Here's a common schema for the whole of existence. It puts all the mental things like thoughts and senses together with Myself and Other People into a physical and Spiritual world.
Given how we deal with all these things every day you would think we had a solid idea about all this. But this diagram is a complete mess. There is obviously not a split between a physical and spiritual world. How does the "me" for example have access to all those things like senses and thoughts equally? Is it like a gas that permeates the brain in order to see what is going on, and what would be the point of that? Doesn't the brain know what is going and function quite happily without a "me" hanging around and micro managing? How how does the "me" get to see and think and feel all the things of this body and no other body? How can I think something in private so that no one else knows I thought it? The "me" seems stuck inside the body and the mind and yet it is not the body and the mind. It is not far from the feelings cos it knows we we are feeling, but it is not itself a feeling, It is like it is "in" the feelings. But its also "in" the senses at the same time and the thoughts. None of this diagram really makes any sense.
So "Science" teaches is that everything is made of "atoms." But what is this pronouncement? Is it made of "atoms" (this is via SRH)? Not everything is made of atoms. A thought is not made of atoms. When some asks us what are we thinking we have a distinct thought ort stream of thoughts. They exist and yet they are not made of atoms. In fact "atoms" is an idea and a thought! It would be more accurate to say all things are made of thoughts in fact. So we get a bit into philosophy but the extremely common schema here is that senses give us sense data like what we see and what we hear which are quite separate. And then they are brought together and analysed to give us a commentary on what we are sensing like SubTitles for the senses. This can even be spoken by a voice in our head for a kind of virtual audio subtitles. When we see a type of flower it can take us a few seconds or perhaps longer to give it a name. For more common things like a chair this is to quick we don't notice it. But it does take time to go from "seeing" a chair to "knowing" there is a chair there. So in fact most of our world exists in the realm of thoughts. That is now a new thought! What is the highest mountain? Well unless we are looking at it or walking it the answer "Mount Everest" is just a thought. If we are also experiencing it by being there then we get senses as well, but these are different from the thoughts. From the diagram above there are some other things. Emotional Feelings, like the name suggests, are actually a bit like senses. And actually in the East all this mental stuff goes in the same basket of Mind. We can add imagination and dreaming (both day and night) to that. Like the subtitles we can give ourselves "cut aways" to re-experience or fantasise about things that are not happening but we can imagine what it would be like if they were: a kind of simulation. What is most notable is the language of media and film like "cutaway", "subtitle", "voiceover" or "narration" are actually all based upon our experience of the world and how the brain does things. Hearing someone talking over a video or film is not so weird cos that is how we experience the world with our own voice coming in on occasions.
So why the big exposition of the Mind. well the question now is where is the "Me"? It's obviously not in the physical world so we stick it in another world the "spiritual" world that also has the souls of other people in it. Now there is some sense to the "spiritual" world. It makes sense of how people can seemingly communicate across wide areas of space and know what they are feeling. I had this with my muse. I knew she was in danger twice despite not having spoken to her or any one who knew her for over 3 years and being separated by 100 miles. Once is coincidence, Twice seems harder to explain. But you hear this again and again from people. And you hear of people being contacted by people who have died. This is harder to prove. But I had a dream of someone who gave me information I did not know and later discovered to be true. Okay maybe I did know and had forgotten or was just luck. Hard to prove. But it seems to happen too often for it to be entirely coincidence. It fits the idea of a separate world.
And yet this is messy. Lets clear it up a bit.
Surely the "me" is really part of the same space that contains all the other things like thoughts and feelings?
We decided that the "physical" world is not really separate. "Mount Everest" is a thought. When we are standing on it then it is also sensed.
So now the great philosophical question, "what is the sound of a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it?"
Well obviously this very question is a thought. And this is where the profound switch needs to happen.
If we get ultra strict here and watch everything that is going on all we ever do is switch from senses to thoughts to feelings to imagination and around and around.
Okay now my protagonist is going to struggle with this and try to get away from this conclusion.
Load of nonsense. Mount Everest is standing there in the Himalayas right now, causing a rain shadow that stops rain getting to the Gobi Desert in China. People there know all about Mount Everest even thought they may never have seen it because it stops their rain. In fact here is a webcam of Mount Everest to prove it exists all the time regardless my brain state.
But we are being strict now. No wholly thinking and drifting around. Is there anything here that is not thought and senses?
When we complain that Mount Everest is a solid permanent objective object that exists separate from everything else, we are actually just creating an idea. I have argued this before in the blog. Real Mount Everest is just a pile of rocks and nothing else. There is nothing "Mount Everest" like about any of it. If someone brings a rock back you would never know where it was from, unless you were a very experienced geologist who had other "Mount Everest" rocks to compare it with. True he could deduce a load from that, like the person had just been to Nepal or got it from someone who had. But all this is thoughts.
Its important to be strict here and not add anything unnecessary. If we think it then its a thought. If we see it then its a sense. Anything else we don't know about.
So this brings into clear focus a very important thing called "Mind." This is different from all the thoughts and stuff. This is like the space in which all these things happen.
Now things start to make sense. The above diagram becomes this:
Now how simple is this! When we meditate this is what we find. Breathing Meditation achieves this my getting us to go into the "Senses" realm in particular the sensation of the breath as it is right now. In so doing we are drawn away from the dominating world of thoughts to explore another part of MIND. MIND is boundless space and contains all these things, but we tend to get dragged into various realms especially thoughts and get confused.
But one question remains. Where is "me" now?
Can we guess?
The great temptation is to say ah great "I am MIND." I am the great box around everything this is how I am conscious of everything. The fact "I can see" and "I can think" and "I can feel" means "I am the space" in which all this is unfolding! Wow I am a Cosmic Being. Awesome. Go me!
And that is exactly the problem of Ego. Whatever happens and whatever we realise we will just own it and "make it all about me" to use a contemporary phrase.
No "me" get ready for the big disappoint. MIND does not need you. MIND manifests all these things by itself. Sights and Sounds and Thoughts and Feelings happen all by themselves and manifest all by themselves. They don't need you at all.
Ego crisis! So what am I being sacked? Is my own Life and Mind getting rid of me?
Even that crisis is just an Ego manufacture. You were never that important in the first place so nothing to get rid of!
Ego turns out to belong among the Thoughts.
The great transition that happens is letting go of the contents of the MIND and freeing them to just exist in the MIND. Up until now we have put them on a ball and chain and tied them down to me. "My thoughts", "My experiences", "My feelings." But actually they were always just "thoughts", "experiences", "feelings." And it was this confusion about the arrangement of things that led to us just to think we needed to grasp everything and hold it tight to make it all stick together into a single thing. It was always just thoughts and confusions.
So now breathing meditation becomes even more profound because it was never just absorbing into the felt sense of the breath happening, but in so doing we are being drawn away from the desperate sense that we need to hold everything together like an out of control parent fearing their children are escaping them.
For comparison in Mindfulness Meditation we are going the other way, not being drawn anywhere, but instead dropping all things to gradually awaken to the non-preferential MIND that care not for this way or that way.
So there it is a much better schema of the world and everything that is in it.
Probably the bit that is struggling here is the question where have all the people gone? Where have I gone. The thing to note is nothing has changed. Nothing added and nothing taken away. It should look like the same world as before. All that has happened is it's been tidied up and assigned to new filing cabinets. "Me" and "Other People" are still there but we see clearly that there is no driving seat. That is the bit that takes time to sink in.
Another question might be, is this just "my" schema and does each person have their own? This is the centre of the misunderstanding above. This schema has no one around it on the outside to own it, it belongs to no one. "Me" and "Other People" belong to the MIND not the other way around. "Me" and "Other People" are just occasional thoughts we may have, they do not have a permanent central place anywhere. MIND is much greater than the mental activity that we see happening like these questions.
Yet the thought still persists that the "Me" in there is ME, a very special person not like other people and so the whole schema must be for "Me" which mean everyone has a different schema. This is the radical shift needed to rethink all this and perhaps meditation is the only way to actually access this.
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