Stepping onto the back lawn on a moonless night, the constellation Orion shocks the mind into the moment. Tracing the three stars along its western edge (with which the Pyramids of Giza are aligned), to a point nearly overhead, I can make out five of the “Seven Sisters” of the Pleiades.
On an unproductive day, gratefulness wells up within as I sit under a sky full of twinkling stars. Feeling a moment of spontaneous thankfulness means the day hasn’t been wasted after all. The mind falls silent in wonder under the stars, and I ask: Is the cosmos conscious, or is consciousness only that which the human brain fabricates?
The current philosophical consensus is that the mind is nothing more than activities generated by the brain. That’s the logical end of the Enlightenment, and it is a dead end. The transition from “superstitious, medieval modes of thinking to rational Enlightenment” seems rapid and clean, in contrast to our transition from the crumbling foundations of rationality to a new foundation for thinking and the human mind.
Are the stupendous achievements of science responsible for that? In this age of decay and collapse, people are still trying to render everything scientific. When it is put first, science robs us of wonder and obstructs deeper modes of seeing and thinking.
Nothing brings the end of the Enlightenment’s principles of objective observation, logical reason and repeatable experiment into sharper relief than the question of the mind and the brain. Neuroscientists would have us believe they’re cracking the age-old nut through scientifically explaining, in ever-greater detail, the functions of the brain. But the more they explain, the more philosophers should complain, because the more confused people are becoming.
A silent mind
Thinking, as we know it, derives from memory, experience, knowledge and reason. As any contemplative of unrepeatable mystical experiencing will say (and better yet, as your own direct insight and experiencing will attest), evidence and reason have nothing to do with experiencing the actuality of a silent mind and spacious heart.
The human mind manufactures realities; nature and the cosmos create and embody actuality. For actuality to be emotionally perceived, all realities of the mind must fall silent. The frantic attempts to return to the halcyon days of the Enlightenment are only hastening its decline and highlighting its limited premises. We are foundering on the shoals of a post-Enlightenment world.
The quieting of thought is the wellspring of peace, healing, insight and understanding.
It’s understandable why scientists would cling to the core premises of the so-called Enlightenment. There could be no modern science without separative observation, tangible evidence and experimental replicability, turning on the spindle of reason.
Can thinking flow from another source—from stillness, silence and emptiness?
It can, though this requires diligent attention to the movement of thought. The quieting of thought is the wellspring of peace, healing, insight and understanding. As long as psychological thought is operating, one cannot know true peace.
The intent of authentic meditation is to quiet the mind as thought. Methods, techniques, systems and traditions are inimical to meditation, because they are all made by thought, and you cannot use thought to quiet thought.
Most meditation teachers in the spiritual and retreat industry have given up on quieting the mind, both because they don’t actually quiet the mind themselves, and because true meditation can’t be taught and doesn’t sell.
The art of quieting the mind
To learn the art of quieting the mind, one must be one’s own teacher. All a true teacher does is point you in the right direction, which is to say, within yourself. Self-knowing is always of the moment, and never accumulative. Self-knowledge is of the past and cumulative.
Be self-knowing, and forget everything you think you know about yourself. Stand in the uncomfortable but essential space of “I don’t know.”
Take 20 minutes, twice a day if you can, outside if the weather permits (because nature is the best mirror), or in a quiet room with natural light at dawn or dusk if the weather or other conditions don’t permit sitting outdoors.
Question the observer. What is this observer that always thinks and feels it’s separate from what it is observing, within and without? If you really question it, and passively observe, you’ll have the explosive, life-changing insight that the observer is nothing but a trick of thought, an infinite regress, and in actuality, the observer is inseparable from the entire stream and content of thought.
When one sees this, not intellectually but emotionally, beyond words, there is then just observing the movement of thought and emotion in the same way one listens to sounds in nature—without any judgment or interference. No matter how trivial or disturbing, watch every thought and emotion as it arises, and watch the reactions to the thoughts and emotions as they arise.
All-inclusive attention then grows unbidden and unseen, and it alone acts to effortlessly, spontaneously quiet mind-as-thought. Then the mind and consciousness are a completely different movement. Negation is the pathless way of meditation.
«RELATED READ» THE GURU SEARCH: Do we really need a spiritual teacher?»
image 1 Bhikku Amitha from Pixabay 2 image by Ralf Kunze from Pixabay
