Memories

Lots of memory

Memory is a pattern. It is a very special pattern. Without it there would be nothing but a chaos of random patterns everywhere and nowhere. There would be no universe, no stars, no worlds, no minds and no bodies. One can see that all experiences are nothing but a memory of one or the other kind. In this article I present this rather unconventional way of looking at an experience - it is a memory.

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.

The Origin of Mind

We saw that all manifestation is essentially metaphysical patterns and movements of patterns aka processes. One of the interesting pattern is that of a mind. The mind is a collection of metaphysical patterns and processes that has properties like memories, knowledge, thought and perception. A mind is a system that is not only affected by other patterns, it also affects them back in a meaningful way. This capability is the capability of action. Usually actions are meaningful in the sense of self-preservation, growth and perpetuation of the mind itself.

Path of Knowledge

Path of knowledge is about knowing and understanding the nature of existence and essence of our own self. It is a gradual dispelling of ignorance. On this path we seek truth. Not only that, we embody this knowledge and apply it in day-to-day life. In this article I will present my understanding of what this path means to me.

Mind Map

Iconic Map of Universal Mind

It is our direct experience that Presence is dynamic. There is activity, there is change. Although there is this static unchanging aspect of it which we know as the experiencer, or "I" or pure consciousness. Ultimately both dynamic and static aspects are just one. That which changes becomes an experience and that which is changeless becomes the experiencer. There is not much to the experiencer part, it is just empty awareness, a silent witness, the light that illuminates the changing part, except that it is essential and necessary for all the experiences, it is plain boring :). The interesting things are the dynamics, the endless activity, unceasing and ever-creating patterns. This is seen as the manifested Presence, the Universal Mind.

We will try to create a map of it all - the biggest possible picture.

States of Mind

It appears that Consciousness cycles through states, but Consciousness is changeless, its the mind that changes state. We explore various states of mind here. All of them are highly interesting and educating.

Layers of Ignorance

By Julia Molloy

All there is, is Experiencing. Its pure and perfect. Something interesting happens in the Experiencing - appearance of a Mind, the universal Mind, organizer of all experiences. Mind starts building structures - knowledge. The Self finds itself surrounded by structures. Structures hide the "what-is" or Presence and instead Self gets a "view" that is made-up, artificial. This view is nothing but knowing, knowledge itself. Mind presents that knowledge incrementally. While the structures are still forming, the knowledge appears incomplete and is seen as ignorance. It takes more experiences to complete the knowledge, which is done, but not before incomplete knowledge does its job - of causing suffering.

This incomplete knowledge is Ignorance. In essence, knowledge is ignorance. Mind is limited, it brings in immense amount of knowledge, still it remains incomplete. For a human mind, which is a part of the Universal Mind, the situation is even worse. Humans spend their whole life (or lives) under the spell of ignorance, well most of them do.

Cessation Of Mind

Patanjali

The content below is an expanded version of a forum post.

Union or realization of oneness happens on cessation of mental activities. This is the age old formula (by the father of yoga Patanjali himself). All very good, but what is really meant by cessation of mental activity?

Does it mean I stop using my mind? Does it mean I stop the continuous chatter (monologue) that goes on inside my head? Does it mean I should stop perceiving things, recognizing things, naming/knowing them etc? Does it mean I bring the mind to a standstill like a dead or unconscious or asleep man? Do I need to be brain dead to get the experience of oneness?

Resistance, Effort and Opportunity: Part-1

A path is rarely seen with a red carpet laid on it, padded with rose petals, mostly, especially for new travellers, it is full of thorns, pits and steep climbs. It may sound discouraging and ironical since this blog is about encouraging people for taking up a path. But then, instead of showing a rosy picture its better to share something useful which provides you instant solutions in case you fall, and something which warns you beforehand, to prevent the fall. Following is a brief write up of things I found that may cause trouble and some solutions that I found useful.

Introspection - 6 : Consciousness Without Content

Goal

We will attempt to gain a direct experience of the pure consciousness, in other words, Self that is not engaged in experiencing anything, or when there are no contents to experience. Note that its not possible to even remember such a state, because there will be no memories of it, so we will just try to get a taste of it.

Prerequisites

Nothing more than that which is already mentioned for other introspections. Although sometimes a friend who can ask you questions mentioned below can be useful. Best done with eyes closed, but it is not necessary.

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.

Introspection - 3 : Mind and World

Goal

We will attempt to experience the creation of duality or plurality out of oneness.

Prerequisites

Same as those for introspection - 1. I will now skip directly to the questions. The state you need to be in is described in detail in previous introspections.

Question - what is experienced? 

Start with the neutral state of awareness of everything with no unneeded mental activity. Once you are steady ask this question - what is experienced?

You will find that the mind starts instantly like an engine and begins presenting things one by one. Your attention will now be on patterns. You will encounter Contents. These are the usual objects, people, sense perceptions, thoughts, memories, feelings etc. The one has become many in response to that question. It is now expressing itself as our old friend - the Mind. Mind is a process that creates divisions, provides an illusion of multiplicity. This is the familiar experience of waking consciousness, the Self being conscious of Contents.

Brain vs. Mind

While we are on the topic of body, lets discuss some interesting stuff about the most interesting and mysterious organ in the body - the brain. As usual, I won't attempt to conclude too much and will leave the file open, since it is beyond my pay grade to talk on this fascinating subject. All I can do is, if you give me some statements about the brain, I can find out if they make sense based on my own experience and a bit of logical and critical thinking. I can also theorize about it but it may not be the whole truth. But I can surely dislodge some beliefs and take you to the stage of uncertainty - the "I don't know" stage, where all the real answers lie.

The Extraordinary Gift of the Mind : Part-1

Presence in its activity of Experiencing gets bound by the Fundamental Process which results in organizing of the experiences, which we call knowledge. The Fundamental Process shapes this activity in many ways, like running water shapes the land. It takes the form of an entity where we can lump together activities of organizing. This entity has already been introduced as the Mind. It feeds on itself creating more organization, more structure, more meaning and more activity. This is by necessity, because an entity which does not do this will surely not be there to be experienced as a structure, given the force of impermanence. If you are wondering what these sentences mean, then probably you jumped into the middle of it all, so please read previous entries to make a head and tail out of this text.

The self sustaining mega structure, the Mind is truly an extraordinary thing. I think the Presence is proud of it, it is the beloved child of the Presence. The love is so deep that in the form of the Self, Presence thinks it is one with the Mind. It is all good, until the suffering begins. Well, how come suffering just appeared here out of nowhere in this pure love of the mother and the child? Did Mind come with a built in suffering generator? Did the Fundamental Process left it there as a bug, while calling it a feature ;-)?

Creating the Experience

We have seen in the previous articles, some strange property of the Presence is responsible for the birth of the Self. By "property" I mean its ability to be either as a static witness or just as existence. When it assumes the form of a witness, it experiences itself as Self, otherwise it remains as Experiencing. It means, it can become two, while being only one, quite paradoxically. The two being the experience and the experiencer. But it does not stop there, it wants to become many.

We now explore this even stranger aspect of the Presence, which is the Experiencing. Its not merely a random process of modulations happening in the Presence, it has some interesting properties. Not only does Experiencing form impressions on the Presence, it also self-organizes itself in the form of various structures [8]. It’d be equivalent to say that the Presence self-organizes itself. Or in other words, it creates. The structures thus created are the Creation.