Topic 6.01.04 The ways of the mind

Topic 6.01.04 The ways of the mind. VERSION CONTROL: 1 March 2018

Mind is the window that frames everything we experience – ourselves and the world we live in.

Awareness, pragya, is an attribute of consciousness, chit.

At differing points in time we live, move, and have our being in one of these four levels of awareness, pragya, namely:
• the dream state of awareness, sapna, in which there is no body identity. The individual mind is aware, body unaware. This can be understood as unconscious unreality
• the waking state of awareness, jagrat, in which there is individual mind-body identity and mind, body and sensory awareness. This can be understood as conscious unreality,
• the deep sleep state of awareness, sushupti, in which there is no “I” (individual consciousness, and no sensory awareness. It can be understood as unconscious reality.
• the transcendent state, turya. It is a detached, disengaged, witnessing mode of awareness of conscious reality, transcending the other three states, and glimpsing the non-dual, collective consciousness level of awareness. It is so obvious and simple, that the grasping of it, obscures it. Never found, never lost, never knowable, it is the consummate absence that is beyond measure.

Non-duality refers to the idea that there is no fundamental distinction or separation between the divine, the self, and the rest of existence. This perspective transcends dualities, such as subject-object, self-other, or sacred-profane. All there is is nothing apparently happening

On the face of it this is a simple but paradoxical proposal. It is also radical in that it recognises that the concept of self is illusory, together with any belief in free will and choice. As there is nothing happening, there would be nothing to seek or to become. And how can there be a meaning or a purpose in this apparent existence if there is nothing apparently happening? This proposal dispels any idea of there being a story or an agenda of any kind leading to anything better or worse. So, if there is nothing really happening, then the nothing that is unknowable, the absence, often feared, is also the very fullness and freedom that is longed for.

This dilemma is illuminated in a unique communication which makes no demands, has no expectations and does not cater in any way to the seeker’s need for answers, processes or a path to follow. It is an uncompromising message which can be both confronting and liberating. Life is not a task. There is absolutely nothing to attain except the realisation that there is absolutely nothing to attain.

Mind is a movement in consciousness. that generates duality.

In the boundless energy that is oneness there can also arise a contracted energy which brings about apparent self-awareness.

A powerful and convincing sense of self-identity seems to arise together with a belief in personal free will and choice in what is experienced as a real life story.

All of these personal experiences can only apparently arise in what seems to be a very real but dualistic reality in which everything appears to be separate. This sense of separation can bring with it a sense of loss and a need to seek guidance, an understanding or a path or process that can promise fulfilment. There are attempts to seek unity which are totally futile because the separate seeker is apparently the very dualism from which it is trying to escape.

Looking for being is believing that it is lost. Has anything been lost, or is it simply that the looking obscures? Does the beloved dance constantly just beyond our focus?

The whole personal investment in making spiritual progress, becoming more aware, more still, more open or more anything at all can simply unravel in this radical revelation. The whole perception of “the self” or “the world” it seems to live in, can be transformed and leave nothing to support the illusion of personal separation, control and continuation.

In yogic philosophy, the human mind can be categorised in four aspects, namely:
• the silo of memory, manas, which receives and stores impressions from the outside world.
• intellect, buddhi, which identifies forms
• identity, ahamkara, which associates and aligns itself with form
• feeling (chitta), which attaches us emotionally to form.

However, the major problem arises from an imbalance of these four aspects of the mind when we tend to filter everything through our intellect, memory, feeling and identity, while neglecting our awareness.

These four different, basic functions of the human mind, which have been described as quality, abstractness, complexity and usefulness, belonging to four dimensions, and can be understood respectively, as phenomenal, semantic, physiological, and functional.

It is almost impossible to separate any one of the aspects of thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting from another for they are inextricably joined in our body-mind. Focus can be internal or external, helpful or harmful. Externalising or the objectifying power in the mind, bahirmukha-vritti, leads to the mind being drawn towards objects,. Combining the types of focus with the ways we focus lead to four distinct states of mind, namely: autopilot, critical, thinking and engaged. Thinking and being engaged are helpful states of mind.

The mind (chitta) manifests in five different forms. These are known as the five yogic bhumikas. They are:

Kshipta rays of the mind scattered on various objects. It jumps from one object to another.

Mudha the mind is dull and forgetful

Vikshepa the gathering mind, occasionally steady and at times forgetful

Ekagra one pointed: only one idea is present

Niruddha the mind is under control.