Mind Matters Most - Chapter Four

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Just observe and leave the results to Nature

In Vipassana Meditation the terms, ‘pure observation,’ and ‘pure breath’ are commonly used.  What is meant by this?  Pure observation means observing without intention.   We are to observe impartially.  No trying to achieve something other than to observe.  No trying to push anything out or bring anything into being.   There is no attempt to force, or use willpower to bring about a result.  The results come by themselves.   Our job is just to observe and leave the outcome to a natural law which, in the East, is sometimes referred to as Dharma.   “Leave the results to Dharma.  What will happen will happen.   The changes will come about of themselves.”

This is not always easy to do.   For when we are experiencing something unpleasant we often try to ‘will it away,’ or ‘wish it away.’  But the more we concern ourselves with it the longer it stays with us.   On the other hand, if we take the attitude, “Ah, I’m feeling pain now” - not using words, of course, just being aware of it - it will eventually go.  “I will examine it.  I will look to determine where exactly where the pain is, find its centre.  Take my attention right down to the very point where it is at its worse.”  Then we are practicing Vipassana as it is meant to be practiced.  

The same goes with our breath.  We simply observe our breathing, as it comes in, as it goes out.   No regulating.   No trying to breathe more deeply, or slower or faster.   The intelligence which is within us and breathes us will do that.  Our job is just to observe.   We note how sometimes our breath becomes ragged and harsh and perhaps speeds up.  We observe when it has quieted down to a point so slow that there is only the faintest of intakes and exhalations, maybe only two or so very shallow breaths in a full minute.  By then, of course, our bodies are very still, the tension gone, our minds quiet, our attention sharp.  We are mastering the technique.

What of the sankaras?  What happens when such purity of observation is brought to bear upon these so-called ‘impurities’ in the mind-body?

As sunshine dissolves clouds…

Let us, by the use of an analogy, attempt to describe what happens.    If we look up at a sky interspersed with clouds we will see that these clouds are forever changing.    This is caused by a both the wind shifting the air mass in which the clouds have formed, and by the temperature of the air at a cloud’s location.   The air warms slightly, the cloud begins to thin.  The air gets even warmer, the cloud disappears.   What made up the cloud is still there.  The nitrogen, the oxygen all the gases and the water vapor.  But the sun’s rays, shining on the cloud and heating the air temperature have made it quickly attenuate to the point where it has dissolved back into the air.  It has become neutral and no longer noticeable.   The sun’s heating rays did that.

I think something of this nature happens when we observe the sankaras that make up our mind-bodies.   Our observation brings about a reaction, but such reactions are generally not pronounced.  We can feel them, of course, but they’re not strong.   However, occasionally there are strong, and sometimes very strong, reactions.   Like the sun’s rays breaking up the cloud, our neutral and pure observation into our own mind-bodies breaks up and dissipates back into a sort of neutrality the  thought-forms floating within our auras.   We are, to use Mr. Goenka’s words, “purifying our mind.”   Our mind, of course, being contained not just in the brain but in the subtle bodies which make up the aura which surrounds us.

However, to say that our negative thought-forms or sankaras are the same as clouds in the sky would be incorrect.   I have experienced a sankara which felt so solid it could be likened a piece of hot shrapnel burning in my forehead.   I could feel its shape, its size and dimension; big as a jagged-edged walnut.    It was so real to me I could picture it.   I describe what happened in this particular instance in my book, “Where Are You �"Me?     All I will say about it here is that by continual observation it began wriggle and writhe like a live thing, getting so hot it felt like a red hot iron before finally weakening, weakening and falling away into oblivion, at which time there followed one of the most astounding experiences I have ever had.  

I knew at the very moment that sankara fell away what had caused it.  One quick insight that many a reader would regard as absurd but which I knew in my heart to be true.   Then this  sankara melted away.  Did the problem go with it?  I believe it did.   But I’ll say no more here, for the explanation which came to me might not be acceptable to some readers.   For it introduces the concept of Reincarnation.

Theoretical knowledge is not enough

If I only convince you, the reader, that the myriad emotional problems we have, the traumas, the hang-ups, the phobias and unmentionable fears that dog so many of us can be, and will be, ameliorated and made right with the continuing practice of Vipassana Meditation, the purpose of this book will be served.  However, I cannot stress strongly enough: you can’t do it by just reading about it, or even attempting to practice it at home.  You have to actually undertake a proper, supervised Vipassana Course in an authorized centre.  Anything less will not work.   I am talking here of the technique advocated and taught by Mr. S.N. Goenka, for this is the only one I have practiced deeply for a long period of time.

One ten-day course will give you the start you need.  And to reiterate, anything less than that will not do the job.  The mind has to be brought under the control of your will.   It has to be tamed to the extent that you can penetrate within it.   For years it was generally accepted that a couple of months of full time meditation was the minimum time to become established in this technique.   Anything less wouldn’t work.   However, now it is known, after a lot of research, that a ten-day course is the very minimum.   For me, I went back over and over again to my meditation centre, Dharma Bhumi, in Australia’s Blue Mountains.  Over a period of twelve years I undertook fourteen such courses.   I started in the autumn of 1986.    Over twenty-eight years have elapsed since that time and I still practice twice daily.

You feel you’re going ‘out of your mind’ because you are

At a meditation centre, with its isolation, its quietness, its long hours of concentration undertaken in an atmosphere of ‘noble silence,’ where we’re for all purposes ‘at one with ourselves,’ we are able to go deep within, very deep.   Additional courses will take us even deeper.  When this happens we can, and often do, become very troubled.   We might feel we are going mad, out of our mind.   That is why the assistant teachers at Vipassana meditation centers are required to have no less than ten years experience in the technique so that if called upon, they can counsel and assist the ‘meditator in trouble.’

Yes, the meditators do by and large get into trouble.   They experience phenomena which sends them to the teacher.   It is not uncommon to see three or four lined up waiting for their turn straight after lunch or in the late afternoon (the only times available to meet the teacher) for advice on how to overcome or bear with something which they’ve found disturbing.  So, if you really are serious about taking up the meditation described in this book, do it through a qualified teacher at a reputable and established meditation center.  Anything less than that could fail in your getting you what you’re after, it might even cause you serious mental anguish and even damage. 

Warning done, I will continue.

In an earlier chapter I mentioned that the sankaras below the conscious levels of our awareness are alive and growing.  Also, that we have around us an aura, the aura being made up of different ‘densities’ or energy-vibrations (different wavelengths) much like a rainbow which interpenetrate both one another and our physical body.    The suppressed or repressed thought with their attendant emotions are imbedded in certain of the mind-bodies.   That’s where they ended up when we pushed them out of our conscious areas of recall.   Now they’re in there.

We have to root out these sankaras

Unfortunately, that is not where they will stay.   All of them have a life of their own.  All grow.  The growth of some of them will be so insignificant as not to cause us any trouble in this lifetime.  Some may.  These sankaras will expand their influence by descending across the permeable membranes �" if I might use that expression, membranes �" that make up the various layers of our aura.  For there are no solid walls in the mind.   As I said, the aura can be likened to a rainbow, one colour blending into the next.  So, too, the human aura, one layer blending into the next.   There really are no barriers between one and the other.  Like our body heat that surrounds the physical, so the layers that hold the sankaras surround and interpenetrate the physical.   When a sankaras surfaces (lowers in vibration) to the point that it is now projecting into the physical, we have the first symptoms of a physical illness.   Treating the symptom will not make it go away permanently.   It has to be removed by the roots.

George W. Meek, in his book, After We Die, What Then? describes how each of us has seven interpenetrating layers or bodies.  The most dense, that is, the lowest of the seven spectra, is our physical.   This is surrounded by and interpenetrated by our Etheric Body (Russian researchers apparently term this the Bio-plasmic body)   Then follows three levels of body commonly termed, The Astral, which contains three different levels of mind, and finally, the subtlest of them all he calls The Soul.

Labels are labels, as I’ve said before.   There are other schools of thought which give them different names.  That is not important here.  What is important to know is that it is in the lower levels of the mind-bodies that our sankaras are located, what is sometimes called singularly, The Emotional Body, or the Pain Body.   However, as I said, each of the levels covers a wide spectrum.   When we start penetrating into these areas with Vipassana it is like digging a mattock into soil so deep and hard it will take years to dig out all that are hidden beneath.   Layer after layer needs to be unearthed.  Each hour-long session of meditation takes off only a certain depth of soil along with its attendant sankaras.   Deeper down, more are uncovered.

If you can liken those sankaras to legumes growing below, some of the roots go very deep.    It seems, at times, they are growing out of the bedrock itself.   The roots don’t come out easily.  Some can be likened to the tap-root of a mighty tree.   The mattock digs away, breaking off pieces, but still the tap root remains imbedded, refusing to come away.

We have to overcome the mind’s repulsion

Mostly, when you are ‘scanning’ the body with your observation what is felt is a form of resistance.   I have already likened it to two magnets having similar poles pushed towards one another, say two north, or two south poles.  There is repulsion.   However, if the beam of observation is sufficiently narrow and the focus strong, penetration is made.   There is a breakthrough into a deeper layer.   And often when this happens there is a reaction, sometimes quite violent.   Whatever is down there does not like this sort of attention.  It does not like it one little bit.   You have unearthed the top of something big, something significant, and that something does not like being subjected to your attention.   Possibly like a hypnotized subject who has been asked to recall some dreadful event, something within us baulks. 

By now you might be thinking, “Well, this is a sight different from the meditations I’ve been told about or introduced to.   No pleasant beach scenes here.  No tinkling waterfalls, or mountain lakes.   This is not what I expected when people spoke about meditation at that workshop, et cetera.”  

And of course it is not.   This is not a relaxation exercise, something to make you feel temporarily good.   This is the real thing.    This is probably one of the most difficult undertakings you will ever do.   But as the saying goes, “No pain, no gain.”  By undertaking this type of meditation and keeping it up you will change your life far more than all the ‘lay back and enjoy-type’ meditational techniques you’ll ever be introduced to.   This is a technique which will take you to the very top of Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs �" then beyond.   It  is even higher than self-actualization.   It leads to Self-realization, the highest knowledge, based not on theory but on knowing.   If you’re ready and prepared to undertake this, then Vipassana is not just a path to that end.  It is, according to S.N Goenka, “a superhighway.”