The Mind

The mind is an instrument of intelligence through which knowledge and understanding are acquired. It has no objective essence of its own, existing only as a subjective flux of impressions, associations and thoughts. A multidimensional organism of mental reality, the mind is linked to the soul through the sense of me. It is this essential quality that distinguishes our mind from artificial intelligence, for it connects it to the plane of pure subjectivity. Around the axle of me, the mind creates a coherent structure of identity we experience as the personal self, the matrix of psychological identity that defines us as human beings.

Initially, the mind developed as a tool for survival. However, through the evolution of intelligence, the functions of the mind have gradually extended into other spheres of reality, such as conceptual thinking and scientific understanding. Psychological processing that transcends the survival instinct has opened the doors to our conscious evolution, allowing the mind to expand and gradually awaken our spiritual intelligence. The highest endeavor of the mind is enquiry into the dimension of spirituality, as it initiates the actualization of its ultimate destiny - its own surrender.

The World of the Mind

To understand the mind we have to engage this very mind. The ability of the human mind to observe and analyze its own activity is most extraordinary, indicating a highly evolved consciousness. Another remarkable quality of the human mind is that it does not rely solely on its individual capacity, but is capable of expanding through conceptual knowledge it gathers from the collective mind. The mind receives stimuli from the external world, processes the data in its internal world, and arrives at its own personal interpretations and conclusions. It is a sort of self-programming thinking system that enlarges its inherent capacity for learning through the process of its own education.

The Unconscious Mind : The mind is composed of many layers, but its ability to think consciously manifests only on its surface. It is similar to an ocean, with waves visible on the surface, but infinite depth hidden in darkness beneath. The foundation of the mind is the unconscious, the storehouse of all the memories and impressions we have gathered from our present and countless past lives. Our human intelligence actually could not function without the unconscious mind, for it is the inner ground of reality from which the conscious mind arises. Thus we can see that unconsciousness is not the polar opposite of consciousness, but rather its ontological foundation.

The unconscious mind is individual, collective and universal. The individual unconscious relates to our personal history and past evolution. The sum total of the memories, knowledge and destiny of all humans and other species is contained in the collective unconscious. The universal unconscious is the existential root of the manifested universe - the original source of phenomenal reality.

The Subconscious Mind: The subconscious mind arises from the unconscious, like a misty dawn arising from the darkness of night. It is the link between the unconscious and the conscious mind - the subtle sphere of consciousness in which spontaneous thoughts, emotions and perceptions manifest prior to the conscious mind becoming aware of them. 'Subconscious' signifies a low frequency of consciousness that operates just above the unconscious level, and just below the conscious level. Unlike the unconscious, in the subconscious, a degree of cognition is active; semi-conscious experiencing and knowing are involved.

There is a hierarchy of cognition that reflects the ladder of consciousness. The highest degree of cognition is the knowledge I am, as it represents consciousness in its pure form. In the unconscious realm, cognition is zero. No one can actually experience the unconscious, because the knower is absent. The level of cognition inherent to the subconscious mind is between that of the unconscious and conscious realities. It is sufficient to produce a subconscious experiencer, but too weak to crystallize a clear sense of ego. We can see it clearly in a dream state in which the sense of me is present, but in too rudimentary a form to generate a lucid consciousness of its own. The lower the frequency and lucidity of me, the more sub-conscious its consciousness.

It is a common misperception that we experience the subconscious mind only while asleep or daydreaming. Most human beings actually live their whole lives in a subconscious state - their entire existence is a kind of daydream. Their sense of me cannot be truly conscious, for they are too busy frantically maintaining the insubstantial reality of the false personality to connect to their essence. In their ignorance, they mistake subconscious mental activity for the conscious use of mind, unaware that they are lost in a waking dream. Since the subconscious mind is the foundation of our perception of reality, we must understand its nature and inherent limitations in order to evolve towards higher consciousness.

The Conscious Mind: The conscious mind represents the stage in the development of consciousness in which thinking becomes self-conscious. It can be seen as a solidified ego that is able to focus thought processes in a clear and directed way. This ability to focalize attention and hold onto particular streams of thought is the characteristic that distinguishes the conscious from the subconscious mind. Being 'conscious' denotes a sense of presence and lucidity within a thought process. From a spiritual perspective, it is the conscious mind that performs self-enquiry and supports the process of awakening by serving as a link between lower consciousness and pure subjectivity.

The Mind and the Sense of Me

The mind operates within objective reality, but serves its subjective host, for it cannot function without the presence of the one to whom it refers. Yet, the thinker is not the thinking. The vital question is: who is the thinker in separation from thinking? The thinker is the sense of me created by the mind that arises when the mind becomes self-conscious. In its essence, however, the thinker's sense of me lies deeper than the mind's self-consciousness; it points beyond thinking to the sense of I am. The thinker is not only a part of the mind, but also the bridge between the mind and I am. The thinker is in fact both this bridge and the one who crosses it. By first turning attention from thinking to the sense of me, and then from the sense of me to I am, the thinker can discover his true center.

How conscious we are directly reflects the strength of our sense of me. In the subconscious state, our sense of me is too feeble to become self-conscious. When we sleep or daydream, we cannot separate it from our fantasies at all - the identification is total. In contrast, in the conscious state, our sense of identity is crystallized to a significant degree. Our me can recognize itself clearly as a knower separate from the known, a thinker separate from the thought.

Within the conscious mind, me can only recognize itself as distinct in relation to the thought, not to its own essence. It can sense itself as separate from thinking, but depends on thoughts to reflect its existence back upon itself. An ignorant me is just a shadow of the mind - it feels that it exists because it thinks. No thought, no me. Conscious me, or ego, does not possess true subjectivity; its sense of self is only experienced through the medium of thought. The ego has no quality of being or existence of its own.

Unlike the ego, the soul does not require the mind to define her existence. The ego only borrows I am in order to create its own personal sense of me in the mind. The soul owns I am. The ego has to think in order to know that it exists. For the soul it is sufficient to be in order to know that she is, she knows herself directly through the light of presence, her pure subjectivity.

The Mind: Friend or Foe?

Because the mind is generally seen as the primary cause of our ignorance, to transcend it is the ultimate aim of almost all traditions of enlightenment. While it is true that the mind is the source of our delusion, without it there would be no spiritual path and no enlightenment. We need the mind to both to understand and to move beyond it.

Although the mechanical and fragmented mind is the root of all of our suffering, it is not the mind itself, but how we use it, that is to blame. Whether the mind is our friend or foe depends on our level of consciousness. If we are unconscious, the mind is unconscious as well; if we are conscious, the mind becomes conscious. If we don't bring awareness into the mind, it is our worst enemy, a parasite that eats away at our spirit. The moment we instill it with the qualities of presence, clarity and wisdom, the same mind becomes our best ally.

Thinking does not necessarily stand in opposition to spiritual illumination - it can be a creative expression of our true nature. The notion that we need to transcend the mind is correct, but that transcendence cannot be actualized until the mind has become highly evolved. Until we are ready to surrender it, the mind remains a fundamental component of our identity and our quest. Our goal is not to negate, but to integrate the mind as an inherent part of our existence.

The Limits of the Mind

The mind is a useful, but limited instrument for the exploration of reality. It can bring clarity to our path, but cannot grasp its essence, for it operates only within the confines of the past. It can carry us to the door of the now, but not through and beyond it. The only way for the mind to come closer to reality is for it to cease its unconscious movement and renounce itself. The spiritual terms used to describe this stilling of the mind are non-abidance, not-knowing, silence, presence and being.

Seekers often hope to gain spiritual security by gathering conceptual knowledge from various teachings, but theoretical understanding cannot bring us to the direct experience of reality. We can feed the mind all kind of spiritual ideas, but unless we go beyond the mind, we become entangled in those ideas. No amount of information can reveal the truth. The most sophisticated philosophies and mental constructs are like castles in the sand: no matter how impressive they appear, they are ultimately engulfed by the ocean of reality and dissolve to nothing. The mind can point to reality, but only the soul, free of thought, can cross its threshold and abide in it eternally.

The Illusory Nature of the Mind

The mind has no substance. It appears to be, but is not. It arises, but has no being. It merely creates the illusion of solidity by enveloping us in a net of endless thoughts. Completely identified with the mind, we cannot tell the thinker from the thinking. Blinded by a dark cloud of mental reality, we do not see the real world; a veil of thoughts separates us from reality as it is. Instead of being, feeling and knowing, we constantly think, think about what we think about, and think about what to think about. We are locked in the never-ending interpreting, checking, comparing, and labeling commotion of the mind. The mind cannot rest, for it would cease to exist. It must constantly move in order to be.

We are prey to two false assumptions about the nature of the mind: that is has its own being apart from the arising of thoughts, and that it can capture the truth of reality. The mind is not an entity, and therefore has no identity. It is merely a mental flow devoid of any solidified sense of self. For lack of a true center, the mind can only grasp at objectified existence through thinking. It has no power to reveal the truth of reality, for it is always external to it.

Ironically, one can be intellectually convinced of the illusory nature of the mind, but remain fully identified with thinking. The mind can believe various concepts about its own unreality, but cannot actually experience that it is unreal. The insubstantial nature of the mind can only be recognized from a place beyond it. Only through the awakening of the inner state and the soul do we gain the necessary distance to be able to perceive the mind as external to our essence.

One cannot think about reality. Only in the absence of thought is that which is real exposed. The non-conceptual is the only door to pure subjectivity.

The Power of the Mind

Each thought is a unit of mental energy that carries an emotional charge - it has a force that affects reality. We must take responsibility for what and how we think, for what the mind strongly believes and desires most often becomes our reality. Thinking is not only a private affair limited to the headspace, but has karmic consequences that shape our lives and impact everyone around us.

Most humans think in circles, ruled by the obsessive tendencies of the mind. When the mind cannot find something to think about, it will think about anything just to escape boredom. In this vacuum of purposelessness, the mind generates dull and depressing thought-forms and energies, utterly powerless to create anything positive. Unconscious, mechanical thinking is but a misuse of energy and consciousness; thinking that is not focused, clear and directed is impotent and serves nothing.

The positive power of the mind is rooted in silence and presence. Only from a place of pure awareness and being can the mind function with true creativity, intelligence and purpose. Abiding in mirror-like consciousness, an awakened mind reflects reality with clarity, and can manifest the correct understanding and action.

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