I suppose the mind could be likened to a searchlight that can—when it’s rightly developed and understood—be the mechanism that cuts through the darkness, through the fog of the unknown. So in many respects, the mind is similar to the function of the eye which looks out upon the world and tries to discriminate, discern, make sense of what it observes.
Robert: Welcome. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present, but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is the mind. Alice Bailey wrote twenty-four volumes of literature, and the main inspiration of the dialogue on this show comes from the works of Alice Bailey. Our thought for today is by Oliver Wendell Holmes: “A mind that is stretched to a new dimension never returns to its original form.” What is the role of the mind on the spiritual path?
Sarah: It’s essential. It’s often, I think, underestimated and overlooked by spiritual seekers, and yet it’s indispensable. In our last program, we talked about the emotions and how they affect spiritual development. One has to learn to deal with the emotional nature and to calm it, to transmute it. The same applies to the mind, and if anything, the mind is more difficult than the emotions for some of us to learn to tame. There’s a frequent reference to the mind among Indian teachers of meditation who call it the “monkey.” It’s like a monkey. It jumps around. It cannot be constrained or inhibited or made to sit in a corner and behave itself. It’s all over the place. But as I say, it’s indispensable. It’s also more elastic and pliable than we might give it credit for, as the opening quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes implied: that a mind that is stretched to a new dimension never returns to its original form. It does have a wonderful pliability if one exercises it.
Dale: Yes, and I think we haven’t even realized the full potential of the mind yet, because most of us are still caught in this lower, what we call the concrete mind, or the form-building mind. We’re constantly analyzing and building thought forms and thinking, thinking, thinking, and it’s a very busy mind, as you say, like the monkey mind analogy.
Sarah: It’s highly developed in the western world: the lower concrete mind.
Dale: Yeah, it’s indispensable. We couldn’t exist without it. Progress wouldn’t happen without the use of the mind, so it’s becoming highly developed, and it’s very useful. It’s necessary to see where the place that the mind plays is, its location in relation to all the other parts of us: the physical and the etheric bodies and the emotional bodies, and then there’s what they call the “mind-body,” or the “mental body.” And these represent a three-fold nature, the “three-fold law of nature”—as they sometimes say—of every human being. But beyond that, there is higher states of mind and consciousness that we are moving towards in evolutionary terms.
Sarah: I suppose the mind could be likened to a searchlight that can—when it’s rightly developed and understood—be the mechanism that cuts through the darkness, through the fog of the unknown. So in many respects, the mind is similar to the function of the eye which looks out upon the world and tries to discriminate, discern, make sense of what it observes. The mind also is an agent of observation. But as you’re suggesting, often the mind is directed totally towards the objective world, the outer world, the world of forms and of what we call reality but really deserves a small “r.” Spiritual reality, capital “R,” uses the mind, but in a much different respect. We mistake—for eons of time—reality as being the physical objective world and not the inner planes.
Dale: Yeah, I think it’s just reversed. We tend to reverse what we consider to be reality. Reality is really what we can’t see in the unseen part of the existence. That which we do see and are part of in the physical world is non-reality, really. It’s very temporary and non-permanent and disappears, comes and goes, and it’s very fleeting.
Sarah: You mentioned there being different parts or divisions to the mind, and that may be a little confusing to our listeners, but according to the Ageless Wisdom, there are different levels to the mind. It’s not just a whole in itself, W-H-O-L-E, not H-O-L-E. Mine feels like a H-O-L-E a lot of the time. (laughing) But there are three divisions, and the most obvious that we’re familiar with is the concrete mind that we’ve already mentioned. This is the part of the mind that discriminates, it criticizes, it analyzes ad nauseum, it discerns, and it takes in knowledge. It’s very necessary, but it can become so developed that it becomes a kind of a barrier to higher realizations which come through the part of the mind that’s called the abstract mind.
Dale: Yes, there is that saying in the Ageless Wisdom teachings that the mind is the “slayer of the real.”
Sarah: “Slay thou the slayer.”
Dale: Yeah, and it does just that. As you say, it blocks off the inner higher reality from getting through because that lower mind becomes so active and so analytical and so intellectual that it acts as a barrier to anything higher and more subtle.
Sarah: I think what happens is that it becomes crystallized or hardened upon itself. And that is the antithesis of what Oliver Wendell Holmes was talking about when he said that a mind that is stretched to a new dimension never returns to its original form.” The overdeveloped concrete or lower mind can’t stretch to a new dimension. It thinks it knows. It thinks it has a grasp on reality. What it knows is somehow assumed to be the whole content of reality. And we’ve probably all known people like this—maybe we see this quality in ourselves—that once they get some kind of impression or idea or opinion, it becomes fixed, hardened. And that’s when the lower mind becomes a barrier. But if there’s plasticity, if there’s questioning, if there’s room for doubt, for remembering that maybe one doesn’t know everything about a subject. “I might be wrong but,” that kind of attitude toward your opinions that you hold, then you leave the door open.
Dale: It’s necessary to leave that door open and to open it as wide as you can because, as I said, we are progressing in an evolutionary way. In fact, evolution is really the evolution of consciousness and not so much with the form. The form only fills in or follows what happens in consciousness. So, it is this human evolutionary trend in human consciousness that is moving inevitably towards that which is higher, towards a more intuitional type of thinking and reflecting.
Sarah: And I think we see a lot more interest and inquiry into the intuition today. There are groups that have formed to study the intuition. There’s an aspect of the Noetic Sciences work in California that has sought to develop a deeper understanding of the intuition. That’s the aspect of the mind that recognizes the divine Plan, that can grasp something of divine purpose behind the outer seeming, that can be creative enough in its vision of the future, that can bring through and register in the mind the intention of God for our world. And these are aspects of the mind—the abstract mind and the intuition—that need much more development. They require the lower mind because it has the access to the brain, which brings through into our waking consciousness the recognitions that are grasped on the level of the intuition and the abstract mind. All the different levels have to work together in a kind of synchronicity. And I think the best way to develop that is through meditation, through reflection, through study, through spiritual growth of whatever sort.
Dale: Yes, I think there is confusion about what the intuition really is. We misuse this word a lot confusing it with hunches and gut feelings and things like that, that are not really coming from the true intuitional level. They are much more of an emotional or an astral feeling and projection. So I think, as we say, there needs to be a reinterpretation and an opening of awareness to what lies ahead in a much higher state of true intuition.
Sarah: There’s some teaching in the Ageless Wisdom that says, in effect, the spiritual seeker has to learn to advance by seeing, by sight, not blindly by touch. And I think this has to do with the role of the mind. Most people, for a very long part of the path of evolution, learn by touch, by experience, by suffering, by running head-on into crises and sorrows and disappointments and adapting accordingly. But at some stage of the way, one has to learn to advance by using the mind as the searchlight, by attempting to envision what lies ahead and preparing for it in the sense of learning to serve and cooperate with what is the next step, not only for the individual self, but for his group, for humanity. This is when the mind can become the real eye of vision.
Robert: I remember something that I saw quite some time ago. It’s been many years, but it left an impression on me. It was in a college, and it was an experiment that was set up by the philosophy department, and I remember being brought to this peephole and looking in and thinking that I saw a room, and it was the most beautiful room. Then the professor laughed and he brought me around to the side door and I looked in and it was all threads arranged in one way or another way, but nothing looked like a chair or nothing looked like a couch. The whole effect was produced just by the lighting. It was really an epiphany to me about how faulty the mind can be. So I guess that’s what you and Dale are speaking about when you’re saying that the mind cannot be totally relied upon to define reality.
Sarah: Well, the lower concrete mind cannot be relied upon on its own. It needs the higher power of the abstract mind, which can see pattern and significance and meaning behind the objective form and the intuition which can discern divine purpose. All of those aspects of the mind are needed. One of the problems of our modern educational system is that we tend to think that education is solely for developing the concrete mind, and more and more for developing the tools to carry out a trade that will make you a lot of money. In fact, education should be training people to learn how to think, how to use the mind, not just pouring in a certain body of facts that will then enable that person to go out and get a good job. I think it’s a real problem in society that we don’t understand that there is this higher aspect to the mind.
Dale: And the mind is that aspect of ourselves where light is first really encountered. There’s much talk in all esoteric literature and in the Bible about light. “In that light ye shall see light” and “the greater light of God shall…” well, that’s what’s first contacted by way of the mind. So, it’s first the light of knowledge, but then later on it becomes the light of pure reason, and that’s where the intuition comes in. And that’s much more infallible because it doesn’t rely on the thinking analytical processes of the lower mind. The intuitional level of mind is what sees the whole, sees the past, present, and future all in one. So it’s much more infallible in what is seen and it’s much more reliable, but as yet it is a high stage which is difficult to reach.
Sarah: Essentially, I think we could say that the mind is like a photographic plate. It registers whatever is projected upon it from whatever is coming into it. What I’m trying to say rather awkwardly is that most people’s minds are influenced by what they feel, by what they desire. I want, I want, I need, I hope, I yearn for, I resist, I dread. Those forces of the emotional body are basically what condition the mind for a lot of people and it simply reflects whatever is going on within the consciousness. If the consciousness is polarized in the emotional life, then the mind is going to be dealing with feelings and the sensations of the emotions all the time. But the trained mind, which I think you’re speaking about, is able to receive impression from higher levels. And when one begins to develop that capacity, you realize that there are no borders on the mind. A lot of people think they are in possession of their own mind, but in fact, the higher level of the mind is universal. It’s open to everyone. That’s why sometimes, for example, scientists will share, almost simultaneously, recognitions about experiments that are underway in the world, such as Edison and Tesla who were both studying electricity. Or the scientists who’ve been quarreling over who’s responsible for finding treatments for AIDS. They’re all working on this project throughout the world and they’re stimulating each other without realizing it by their work on the higher mental plane, don’t you think?
Dale: Yeah, because that’s the plane where real telepathy—the true kind of telepathy, mental telepathy of mind-to-mind contact—really begins to work its way through. There is a lower form of telepathy, which is more at the emotional feeling level. Those in the scientific community tend to work at that more abstract level, and so it’s inevitable that they begin to tune in on each other, and scientists in different parts of the world are working on the same experiments and perhaps not even knowing it, but when it comes time to reveal it to the world, you realize that there is a group at work there, and it’s group consciousness at its purest state.
Sarah: Even if they didn’t know each other, even if they didn’t know they were part of a group, they are all contributing to and drawing from this pool of mental substance that is universally shared by those whose minds can tap it. And there are no borders. So, I find that kind of realization thrilling and encouraging. But if you have the desire to possess an idea on your own, then you don’t find that idea very pleasant to think about. But it is a fact that the higher level of the mind is the universal mind and there are great truths that are grasped by people of very different cultures and experiences because it’s above the level of outer differences and diversity.
Dale: And that higher state of mind is where the soul is located and I think that’s an important aspect to bring out here because the mind is—as it says in the esoteric writings—the location of the soul. That’s in the higher subplanes of the mental plane, if you want to get a little more technical about it, but that’s when the soul qualities and the soul values really begin to filter down through into the personality nature, when that mind begins to open up to the soul.
Sarah: And you can see that the soul is the Christ principle in the way that the soul works with the mind. The Christ is the mediator between God and man. The Christ principle is within the soul, the mediator between spirit and form. So, the mind or the Christ principle, the soul, forms this bridge that creates a union between pure spirit or God and the individual human being. When one’s soul awakens, one becomes a unit within the greater life of God and not an independent, separated human being, and all of this happens through the mind.
Dale: Yes, and I think that’s the real crux of our religious upbringing or our religious training: to recognize the function of the mind and the place of the mind, that it is that mediating agency that works between the human being and God, or the universal mind of God.
Sarah: Often the mind is thought of as being cool. People who are mentally polarized are thought of as cool, in the sense that their emotional nature is calm and quiet. But the mind can also be very fiery in its energies. The mind is a kind of fire. It can scorch and burn, but it can also purify and transform. St. Paul said, “Be ye therefore transformed by the renewing of your minds.” When you are able to regenerate your thinking, bring it to a higher level, look at life and yourself and everyone that you love in a new way, you transform. And that’s a kind of fire. It puts to combustion the past; completely ends it and you are able to live in a new and fresh open way.
Dale: Fire is often used as a symbol of mind in esoteric writings and I think even in the Bible wherever it mentions fire, really it’s a symbol for the mind and the mental principle.
Sarah: It burns through barriers. It burns away all that hinders. It burns away the blockages of the emotional world. It can’t be overestimated how important the mind is, because the very word man is from the Sanskrit manas, which is a word meaning: one who thinks. That’s our role as human beings, to think. And in fact, the Ageless Wisdom says that the human kingdom is meant to be the creative intelligence for the working out of God’s purposes on earth. This is a recognition that some very great minds have discovered on their own, intuitively. For example, Lewis Thomas, the great writer and biochemist who died a few years ago, wrote a book called Medusa and the Snail and he said, “There is nothing at all absurd about the human condition…It seems to me a good guess… that we may be engaged in the formation of something like a mind for the life of this planet.”
Dale: Absolutely, and the mind is the universal mind of God that’s in all of us.
Sarah: Yeah, He needs us. Maybe that’s the final word, He needs us.
Robert: You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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