4: Continuums of Experience
Look into space in front of you, eyes fully open, and whatever thoughts may arise in your mind at that moment, do not look at what has arisen but where it has arisen from. The thoughts will disappear without a trace.
– Jigme Lingpa
Every moment is experienced without the slightest effort. No exertion is required to experience anything.
Do not confuse this statement with thinking, or with feeling, or with acting.
How much effort is required to see a child’s face for the first time? How much effort does it take to experience the water running over your hands as you wash them?
When the mind is without obstruction, there is no effort needed.
How long can you experience the nature of experience before becoming distracted?
Exactly when does your quiescent mind refuse such a state?
When the moment is experienced, what experiences it? If you can locate something notable with which you experience, like mind or consciousness, what did you experience that experience with?
Normally, at any moment we can process experience in three primary ways:
Intellectual
Emotional
Motor-Instinctive-Sexual
These are three brains or central processing centers of the human organism.
The commonly understood brain and spinal medulla, the central nervous system, is just one third of our processing capacities. The emotional brain is related to the sympathetic nervous system, and the motor-instinctive-sexual brain is related with the parasympathetic system.
It is extremely rare to find someone perfectly balanced between the three brains. Usually we find people who are more intellectual than anything else, or primarily emotional, or chiefly motor-instinctive-sexual.
Anyone who is not perfectly balanced relies on one brain primarily, then a secondary brain when needed, and finally a tertiary brain in desperate circumstances.
There are those who almost never use the emotional brain. They wish to figure out everything intellectually. Others fear the intellect and prefer to remain sensitive to their emotions. Those who live primarily in the motor-instinctive-sexual brain prefer to do something physically, or to just do whatever their tradition tells them, or whatever pleasure arrives in front of their senses.
The intellectual tends to grasp at their thoughts as the ‘real self.’ The emotional relies on feelings as primary sense of self, etc.
Only the person who is balanced with continuity finds their sense of self within conscious experience.
Consciousness can perceive and pay attention. Therefore, that which perceives and attends to thought is not thought. That which perceives emotions and impulses is not those things either.
Is there exertion in the process of thinking? Do thoughts arrive effortlessly, or with exertion? Perhaps some thoughts appear to arrive automatically without any effort, and other times thoughts appear only with great struggle. Conversely, there are many who experience the torment of a never-ending stream of thoughts.
Is there effort to have thought, or alternatively, effort to maintain attention towards the goal with which thought is being used to attain?
Most of us have poor concentration skills. We cannot seem to attend to a singular theme. We get distracted. At night, we cannot go to sleep because the mind is too weak to drop the things it is attached to.
It is something else (a different problem) when we also have poor reasoning skills. Poor reasoning occurs when something other than strict logical conclusions are used. For example, a desire to be right, a desire to get pleasure or wealth, or a desire to not feel discomfort, all pollute rationality.
Is there exertion in the process of emotions? Certainly, the experience we have is just occurring. Nevertheless, is it possible to attend to some quality which will modify our emotions? Emotions arrive, normally, based on the data of the sense impressions. Anyone who watches a dramatic film knows this.
Instincts can be seen in a similar way. Impulses appear, without intellectual reasoning, and often prior to any emotional context.
Consciousness experiences all of this. Thoughts, emotions, and impulses do not experience anything. The body and the brain are just machines. The consciousness is the experiencer, the perceiver, and the attender.
If consciousness was produced by the brain, free will would be an illusion. If this were the case, everyone would be just like a computer that reacts to the world, and to other machine-people. Many highly educated people believe this is the case.
Regardless, even the highest educated person predicates their theory of knowledge upon a philosophical belief which is necessarily metaphysical (not scientific). In other words, the scientific method was not created by the scientific method. It was created by philosophers.
Modern scientific pursuit is a incredibly successful enterprise in many areas. Nevertheless, it has nothing coherent to say about consciousness.
We are not computers. Our brain is like a computer, yet, we are not the brain. We are consciousness. The nature of consciousness is only comprehensible to itself. This is the mystery of all things, because all things are experienced, perceived, and attended to by, and only by, the same consciousness.
Experience must be analyzed deeply. Our everyday nominal experience is a composite of several major processes:
The process of sense organs encoding environmental energy of the electromagnetic continuum into the nervous system (principally the brain). Simply put, these are the sensory impressions, such as seeing, hearing, touching, etc.
The mental or psychological continuum. This is the flow of rational-emotional-instinctual states which mutually interact with each other and the impressions of life. There are many layers here. Some strata closely correlate to brain states, while others are virtually independent. When we use the term mind in this work, this continuum is what is being referred to.
The continuum of consciousness itself. Consciousness has many layers of increasing subtlety.
We can call these continuums by more basic names:
Sensory experience.
Intermediate experience.
Inner experience.
Sensory experience is simply data received by the senses. Inner experience is something pure, however we are unable to perceive it because we are spiritually asleep. This leaves the middle, intermediate experience, what is commonly understood as our psychology.
When the impressions of life reach our mind, it responds in accordance with its factors of conditioning. The mental continuum in each of us has been polluted by factors which condition it. In other words, these are things that distort the mental continuum into something extremely subjective.
The conditioning factors of the mind are summed up in the word ego. Let us refer to the terms mental formations, skandhas, kleshas, psychological aggregates from eastern psychology, or the self-willed of Gnostics: the sinning attributes or passions of the soul, in Orthodox Christian terms. More bluntly, the ego is Satan.
Materialists, believing that consciousness comes from the brain, also believe there is no existence without ego. Therefore, they want to dress Satan up in a fine suit and redefine ‘good’ to be whatever the ego desires. Such people believe that someone lacking ego suffers more, or worse, becomes psychotic. In actuality, a person without an ego or personality is like an infant, very beautiful.
The ego is mental conditioning based upon fundamental ignorance. The ego develops due to a lack of self-knowledge in the consciousness.
The consciousness can connect cause with effect through pure intuition. Due to this, the consciousness can ultimately untie the knots of suffering which condition the mind. The knowledge of the knot, in this analogy, is summarized as ‘self-knowledge’ or ‘gnosis.’ Then the consciousness begins to know its own nature.
David Hume already deconstructed the problem of causality in relationship to reason. Hume rightly states that there is no solid reason for the presence of cause and effect. Instead, every fact of life determined by the mind is due to the assumption that causality is already present. The mind sits atop the assumption of causality, and therefore cannot turn in upon itself to find a reason for causality. Therefore, causality itself is irrational (it cannot be reasoned to exist from an empirical basis). In philosophical jargon he said that causality is synthetic a posteriori knowledge.
Immanuel Kant was struck by this analysis so profoundly he wrote his greatest works in response. Kant states that causality is synthetic a priori knowledge. We can say this more simply: knowledge of casualty is intuition arriving from the continuum of the consciousness.
To clarify all of this, we return to the three continuums of experience:
External sensory continuum provides sensory reasoning. It is the basis of empiricism.
Intermediate (psychological) continuum provides belief. It is the basis of dogmatism.
Inner (conscious) continuum provides pure intuition. It is basis of intuition and objective reasoning.
These three are then the basis of the minds of reasoning:
Sensory Mind
Intermediate Mind
Inner Mind
The Sensory Mind is that which elaborates the sensory data to produce concepts and reasoning. Its concepts only related to the five senses. Therefore, it cannot know the truth.
The Intermediate Mind combines information from the other continuums and elaborates beliefs and concepts about the past, present, and future. It cannot know the truth.
The Inner Mind is the elaboration of pure intuition directly from the consciousness.
The Sensory Mind and the Intermediate Mind cannot find the ultimate sources of ignorance and suffering. We must work to liberate the consciousness.
To progress in this work, the aspirant must begin to self-remember their own state and condition. The ‘sense of self’ must become something more subtle, fluid, dynamic.
First, it must be crystal clear that you can fundamentally change your current psychological condition. Second, you must do the work to accomplish such a change.
Most people cannot accept the first factor, or do not want to risk ‘believing’ it, over the fear of later disillusionment. People are afraid of failure and false teachings.
It is evident, through study of the world’s mystical traditions, that the gnostic path of liberation is possible.
However, this work is extremely difficult and challenging. The cost is extremely high.
Gnostic psychological work is tremendously demanding. It must be done with exact concept and logical conclusions, powered by practical and daily efforts.
It is much easier to daydream about being different, elect, ‘gnostic’ or spiritual, than to actually achieve these things. Most people are just looking for theories and armchair chit-chat, and pretexts for socializing.
Superficial Christians blame an external Satan for all their woes, while superficial ‘Gnostics’ blame them on ‘the Archons.’ Both types fail to find these things within the depths of their own psychology.
We must break the chains of our own conditioning, but never look for the enemy outside.
To cut directly through the ego, and then through the mind, straight to pure consciousness itself, is certainly the unexcelled method. A more basic method is the “neti neti” technique.
The aspirant observes all the impressions and mental processes as best possible. For everything that appears, the aspirant must inquire if ‘self’ is found within it.
Is self found in this thought? “Neti” (not so…)
Is self found in this emotion? “Neti”
Is self in my body? My brain? “Neti”
Where is self found? “Not here…”
Where is the experience of the inquiry arriving from?
What is the nature of the experience of the inquiry? From such basis, one must remember their self. This is self-remembering. To remember that one is consciousness, even if the nature of such consciousness remains a mystery.
You must hold the gnostic mystery of your Being paramount.
The meaning of your life hides within the mystery.
