Batman

@Jimrubin Dude, what's with advocating this book in such a religious fashion?

"When you meet the Buddha, kill him." And I would add: "Immediately".

I wish you a profound experience. Haux Haux!

Hey, Yes, as you become more and more awake to the nature of mind, and specifically to the activity of thoughts and their function for self-preservation, it will gradually "put them in their right place", so to speak. When you become more conscious of this activity and it's nature, you will notice that you use it to manipulate others and reality, rather than acting in accordance with your authentic internal state. In time this will cause the mind to "take a step back" and have less dominance over your experience, ultimately leading to a place where your understanding of this function is deep enough so it will be utilized in the appropriate circumstances. I would not say that they completely stop, because the activities of mind are functions of the organism which you are, and they developed over time for the necessities of self-survival. However, due to the development of language and modern culture, the pursuit for gratification of the senses and social approval, mind activities became the dominator of human experience. Awakening to this facet of your experience 'degrades' mind activities back to their original use. Have fun, Batman

Ken Wilber. OP - he is a very foundational teacher within our realm. I would assume that a lot of "seekers" miss him out due to his articulative and analytical style. He has lesser degree of new-age vibe, unlike Tolle, Adyashanti, Spira, Kahn and so forth. I should clarify that this is stated without judgement towards any direction. It actually reminds me when I was a teenager who was digging into spirituality, I came across Wilber's work but could not resonate with any of it. Only later I find out that he's work (and other models of psychological development) explains exactly why that was. Ahh, the irony.

Existence is a function of mind. Meaning, that anything in your present experience (the "Now") which you are conscious of, is your existence. Of course, there could be infinite aspects of experience that you are not conscious of, and therefore they will now exist for you, but may exist for others. It does not negate the possibility that a certain aspect of experience might exist for you in a "future" Now, or that you will know of certain aspect of past experience that you were not conscious of in real-time. Meaning, the existence of New Zealand (which is a legal concept of itself) is purely conceptual in your present experience. Even if you visit New Zealand and return to your home country, New Zealand return to reside in your experience as pure concept, belief, or any other mental activity you would like to classify it. This means that your experience of it has degraded to a mental activity. If it is not actual for you and you do not directly experience it, than it does not exist for you. By the way, knowing is also a conceptual framework. You can posses in your mind conceptual knowledge of New Zealand's existence, even though you've never been there. Your only way to overcome or address this impediment is to become conscious of, or awaken to, the mesmerizing depth and mindfuckery of the distinction between direct experience and mental activities (such as thoughts, beliefs, stories and concepts). Becoming awake of the degree to which your experience is dominated by mental activities will blow your freakin' mind, and leave you with an astounding headache. But you will also mature dramatically by this awakening, ultimately allowing you to grasp better the mechanics of mind, and sharpened understanding of the saying: "The mind is a loyal servant, but a bad master". Yours, Batman

I hope it is okay to invite myself to propose a (slightly) different approach. The word Mind generally serves as a representation of certain activities within the different domains of experience, generally known as mental activities which are absent of object, such as thoughts, emotions, internal chatter and so on. Therefore, it appears that Mind is a distinction within human experience. That is I wouldn't classify it as a "feature" of Consciousness, which is generally regarded here as being prior to Mind. It also seems as if Mind has a self-referential aspect to it, provided that the activity of mind is the generator of the distinction Mind itself. Also I would not hold that the activities of Mind serve as the foundation or source of perceptions and emotions (unless you wish to recontextualize the general interpretation of the word 'Mind'), because they seem to exist almost entirely independent of each other (although probably impossible to recollect, I would assert that an infant experience perceptions and emotions, but lacks the Mind faculties needed for interpretation, identification or other form of mental activity which is required to establish the 'requisite' relationship to the content of their experience). Of course that everything stated above is rather pointless if your intention by using the word Mind with capital letter was to refer to a certain meta concept of mind. Please clarify. By the way, I am thrilled to hear how did you experience Brahman. Yours, Batman