This is a short commentary & assimilation of The Pilgrim’s understanding of the limit of the mind. The information comes from numerous teachings of practitioners of non-duality & eastern philosophies, realized teachers & several lectures who have spent their lives in educating us in the real nature & truth of our existence & spirituality.
Among them are my own preceptor who continues to teach me & educators like Rupert Sheldrake, Rupert Spira, Terrence McKenna, Alan Watts and their likes.
According to the thousands of years old eastern philosophers, mind is tricky & through the creation of Ego, the mind creates a perception of the world around us, leading us to be completely absorbed in the body-mind existence. For them, the mind is the reason for one’s Ignorance, where Ignorance is defined as the failure to know & be established in one’s true nature – Nitya (eternal), Shuddha (pure), Buddha (enlightened), Mukta (free). Thus, one who can control the mind, would be able to go beyond the gross mind & realize the infiniteness of one’s true self.
Indian philosophies on spirituality does not differentiate between the materialistic existence & the spiritual. They are various manifestations of the one. This essence of manifestation is captured qualitatively in the five elements of the universe, starting with the most subtle ether, through air & fire, onto the gross form of water & the grossest form of earth.
The human body, for example, is derived from these five elements, and upon death, it dissolves into these five. Food, that keeps the body & brain & mind working, comes from these five elements as well, thus reinforcing the fact that our living bodies and minds are just various forms of these five elements.
Swami Brahmananda once challenged his beloved disciple Sw. Prabhavananda to find the line of demarcation between matter & spirit. For in meditations they have realized that all are but the many manifestations of the one. The ones who realized this truth never spoke, while the ones who are desperate to seek & prove (or disprove) this seems never had the intentions to realize it themselves.
According to neurosciences & the current findings of data & experimental scientists, that mind is an integral part of the brain which thinks, reasons, perceives, wills, and feels. There is no duality between the mind and body. They are one. This basically conforms mind to be a slightly subtle property of the gross matter called brain. All emotions, thus, are properties of our brain.
Scientific studies of Consciousness have continued to be undermined by the more traditional scientists. Maybe this form of study requires a completely different approach to what traditional sciences have offered thus far? The approach of having to dissect the brain to explain what happens in the plane of consciousness does not seem to be able to lead to any significant conclusion. How can we describe or even quantify something that is subjective & infinite (consciousness) by dissecting something that is objective & finite?
Researches like Unity of Consciousness, published in 2011 & Neuroscience of Consciousness, published in 2018, are good studies in themselves but may be derailed by the very nature of conducting the analysis. All these could lead to prove are empirical similarities & nature of experiences and not the Consciousness itself.
Educators and scientists who have taken a non-traditional approach to even try and understand what another set of perceptions could lead you to think & believe, include the likes of McKenna and Watts. Though the free use of psychedelics raise several social & medical concerns, people who have used them responsibly have described a complete different way of perceiving the reality around us.
Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, describes the effects of using mescalin as having to completely eliminate the need to have forms, shapes, distance & dimensions as perceptive measures in day to day life. Instead the focus was on color, intensity and the light of consciousness. His sense faculties seemed redundant in this dimension of perception where appreciation was abundant for intricate details in creation, even the man made ones.
Various experiments around mind & consciousness done in human telepathy and several with dogs & birds, conducted by Sheldrake also provide evidence that numerous other living creatures, with much simple construction of the brain, have a much different perception of their ecosystem, probably delivering them from some of the most base natures as jealousy, hatred, willingness to harm & hurt for pleasure, one-up-ism observed in creatures with more evolved brains like chimpanzees & humans. A more patient and unbiased understanding of his Morphic Field & Resonance theories leads me to have a high degree of respect & trust for this scientific mind.
Rupert Sheldrake inadvertently challenged the commercial world money makers so much that Nature did not hesitate to condemn his research & career many times over. Minds of such calibers should continue to find meaning, continue to voice their opinions, especially when such comes after years of study & understanding of science.
In the report by Philosophy & Mind Sciences (PhiMiSci) called Radical disruptions of self-consciousness, George Dean presents a significant study & analysis called Dissolving the Self – Active inference, psychedelics, and ego-dissolution.
Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD and DMT are known to induce powerful alterations in phenomenology. Perhaps of most philosophical and scientific interest is their capacity to disrupt and even “dissolve” one of the most primary features of normal experience: that of being a self. Such “peak” or “mystical” experiences are of increasing interest for their potentially transformative therapeutic value. While empirical research is underway, a theoretical conception of the mechanisms underpinning these experiences remains elusive.
Deane, G. (2020). Dissolving the self: Active inference, psychedelics, and ego-dissolution. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 1(I), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.33735/phimisci.2020.I.39
The Pilgrim understands that the human mind could be big enough to perceive & understand the design of the macrocosm but by design, the brain only allows & uses a small fragment of that information primarily to protect the gross body. It would require tremendous effort, concentration of the mind, purity of the heart and the energy of the body to break that barrier. And above all, the blessings and guidance of a preceptor to lead him to the realization of the true Self.