Our True Nature

Subtlety Beyond the Mind

The mind's inexhaustible appetite for answers and explanations is not going to be satisfied.

There is nothing that says a Movement of Consciousness is always represented in thought. There is nothing that says you will mentally know (meaning in words, thoughts and concepts) what is going on.

As the Buddha stated -

"Our theories of the eternal are as valuable as those which a chick, that has not broken its way through its shell, might form of the outside world. "

The mind is dualistic and it divides and divides. The mind comes up with a dualistic version in which integral parts of the whole are conceptually isolated and then refers to those 'bits' as if they had a separate existence.

An example of this is seeing. The actuality of seeing is the SEE-ing itself - which is an action or a movement - a verb. The mind divides the SEEing into the observer and the observed, neither of which exist. They are pure abstractions. So now we have a mind-generated name for something that is ostensibly separate but actually does not exist.

Ramana Maharshi fended off questions about the "various natures" of the ego, saying that they did not exist as such. Ramana went on to say that the so-called "various natures" only came about for the purpose of analytical discourse. A nice way of saying 'mind stuff'. Nice one, Ramana.

The mind is LIMITED in it's capacity. It cannot handle the formless, the no-thing. It is not surprising that it cannot know what is going on at a level deeper than thought.. The mind operates in the pairs of opposites - that is is dualism - so it cannot 'grasp' the non dual.

Thoughts are just thoughts. They occur. We do not choose them.

Any words used by the mind are 'not it'. The word is not the thing. The description is not the described. Words cannot encapsulate the Truth. Words, thoughts and concepts are objects in Awareness.

The recognition of who we are is not done by the senses. It cannot be - the physical senses pick up objects in Consciousness but cannot pick up or detect Consciousness itself.

The actual re-cognition of our true nature occurs at a level deeper than thought and it often takes the mind quite a while to figure even a small part of it out. Most of it does not get figured out at all. The mind notices that 'things are different somehow'.

What we pick up through the physical senses are feelings (energies and movements) and thoughts (which are just objects) - all of them in the field of Awareness. But through that we often get enough data to figure out at least some part of what is happening. What has happened is in the past, but when it did happen it did not involve thought. It was deeper than that.

What we pick up at a mental level is just a small amount of what is actually happening - the tip of the iceberg. We only get to see the objectified part.

Then at a mind level it becomes conceptual, dualistic, based on separation and as such its version is 'not it'. This is why lengthy talk about Oneness and the Vastness of it all and how Perfect everything is doesn't do a thing for me at all.

I can give you an example of this. When I was in Melbourne with Bob Adamson my seeking suddenly finished but it took me a week or so to realise that at a thought level. Even now there is no mental explanation of what actually happened. Have I had all my questions answered - no actually - the questions just dissolved, to use Eckhart's expression. Where did they go ? It was just as if the rug had been pulled out from underneath. What occurred was entirely subterranean, in a way, but there was a surface part too - the belated mental noticing.

Adyashanti talked of looking backwards from a boat and seeing the wake left by the boat. Consciousness moves, but the mental version, the in-words version of it may not occur. So looking back at your recent life, like the 'wake' of a boat, can give some indication of where it is going, or at least where it is heading.

The mental part is always after the fact and is not leading the way. It is the tag-along crew that only 'gets' a small part of the picture and other than that is quite bewildered.

This is not to say that the mind is useless - it is not. It just happens to be the only tool that we have got. Ramana Maharshi talked about getting a thorn in your hand - so you break off another thorn and dig out the first one - then throw both of them away. The use of the mind is like that. Just a tool.

This applies to the Inquiry itself. "Is there really a 'me' there?" is a thought. And you look - and find nothing.

In that SEEing there is the non conceptual. This is not of the mind and it is non - dualistic. Krishnamurti described it as the "Flame of Attention". The POWER is in the SEE-ing.

Then the mind comes in after the SEE-ing and identifies with that and says "I did not find anything". Nothing wrong with that.

The mind's 'take' is always after the actual, after the occurrence, after the show - after the Movement of Awareness / Consciousness itself.

The mind's 'take' or version is 'not it'!

Even if we end up with a mental answer - do we then 'believe' in that?

It is not it!

Yes - Consciousness is Subtle. Really subtle!

The Buddha

(source http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/awakening101/avyaakata.html )

Avyaakata, the 'indeterminate questions' are given as ten in number:

('Indeterminate questions' means these questions are set aside - not answered - as any answer takes one away from the truth and not towards it.)

1. Whether the world is eternal
2. or not eternal
3. Whether the world is finite
4. or infinite
5. Whether the soul and body are identical
6. or different
7. Whether the enlightened one exists after death,
8. or does not exist after death,
9. or both exists and does not exist after death,
10. or neither exists nor does not exist after death

Written by Mike Graham, 19 Jan 2008, last edited 17 Feb 2008