Follow-up from Vigneshwar: Dear Floyd, With all sincerity I am reading your replies. Gratitude fills my heart. I understand now that when all the things that are somehow or other connected to the \"I\" are discarded, there is nothing else wanted. All that this consiousness seems to have offered, has got its base in the \"I\". And when this \"I\" is seen for what it is - unreal, purely fictional, then all its associated \"mind\",\"worries\", \"troubles\", \"problems of life\" are simply discarded as it is. Then what remains is simply beyond words. But the game seems to be interesting only when the firmness of this knowledge is present. There is a little fear of losing whatever is learnt here, when we interact with the world. As long as this fear remains, I understand that its not final. But this seems to call for some exercise of the mind after all. Why is there such a need to reason out the mind created all the time?
F.: Within two days, Vigneshwar, these discussions in response to your e-mails will end. You (and the other site visitors who can relate to the topic) will be invited to stop discussing, to avoid seeking any further input for a time, and to start considering earnestly, in quiet solitude, these pointers. Now, to continue: your e-mail above shows that you have missed the main pointer regarding the “mind.” You cannot “reason out the mind.” Reasonable conduct is rooted in the brain’s natural functionings; unreasonable conduct is rooted in the “mind’s” motives. “Reason” and “mind” (contrary to widespread beliefs) are mutually exclusive, just as “peace” and “mind” cannot co-exist, (also contrary to widely-held beliefs.) Thus you can’t “reason out the mind.”
“They” (your programmers and conditioners) created a problem for you, but now you are the one who is embracing the problem. A question about trying to make the mind reasonable reveals that you continue to value your mind, that you want to cling to it, that you want to hang onto that collection of beliefs and lies that your “mind” is, and that you think that if you can work hard enough, you’ll be able to improve it enough so that it will be worth keeping instead of actually being rid of it once and for all. The sane toss out all of the garbage in their homes. You merely want to clean up your garbage so that you can keep it in your home rather than discarding it all completely. As site visitor Sim in Kentucky read these postings on Friday, he struggled with the same notion (just as you are struggling to preserve the “mind” rather than being free of it entirely), so he wrote:
Would you say that you have no mind, that you have control over your mind, or that you ignore your mind?
The reply: If you were driving through Arizona and you noticed on the highway directly in front of you what is called “a mirage,” would you say that you have control over the mirage, that you're going to ignore the mirage and act it is not even being perceived, or that the mirage being perceived is actually not real?
Obviously, a mirage cannot be controlled. It is also obvious that a mirage that seems to be appearing in the road directly ahead of you cannot be ignored. That mirage will not disappear simply because you tell it to disappear; nor will you succeed at pretending that the optical illusion is not there. So it is with “the mind.” Billions of persons on the planet suffer from the incessant mind clutter—that chattering of a thousand monkeys that the “mind” generates and which results in “the aching” you mentioned. If persons could simply choose to ignore the mind, wouldn’t they do that? But it cannot be done. Others want to “control” their thoughts. If it is suggested that you not think about an elephant, an elephant immediately “comes to mind.” To think about getting rid of a thought only guarantees that the thought will remain. Your ego defense mechanisms are all being called to arms in order to convince you to protect the “mind.” Ego’s goal is to sustain all of your illusions (a gathered known as "your mind") because that is the home of all of the ego-states that you are accepting as identities. Your ego is using every trick in the book to encourage you to ignore the pointer being offered that the “mind” must go. Again, why must it go?
Your ego wants you to believe that you can gain control and power if you can just overhaul your “mind”; to the contrary, it is the “mind” that removes all ability for you to control anything, including what you think, feel, do, say, emote, ad infinitum. So much for the first two options in Sim’s e-mail. That only leaves the third option: “Would you say that you have no mind?” Of course. Isn’t that the pointer that has been offered via so many of the 500 postings on this site?
The Advaitan poet said in Romeo and Juliet, “Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, and where care lodges, sleep will never lie; but when unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.”
Meaning? If you’re old, old enough to have been around long enough to be programmed and conditioned with the insanity that is so prevalent in most cultures, then you will have developed personas that care. The Advaitan question is, WHO cares?” That is an invitation to be freed from cares by seeing that it is always some illusory ego-state that is caring if a care exists. The poet notes that if cares are present, peace/rest (sleep) will not happen. Unbruised youth are either (A) those who are so young that they have not yet been programmed with the lies of the culture or (B) those whose brains (actually "minds") have been unstuff’d. That is, ideas and lies and concepts had been stuffed into them, but they have subsequently been unstuff’d. That means that the consciousness has been re-purified because all that stuff that had been fed into them has been removed/discarded. And what is the result of being unstuff’d? Golden sleep reigns. That is, the perfect peace of deep sleep manifests, whether physically asleep or totally awake and merely witnessing the happenings of an AS IF existence. You’ve been bruised because you’ve been stuffed full of false ideas, magical concepts, mythical nonsense, and metaphysical teachings that amount to nothing more than learned ignorance. To question what you’ve been taught, to see that it’s all nonsense, to see the price that you’re paying by honoring your "mind" and thereby honoring lies, and to see the toll being exacted by honoring ego (which is driving you to value the fictitious content of the “mind”) can begin the process of being free of that debilitating content, once and for all. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
F.: Within two days, Vigneshwar, these discussions in response to your e-mails will end. You (and the other site visitors who can relate to the topic) will be invited to stop discussing, to avoid seeking any further input for a time, and to start considering earnestly, in quiet solitude, these pointers. Now, to continue: your e-mail above shows that you have missed the main pointer regarding the “mind.” You cannot “reason out the mind.” Reasonable conduct is rooted in the brain’s natural functionings; unreasonable conduct is rooted in the “mind’s” motives. “Reason” and “mind” (contrary to widespread beliefs) are mutually exclusive, just as “peace” and “mind” cannot co-exist, (also contrary to widely-held beliefs.) Thus you can’t “reason out the mind.”
“They” (your programmers and conditioners) created a problem for you, but now you are the one who is embracing the problem. A question about trying to make the mind reasonable reveals that you continue to value your mind, that you want to cling to it, that you want to hang onto that collection of beliefs and lies that your “mind” is, and that you think that if you can work hard enough, you’ll be able to improve it enough so that it will be worth keeping instead of actually being rid of it once and for all. The sane toss out all of the garbage in their homes. You merely want to clean up your garbage so that you can keep it in your home rather than discarding it all completely. As site visitor Sim in Kentucky read these postings on Friday, he struggled with the same notion (just as you are struggling to preserve the “mind” rather than being free of it entirely), so he wrote:
Would you say that you have no mind, that you have control over your mind, or that you ignore your mind?
The reply: If you were driving through Arizona and you noticed on the highway directly in front of you what is called “a mirage,” would you say that you have control over the mirage, that you're going to ignore the mirage and act it is not even being perceived, or that the mirage being perceived is actually not real?
Obviously, a mirage cannot be controlled. It is also obvious that a mirage that seems to be appearing in the road directly ahead of you cannot be ignored. That mirage will not disappear simply because you tell it to disappear; nor will you succeed at pretending that the optical illusion is not there. So it is with “the mind.” Billions of persons on the planet suffer from the incessant mind clutter—that chattering of a thousand monkeys that the “mind” generates and which results in “the aching” you mentioned. If persons could simply choose to ignore the mind, wouldn’t they do that? But it cannot be done. Others want to “control” their thoughts. If it is suggested that you not think about an elephant, an elephant immediately “comes to mind.” To think about getting rid of a thought only guarantees that the thought will remain. Your ego defense mechanisms are all being called to arms in order to convince you to protect the “mind.” Ego’s goal is to sustain all of your illusions (a gathered known as "your mind") because that is the home of all of the ego-states that you are accepting as identities. Your ego is using every trick in the book to encourage you to ignore the pointer being offered that the “mind” must go. Again, why must it go?
Your ego wants you to believe that you can gain control and power if you can just overhaul your “mind”; to the contrary, it is the “mind” that removes all ability for you to control anything, including what you think, feel, do, say, emote, ad infinitum. So much for the first two options in Sim’s e-mail. That only leaves the third option: “Would you say that you have no mind?” Of course. Isn’t that the pointer that has been offered via so many of the 500 postings on this site?
The Advaitan poet said in Romeo and Juliet, “Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, and where care lodges, sleep will never lie; but when unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.”
Meaning? If you’re old, old enough to have been around long enough to be programmed and conditioned with the insanity that is so prevalent in most cultures, then you will have developed personas that care. The Advaitan question is, WHO cares?” That is an invitation to be freed from cares by seeing that it is always some illusory ego-state that is caring if a care exists. The poet notes that if cares are present, peace/rest (sleep) will not happen. Unbruised youth are either (A) those who are so young that they have not yet been programmed with the lies of the culture or (B) those whose brains (actually "minds") have been unstuff’d. That is, ideas and lies and concepts had been stuffed into them, but they have subsequently been unstuff’d. That means that the consciousness has been re-purified because all that stuff that had been fed into them has been removed/discarded. And what is the result of being unstuff’d? Golden sleep reigns. That is, the perfect peace of deep sleep manifests, whether physically asleep or totally awake and merely witnessing the happenings of an AS IF existence. You’ve been bruised because you’ve been stuffed full of false ideas, magical concepts, mythical nonsense, and metaphysical teachings that amount to nothing more than learned ignorance. To question what you’ve been taught, to see that it’s all nonsense, to see the price that you’re paying by honoring your "mind" and thereby honoring lies, and to see the toll being exacted by honoring ego (which is driving you to value the fictitious content of the “mind”) can begin the process of being free of that debilitating content, once and for all. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
