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What and Where is The
Mind?
An enquiry based on the teaching,
writings and talks of
Adi Da Samraj and other Realizers. –
edited and adapted by Beezone
“The independent mind must
constantly be surrendered to the seniority of the principle
of the body (subtle or gross).
This is the Law that we must
perceive within the dynamic incident of our born
existence.”
Adi Da Samraj
The Question
When you think about it, it all
seems so normal. When someone talks and expresses themselves
it appears so natural. It would seem stupid to ask questions
of, what is mind and where do words and thoughts come from?
But then I ask, “is my world the
same as your world?” This ‘world’ we all assume to be ‘out
there’ is also ‘in here’. So, back to the original question,
where is ‘here’? The inside of the world, my mind.
These questions give rise to three
things, me, others, and the world and they all seem to hinge
on this sense that ‘I’ have a ‘mind’ and there are others
and there is a world, out there.
Todays popular science would tell me
that my mind in in my brain. But it can’t tell me where. Is
my mind a little box in my head? A place where all the
neurons connect experience into a whole life of mind which I
then identify experiences and refer them to my body and as
myself? It surely seems like that is the way. Even without
thinking about it!
It seems that most people ‘think’
(and therefore believe) as I just concluded that there is a
‘mind’ and it is inside their body. This ‘mind’ retains
information, experiences, forms identities (friendly and
foe), has a body with desires, beliefs, fears and appetites
of all kinds and goes about ones life in a family, culture
and world going about ones life with one primary objective,
to stay alive. But is this really so?
The Enquiry
The mind in it’s most simple form is
a functional tool which we use to navigate the world. And in
it’s most simplest form does not require much investigation
into it’s nature. It’s magical, simple, complex and seems to
operate pretty much on it’s own in it’s simple waking form.
But what about the sublet aspects of mind? The mind of
dreams, reveres and more complex abstract thinking? What
about the ‘intuitive’ and ‘creative’ and ‘imaginative’
aspects of mind?
This enquiry investigates many
aspects of what we call mind from the writings and talks of
the Great Sage Adi Da Samraj. This is not just a
philosophical or psychological enquiry or investigation.
When you follow the tread of minds enquiry out into the
depths of the universe and down into the rabbit hole of your
soul it becomes more of an existential investigation into
the nature of who, what and where you are.
Mind is not merely in the brain and
less than the brain. Mind is the circumstance of
consciousness in its association with objects of all kinds.
Mind is universal, infinite in extent. And if we put
ourselves into a position to explore the roots of
experiencing, we are going to enter into a realm of mind in
which we realize mind to be greater than mere daily thinking
and social consciousness.
Human beings live in the mind. Human
beings live in a pattern of language, assuming roles in the
“world” that are based on imagination. That imagination is
simply the brain talking. To live on the basis of such
imagination is to live in a misguided manner that is
disconnected and detached from the “animal” that is walking
around – the “animal” that is mortal, suffering, limited,
and needing to survive, in an environment that allows only a
short span of life which is characterized by stuggle and
fight.
Mind is an interior projection of a
language-program that, in its imaginative elaboration of
itself, conceives of purposes and ideas for which there are
no corresponding physical data. Human beings are all living
in a “virtual world” of mind.
Mind has a virtual existence only.
Therefore, human beings are participating in a
language-“world”-and, in that sense, they are patterned not
only by natural structures but also by mind-forms. The human
mind is actually a facsimile machine. This “machine” merely
replicates language-forms in the illusion of mind. The
“machine” feeds language into the computer of the illusion
of mind with which people identify themselves. That illusion
is who they mean when they refer to themselves-the
body-mind-complex, the mortal bio-form associated with the
“artificial intelligence” of talk, of space-and-time “point
of view”, of ego-“I” constructs, of language, of
language-based brain, and (altogether) of ego-based and
brain-based psycho-physical ideas and perceptual
memories.
What appears to be mind is only a
focused reflection of the world. There is no mind. Mind is a
myth. There is language – which is programmed by brains, and
which, in turn, programs brains. However, there is no
tangible existence to “mind” itself-absolutely none.
Nevertheless, human beings identify with the “mind” as
“self”, and (thereby) invent destiny for themselves, and
even project that “self”-imagined destiny into an idea of
time and space beyond the present physical
lifetime.
The Mind Is Not A Someone. There Is
No Mind in Itself.
When the Body Is Full of
Light
Mindless embodiment
Consciousness without
inwardness.
Thus it becomes obvious.
Every object is only Light, the
Energy of Consciousness.
Even so, there is no
mind.
Only this stark embodiment, without
inwardness.
First transcend the mind, not the
body.
Inwardness is flight from Life and
Love.
Only the body is Full of
Consciousness.
Therefore, be the body-only, feeling
into Life.
Surrender the mind into Love, until
the body dissolves in Light.
Dare this Ecstasy, and never be made
thoughtful by birth and experience and death.
Adi Da Samraj
The mind has no substantial
existence. The mind is simply stored as language-bits (or
patterns of language and remembered perceptions) in the
brain. When a particular brain dies, other replicating
machines carry on the language-mind-continuing it from one
generation to the next.
Mind is “artificial intelligence”.
Mind is the first “robot” that human beings ever made. In
the usual discussions of such matters, artificial
intelligence is presumed to be something generated by
computers. In actuality, however, language is the first form
of artificial intelligence created by human
beings.
There is no singleness to any part
of the process, much less one entity that is all of
that.
Your mind is your reflection, the
image in the pond. You are the one who is looking at the
image. You are the one who is deluded. But you are the one
who is posturing. You are the one who is believing in
illusion. Therefore, merely to talk about yourself is not
sufficient. You must actually look at what you are
doing.
It is not surprising people are
obsessed with the world in a stuggle for survival. Obsessed
with perpetuating the patterns, be it nation, religion,
territory, language, culture or some other form of identity
that is sustaining and controlling their lives.
The chronic, obsessive thinking (and
talking) mind is a problem. It actually takes the form of of
a problem. “What about this”? “What about that”? “Tell me
about this”? “Tell me about that”? By using the mind one
tries to get free of a problem or discover a solution to a
problem, hoping that it will produce some understanding or
some release.
The drama of mind is the purely
functional aspect of the mind. The mind is an ordinary and
useful function of human existence and, like all the
functions of your life, it must be brought to the condition
of Understanding as well as to the useful communicative,
ordinary conditions of life. This functional dimension of
the mind, the purely practical use of the mind, is quite
apart from that whole problematic life of the mind which
everyone is suffering. But in the usual man, whose functions
are rooted in dilemma, that practical, functional aspect of
the mind has become enmeshed with the problematic use of the
mind. And this drama of the mind or conflict is the
characteristic sign of the uncompleted third stage of
life.
When people talk with one another,
they often talk about their hard times. They obsessively
talk about difficulties relative to money, sex, food,
friends, planning, lamenting, family, jobs, frustrations or
whatever. They never shut up! Their mind needs noise and
activity, either good or bad, relaxing or unnerving. They
meditate on their difficulties through the instrument of
social communication. Such social magic is a way of
meditating on the failure of life, on one’s self-indulgent
and irresponsible life of conflict and seeking.
What we conventionally call the
“conscious mind” or the waking mind is a strategic version
of mind which is always manufacturing
motivations.
The mind is simply memory, past
association. It is not perceptive, nor truly sensitive to
anything. It is just the mechanical record of patterns. The
body is exactly the same as the mind, but because we think
so much, we imagine that the mind is something different
from the body. Actually, the body-mind is one, a
simultaneous coincidence. Just as the mind is past
associations, the body is past associations.
The body is the past. It is like a
star-the rays of light that we now see were generated light
years before now. The present form of that star is not
visible, because it is so far away that the light it
generates today takes eons to arrive. Likewise, these bodies
are the reflections of the distant past. They have no
present significance.
What we view as the present, which
includes body, mind and world must be transcended before we
can Realize What Is Truly Present which is Unmediated
Reality. We are not present in our experience. In other
words, thinking, acting, or experiencing, is not a present
activity. It has nothing to do with the present. Thinking,
acting, or experiencing is all about the past. All
experience is the past. There is nothing new, and there is
nothing real about the mind that experiences.
The body is a reflection of the mind
and of energies subtler than the elemental or gross physical
body. But the body is also senior to the mind, since simple,
formal, or manifest bodily existence is the primary
conditional circumstance of personal
consciousness.
Just as the body exists in space,
the mind exists in time. The body-mind, therefore, exists in
space-time, and it demonstrates all of the paradoxes of
space-time phenomena.
The body-mind is thus a dynamic
unity. However, it is not, because of that unity, merely
mortal. Both body and mind have their grosser and their
subtler aspects.
Mind and body are mutually
dependent. They arise as a dynamic play of nearly
simultaneous opposites, and, as long as the pair exists,
each constantly affects the other. Neither is more “real”
than the other, except that the body, not the mind, is the
first and the last to appear.
Therefore, the individual body-mind
is a dynamic play of changes that passes from birth to
death. However, the body-mind also survives gross physical
death. Personal psycho-physical existence continues in
subtler realms of energy after gross physical death, and,
thus, the body-mind continues to evolve and change in a
dynamic pattern after gross physical death.
The mind is only an illusory
extension of the independent existence (or self) implied by
the body. Therefore, unless the mind acknowledges its
dependence on the body for its sense of independent
existence, the mind (or independent self) will tend to be
embraced as the senior and independent principle of
existence, evolution, and even Truth.
But the secret of the mind is the
body. And the mind cannot be free unless it surrenders its
independent selfhood to the body, so that the body itself
(and the principle of independent selfhood) may be
transcended in the Transcendental Life-Principle.
The mind, through association with
the body, enjoys the modes of movement or change in space.
The body, through association with the mind, enjoys the
modes of movement or change in time. But the body-mind
inheres in the Divine Being or Infinitely Radiant Self.
Therefore, the Being Who is the Self of the body-mind always
transcends time, space, and space-time, or all the phenomena
and paradoxes of experience.
Thus, the evolutionary trial (which
may go on for many lifetimes or rebirths in human form) is
projected on a progressive scale, beginning with the gross
dimension of the physical body, and extending into the
various subtler dimensions of the physical body, the nervous
system, the brain, and the psyche. And at some point in that
process the individual awakens to the experiential knowledge
that the psyche is actually a subtle and separable
body-mind, made of subtle energy and subtle states of
consciousness. Even so, that discovery is not the highest
reach of Man, nor does it signify the ultimate liberation
and fulfillment of individual existence.
Matter is energy. Thought arises on
the basis of a deep psyche that is pure energy. And the
physical body is a mysterious and momentary phase of an
ongoing process of eternal energy, or light.
Human existence is an evolutionary
trial, or growth lesson, in which the individual must first
adapt to physical existence, or the physically and bodily
defined self. After complex physical adaptation is achieved,
the individual is obliged to adapt to the various functional
levels of vital energy, emotion, and mind (both lower and
higher). This second level of adaptation requires the
development of the various higher functional capabilities
that are native to the structures of the autonomic nervous
system and the central nervous system (especially the
brain).
Man, and thus the human individual,
is actually a composite of three dimensions of
Light.
The most obvious dimension is the
physical being, which seems to be “material” and not made of
Light at all. Its root center or primary seat of association
with the Life-Principle is in the great vital region between
the solar plexus and the perineum.
The second dimension of Man is
subtler than the physical. It is the astral or “star body”
(or body-mind), which interpenetrates and surrounds the
physical being with biophysical energy, and which we
identify as the “psyche” of individual existence. This
second dimension of Man survives the physical death of the
individual, but it is also the primary principle of
illusion, which is the sense of independent subjectivity.
(Its root center or primary seat of association with the
Life-Principle is in the brain.)
The “star body” seems to be composed
of energy and consciousness, and thus it seems to be more
like Light than does the physical body. Therefore, this
inner being or “soul” is the traditional resort or refuge of
conventional religion and of all who seek release from the
mortal threats that are the natural companions of physical
existence. But the “star body” (or psyche) is neither
immortal nor free nor truly independent or self-contained.
It is simply the conventional, inward, and temporary
solution to mortal fear.
The “star body” has the capacity
(like the mind) to take on any form. But as long as the
association between the “star body” and physical body (or
“earth body”) remains, the “star body” is expressed as a
field of biophysical energy that pervades and conforms to
the basic shape of the physical body, and also extends
beyond the physical body as an “aura” of personal radiance
that has the ultimate capacity to enjoy direct telepathic
association with all beings and events in the biophysical
universe.
Therefore, the “star body” must be
understood to be simply an extension or subtler dimension of
physical embodiment. It is in play, or dynamic union, with
the physical body, and, although the “star body” (or mind)
may be manipulated to cause changes in the physical (and
also to seem to escape the physical), the existence of the
limited personal psyche (or apparently independent mind and
self) is priorly determined by the fact of physical
embodiment. Thus, the physical body is ultimately senior to
the “star body” at the level of the original determination
of egoic existence (or existence as a limited independent
self, presently embodied in one or another form or degree of
manifest Light).
The “star body,” or independent
mind, must constantly be surrendered to the seniority of the
principle of the body (in whatever form or degree of Light
the body is presently expressed). This is the Law that we
must perceive within the dynamic incident of our born
existence.
The mind must acknowledge the
principle of the irreducible simultaneity of psyche (or
mind) and body-or the irreducible unity of the body-mind.
The mind is not other than the body. The mind is not within
the body. The mind is simply the subtler version of the
total or simultaneous body-mind. The “mind” is itself a
body-mind. It is psyche, but it is also a body made of
energy (just as the physical body is truly a form of energy,
or Light).
The mind Is Not A Someone. There Is
no mind in itself.
The third dimension of Man is senior
to the physical body, the “star body,” and even all
embodiment, or all deluded identification with limited
independent existence, mind, and form. The third dimension
of Man is free, immortal, eternal, and Transcendental, or
Divine. It is the true Self or Identity of Man and of every
human individual. It is the Radiant Life-Principle and
Transcendental Consciousness in which both the psyche (the
mind, or “star body”) and the physical body are presently
arising. It is the Transcendental Heart, the Life-Principle
itself, and its psycho-physical root (or origin of
association with the body-mind) is in the heart of
Man.
The “star body” (or psyche) is
intimately associated with the autonomic nervous system and
the central nervous system. However, it is not the ultimate
or highest dimension of existence to which the central
nervous system and the autonomic nervous system are
connected. The Transcendental Light, or the Radiant
Life-Principle and Transcendental Self, is the true Identity
of Man. And the human individual is not free or fulfilled
except in ecstatic surrender into the very Condition of that
Transcendental Identity.
Therefore, the ultimate stage of
human evolutionary growth is Realized only when the “star
body,” or the apparently independent inner self and mind, is
itself transcended through love of the Living Truth, or
self-transcending submission to the Life-Principle and
Transcendental Identity that is the Truth and Condition of
the total body-mind of Man. (Only when the independent and
limited self, mind, or psyche is first transcended through
surrender to the Life-Principle may the physical body, or
the original tendency to limited consciousness and limited
embodiment, also be transcended through surrender to the
same Life-Principle.)
In Its essence, the Way that I have
Revealed and Given is simply turning to Me and serving Me.
However, the ego is incapable of doing such right practice
of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam.
Rather, the ego merely thinks about doing the practice.
“Thinking about doing it” is an activity unique to human
primates-animals who have a highly developed
language-facility, and (thereby) a capability to make mind
and to be formed by mind.
Realization is Beyond mind.
Realization has no mind.
In order to Realize Reality Itself
(or Truth Itself), you must go beyond mind.
To live as mind is ego.
“Narcissus” seeing his own
reflection is mind.
Mind is the reflection.
Human bondage is bondage to
mind.
As a result, people do not directly
notice the actual conditions of their existence.
I Am As I Am.
I am not merely
Reflecting.
The Mirror is not “busy” Reflecting
everything.
The Mirror Is What Is.
The Mirror Is the Reflector to (and
of) egos-but Always Acausally (or Indifferently), Always
Free-Standing As Itself (Prior to and Beyond all apparent
differences).
The Mirror is not doing any
Reflecting. The Mirror is not doing any observing. The
Mirror is not doing anything.
Adi Da Samraj – The
Aletheon
The Divine is absolutely subtle,
perfectly transcendent. The first level on which we realize
the modification of the Divine, the stuff of the Divine, is
in the forms of consciousness. The superconscious organs
through which we intuit the Divine Presence as Life are in
the upper part of the brain. In the midst of the brain are
the forms of mental consciousness, less subtle than the
superconscious. The psycho-physical origin of the
life-force, the entrance point of the universal Shakti, is
in the throat, and it is etheric, subtler than all of the
natural forms, the vital forces. Grosser than that dimension
of the life-force is the airy life in the midst of the body,
in the heart, the region of the life-psyche. Grosser than
that, just as the heart or living psyche is grosser than the
mind, is the fiery elemental life of the navel. Below that
is the watery life of the root of sex. And below that is the
solid life of the physical body. But [it is] the
Divine, above all this transmuted or modified, which
descends into this whole order of grosser and grosser
manifestation.
In the way that I teach the mind
dissolves in Bliss, thus relieving the body of its
necessity. The motives that caused the present embodiment,
and which would cause future embodiments, are yielded, with
the gesture of attention itself, into the motiveless Heart,
the Eternal Domain or Radiant Condition of God.
There is only one event: Something
arising. All arising is the same mysterious fascination. The
body-mind is a completely mechanical entity that is arising
and going on and dying completely on its own. Your effect
upon it is simply an illusory, or, rather, metaphysical
drama wherein you are bound by the limitations of this
structure. You are bound to it to the degree you do not
Realize your actual Condition and do not recognize the
body-mind as a modification of that real
Condition.
The Root of Body and Mind Is in the
Heart
Consciousness is the Ultimate Domain
of the conscious self and it is not dependent upon the
individual mind. A medium is necessary for knowing anything
other than one’s self: for knowing one’s self no medium is
necessary. In fact, the association of consciousness with
the mind is a hindrance to the attainment of realization. As
the seat of the ego the individual mind is conscious of
being isolated. From it arises the limited individuality,
which at once feeds and is fed by the illusion of duality,
time and change. To know the self as it is, consciousness
has to be freed from the limitation of the individual mind.
In other words, the individual mind has to disappear while
consciousness is retained. The quality and mood of
consciousness itself, that precedes the mind and the Heart
is the root of the mind, the source of the mind.
Arising is all there is. At this
stage enquiry becomes much subtler. It’s no longer verbal
enquiry, because it’s not an activity of the mind. It’s
rather a subtle activity of re-cognition that operates on
the mind itself and not even the mind as particular
thoughts. At this point there may no longer be any
particular concern for what the thought is that is arising,
whether it’s some super conscious manifestation or some
manifestation of unconscious life, or some concept of other
or some image. It makes no difference what’s arising in this
stage or this form of the intensity of the life of
understanding. Whatever it is, it’s a form of mind, it’s a
form of the mind, it’s a modification of the mind. And it is
recognized as such. It is known in itself to be this
contraction of the quality of consciousness. All thought,
all that is mind is recognized, re-cognized, known again at
this point to be a contraction or modification of
consciousness itself. Whereas previous to this time one was
observing the contractions of oneself alive. One’s
contraction in life. One’s avoidance in life. Now one has
begun to see quite spontaneously, without trying to get into
some sort of state like the one I’m describing here. Quite
spontaneously one has begun to see and comprehend the rising
quality of existence in quite a new way. No longer through
the mind, but one is re-cognizing, knowing again, cognition
itself. This is only when one has quite spontaneously begun
to rest in the heart, which is the root of consciousness,
which is the root of the mind.
Real Intelligence is tacit (or
intrinsically wordless) living existence. Where there is
such tacit living existence, a Realizer (of Reality) can be
recognized, and you are immediately able to devote yourself
to a Realizer as Master-because such a relationship does
not, fundamentally, require any words.
Once we are Awakened, or Enlightened
in our disposition, and thereby entered into Love-Communion
with the Divine Person, then we begin to grow again and to
mature in love and self-transcendence. And, in that Process,
the subjective urges dissolve in the heart. Attention
gradually and suddenly surrenders into its heart-root, and
the causes of our mysterious and self-possessed embodiment
become clear.
We are Free only if we become
responsibly established in Remembrance, Communion, and
Reawakening in relation to the Divine and Eternal Reality,
the very Condition of the embodied soul and all experiential
phenomena. It is a matter of Transcendental Awakening to the
Truth, and of self-transcending Love-Communion with the
Divine Person, the true Self, Radiant, All-Pervading, and
Eternally Free of all limitations.
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