“The world will surrender to a standstill mind.” - Zen
The world we perceive is highly influenced by our thoughts. The same tree two people see might have different impacts on them based on their previous association with the tree. We don’t perceive objects as they are rather as we are. Each self is different.
“Your identity is a moving target, it never reaches an endpoint” - David Eagleman
On a very high level, we have three levels of self,
To understand self we must get insights into all the three. Our normal thoughts must have been evolutionary traits to keep us safe from dangers. We must formulate plans to tackle known problems and dangers. With the languages into the play, the thoughts started using languages to formulate plans.
Most of our thoughts or mental energy is actually diverted to ego and libido. Thoughts and beliefs form ego. Anger and fear are two sides of the same coin, ego. Ego, the outer self, tries to keep one’s identity. This still goes back to one of our primary instincts, survival where we try to maintain our identity and social status by creating an egotistical self. In early days, when survival was a lot more challenging, the alertness kept the humans safe from the predators. The same alertness continues to drive us but in a different form. But the ego creates illusion hiding the true beauty inside one.
“The moment the judgement stops through of acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind” - Eckhart Tolle, The power of now
The same thought has become uncontrollable now, taking up too much of the brain’s potential. Our thoughts themselves are not the culprit, it’s just our tendency to identify ourselves with the thoughts cause the suffering. We don’t know why thoughts are too active then they need to be. But we need to realise that the ego created by the thoughts stands in our way to a more encompassed life we can live.
With all the sophisticated tools and technologies, we all should be living more authentic lives. But that does not seem to be the case, thanks to ego self which gets bought into the social pressure. This social pressure is different in different communities. Let's say you are working in big company with a handsome salary, but you want to be wildlife photographer, this needs compromise from your ego self. The social pressure would urge you to stay in the current job while your true self needs to you to move to the job you love.
Subconscious self is inherent to each one again. This can be divided into two types, one based on your current life's past experiences and one we inherited from our ancestors. First one gets accumulated over the years based on various incidents. Like, a particular color you like, it comes from your past likings. While the second one gets inherited from our ancestors, we like sweets because they contain high concentration of glucose which is essential for hunter-gatherer ancestors in a harder environment they lived.
Consciousness, the truth within you must be a part of a bigger consciousness, which has no beginning or end. Is it possible? The genes we saw earlier, try to pass themselves to next generations since it cannot by itself be eternal in the same body due to the dynamic nature of the environment. So there is something that never gets destroyed. It’s like new houses are being built, old ones are getting destroyed, then the deduction can be that there is a person tries to live inside the houses. As houses themselves could not be considered as the source of living.
Human self considers itself as the greatest thing because of the survival instinct while sometimes fail to see the bigger picture. We always try to achieve something hoping that will pave ways to a happy life without realizing to be alive itself is already a gift. One in four trillion is the probability for you to be alive at this moment.
With earth, solar system, milky way galaxy, galaxy, and the universe we are significantly negligible in the grand schema of things that operate around us. Even a momentary pause in the earth's rotation would cease the gravity and every object on the surface would be swept away into the atmosphere. Our existence is merely a drop in the ocean, if we recollect that 99% of all living beings ever lived are already dead.
Let’s take how we observe things. When you look at beautiful waterfalls, you get lost in its beauty. Now think whether the beauty lies within the waterfall or within you. The waterfall just stays as it is, it’s our mind that experiences the beauty. The observers experience the experiences not the observed objects.
The self is an illusion defined by our thoughts, beliefs, and environment. Take a lizard as an example, can a lizard be explained why a light glows? Does that mean a light can’t exist? A lizard is yet another organism which can survive and reproduce. But it is unnecessary for a lizard to know the solar system, the books we read, our culture. Humans are yet another species capable of survival and reproduction. There are higher chances for our self to be limited as well.
Just that we have higher order experiences. Does that mean we don’t have a free will? That’s the question I don’t want to dive into. Bharathi, Tamil poet, questioned our whole reality. The song goes like this,
“All beings that are standing, walking, and flying are just my dreams or mere illusions?
All things that I learn, hear, and think are just illusions, isn’t there a deeper meaning?”
Did he suffer from existential crisis? I don’t think so, he had a deeper understanding of things and he was revolutionary with his thoughts.
Like how a lizard has it’s own reality, our self has its own different reality. We need not conclude that it’s the ultimate reality. We must remember even within humans we experience different reality. Sage Ramana, Echart Tolle, for example, are a few people with altogether different reality. If we have the ultimate reality a being can experience, then we should be able to understand after death phenomenon.
What we experience as reality happens inside our brain. The brain which is sealed inside a dark place, depends on the sensory organs to receive inputs, then the electrochemical reactions give rise to a form of reality. The brain detects pattern in the input signal and arrives on a representation of it. In fact, only energy and matter are out there.
There is a bigger intelligence at work, look at a single cell, 1/1000 of an inch in diameter contains instructions in its DNA that can fill up hundreds of books. Our overactive thoughts would not let us realize the true intelligence until we found a way to silence it.
Let’s see how our brain operates. It produces certain types of waves during different situations. Our brain waves are produced during the neural activity, that is when connection between neurons are made. Types of brain waves are
Infra low waves are lower frequency waves, and cannot be measured easily. Delta waves are generated during deepest meditation and dreamless state. Theta waves occurs during sleep but also in deep meditation. Delta waves make us suspend external awareness while theta makes us focus on internal signals. Alpha is the resting state of the mind, being present in the moment. Beta waves are generated when we focus on goal-oriented tasks where we strive hard to achieve something.
Meditation producing Delta and Theta waves are greatly beneficial, making one rest in the present, having clear perspectives.
Is there a way we get higher degrees of self? One way to realize our true potential is through meditation. Meditation is an art of doing nothing and looking deeper into oneself. Meditation makes you realize a vast realm of intelligence exists beyond thoughts’ level of access. Some useful meditation apps to get started are
Insight timer,
Headspace, and
Calm.
Over a period of time, you may not need apps once you get the hang of it.
A few people have succeeded in controlling thoughts and realizing the consciousness. All they say is oneness, where they see every being as an extension of the same thing, having no difference.
Some unique traits5 of such enlightened people are
"I never know, what people mean when they complain of loneliness.
To be alone is one of life’s greatest delights, thinking one’s own thoughts...
And feeling oneself uninterrupted in the rutted connection with the center of all things." - D. H. Lawrence
If you have had a major shock, like an accident, it would have created a momentary pause in your thoughts during that moment, leaving a clear state of self. That is the real you without the load of your thoughts.
The other support I can refer to is, NDE(Near death experience) where people have been almost dead, but they were revived after a brief period of time. Many reported a similar experience during that period, like they could see everything happening inside that room as an observer, then they flow through a tunnel with bright light at the end. The environment felt so original and serene.