Maya of the Mind

Watch the mind as it tries, in every moment, to co-opt experience by translating it into a story. It tries to draw us away from experience into a mental world that simulates experience. It tries to draw us into an imagined story about the experience. If it succeeds, that story becomes our experience. - Gina Lake.

The mind, it appears, is our biggest enemy. We are hard coded to get fooled easily and there is no limit to the nature, depth and complexity of the illusion that may form in the mind.

As per my understanding of Advaita Vedanta, the biggest illusion could be that events of the human world flow chronologically and are connected by cause and effect.

But how true is this concept - only moments of transcendence of mundane reality could reveal to us.

I don't know if it is true.....

BUT

Have you ever, in your life, looked at something, and found yourself saying...'TIMELESS' or 'AMAZING' or 'WOW'...and found the surroundings dissolving...

Those are, technically speaking, moments of transcendence of human life.

Such temporary transcendence is also known as "Satori". Beautiful things, beautiful concepts, beautiful music, beautiful places, little children, cute puppies, such things can push us into "Satori".

Each experience with Satori is unique. It's like Tea. No two cups of tea can be the same.

Why I am talking of 'Satori' is --- in the moment of 'Satori'...the non chronological nature of the flow of events in the human world could hit you. As per the texts...

PART - II
Carl Jung suggests that memory is merely a dance of archetypes in the transcendental NOW. Everything - the past, the present, and the 'future' - it is all unfolding simultaneously in the transcendental NOW.

Moments of "Satori" could give us a glimpse of this timeless reality. As mentioned previously.

Illusions

The green and the blue spirals are the same colour.

When tomorrow comes, it's the NOW again.

A Tolle lecture on the 'transcendental NOW' in which he points out that careful observation will reveal that audio-visual quality of memory --- whether it is from 10 minutes back or 10 years back or 20 years back - it's the same.

The 5 minute old memory is as fragmented, as disjointed as the 5 year old memory. Or the 10 year old memory. Or the 20 year old memory.

Your transcendental self has been, and is, peacefully watching all moments of your life manifesting simultaneously. These moments contain archetypes, i.e., models of you, not the real you.

The future does not exist, except as a thought, a moment on the above mentioned transcendental fabric. It is also unfolding in the NOW, along with the past.

And here is Carl Jung, talking about the relationship between the past and the present moment.

It appears that Jung is in perfect tune with Tolle.




If indeed the 'transcendental NOW' is all there is, one just might prefer to say -- memory or "movement of archetypes" from 10 minutes below, or 10 years "below", or 20 years "below". -- to use Jung's representation.

One dynamic moment, evolving 'vertically'. Outside of time, which can be looked upon as flowing horizontally.

"One dynamic moment evolving vertically" is also a sensibility that physicist Fritjof Capra ponders in 'The Tao of Physics', when he comments on the experiences reported by eastern mystics who claimed to have transcended, and the odd behaviour of phenomena seen at the sub atomic level, phenomena that do not flow chronologically, and appear to move in complex ways that can be summed up as "distortion of time."


An interesting statement pointed out by Eckhart Tolle that points to temporal distortion in human life:

"Before Abraham was, I am."


Some more examples of temporal distortion:

• You are reading this for the first time, all over again.
  
  
• You have been watching this statement forever.
  
  
• You are visiting this blog for the first time, but you think you have been here before.

Word maps versus the Territory

When it comes to building maps of reality using words, I try to avoid building maps that are elaborate.

Word maps of reality should move like poetry.

There is no need to try to be 'exact' -- there is no such thing as 'exact'. It is an imaginary thing.

Whatever reality is, it's beyond word-maps, and can be comprehended only through the DIRECT EXPERIENCE.

Reality is totally different from the maps we build.

For example, consider the statement:

"We apply a certain force to a mass, and the mass moves through a distance as predicted by the laws of motion".

This statement is ok, as far as engineering is concerned.

But it is NOT OK, as far as the real flow of reality is concerned.

So what would be the REAL flow of reality in the above mentioned situation?

Answer: IN-DETERMINISTIC. Cannot be defined, cannot be expressed in words. It is a dance of quality that involves all of infinity. That's the only thing that can be said.

Robert M. Pirsig has the following to say, Chapter 5, Lila:

"The fundamental nature of reality is outside language. Language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided." [While talking about the POV of mystics.]

He also says..."Quality does not have to be defined. You understand it without definition, ahead of definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions."