Buddha has said ‘every thought will be a thing, a thing was once a thought. All we are is the result of our thoughts.’ If I say that this world is a thought, it might surprise you. In fact, your world is your own thought. Your world is within your thoughts. You exist in thoughts. As many people as many worlds exist in this world. Everyone’s world is different. Because everyone’s thought is different. Everyone’s thinks differently. Everyone thinks from what one’s thoughts are. Everyone’s mind is different. Everyone views the world differently. Two persons looking at the same thing will give different definitions. Everyone pays attention to the world around them in one’s unique way and understanding.
Mind is the sum-total of the accumulated past that is not there and the fleeting future which is not there. Mind is the absence of your presence. Your absence in your presence has caused your mind. When you are your mind disappears.
This world is not a definition. Your mind cannot define this world. Nor does your mind define God. This world is a continuous flow that exists in flowing continuously in timelessness. This world is moving. You are flowing. Things around you are flowing. Nothing is inert and still. This is how the world has become the world. The world is continuously evolving.
When one looks at a flower. Someone finds it beautiful and another finds it monotonous. Someone finds birdsongs mesmerizing, the other boring. Our senses disclose different meanings for similar events. Life is a continuous flow, it is not an incident.
Our genes are evolving too. Genes are evolving continuously for billions of years. Genes birth new genes. Genes are programmed to license new genes to form new bodies. It is essential for them to spread genes for survival. Our body is also genetically programmed to spread genes. The anatomy of genes is different from our behaviour. They imperatively copy and make copies. From one copy to another. The copy that is made today is also a copy that was made a billion years ago. Genes are immortal. They renew. Like a one-celled amoeba splits into two one-celled amoebae to make a copy. The one-celled that you find today is derived from the one-celled that was 4 billion years ago. Like one-celled amoeba is immortal. Our genes are immortal too.
Science agrees that everyone understands differently and everyone has free will by which one understands. Science agrees that free will is formed by one’s genes, one’s brain order, and one’s society. But factors determining to understand are not similar, no two persons give similar answers for one question. Science finds this indefinable. Because science is defining. You can define only the dead. The definition is limiting something in the periphery of words that which is continuously flowing. The world is a continuous flow. It is an uninterrupted mystery. Genes do what they ought to do as per the code embedded in them but a mind is influenced by genes but is not an independent thinker. Therefore, one finds genes more accurate, able and perform brilliantly. But a mind only thinks. A mind thinks like a machine.
Mind is a complex thinking machine. It is unlike the psychological theories. Neither is it like explanations taught by society. A mind is a psychological thing and the brain is the mind’s physical body. Mind is a non-entity. In thinking, the mind functions. The brain functions the body.
Why does a man think? Psychology says a mind works with beliefs that are innately embedded which is the result of many factors. But a mind thinks it is the beholder of this body organism. But who is the beholder of this organism? When a house is on fire would you run out or think and wait for flames to douse since you are the beholder of this body organism. You run out without thinking. When driving a car you are about to hit another car, you simply act to put breaks and don’t think of acting. Your whole being acts in the spur of the moment to stop the car. Thinking is your absence. Thinking is the absence of the beholder.
Our brain does not think but stores all information. Like hardware that has RAM, processor to access information. Mind is like a screen with a camera, speaker, microphone and sensors. You can build a machine that can think. A mind is a machine that we have built by ourselves. A mind is programmed to keep information in memory storage and to retrieve it at any moment.
Language is a set of information that we have learnt by assigning meanings to the words to denote things of the world. Meanings that the mind interprets as things. Assigned meanings are not real cannot be real. It is said that every spoken word is a lie. It has to essentially be a lie. Language is to define one’s understanding of the real in unreal terms. Language has made the human mind intelligent and complex.
For knowing one does not need to be articulate about knowing. The knowledge that came by seeing, hearing through all senses was our primary knowledge. We grew to store knowledge in symbols. To walk on the load path, we would store the knowledge of milestones. To understand our siblings we stored knowledge of our parents.
Language changed the development of the human mind. Our language depends on relative terms. This world is one. Night turns into day and day into night. To define day we have to understand that which is not night. To define light we have to understand that which is not dark. We dissect one knowledge into two to define the defined by its opposite understanding. We isolate the world by definition. Our mind works with symbols. Computation is also symbols. What the beholder sees is stored into symbols. Language is also stored in symbols. Your name is the code or symbol assigned to you.
Whole life man keeps writing coding programs in one’s mind. Beliefs and desires are stored and retrieved, while the brain plays the part of the hardware, computation is done by thinking.
Are you the brain? Are you the mind? Are you the mind of the beholder? Mind is beholding you or you are the beholder of mind.
The mind has obviously become intelligent by logic language and computation. It is like your hand is holding a tool to hold an object. The tool cannot be picked without your hand. Without you, your hand also cannot pick. Your intelligence, logic, language and computation is nothing but software programs of your intellect. Intellect alone cannot pick the tool to hold the object. You can think or do anything with intellect. But you cannot hold the beholder with intellect. Because the intellect is a tool in the hands of the beholder. And you are the beholder.
Obviously, neither could your intelligence nor logic or thinking define the world. Whatever it defines is defined in thoughts. Perception of mind about the God is not the God. Therefore, Buddha has said every thought will become a thing. In the flowing universe, to know That-Which-Is is worth knowing. It is known when you are still, thoughtless, and ready to empty your mind. Ready to throw away all computation, logic, beliefs, theories and conditioning. You are ready to be still. Be still to know.
The author is a spiritual teacher. He can be contacted at arunavlokitta@gmail.com