The Mind’s “I” - 06.03.10

Student Comment: It seems like when we close our eyes and start to meditate, we’re focusing on what we call the mind’s “I.” I was wondering, when you have the other consciousness, I’m sure it’s a different sort of feel, and that you’re not experiencing the mind’s “I.” It would have to be different because my mind’s “I” feels like it’s internal.

“Once the ‘I’ is projected into the mind, then it’s refracted into a structure of consciousness that produces arisings of different gestalts, and there’s a subtle shift from moment to moment of one gestalt to another,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But as you retract the consciousness out of the structure of mind, into the pure awareness, then you can see those structures for what they are, and the gap between them. And they no longer create a coherent narrative. And you can begin to feel the global incoherence of what you had taken to be reality: that your reality is an unreality, and there are many inconsistencies, and it’s simply a tissue of concepts. And the gaps between it become more clear than the conceptual forces that push it to create images and feeling states, etc. And then once you have let go of all of that, then there is a nondual perception that’s completely different—that is noumenal, it’s no longer within a phenomenal plane. The world is recognized simply as a projection of the same God consciousness. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 3, 2010.