OK,
I am the field and I'm also the knower of the field.
The field is
the field of consciousness.
And the knower of the field
is also
the field of consciousness.
In the last video, we explored a mode of knowing called, “I”,
the witnessing awareness.
As I said, there are about
not about 24 modes of knowing
as explained in the Bhagavad Gita
Chapter 13, I think
and also in the
Brahma Sutras
OK. If the first mode of knowing
is witnessing awareness, the second mode of knowing
is what we call mind, mana,
Mana.
By the way, that's the origin of the word human woman.
Mind is mana
mana,
a thinking biological organism.
Of course,
the biological organism itself is a mode of knowing is also a species specific
mode of knowing.
But that now let's
look at the mind. OK.
So the sequence of experience is as follows: being,
which is the witnessing awareness,
feeling, which is emotions,
thinking,
which is the interpretation of those emotions.
And of course, then
the sequence moves on to speaking
and doing, but we'll get there soon.
Let's just stay with the mind.
So when the Vedanta
the Bhagavad Gita
which is also upanishads
refers to mana
or mind
it is referring specifically
to emotions
and feelings, same thing,
emotions are feelings because they also felt in the body,
you feel them
emotions, feeling, but it also refers to thinking.
And as a result of that something happens very spontaneously,
the creation of images. So, feeling, thinking,
imagining or creating images are entangled.
If you think of something, you might generate the emotion.
If you have the emotion, you might generate the thought or
the image
they're entangled means they're inseparable. They are part of the matrix of
modes of knowing.
So let's
see each of them separately. OK. Right now. So let's look at emotions,
emotions are generated as a result of
experiences good or bad.
What are the experiences? They’re modes of knowing.
You know, consciousness
knows experience through its modes of knowing. So
emotions are basically generated as
a mode of knowing, but
they are the result of
a storyline created by
by consciousness or the mind. You might say storyline created by the mind. And
if you close your eyes, as I said before, you'll see you're speaking to yourself,
the invisible is speaking to itself. And the sound you hear in consciousness is also
not a sound. It's a tanmatra,
which we will get to but you hear it. OK?
It's your internal dialogue.
And what is your internal dialogue? Its the
interpretation of a past experience.
The story
you were having an argument with your significant other
or
maybe you were celebrating your anniversary with the significant other
two different experiences.
But they're basically experiences
that are generated as qualia,
and we've talked about qualia,
qualia are qualities of experience
and we get more into qualia
as we move on.
But
you know, if you close your eyes, you'll see you're telling yourself stories.
And these stories are referred to as Karma
interpretation of past experience.
Memory, the whole mystery of memory that we have addressed and will address
later. But memory is embedded as stored consciousness
in
awareness or consciousness, not in the brain,
it actualizes through a neural correlate, but it
is not in the brain according to the Vedanta
anyway, and also as a result of experience.
So
when you close your eyes and you start telling yourself stories automatically,
then there are two kinds of stories, you know, a story which you feel is a happy story,
story, you feel
is not so happy, maybe sad and in between all kinds of stories. OK.
And those stories
project as the karmic body or the conceptual body.
And
the stories that are most significant are emotions,
emotions means level of feeling,
we call them feelings because we also feel them in the body sensations.
So how do we get in touch with
our emotions without actually aggravating the storyline?
And that's very simple.
All you do is bring your awareness to
the sensation that is associated with the emotion
and
no interpretation,
just awareness to the sensation
and awareness
without interpretation is self organizing, self healing and
self regulating and all of that. So
the emotion dissipates
if you keep your awareness on the sensation,
and soon
you become free of the emotion.
And by the way,
it's good to be free of both happy and
unhappy because you realize that the emotions are generated by you
and you can be free of them. The awareness of the emotion is not the emotion.
And why is that important?
Well, if you're free of emotions, particularly melodrama,
then as we'll see,
there's
room for creativity.
OK. So that's the first way
to get in touch with the mind, emotions, feelings, bringing awareness.
Now let's move to the next emotions,
feelings,
thoughts,
the entangle. What is a thought? Thought is the interpretation of that feeling.
Remember the sequence is being, feeling, thinking
and thought is recycled everybody else's thoughts. That's why in the
there's a line, there's a phrase, let noble thoughts come to me from every side
because you don't own your thoughts nor do you own your emotions.
They are a result of the condition mind. And we actually
these days, particularly our emotions are generated through
social media and digital technologies and so on. You'll see that
those are also experiences that actually
govern our emotions. How many likes you get, how many dislikes do you get et cetera?
And then it
affects your self esteem and all of that
creates fear or happiness depending on how you interpret it. But
emotions are now also today generated digitally.
We have digital babies,
digital natives.
And as we'll see their whole identity is being shaped
through Digital technology. Just tells you how,
how capricious
our individuality is
at the mercy, not only of every stranger on the street, but what you see
on Instagram, on
TikTok or Twitter or Facebook or whatever else you use
that's creating your emotions as well.
OK.
So you need to be free of those emotions in
order to be in touch with yourself and be creative.
And then as I said, they're related to thoughts
and thoughts are the interpretation and
those thoughts are also culturally programmed
in us.
We are the localization of the culture
and history,
you know, all of that and everything else.
Economics, parents, you know, a childhood
in utero experiences
other lifetimes if you understand what that means and I'll explore that with you.
But bottom line is
you do not have original thoughts unless you have creativity, which
is not
in the mind, it's beyond the mind.
So first of all recognize that your thoughts are also not your own. They are,
they are
recycled thoughts
and
we are as individuals programming of culture and society and history and all of that
biological robots.
OK.
And so
how do we handle thoughts?
Not by forcing ourselves to have positive
thoughts because that itself is a stress generator
but having the ability to witness those thoughts
without interpretation as well or sometimes just stopping and saying,
I wonder what my next thought is going to be.
And you see
that when you ask yourself what my next thought is going to be,
it takes its time to emerge.
And according to the Vedanta,
there is a very specific sequence of that
...
... is the thought that is
store consciousness or store memory
... is
the emergence of that.
actually the internal dialogue and ... is when it surfaces as speech.
Now if you're a biological robot, all of that happens spontaneously.
But if you wait for a thought or you witness a thought
and you recognize that you're not a thought, you'll see it comes,
it's there
it disappears like clouds in the sky
and you can
know, that you are
not the clouds but the sky itself.
OK? So that's how we
understand this mode of knowing that we call thought.
And then
the third mode of knowing as the mind is images, they come spontaneously,
consciousness modifies itself into images.
But you can also generate images. If I ask you close your eyes and
you know, think of
a sunset on the ocean immediately the image comes the formless becomes that image.
You are the formless
and that becomes the image.
Then I say, OK, instead of what thinking of snow clad mountains, think of a rainbow,
then you return from snow clad mountains image back to the farm lesson,
construct the image of a rainbow. And I said think of the Empire State Building.
You come back to the formless
and there you go.
So between every image between every thought
and between every image you always return to
the formless consciousness modifying itself has that experience
and therefore that mode of knowing.
So play with images, generate images, any image you want
even outlandish images, you know,
hybrid images, you know, mix a rainbow with an ice cream
and mix the ice cream with a giraffe or on and on. The more you can play with the images
you will see that's the raw material for creativity.
As Einstein said, imagination is more important
then
whatever information or intellect or
or thinking.
OK. So those are the three modes of knowing that we call mind
and
the experience is: I'm not the mind. I'm the
generator of the mind. I know experience
by generating mind by generating emotions, thoughts, images.
And
maybe I heard or read this
little prayer from the Course and Miracles. I'm responsible for what I see.
I
generate the emotions that I feel
and everything that happens to me I create.
And
I experience
as my own creation. It's a paraphrasing. It's not the exact prayer,
but you get the idea that you as awareness are experiencing yourself as the mind
and therefore every experience then ultimately gets
recycled through that mind and slowly evolves
But
that happens generation after generation.
And that recycling of that experience is also called reincarnation.
We'll go into that later.
OK?
So today, just that tomorrow,
we'll go into the intellect and then into the ego and other modes of knowing.
But let's stop here
with the mode of knowing
that we call thought,
recognizing
that it is the self that generates the mind, experiences the mind, knows the mind
and also
understands that that self is not the mind, it is free of the mind.