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The mind's role in Truth
I love the word resonance; it conjures up the image of two tuning forks vibrating at exactly the same frequency to produce a single note. I think the truth is like that. We all have embedded deep within us the frequency of truth. We are affected by certain words or phrases that resonate with this frequency thereby allowing us to recognize it. But often the pointers don't always come from the same teaching or teachers and this can sometimes lead to a great deal of confusion when the mind steps in to try to thread them together into a nice tidy set of beliefs.
The biggest pitfall for me was the reconciliation with the relative and the absolute. Dr. Shankar, in one of his interviews mention a theortical physicist by the name of Julian Barbour. Julian Barbour has produced a documentary titled "Killing Time". In it he explains how time is a construct of the mind. (I know this is old news to many people on this site, but I had accepted this notion without ever really understanding it.) Many teachings emphasize how the mind has to be side-stepped to really get to the kernal of THIS, that for years I tried to shelve the mind mistakingly believing that the mind couldn't help me with this. The documentry "Killing Time" explains how since everything is constantly moving there can never be a true "now" and time is not something that exists prior to things and that we in fact use the changes in things to construct the notion of time. As I mentioned before, this isn't news to many on the site, but what it helped me understand was that since our brains ascribe a linear structure on to events that are happening simultaneously, we are producing our own Reality. Then my mind conjured up a memory, I taught young children for a few years and I remember how many of the kindergartens when given pictures of a sequence of events had a hard time placing them in order. Sequencing seems to be a learned behaviour. I tied this in with Eckhart Tolle's teaching of the Inner Body. He points to the benefits of anchoring one's attention in the "Now" by focusing on the sensation of Aliveness or Beingness. It helped me to arrive at the understanding that Life as we "think of it" is indeed a construct of the brain, but LIFE itself is anything but an illusion and the mind can play a pivotal role in discovering this.
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I still can`t chatch the right definition of light and sound, quite basilar to understand the whole stuff...
www.evolutionofmind.org/Evolution_of_Mind/Articles/Entries/2010/3/8_NonD...
www.evolutionofmind.org/Evolution_of_Mind/News/Entries/2009/10/25_Marcus...
Hi Anna,
Many thanks to you also for sharing your experiences on this site, I find people's experiences with THIS extremely helpful...
I see the brain as a kind of receiver and organizer of electrical impulses. There has been some fascinating research on how the left and right hemispheres of the brain receive and organize the electrical impulses or the "molecular soup" differently. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist gives her account of the stroke she experienced in her book "A Stroke of Insight" from a scientific and spirtual perspective. She experienced a hemmorhage on the left side of her brain and experienced for a short time a "right hemisphere perspective" of the world where she found that nothing was solid and the rational, pragmatic part of her personality seemed to recede and a feeling of connectedness and fluidity of life moved to the forefront. She is a scientist and by her account had never delved into spirtuality, nonduality or Avaita blah blah blah....
I don't think we can dismiss the brain's part in this. I think we are habituated to percieve and live life primarly from the left hemisphere of our brains, (this is also the language centre) and as a result we don't process and perceive the full picture. I know many people who are artists and they "see" the world differently. I'm not saying that all artists are right-brained, but many are. I think our brains are "evolving" towards a more balanced use of the right and left hemispheres to allow us to feel our connectedness. Of course this is a relative perspective.
The mind-- I somehow arrived at the erroneous belief that even though everything is changing, the mind somehow stays the same; That it is an unchanging entity. Francis Lucille, in one of stasangs points out that the mind is only there when perception takes place. So it renews itself upon every perception. So nothing,(other than Awareness) not even the mind has any staying power. This helped me understand that the ever fresh mind can "sophisticate" (although illusory), into witnessing LIFE. That is what I meant when I said the mind plays a pivotal role in this.
Hi Lucy
Now I understand what you meant with the pivotal role of mind vs the brain as merely physical entity.
I remember the case Bolte Taylor, really fascinating. It once again pointed to the great mystery of how the brain works.
We are speaking of consciousness and awarness but actually we haven`t the slightest clue of what it is. We can only watch and witness.
But I also do think that it is an evolution going on so that, as you too say, we become more and more conscious of ourselves and of the singularity of the moment in which Life is unfolding.
This just happens to us and witnessing that is quite a great thing.
Comment on Dr. Shankar’s meeting with scientist Julian Barbour in Oxford February 2010.
Quote: “Time, mind and individual would be needed for an action to exist. Movements evolved as time. It was the movement of the moon that evolved as time...“
“It was the movements of thoughts which evolved and sophisticated as the mind.“
“Movements evolved and sophisticated as time, mind and an individual.“
“Since time, mind and individual are illusory, the existence of an action is illusory and not real. An action is an optical illusion of a movement.“
Vijai Shankar in “Evolution of Mind“, 2010
Quote: “Intervals of time do not pre-exist but are created by what the universe does.“
“Time as an independent concept has no place in the foundations of physics.“
“The quantum universe is static. Nothing happens; there is being but no becoming. The flow of time and motion are illusions.“
Julian Barbour in the essay
“The Nature of Time“, 2008 (www.platonia.com)
From “inside“, in each one‘s direct experience, Dr. Shankar‘s pointers reveal the true nature of life by showing that the mind does not exist as a reality but as an illusion - which means: man is not the doer, speaker or thinker. What Dr. Shankar proclaims - beyond the shadow of a doubt is a herald of wisdom – which Barbour proves scientifically. Barbour as a scientist with sharp insights into life as it really is, investigates time with the accredited means of science, from “outside“ and comes to the same conclusions as Dr. Shankar comes through direct experience from “inside“.
May the witness behind the ego begin to watch life as light (whose singular movement does not happen in time but creates the deception of time) and sound (appearing as the mind pretending to be the conductor of light). What a beautiful play!
Thank you Lucy for your interesting topic.
And before I continue on my comment I would mention that since Dr Shankar made his appearance on NNH this site has become much more interesting and fun. So thank you Dr Shankar and all of you who are contributing with topics and comments!
It happend to me too that since I deeply felt the absence of time I began to live more authentically.
Interesting also about Julian Barbour, I checked his site kindly given by Marcus!
You used the words "brain" and "mind" meaning, if I understood you right, as the brain constructing a false image of life, while mind would be pivotal in discovering what Life could be,but I don`t understand this difference...
I`m glad that you used the word "brain", because I often have the feeling that when we speak e.g. about oneness, how we realize it or not or about no-mind etc. we are like playing hide and seek with science.
When science proves something, for instance the absence of free will, than science is supporting - otherwise it is ignored.
At present I`m reading Evolution of Mind and often I must stop reading,trying to understand Dr Shankar`s scientific terminologi. I still can`t chatch the right definition of light and sound, quite basilar to understand the whole stuff...
Anna