Origin of the World

We saw the mind in detail in last article - a very important part of the manifestation or creation, that we call Experience. We can now go deeper into the Experience and see what else lies there and how it all originated.

The metaphysical patterns and processes not only form minds, they form all kinds of structures. Minds happen to be a special kind. So what are those other structures? We see them all around us, they are things, objects, systems, physical or non-physical, we are surrounded by all kinds of patterns. A collection of objects is called a World. So we are going to take a look at the world in this article.

Introspection - 4 : Identity and Ignorance

Goal

We will attempt to experience the illusion of identity and Ego (aka person) directly.

Prerequisites

Same as that for introspection - 1.

Question

Establish yourself in the usual tranquil state. Take a look at the names and forms. You can now ask - who is aware of the world or objects or thoughts?

You will notice that there is no “who” initially, there is just awareness of contents. If there are any thoughts, the awareness overshadows those thoughts. Ask it again with a twist, inserting memory or space-time invoking words – who is sitting here and watching? Or who had dinner last night?

And the Mind wakes up and responds this time. There can be recalls of some experiences of coming and sitting or having a dinner at some place etc. Still there is an awareness of those recalls. Now start describing the events and now a doer appears – the “I” or the identity. Note that an “I” appears in the thought which are correlated with a place or event in the near past or somewhat distant past, and it is created only when language kicks in.

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.

Bodies and their Drivers

By H R Giger

We talked about this weird thing called body that possesses us and we are seemingly incapable of controlling it much. However we do perceive ourselves as drivers of this biomechanical biodegradable monkey suit. It seems, that we can command it and it takes us wherever we want. In return it demands fuel and rest. It comes with an auto pilot installed - the Ego, which takes care of most of the driving tasks. Its so efficient that people are hardly aware of it and think they are doing all the driving, because it fools us into thinking we are the Ego. The huge colony of cells takes care of most of its functions from growth, repair and fighting invasion of other colonies of cells. The auto pilot ensures preservation, defence and copying of it. The higher mental functions provide it an overall direction. The journey of a body is presented to the Self in its full glory and with all the bells and whistles in Technicolor 3D. The Self merely witnesses this experience, that we call a human experience.

Ego and its tendencies

The Animal Inside by Olympia Altimir

Ego

Ego is a popular term, and therefore, has acquired many meanings. It means “I” or “myself” and it also means something that one owns (e.g. in “my ego is weak” etc). It also means a sense of self-worth, self-esteem (for some odd reason). In Psychology/Psychoanalysis it has been adopted in a more formal way. For the purpose of this discussion, we will define it as a structure in the Mind that deals with survival directly and in a primitive and mechanical fashion. It is also called Mammalian Mind, Lower Mind, and Primitive Mind etc. 

There is also a Reptilian Mind, which is even more primitive and is seen as control system for basic actions. It takes care of some very basic self-preservation activities. E.g. when you are about to fall from your chair, the fear, the feeling of urgency and the actions you take to save yourself or to minimize the damage, all come from reptilian mind. There is often no time to think, or even for primitive strategies to fire up, you must act mechanically and automatically. We can see some physical structures corresponding to these various mental structures. The reptilian part corresponds to the brain stem and spinal cord, the mammalian part corresponds to the limbic system. The cortex and the neo-cortex correspond to the newer and more developed human Mind.

Afflictions of the Mind : Part-1 (Deception of the senses)

We will now begin a series of articles on afflictions of the Mind. Afflictions are undesirable side effects produced by the highly complex processes that occur in the Mind. While bearing in the mind that the afflictions are also perfect, there is nothing wrong with them and there is no natural law that compels anyone to remove them, we will still try to see what are the possible ways to see them clearly and in case of extremely dysfunctional ones, how one can eradicate them effectively. There are certain tricks that I learned from great masters, that I found work nicely in my experience, however, everyone has a unique Mind and these may or may not work for all. This is not an article on medical/psychological matters, so those who are crazy beyond repair will not find it useful. These afflictions are seen as "normal" by the human society, and are good examples of socially accepted madness. Those who are on the path, know them very well and strive to stay uninfluenced by them.

How can I know that I'm afflicted? Everyone is, don't worry. The telltale sign of afflictions is suffering and bondage. That is the main motivation behind hunting them down. It is not really important to completely cure them, in most cases, simply being aware of them is enough.

The Extraordinary Gift of the Mind : Part-2

Lost-Identity - Artist: Tomasz Alen Kopera

 
We have explored some basic capabilities of the Mind in Part-1 of this topic. We continue onward and explore some more of the extraordinary abilities and peculiarities a Mind has.

6.    Identity and Personality

Contents appear in the experience, they belong to no one, no one owns them. Yet the Mind has a feature that tags many contents as strongly relating with an entity called the Identity or a Person or an Individual. A person is the sum total of the experiences, a large collection of knowledge in the Mind, abstracted as a container (or owner) of those experiences and their structures. The Person or the individual is thus nothing but a Content, a structure in the Mind. It is also experienced.

Does a person has a Mind or does the Mind has a person? Very interesting question. There is no trace of any personality when a child is born, but the Mind is fully present. It takes some time to develop a personality, as the collection of experiences grows. Initially the child does not even own a name, he has to be told and reminded often, what he should answer when someone asks for “his name”. With more and more experiences, the Mind learns to separate the experiences into two – “I” and “not-I”, “mine” and “not mine” etc. Structures are formed which are strongly related to other structures depending on the importance of those structures for the sustenance of the Mind. More important a structure is for its sustenance, more is the “I-ness”. For example the knowledge of one’s name and one’s gender gets strongly related to his all other experiences, and is seen as “I – the name” or “I – the male” etc. This I is a container of the Contents, and the container is also a Content, since the container/I is also experienced.