner-mind realities the impartial attention they require if we are to develop a truly comprehensive understanding of them. As long as there is so much cultural censorship, we will not even be able to acknowledge the inner-mind data, much less learn what it means.
Our culture needs to lose its fear of the inner mind. That fear seems to be based on a conviction that if we ever listen seriously to accounts of anomalous inner-mind experiences that people are having all the time, we will be seduced back into the dark ages of primitive superstition. I think the opposite is the case: unless we pay attention to these data, we will secretly harbour the fear that they are, after all, true.
I believe that the fear of recognizing anomalous inner-mind experiences as psychological data worthy of study is itself the manifestation of a hidden superstitious attitude in our present society. Our culture, so heavily invested in a blind faith in science, secretly feels the fragility of that faith. It secretly fears that the demons banished by science over the past two hundred years will rise again if not fought off at every turn. Our culture is not confident that science has disposed of the occult and the spiritual as thoroughly as it had hoped. It may claim to fear the demons of superstition in people's minds, but I believe that the taboo it imposes on looking at the data of the inner mind shows that on an unconscious level, it harbors a real fear of real demons. In a neat projective defence, it has repressed its belief in their existence and attributed that belief to others. The result is that, in the culturally accepted view, anyone who psays attention to anomalous experiences is a dangerous true believer in blind superstition, whereas anyone who prejudges the case and flees from these data is a hard-nosed realist.
So as it turns out, the problem of the outer-mind/inner-mind conflict is in the last analysis a cultural problem. It revolves around the conditioning imposed on the outer mind by cultural trances that operate everywhere in our lives.
life-mind
we have gone from sensation to sensation, from excitement to excitement, till we come to a point when we are really exhausted. Now, realizing that, don't proceed any further; take a rest. Be quiet. Let the mind gather strength by itself; don't force it. As the soil renews itself during the winter time, so, when the mind is allowed to be quiet, it renews itself. But it is very difficult to allow the mind to be quiet, to let it lie fallow after all this, for the mind wants to be doing something all the time. When you come to that point where you are really allowing yourself to be as you are - bored, ugly, hideous, or whatever it is - then there is a possibility of dealing with it.
when you want to understand something, what is the state of your mind? When you want to understand your child, when you want to understand somebody, something that someone is saying, what is the state of your mind? You are not analysing, criticizing, judging what the other is saying; you are listening, are you not? Your mind is in a state where the thought process is not active but is very alert. That alertness is not of time, is it? You are merely being alert, passively receptive and yet fully aware; and it is only in this state that there is understanding. When the mind is agitated, questioning, worrying, dissecting, analysing, there is no understanding. When there is the intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil.
If I do not name a feeling, that is to say if thought is not functioning merely because of words or if I do not think in terms of words, images or symbols, which most of us do - then what happens? Surely the mind then is not merely the observer. When the mind is not thinking in terms of words, symbols, images, there is no thinker separate from the thought, which is the word. Then the mind is quiet, is it not? - not made quiet, it is quiet. When the mind is really quiet, then the feelings which arise can be dealt with immediately. It is only when we give names to feelings and thereby strengthen them that the feelings have continuity; they are stored up in the centre, from which we give further labels, either to strengthen or to communicate them. When the mind is no longer the centre, as the thinker made up of words, of past experiences - which are all memories, labels, stored up and put in categories, in pigeonholes - when it is not doing any of those things, then, obviously the mind is quiet. It is no longer bound, it has no longer a centre as the me - my house, my achievement, my work - which are still words, giving impetus to feeling and thereby strengthening memory. When none of these things is happening, the mind is very quiet. That state is not negation. On the contrary, to come to that point, you have to go through all this, which is an enormous undertaking; it is not merely learning a few sets of words and repeating them like a school-boy - `not to name', `not to name'. To follow through all its implications, to experience it, to see how the mind works and thereby come to that point when you are no longer naming, which means that there is no longer a centre apart from thought - surely this whole process is real meditation.
When the mind is really tranquil, then it is possible for that which is immeasurable to come into being. Any other process, any other search for reality, is merely self-projected, homemade and therefore unreal. But this process is arduous and it means that the mind has to be constantly aware of everything that is inwardly happening to it.
To come to this point, there can be no judgement or justification from the beginning to the end - not that this is an end. There is no end, because there is something extraordinary still going on. This is no promise. It is for you to experiment, to go into yourself deeper and deeper and deeper, so that all the many layers of the centre are dissolved and you can do it rapidly or lazily.
It is extraordinarily interesting to watch the process of the mind, how it depends on words, how the words stimulate memory or resuscitate the dead experience and give life to it. In that process the mind is living either in the future or in the past. Therefore words have an enormous significance, neurologically as well as psychologically. you can experience it, you can watch yourself in action, watch yourself thinking, see how you think, how rapidly you are naming the feeling as it arises - and watching the whole process frees the mind from its centre. Then the mind, being quiet, can receive that which is eternal.
stillness of the mind
When the mind, having seen its trivialities, is fully aware of them and so becomes really quiet - only then is there a possibility of these trivialities dropping away. So long as you are inquiring with what the mind should be occupied, it will be occupied with trivialities, whether it builds a church, whether it prsays or whether it goes to a shrine. The mind itself is petty, small, and by merely saying it is petty you haven't dissolved its pettiness. You have to understand it, the mind has to recognize its own activities, and in the process of that recognition, in the awareness of the trivialities which it has consciously and unconsciously built, the mind becomes quiet.
Krishnamurti: it IS necessary, if we want to understand anything, that the mind should be still.
If we have a problem we understand it only when we are directly in front of it, when we are faced with the fact.
We can face the fact only when there is no interfering agitation between the mind and the fact, so it is important, if we are to understand, that the mind be quiet.
How can the mind be made still?
most people who try to be spiritual, so-called spiritual, are dead -because they have trained their minds to be quiet, they have enclosed themselves within a formula for being quiet. Obviously, such a mind is never quiet; it is only suppressed, held down.
The mind is quiet when it sees the truth that understanding comes only when it is quiet;
if I want to understand you/myself,
I must be quiet, cannot have reactions against you/myself,
must not be prejudiced,
must put away all my conclusions, my experiences and
meet you face to face.
Only then/myself, when the mind is free from my conditioning, do I understand.
to see the truth, the mind must realize the fact that so long as it is agitated it can have no understanding.
Quietness of mind, tranquillity of mind, is not a thing to be produced by will-power, by any action of desire; if it is, then such a mind is enclosed, isolated, it is a dead mind and therefore incapable of adaptability, of pliability, of swiftness. Such a mind is not creative.
Our question, then, is not how to make the mind still but to see the truth of every problem as it presents itself to us.
It is like the pool that becomes quiet when the wind stops. Our mind is agitated because we have problems; and to avoid the problems, we make the mind still.
Now the mind has projected these problems and there are no problems apart from the mind; and so long as the mind projects any conception of sensitivity, practises any form of stillness, it can never be still. [yoga?]
When the mind realizes that only by being still is there understanding - then it becomes very quiet.
That quietness is not imposed, not disciplined, it is a quietness that cannot be understood by an agitated mind.
Many who seek quietness of mind withdraw from active life to a village, to a monastery, to the mountains, or they withdraw into ideas, enclose themselves in a belief or avoid people who give them trouble. Such isolation is not stillness of mind.
The enclosure of the mind in an idea or the avoidance of people who make life complicated does not bring about stillness of mind. Stillness of mind comes only when there is no process of isolation through accumulation but complete understanding of the whole process of relationship.
Accumulation makes the mind old; only when the mind is new, when the mind is fresh, without the process of accumulation - only then is there a possibility of having tranquillity of mind. Such a mind is not dead, it is most active.
The still mind is the most active mind but if you will experiment with it, go into it deeply, you will see that in stillness there is no projection of thought.
Thought, at all levels, is obviously the reaction of memory and thought can never be in a state of creation. It may express creativeness but thought in itself can never be creative. When there is silence, that tranquillity of mind which is not a result, then we shall see that in that quietness there is extraordinary activity, an extraordinary action which a mind agitated by thought can never know. In that stillness, there is no formulation, there is no idea, there is no memory; that stillness is a state of creation that can be experienced only when there is complete understanding of the whole process of the `me'. Otherwise, stillness has no meaning. Only in that stillness, which is not a result, is the eternal discovered, which is beyond time.
emotions-
tolle
What about emotions? I get caught up in my emotions more than I do in my mind.
Mind is not just thought. It includes your emotions as well as all unconscious mental-emotional reactive patterns. Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body reaction to your mind or, a reflection of your mind in the body.
For example, an attack thought or a hostile thought will create a buildup of energy in the body that we call anger. The body is getting ready to fight.
The thought that you are being threatened, physically or psychologically, causes the body to contract, and this is the physical side of what we call fear.
Research has shown that sstrong emotions even cause changes in the biochemistry of the body. These biochemical changes represent the physical or material aspect of the emotion. Of course, you are not usually conscious of all your thought patterns, and it is often only through watching your emotions that you can bring them into awareness.
The more you are identified with your thinking, your likes and dislikes, judgments and interpretations, the less present you are as the watching consciousness, the stronger the emotional energy charge will be, whether you are aware of it or not.
If you cannot feel your emotions, if you are cut off from them, you will eventually experience them on a purely physical level, as a physical problem or symptom. A sstrong unconscious emotional pattern may even manifest as an external event that appears to just happen to you. For example people who carry a lot of anger inside without being aware of it and without expressing it are more likely to be attacked, verbally or even physically, by other angry people, and often for no apparent reason. They have a strong emanation of anger that certain people pick up subliminally and that triggers their own latent anger.
If you have difficulty feeling your emotions, start by focusing attention on the inner energy field of your body. Feel the body from within. This will also put you in touch with your emotions.
sometimes there is a conflict between the two: the mind says no while the emotion says yes, or the other way around.
If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, o look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your tate of mind at that time.
Conflict between surface thoughts and unconscious mental processes is certainly common. You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will alwsays be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware. To watch an emotion in this way is basically the ame as listening to or watching a thought, which I described earlier. The only difference is that, while a thought is in your head, an emotion has a strong physical component and o is primarily felt in the body. You can then allow the emotion to be there without being controlled by it. You no longer are the emotion; you are the watcher, the observing presence. If you practice this, all that is unconscious in you will be brought into the light of consciousness.
THE OUTER MIND-
The outer mind is at home in the physical, social, interactive environment of our lives. Working ceaselessly to make things happen, to accomplish what it wants to accomplish, to relate to others as it wishes to relate, to handle life's situations as it chooses, the outer mind is a true citizen of the world, and, like it or not, the outer mind cannot escape this involvement. The world is its home, its theatre of operations, the place where it lives, and the job of the outer mind is to find the best way to deal with worldly affairs.
The outer mind's reality is not just the physical world and its occupants, but also the expectations, rules, and protocols that operate there. the outer mind is very concerned about fitting in with these demands. And why not? If it is going to negotiate this complex world successfully, it has to know what works and what does not.
The hallmarks of the outer mind are rationality and determination. Reason dominates every outer-mind experience and willpower provides the force to get things done. When reason or willpower break down, it is because something else has entered the picture--the inner mind.
freedom-
you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation.
Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old audiotapes that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years.
This is "watching the thinker,"- Listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence.
When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You'll soon realize: There is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind./innermind
So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in.
As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper elf - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.
When a thought ubsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental tream - a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural tate of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind.
With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.
In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified tate. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that gives life to the physical body.
As you go more deeply into this realm of no-mind, you realize the state of pure consciousness. In that state, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison to it. And yet this is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as "your elf." That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably greater than you.
Instead of "watching the thinker," you can also create a gap in the mind tream imply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment.
This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.
In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, o that it becomes an end in itself.
For example, every time you walk up and down the tairs in your house or place of work, pay close attention to every tep, every movement, even your breathing. Be totally present.
Or when you wash your hands, pay attention to all the ense perceptions associated with the activity: the ound and feel of the water, the movement of your hands, the cent of the oap, and o on.
Or when you get into your car, after you close the door, pause for a few econds and observe the flow of your breath. Become aware of a ilent but powerful ense of presence.
There is one certain criterion by which you can measure your uccess in this practice: the degree of peace that you feel within.
The single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: Learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows tronger.
osho-mind
Your mind is constantly projecting—projecting itself. Your mind is constantly
interfering with reality, giving it a color, shape, and form that are not its own. Your mind never allows you to see that which is; it allows you to see only that which it wants to see.
Scientists used to think that our eyes, ears, nose, and our other senses, and the mind,were nothing but openings to reality, bridges to reality. But now the whole understanding has changed. Now they say our senses and the mind are not really openings to reality but guards against it. Only two percent of reality ever gets through these guards into you; ninety-eight percent of reality is kept outside. And the two percent that reaches you and your being is no longer the same. It has to pass through so many barriers, it has to conform to so many mind things, that by the time it reaches you it is no longer itself.
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The first thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled peace and silence in the mind. Otherwise you may have experiences, but nothing will be permanent. It is in the silent mind that the true consciousness can be built.
A quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the surface and you will feel your true being within separate from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and to accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and true experience.
Passivity of the mind is good, but take care to be passive only to the Truth and to the touch of the Divine Shakti. If you are passive to the suggestions and influences of the lower nature, you will not be able to progress or else you will expose yourself to adverse forces which may take you far away from the true path of yoga.
The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine.
equanimity--a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them;
it means self-mastery over the vital movements,-anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest,-not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit. It is not easy to have this equanimity in any full perfect measure, but one should always try more and more to make it the basis of one’s inner state and outer movements.
have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them; it helps one to see the truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one’s seeing and judgment and even all the mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men’s actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there. Misunderstanding, misjudgment which could have been avoided are the result; things of small consequence assume larger proportions.
more than half of the untoward happenings of this kind in life are due to this cause. But in ordinary life personal feeling and sensitiveness are a constant part of human nature and may be needed there for self-defence, although, even there, a strong, large and equal attitude towards men and things would be a much better line of defence. But for a sadhak, to surmount them and live rather in the calm strength of the spirit is an essential part of his progress.