THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES OF MEDITATION
LESSON 2: MENTAL SPACE
CHAPTER 2: LESSON 2: MENTAL SPACE
The human mind is a wondrous invention of nature. With 100 trillion neural connections, its complexity competes with that of the universe itself. The entire universe only houses 100 billion stars for comparison. For this reason, the mind’s power is said to be untapped and in its relative infinity await the secrets of human potential.
Yet, the scope of its influence over us and our lives is often underestimated and very few ever seriously ask if they are actually in control of their lives or not. The art of meditating is the art of self-control. Once the practice becomes a habit and familiarity with the experience of self-control builds it will be easy to appreciate meditating as an act of rebellion against the automated and unconscious self. When pursuing our own autonomy it’s prudent to know where we lose our own authority and what is taking it away. When we do, we discover we are ignorant of the reasons why we do the things we do, like the things we like, and dislike the things we dislike. We simply go with the suggestions of our inner voice and assume there is a plausible reason. The same way we trust Google Maps to take us where we need to go, we trust our minds - the shadow monarch - to lead us forward into our future choice after choice. Sometimes it leads us well, often actually, but we do so under its authority. Even when we hesitate between different options, in the end, when the choice is made, good or bad, it was decided for us through the whip of thought.
The lesson of Mental Space involves nurturing a healthy skepticism of the mind. As we disassociate from its influence an unprecedented sense of sincerity emerges. The term in Sanskrit is Moksha. It is not easy because the mind is sticky and our subservience is familiar. Moksha means liberation, specifically from the mind. By rejecting the mind’s influence we become a Jivanmukti, a liberated being. The yogis interpreted the mind as if it were a psychological landscape. This landscape is common to all of us. The closer you get to your deepest center, which is the summit of this mountain meditation aims to lead us to, the more sincere we become. To sit at the top of the mountain is to sit in unprecedented honesty with ourselves, intentionally non-reactive. At that point, however, the mind has been completely abandoned. It’s thoughts, memories, fantasies, beliefs, and stores of knowledge are like the cities at the bottom of the mountain slopes. When meditating, the city of the mind, its world of ambition and judgment, and its many personas can be seen, but they are far away. The distance makes it all far less significant.
Understanding the experiential nature of the mind is paramount to letting it go, so it’s worth discussing. Those 100 trillion neural connections swirl with countless thoughts, signals, and commands every second. When someone meditates they are often overwhelmed at the number of thoughts buzzing in their head. It is a cerebral tempest of data and its movement creates a sort of psychological gravity. As it swirls with thoughts it pulls our awareness into it, like a paper boat in a whirlpool. In the rip current, we become our thoughts, our paper edges dissolving. Whether they are positive or negative, their assumptions and reactions are ours and we agree with them fanatically. This is happening continuously. The whirlpool of the mind pulled us in a long time ago and we have never gotten out.
By 4 months a toddler will ponder its reflection and in some primordial language ask itself, “Who is this? Is that me?” The mind at that point begins its life long quest of resolving that daunting question. At 18 months a child begins to see itself as autonomous. It begins to identify with the voice of a growing identity in its head. From that moment on, the mind will never let go of the identity it has assumed and we, for the most part, will spend the rest of our lives living through that identity, obeying the mind that created it, and forgetting what we were before we were entranced 36 months into our story.
Yogis believe what we really are is the consciousness that perceives the world and the identity it “wears” to interact with it. The true self has no physical features and no personal motivation. It simply observes as a disembodied sense of witnessing. Turns out, that “mode” or pattern of nueral activity, because that is what it is, is beneficial to our physical and psychological health. All the researched benefits of meditation depend on the witness self’s gained independence from the mind. It is pure poetry, and how it reflects the circumstnces of our socio-political history is not surprising because the world and the systems we've designed were built outwardly from a collective mind, through the individual, into the physical - so the story goes.
The will to disassociate from our minds is a quietly frightening endeavor and the ability to believe we are not the identity we think of as ourselves is bizarre. If we can muster up the imagination and wonder to renounce our unconsciousness, the next question worth asking is why spend the time disassociating from our minds. There are two answers. One focuses on reducing suffering by seeing life beyond the inaccuracy of the intellect and the other focuses on coming to terms with life’s great mysteries.
Whatever level of suffering exists in any ones life, the yogis firmly believe it is the misperception of the mind, specifically it’s intellect, which tends to see the world in black or white. Illness, pain, poverty, heartbreak, and death are, in truth, as divine as beauty, health, and prosperity. For this reason they practice meditation to experience Moksha, and liberate themselves from mental misperception. Moksha depends on Advaita- or non-dualism. To support the individual, India has the value of living examples of Jivanmuktis who have lived beyond duality. They are beyond consequence, beyond greed, beyond self-doubt and shame. From squalor they sing with joy every day, give their possession to any that ask, and exude nothing but happiness with every breath. Their are more notorious characters that fiest on cow feces, urine, and rotten fish guts, tasting Amrita - heavenly nectar. What this demonstrates to those with the courage to keep their eyes open is that suffering and disgust are concepts that can be remedied by dissociating with its source, the mind. If we had the choice to only sense reality as good, the ugly as gorgeuous, the wicked as innoncent - would we? The will to say yes, is the desire to become a sage and sit on the lap of heighest perspective.
Psychology might label this as skillful or detrimental reframing. Reframing, in practice, is when a therapist provides a different perspective on a given situation. It builds off the point that the majority of life is interpretive rather than factual. But, sincerely adjusting our views of any given situation is difficult. We discover as in control as we think we are, we do not have the control to change what we believe or feel at will. Rather than exchanging one perspective for another, meditation states that all perspective are incomplete. It is better to renounce them all and the mind with it through meditation and re-examine the situation after. If our opinions and minds are the bath water, the baby is consciousness. The consequence of stepping away from the mind is almost always a more positive world-view. This proved to the yogis that the world without the mind is increasingly good, which validated the divinity and supreme nobility of life and the force that created. No matter the state of affairs in any given moment, through meditation the world regained its brilliance. It was true, tested, and reliable - as true as the Sun and Moon.
The other reason to abandon the mind and the identity involves appreciating the unique brilliance of being human and the opportunity it provides. To be born human, to yogis, suggests that passed lives were lived well. This does not mean all humans are wise. The temptations of the human condition might prove too much for some who live this life indulging in reckless pleadure or creating pain for themselves and others. For the more insightful, being human provides a once in many lifetimes opportunity to know Truth. Life is mysterious to all that are alive. But the mystery itself is non-existent for the dimwitted, animals, plants, and bacteria that don’t have the intellect to question it. Human beings have two names in Sanskrit. Manava and Antakharana. Manava means the imagining animal. Anthakarana means the divine instrument. Our intelligence and imagination allowed us to question if the world was operating through a unifying willpower. We sensed a unity, more than likely because of life’s interdependence - the circle of life. It is humbling to consider that we are still unveiling the scope of life’s interdependence through the mdoern sciences and just a sliver of what has been revealed has tranformed life on earth for better and worse. This imagined connection enabled our ancestors to see beyond the senses to connect, empathize, and learn from the natural world. We could see that the trees, wind, stars, animals, villages, and tribe were all the same in some way. We shared existence. That is a complex and abstract observation. It came to be known as animism, the first religious thought - all things hold spirit. The possibility of that unifying force eventually was named God. As divine instruments the yogis believed human beings were capable of understanding the spirit, meaning we can access the invisible connection that unites all things by liberating personal consciousness from the thicket of the mind. When the mind is let go God is understood and the questions that only God could answer, if it is real, would be answered.
What is life?
What is the point of existence?
Who am I?
What is my purpose?
Ironically, the mind is both the main obstacle in this process but it is also the key to it. Similar to how so many of our technological innovations have proven to be simultaneously advantageous and disastrous. Fire is the most ancient example and nuclear power is the most extreme. This pattern of danger being entangled in value is easy to observe. When we use the mind to escape the mind it leads us beyond its limitations rather than drowning us in them. There is no greater adventure than the chance to encounter the possibility of this unifying force, not as an idea but as an inner wind upon the face of consciousness, as real, although nn-physical. The fact that life’s mystery might be resolved by looking inside is beyond astounding. The fact that the ancients were sophisticated enough to embrace the inner-invisible dimensions of reality, where before the 1850’s the idea of germs creating illness was insanity only illustrates our current hubris and a pattern of de-escalating wisdom.
The main way to disconnect from the mind is by restraining it. The mind, as vibrantly active as it is, only has one conscious thought at a time. By focusing and refocusing the thought stream onto a single object the mind is restrained and its “gravity” is reduced. Then consciousness floats up and away like a balloon in the sky. In no time, it is level with the mountain top. This is notoriously difficult. The reality is the rip currents of the psyche will immediately prove themselves to be almost unstoppable. But despite the challenge the yogi’s learned it could be done and thankfully, even partial success leads to overwhelming states of peace. They used mantra for the job. Mantra means secret word and utilizes intense repetition of a select word or phrase at differing frequencies, said allowed, sung, or internally repeated, to hijack the language centers of the brain. The brain is mainly a speaking and visualizing organ. So, it uses grammar, speaks in sentences, communicates its orders, and controls us with words. With our own voice, camouflaging its assumptions and perspectives as our own, we become spellbound. Mantra is a way of fighting fire with fire.
Alongside mantra there is a particular philosophy that enables us to push away our thoughts, that inner voice, and the psychological identity it represents and that is dispassion. The underlying message of our psyche is to care about life so that we can preserve ourselves for long enough to live it. Along the way we also settle into our identity and become someone we are proud to be if we are lucky. But meditation is about disappearing. By un-being we expand beyond the cage of identity and the baggage of its wants, responsibilities, and preferences.
The term that refers to this dispassion with the wrold and self in Sanskrit is Vairagya. It is the knife that cuts the weight from the balloon to let it float away. The term literally means to remove color. Yogis saw the world as gray. Happiness was the same as sorrow to the masters. Pain was the same as pleasure. Death was the same as life. Notice how unattractive or unnatural that seems. The intensity in which you disapproved of happiness being the same as sorrow is the intensity of your passion. As their world became less colorful it became less polarized. They realized through neutrality they could appreciate everything equally. Grey wasn’t dull. It was subtle. Vairagya is a virtue in itself but as a tool for meditation it slows down the current of the mind storm enough to make mental restraint possible. The longer the mind is restrained the more space builds between it and the consciousness within it.
So, by willfully focusing the mind and projecting a bit of apathy we can reject the enticing drama of our lives long enough to “separate” from them, like when the Buddha left his home, wife, and child to explore the nature of suffering for himself. When we sit and push the world and our minds away, we are doing the same thing. The term is disassociation and we do it all the time. Usually we dissociate with entertainment, which satisfies egoic needs and makes the mind fat and strong.
As we push the world back, barricading ourselves within our own head a sense of space will develop. The mind plays in front of us like a movie on the silver screen and it’s suggestions, desires, and ideas are only the urges of a fictional character playing its own illusions. The yogi’s mapped the anatomy of the mind, similiar to how the modern world has mapped the anatomy of the brain. The mind has its bits, just as the brain has it’s specialized bits. The mind is made of various substructures that seem to be one undifferentiated phenomenon to the untrained or insensitive. The ability to discriminate between the different appendages of the mind and utilize them for meditation is called Viveka. It means discrimination. The ability to sift through the mind to discover the delicate bits of the soul is called Vivekakhyati, crystal clear discrimination.
The same way we can see a human face as one thing or divide it by its features; eyes, a nose, a mouth, cheeks, eyebrows, ears, etc, the mind at its simplest can be divided into two parts. The psychological experience is called Buddhi. If the monarch in our heads had a name it would be Buddhia. Using dicrimination the consciousness that perceives Buddhi can be isolated. It is called Cit. The ambition of this step is to clearly sense where Buddhi ends and Cit begins. The space between them is the void, Shoonya. Like the vacuum between stars and planets there are great distances of delicate nothingness within our minds. The more space we learn to feel within us through meditating, the more peace we will know, and the closer we are to the summit of this internal mountain.
From the top, it’s just you and the world. The prize of recognizing and creating this inner space is the opportunity to be alone. This internal sense of aloneness is the reason why yogis, mystics, and monks retreat into the mountains to enhance their meditative power. To be alone is an integral piece of the puzzle. Literal solitude helps but the mental experience is the ticket. The world is jampacked. Every second of our existence life itself is thrusting moments, people, thoughts, and emotions onto us. There is no escape. Plus, as social creatures we are driven to converge into groups. We believe together we are strongest and safest. Our bonds will see us through the maze. As necessary as our social circles are, there is great opportunity in solitude but solitude is often as unnatural and anxiety inducing as stillness to our organism. So much so, that even in the thrall sof our practice we find comfort in the company of ideas. We hang out in the fantasy of our lives and with the thoughts of others. The unwillingness to still the mind and disassociate form the identities within it is really the fear of aloneness. The mind is our best friend, our lover, our families, our king, our nemesis, our teachers. In it’s company we are never alone. Yogis saw the willingness to be alone as a virtue. Kaivalya is its associated term.
The lord of yoga, Shiva, for that reason meditates on the top of a mountain where it is too cold and too far away for most. The journey into this process demands we make space by renouncing our bonds psychologically. The beauty is this; a meditator can renounce and abandon because they know the world will be fine without them. They will return from practice. The greatest yogis, high in the mountains however, usually do not. Still, their ability to separate literally or psychologically is rooted in trust. Everyone will be fine because life is only good. Not everyone sees that, but that is because they are in the constant company of a limited mental state.
As the void builds between Buddhi (the intellectual mind) and Cit (consciousness), trust fills the vauum. In the aloneness of Kaivalya, without the influence or pressure of the whole world sticking on to our being, often what comes up is a surge of sincerity. What someone might realize in the candid blaze is how much of their character was a show, back to Maya (illussion) and a new voice that is theirs and theirs alone comes to speak the truth. It’s all good, more than good in fact, it is all perfection.
When that inner space is perceived we become spiritually vast. Our bodies expand as they age, and then begin to shrink as they continue to age. Our minds also have a period of exponential expansion in the toddler years, then platuea. As we get older it takes willpower to keep the mind from fossilizing. The spirit is another dimension that can be provoked to expand. By meditating we expand spiritually. When we renounce the mind specifically, we become vast.
I remember on a trip to Northern India, I would walk to a small stupa near a famous waterfall everynight to meditate on the slopes above the river. During the day it was crowded with tourists and resident Bhuddist monks. The town was a mile up the mountain from Dharamshala, home of the exiled Dalai Lama. Everynight, I’d leave around 11pm and make my way through the empty streets. The streetdogs that were docile in the day became wolves when the moon rose. Everynight was a gauntlet. I would have to make my way through the snarling pack. It was scary, every time. It was about territory and space, of course. I was a stranger making his way through their home. They would surround me and I would feel fear and adrenaline surge every time the took another step closer. They were the embodiments of fear, telling me to stay in my room, to stay in my “right” mind.
They would always let me through in the end. From my little shrine, under the night sky, I would meditate for a couple hours, and I would hear the dogs bark. I imagined another intruder being scared off but in the distance their aggression dissolved. The point being, space whether it is physical or mental soothes our terror, it’s not just time that heals. There is an analogy the Bhudda used to share the same point; a handful of salt poured into a cup of water will make the water undrinkable. A handful of salt in a lake will do nothing.
