The Mind - Real or Illusion?

Spirituality
#1

[QUOTE=Bentinho Massaro;22711]
[B]We can choose not to believe in what we say to ourselves internally[/B]! Let is just all play out. let the monkey mind play its games, we do not have to change or alter any of it, for that would only give it illusory power of being something real or important. Instead we leave it alone altogether. We do not suppress it either because that would again indicate that the monkey-mind has power or substance of its own, but it has none. It has no importance or value…
[/QUOTE]

Maybe its just me, but isn’t there a whole world of stuff out there that suggests that the mind is absolutely real and of enormous value? Doesn’t this violate the first principle of yoga, i.e.; yoga citta vrtti nirodha. In my study of yoga philosophy, I don’t recall any discussion of the mind not being real, and my personal experience seems to validate that. Anyone have an opinion? If you don’t care to comment, just cast a vote.

#2

Correction to previous post: My personal experience seems to validate that the internal workings of the mind have real effects in the world outside, but only if we give them a voice, so to speak. And we give them more than just a voice. We give them arms and legs and hands and feet, and other things too.

#3

Hey Asuri,

When I say it has no importance or value, I do not mean that it doesn’t exist. The mind has two aspects to it, although both aspects are inseparably one and intrinsic in and as one another, there could be said to be two aspects. These two aspects are what we could call: 1: Forms/Phenomena, and 2: The basis/awareness. But! both are still one and the same. It is the basis which forms everything out of, and within, itself.

When our experience shifts to that of awareness, we will let go of trying to define the extremes. What I mean by this is that we find that we cannot really say that the world exists, nor can we say that it does not exist. It both exists and does not exist, and it also does not both exist and does not not exist.

Take our dreams for example, when we dream at night, would you cal these dreams real or unreal? There is no point in making any such conclusion right? it’s just there, yet it is not really there in the sense that we might belief in these forms/phenomena.

So in my experience I have to say the mind is both real and unreal, and yet it is neither of these definitions. The mind’s basis includes all these definitions and all that exists (or doesn’t exist).

To try and grasp or understand this with the intellect, to try and come to a definitive conclusion about it by thinking about it and comparing experiences is a futile endeavor, no matter how well-intended it may be. The biggest paradoxes of life, like opposites being one and the same to name an example, is only understood and experienced by relaxing our perception as it is, open and at ease. Again and again until it stabilizes itself as our primary vision/state of being. This way, all will become clear, even that which can never be cleared up will be clear in your own experience/understanding.

Love,
B.

#4

Maybe its just me, but isn’t there a whole world of stuff out there that suggests that the mind is absolutely real and of enormous value?

Yes but when we speak about the mind, we must be open to the fact that everything we see as ‘out there’, [I]is[/I] the mind. All ‘external’ resources and the mind itself are not two. So how valid and real is everything ‘out there’ if it is just another appearance of mind within awareness?

#5

What is real ? What is illusory ? What is mind ? What is the outer world ?

Let me try to expand an answer.

Real is what it appears to be what it really is. :slight_smile:
Illusory is what only appears to be something, but in reality it is just a misperception of something else. :slight_smile:
What is the mind ? What is the outer world? … these ar tougher ones.

Let’s take the outer world. Is it real ? I am sitting on this chair. It is made of wood. I see it’s color, shape, I touch it’s surface, hear how it screeches when I sit on it. I am immersed into an abundence of sensorial input. But … how is that the picture reflected in my eye is transformed into the idea and thought of the chair in my brain ? Do we realize that our ordinary preception is based on a lot of automatic and subconscious procesess ? It is clear that we are not conscious about how our sense organs work, they just operate automatically, like complex bio-chemical mechanisms. What happens in the brain ? How a picture, what has for long ceased to be a picture and it is probably some kind of data transmitted by neurons, becomes the idea of the chair in our mind ? If we think this way, we must realize that our sense organs and even our brain still belong to the ourter world, in the sense that they are ruled by the laws of the outer world, they are built for the experience of the outer world. Than what makes a human being have a consciousness instead of being an automat ? What makes me remember myself and the outer world ? Think of this: we lose self consciousness while we are sleeping. For us, when we are sleeping, the outer world ceases to exist. The only reason we percieve it as existing is because next morning, coming back to our senses, we find it to be there again, and we recognize it to be the same. Or slightly changed, yet we are able to recognize the changes because we have the memory of the former state. Indeed, we must say, the existence of the outer world is linked to our ability to remember. If we had not this ability the world would appear every day like it appears to a newborn. But what is this ability ro remember ?

We need to realize that our clear perception of the outer world is the result of our growth process. The newborn does not see clearly, does not percieve spatiality, and even if he/she has sensorial expereinces they are meaningless/frightening, except for those what have been expereinced in the womb. (body rythms, sounds, voice fo the mother and so on)
We grow into this world, and it is quite a long process, until the child is able to speak in first person, talk using sentences, develops the ability to remember. It takes about three years.

Can we honestly say that what we call our mind has been there before this early age ?
We must admit that we have few memories before the time we were first able to say, I am. Before that, like we were sleeping. We do not even have the sense of continuity of our existence, just like while sleeping.

Now, that what we call mind and outer world are presented in this fashion, we must ask: how can we research them, not superficially, but in depth, with their links to the human being ? Do we accept the limits of our clear consciousness and self, these being our waking state and that of life between the age of three and up to our death ? If not, than we must say that perception of the outer world, and it’s mental representation are just of a relative reality.
The yogis say, if something did not exist before, and ceases to exist at a certain time, than that something has not been really existing between these two ends … but it has been an appeareance, an illusion. Meaning that it’s reality is relative. It is the result of something else, what we do not see. So, if we want to give meaning to our existence beyond it’s changing nature between birth and death, we need to accept that it is but manifestation of something we are unable to percieve. If we do not accept this, than we must accept that our very existence is unreal togheter with that of the world.

To arrive to better knowledge in this field the higher stages of meditation needs to be practiced. Pratyahara, dharana, dhyana. What makes these stages hard is that they are counterintuitive for a sensorial mind. They use and develop abilites what we rarely use in our everyday lives. In a way, the yogi needs to put himself into a state before the age of three shutting out all learnt knowledge, all subconscious conditionings, and developing the strenght of remembrence what is able to go to a “higher” level of existence, that existence of what this world we know is but a manifestation.

#6

Hey Hubert, interesting post!

The yogis say, if something did not exist before, and ceases to exist at a certain time, than that something has not been really existing between these two ends … but it has been an appeareance, an illusion. Meaning that it’s reality is relative. It is the result of something else, what we do not see.

I just want to remind us that [I]every single perception[/I] falls into this category. Planets, minds, beings, the universe(s) all belong to that category of being an appearance of something that is beyond, yet includes all these appearances. I am just saying this to remind ourselves that we need not to go and figure out the difference between permanent things, or real things, and illusory things. For all is a transitory appearance of consciousness. To try and define in further detail what’s real and what not will keep our perception ‘closed’ in a sense and this keeps the very obvious and simple truth of awareness hidden from our experience.

To arrive to better knowledge in this field the higher stages of meditation needs to be practiced. Pratyahara, dharana, dhyana. What makes these stages hard is that they are counterintuitive for a sensorial mind. They use and develop abilites what we rarely use in our everyday lives. In a way, the yogi needs to put himself into a state before the age of three shutting out all learnt knowledge, all subconscious conditionings, and developing the strenght of remembrence what is able to go to a “higher” level of existence, that existence of what this world we know is but a manifestation.

[U]If this is what we start to do:[/U] exclude certain sensations and try to enter a state of exculsivity from disturbance and distortion in order to attain clear perception, what we are doing is creating a mental state of fake-serenity and wisdom. This is not true freedom for it depends on certain states being there and certain states not being there. The ‘wisdom’ and somewhat ‘clearer’ -appearing perceptions we might have while in such a state, are still very feeble and limited compared to the clarity that comes from simply relaxing as you are again and again. Opening up your perception for just a moment to the openness in which all appearances and phenomena occur. [I]Again and again.[/I]

So as you may have anticipated I would not suggest anyone any sort of practice that involves getting rid of, or excluding certain perceptions and not others, for the simple reason that when we do this we prove ourselves to continue being blind to the truth that all is just an appearance of that one source you spoke and quoted about. When we enter this process of exclusion which is indeed counter-intuitive - and for a reason - we try to isolate truth or awareness out from everything else. All wisdom that comes from that is cultivated wisdom, false truth, because it beliefs in truth being a state free from everything, while truth in reality is free [I]as, throughout and within[/I] everything. There has never been anything not-free or obstructing awareness. that’s only what seems to be the case in our thinking and analyzing the appearances of the world. There is no differentiation or division needed to realize the simple yet deeply profound truth of being.

When deciding mentally that we shall enter such and such path of performing this and such mental processes, we are merely being closed up again to the simple openness of truth that’s right here. Thus we continue our cycle of appointing values to the appearances as if they mean or imply any action of any kind, whether internal, external, physical or mental. We start to belief we need to cut our way through this forest that is bliding us from seeing the open grasslands. But we only need to recognize that all trees are rooted in that very grassland we are searching for. There is no tree out there that exists in and of itself that has a meaning or implication of itself. In fact they themselves are at one with the open grassland. Openness and non-openness are both appearances/perceptions within openness.

[U]In order to fully realize this in our own experience;[/U] we need not enter any mental process of differentiating between all the appearnces (including states of mind which are also just appearances of freedom, no matter how true in their own nature they might feel or seem). Instead we can leave all appearances alone completely, as they are. We simply rest as we are again and again, letting the mind, whether appearing internal or external, as it is, without putting much faith or belief in any single one of them, painful or pleasurable. We simply stop our belief in them meaning anything and thus we start to experience short moments of relaxing as the open nature that we are.

This is all that’s needed. From these initial moments grows infinite wisdom and peace naturally. How could it not be natural, after all, it is what we are already and it is what we have always been. Just be consistent about seeing through all belief in the value or meaning of the individual states and appearances. Simply let alone these appearances as they are again and again, regardless of the seeming urgency or intensity of the situation. Rest as you are, agian and again and you will see before long that all states of mind cultivated by mental practices, are merely cultivated, altered states of appearances. They are simply displayed within that same awareness just like every disturbing every-day life state we go through. They are the same.

In seeing this we will be free from trying to achieve or cultivate something… [I]“in order to reach ourselves”.[/I] Simply because we clearly see that we are ourselves no matter what we do or go through. We realize everything to be an appearance of this ground that we are. Therefore nothing needs to be altered or included or excluded to reach any sort of state of clarity. All is already included within clarity, without exception whatsoever.

It’s as simple as relaxing our perception into the openness of the present moment, again and again. It’s simple! :slight_smile: It’s only our thoughts about this that seem complex or not in line with our taught spiritual structure and points of reference. But that doesn’t make it complicated or ‘hard to reach’ in actuality.

Love,
B.