Using your mind
Just repeating something that was said before,… are you using your mind?…If you make a calculator that only shows the input as output..who would buy it? …Yet, even the most simple calculator seem to have a more functional mind than many a man of the crowd…
Reading a book….are you really using your mind…sense impressions impress themselves onto the brain-matter…if that impression never gets processed by means of thinking…what will come out of it?
Observing certain animal species interacting one might easily become convinced that their minds are more complex and functional than that of many modern scholars.
Understanding the situation to be thus,…one might want to ask,…how to properly use the mind? What subjects will be worthwhile to consider …and in any case why do we even have a mind?
Why not using the mind to understand the mind?
(…or to get free from suffering? (or both, one after the other or one by means of the other))
Systems like the Abhidhamma are design to make use of our mind (exercising our faculties)…for solving the riddles of life….
The method is quite an old one, but one in modern days not commonly understood. That is, to build a structure into the mind, pretty much like a mind-map…and from there, as a life-long task filling in ever greater details. To bring the mind-map into consciousness will be one of the primary tasks of an Initiation into a tradition.
As an example,…
Acquiring knowledge of any subject, it has to be be contemplated as to how it relates to any other subject in the system,…f.ex. if one acquires some knowledge of biology….one has to see to where it fits,…f.ex. under ‘base’ and how it relates to the other subjects f.ex. how it relates to the mind (esp. mental factors), to consciousness (f.ex. relation of brain to consciousness etc.), how it relates to object (f.ex. becoming an object of insight etc.),to mental functions, f.ex. perhaps how the brain relates to retention, how the heart or ductless glands relate to emotions, etc, and finally how it relates to meditation attainments.
In a similar manner with any meditation experience, f.ex. seeing some light,…one has to try to find out the physiological base of it,…the mental side of it,…what type of consciousness it relates to, etc…
This is the way of the working of occult science, which may be a path quite distinct from the path of a mystic, but it surely is a path which leads to the same destination.
