Limits of the Mind

The Limits of the Mind

The lower mind is that endlessly chundering lump of mental matter that pours the physical manifestation of thought into your brain box. This somewhat disparaging view of what is, after all, an essential part of human life comes from years of having to put up with its twitterings while I meditated my way out of its clutches! And I am not alone in this view!

The mind is frequently portrayed as one of the major obstacles to overcome when we seek to become more intuitive, more sensitive or when we travel a spiritual path.

The Sufi tradition offers the following pithy aphorisms:

"Stop boasting of intellect and learning; for here intellect is hampering, and learning is stupidity."

"No human mind can attain an understanding of the being which is God."

"Intelligence is the shadow of objective Truth. How can shadow vie with sunshine?"

"True Reality. Of this there is no academic proof in the world; for it is hidden and hidden and hidden."

The Upanishads offer us:

"That which cannot be seen and is beyond thought, which is without cause or parts, which neither perceives nor acts, which is unchanging, all-pervading, omnipresent, subtler than the subtlest. That is the Eternal which the wise know to be the source of all."

The essence of all such systems is that there are states of consciousness beyond the mind which offer a truer perception than is possible with the mind. The finest and deepest of these states include ones in which it is patently obvious that the mind and its thoughts are a very limited vehicle and cannot truly reflect our spiritual nature that is at the root of all consciousness.

Such ideas do not rest easily with the mind! This is especially true for those with very strong mental bodies. To pacify such minds it is therefore important to describe the benefits of having a mind before discussing its limits!

For our purposes, the mind is the structure in which thoughts occur. The mind is part of the mental body and is made of subtle mental matter on the mental plane. (A definition is necessary as states of consciousness subtler that the mind are often given names like "Universal Mind", "Godmind", "Cosmic Mind". These refer to states in which forms and colours are still perceived and in which realisations occur but which do not involve thought.)

The lower mental body receives impressions from the higher mental body and it in turn generates impressions within the astral body which, via the etheric body, brings about the mental and emotional awareness we have in our waking and sleeping life. This process is one of filtering and slowing down so that the mental and emotional awareness we have when these are anchored in the physical body is a poor reflection of the state of consciousness that exists in the mental body itself. An analogy for this is seen in the greater freedom and increased intensity of emotion that is felt in dreams when compared to the emotions experienced in our waking life. In dreams we perceive and function within our emotional body unencumbered by the limits of the physical body's.

The mind gives us definition: it shows us where the edges of things are. The mind allows us to recognise and label objects and, through this naming function, generate symbolic meanings and logic. Memory is also part of this naming function. So without the mind we would not be able to identify the function of any of the objects around us, we would not know what they were and we would have no knowledge of having seen them before. Without the mind we could not communicate with words as they would have no meaning. (Meaning can only exist if we can identify edges or limits. Something can mean one thing to us today, another tomorrow as the limits have changed with the passage of time. Meaning only comes from comparing the present with the past.)

If (in our mindless state) we still had emotions then we would not be able to focus them as it is the mind which gives direction to emotions. We would feel love or hate but as to who or what generated the emotion we would have no idea. Love is love, hate is hate. It is the mind which places these emotions in context and grades their significance to us. To some extent, we can all experience emotional states in which there is little mental focus if we let go and relax into our feelings But this state will only last for a little while before the internal or external environment will make us mentally react and bring in a mental focus again. Much of our emotional reaction is driven by mental ideas, beliefs or ideals that we have. For example, the emotions do not consider slavery as being wrong, they would simply empathise with the suffering it causes. It is our mental values about slavery that generate an emotional reaction to it on principle.

Science, religion, art, literature and philosophy etc. all depend on the mind to give substance and form to our inner intuitive insights, logical and imaginative processes and emotional responses. Its pattern matching activity allows us to predict how things will function in our environment on the basis that if something has happened one way a number of times then it will probably keep happening that way.

So, the mind is essential for the normal functioning of the personality and, while its limits are remembered, it makes a very good servant. The problems begin when a strong identification with it is made and it then becomes seen as the "real self" or "real me" and it takes on the role of the major arbiter of truth. By "arbiter of truth" it is meant that part of you that you listen to when you want to judge whether something is true or not. At different times we listen to different parts of ourselves to give us a verdict. However, some parts are more reliable in this role than others…

The following list outlines the some of the limits of the mind. It can be useful to remind the mind that these are part and parcel of its nature when it gets too uppity!

The mind is mortal. It is created and so will die. This means it cannot truly know the immortal nature of spirit. Therefore all pronouncements it makes about spirit and all the beliefs it has about spirit are essentially the twitterings of the uninformed! Similarly, the mind uses thoughts which begin and end. Thought cannot grasp the concepts of infinity, eternity, unity, absolute truth, spirit, emptiness or non-existence. Thoughts begin and end and so are not infinite or eternal. There are many different thoughts and so thoughts cannot reflect unity. Thoughts, being limited, can only conceive of limited, relative truth. As spirit is the eternal essence it is beyond transient thought. Thoughts cannot truly understand states in which thoughts do not exist (emptiness, non-existence, be-ness) as it only has experience of its own existence. If it was not existing it would not be thinking as it would be dead!
There is no such thing as mental truth. Anything is mentally true only for the moment you think it. It is only on reflection that your habits and memories will decide whether something is not true or not. Thus a blue banana exists while the thought is in your head. It is only your experience which denies its existence. Nothing is really predictable despite the mind thinking it is. Science uses the mind to formulate theories and identify natural laws but we can never predict with complete accuracy what the outcome of any given situation will be. This is not too important in our daily lives and the mind's apparent predictive power is very useful. However, when we start dealing with the subtleties encountered on a spiritual journey the ability of the mind to trick us into believing its predictions and assumptions can blind us to truth.

There is no absolute mental proof to be found in the mind. The "truth" gained by observing anything is short lived (unless you blind yourself to contradictory thoughts) because the mind will always question any experience and find flaws or imperfections in it. There is no mathematical, logical, religious or philosophical proof possible in the mind because all of these are based on individual value systems which change so that a different stance will be taken by the same person at different times. This is why there are so many contradictory ideas to be found in the world. This means that the phrase "seeing is believing" is not true. The mind doubts everything it sees and only appears to come to fixed conclusions by having sufficient rigidity or fanaticism to ignore the doubts that are there. Certainty is not found in the mind. Absolute certainty is only found in Unity.

Thoughts are always active and so the mind can never understand stillness. There is therefore no peace to be found in the mind. As thoughts are always active and always acting on self preservation they cannot grasp concepts expressing neutral states such as "pointlessness", "inaction", "non-being" that arise from higher states of consciousness. Thoughts must always polarise to one side or the other of any concept, they can't be neutral. The mind seems to delight it using qualities that only Unity can contain to tormen us in our daily life with unobtainable ideals. Ideas such as "being in the moment", "being desireless", "complete certainty", "permanent security", "unconditional love" etc. can only be truly known in Unity. While looking to such ideals may make us live more harmoniously, the self-torment or guilt that they can generate by failing to live up to such impossible notions is an unnecessary burden. Thoughts depend on separation. Without a separation between the thinker and "the thought about" thoughts could not function. They also separate one object from another, one idea from another.

That thoughts depend on separation or distance means they are always taking a polarised view. This is why fixation on thought, and the belief that thoughts can express truth, always leads to argument and difference. Thoughts never show us what is actually there. We only recognise an object because we can fit its pattern into a shape we have seen before and so give it a name. This includes recognising the colours, textures and edges of everything that we see; identifying the nature of the sounds that we hear and interpreting the tastes, smells and sensations from our other senses. This is inherent in the mind's nature. If we have an experience in which we don't perceive in this way then we are not using the mind at that time. When we are thinking, we are sitting in our past memories or experiences viewing the present.

This is the source of most depression and misery.
It is only by comparing the here-and-now with past experiences or to our expectations of how things ought to be (and expectations are again based on the past) that we can judge the present moment to be anything other than complete and perfect for being just as it is. If you are in the freezing rain and shivering it is only past experience of warmth and being dry that prevents us from accepting the current situation as being fine as it is. Every moment of our life we have the fortune of being alive and can revel in the simplicity of being content to be exactly where we are and totally satisfied with each moment for being what it is. It is our mind's insistence on living in the past that takes us away from engaging fully with each moment. This is why the pursuits of the mind can never bring lasting contentment of themselves

Our thoughts generalise because they do not see what is there. Having seen thousands of yellow bananas the mind thinks it can know if a blue one could possibly exist or not. This generalisation generates the closed minded attitudes seen in much of science and religion. However much of life we experience we can never be certain we have a complete understanding. Such certainty is not possible in Duality in which there are always two sides to everything. Certainty is only possible in Unity. Thoughts give us a partial view. Our senses only show us the surface of objects, and we can only see one side of an object. The limitations of our senses means that the mental interpretations we make on the basis of these perceptions is also limited. Thus our view of the world is very partial.

Thoughts do not belong to any one person. There is no way of recognising any personalised features in them. How would you know if your thought of an orange has not being used or thought by someone else? They don't have your name running through them like the words in a stick of seaside rock! Because thoughts compare and contrast, they do not produce satisfaction. The mind will judge that there will always be a "better" (in fact just different) way of doing something. If for a while the way in which you have done something is considered by you to be the "best" way, it will be at the expense of all the other ways that people have of doing it being then considered less good. So you flip from dissatisfaction with yourself to dissatisfaction with others.

There is no security in mental identity because the mind changes. Even when there is strong identification with fixed ideas in the attempt to bring a sense of mental stability, death will change all of these ideas and so destroy any "secure" mental identity. Thoughts will always act on the basis of self preservation. The "self" in question may be the little sense of self preserved at the expense of others or the greater sense of self in which the personal, little self may be sacrificed in the service of that greater sense of self. This self preserving quality means the mind always follows what it decides is the best course of action, however it looks from an outside view.

But, do thoughts really make decisions? If we go into different environments we have different types of thoughts: this means that in many situations it is our environment that rules our thoughts. If you ask yourself why you made a particular decision and then ask why it was that that decision felt it was the right one you will find certain reasons. If you then go on to ask why that choice felt that it was the right choice and keep doing this, you can't actually discover where the ultimate cause of your decision came from. You simply go back and back into more and more layers of triggers and influences which are usually nothing to do with your own mind.

This is the karma of the mind and the reason why the causes of any of our actions can never be fully understood. The causes of the mind's activities lie outside the ability of the mind to perceive them. It is only in states subtler than the mind that the causes that influence the mind can be identified and understood. We are not in control of our thoughts. We don't know where they come from before we are thinking them nor where they go after we have thought them. We cannot choose which thoughts will enter our heads before we have thought them, we can only let them go after we have had them. You can't stop a thought being triggered. If someone says the word "light" the mind will produce the inner thought "light" and you cannot stop this from happening. The mind cannot understand how it was created. As mentioned before, for it to do so would be like a pot understanding the potter.

Therefore we will never mentally understand the creation. It will always have mystery (thank goodness).