Mind

In ordinary usage, the word "mind" refers to thoughts, the thinking process, or the thinking apparatus. But there are other usages: in the East, for example, "mind" includes more than just the thinking sphere. And here in the West as well, the word often has a larger meaning. In fact, most of the depth psychologies and the social sciences in general, use the term "mind "to include all inner experience. The mind is then taken to be the field or sphere of our thoughts, images, feelings, emotions, sensations, and perceptions, plus the apparatus or agent that deals with all these impressions. This "mind" is connected not only to the brain, but to the totality of the nervous system. Here, we will use the term "mind" in this larger, more inclusive sense. We will also be open to modifications or extensions of this definition. (The Void, pg 1)

Mind and Being

This is an important difference between the mind and Being. The mind can absorb and identify with any psychic material it believes to be true. It does not have the capacity, on its own, to discern what is objective truth and what is not. In other words, the mind can be deceived, even by itself. Being, on the other hand, is pure reality. It is the actual stuff and consciousness of truth, and cannot be deceived. It does not try not to be deceived; it is simply truth by its nature, a self-conscious medium made of pure sensitivity. (The Pearl Beyond Price, pg 163)

Mind and beyond mind

And if I want to penetrate beyond my mind and see what is there, it is a mystery. It is unknowable, completely, one hundred percent unknowable. It is so unknowable that the moment you begin to get a glimpse of it, your mind is blown to smithereens. You realize that your mind lays a kind of curtain over things, a veil, a colored sheet with drawings on it that overlays our reality and says, “That is reality”. But the reality is beyond that: you open that curtain, open the window and it is unknowable. If you truly look, you do not even know you are looking, and you disappear. Your mind is there, but nobody is looking. The reality is there and you do not say there is mind or there is reality. And then, what you perceive, although it is mysterious, it is unknowable, we give it a name. We call it truth, we call God, we call it reality. These are just words, words to refer to the unknowable, to the unknown, to the mystery. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 263)

Mind and concepts

As the mind understands more and more, it reaches a place where it knows that not everything can be known conceptually. It knows definitely, absolutely, that something is there, but the mind, itself, cannot know it. Beingness, however, knows itself, and knows itself not by a reflection on itself, but just by being it. (Diamond Heart Book 3, pg 164)

Mind and consciousness

So we're seeing here another meaning of mind, which is pure consciousness. There is perception, but that perception is not anything but the perceptivity itself. At this point we go into mind, not in a sense of it being just space, but of it being perception, consciousness. We see that we always have that consciousness. Every person, and every living thing, has this consciousness. In our everyday experience, there is always a consciousness of something; we never know consciousness by itself. There is always consciousness of the rug, my foot, my mind. The consciousness and the content of consciousness are never separate. The consciousness is always taken to be the content of consciousness, because that is how we operate with our limited consciousness. We never see consciousness itself, in its purity. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 19)

Mind and essential development

There is an inner consistency and order for the process of essential development. There is no need for the mind to direct the process. In fact, directing the process by the mind can only lead to difficulty, for the mind does not know. Commitment to the truth is sufficient for the process to unfold. When the essential aspects are discovered and freed, when the incomparable pearl is realized, the process spontaneously unfolds in the direction of the instincts and ultimately of the survival issue. (Essence, pg 174)

Mind and heart

The nature of the mind is emptiness, and the subtle consciousness that perceives that emptiness is the heart of the mind. But this relationship of the heart to the mind is even more complex. There is also the mind of the heart, the consciousness of the heart, the knowingness of the heart, the curiosity of the heart, and the sensitivity of the heart. The heart is seen as the sensitive organ, the knowing organ. It is conscious and perceptive. The heart is sometimes called the mind because the heart is the source of the heart of the mind. In this way, one could also say the mind is the mind of the heart. But their unity goes even further than the mind of the heart or the heart of the mind. They are the same. At the level of understanding the mind as a subtle consciousness, as an aspect of Essence, there is no heart and no mind, there is only one thing. It is experienced as one consciousness with no separation of the centers. (Diamond Heart Book 2, pg 24)

Mind and suffering

To throw away your mind means to throw away what you think you are, what you think the world is, and what you think is there, what is not there, what is good, what is not good – to throw it away, all of it. Otherwise, what you will perceive, and what you will be experiencing, is nothing but parts of your mind, a continuation of the past coming from your own memory. When I say the world is old, or what we see is old, I do not mean old in the sense that it has grown in time. I mean old in the sense that it has stopped growing. It is dead in its old form, the way you constructed it years and years ago. The mind perpetuates ghosts, dead things; there is no life in them. They are not light – they’re heavy, dark, dank, old, and musty. They are stale. In that dark, old, dank world, you suffer. The suffering is felt mostly because we still believe that old, dark, dead world to be reality, and we live as if it is reality, wanting one part of it, not wanting another part of it, putting part of it against another part of it. You are putting this dead body against another dead body, not liking this dead thing, liking the other dead thing. When you want something because you have experienced it in the past, what you are wanting is a corpse. It is already dead. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 142)