The present mind and heart are two entire ways of being, each seeing and feeling the world and ourselves differently.
The mind craves control; the heart seeks love. We can only control what is fixed and certain; hence the mind’s mission to define, delimit and detain. The mind wants to reduce the universe so it can be possessed, known and dominated.
We can only really love what is free; for love which binds, only chokes and extinguishes itself. The heart yearns always to expand the universe so it has more to love, can widen the scope of its love and deepen and discover more of itself in love and as love.
The mind needs to know, and the heart to flow. The mind seeks the comfort of certain stability; the heart thrives on the adventure of flexible spontaneity.
The mind likes itemised lists; the heart loves a blank page.
The mind constructs borders; the heart builds bridges.
The mind wants to fix everything in place; the heart fixes everything apace.
The mind likes to look down on the world; the heart loves to gaze up at the heavens. The mind seeks mastery; the heart adores mystery. The mind would be lord of the temporal; the heart, disciple of the eternal.
The mind wants to plan and command the looming future; the heart invites, embraces and obeys the blooming future, now.
The mind invents and wields the might of sound; the heart discovers and becomes the power of silence. Sound precludes silence; silence includes sound. Sound masks silence; silence unmasks sound. Sound is a constant questioning; silence the eternal answer.
Yet – when the mind awakens, transcends itself and embraces the heart unreservedly, the still mind and thrilled heart fulfil each other gloriously.
The mind is not bad. It is potentially extremely good. It has just headed in a wrong direction.
The mind is like an adorable little boy of the family who thinks it great fun to splash paint over everyone’s food – at every meal. At some point, his ways need to change, before we all starve.
The mind has assumed a role beyond its station, a job for which it is not qualified – ruler of the universe.
Wherever there is illness, there is also a cure. The cure for all the mind’s ills – and all the ills it causes – lies in the peace, love and light of the heart. This cure can only work when the mind gives up its attachment to greed, power and control – and surrenders to the heart. At present the mind feels that only it is qualified to rule our lives and our world; it does not recognise that the heart might have the necessary capacity to guide our lives peacefully, happily, successfully and gloriously.
A sick child appears pale, weak, glum and forlorn: when he is cured, all his enthusiasm, light and joy return. When it opens to the light, love, wisdom and power of the heart, the mind’s natural capacities blossom and the mind becomes what it is meant to be; a clear, brilliant, inspired server of our own and the greater good.
The transition from a mind-driven to a heart-centred consciousness is our most urgent need.
Allowing the infant-mind to drive our life-car has been an interesting ride, but could be leading us over a cliff. It’s high time we let the licensed driver take the wheel.
The mind and the heart perceive and comprehend reality differently.
The mind’s modus operandi proceeds on the understanding that it is observing something separate from itself. The mind constructs models of reality based on evidence it receives from the senses and other sources. These models are constantly changing as new evidence comes to light, just as the mind itself is subject to constant change.
The heart’s way of knowing is through identification. The heart’s capacity of love enables it to enter into and become one with reality. There is no process or procedure involved – just instant intuitive awareness.
The mind approaches reality from the outside; the heart from within. The mind’s processes of observation and analysis can be slow and laborious and are always suspect to doubt, rejection and revision; the heart’s knowing is immediate and absolute.
In Western civilisation we have been using the mind as our primary instrument to know and understand ourselves and our universe. This would be all very well if we were finite beings. But we are not – so this mode needs to change.
To use the mind to understand ourselves and the universe is akin to measuring the sky with a 30 centimetre ruler, an exercise in frustration and futility. It is simply the wrong instrument.
A 30 centimetre ruler is excellent for measuring anything up to and including 30 centimetres, but beyond that, it is useless. The mind is a marvellous instrument for measuring, understanding and relating to the finite world, but when it comes to the infinite universe and to life itself, it is helplessly and hopelessly inadequate.
Only the infinite can know the infinite.
To know our infinite self, we must use an infinite instrument – our spiritual heart.
Why does the smallest dog always bark the loudest? He knows he is small, so feels he has to project an impression of greatness and power to impress the world and hide his weakness. It is all front, all a bluff.
Why does the mind always have to be right? Deep down, the mind is insecure, because it knows it is finite. Insecurity is weakness, and from weakness comes a desire to project an impression of strength. A genuinely strong and secure nation will never declare war on another, because it has nothing to prove. Wars, like arguments, are megaphones of insecurity.
Because the mind is finite and insecure, it feels the need to inflate itself, to establish its identity in superiority. It does this by differentiating itself from others and the world around it. Separativity seems essential to the mind, for only by asserting difference can it establish its own superiority.
The mind is aware there is an infinite vastness beyond itself, and is afraid if it would enter that vastness it will only be extinguished. So its first impulse is to deny the vastness exists; then to hide from the vastness; then to attack and discredit the vastness, and run away.
Our mind tries all these tricks in respect of our meditation, gateway to the infinite, afraid that meditation will lead us to a higher power than itself and it will lose its empire.
All the mind’s tricks and resistance are ultimately in vain. When the mind surrenders to the heart’s light, it comes to realise that far from being extinguished, the finite – itself – has been housed in the infinite all along. Only in the infinite – in meditation – can the finite mind be fulfilled and make sense of itself.
Yesterday I was poring over some accounts; George was studying calculus – we were both much in our minds. We met and started a conversation. It happens that George and I like different colours, different kinds of music, different foods, movies and sporting teams. After 5 minutes, we made a long list – of all our differences.
Today, I’m singing my favourite songs, and George has been meditating – we’re both centred in our hearts. We meet on the street and chat again. After 5 minutes we make a new long list … of all that we have in common, our shared loves, passions and interests.
Yesterday our minds separated us. Today our hearts have united us.
So the mind and heart operate: the mind builds walls between us; the heart sees and feels only our oneness. The mind suspects; the heart loves. The mind grasps; the heart offers. The mind frowns; the heart smiles. The mind judges and criticises; the heart accepts and forgives. The mind dominates; the heart liberates. The mind hesitates; the heart accelerates. The mind sees problems; the heart seeks solutions. The mind sees spots on the moon; the heart sings to the moon’s beauty. The mind abhors the thorns; the heart adores the rose. The mind is old, tired and pessimistic; the heart is ever young, fresh and optimistic. The mind is master of the world; the heart, servant to the world. The mind espouses superiority in separativity; the heart proclaims unity in diversity. The shouting arrogant mind knows nothing; the whispering humble heart knows everything. The mind asserts “Me!”; the heart proclaims “Us”. The mind reduces me to my little lonely ego; the heart expands us to the wide universe, and beyond…
Our mind is the servant that has become the master.
Fire can be used to cook, to warm us and give light: or it can destroy.
The mind is meant to be an instrument for our use, processing information from the senses, and applying its intellect for our own and the greater good. The mind is a wondrous power, an indispensable tool to aid us to live and operate in the world.
Yet the mind has gotten ahead of itself, and out of control. It has usurped the role of ruler of our selves and lives. It tells us what to think and what to do. It forms our opinions and makes our decisions according to its own limited experience and prejudices. It acts as though it owns the place. The mind has usurped the throne and seized control even of our sense of self. To all intents and purposes, most of us think and act as though we are the mind. We have become the mind’s puppets, instead of the other way around.
The mind’s sovereignty is precisely what has led us into such disharmony, disarray, disaffection and dismay. Not only our personal problems but also the problems of our society and even our planet, are expressions of the mind’s division, ignorance, selfishness, greed and stress. The solution to all of these problems lies in our hearts’ love, peace, compassion, wisdom and oneness.
The mind has staged a coup d’etat of our conscious being. The time has come for our hearts to mount a peaceful counter-insurgency, to assume loving guidance of our conscious awareness and therefore, our selves, our world and our destiny.
Other than by direct divine intervention, the only way to achieve this remarkable transformation, is through meditation.
We have seen that of the five levels of our being, the lower three levels – body, vital and mind – are finite, while the higher two levels – our spiritual heart and soul – are infinite. The qualities we seek: peace, love, joy and satisfaction, all are infinite. All abide in our heart and soul. Yet our present consciousness is most dominated by our finite parts: in particular, our mind.
The finite tends to resist the influence of the infinite, because the finite fears it will lose its dominion and even its very existence in the infinite. Hence the absurd tragedy of our present predicament: our principle instrument of conscious awareness and bulwark of our identity – our mind – while being primarily responsible for our civilisation, learning, outer prosperity and material advancement – is by its very nature also the primary obstacle to our spiritual progress and happiness. The blessing which elevated mankind from the animal consciousness, now stands as the curse obstructing our path to the divine.
Because the fulfilment of our yearning – peace, light, love and joy – lies in the infinite, then it is towards the infinite that our aspiration – and hence our evolution – must turn. To achieve what we seek and need, we must needs raise and expand our normal consciousness from its habitual preoccupation with the finite, into the realm of the infinite.
In practise, this means raising – little by little – our seat of consciousness from our mind, to our spiritual heart. Our mind is king of the finite; our heart, gateway and loving guide to the infinite.
This process of bringing our awareness from the mind and into the spiritual heart is the most urgent need of our time.
At the heart of the human condition lies a contradiction which gives rise to a unique and dramatic tension. This contradiction is in the very character and attributes of the various levels of our being: body, vital, mind, heart and soul.
There lies between the “lower” three levels of our being – body, vital and mind – and the “higher” levels of heart and soul, an essential difference of nature. This difference informs both good and bad, and results in much of the drama, struggle, conflict, inspiration and creative genius that is the stuff of human history and progress.
In our bodies, vitals and minds, we are finite; in heart and soul, we are infinite.
We are one being, true: yet when we identify as being the body, vital or mind, or any combination of these, we see and believe ourselves to be, and act as though we are indeed a finite being inhabiting a finite world. When we enter into our spiritual heart and soul, we realise ourselves as spiritual beings of a limitless universe.
There is a radical difference – even a yawning gulf – between a finite and an infinite consciousness. They see themselves and their worlds in completely different, often opposing terms.
And humans are both – finite and infinite. At once.
Yet this contradiction, this tension, this paradox, only exists when perceived from the finite portion of our consciousness, especially from our minds – for the finite alone is incapable of comprehending or embodying the infinite … while the infinite can easily house the finite.
Hence the only way to remove this tension and resolve this contradiction is to identify with our spiritual selves. To transcend, then transform the finite, the finite must enter into, surrender to, and lose itself in the infinite. This is meditation.
The soul is our source, the only part of us which is eternal – yet we have of the soul, only a vague awareness. We have become estranged from our own true self.
If you ask people if they have a soul, most will immediately answer, “Yes”. But ask them to prove it; you will likely get a blank stare of bewilderment. We have an intuitive awareness that we have a soul, yet no tangible experience of it. We can point to our bodies; we can run around to prove the existence of our vitals; we communicate using our minds; and we know our hearts from feelings of peace, love and joy – yet how to prove we have a soul?
Like God, the soul cannot be defined: it is what remains when all that can be defined is removed. The soul is beyond mortality, form, time and space, beyond thought, sound and silence. The soul is all-knowing and all-pervading; all Light, all Delight.
The soul is the spark of the divine within us, connecting us with the supreme consciousness, with God. Without a soul, we cannot exist, for the soul is the root and sum of our consciousness, the source of which all other levels of our being are partial, imperfect expressions.
While the soul is everywhere, we feel its presence most clearly when we can rise beyond the mind to meditate thoughtlessly deep within our spiritual heart.
Since we have no direct means to perceive our soul, we can only strive to approach it by degrees. To reach the 5th floor of a building, we ascend via level 4. Similarly, by immersing ourselves in the spiritual heart we gradually perceive, and ultimately know and become the fullness and perfection of our soul.
Make a list of all the qualities you most treasure; the qualities you, and the world, need most urgently.
Your list might include peace, love, oneness, joy, fulfilment, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, wisdom, courage, strength, belonging, kindness, tolerance, patience, beauty, sweetness, perfection, satisfaction.
All these qualities are to be found in our spiritual heart, the place we point to when we say “I”. Indeed, they are to be found nowhere else. “Home is where the heart is” because our heart is where we feel most natural, most comfortable, most fulfilled, most complete, most at home.
We cannot see the spiritual heart, so how can we be aware of it? How can we concentrate on it?
If you close your eyes and someone holds a rose in front of you, you will know it is there by its fragrance. Similarly, we know we have a spiritual heart by the fragrance of its qualities, its emissaries, and we can concentrate and enter into the heart by invoking, loving and absorbing ourselves in these qualities.
The spiritual heart is the 4th level of our being, at once housing and yet extending infinitely beyond the first three levels of body, vital and mind. The heart is our portal and guide to the spiritual realm, to our deeper, more real, eternal self.
Our heart is like the mother to our lesser parts, always offering love, compassion and concern, yet requiring infinite tolerance and patience, and often ignored.
The heart connects directly with reality through the identification of oneness. Our heart reveals itself and communicates most eloquently through a smile.
Love is the heart’s staple diet; music its universal language.
Our spiritual heart is ever new, all-loving and all-wise, continually expanding, deepening and blossoming.
Level three is where most of us spend most of our time, energy and focus, the locus for most of the conscious awareness of present-day humanity, the level which rules the world – for better and for worse.
We are speaking of the Mind.
It is the mind which sets humans apart from the animals. The root of “human” and “mankind” is the Sanskrit “manas”, meaning “the mind” or “the intellect”. Thus was mankind originally defined as “the thinking animal.”
The mind is our onboard computer. It receives all the information from our senses – what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch – processes it all through what it has already learned, and creates models of understanding through which we relate to ourselves and the universe.
In our hierarchy of concentric circles, the mind encloses the body and vital, so it has power to influence and control both body and vital and bend them to its will.
The mind is an ardent seeker of both knowledge and control. The mind applies its instruments of understanding: observation, experience, inquiry, logic, reason, analysis, the scientific method, to establish laws governing the world and behaviour. To the mind, knowledge is power, expressed through the expansion of itself, its ego and dominion: thus the mind seeks its fulfilment through extending and inflating itself. Knowledge, philosophy, science and technology are limbs of the mind, means by which it seeks identity, and to establish dominance and exert control.
Our present-day world is a projection of our minds’ majesty, immensity, ability, agility, fragility, facility, fecundity, creativity, audacity, ingenuity, intricacy, complexity, perplexity, perspicacity, superfluity, superiority, ambiguity, absurdity, disparity, disunity, duplicity, obduracy, autocracy, inflexibility, inadequacy, insecurity, instability, insincerity, impurity, inequity, iniquity, poverty, rapacity, hostility, cruelty, calumny, calamity – and insanity.
There are two convenient ways to represent a model of our five levels of being. One way is as a 5-story building, where the body is the ground floor and each succeeding level is the next floor above. This model is useful to understand some aspects of the relations between the various levels.
However perhaps a more accurate model may be to represent the levels of being as 5 concentric circles, the innermost circle being the body. It is clear from this model, that each successive circle will not only be larger than the previous, it will also encompass each of the “lower” levels. And so it is – each successive “higher” level has direct influence and control, or jurisdiction over the smaller circles within it.
Level 2, the Vital, is our life force, source of our vitality. Just as our physical body is formed from the realm of physical matter, so our vital derives from the immense field of cosmic energy.
With the vital energy now permeating the body, it is able to enter the field of action. The body can get up, move around, run, jump and dance. The body and vital are interdependent: the body needs the vital to enable it to act, while the vital needs the body to be able to express itself in the world.
The body with the vital is now a force of potential action, awaiting instructions. Like water, which in flood can cause massive destruction, or can be harnessed for irrigation and power generation, the vital-enabled body can just as easily build or destroy. Our body-vital combination requires direction and guidance. For this we must look to the next higher level of being, that most marvellous manifestation, the Human Mind.
… infinitely more complex than the physical Universe around us.
While no model can ever adequately represent the multifarious levels of our consciousness, nevertheless for our purposes it is helpful to envision ourselves as comprising five essential levels of being. Each level has its own distinct modes of consciousness, its own qualities, capacities and sometimes defining limitations. Of course we are one Being, and every level is intricately and intimately intertwined with each other level in myriad ways, some obvious and most mysterious.
The most apparent level of our being, the first we can consciously grasp and identify with, is that which embodies us here on earth, our physical form. Of all the levels of our being, our body is the only one most of us can actually see, point to and touch.
Our physical body is composed of physical matter and for the most part, obeys known laws of physics. We can draw a line around it, enclose it, we can weigh it and measure it. Being composed of physical matter, our bodies are conceived, born, grow, age, die and return to the physical elements from which they were formed.
Medical science and anatomy have given us a fair understanding of how the body works. Through general sciences we can observe how our bodies operate in and interact with our broader physical universe, which for the purposes of this model, serves as an extension or projection of our physical consciousness.
Our bodies are astonishingly intricate and marvellous instruments, yet in and of themselves they are essentially useless, inert matter. For the body to be able to act in the world, it needs the presence of the second level of our being, the Vital.
