Thought and Awareness
The mystic, while in the beginning stages, tries diligently through his sadhana to extract his awareness from the thinking area of the mind, while simultaneously trying to perceive without thinking about what he has perceived. It is the overview of what has been perceived that the mystic endeavors to superconsciously grasp in a series of flashes. He well knows that thinking is the more externalized strata. The mystic constantly, through every waking moment and even during sleep, endeavors to strengthen his acute observation through perceiving the overview of thought strata rather than thinking through them. My guru often said, "There is a chair at the top. Sit in it and look at the world from that perspective." The mystic constantly sits in this chair, looking at mind from the threshold of the Absolute.
It is the baser emotions, when stimulated, that bring awareness from inner depths into the thought strata of the mind, thus strengthening human emotions and feelings with powers of reason and memory. Therefore, for those not too deeply engaged in the external emotional traps, certain sadhanas can be performed to regulate and control these instinctive drives. When they are less impulsive and forceful, one has a sense of being able to control one’s thoughts. Later on, if the sadhana persists, the sense that awareness travels in and among these thoughts is felt, and still later the perceptions occur of hovering above thought, looking out upon the thought strata of the mind or a portion of it.
To give an example of the thought state, and a deeper state of not thinking but perceiving thoughts, imagine sitting before a television set. The set has not been turned on, and you are thinking about various things that involve you personally and wish to distract awareness from them by watching a television program. When you turn to the program, sitting across the room from the set, you have the sense of perceiving the thoughts, moods and emotions of the program, without necessarily thinking yourself. You perceive. Similarly, the mystic can be called the watcher of the play of life, for he is totally identified with his inner depths, rather than the thought strata and structures he perceives.
The mystic lives in a state similar to that of a child, for a child does not think, but perceives. He, of course, reacts emotionally to some of his perceptions, but it is only when he reaches twelve or fourteen, sometimes younger, that he begins to enter the thought strata of mind. The mystic has deliberately arrived at this state of the child through sadhana and, of course, has awakened the facilities in himself to go into the next succeeding, even more refined, areas of consciousness.
The entire concept of creating a thought, or thoughts of the mind already being in existence, or thoughts and concepts disintegrating or being destroyed because they are no longer used, is totally dependent upon the nature of the sadhana of the mystic. There are four different perspectives in looking at the mind from within oneself. In Shum, these four perspectives are called shumef, moolef, simnef and defee. And of course, many more combinations of these perspectives can be utilized and have been, thus creating the various philosophical and metaphysical outlooks that we know today. How thought is seen within one’s mind totally depends on the positioning of one’s individual state of awareness. This, in turn, depends upon prior sadhana he has performed.
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