The Flip !

When you start progressing on the path of knowledge, you will notice a strange pattern - your old beliefs will be most of the time an exact opposite of new knowledge. This is quite amusing and enlightening. Everything you "knew" gets reversed gradually. I call this - the flip !

As you progress, your views go on flipping and soon the entire picture changes, the foreground becomes the background, and the background jumps forward. This is the figure-ground reversal that you will notice. We will take up some examples to demonstrate this. What's the point? Well, besides fun, it can be a good indicator of your progress. More things you flipped, more you have progressed. What's your score?

The Illusion of Death

No one has witnessed their own death, however almost all of us are totally convinced that we will die someday. Without a direct experience of death, one can say that that death is only a belief. Of course we see many others who die every day, its all very common and obvious. What's not so obvious is that we see only their bodies dropping dead. The rest is mere extrapolation of same event in our own case.

Fantasies of Death

We see that a body is destroyed after death, and we actually ensure that it is destroyed by cremating it. So it is fair to conclude that our own body will be destroyed, and since our body is no different than all those dead bodies, there is no reason to conclude otherwise. Anyhow one cannot witness the destruction of one’s own body. It is just an assumption.

Afflictions of the Mind : Part - 4.5 (The Prison of Beliefs)

4. 5 Resistance

We have gone through the broad kinds of beliefs. This is not a textbook classification, just my own understanding from my own experiences with beliefs. So I must have left out a few kinds or created a few new kinds. But classification is not important, the important issue is to be free from all beliefs. We have already seen how this can be a difficult goal. One can encounter some difficulties when one tries to force the beliefs out of his Mind. They are integral part of a person, his life and perhaps many lives. The essential task on the path to freedom is to destroy all beliefs and let the Self shine as it is, in its purest form. It all starts from getting rid of beliefs that are superficial and then slowly digging them out of the depths of the Mind. It can take a lifetime or perhaps many lives.

The first difficulty one may find is that people don’t know that they have beliefs. Many people are often surrounded by others with same/similar beliefs. That’s how one gets a major portion of beliefs – via indoctrination, socio-cultural brainwashing. It helps to question everything, helps to explore new ideas and contradicting beliefs, and to remain open minded but critical of all indirect knowledge.

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Afflictions of the Mind : Part - 4.3 (The Prison of Beliefs)

4.3 Indirect Knowledge, Delusions, Doubts, Attachments and Myths

Indirect Knowledge

These are the most common type of beliefs and when one says the word belief, this is what is mostly meant. Indirect knowledge is any knowledge that is not based on first hand direct experience. Indirect knowledge is just information, not real knowledge. So why do we call it knowledge at all? Firstly, the information can be converted into knowledge most of the time (if the seeker is willing to take that trouble) and secondly, some of the information originates from the direct experience of another person. It is up to the knowledge seeker to trust (have faith) on that person. Traditionally indirect knowledge has been a recommended method for gaining knowledge on the path of knowledge (includes scriptures and teachers). However, one need not be content with such knowledge, ideally speaking, and should go ahead and gain a direct experience of the matter. Until that is done, one needs to clearly understand that the indirect knowledge is just a belief.

I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.

- Richard Feynman, The Making of a Scientist, p. 14

Afflictions of the Mind : Part - 4.2 (The Prison of Beliefs)

  
4.2 Cognitive Biases, Gross Generalizations, Superstitions and Faith

Cognitive Biases

Or simply biases, they are aberrations in the Mind that prevent a person from thinking correctly. These are so universal that one can call them inherent. These have deep roots in evolutionary history of the Mind, and also are caused due to socio-cultural indoctrination [1]. What a bias does is, makes one reach illogical or incorrect conclusion by injecting a belief in the thinking process. This is often fully automatic and the person is not even aware of his bias. Sometimes even when the presence of a bias is shown, the person refuses to accept it, reason – justification of belief – "I cannot be wrong", aka stupidity.

There are hundreds of biases, and surprisingly (or not!) not many people are aware of them. Many psychological and social studies have been done on them and exotic names are assigned to them. Here is an extensive list of biases if you are interested and unbiased towards reading them: List of cognitive biases.

One need not memorize the list, just knowing that one can have these biases helps to remain uninfluenced by them. However, I recommend doing a small exercise – read them and see them if you are afflicted by some of them, or most of them. This alone will raise your awareness sufficiently, if you are open minded, it will start a process of cleansing them from your Mind. Awareness is the key. Once you know, you don’t have any excuse to be biased again.

I’m going to mention some of the common ones, because we all suffer from them. Here is a short list:

Afflictions of the Mind : Part - 4.1 (The Prison of Beliefs)

4. The Prison of Beliefs

Plato's Cave by Lalita Hamill

4.1 What is a Belief?

We have already discussed beliefs previously in brief. Here I’m going to peel the onions, do hair splitting and perform surgery on them. This is needed because beliefs are one of the most dangerous afflictions of the Mind. A belief is an assumption, an unfounded idea. It masquerades in the form of knowledge. It is a partial or false knowledge, a structure in the Mind, that lacks solidity of experience to support it. A belief is an epitome of ignorance. These will serve as some definitions for the term belief [1].

A belief is a poor substitute for knowledge. If I tell you a story, which is beyond your experience, you have only two options, either to believe it or disbelieve it. Any of them are not going to take you anywhere. I want you to know.
- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev (Paraphrased)

If you look at beliefs via the microscope of self-observation, you will find that they are mental structures called Concepts. So a belief is not a new entity, it is just an idea, a concept, a higher level abstraction. So why do we need a new word, a new definition? Because a belief is a concept that is erroneous. It is an assumption that takes the form of knowledge. It does not come from experience. A concept that is firmly founded on direct experience is knowledge. When you see beliefs, you will find no solid experiences, no impressions, no memories, no logical chains of thought there, they just simply hang in air.A belief is never founded on experience, it is derived from other sources. It can also be an erroneous interpretation of an experience, which again means that the interpretation is unfounded. A belief can be based on other beliefs, which makes the matter more convoluted, because the person may believe that it is based on a fact, and so is a fact. It is easy to get lost in the jungle of beliefs. 

Presence, Experience and Knowledge

By Salvador Dali

Experiencing as being

I'm very very sure of one thing - something exists. Actually that's all I'm sure of. I have no other knowledge, no other experience of which I’m so sure of. I'm going to define that "something" as Presence. Its merely a term I'm going to use for something that I'm so sure of. The Presence is going through a process, which I'm going to call Experiencing, and an Experience is then defined as an arbitrary slice of Experiencing. I can’t deny that there is Experiencing of Presence, however hard I try, and no one can. Denial or falsification is also an experience, and that makes it absolutely undeniable that there is Experiencing and/or Presence. What can be so convincing, so solid, so self-evident? So we are on a very firm ground here, it’s a good place to start, perhaps it’s the only place to start.

The modulations in Presence give rise to Experiencing. That's all there is, rest is merely details. Don't ask me what this thing called Presence is, and why are there any modulations or changes in it at all, how and why is this happening.... I have no idea. Grab a good book on Metaphysics to know what the great masters think about all this. I can assure you that nobody knows. Its paradoxical that something so evident and intimate is absolutely unknowable ! Well, welcome to the country of mystics, this is not your first surprise....