Conveyed by Brahn th Blessed
Part Five: The Mind is a Universe Unto Itself, Boundless and Filled With Wonders
Look inside. How do you do that? What is this ‘inside’ into which we must look? The ‘inside’ is a misnomer, for it is not inside at all; it is otherwhere. It is instead that part of us that exists in time, but not in space. More clearly, it is that aspect of our being that exists only in time, only in the astral plane where there is no space, and having no space, it has no size or shape, no location or motion, no multiplicity. The hidden Realm of the Mind is real, but it is so different from our physical existence in the material plane that we can’t begin easily to conceive it. When you remove space, you remove outside and inside (as they apply to space); you remove direction and location (as they apply to space), you remove size and shape (as they apply to space), you remove location and motion (as they apply to space). But the absence of purely physical qualities makes the mind not less real, but only more primitive, older than its physical counterpart, the brain.
You must understand that the four planes of existence are created in a natural order, a necessary order, and not all at once. Remember that everything is created by Natural Process, which I have discussed earlier. The first plane is the Spiritual Plane in which there is neither space nor time, but only that primordial Spirit (Existence) in which there is no discriminate being; only that One Without Other (Unum Sine Altera) in which there is boundless potentiality for being manifest and discriminate. Then Consciousness is awakened by the existential paradox that prevents Spirit from realizing its innate potentials. The awakening of consciousness is the first act and the first change that begins the realm of Time and the endless, relentless torrent of changes that follow upon it. Time alone, in the absence of space, rules the second plane which is the Astral Plane. In order for the three-dimensional macrocosm of the physical universe to be created, there first had to exist the transitional plane in which the twelve elemental energies were created, each in its individual protocosm. This transitional third plane of the twelve elemental energies is called the Elemental Plane. The immense burst of energy that created the physical universe was the combined release of the twelve elemental energies converging into a single point, the thirteenth protocosm, thus creating the fourth plane of existence in the emerging macrocosm of the Material Plane. It is only the material plane that is ruled by four-dimensional space-time.
The laws of the astral plane are quite different from the physical laws of the material plane because the realities of the astral plane are quite different from the realities of the material plane. It is the fact of the former difference that causes and is proven by the fact of the other. But if you cannot absorb this fact and understand the astral plane as a reality in which only time is real and not space, not yet, then you will never comprehend the nature of the astral plane. Close your eyes and repeat this mantra again and again while you think of all that it means: “Time alone is; space is not.”
The home of the mind, my mind, your mind, all minds, is absent of space; therefore, the qualities contingent on space are also necessarily absent from this astral home. There is no matter, no substance. There is no cold or hot, no wet nor dry, no colour nor smell. These qualities belong to objects and places, and there are no (physical) objects or places in the astral plane because there is no space. There is no size without space, nor shape without it, nor even location. Our thoughts are like that; they have neither size, nor shape, nor even location; they are never hot nor cold, wet nor dry, coloured or odorous. We may imagine colours certainly and pleasant or stinky odours, but though the contents be so, the thoughts themselves are colourless and odourless. The imagination is quite facile and able to replicate any object or sensation belonging to the material plane, but these images, these imaginary conceptions themselves have no appearance beyond their content. This brings us to the fact that the mind and its contents have no location in the manner of physical objects, no place to be found, no place to hide or seek. Where is the mind? It is nowhere to be found.
These strange concepts are difficult to impossible to conceive. They are in fact completely impossible in the material plane, but they are commonplace fact in the astral plane. So you must work through this difficulty of conception to understand the astral plane of reality.
We must each exam our own minds in order to gather some sense of the cosmic mind that consciousness first created through its cycles of action and experience in the beginning of time, for we can otherwise have little resource for understanding that universal mind and its faculties. Also, a close self-examination of our own minds can be quite beneficial to those of us, mostly extroverts, who have seldom considered the processes or contents of their minds. Some of you may have so different an understanding of your mind that you find my presentation incompatible if not entirely unacceptable. I cannot honestly present my understanding of mind, both the human and the cosmic mind, honestly and forthrightly without saying this as I must say it. Although I have studied the mind for years, I understand and concede that my knowledge is still subject to error, and that is all that I may do for those who are unable to grasp or find agreement with something I here present.
The mind is accessible only to the person whose mind it is. Only I know my mind. Only you know your mind. No-one else can even know with certainty that we have a mind; they only guess and assume that we have a mind based on our behaviour that so closely mimics their own. So I say quite rationally that the mind is hidden to all but its owner. That is observation number one. There are many neuro-scientists who will argue that the mind is just a function of the brain, for one reason, many of them will argue, because only those beings that have brains appear to have any features of mind. This is a reasonable argument, but it is questioned by some who argue that not all brains are necessarily recognizable to humans looking for an organic structure much like the human brain and only in organic beings.
I believe that human hubris prevents our recognizing minds that are just as real as ours although the embodiment of those minds is quite inhuman and unrecognizable. I believe that the Earth is a living being with a conscious mind like our own in some respects, but also inhuman in other respects; her conscious mind is old, very old, 4.5 billion years old, and extremely wise. How can I believe in such a thing? Because my view of the mind is not the hobbled, feeble view of the mind as a function of a brain as the neuro-scientist views often are. Now, I love science, and I willingly concede that the neuro-scientist much better understands the brain than do I. But the mind is rather an issue of metaphysics, where I consider myself rightfully able to dare challenge the neuro-scientist on certain metaphysical issues. I think it remains in question whether the brain generates the mind or the mind formulates the brain. Since it is a question the answer to which must be discovered by science, I leave it to them. As a metaphysical philosopher and mystic, I only have a layman’s interest in the brain.
The mind has no size, either when scientists and physicians search for it from without or when we ponder its size from within. From within, the mind is boundless, a universe unto itself. That is my observation number two. The human mind has seven functions that we experience (more or less as you may judge, but about seven); these functions are (1) cognition/thought, (2) memory/knowledge, (3) imagination/creativity, (4) volition/choice, (5) intuition/insight, (6) emotion/affect, and (7) desire/want. Cognition is what we mostly consider as our mind while the other functions are like sub-functions to our cognition, but all these functions are different and important. Without memory, we could not accumulate and retain the information of our experiences; each experience would last but a moment and then disappear as it was replaced by the next experience, which in turn would suffer the same brief existence. Our experiences would flow past us like the drops of water in a wide river, but we would only know the drops that washed across our eyes in each instant; we would have no sense of the passage of time and we would lack any knowledge of past or future. We would be as mindless as a boulder, having no capacity to form a continuous thought form. We would, on the positive side, LIVE IN THE MOMENT, only we would do so exclusively and much to our detriment.
We would suffer nearly as much were we absent our imagination. All of our ability to interpret words as meanings derives from our imagination’s ability to see the elephant as soon as we read the word. When we think or read or remember, it is our imagination that is the theater upon which our conscious flow of words and images is displayed on invisible screens over silent speakers. This is but one function of imagination.
Imagination and memory combine to form a vast portion of our world, the portion outside our immediate experience. In my room, I experience only what is in my room and whaat is visible just outside my window; that is all I know of in this place. The rest of my world, beginning with my apartment, then my apartment building, then the small community around my apartment building, then the town around that and the city around the town and the rural countryside around that, and on and on; all that exists only in my memories, to be recalled into my imagination. My friends and family, none of whom are in this room with me, they too exist only in my memory and imagination. And yet they exist. The pyramids and the space station and the grand canyon(?), these things I have seen only in pictures and movies, but those images abide in me. Without imagination, I could never recall these memories.
And imagination is the ground of your creative impulse; it is your ability to imagine what is not and how it might be made real. It is the composer’s ear, the artist’s eye, and the whispering mind of the poet. Without imagination, my room would imprison both, my mind and my heart, and I would be absolutely alone in the world except when in the presence of others. Imagination is invaluable to us in our lives, and I truly believe that its powers by life are hobbled and constrained; beyond our lifetimes, the power of imagination is released from its bonds and fully realized, as the mind begins to make its own world. The afterworld is composed by the mind, and especially by the imagination, unbounded by the incarnate bondage of the material plane.
Volition is also dependent upon imagination in many ways. Whenever a situation occurs in life that requires possible action on our part, as very often happens every day, we immediately think of actions we may or may not take. I am typing these words and I’m confronted with continuous choices I must make, in the contents of each paragraph and sentence and phrase. How I say something is very important in reaching my readers with maximum clarity and relevance, so I must choose the best words by which to express my intended message. Other situations that require possible action in my life include if, when, and what I shall eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; whether I shall answer my phone or disconnect the caller; what clothes I shall wear; shall I greet my friend who enters the room org wait for them tho speak first; many, many such mundane choices we must make daily in our lives. Because we are intelligent beings, these occurrences, these situations in our lives require us to make decisions, sometimes quickly and with little thought to which action we choose—such choices may be instinctive or habitual with little consideration; other times we make decisions deliberately after careful consideration of all our available options. All of this process is volition, be our choice considerate or habitual or impulsive.
When we act on impulse and without forethought, it is often not we ourselves who act; rather it is our body that acts, as when we scratch an itch, or blink our eyes or flinch to dodge an object coming towards us. Our body chooses its actions quite often; the brain makes decisions without our consent, often because the brain is informed before our conscious mind is. And the brain controls some activities without our involvement in the process; we do not choose our heartbeats or blood flow or the aspiration of our lungs—these processes are the business of the brain. Our consciousness plays no role in regulating our fundamental physical functions. The experiences that report to our conscious mind are the phenomena that stimulate reactions from our conscious mind; that is, from the I-inside, from us and not our body. This is an important distinction! We are not our bodies; their choices and actions are not our choices and actions—nor ours theirs.
We can force our body to act at our will (volition), we do so all the time, and we are responsible for those actions; our choices, our actions. But when the body acts of its own choice, that is the body’s intent and will; we are not accountable for these actions—although we may surely benefit or suffer from them. Not only are we the shared victim’s of our body’s heart attack or stroke, but the body’s imperfections affect us as well. We suffer depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, not because we have chosen it, but because our body is broken and imperfect. Our body may affect our mind and lead us to make choices that our mind would not itself choose; such actions as suicide, homocide, and perversion, though our own mind may be accountable for them, are often induced in us by our body’s own illnesses.
But such is the relation between the inner self (the I-inside) and the outer self (our physical embodiment). Many of us may experience occasions when we act in conflict with our will, when we do something contrary to our inner ethic. Many times but not always, this may be our body’s will in conflict with our own. Often, having sex is such an action, wherein our body’s physical yearning overpowers our personal reluctance. Mind you though that this is not an excuse, because often our inappropriate actions are our own ill choice between what we want to do as opposed to what we should do; it’s not always the body that urges our bad choices.
There is an amazing fact about volition and the choices we make. OUR choices are determined by our Character, by our spirit (existence), by our inner potentials for good and evil, right and wrong, joy and sorrow, trust and suspicion, prudence and impulsiveness, all the characteristics that define our personality and behaviour. When confronted with a situation, we consider choices—the number of choices we consider may be linked to our intelligence or our imagination. Regardless the number of choices we consider, our ultimate decision will be based upon our character, which includes our values and our dreams, our moral and ethical integrity, our determination, our religious faith, our DNA, our intellect, our libido, and much more. But ultimately, what we are (our character) determines what we do (our choices and actions).
Looking deeper and more broadly at volition, you will realize that it is our actions that manifest our potentials, indeed, it is the actions of every conscious being in the universe that manifests the potentials of that being, with the end result that the universe manifests the potentials of the cosmic mind. This is how consciousness is the channel through which the boundless potentiality of Spirit is realized and made manifest. Volition is the mechanism that converts the potentials of our character into the manifest phenomena of our actions and the changes they cause, changes which evolve the wheel of time, moment by moment and epoch by epoch into tomorrow. Thus our choices do not just happen in time; it is our choices that cause our actions, that cause the changes, that cause the evolution of time. In essence, we are ultimately the creators of the universe and the makers of time. This is the deep mystery of volition.
Some beings do not choose as we do, but they DO choose, either to act or not act. An electron is bound to an atomic nucleus by its electro-magnetic (EM) charge. This bond is automatic, only because the charge of the nucleus is strong enough to attract and capture the electron, and when the bond between the two is weakened enough, the electron can be torn away from the nucleus. Science sees this motion of the electron as being ruled by forces; dead forces moving dead electrons to and from dead nuclei. Science ignores and rejects the consciousness of these nuclear particles. But the mysteries assure us that every being in the universe must be conscious to experience, must experience to interact with other beings and the forces that connect them. The electron, by virtue of its innate electrical charge, feels the positive charge of the atomic nucleus, and chooses (automatically) to move into proximity and become bound to the nucleus. It remains bonded to the atom at one level of valence or another until exterior EM attractions are powerful enough to draw it away from the nucleus, again by an automatic volitional choice. These particle do not have multiple choices to choose from as we humans usually have; they have only one choice—to act upon forces that they experience to the extent that they experience them. This is not the absence of volition; it is only the base level of volition from which higher levels emerge.
Volition is the magical center of the conscious mind, where experience stimulates a response. Were there no stimulation or response, there would be no experience. Experience occurs only when that which experiences stimulates a response from that which experiences (conscious mind), even if that response is only recognition of stimulation, like the very passive response we have to peripheral vision or subliminal sound. It is experience but only outside the scope of our attention; consequently, it is seldom recalled and usually not even present in our memory. But the experiences to which we attend, to which we are attentive, those experiences are at least recognized by our awareness. For example, I acknowledge even the depression of the keyboard keys as I type each letter of each word of this article. I don’t dwell on them by any means but the quick register of the experience and my acknowledgment is my assurance that I have completed the action I’ve undertaken. There are so many such brief experiences that make up our lives.
Each experience triggers an action that in turn generates further experience, ad infinitum. The generation of actions from our experiences is the work of volition.
The next mental activity we should examine is intuition. Common intuition is a knowledge of which we become aware, but have no idea how we came to have that knowledge. If questioned, we may answer, “Oh, I just knew it.” But I have said before that all our knowledge is memory of experience. How can we have knowledge that doesn’t come from experience? We can’t. Intuition is communication from the spirit, from the deepest part of our being, the source of all our potentials and character. Intuition includes empathic knowledge and feeling of other people’s feelings that is communicated from spirit to spirit. Intuition includes extra-sensory perceptions (ESP) like telekinesis, clairevoyance, and telepathy. Intuition includes divinatory readings of other people’s ‘fortunes’ using cards or stars or crystal balls. Intuition includes incidents of enlightenment, satori, and mystical experience. And intuition includes near death experiences of course. Intuition is any occasion, big or small, practiced or impulsive, where we briefly communicate with our own spirit, and through our spirit communicate with spirits beyond.
We have long lost our intuitive abilities and little is left of them today. Witches and Pagans are set apart by our empathic nature, gifts which have led us individually from the cultures of our births to find or rediscover our native paths as witches, wiccans, heathens, druids, magicians, ancient religion reconstructionists, and all the many, many paths and traditions that comprise the general neoPagan community. But for most of humanity in our time, intuition has become a mostly feminine peculiarity of the emotions, a topic of humour rather than a spiritual experience. This is one of the tragedies of humankind, that we have grown so brilliant in our technologies and so blind and dead to our spiritual center. And it has become the hinge upon which swings our ultimate destiny, whether we will degenerate into a hell of our own making, leading to our eventual demise as a species, or whether we find our spiritual source and restore balance between out technical genius and our thirst for beauty, peace, compassion, and hope.
Emotion and desire are the last two of our mental activities. These two seem most attached to the physical body because of their greater influence by hormones and other chemicals in the body. But they are nonetheless mental activities. They are probably among the more primitive mental functions; it is likely, I think, that Consciousness learned to feel before it learned a mental language by which to think thoughts. We ourselves also tend to react more quickly at an emotional level with fear or joy preceding our mind’s ability to decipher what is happening and how it should respond, if only by milliseconds. Our heart is faster than our mind it seems, if not always accurate in its immediate response. Our minds take analytical time to determine what is so scary or delightful before reacting.
Another quality of emotion is that it is dominant. The connections between our emotions and our thoughts are quite strong, but the heart rules the mind at every turn. If we like something or dislike it, it can take a great deal of dissuading to change our emotional position. Certainty, you see, is only a feeling, only an emotion; there can be no perfect connection between the mind and the world. “I know the sun is shining.” Seems certain, but the sun is eight minutes away, and may not be shining; and if you mean the sun is presently shining on you, well that too may only be a dream from which you will awake. Certainty is a rare bug, but the feeling of certainty is with us all the time. My challenge as writer of this article, if you disagree with my words, is not to change your mind; it is to change your heart, to wash away your certainty in your beliefs to allow you to accept my view as your own, which you cannot do as long as that spot in your heart is occupied.
The ideas we deeply believe or disbelieve are affixed to our hearts; they are not just ideas, they become a part of our character, a part of our basic values. Ask a Pagan to become a Muslim or a Christian to become a Buddhist. Obviously it will not happen on the spot. These ideologies are anchored and affixed in the heart and will not readily be released. The mind is a playing field for introducing new ideas, but it requires a lot of convincing argument in the mind to force the heart to release the anchors of certainty that hold deep-seated ideas in place. The heart has jungles and swamps of subconscious psychological entanglements that cling to ideas and traumas tenaciously and will not release either its fears or its needs until they are dug out by the root.
Emotions tend to be dualities, basically expressing pleasure or pain, desirable or repulsive experiences. So we have words for positive emotions and their antipodes. We trust or distrust, hope or fear, love or hate, we are joyful or angry, pleased or displeased, happy or sad, delighted or furious, laughing or crying, trusting or suspicious, bold or timid, courageous or cowardly, etc. Sometimes, they form trilogies; the opposite of joy may be anger, yes but it may also be sorrow. What emotions most affect you?
Desires are much like emotions, both are primary motivators of human actions. Desires communicate our body’s physical needs and yearnings to the mind. They include hunger and thirst, fatigue (the need for rest), and sleepiness (the need for sleep), as well as the need for sexual gratification. Desires arise from physical stimulation and are therefore physical stimuli; however these physical desires trigger secondary mental desires to act in a manner that will satisfy the primary physical desires, and the secondary mental desires are also desires in themselves.
Insofar as emotions and desires start in our bodies and transfer to our minds, they are like children whose laughter makes us laugh, whose tears make us cry. And whose I wanna wannas emburden us with the need to fulfill their wants and needs as if they are our own. We hear and feel our body’s feelings and needs, and they become our own; they register at both, a conscious and unconscious level. This is an example of communication and interaction between two adjacent worlds, the sixth and seventh worlds.
This completes our survey of the seven functions of the mind that we experience as the seven “mental activities.” All this activity is going on continuously in our minds except when we sleep. That’s one way the astral plane differs from the material plane; the mind becomes fatigued and must rest. The universe doesn’t sleep every several hours, days, or millennia.[1] The universe is constant. But when we sleep a deep and dreamless sleep, our consciousness shuts down completely, and we effectively cease to exist—because consciousness is experience and experience is existence. We have no sensory perceptions, no mental activities, no concept of a passage of time. The time from when we nod out to when we awaken is zero, naught, nonz; so we do not conceive our brief non-existence, but we awaken to discover that hours have passed in the material plane while no time passed in our astral plane.
Since the astral plane is a time unto itself, we lose time only in the material plane. Our absence of consciousness in the astral plane stops the flow of time so we do not cease to exist in that plane. We stop, and time stops. We start and time starts. Remember, the mind is a universe unto itself in the astral plane, a boundless and solitary realm, not of spatial dimensions but of time, and time alone, extending to forever insofar as there is no barrier to it, no wall beyond which it cannot reach. The time that rules the astral plane is itself ruled by consciousness.
When the conscious mind experiences its mental activities, time happens; but when the conscious mind is silent and still, when it stops experiencing, time stops. Why? Because time is a function of change, and absent experience, there is no change. It is a Schroedinger’s Box, you see. The cat is both alive and dead—or neither alive nor dead—until the box is opened to experience. There might theoretically be an action that causes a change in the astral plane after experience has stopped, but until that change is experienced, it isn’t real; it is not even a dream, not even a hope. It remains nothing more than an unrealized potential until it is experienced. Such is the reality of the astral plane.
If this all sounds strange and alien, you do not know yourself well. All of this is common to us; it’s our inner self, the I-inside, our mind. Every conscious being has an inner self and an outer self, and few of us spend enough time examining our inner self. We hide inside our inner self, we seek refuge there, but we never look about and examine its structure and substance. Our inner self (or inner world) is real, but it is made of temporal substances. You can’t expect physical structure made of brick or wood; you won’t find a place—you ARE the place—and it has no shape or size, but its real and substantial in its own way. Everything is remembered, except on the edges of old age. Memory is amazing! We are so much more than the person of the moment, that person is only the tip of the iceberg. We’ll talk about the depth of being next time, about the vast potency within us.
[1] The Universe may be said to “sleep” every few eons of time when the universe develops a false vacuum state causing it to crash to a new vacuum state. Cosmological theory proposes that this could happen at any time and would engulf the entire universe at light speed or faster, wiping out all existence. This is the most frightening prediction in all of cosmology, saying that we might be totally obliterated at any moment if the universe scrunches its butt to soothe an itch.
Want to join the conversation about this blog post? Go to the Green Egg Forum and scroll for the forum post that relates to this article: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1069823176940972
The writer was born with moonlight in his heart and is dedicated to her service. He is a pantheistic neoPagan mystic, the coordinator of Crows Nest, the Global CAW Cybernest, and an editor of Green Egg Magazine–by which magazine he was first introduced into the neoPagan community in 1972. He is also an Elder of the Essynian Witchcraft Tradition that he founded in 2021, and he is also the Most High Swami-Pajami at the Nashville Temple of Eris Discordiana & Towing Service…If You Need a Tow, Come Rain or Come Snow, We’re on the Go, And We Won’t be Slow!