• MEDITATIONS ON LOOKING INTO MIND

    12. WHO IS LOOKING?

    AD: When most of us sit down and we meditate, you close your eyes and you look and there is blackness in front of you.  Nothing.  Right?  And after a little while you get bored.  You say, “there is nothing here.  What am I doing?”  And then after a little while you get sleepy and you go to sleep.  Some of us, when we sit down and we’re looking at that blackness in front of us, you look there, there is nothing there.  What am I looking for?  You have to ask yourself, “Who is looking?” Whether there’s pictures in front of you, or whether there’s just blackness in front of you or whether there’s a lot of thoughts, the question that should come up is, “Who is looking?” 

    You are always looking at something, but the one who is looking at you always forget.  You’re always preoccupied with what goes on so to speak on the cinemagraph.  And you never look at the guy who is looking.  It’s like when you go to the movie, you forget about yourself and you’re just looking at the picture.  Well, that’s what we’re doing all the time.  We’re always looking at pictures.  We looked at pictures so much that we forgot that WE ARE.   

    13. ITS NOT FAR AWAY

    PB: “Reason tells us that pure Thought cannot know itself because that would set up a duality which would be false if pure Thought is the only real existence.  But this is only reason’s inability to measure what transcends itself.  Although all ordinary experience confirms it, extraordinary experience refutes it.” (28:2.132 and  p. 385) 

    AD: You know it’s not something far away from you.  It’s not out there.  It’s like I said, when you close your eyes and you look within and you see this blankness.  Ask yourself the question, “Who sees this blankness?”  Try to understand the who who sees. 

    Never mind what it sees.  Just concentrate on who sees.  And after a while there develops the looking sensation, that you’re just looking.  And then after a while that drops away.  The sensation of looking drops away and there’s just looking.  Then you begin to feel that you aren’t anything at all, but just this infinite consciousness, no limits to it.  But it’s right there when you close your eyes.  You say, “Look I see all these thoughts running around.”  Never mind the thoughts.  Who sees the thoughts.  “Oh, I’m disturbed today.”  Never mind the disturbance, who sees the disturbance?  Always go back to the who.  It’s that point of light within you that you got to go into and follow it through all the way.  And that’s the void that he’s speaking about.  Because that seer is consciousness. 

    But you will see, you’ll think about consciousness and you’re off the point.  Because to think about consciousness is to put you outside of consciousness.  So all you can do is to be attentive to that seeing.  Never mind anything else.  Who’s looking, who sees this blackness in front of me?  It’s horrible.  I keep looking, I keep hoping to find myself, but all I see is this blackness, this darkness.  And you got to try to remember.  Go back to who sees it and stay with that.  Don’t let the contents usurp your attention.

    S: This is not what you would call the Witness, this is beyond that.

    AD: You go through the Witness-position too.  The important point here is to try to understand by being that awareness.  That’s the only way that it could be understood, by being that awareness.

    S: Is there any experiences which could be like that experience, which is not that experience.

    AD: You could imagine, if this is what you mean, you could imagine that you’re having the experience.  But whenever you imagine anything, it won’t give you the feeling of being infinite awareness, boundless, uncircumscribed, empty of everything…

    14. FACULTY OF ATTENTION

    PB: “The faculty of attention is interiorized and turned back upon itself.” (23:7.216)

    AD: Let me read that again, because this is in one sentence what you’ve got to do.  (rereads)

    AD: You remember we take the example you are reading a novel, you are very interested, you’re absorbed, then take the novel away and stay like that, very absorbed.  Your attention is at a peak.  Now you take that attention and you turn it upon itself.  Do you follow that?  Now that is very difficult, but it can be done, and you could do it, by just doing the exercises. 

    I give them the Hua-tou  exercise because that is the quickest way to get to the attention.  The exercise where I tell them, “Close your eyes, look at your mind, it is black, just pitch dark, there is nothing there.”  You say, “What the hell am I looking at?  There is nothing there.”  You keep looking, but a thought comes up.  As soon as the thought comes up, you have got a big sword, cut it right off.  You stay there, you keep doing that.

    So you have got to be at attention, constantly.  Every instant.  Like when you’re playing the piano.  As soon as your attention backs off, the exercise is over, and you have got to start again.  So you are looking into your mind.  “Boom, there I got that one!”  Every time a thought comes up, you cut it right off.  When you do this for a couple of weeks and let us say you could do it for a half hour, because it is really very strenuous, right?  You are doing the exercise, after a while you are looking at your mind, a thought comes up, you cut it off, you keep looking, you are constantly looking into your mind. 

    As soon as a thought comes up, you cut it right off, you chop off its head.  I don’t care what you do, hang it, strangle it, anything you want to do.  Get rid of it.  It is just that simple.  Get rid of it.  If you could do that for a few weeks I guarantee you results.  I guarantee them.  Maybe I shouldn’t talk like that.  But it is impossible, because your attention gets so intense that you become like a statue of attention, a mass of attention.  That is all you become.  I see myself get so stiff I was like a board.  If you kicked me I would have just, you know, like a board gone down.  That’s how stiff you get.  That means you haven’t succeeded yet, because you’ve got to get so intensely attentive that suddenly something snaps, it is over.  You are no longer tense, you are relaxed.  But you can be at attention.  You are very relaxed, but you are at attention.  Until that happens the exercise isn’t completed.  Assuming that that happens, assuming that you finally get there, then the attention which is so alert, now you turn that attention on itself. 

    That is like trying to see your own face, but it can be done.  You can be focused, you can be reflectively self-attentive.  You can have the attention looking at itself constantly.  That is when the separation between your consciousness and your body starts taking place.  You begin to feel, you are no longer your body, you begin to feel that you are distinct from anything and everything.

    11. LIFE CURRENT 

    PB: “Once you have caught this inner note in your experience of your own self existence, try to adhere firmly to the listening attitude, which catches it.” (23:6.228)

    AD: In meditation when your mind is very quiet and lets say your thoughts have subsided somehow, there is a feeling attitude that a person operates with: It’s like you’re fishing around and you pick up the scent of your own being.  …  Now, in meditation very often when a person is listening inwardly he can pick up, what you might call the life-current in you.  It’s a feeling that you are authentic.   Do you have any notion of what I mean when I say that you have a feeling that you are authentic, that you’re for real?

    It’s a very delicate subject, this listening attitude that you acquire when you meditate.  You have an attitude where you are very attentive .  You know there is something there but you just cannot quite get to it.  Nonetheless without that attitude of listening and paying attention you would miss the whole point.  It is like if you are listening to a great piece of music.  You know at a certain place there are a very important few measures that are very melodious and that you know are very inspiring, but you are not listening and they go by.  And you are not there.  But whereas if you were in the attitude of listening and expectation and you were watching for it, the moment it arises you would immediately pick it up and you would feel it.  In a similar way, when this current comes through you or passes through you, you pick it up and you’ll hold on to it and it takes you deeper and deeper into yourself.  And they call that the life-current.  Some people refer to it as the I-current.  But you have to look for it

      If you could completely relax—if anyone here could completely relax—you would immediately get very still, absolutely still. Looking Into Mind

    16. MAKE MIND THE OBJECT 

    PB: “Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts.” (p.236 23.7.10)

    AD: Let’s not have any comment on this, but let me recommend it as one of the finest mantrams that you could use in meditation. Just memorize that and go over it in your mind when you meditate.  
    AH: Anthony, may I ask a question in regards to the meditation on this? How could Mind be made into an object of attention?
    AD: Keep saying the word to yourself, “Mind,” “Mind”–you know? Say it enough times that you even get angry and you pinch yourself: What the hell is it? Things like that.
    AD: Yes, you know, keep asking yourself the word, keep repeating the word to yourself, and see if you can taste the flavor of it. It’s like when I tell you to be at attention.
    AH: We should have a thought of what mind is and make that the object of our attention.
    AD: Well, I keep telling you, like in the “hua t’uo”, to make attention the goal. No object or anything; just make attention–pure attention itself–the goal. So that means now on the one hand you have no object of consciousness but at the same time you have to be attentative. It’s a similar thing.

    You’re trying to feel or grasp or grip this thing within you which you call consciousness. And then as you grip it and keep it from moving, after awhile it kind of tries to retract and draw you into itself. And that’s when it starts getting absorbed back into the Mind. It can be experienced; I think it’s easier to DO it than to talk about it.

    15.  THE MASTER STROKE  

    This path is a master stroke.  This method of destroying the illusion of the self by means of the intellectual function which is its primary activity stands supreme and almost alone.  That very function automatically ceases when directed upon itself in the way that is herein taught, and with its cessation, the self is dissolved, appropriated by the Universal.  20.3.79

    AD: Maybe you could make a leap in your imagination to follow.  If you could think of yourself as attention, just pure attention.  Now conceive of yourself, this attention, examining or introspecting into itself.  Now you can see that you’re beyond worrying about what the body is or what the world is.  You’re not concerned with that at all right now. Let me repeat this, because it’s kind of subtle.  You reach the stage in your meditation where you are nothing but attention and you’re going to take this attention and you are going to force it to examine itself.  Is that right?  That would be (like) the general way he speaks about thinking examining itself, inquiring into its own origin.  Attention or thinking is saying, where did I come from, who am I?  What am I?  (alright) Now in what sense is that a master stroke?  Read it again…

    (Quote read again)

    So I think so far we could say that (right): Attention introspecting into itself comes to a position or it ceases functioning.  And if it ceases functioning, then how is the lower self destroyed, I would ask.

    S: Because it feeds off of it.  It only exists by virtue of the higher functioning…

    AD: Uh huh. So insofar as introspection into thinking, or thinking introspecting into itself, it comes to a state of cessation–in other words, thoughts stop–then at that moment you could say that the lower self is cut off.  There is no lower self.  There isn’t anything. There’s only this thought concentrated upon itself, attention concentrated upon itself.  There would be no connection then with any lower self.  But then if that happens …  the last sentence:

    That very function automatically ceases when directed upon itself in the way that is herein taught, and with its cessation, the self is dissolved, appropriated by the Universal. 

    AD: He’s saying: look we have a certain technique which is really a master method by which you can come to this realization that you are a universal Being, an Intellectual being, a spiritual being.  What is the method? And he would say: You’re not thinking about the outside world, you’re not thinking about any images in the inside world, neither outer nor inner.  You’re preoccupied with the function of thinking, thinking is preoccupied with itself.  What is its nature? And the more it is engrossed by trying to understand what its own nature is, it stops thinking.  At the moment that it stops thinking, then the lower self is gone and the higher takes over. 

    S: That’s the master stroke!

    AD: Yes.  He speaks about that in the Wisdom, doesn’t he? He speaks about that in quite a few places.

    S: Using the intellect…

    AD: Most of the ways are usually…like you take an object, you look at a picture, let’s say of a guru. There’s nothing wrong with these ways, but this is one way.  You concentrate on the picture, you finally focus your attention to the point where the attention is riveted and the picture becomes very real for you. 

    Or you turn inwardly and you look at an idea in the mind and you contemplate the idea.  These are the two methods that are generally employed—either external aids or internal kind of meditation.  But he’s saying neither of these two is going to be as satisfactory and as thorough as having thinking be preoccupied with itself. Because in that very preoccupation with itself it comes to a halt.   If thinking ceases then you are at that moment in a state of egoless being. Right then and there. 

    S:  Anthony, when you say, thinking being preoccupied with itself, you said earlier that you thought that you were attention…and you say thinking attending to itself…

    AD: Yes, I’m using them synonymously.  Probably for personal preferences, because that’s the way I work with them.  I wasn’t thinking of thinking, I was just preoccupied with attention, engrossed in it and then trying to understand the nature of attention itself; and what happens is there’sa deepening, and inwardization of your attention, you get deeper and deeper.  And then, all of a sudden, everything is thrown out, there’s nothing there.  There is just this pure attention and you’re like in a state of being where there’s no ego.   You are!  If anything characterizes that state it is the characteristic of existence, sheer existence but not being anything in particular. That’s a good way.  There is one sentence in Plotinus I give out to some people as a mantra.  You remember the one where he says: 

    “To know without images is Being” 

    [NOTE: Plotinus 6.5.7… “to know without image is to be.”].

    And I tell you, just concentrate on that intensely enough, it will get you there.  It’ll give you a whiff. Within a couple of weeks you’ll get a whiff of what he is talking about.  “To know without images is Being.” 

    17. MENTALISMS TRUTH: 

    PB: ``Successful results from these meditation exercises can be got much more quickly and much more easily if he begins their practice after he has thoroughly convinced himself of mentalism’s truth and after having kept this conviction alive by constantly gravitating back to it during reflective moments.” (23.6.21)

    AD: That helps a little, huh? You have to constantly deal with the subject of mentalism; you’ve got to keep thinking about it. You’ve got to reflect on thinking, and then thinking has to think about itself.
    AH: You go through the analysis of mentalism.
    AD: Sure, you could start that way. You could [go] talk to yourself, say “Now what is Mind? What is thinking? Who the hell am I? What is this all about? And I know I can’t get out of my thoughts–I’m always within them.” And you can get yourself in a state where the mind is just paralyzed and can’t move–no thoughts. But you can start out with everything that you understand about the mind in a discursive way. Stick rigidly to it. I mean, if you sit down and you’re going to start thinking of Mind, make sure you don’t bring in anything else. And you just have a discursive meditation on Mind in yourself, and you just keep elaborating it, until you exhaust every possible association or meaning or intellectual idea. Until that’s completely exhausted, you won’t get the flavor or the taste of what you’re doing. But it’s a very straightforward discursive exercise

    . AH: I was speaking about the difficulty of doing that exercise. Really it requires a tremendous amount of energy, vitality to do that exercise.

    AD: It takes a lot of energy and vitality to build a log cabin, doesn’t it? And a boat? Sure, anything worthwhile takes vitality. It depends on what you think is important. But it is true, the more you understand about these doctrines, the more available a statement like that previous one becomes, the more meaningful. It’ll paralyze your thinking, don’t worry. Just try it. 

    18. TRACE CONSCIOUSNESS          [9/21/83]  3:01  MOVED TO DEEPENING

      19. UNDIVIDED  MIND  

    PB: “There would be no hope of ever getting out of this ego-centred position if we did not know these three things: First the ego is only an accumulation of memories and a series of cravings, that is thought. It is a fictitious entity. Second, the thinking activity can come to an end in stillness. Third, Grace, the radiation of the Power beyond Man, is ever-shining and ever present. If we let the mind become deeply still and deeply observant of the ego’s self-preserving instinct, we open the door to Grace, which then lovingly swallows us.”(8.4.417)


    BS:  . It seems to me you almost have to stand at that point just before embodiment, and see that the ego has nothing to do…
    AD: Yes, that’s very true, Bert. That’s quite an accurate perception, although I wouldn’t use those words the way you put it. I would say the Mind is whole and undivided, and before it gets divided you don’t have those things like instinct, self-preservation; none of that exists. As soon as the Mind divides itself into thinker and thought, then all those things come into existence, all those things come into being. So if you could stand at the point where the Mind is whole, undivided, you’re outside that conflict. That’s why it’s so important to try to cultivate a quiet mind, because a quiet mind is a mind that’s whole and undivided and isn’t preoccupied, so to speak, with the thoughts of the ego. There it stands, so to speak, in this way prior to, let’s say, part of it identifies with the body and in that identification with the body’s sensation (then?/that?) thinks itself as the body.   So, of course, that’s the thing that all the great teachers hammer away at. Try to get to the quiet mind, the mind that IS, when thinking ceases. And if thinking inquires into its own nature, it is eventually forced into that position where it’s quiet; it actually ceases functioning when it tries to understand its own nature. And at that moment, like he said, it’s like before being embodied.

     But you see, we’re talking about very practical things now. Last week and the week before was much more theoretical for many of us. But here we’re talking about day by day. We’re talking about what has to be done EVERY day.