The
mind of an individual is a part of the cosmic universal mind. You must
understand that your individual mind is part of the universal mind. The space
in this room is an individual space, but it is also a part of a greater space.
Because you have four walls around it, you call it your room space. Similarly,
the individual mind is a concept and not a reality. Actually there is only
universal mind. Individual mind should not be brought into consideration at
all. 'Your mind' is a concept and in meditation you have to blow it up. What
happens when you break the walls, where is the individual space? It becomes
part of the total space. So the whole crux of the matter is the
individualisation of the mind which is actually a process of self-hypnotism.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Whether we want to admit it or not, we
live in a reality which is a projection of our psyche. This is a central understanding of Yoga
Vedanta. In the 18th century
the German philosopher Immanuel Kant declared that space and time were mental
constructs. In the twentieth century
Einstein stated, “. . . the distinction between past, present and future is
only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” However,
we are so accustomed to accepting our sensory display as given that we rarely
appreciate the consciousness within us that gives rise to it. Without consciousness there would be no
experience of a reality.
We are immersed in and enlivened by a
larger being who is none other than ourselves.
At the same time we are, of course, individuals. We have an individual choice as human beings
whether we want to tune into and connect with our greater being or ignore
it. There is a seeming paradox in
operation here: one needs to individuate in order to reconnect with a greater
wholeness. When we are embedded in the
conditioning provided by our families, culture, media, educational system, etc.
we are limited by it. This is why
shamans and yogis have traditionally separated themselves in forests, caves, or
ashram communities. A supportive
community is very helpful. Even then it
is most important to tune into the quiet guidance of intuition within.
Yoga practice helps us to learn to tune
into our bodies as antennas. We can feel
things in our bodies before they ever reach our conscious minds. We can also learn to influence our external
reality through our bodily presence.
That presence is our awareness which is fundamentally free from the
limits of our spacetime imaginings. We
are beings of interconnected energetic alliances, neurons in the hyperspatial
Self. We are all One. As Max Planck, one of the originators of
modern quantum mechanics, stated, “All matter originates and exists only by
virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a
conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”
True meditation
enables us to step outside of our personal and collective psychic cocoons, to
observe our working models of reality in light of a higher dimensional
perspective. Lama Govinda writes, "If we speak of
the space experience in meditation we are dealing with an entirely different
dimension." He continues, "Vision is bound up with a space of higher
dimension, and therefore timeless." He further explains, "An
experience of higher dimensionality is achieved by integration of experiences
of different centres and levels of consciousness. Hence the indescribability of
certain experiences of meditation on the plane of three dimensional consciousness." This is also true of
certain psychedelic or “entheogenic” experiences.
The “ego” in this sense is that particular
software component that keeps us fixated on our individual timespace
realities. It is absolutely necessary if
we are to function coherently on in our collective 3D hallucination. On the other hand spiritual awakening shakes
us out of this collective dream and opens us to new possibilities.
