Mental Schmental!
“The mind should be used as a tool rather than an already existing substance or word bank, you see. In other words we must use the higher mind, not the lower mind. The lower mind is full of memory, words, grammatical constructions, illusions”
Adi Da Samraj
DEVOTEE: When you were speaking earlier I was appreciating and realizing your Transmission as transmission of the obviousness of the Truth. It became clear in way that was much more than just a mental or intellectual appreciation of the Dharma.
MASTER: Mental schmental! Contemplate in the mind. How much can the mind tell you? If the mind was so enlightened, you would already be enlightened. You just continue to consult the mind again and again and again and revolving through its parts, consulting its grammatical structures and so forth as if that would somehow become Absolute Illumination you see.
You must use the mind, not dwell on it, inwardly, use the mind’s intelligence, as attention, and bring it to the real context of life, bring it to my Argument and the Argument as consideration, in other words bring it into the context of life. Merely to dwell on the mind is just – a way of making forms, sculptures out of thought. You can’t accomplish any more than the mind has already communicated to you, than the mind already contains. In any case there is no consequence in the mind that’s equivalent to Transcendental Realization.
So the mind should be used as a tool rather than an already existing substance or word bank, you see. In other words we must use the higher mind, not the lower mind. The lower mind is full of memory, words, grammatical constructions, illusions, and so forth. These things are constantly arising in us rather automatically. We must use the higher mind, vijnanamayakosha, the intelligence factor of the mind the capacity to observe and see directly and understand and release, transcend, go beyond. This function of mind does have a use in spiritual life. The other form of mind has a use in practical life really and not much more use The mind is mere content and structure. It is not something that we should suppress, but we should economize it, we should require it, oblige it to be useful in its domain. You wouldn’t consult the liver, for instance, for God-Realization.
Why should you consult the lower mind? You don’t sit and have conversations with your feet. Why do you have conversations with your mind? Instead of using your higher mind, you see, you indulge it, you become an odalisque and you lie in the lower mind and in the body and in the emotion’s and reactions, the content of past life and so forth. You don’t exercise a freer mind, the higher mind. The mind is just intelligence, attention. That form does have a use in spiritual life, but we don’t use it very much, you see. We indulge ourselves in the lower mind and in the body and in emotions, our relations, and we bind ourselves to these structures, instead of using the higher structures for the sake of self-understanding, self-transcendence, liberating insight and intuition. Then the higher mind would even itself be transcended, you see, in transcendental Realization.