BODY MIND CONSCIOUSNESS
I would like to consider briefly body, mind and spirit and their apparent relationships within the experience of being human. This is not a scientific consideration in the sense of trying to define the nature of the body, the nature of the mind, the nature of the spirit and their apparent relationships. It’s more a consideration of the nature of human experience and its implications. Within which of course all human beings, despite the incredible variations in their experiences, in their situations, are always doing whatever they can to be as ok as possible, to be as happy as possible. Not everybody has the same resources of course, some people are more honest, open, sensitive, generous and intimate than others. Some people are living in difficult life circumstances compared to others. Nevertheless everybody is doing the best that they can to be as happy as possible. And to most people being happy, being content, being at peace, being at ease is really more important then knowing the true nature of reality. Rightly or wrongly this is actually the case.
Perhaps some people can only be happy if they think they know the nature of reality. But this is not my concern right now and it doesn’t need to be the concern of a yoga teacher either. The concern of a yoga teacher is more prosaic more mundane than that. How are your students feeling? What does it feel like to be a human being? What does it feel like to have this experience of a body, and to have this experience of a mind? And to have all these concepts that come along with it like soul and spirit. Is there any experience of spirit that is actually not an experience of mind or body? How much of your experience is determined by your beliefs? How many Hindus have had a vision of Jesus or Mother Mary? How many Christians have had a vision of Ganesh or Parvati? This should tell us something about the significance of belief relative to experience. Even though the vision of Mother Mary, Jesus or Ganesh no doubt seems to be the deep expression of the deep nature of reality, it’s in fact an expression of belief.
Do you believe that you are alive or do you know that you are alive? Do you believe that you have a body or do you know that you have a body? Do you believe that you have a mind or is mental activity participating in your experience, along with physical activity? Is that a matter of belief or knowledge? Is there a third factor here, alongside body and mind? Yes there is: consciousness. It doesn’t matter what mental activity is going on, it doesn’t matter what physical activity is going on, consciousness remains. Of course its contents change in response to mental and physical activity, but its presence, its intrinsic qualities don’t change. It always reveals, it always includes.
It’s not like the mind. You know how your mind is. I’m sure you all experience this. If you are female you can take the female role, if you are a male you can take the male role. There is a couple walking down the Champs-Élysées. Let’s just take Jose Luis and Juliette or Anette and Sebastian. Makes no difference, really. You know what Annette and Juliette are doing. They are looking at those incredible shops full of those incredible clothes and shoes. Anette’s in denial about this. Never mind. Whereas Jose Luis and Sebastian they are tired they are hungry they are rejecting McDonald’s, they are rejecting Hägan-Daz but they are looking for a little nice bistro to fill their stomachs. They don’t even notice the shoe shops while Juliette and Anette didn’t notice Hägan-Daz. They are looking at those heels and those buckles.
So you know how exclusive the mind is but Consciousness is not exclusive it’s inclusive. It has no prejudices, it has no preferences. So you could say that the differences between the body and mind, spirit or body, mind and Consciousness are not so hard to recognize.
However, what happens when you look really closely to see which is the more obvious, body or mind? Which is more obvious really, body or mind? I would say what’s more obviously obvious is the body but what’s more subtly obvious is the mind. It’s actually your mind that you are seeing, feeling, tasting and touching with even as your body participates in that.
Yet things are not always as obvious as they seem. An experience of your body is an experience of your mind. At the same time an experience of your body is also an experience of consciousness. Yet that’s easy to overlook, even more easy to overlook than the presence of your mind. This is so simply because it’s so much more fundamental and much more continuous than mind and body. In and of itself it’s completely unchanging and of course we notice things on the basis of change.
What happens if we pay more deep attention to the obvious? One of the first things that we can notice is that the distinction between mind and body within your experience of your body turns out to be a little hard to maintain. Within your experience of your body. Of course you can maintain it in your thinking about them. Yet in your experience of your body, sooner or later you have to realise that in experiencing your body in any way at all you are simultaneously experiencing your mind. There is really only one thing happening and it’s been divided by your mind. It’s not just being divided into body and mind, it’s been divided into subject and object. The seer and the seen.
So where does the spirit fit in all of this? Where does Consciousness fit in to your experience of your body? Is your experience of your body no less an experience of consciousness than it is of your mind? Even if it’s not acknowledged? What about those wild fantasies you have when you are coming out of savasana? Perhaps it was Johny Depp or Monica Bellucci’s body that your mind was thinking about, and your body was not being experienced. Nevertheless Consciousness is still present with or without your experience of your body. You can experience without experiencing your body. But you can’t experience without the participation of mind and without the participation of consciousness.
So, what happens when you experience your body deeply? When the obvious and the particular, the specific and the temporary such as your hands and your feet, your arms and your armpits, your heartbeat and your pulses no longer captivate your attention, then what? What is happening when you are taken by softness, perhaps into lightness, spaciousness and openness? What are you experiencing? What are you feeling when you feel peace? If you feel love what are you feeling?
Of course you feel love, you feel peace. But when you feel pain in a joint you are feeling sensations, you’re feeling nerves, you’re feeling your body. When you’re feeling love within your own presence, when you are feeling peace within your own silence, what are you feeling? Is it that you are made up of body, mind, spirit, love, peace and delight? Are you actually a six fold creature? Are there six fundamental frequencies to your presence?
Or is love, is peace just another way of experiencing your own presence undivided by mind, undivided into body, mind, spirit? Maybe your mind is your body. Maybe your body is Consciousness. Maybe you are love. Maybe there is no relationship between these things. Maybe they are all the same.
Anyway it might not be a bad idea for you to at least be clear about all this. Most of the things that are said about body, mind and spirit are nonsense. There is no need to be disturbed by them. They are only thoughts expressed. You need to let them go so that you can freely encounter the nature of your body. You need to see that you carry deeply inhibiting notions about the body. Its corruptness, its limitedness, its insignificance compared to the spiritual.
No understanding is more important to human happiness than understanding the true nature of the body. It is not a trap. It is not a prison. It is not a temporary instrument. Of course you can’t understand the nature of the body without understanding the nature of mind. This understanding must come directly from experience. From experience of your own body, from within. This is self enquiry. It has nothing to do with the academic enquiries of logic or biology. It needs to bring you into direct relationship with Consciousness, with spirit. Then you will begin to see directly the nature of the apparent relationships between body, mind and spirit.
2012
I would like to consider briefly body, mind and spirit and their apparent relationships within the experience of being human. This is not a scientific consideration in the sense of trying to define the nature of the body, the nature of the mind, the nature of the spirit and their apparent relationships. It’s more a consideration of the nature of human experience and its implications. Within which of course all human beings, despite the incredible variations in their experiences, in their situations, are always doing whatever they can to be as ok as possible, to be as happy as possible. Not everybody has the same resources of course, some people are more honest, open, sensitive, generous and intimate than others. Some people are living in difficult life circumstances compared to others. Nevertheless everybody is doing the best that they can to be as happy as possible. And to most people being happy, being content, being at peace, being at ease is really more important then knowing the true nature of reality. Rightly or wrongly this is actually the case.
Perhaps some people can only be happy if they think they know the nature of reality. But this is not my concern right now and it doesn’t need to be the concern of a yoga teacher either. The concern of a yoga teacher is more prosaic more mundane than that. How are your students feeling? What does it feel like to be a human being? What does it feel like to have this experience of a body, and to have this experience of a mind? And to have all these concepts that come along with it like soul and spirit. Is there any experience of spirit that is actually not an experience of mind or body? How much of your experience is determined by your beliefs? How many Hindus have had a vision of Jesus or Mother Mary? How many Christians have had a vision of Ganesh or Parvati? This should tell us something about the significance of belief relative to experience. Even though the vision of Mother Mary, Jesus or Ganesh no doubt seems to be the deep expression of the deep nature of reality, it’s in fact an expression of belief.
Do you believe that you are alive or do you know that you are alive? Do you believe that you have a body or do you know that you have a body? Do you believe that you have a mind or is mental activity participating in your experience, along with physical activity? Is that a matter of belief or knowledge? Is there a third factor here, alongside body and mind? Yes there is: consciousness. It doesn’t matter what mental activity is going on, it doesn’t matter what physical activity is going on, consciousness remains. Of course its contents change in response to mental and physical activity, but its presence, its intrinsic qualities don’t change. It always reveals, it always includes.
It’s not like the mind. You know how your mind is. I’m sure you all experience this. If you are female you can take the female role, if you are a male you can take the male role. There is a couple walking down the Champs-Élysées. Let’s just take Jose Luis and Juliette or Anette and Sebastian. Makes no difference, really. You know what Annette and Juliette are doing. They are looking at those incredible shops full of those incredible clothes and shoes. Anette’s in denial about this. Never mind. Whereas Jose Luis and Sebastian they are tired they are hungry they are rejecting McDonald’s, they are rejecting Hägan-Daz but they are looking for a little nice bistro to fill their stomachs. They don’t even notice the shoe shops while Juliette and Anette didn’t notice Hägan-Daz. They are looking at those heels and those buckles.
So you know how exclusive the mind is but Consciousness is not exclusive it’s inclusive. It has no prejudices, it has no preferences. So you could say that the differences between the body and mind, spirit or body, mind and Consciousness are not so hard to recognize.
However, what happens when you look really closely to see which is the more obvious, body or mind? Which is more obvious really, body or mind? I would say what’s more obviously obvious is the body but what’s more subtly obvious is the mind. It’s actually your mind that you are seeing, feeling, tasting and touching with even as your body participates in that.
Yet things are not always as obvious as they seem. An experience of your body is an experience of your mind. At the same time an experience of your body is also an experience of consciousness. Yet that’s easy to overlook, even more easy to overlook than the presence of your mind. This is so simply because it’s so much more fundamental and much more continuous than mind and body. In and of itself it’s completely unchanging and of course we notice things on the basis of change.
What happens if we pay more deep attention to the obvious? One of the first things that we can notice is that the distinction between mind and body within your experience of your body turns out to be a little hard to maintain. Within your experience of your body. Of course you can maintain it in your thinking about them. Yet in your experience of your body, sooner or later you have to realise that in experiencing your body in any way at all you are simultaneously experiencing your mind. There is really only one thing happening and it’s been divided by your mind. It’s not just being divided into body and mind, it’s been divided into subject and object. The seer and the seen.
So where does the spirit fit in all of this? Where does Consciousness fit in to your experience of your body? Is your experience of your body no less an experience of consciousness than it is of your mind? Even if it’s not acknowledged? What about those wild fantasies you have when you are coming out of savasana? Perhaps it was Johny Depp or Monica Bellucci’s body that your mind was thinking about, and your body was not being experienced. Nevertheless Consciousness is still present with or without your experience of your body. You can experience without experiencing your body. But you can’t experience without the participation of mind and without the participation of consciousness.
So, what happens when you experience your body deeply? When the obvious and the particular, the specific and the temporary such as your hands and your feet, your arms and your armpits, your heartbeat and your pulses no longer captivate your attention, then what? What is happening when you are taken by softness, perhaps into lightness, spaciousness and openness? What are you experiencing? What are you feeling when you feel peace? If you feel love what are you feeling?
Of course you feel love, you feel peace. But when you feel pain in a joint you are feeling sensations, you’re feeling nerves, you’re feeling your body. When you’re feeling love within your own presence, when you are feeling peace within your own silence, what are you feeling? Is it that you are made up of body, mind, spirit, love, peace and delight? Are you actually a six fold creature? Are there six fundamental frequencies to your presence?
Or is love, is peace just another way of experiencing your own presence undivided by mind, undivided into body, mind, spirit? Maybe your mind is your body. Maybe your body is Consciousness. Maybe you are love. Maybe there is no relationship between these things. Maybe they are all the same.
Anyway it might not be a bad idea for you to at least be clear about all this. Most of the things that are said about body, mind and spirit are nonsense. There is no need to be disturbed by them. They are only thoughts expressed. You need to let them go so that you can freely encounter the nature of your body. You need to see that you carry deeply inhibiting notions about the body. Its corruptness, its limitedness, its insignificance compared to the spiritual.
No understanding is more important to human happiness than understanding the true nature of the body. It is not a trap. It is not a prison. It is not a temporary instrument. Of course you can’t understand the nature of the body without understanding the nature of mind. This understanding must come directly from experience. From experience of your own body, from within. This is self enquiry. It has nothing to do with the academic enquiries of logic or biology. It needs to bring you into direct relationship with Consciousness, with spirit. Then you will begin to see directly the nature of the apparent relationships between body, mind and spirit.
2012