A Vedantic Exploration of Mind as the Object of the Self
[This is part 1 of a 2 part series]
In this information technology age, knowledge is at a premium and a greater emphasis is on occupations where the use of the mind is at its highest. People seek to define themselves by their thought processes – I am a complex person..I am sad when I think about my past…I am intelligent .. I have a poor memory…I am stupid and take time to understand things…I am so troubled my thoughts…wish they would stop…My mind is full of continuous chatter … I am sad..
As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, aversions, and apart from them, there is no ‘I’ except as a mere possibility or an unfulfilled potential. Excessive identification with the mind causes thought to become compulsive. The incessant mental chatter prevents people from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self .
The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement, “ I think, therefore I am.” He had in fact given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with being and identity with thinking.
Most of us think compulsively and therefore live in a state of apparent separateness and fragmentation of the mind. Identification with the mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, words, judgments, images and definition that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, you and another person. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate other. Because we are so unconsciously identified with it, we don’t even realise that the mind is using us and we are not using it. It ‘s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.
Many people seeking to know the self think that there is a great deal to be learnt about the working of the mind before they are anywhere near spiritual enlightenment. Studying the mind ‘s complexities certainly helps in mind management but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind.
Some of the features of having or deriving a strong sense of self due to identification with the mind are as follows:
-People feel very stressed and are so busy getting to the future that the present is a means to getting there.
-The past takes up a great deal of attention – with frequent talks about it, positively or negatively in the form of talking about past achievements or failures, adventures, experiences or stories or terrible things done to the self or the terrible things done to others.
-People are plagued with ‘what if’ thoughts that show the identification with the mind which projects itself into an imaginary future situation and creates fear.
-Most times, the thought processes create guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret or self-pity.
-The mind says that you need time – to sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become or understand something because ‘you are not good enough’.
-The manifestation of defining the self as the mind is a deep sense of finitude – every pursuit is an act of rebellion against the sense of limitation that the individual feels.
According to Vedanta, self knowledge can be understood by an adhikari – a prepared student, one of his foremost qualities being viveka or the ability of discrimination. One of the things to be discriminated is what the self is and what the self is not.
Identification with the mind only strengthens a sense of self that is a substitute for your true self rooted in Being. The individual recognises that ‘I am not my hand, I am not my leg’. He says "my hands, my legs, my body, my brain." He also says "my intelligence." Though we also say "my mind,", we identify so much with the mind. This is very significant. Although it is your mind, it is one of the instruments within one of the parts of you. Just as the leg is a part of you, and the hand and the brain - similarly, the mind is a part of you just as the limbs are different, as your body is different from you. Between the "I" and the mind, there is so much attachment and mine-ness that anything happening to the mind is happening to us. Even if we make this paradigm shift, of ‘I am not the mind only’, our functioning demands that we use the mind on an ongoing basis in the world. It is easier to discriminate between the body and the self as opposed to the self and the mind, the mind being more subtle from the body. -
The ego is always seeking for something to attach itself to in order to uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self. The notion of self or self-identity is the core around which the psychological patterns and the reality of the individual develop, and this notion becomes therefore the subject of change for the purpose of self-development and psychotherapeutic healing. The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, you begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind.
Yoga psychology tells us that it is the mind which is excited, that it is the mind that is sorrowful. Indian philosophy believes - even Sage Patanjali says - that the Self does not have anything of the nature of pain, pleasure, loss, gain, success, failure, fortune, misfortune... All those polarities, those dualities are not for the Self, they are all for the mind.
Subject and object relationship
Philosophy and metaphysics suggest that we are not the mind. The word ‘antahkarana’ or inner instrument is used to denote the mind and its aspects. Clearly, the mind is our instrument – to be used by a self other than the mind.
Since correct knowledge of the Self is not a pre-requisite to know the world outside properly, we just ignore ourself. The ability to know an object does not presuppose the existence of the correct knowledge of ourselves.
The term 'object' refers to anything anyone might be aware of or pay attention to. The term refers, then, not only to 'physical' objects, including whatever material processes, states, or conditions one might discriminate, but also to such 'mental' or immaterial entities or processes as pains, sensations, memories, images, dreams and daydreams, emotions, thoughts, plans, numbers, concepts, moods, desires and so on.
The term, 'subject' refers to I-who-am-aware. One is likely to know immediately, without having to stop and think it over, or having to collect any evidence, which is I and which is the object. Three guidelines could be: (1) I, subject, can be aware of some object (2) I can focus awareness in attention (3) I can distinguish myself from the object I attend to.
Anything one can objectify is the object and the one who objectifies is the subject. In an object, one does not have the I-notion. The subject and object are two distinctly different entities. The knower of anything is distinct from the thing he knows.
The distinction between subject and object, and our capacity to make that distinction, is prior to any particular opinion or theory about what either the subject or the object may be. You can distinguish yourself as subject from any object whatsoever ('physical' or 'mental') any time you direct your attention to that object and realize that it is you who are aware and who pay attention, not the object. The real nature of the object and the real nature of the subject may be baffling mysteries to us, but these mysteries are no barrier whatever to knowing which is obviously which. There is a greater entity which objectifies the events of the mind – emotions, thoughts, memories etc. Therefore, the problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. The seer is different from the seen; the subject cannot be the object.
Vin V
A Vedantic Exploration of Mind as the Object of the Self
[This is part 1 of a 2 part series]
In this information technology age, knowledge is at a premium and a greater emphasis is on occupations where the use of the mind is at its highest. People seek to define themselves by their thought processes – I am a complex person..I am sad when I think about my past…I am intelligent .. I have a poor memory…I am stupid and take time to understand things…I am so troubled my thoughts…wish they would stop…My mind is full of continuous chatter … I am sad..
As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, aversions, and apart from them, there is no ‘I’ except as a mere possibility or an unfulfilled potential. Excessive identification with the mind causes thought to become compulsive. The incessant mental chatter prevents people from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self .
The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement, “ I think, therefore I am.” He had in fact given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with being and identity with thinking.
Most of us think compulsively and therefore live in a state of apparent separateness and fragmentation of the mind. Identification with the mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, words, judgments, images and definition that blocks all true relationship. It comes between you and yourself, you and another person. It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate other. Because we are so unconsciously identified with it, we don’t even realise that the mind is using us and we are not using it. It ‘s almost as if you were possessed without knowing it and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself.
Many people seeking to know the self think that there is a great deal to be learnt about the working of the mind before they are anywhere near spiritual enlightenment. Studying the mind ‘s complexities certainly helps in mind management but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind.
Some of the features of having or deriving a strong sense of self due to identification with the mind are as follows:
-People feel very stressed and are so busy getting to the future that the present is a means to getting there.
-The past takes up a great deal of attention – with frequent talks about it, positively or negatively in the form of talking about past achievements or failures, adventures, experiences or stories or terrible things done to the self or the terrible things done to others.
-People are plagued with ‘what if’ thoughts that show the identification with the mind which projects itself into an imaginary future situation and creates fear.
-Most times, the thought processes create guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret or self-pity.
-The mind says that you need time – to sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become or understand something because ‘you are not good enough’.
-The manifestation of defining the self as the mind is a deep sense of finitude – every pursuit is an act of rebellion against the sense of limitation that the individual feels.
According to Vedanta, self knowledge can be understood by an adhikari – a prepared student, one of his foremost qualities being viveka or the ability of discrimination. One of the things to be discriminated is what the self is and what the self is not.
Identification with the mind only strengthens a sense of self that is a substitute for your true self rooted in Being. The individual recognises that ‘I am not my hand, I am not my leg’. He says "my hands, my legs, my body, my brain." He also says "my intelligence." Though we also say "my mind,", we identify so much with the mind. This is very significant. Although it is your mind, it is one of the instruments within one of the parts of you. Just as the leg is a part of you, and the hand and the brain - similarly, the mind is a part of you just as the limbs are different, as your body is different from you. Between the "I" and the mind, there is so much attachment and mine-ness that anything happening to the mind is happening to us. Even if we make this paradigm shift, of ‘I am not the mind only’, our functioning demands that we use the mind on an ongoing basis in the world. It is easier to discriminate between the body and the self as opposed to the self and the mind, the mind being more subtle from the body. -
The ego is always seeking for something to attach itself to in order to uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self. The notion of self or self-identity is the core around which the psychological patterns and the reality of the individual develop, and this notion becomes therefore the subject of change for the purpose of self-development and psychotherapeutic healing. The beginning of freedom is the realisation that you are not the possessing entity – the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, you begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. You also realize that all the things that truly matter – beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace – arise from beyond the mind.
Yoga psychology tells us that it is the mind which is excited, that it is the mind that is sorrowful. Indian philosophy believes - even Sage Patanjali says - that the Self does not have anything of the nature of pain, pleasure, loss, gain, success, failure, fortune, misfortune... All those polarities, those dualities are not for the Self, they are all for the mind.
Subject and object relationship
Philosophy and metaphysics suggest that we are not the mind. The word ‘antahkarana’ or inner instrument is used to denote the mind and its aspects. Clearly, the mind is our instrument – to be used by a self other than the mind.
Since correct knowledge of the Self is not a pre-requisite to know the world outside properly, we just ignore ourself. The ability to know an object does not presuppose the existence of the correct knowledge of ourselves.
The term 'object' refers to anything anyone might be aware of or pay attention to. The term refers, then, not only to 'physical' objects, including whatever material processes, states, or conditions one might discriminate, but also to such 'mental' or immaterial entities or processes as pains, sensations, memories, images, dreams and daydreams, emotions, thoughts, plans, numbers, concepts, moods, desires and so on.
The term, 'subject' refers to I-who-am-aware. One is likely to know immediately, without having to stop and think it over, or having to collect any evidence, which is I and which is the object. Three guidelines could be:
(1) I, subject, can be aware of some object
(2) I can focus awareness in attention
(3) I can distinguish myself from the object I attend to.
Anything one can objectify is the object and the one who objectifies is the subject. In an object, one does not have the I-notion. The subject and object are two distinctly different entities. The knower of anything is distinct from the thing he knows.
The distinction between subject and object, and our capacity to make that distinction, is prior to any particular opinion or theory about what either the subject or the object may be. You can distinguish yourself as subject from any object whatsoever ('physical' or 'mental') any time you direct your attention to that object and realize that it is you who are aware and who pay attention, not the object. The real nature of the object and the real nature of the subject may be baffling mysteries to us, but these mysteries are no barrier whatever to knowing which is obviously which. There is a greater entity which objectifies the events of the mind – emotions, thoughts, memories etc. Therefore, the problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. The seer is different from the seen; the subject cannot be the object.
to be continued in part 2.....
2 years ago | [YT] | 12