The Therapy Of Music

Out of what is in itself an undistinguishable, swarming continuum, devoid of distinction or emphasis, our sense make for us, by attending to this motion and ignoring that, a world full of contrast, of shady accents, of abrupt changes, of picturesque light and shade.

Helmholtz says that we notice only those sensations which are signs to us of things. But what are things? Nothing, as we shall abundantly see, but special groups of sensible qualities, which happen practically or aesthetically to interest us, to which we therefore give substantive names, and which we exalt to this exclusive status of independence and dignity.

William James said that the ego creates things by selectively attending to one aspect of a field of awareness, and ignoring everything else within that field. He's right. We do create things by slicing up reality into experiences. We do tend to close the eyes of our conscious mind, and not see what is there to see. We don't trust our innate therapeutic nature. Music, on the other hand, is one of those sensations that we rarely overlook. Music is a conscious reminder of the innate rhythms that exist within us. Music brings images to our conscious eyes, and we see our conscious beliefs in various forms.

The natural healing sound of music surrounds us, but we give it other names and ignore it. The sound of rain is one of those nuances. Left alone the conscious mind will automatically allow the sound of rain to flow through our thoughts, and healing occurs internally. We don't believe it, because as James points out we consider the rain an annoyance rather than a healer. The great therapy within the sound of all types of music activates our cells, and stimulates the energy within the inner self. Music helps the conscious mind unite with other portions of the self that wait for us to become aware of them.

A Self That Knows

My body is like a phantom, like bubbles in a stream. My mind, looking into itself, is as formless as empty space, yet somewhere within sounds are perceived. Who is hearing?

That question was asked by the 14th century Zen Master Bassui. Questions like this one would constantly keep Bassui searching for an answer in meditation, until he found comfort remembering the inherent emptiness of consciousness. Within that emptiness is a fullness. That fullness appears differently in every physical focus. The one who is hearing is hearing our inner sounds. We hear the self through the channels of awareness that manifest through experiences.

We flow through awareness,and then focus using our branding fork of beliefs. Once beliefs are branded they become experiences. The body is a phantom. It bubbles in a stream. Each bubble within the body is another thought in the conscious mind. Thoughts gather and then change as the energy within them moves through eternity.

As Hui-neng the 6th Patriarch of Chan Buddhism said during his 8th century life:

There is within oneself that which knows.

The Human Façade

From within or from behind a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is a façade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his actions, would make our knees bend.

When it breathes through the intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will it is virtue; when it flows through his affections it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins, when it would be something of itself. The weakness of the will begins, when the individual would be something of himself. All reform aims, at some one particular, to let the soul have its way through us, in other words, to engage us to obey.

Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay, The Over-soul, explains the obscure force that shines through us. He calls it light, but it's the energy of consciousness shining through us. The human body is an organ for this energy. That energy is what Emerson calls the soul, but the name is only a way to describe a knowing, or an experience, so we can become aware of what we create. The genius, the virtue and the love that Emerson mentions are right below the surface of our thoughts. They wait patiently as impulses peaking through the contrast of each human experience. Our ability to use these impulses is controlled by our beliefs. We can believe those impulses don’t exist within us so we never think we use them, but they are always being used by the self that sits behind the human façade.

Breath Of One Existence

I don’t look at a man and think: man

Not, for that matter,

Do I think him ox or pig.

He is I. And as meaningless.

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poem Man lets us peak around the corner of consciousness. Around that corner is a world void of rational rhetoric and guilt-filled beliefs. In the open fields around that corner is another aspect of our conscious mind, and it beckons us to comprehend the fact that we physically form what we think and believe.

Takahashi poignantly points out that we are not just human; humanity is our vehicle of choice. We ride it using multiple existences. Our beliefs, thoughts and feelings in those realities instantly materialize in this reality, but our concept of time creates lapses between them so we can feel what we think. Takahashi meaningless comment is well placed. In the scheme of being consciousness, we experience events and meet other forms of consciousness, which we cannot perceive in this level of awareness.

The rhythm of birth and death can be looked at as air inhaled and then exhaled. We feel our breath as it enters and leaves us. We are not breath, but without it we would not physically exist. Our lives go in and out of us. They are us, but they are not us. So the life we live is part of us, but not all of us. We are the I that has meaning in all the meaningless time related experiences. So we don't have to look at man and say man; we could say man is the breath of one existence.

An Unwritten Poem

Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree
And about bamboo plant from a bamboo plant.

Those words come from the 17th century Japanese poet Basho. He was referring to poetry, and how a poet should detach the mind from the self and enter the poem. The poem then writes itself, and the poet senses what the poem senses, and that expression is manifested physically. The poet’s personality and ego are shelved in another aspect of time. They rest in a dimension where psychological time is misunderstood. The time of a poem is eternal, and the poet lives in that eternity. Poets experience the nature of each symbol and word,and live them. The tiny strokes become their own world where no thing exists without the flavor of selfless awareness.

In the action of no-action the poem writes over the poet and a unity of character develops within the creases of the poet’s mind. A newness blooms into a scented flower of unity between the poem, the poet, and the reading self. The poet grasps the flower of self awareness, and finds another self. That self is busy writing what has already been written, so the reader reads what is already known. In this action, a quality of complexity forms a verse of meaning, and the poet, as well as the reader, senses the nature of oneness. Free to roam through the corridors of the poem, the poet finds an electromagnetic reality, a pattern of impulses, which spark imagination and a stanza of consciousness manifests through the ego. The poet’s ego chooses a channel of reception, and perceptions flow freely without the threatening forces of discrimination. The poem becomes the poet learning about a self from the self, as he lingers in pine and bamboo trees of his own consciousness.

A Bucket Of Unawareness

Listen: a nightingale strains her voice, serenading the snow. Look: a tortoise wearing a sword climbs the lampstand.

Should you desire the great tranquility, Prepare to sweat beads.

Hakuin Ekaku was one of the most influential figures in Rinzai Zen Buddhism during 18th century. Hakuin was instrumental in integrating meditation and koan into training practices for monks. All modern day practitioners of modern day Rinzai Zen use practices that were initiated by Ekaku.

Trying to find some sense in Hakuin’s words doesn’t come from educated Western thought. Dissecting translated Japanese poems is a personal process, because Zen itself is personal energy. Zen can be described as spontaneous activity free of form. Zen flows from the formless inner self. We don’t need an education to experience that action; it is always present under our rational radar screen. We tend to filter unusual thoughts and then deposit them in a conscious mind holding area.

We consider the inner self a foreign place. We believe we are like the nightingale that strains and stresses in order to know the self. We act like the tortoise that slowly climbs the lampstand of awareness, but never turns on the light. We want tranquility and peace, but we look objectively for them. We sweat beads of emotions in order to sense what we already have.

We are never prepared to feel the action of Zen in its completeness. We fear and then ignore it and then call those actions sanity. Sanity is another term for complacent conformity. True sanity is knowing the nothingness of Zen, and frolicking in that awareness.

Self Inflicted Ignorance

Whoever degrades another degrades me. . . and whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
And whatever I do or say I also return

The words of Walt Whitman, from The Leaves of Grass, are a reminder that everything in my reality is created by and for me. Whatever energy I project into my reality continues to flow through consciousness, and it expands as I do. I find my self reliving that energy in different forms; the energy in the messages is never far from my awareness, but I play with these messages like a cat with a string, pushing them away, but they always come back and form an experience for me to live physically. The energy of consciousness swirls around and through me as I travel through a focused reality creating, experiencing, and remembering.

It’s easy to maintain the sunderance that exists within me. I can live as a separated self and continue to deny what I already know. I experience what I’m creating in a variety of ways. There is no right or wrong, because in each message I experience what I believe. I perceive, and then justify my creations in order to validate my awareness; an awareness that is always in motion like a stream filled with bubbles. I grab a bubble and it manifests as an experience, and within each bubble is a remembrance of the me, I sense around me. What I say and do is but a drop of water in a fast running stream that flows into the consciousness of all consciousness. Constantly in circulation, all energy returns to me, and in the wake of my self-inflicted ignorance, I expand from my self-created contrast.

.

Dreaming Is A Form Of Movement

Neither cling to the notion of a mind, nor cling to the notion of purity, nor cherish the thought of immovability; for these are not our meditation. When you cherish the notion of purity and cling to it, you turn purity into falsehood. . . Purity has neither form nor shape, and when you claim an achievement by establishing a form to be known as purity, you obstruct your own self nature, you are purity bound.

Hui-neng, the 6th patriarch of Chan Buddhism, gave a group of 8th century monks a lesson in meditation using those words. Hui-neng could have been talking about our dream state as well. In the dream state we have purity of thought. Dreams are filled with powerful learning experiences, but we consider them empty because we don't understand them. Dreams are filled with ideas constructions that become impulses. Dreams connect our inner world with our exterior world.

Dreaming is a form of movement. The conscious mind experiences the self without a body. We live life in another reality.

Dreams give us a plethora of information about the state of our bodies as well as the state of reality. They show us probable external conditions that our present beliefs will manifest. The dream state allows us to experience trial frameworks and probable actions. We decide which framework of action we want to physically materialize.

Our physical life springs from invisible worlds, and we create our reality from these worlds using our thoughts and beliefs. The power of our identity and individuality comes from the inner self. The inner self projects that power in our waking state as well as in the dream state.

The Soul Is Dressed In Chemicals

We play with obscure forces, which we cannot lay hold of, by the names we give them, as children play with fire, and it seems for a moment as if all the energy had lain unused in things until we came to apply it to our transitory life and its needs.

But repeatedly. . . these forces shake off their names and rise. . . against their little lords, no, not even against, they simply rise, and civilizations fall from the shoulders of the earth.

Rainer Maria Rilke's poem Worpswede talks about the invisible energy that manifests from the self. The soul is dressed in chemicals in physical life; we wear the garments from all the elements of earth. Our cells are changed by the food, drugs, and chemicals we absorb. They become part of the us we call the self. Our beliefs about those substances make them real. Rilke talks about the hidden aspects that surface from our distorted beliefs about the self. These thoughts create blockage, and we experience a reality filled with distortion.

The self is multidimensional. We are more than one self. We are the obscure forces that we can't identify until we examine our beliefs. Rilke used poetry to identify with other selves. He found comfort in his diversity, and agony in its realness. The agony was an emotional response to his fear of these obscure forces. He repeated this cycle of insanity until he found common ground for all his selves. That common ground was the acceptance of his own creations.

Snow Brings Water To Life

I walked abroad in a snowy day;
I asked the soft snow for me to play.
She played and she melted in all her prime,
And the winter called it a dreadful crime.

William Blake wrote the poem Soft Snow at the turn of the 19th century. Blake was ignored most of his life. A group of inspiring artists found his work right before his death in 1827, and feel in love with it. The scope and depth of his work has been dissected, analyzed, and studied over the years, because he projected his innate self in his work. Soft Snow is not only brilliant rhyme, it’s enchanting mysticism. The ability to sense the snow being born as a unique form of consciousness is very obvious in the poem. Unique flakes of snow bring water to life, and it blankets the ground with diversity. Nature applauds her arrival, but we treat her with mixed emotions.

Snow, like other natural forms of consciousness, tests our ability to connect with a self that wants to play and enjoy each experience. We treat her like a menace when she brings more play than we expect, and we are annoyed when she doesn’t show up when and where she’s expected. We judge, curse and hate her for her indulgences, and miss her when she confines herself to the mountaintops. We scold her when she turns to ice, but praise and admire her when she becomes an iceberg. If she is too big we fear her; if she is aggressive we hide from her. We applaud her for melting, and ignore her as she does. We create a snow filled life in a world filled with her consciousness. It's a dreadful crime filled with the ingredients of our separated mind.

Imperfect World

The infinitely small is as large as large can be,

When external conditions are forgotten;

The infinitely large is as small as small can be, when objective limits are put out of sight.

Those thoughts were written in Chinese in the 5th century by Zen Master Seng-ts’an. His work Hsin-hsin-ming is loosely translated as, Inscribed on the Believing Mind.

In childhood the conscious mind is trained to use innate argumentative tactics above all others. We restrict our creativity. We only allow it to flow through accepted channels that conform to family beliefs. Our conscious mind create images that we never acknowledge or act on. We make the infinite large as small as we can in order to conform.

The conscious mind creates physical experiences from the inner conscious mind as well as from exterior data. The inner conscious mind is limitless, but we believe it's very small so we compensate by accepting the beliefs of others. We want to be perfect in our imperfect world.

The ancient Chinese master, Hsin said I am all things in mind, and I choose how to be perfect.

As Seng explains

One in all,
All in one. . .

If only this is realized,

No more worry about your not being perfect!

The Only Now

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Not any more youth or age than there is now;

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Walt Whitman wrote those thoughts in his 1855 work, Leaves of Grass. Emerson called the book the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed. It was the first volume of its kind, and it stands on its own in the world of poetic literature. The messages in the book are delivered in a relaxed style. The sexual candor, racial bonding, and democratic unity, that is expressed in the poems, compliment and affirm the connection of all life in ordinary terms.

Whitman’s thoughts about the now ring a bell of awareness, but that bell was muffled in the 19th century. Now had a different meaning back then. Now was a mixture of the past and the future. Now has been redefined in this now. The meaning of the word is rooted in the endless sand of consciousness where simultaneous experiences awakened in linear style. We dress for the occasion of now in flowing garments of thoughts and beliefs, and realize now is where the spirit meets the flesh.

Heaven and hell are filled with duplicity, and the separation is boiling over into a sea of distorted religious conundrums. Our beliefs are manifested in the now and we feel them as we focus on them now. The only now is the now each one of us creates. It is the playground of physical consciousness and the training ground for the experiencing other realities.

We Can Go Anywhere

You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go,” the Elder said. I’ve gone everywhere and every-when I can think of.” “It’s strange the gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection in order to go anywhere, instantly. Remember Jonathan, heaven isn’t a place or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless.

Richard Bach wrote, Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1970. The trick to freedom, as the elder Chiang tells Jonathan, is to release the self from a limited body, and recognize his true nature as perfect, which is, in a sense, an unwritten number everywhere at once across space and time. The self is finding other aspects of self, and sensing the unlimited number of possibilities that wait to be experienced. Perfection is not an end or the ultimate; it is in constant action, and is always expanding in awareness.

We look at yesterday and see our beliefs. We believe perfection is out of reach. It spins around a self-created God like an energy-charged blanket that warms spacelessness. Heaven is not a place or time. It is a state of mind, and we visit it in our now. Perfection is not our ultimate goal. Perfection means the end, but there is no end to consciousness. It is always expanding. We tell the self stories and live them. We travel through our own mind fields and find heaven or hell in our distorted thoughts. We see reality and measure it in space and time, but that measurement is a focused thought of one self. We can go anywhere we want when we believe in our own eternal perfection.

Wisdom Is A Form Of Non-Being

When thou reviewest the world with thy wisdom and compassion, it is to thee like the ethereal flower, and of which we cannot say whether it is created or vanishing, as the categories of being and non-being are inapplicable to it.

When thou reviewest all things with thy wisdom and compassion, they are like visions, they are beyond the reach of mind and consciousness, as the categories of being and non-being are inapplicable to them.

When thou reviewest the world with thy wisdom and compassion, it is eternally like a dream, of which we cannot say whether it is permanent or it is subject to destruction, as the categories of being and non-being are inapplicable to it.

That hymn is from Bodhisattva Mahamati. A Bodhisattva is an enlightened being whose goal is to help others. Being enlightened is an achievement in Buddhism as well as in any other religion. Freeing the self from the self is achieved through wisdom, and the goal of liberating others is achieved through compassion. Those thoughts are the foundation for most religions. The methods used to achieve enlightenment, or what we believe to be enlightenment are the fences that create the separation when religion is discussed.

Our core beliefs about wisdom and compassion are the same beliefs that Mahamati had 13 centuries ago, but the expression of those beliefs has changed. That is the nature of consciousness. From the seeds of religion we discover other seeds, which existed long before religion was a belief. Wisdom and compassion come from a self that has no physical being so that self is non-being. The self not connected to the brain contains the wisdom and compassion of all consciousness so wisdom is a form of non-being.

Wisdom cannot be fully explained in rational terms, even though wisdom is the foundation for rationalism. Compassion is an emotion fueled by rational thought, but it can only be expressed using the knowledge created by our current awareness of the self. The self not connected to the brain sends us wisdom in time capsules and we reconfigure the physical self using those capsules.

Changes in the self are reflections within the stream of wisdom, and that stream produces the exact amount of compassion for our experiences.

Invisible Beliefs

Broader and deeper we must write our annals, from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience. If we would truly express our central and wide-related nature instead of this old chronology of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes.

Already that day exists for us, but the path of science and letters is not the way into nature. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and the unschooled farmer’s boy, stand nearer to the light by which nature is to be read, than the dissector or the antiquary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1842 essay, History, explains the difference that exists between what we are taught to believe and the beliefs that innately exist. Some of our beliefs come from our thoughts, some come from our family and friends, and others come with us at birth. We don't recognize all of our beliefs. Some beliefs are deeply rooted in our conscious mind, but other beliefs hide in the creases of the ego.

Beliefs float through a vibrating stream in a region of consciousness. Beliefs are shared using that stream. We create hybrid beliefs using associations and influences that are attached to the beliefs of others. They become part of our invisible belief group.

Invisible beliefs are incorporated in our core belief structure at different times. They help form our individual reality as we move through time. Invisible beliefs are in a constant state of motion. They always manifest in some way, but the time and place of that manifestation is hidden from our conscious mind by the ego.

Dilatory and Ignorant Beliefs

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem.
I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you.

Walt Whitman is one of America’s foremost 19th century thinkers. His essays, poetry and humanistic reflections are part of American culture, although his views about certain issues are still debated. His thoughts about the abolitionist movement were considered radical by some, and accepted by others. There’s no doubt that his work can be interpreted in several different ways. His poem, To You was one of the topics William James wrote about in his 1905 essay, Pragmatism and Religion. Certainly the pragmatic view can be accepted as a belief about the nature of Whitman’s thoughts, just as easily as a mystic can translate them into a message of self awareness. The choice is an individual one. Within Whitman’s work there’s an undertow, an inescapable knowing that he senses other realities and expresses them in 19th century terms. The first two stanzas of To You explain how he framed himself in that linear time period. He knew he was living in two worlds, but was ignoring one in order to practice conformity in the other.

Whitman’s work Leaves of Grass was shunned by most readers in that linear time period, but Ralph Waldo Emerson had nothing but praise for the work, and that opened the door so others could recognize the masterpiece. Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott also thought enough of the work to pay Whitman a visit. That’s how awareness works. At that time there were a few people who were aware of the mystical aspect of Whitman’s work and that awareness permeated the collective, and now it is an accepted way to absorb the messages.

Believing that there are other selves living experiences in other focused realities is certainly a belief that is only held by a few, but that does not invalidate the reality of those selves. Some call it reincarnation, but all realities are happening simultaneously.

It seems that the road to accepting these messages is paved with dilatory and ignorant beliefs about the self and our multiplicity. In order to eliminate the sunderance between us, we must express the self using our internal voice. We are our own poem with different lines, and diverse stanzas, and a plethora of meanings.

We Tease Our Self

A cock crows and someone
Strums a koto.
Nothing’s wanting.

In the midst of this stillness,
I’m still.
Could I catch it, I’d drop
That butterfly into my mouth.

The works of Takahashi are breeding grounds for subjective thoughts. Our conscious mind gives birth to a variety of thoughts as we read his work. His work Stillness is a good example of Dadaism mixed with a healthy dose of Zen. We find a fragment of our self circling the honeysuckle vine of wisdom in order to drink its nectar. We realize our objective world is captured by the aroma of the vine's inner stillness.

We dance to the beat of stillness as we hear the music of consciousness. Set adrift in a micro world of colorful patterns, we flirt with our own creations. Age accelerates the action of the butterfly in our consciousness. We discover a new kind of growth and personality fulfillment in our dreams.

Age activates our free flying conscious mind and mends our fractured ego. We tease our self with death in order to understand the life in death.

Reasons of Love

It is by caring about things that we infused the world with importance. This provides us with stable ambitions and concerns; it marks our interests and our goals. The importance that our caring creates for us defines the framework of standards and aims in terms of which we endeavor to conduct our lives. A person who cares about something is guided, as his attitudes and his actions are shaped, by his continuing interest in it. Insofar as he does care about certain things, this determines how he thinks it important for him to conduct his life. The totality of the various things that a person cares about, together with his ordering of how important to him they are, effectively specifies his answer to the question of how we live.

Harry G. Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton. He wrote those thoughts in his 2004 book, The Reasons of Love. Professor Frankfurt is explaining how our beliefs, along with our emotions create our reality. The importance of caring is deeply rooted in our belief structure. Everyone cares about something. We may not agree with what a person cares about, but that is an association, or a judgment, and it is related to our personal belief structure. It seems we experience this physical dimension for different reasons of love.

Each person chooses to care about certain things, even though it may not be obvious to them that they do care or believe about them. There is so much care around us, but at times we misplace and even misuse our caring.

The importance of caring is an individual association. We tend to group care and beliefs in a linear fashion, but we do that with everything. Our own feeling of separation creates a hierarchy, and we move it around at will. We are guided by our emotions. We react to them, rather than listen to them. We construct mental ideas around beliefs, and they manifest in some way. Those manifestations are usually what we want to believe about our reality.

The reasons for love are as diverse, as they are the same. Our expressions of caring and our believable and unbelievable actions about caring are all reasons of love.

Separated Sapling

This short story makes a mind print about what we believe and trust about the self.

The story incorporates two saplings, both exactly identical, both newly growing; one growing naturally, and reaching towards the sun, and basking within its rays, and drinking naturally of the rain, and resting to the moon.

The other is looking around, and is viewing the sky, and is seeing the sun, and is saying to itself, “Maybe I should be growing at night! The sun is very hot. It may burn me, or it may sap my energy, and the rain is very wet, and it get all over me, and I am not sure I am liking of this rain, and I am not sure that it is making me grow properly, and maybe I should be investigating where this rain is coming from, and I should be analyzing the sunrays to be sure that I am incorporating the proper vitamins, or maybe the moon is more friendly to my growth, and I would grow tall if I am growing at nighttime, while this idiot sapling next to me is being stunted by the sun!”

And in the morning, the natural sapling is stretching its newly formed branches, and uncurling its soft leaves, and growing within complete trust; and the other sapling, in the morning is viewing the same sun, and is looking at the beautifully formed other sapling, and it is looking like a deformed creation of itself that is confused, distorted and exhausted from pushing, forcing and untrusting attitude about its own ability to allow and just appreciate its own responsibility.

The Spaceless Aspects of Self

Apart from us where is time and space? If we are bodies we are involved in time and space, but are we? WE are one and identical Now, then, forever, here, there, and everywhere. Therefore we, timeless and spaceless Beings, alone are. . . What I say is that Self is here and now, and alone.

That interesting thought is from the Spiritual Teachings of Vedantist Ramana Maharshi. Time is certainly an idea construction of the self, and the spacelessness within that time is filled with other idea constructions, which fill that space, although we are not aware of them.

The realization that the mind is eternal, and in one moment the past, present and future exist at once is what we seek to experience in physical form. We create a variety of experiences through our beliefs, and each one brings us closer to our ultimate reality, which lies in the heart of each daily experience. All ideas exist within us from the beginning of the non-beginning, and these ideas manifest as we need them.

The Brilliant Side Of The Self

The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable foundations of physics have broken up. . . The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?

Alfred North Whitehead wrote those thoughts in his 1967 book, Science and the Modern World Whitehead may be describing what some folks call a shift in consciousness. A natural merging of the conscious mind with its counterpart, the unconscious mind, is in progress. Unconscious means the segment of the conscious mind that is not attached to the brain. This merging brings about a greater appreciation and understanding of the give-and-take that occurs between the ego and other elements of the self. Our unconscious is no longer an unknown. It is not the dark side of the self; it is the creative aspect of the self.

Normal behavior or personal characteristics that seem unusual and opaque before are now becoming clear thanks to this merging or as some people call it the transformation of the self. The shadowy side of the conscious mind is really the brilliant side of the self. There are a plethora of natural and spontaneous discoveries that occur as a result of this merging. We have reach a turning point in our consciousness. We are beginning to realize that there is great creativity and wisdom in our unconscious mind. In fact, it is much more conscious than the part our conscious mind that is attached to the brain.

Magnificent Cloud

Things which rise from the darkness of silence, from the wilderness of the unconsciousness, do not belong to the realm of human reflection and deliberation. Hence the mystics are the lilies of the field and the grass of the field as well. They are beyond good and bad, they know no moral responsibilities, which are ascribable only when there is the consciousness of good and bad. If this is the religious life, it is the philosophy of anarchism or nihilism. But the conclusion we can draw from the mystics of two widely divergent teachings (Christianity and Buddhism) seems to point to this nihilistic smashing of all human moral standards.

D.T.Suzuki in his wrote those thoughts and they were included in a work published in 1969, which was three years after his death. The morality that exists above the umbrella of duplicity is always present, but we mix it in a concoction of associations, and the end result is a distorted expression of beliefs. One example of this watered-down morality is expressed by an early Christian mystic:

To affirm God is actually to reduce him. To say that God is good, just, intelligent, is to enclose him within a created conception which is applicable only to created things.

This sort of thinking is not what we have been taught to believe, but when we give the self the opportunity to actually hear the message, we find another self that understands the message innately. Of course these messages are mystical babblings, which bear no resemblance to physical life. That fact confirms how separated we are from the self that expresses true morality. In order to affirm anything Iwe must use what we know, and that knowing is rooted in duplicity. There is a wilderness of consciousness within us, which does not belong to human reflections and deliberations, but is fully aware of those creations. In order to sense this aspect of self, we can enter the space of no-thought where images dance across our mind’s eye. These images come from impulses sent from the silence within us. It is within these images that we sense our innate morality.

The Roots Of Our Conscious Mind

A man is a bundle of relations; a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. His faculties refer to natures out of him and predict the world he is to inhabit, as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, or the wings of the eagle in the egg presuppose air. He cannot live without a world.

Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light? The ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not the lovely attributed of the maiden child predict the refinements and the decorations of civil society? A mind might ponder this thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach in a day.

Who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue or has shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation or alarm? No man can antedate his experience or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for the first time.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1841 essay History, expresses some interesting thoughts about individual realities. Our conscious mind aligns with several specific areas of knowing as we travel through adulthood. Those areas are filled with physical manipulation and emotional activity. The conscious mind is trained to use its separating qualities before all others in order to feel those areas in the flesh. The roots of our conscious mind flower in the act of being human.

We see our flower grow and change as we add years to our individual mixture of reality, and during that process the mind connects to more of itself. It is free to use its inner abilities in unique ways. Our refined and focused mind adjusts to the contrasts of life, and moves into restricted channels of knowledge. In those vacillating channels of contrasting knowledge, the conscious mind assimilate as well as creates the decorations and refinements of a mass society.

The Ghost Cave

With one stroke I have completely mashed the cave of the ghosts;

Behold, there rushes out the iron face of the monster Nata!

Both my ears are as deaf and my tongue is tied;

If thou touchest it idly, the fiery stars shoot out!

Those thoughts are the thoughts of a Zen Master known as Bukko. He seems to be conscious of his unconsciousness. His conscious mind is expressing his subjectiveness in a very unique way. The cave of ghosts is physical reality, and the fiery stars are selves from other realities. These monsters roam the hills and valleys of his mind. Objective perceptions are distorted. They manifest as monsters that promise to consume him in their treachery. These self created illusions become real as he mashes his cave of ghosts. With one stroke of the conscious mind he finds himself in an iron mask filled with strange faces. Those faces are other aspects of the self.