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Paul Brunton's Notebooks: Category 21, Mentalism

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

February 9, 1983

PB PARAS; MENTALISM

TOPIC: PB Paras

SUBJECT: Mentalism

SUBSUBJECTS: Epistemology, Sensations, Senses

CONTENTS:

PB PARAS ON MENTALISM

"THIS VAST UNIVERSE IS REAL IN ITS PRESENT FORM TO HIS BODILY SENSES ONLY"

IF THE MIND RESUMES ITS ORIGINAL FORM, WHICH IS LIGHT, WHAT HAPPENS TO THE WORLD THAT IS THE RESULT OF SENSE FUNCTIONING?

WHEN THE MIND IS IDENTIFIED WITH THE BODY, BELIEF IN THE MATERIALITY OF THE WORLD ARISES

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE WORLD IS MENTAL, YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF IT CHANGES, BUT THE OBJECTS' QUALITIES DO NOT

SENSATIONS ARE IDEAS PROJECTED BY THE MIND

THE OBJECTS WE KNOW DO NOT EXIST EXTERNALLY BY THEMSELVES

THE SENSES ARE NOT THE SAME AS THE SENSE ORGANS; IN DREAMS, THE SENSES FUNCTION WITHOUT THE SENSE ORGANS

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

Paul Brunton, Notebooks
Paul Brunton, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga
Paul Brunton, The Wisdom of the Overself

TRANSCRIBED Verbatim by IT 2018. Reformatted from V11a version by JRM & JF 2019-2020, with Subheads and Table of Contents added by JRM. In 2023, IT reformats again to accord with new conventions, fixes prefatory matter and footer, updates audio file name. In 2025, MW expands Subsubjects and alters Subheads to make more accurate. Archival verbatim transcript – V14.1a.

AUDIO FILES: 1983 0209a. [Note 1: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files. Note 2: We are missing the second audio file for this class.]

Highlight:

1983 02/09 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

PB Paras; Mentalism

Archival verbatim transcript

[Audio File 1983 0209a Begins]

RC: Why don't we jump right in the middle and then if we can't handle it--

VM (simultaneously) If we drown we can back up.

RC: We can back up and get the right attitude.

VM: Right. (VM laughing)

[11 second pause, faint background student talking]

PB PARAS ON MENTALISM

PB [V13, 21:5.96 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #61, RC reading]: "To arrive at the understanding that the universe is non-material and is mental, is to be liberated from materialism. It produces a sensation like that felt by a prisoner who has spent half a lifetime cooped up in a dark and dingy fetid dungeon and who is suddenly liberated, set free, put out of doors in the bright sunshine and fresh clean air. For to be a materialist means to be one imprisoned in the false belief that the matter-world is the real world; to become spiritual is to perceive that all objects are mental ones; the revelation of the mental nature of the universe is so stupendous that it actually sets mind and feeling free from their materialistic prison and brings the whole inner being into the dazzling sunshine of truth, the fresh atmosphere of Reality. All those who believe in the materiality of the material world and not in its mental nature, are really materialists--even if they call themselves religious, Christians, spiritualists, occultists, or Anthroposophists."

AD: [one/two words inaudible] (is external).

RG/S(?) (simultaneously): (Right/Yeah).

PB [V13, 21:5.96 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #61, RC reading]: "The only way to escape materialism is not to become a follower of any psychic cult or religious faith, but to enquire with the mind into the truth of matter and to be rewarded at length by the abiding perception of its mental Nature. All other methods are futile, or at best are but preparatory and preliminary steps."

[short pause]

PC: Where is that from, Randy?

RC: These-- this one's from the 10^th volume, the red one in the library. It's page 74. Starts at the top of the page, number 15. [short pause] That one made me think a little bit of the analogy of the cave that Plato talks about. [short pause] Being "suddenly liberated, set free, put out of doors in the bright sunshine and fresh clean air."

PB [V13, 21:5.96 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #61, RC reading]: "…the revelation of the mental nature of the universe is so stupendous that it actually sets mind and feeling free from their materialistic prison and brings the whole inner being into the dazzling sunshine of truth…"

RC: In that analogy of the cave he had everybody's neck clamped so that they could only look out, straight, forward direction. And it seemed that the first step in awakening in the cave was recognizing that it was all cast by a light which was behind them. And, the awakening to the world as a set of images cast and illumined by a light that comes from within [short pause] he says "actually sets the mind and feeling free and brings the whole inner being into the dazzling sunshine of truth, fresh atmosphere of Reality."

[23 second pause]

PB [V13, 21:4.170 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #49, RC reading]: "Is there some precise universal criterion of truth which will be applicable at all times and under all circumstances, in short, something unchanging and therefore supreme? [For] scientists know that the great principles which formed landmarks in the history of science were really successive stages on the route towards [the] precise truth. Science changes, its doctrines change, and its earlier approximations are replaced from time to time by more accurate points [RC reads: ones]. We cannot hope to find an ultimate truth nowadays, when science itself is so rapidly on the march. There remains, however, one unfailing all-embracing fact which will forever remain true and which cannot possibly change. Indeed, every advance in experiment and theory made by enterprising scientists will only help to verify this grand discovery. What is it? It is that the whole world which every department of science is busily engaged in examining is nothing but an idea in the human mind. Physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, and all the other sciences without a single exception are concerned solely with what is ultimately [a] thought or series of thoughts passing through human consciousness. Here, therefore, we possess a universal law which embraces the entire field in which science is operating. This is an ultimate truth which will stand immortal, when every other hypothesis formulated by science has perished through advancing knowledge."

[short pause]

VM (faint): It was really the last-- there were two sentences or so.

PB [V13, 21:4.170 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #49, RC reading]: "…all the [other] sciences without a single exception are concerned solely with what is ultimately a thought or series of thoughts passing through human consciousness. Here, therefore, we possess a universal law which embraces the entire field in which science is operating. This is an ultimate truth which will stand immortal, when every other hypothesis formulated by science has perished through advancing knowledge."

[short pause with very faint background student talking or students assenting]

S: Uh-hm.

[14¼ second pause]

PB [V13, 21:4.45 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #8, RC reading]: "Mentalism, the teaching that this is a mental universe, is too hard to believe for the ordinary man yet too hard to disbelieve for the illumined man. This is because to the first it is only a theory, but to the second it is a personal experience. The ordinary man's consciousness is kept captive by his senses, each of which reports a world of matter outside him. The illumined man's consciousness is free to be itself, to report its own reality and to reveal the senses and their world to be mere ideation."

[18½ second pause]

PB [V13, 21:4.128, RC reading]: "It is the incapacity of our thinking, the poverty of our perception, the vividness of our sense-experiences, and the encrustation of our habitual outlook which creates and maintains the illusion of the world's materiality and prevents us from noting that it is really a presence within consciousness. How can those who test reality like Dr. Johnson by using their feet or like any bricklayer by using their hands affirm any other doctrine than that of materialism? [RC reads: How can those who by using their feet test reality like Dr. Johnson or by using their hands like any bricklayer affirm any other doctrine than that of materialism?] Contrarily, how can those who use their God-given intelligence to test reality arrive in the end at any other doctrine than that of mentalism? Those [RC reads: The] materialists who tell us today that [RC reads: that today] the line of the soul is an unscientific one and that it is a legacy left to us by primitive simpletons are themselves unscientific and oversimple. For science, which began by repudiating mind and exalting matter, is being forced by facts to end by repudiating matter and exalting mind. This is why philosophy today must sharply emphasize and teach, alongside of ancient lore, the profounder mentalist [RC reads: mentalistic] import of vital facts of modern discovery which have not yet received their [RC adds: true] deserved reward of recognition from the world."

[12¾ second pause]

JG: What page was that please?

RC: It's still volume 10, the red one.

JG: Uh-hm.

RC: Page 68. Top of the page, number 1.

[10¼ second pause]

PB [V13, 21:4.40, RC reading]: "The road from mentalism as conception to mentalism as a conviction is a long one."

PB [Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #14, RC reading]: "The ignorance which accepts matter as a reality [rather] than as an idea can be overcome [RC adds: but] only by a course of emotional purification, mystical contemplation, and metaphysical reflection."

AH: Randy, if the ignorance that accepts matter-- matter as an idea--

RC: As reality-- "accepts matter as a reality rather than as an idea".

AH: That's not the way you read it. Is there another-- Would you mind that one again please?

PB [Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #14, RC reading]: "The ignorance which accepts matter as a reality rather than as an idea can be overcome [RC adds: but] only by a course of emotional purification, mystical contemplation, and metaphysical reflection."

[18¼ second pause]

"THIS VAST UNIVERSE IS REAL IN ITS PRESENT FORM TO HIS BODILY SENSES ONLY"

PB [V13, 21:1.10 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #27, RC reading]: "He will come to see by experience, as science is coming to see by experiment, that this vast universe is real in its present form to his bodily senses only. As soon as his mind is freed from them, it takes on quite a different form, the old form having no further existence at all. He is then compelled to correct his false belief in the world's reality. If there were nothing more than the five senses, then this correction would make the universe an illusion. But the presence of mind in him makes it an idea."

JG: Would you read that one more time?

PB [V13, 21:1.10 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #27, RC reading]: "He will come to see by experience, as science is coming to see by experiment, that this [vast] universe is real in its present form to his bodily senses only. As soon as his mind is freed from them, it takes on quite a different form, the old form having no further existence at all. He is then compelled to correct his false belief in the world's reality. If there were nothing more than the five senses, then this correction would make the universe an illusion. But the presence of mind in him makes it an idea."

S (faint): Hm.

S: Hm.

PC: Let's go over the la-- the last sentence.

PB [V13, 21:1.10 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #27, RC reading]: "If there were nothing more than the five senses, then this correction would make the universe an illusion. But the presence of mind in him makes it an idea."

LR: What is the--

RG (simultaneously): I don't get it.

S: Again.

RG: Again.

LR: What is the form that it-- that the mind-- when the mind is released from the bodily senses, what is the new form that experience has obtained?

VM: The mentalness of the universe. The first form of the universe when you're tied to the senses is that the world has a material existence. That is sublated in some sense, if you want to use that fancy word. Let's say that the-- you-- you will have a deeper understanding of the world when the mind's freed from the senses, it takes on a mental nature. And, if it didn't make this transformation from material to mental then it would only be an illusion. But in fact it's not an illusion. Principle of mind in you transforms this vision, if you like, about the world into a mental as opposed to material.

LR: No I'm asking specifically about the word 'form' here. That word [one/two words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): He's-- he didn't tell you, did he, Linda.

LR: I'm sorry?

AD: He didn't say what that form would be.

LR: I know he didn't say Anthony, that's why I asked the question.

AD: How do you expect an answer if he didn't say it? (bit of laughter)

LR: There are people who have these opinions I respect, such as you. (laughter)

S: Me too. (bit of laughter)

S: (Find it?)

[19 second pause]

AD: Well if you'll respect my silence too.

[students assent, faint]

[22¼ second pause]

RC: Well without getting into talking about any specific form that it could have, this point seems to me huge and (the) capital point, that-- [short pause] Whereas some schools of thought will criticize the sense constructed universe, they won't replace it with a reality that has meaning, and they'll just criticize--

S (very faint): [couple words inaudible] yeah.

RC: Yeah. They'll just criticize the sense perception of the world and call it an illusion. But he's calling for a fundamental change in perspective toward what the world is and saying that because there is more than just the five senses, because there's a mind present in it, that regardless of specifying the form, the form which it has is not a mere [short pause] non-entity.

VM: Yeah but [student assents] the first part of the quote stirred me a little bit when he says, you know, if you're tied to the senses then that world is shown-- no, the world in that form does not exist.

RC: Uh-hm.

VM: And I said, gee this just doesn't sound like PB, but then at the end he does suggest that world as the, let's say, material world doesn't exist but its reality is reaffirmed but on a mental level.

S (faint): Yeah.

RC: I think it's like that point that we worked at in the Buddhist class so often with so much frustration, [VM simultaneously: That's right.] that when you see that it never was inherently existent, it doesn't become inherently existent. I mean it's not experienced as inherently existent anymore.

RG: But you know what's funny to me about the quote, it says if there were nothing more than the five senses, than this correction would make the universe an illusion. [RC assents] But if there were nothing more [VM simultaneously: Couldn't have a correction, uh-hm.] than the five senses [JG simultaneously: You couldn't have the correction.] there would be no correction.

VM: Yeah that's right.

RG: The correction implies a mind that knows it isn't the senses and therefore it knows that the-- then the universe doesn't become an illusion.

RC: I-- [S, faint: Yeah.] seems to me--

RG (simultaneously): No, but I don't-- I don't even-- I don't un-- I don't understand it that-- that line then. I don't understand what that means.

LDS: I thought he was saying the correction would be an illusion.

RG: But the correction-- no, [JG(?): No.] he says the universe (bit of laughter) would be an illusion, not the correction.

S (faint): [couple words inaudible]

JG: Could we read it again? [student assents, faint] It seems--

PB [V13, 21:1.10 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #27, RC reading]: "He will come to see by experience, as science is coming to see by experiment, that this [vast] universe is real in its present form to his bodily senses only. As soon as his mind is freed from them, it takes on quite a different form, the old form having no further existence at all. If he is then compelled to correct his false belief…"

RC: Excuse me.

PB [V13, 21:1.10 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #27, RC reading]: "He is then compelled to correct his false belief in the world's reality. If there were nothing more than the five senses, then this correction would make the universe an illusion. But the presence of mind in him makes it an idea."

[short pause]

AH: I understand your criticism, Dickie. But I kind of felt like that's like a rhetorical sort of, [VM: Yeah.] if that was possible, but it ne-- it never could-- obviously it never could be corrected without the presence of something.

S: (Right/Yeah).

RG: Uh-hm. So if you-- if like you corrected it and forgot that you were a mind correcting it then you could end up in this dilemma (bit of laughter) where the universe becomes an illusion because you forgot that you had a mind that was correcting it.

AH: You know what they say, it is possible in these advanced practices to fall into the extreme of nihilism.

AH/S(?): Is that what-- is that what they are?

RG/S(?): Yeah [couple words inaudible]

RC: In fact, I don't know if I can take it out right away but, he's got one here-- his criticism of Hume.

[22¼ second pause]

AH: I mean how many mystics run around hollering the world doesn't exist based on the experience of a reality that they weren't able to integrate.

RG: Right, it's funny, he sa-- I mean, right. But that understanding comes from the side where everything is mind and the world is an illusion, not from the side where everything is the senses and then the world is an [student assents] illusion, that's-- that's the paradox I don't understand there.

RC: Ok let's try this one, see if this helps.

PB [V13, 21:4.206, RC reading]: "Hume rightly pointed out that the mind is [RC reads: was] a mere series of sensations but he wrongly concluded that the series is [RC reads: was] destitute of any connecting thread. He saw nothing in the world but momentary perceptions, and in perceptions he saw nothing at all. They arose and faded into a void. Thus it might be said of the Scottish thinker that his doctrine was a Nihilistic Idealism and his universe a meaningless one."Everyone keeps at a distance," he complained. "I have exposed myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians and even theologians; and [can] I wonder at the insults [RC reads: insult] I must suffer?""

[students assent]

RG: Right, so here's a case where he pointed out that the mi-- that the mind was a series of sensations and forgot that he had a mind doing it.

RC: Exactly.

PC(?) (faint): Right.

RG: Right. (RG laughs a bit) And included his mind within the-- within the sense organs and not outside.

[students assent, faint]

AH: See Linda's question is still sitting on my mind, (yeah). Like what is the form of this reality, I-- obviously we're not going to speak about that. Obviously we can't speak about that in any technical sense. But when he says it is replaced by, (you know/no)-- not the last quote but the next to the last one, the last sentence.

RC: Uh-hm.

AH: It is replaced by--

AH: So the-- the universe becomes an idea.

S: Yeah.

AH: But it's not a sense universe.

S (faint): Yeah.

RG: It could be.

S: It is to the body.

RG (simultaneously): It would still be mental. The understanding of it as sense doesn't-- [S: Yeah.] I think here we have to understand the difference between sense and ma-- and material. Sense could be presented and yet be men-- be unders-- be seen as mental.

AH: But it seems that the first part-- I agree with that but in the first part of the quote it's quite clear that the senses are what prevents that insight.

RG: You think it's the senses that prevent it?

AH: Well, I thought that's what the-- I was-- I wondered about it. Maybe if we read the first part of the quote.

RC: "He will come…"

VM (simultaneously): Foundation of the senses.

PB [V13, 21:1.10 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #27, RC reading]: "He will come to see by experience…that this vast universe is real in its present form to his bodily senses only. As soon as his mind is freed from them, it takes on quite a different form, the old form having no further existence at all."

AH: Old form being bodily-based experience.

RC: Out there, outside the body [S simultaneously: (one word inaudible) material.] and therefore outside me. Independent of my body and therefore independent of me.

JG: You mean that's gone forever, this form, for this person who has that experience?

RC (simultaneously): Doesn't say when but he does say he will come to see by experience.

JG: No, no, [few inaudible student words simultaneous with JG] I mean once he has that experience, that's gone, this form.

S: Yeah.

S (faint): Yeah.

JG: The materialistic view--

RC: Yeah. Once it's-- once it's gone, unless there's some good reason why the higher agency thinks you ought to go back a grade, it-- it's probably gone. [student assents] That way of believing, that way of constituting your experience.

[student assents, very faint]

LH: But what's gone is the attitude that would limit experience to-- to senses, not, (you know/yeah), the sense experience [RC simultaneously: Exactly.] itself.

RC: I don't think it's like necessarily completely gone. I meant a person could have a glimpse where they know this for a certain length of time. And then it lapses and the felt-- the former feltness of the experience is very close to the same. But, the inner disposition to believe it [two/three words inaudible]

DD: And-- and Randy, it isn't even belief, you're no longer duped. It's a question of duplicity. [student assents] The duplicity is gone.

[11¼ second pause]

AH: I don't understand that quote. I don't understand how the senses could be the impediment to this insight.

S: [one/two words inaudible]

RG (simultaneously): It's not. It's not, he doesn't say that.

TS (simultaneously): He doesn't say that. Says it's the senses as in the body.

AH: Well that's the only ones I know about, I don't know about other ones. [TS: Well--] I'm speaking experientially.

TS: Well--

AH: I'd like to understand this in terms of my experience.

RG: Do the senses have anything to do with telling you about what they report or not?

AH: Anything to do--

RG: With the reporting of the information that they give you.

S (faint): Yeah.

[short pause]

AH: I would have to say they must have something to do with it.

RG: No or just do they give the data, do they pre-- give you a presentation on which some other faculty in you then judges the presentation and pronounces on it something.

AH: Yes, that's so.

RG: Ok. Well if that is so then that other thing pronounces judgment on the given perception and says this is either outside me or not. [short pause] Ok? So then I would say to that that it's-- that it is that faculty which we could call the mental function, or whatever you want to call it, that says on the material given by the senses that number one, either I am these senses, number two, these-- the presentation is outside me because now I took myself to be the body, or three, this presentation is within my field of consciousness and therefore I know it as a part of my own mind. Now those three options have nothing to do with what the senses report. It only has to do with the faculty that tells you about the report.

VM: No. But the limitation of that faculty to sense functioning [RG: Yes.] is the impediment to the insight that the world is mental.

RG (simultaneously): But not senses themselves.

VM: No.

RG: The identification of [VM simultaneously: No, fine, it's the identification, yes.] them-- of the faculty with the senses.

VM: Fine.

[student assents, very faint]

AH: The [one inaudible student word simultaneous with AH] faculty being--

VM: The mind.

S (faint): The mind.

RG: The mind and some-- the ego, the mi-- the "I", the mind, the ego. What-- what do you want to call it? What would you call that faculty? Any or all of those.

AH/S(?): Yeah, any or all of those.

AH: Well, would you read it again based on the explanation? I'd like to hear it.

AH: As bod-- the old form being bodily senses.

RG: Uh-hm. But the word he didn't say in the first part of the sentence which he then included in the second part was the mind in it. 'Cause in the second part he says the mind as freed which implied the mind is not freed in the first understanding of it, which wasn't stated in the beginning.

AH: So you think this mind, this mind that is now free(d), is functioning in some sensory way?

RC: In the way that we've talked about sensation in PB's language, in the sense that [short pause] the World-Mind's input to the individual mind is first dealt with by the senses. I guess that kind of sensing would still be going on. But, the later phase of investing it and believing in all the additional ideas of externality, independence, and so on, which are true with respect to the body, are seen to be not true with respect to the mind.

AH: Ok, so this mental sense, I-- I guess that's an appropriate word or phrase, what forms does it perceive? I mean--

S: Yeah.

RG (simultaneously): That you'll have to ask Linda. (bit of laughter)

AH: Does it see shapes and colors and distances and does it experience things in the context of time?

S (very faint): No.

RG: I see-- well, I don't-- I don't know. (bit of laughter) You have to break your silence on this one Anthony.

IF THE MIND RESUMES ITS ORIGINAL FORM, WHICH IS LIGHT, WHAT HAPPENS TO THE WORLD THAT IS THE RESULT OF SENSE FUNCTIONING?

AD: Well if the mind resumes its original form which is light, what happens to the sense functioning? What happens to the world which is presented with sense-- by sense functioning?

RG: If the mind is nothing but light?

AD: If it [VM simultaneously: (Overexposing.)] resumes its form.

RG: Goes up in a blaze of glory, (RG laughs a bit) I don't know.

AD: No, well--

RG: What?

AD: What would you think of the sense functioning, the world that is presented through sense functioning?

VM: It would be a very secondary consideration.

AD: Yes. Doesn't even exist.

RG (simultaneously): You think (just I--) that it was presented?

AD: It doesn't even exist.

VM: Are you talking about Nirvikalpa samadhi Anthony or are you talking about--

AD (simultaneously): No, no, no, no, no, I cou-- I know those words.

RG: So what do you mean the world doesn't (bit of laughter) exist Anthony, why-- what do you mean, I don't get that.

AD: Just imagine that your mind resumed its original pure primitive form, it's all light.

S: Can't imagine it.

RG: That's right.

RC: I--

AH(?): I guess it's-- (RG laughing, laughter)

S: (Go ahead.)

S: Yeah. Go ahead. (S laughing)

VM (simultaneously): Does seem closer to home, (go ahead).

RG: Yeah, right.

AD: Then the world which appears because the senses function would be considered non-existent.

AH: And Anthony in that explanation, the extreme of nihilism is avoided by positing this one undifferentiated mind rather than subtle senses.

AD: I'm not worried about David Hume, he had his problems, I got mine. (laughter)

AH: But the explanation is that--

AD: And my problems are to explain what is presented to me right now.

RG: But Anthony, doesn't the presentation stand? What-- I mean-- the-- isn't the presentation still a presentation? In fact isn't it at that moment you know it as pure presentation and not as-- not as yours or--

AD: Isn't that at that moment that you know it to be illusory, an illu-- illu-- an illusion?

VM: But I thought PB's (point of view--)

RG (simultaneously): I-- yeah, I thought-- well, I don't know. You know which to be an illusion?

AD: The world that's presented to you by the senses.

RG: I don't know what that implies.

DR: Well that might be but then you have to continue with the-- the end of the quote where he says now the universe is an idea. But what do you mean by the universe there?

AD: Well, you would have to recall it, wouldn't you.

DR: Recall it?

AD: Yeah, what you wanted to consider.

S: Hm.

VM: Re-re--

DR (simultaneously): You mean rename it?

S (faint): Right.

AD (simultaneously): No. I said you would have to remember it or recall it. And there it would show you that it's only an idea and that's all it ever was.

DR: And that universe that's being referred to is [one word inaudible] that this world is--

AD (simultaneously): The world that is presented to the senses or the world which is a result of sense functioning. It would be better to put it that way, the world as a result of sense functioning. The senses function and a certain world is the result of that functioning. If the mind subtracts itself from that functioning, alright, then it could recognize, so to speak, first of all it recognizes that it doesn't exist, that world doesn't truly exist. It's only the result of sense functioning, alright. [RG: Truly.] And secondly, upon recall, you'll recognize that the sense functioning and the world that appears because of that sense functioning is nothing but an idea.

DD: Anthony, does that lapse too?

RG: Can lapse as a-- through exerc-- or during certain conditions.

AD: Can what lapse?

DD: That idea.

AD: Well it lapsed in order for you to have to recall it, if your mind is light.

S (faint): Yeah.

AH: Anthony, I would like to ask the question that I tried earlier in a more-- (in a more) simple way. [AD: Uh-hm.] In this quote, are the bodily-based senses replaced with mind or the subtle senses?

AD (simultaneously): I'm sorry, in this quote what?

AH: In this quote, are the bodily-based senses replaced by a reality of the subtle sense or mind?

AD: I don't understand your question.

AH: Well, we were arguing the possibility that there's a distinction between bodily-based senses and mental senses.

S: Uh-hm.

AD (simultaneously): I don't see where that comes in (in this quote).

AH (simultaneously): Well that was offered-- mental senses were offered as the reality.

S (faint): No.

RG: No, no.

VM: No, no.

S: Uh-hm.

S (faint): [couple words inaudible]

VM: Anthony, could I [AD simultaneously: I don't remember(--/.)] try a simple-minded maybe approach to this which-- I hope it's not off the point. If you take the well-worn dream example, you-- when you have a dream and you're fully identified with the fellow who's functioning in it through the senses and so on, the dream has a great deal of compulsion and palpable sort of reality and so on. That's the mind let's say as identified with the sense functioning and the sense-presented world. But you can imagine (if it's a) possibility, and (maybe a lot of us have had it), of sort of waking up and the dream is still going on. You're awake and yet the dream goes on. So there the compulsion or the sort of reality of the dream has diminished enormously but still continues. But it's seen to be a dream, it's seen to be a mental construction and does not have that-- that reality as a sort of concrete sense world. So it still occurs but it's transformed into a mental reality instead of a compulsive sort of external material reality. Now, perhaps you're trying to say something different or--

AD: Well I wouldn't disagree with what you said Vic except that he does make the point that when the mind takes its primitive form, the sense-- the world that appears to sense functioning doesn't exist.

SD: Anthony--

VM: I understood the quote to mean that it doesn't exist as material, now it's seen as an unfolding of ideas or a-- an outflowing of the mind. But you're saying more than that, aren't you Anthony, you're saying it actually--

AD (simultaneously): Well, yes. I--

VM (simultaneously): It sort of just vanishes?

AD (simultaneously): --it's-- it's what he's-- the quote, I'm going by the quote.

VM: Ok well, your understanding of the quote, ok.

LR: See the one-- the thing that that explanation-- the thing I think Anthony's adding is that the mind of-- assumes its original form as light. In other words, it's not-- it's not just that the external world is seen differently, there's actually some other reality which is experienced to make that external world be known differently now.

VM: Yeah that's fine.

LR: There's another--

VM (simultaneously): But it doesn't vanish.

LR: --an added factor.

VM: But it doesn't vanish.

S: Uh-hm.

DR (simultaneously): It sounded like it did. And it sounded like [one word inaudible]

VM (simultaneously): And I don't-- that's the part I can't understand.

DR: Well-- let's, I mean--

VM: It doesn't vanish for me.

LR: Well, how many times have you had [one/two words inaudible]

RG (simultaneously): You haven't had the experience yet. (RG laughs)

DR: No it just sounded like, or, if you wanted to use the dream analogy the way you just did, [S: Yeah.] and do it according to the explanation that was heard, [VM: Ok.] that you'd say that instead of you wake up and the dream goes on, you wake up. You wake up and realize--

VM (simultaneously): The dream stops.

DR: Yeah, and realize that the-- the actual condition of the mind, and now by a force of--

VM: Recall.

DR: --recall, you put the-- you put the dream back before you again and in its place, you know, put before. I mean it's still known to the bodily senses but [VM simultaneously: That's true.] compulsive nature and all that, very different. The only thing that's-- that seems to be subtracted from your example is that somehow it still has its own self-motive nature. I mean if you wake up and a thing goes on, somehow it's still other, or something else is still running it even though you're not so fooled by it.

VM: No but if you take a Sage--

DR: It's a little bit different to say you have to recall it.

VM: I mean I unders-- I would guess this would be the condition of a Sage. And I understand that the world still goes on for him as the world that-- that is presented through the senses. It's not like he has to recall it and say, "Oh, where am I?"

AD: No, no, this is not-- this is not the position of a Sage, I don't think he's speaking about that. He's speaking about-- he's speaking about another state of mind, a state of mind which is free from the body. And it doesn't mean that you're necessarily a Sage. This could apply to any of the posthumous states that the human being dwells in.

VM: Ok.

RG: And it doesn't apply to experience walking around in a world where you have a moment where you see this. I mean, I don't understand that because it seems to say that-- he says "the old form having no further existence at all." Now you're taking that form to be the entire presentation [AD: Yeah.] of the world.

AD: But, if you put it that way, if you put it the-- the presentation of the world, alright, you're making sense functioning based on the world whereas what he's saying there is the world is the result of sense functioning.

RG: Yeah.

AD: That world does not exist if you alter the framework that your mind is working with, that is, liberated from the body or free-- freed from the body. Then the world that appears is not going to be that sense world. And it does not exist in that state!

RG: So when he says, "But the presence of mind in him makes this world-- this universe an idea now," is that referring to a change in the-- in the ontological correspondence in his own knowledge or just a change in his own knowledge? He seems to say both are changing.

AD: Well I don't know what you really [couple inaudible RG words simultaneous with AD] said, Dickie, [LD(?) simultaneously: (But) no, there's no changes.] but I don't say it-- if the mind is in a-- is in a state of light or a-- a more primitive state, then ce-- then certainly there's been a change.

RG: Yes but-- right.

AD: And you-- you can't-- you can't refer(--/,) when you come back into the body and the mind, let's say, is now in the body, now you see the illusory nature of the world that you're looking at. [RG and another student assent] In other words, the transition out of the body and back into the body shows you that the world that you're looking at is a result of sense functioning and therefore is illusory. Out of the body, it doesn't exist at all! That is for you of course.

S (very faint): Yeah.

S (very faint): Ok.

S: Isn't that awareness of the mind as light also be considered as sensation and--

AD: I didn't say that. Try again.

[short pause]

S: You didn't say the mind is light?

AD: Yes, go on.

S: Wouldn't that somehow be a sensation in that you're talking about light that is perceived?

AD (simultaneously): If you wish to call it a sensation but I-- [short pause] I'm certainly not referring to physical light, obviously. [S simultaneously: But it is somehow--] But a more primitive condition of the mind would be what in our terms we would-- would refer to as light, mind of light.

S: (Preceded.)

AD: Certainly from the point of view of the Sage we know that the Sage will see both worlds, the ultimate reality of which the sense world is an appearance. But, I don't think the passage or the quotation is concerned with that at all.

S: Well then does he mean once-- once the person leaves the condition of light that they now see the world as mental construction and that they [couple words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): No, if you go back into the body you'll see that it's a sense-based world.

S: But isn't he saying that the-- there's now a reorientation, [AD, faint: Yes.] and that-- that the former viewpoint no longer holds. Or can you come out of it and still be materialist, and is he referring to that-- that experience of mentalism that he referred to in other quotes.

(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1983 0209a Ends; Side 2 begins)

AD: --the dream no longer is and you saw the dream only, so to speak, in a dream state, and in order to recall that, when you recall that dream, alright, then you see that that dream and-- the dream and the sense functioning were one and the same thing and that these are ideas. [students assent, faint] Alright, let's go on.

WHEN THE MIND IS IDENTIFIED WITH THE BODY, BELIEF IN THE MATERIALITY OF THE WORLD ARISES

AH: Anthony, one further question. In this quote, is it being suggested that the bodily-based senses are what prevents or is the obstacle to the mental nature of the world? [short pause] Like--

AD: Yes, I would say that that's included insofar that you function with the bodily senses. It becomes an os-- obstacle to recognize that the world is an idea, including the senses which perceive that idea.

[short pause]

RG: I'm sorry. I don't know what that means. I don't-- I don't understand the senses as the cause of ignorance in that way.

AD: Louder, Dickie.

RG: I don't understand the senses as the cause of ignorance. How could-- how could something that-- that doesn't provide knowledge cause ignorance or not-ignorance?

[students assent, faint]

LD: Isn't it more the identification with?

RG: I wou-- yes, I would like to have that as-- yeah, I would go for that.

AD: Well Dickie, when your nose-- when your nose smells a rose, [RG: Right.] alright, or when your tongue tastes a-- [RG assents] a sweet chocolate, [S, faint: Right.] [RG: Yeah.] you would say that-- I think what we wou-- are saying is that because of the-- like the-- the persistence of the referent brings about a belief in the externality of a material world.

RG: Persist-- what do you mean by-- the persistence of the referent being what?

CDA: The nose.

S: Uh-hm.

S: No, the smell.

S (simultaneously): [three/few words inaudible] (bit of laughter)

S: The odor.

AD: I would say the rose or the chocolate, the belief in the materiality of the chocolate.

RG: The belief in the materiality. Does the rose have the belief in the materiality?

AD: No, I said you have the belief [RG: Right.] in the materiality, yes.

RG: Right.

AD: Now, go back one more step, alright, and think of the mind as identified with the body now.

RG: Yeah, ok.

AD: Alright?

RG: Yeah.

AD: And the belief in the materia of the-- materiality of the world will arise, won't it?

RG: Yes. Right, yeah.

AD (simultaneously): Ok, that's all we're saying.

RG: Ok.

[short pause]

AD: Anyway, that's what I'm saying.

RG: Ok, I'll just-- thanks for clearing this.

[12¾ second pause]

WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE WORLD IS MENTAL, YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF IT CHANGES, BUT THE OBJECTS' QUALITIES DO NOT

PB [V13, 21:3.6, TS reading]: "The nature of world experience, such as moving, talking, or reading, must eventually be understood as mental or mind-made; but your experience of its activity or forms does not change, only your understanding of it: that is, that it is basically mental activity and these are mental forms. For whatever they do and however they behave or seem to behave, whatever you can know of them can be grasped only with the mind. They obviously have their own mental existence and activity even when you are not present to observe it. We must keep our common sense even when learning to reason philosophically."

[short pause]

SD: Could you just repeat the end of that again? [couple inaudible student words simultaneous with SD] Not the last sentence, the one before that.

RG(?): Why? Go ahead. (some laughter)

SD: The second to last.

PB [V13, 21:3.6, TS reading]: "We must keep our common…"

S (whisper): Ok.

VM: No. (bit of laughter)

S: And that one.

S: And that one too.

PB [V13, 21:3.6, TS reading]: "They obviously have their own mental existence and activity even when you are not present to observe it."

[short pause]

S: Tim, read the whole thing.

TS: Alright. This is a rough (one).

JG: What did you say?

TS: It says Rough Volume 2, no page number(,) [students assent] (off) the other page.

RC: And only page 10.

S (very faint): What time is it (Tim)?

TS: Um--

LR: What does the "they" refer to in the last (forms)?

JG (simultaneously): The mental forms I think.

LR: He says our experience does not change but the understanding does.

S (faint): Yeah.

DD: If you're lying on the floor when you have this realization you don't fall through to the basement. (laughter, AD laughing)

S (amidst laughter): Your experience is still an idea.

S (amidst laughter): That's a good one [one/two words inaudible] (laughter, student words)

AD: But it sure will feel like! (AD laughing, laughter)

S: So you will-- you will have (that/the) experience. (laughter, student words)

LR: But Dennis, that's-- that's a description that we read.

DD: Well I was addressing the one sentence second from the end that says that, you know, your body is-- will still lie there on the hard floor, [LR simultaneously: How--] that reality stays pat.

LR: Yeah but he says the experience doesn't change and that-- I think--

RG (simultaneously): This seems to go back to the other quote problem.

AD: Is the word 'only' capitalized and underlined and put in red?

S (faint): Tim--

S: No.

RG: No. (RG laughs, laughter)

AD (amidst laughter): Well it should be. But it should be.

LR: Wait, I'm sorry, [RG simultaneously: Which 'only'?] I don't think I follow you.

[couple seconds of faint background student talking]

TS: Is that a red one?

S: Uh-hm.

DD/VM(?): You better read it again.

TS (faint): Well, there's a tradition [one/two words inaudible] (bit of laughter)

VM (faint): I didn't know.

RG: David, read it, let's--

EM (faint): Read it again once more.

TS: One more time?

EM: Underline 'only'.

TS: Which 'only', that's easy.

VM: Oh, well--

EM: (Um/On)--

TS: Uh--

AD: "Only your understanding." (bit of laughter)

TS: Ok.

S: Right, now I'll read.

TS: (Um/Uh)--

AD: That's enough.

RG: Only your understanding.

AD: The typewrite goes on being a typewriter.

[student assents, very faint]

RG: But the world of form then becomes a-- vanishes, I mean how do you put those two together?

AD: The world of form vanishes?

S: No.

AD: Why does the world [RG simultaneously: It's the same idea.] of form vanishes, [few inaudible student words simultaneous with AD] why can't a thought retain form that it has?

RG: Excuse me?

AD: Why can't a mental existence retain the form that it has?

RG: That's what I was asking you before.

AD (simultaneously): Instead of state-- instead of saying, instead of saying there's a material thing here which is hard, I say there's a mental thing here.

RG: I agree, (that's not) what you said.

VM (simultaneously): No, we wanted to do that the last quote Anthony.

RG: You wouldn't let us. (RG laughs)

S: Try to relate it to the quote--

AD: I'm sorry?

S: --the other quote.

VM (simultaneously): I say Richard and I were trying to offer that interpretation on the last quote but you disavowed [S simultaneously: It doesn't--] that argument.

AD: Well why don't we leave that last quote till ten o'clock, alright? (bit of laughter, student words)

AB: Yeah but the last quote was the mind resuming its original form.

VM: Yeah.

S: It's--

AB (simultaneously): It's different.

LR/S(?): Yeah, that's the same.

S (simultaneously): But that's how come I said [one/two words inaudible] that last quote.

VM (simultaneously): But [one word inaudible] also the realization that [couple words inaudible]

S (simultaneously): Right, yeah.

EM(?) (simultaneously): It's not the same thing.

S: Yeah, they're talking [student assents, faint] about two different things.

S (faint): Yeah.

AD: If you people can't understand-- (laughter) this man, this man is writing aphoristically. If you want to undertake to tie these quotes together, [VM: Good luck.] I'll make you general editor of the world computing system. (laughter, student words)

VM (amidst laughter): [few words inaudible]

[few seconds of laughter, background student talking]

RC: Is that a threat? (laughter)

LR: When he says "only our understanding," it seems-- it seems to me that if the understanding changes, the experience of the forms change also. [RG assents, faint] And that's my problem with the quote (now). Because when your understanding of something changes, the actual experience of the thing also changes.

RG: Right, it's a problem with the word of 'experience'. [LR simultaneously: Alright.] You might say-- you would-- you would agree that the perception doesn't have to change, the-- the presentation as presentation could remain but your experience of that could be completely different.

LR: Yeah. Is that what you think-- I mean that must be what's meant (by/like)--

RG (simultaneously): I think so. [student assents] But I missed the last one (so I don't know).

LD (simultaneously): Your conceptual overlay [couple/three inaudible student words simultaneous with LD] might change but how could the experience change, I mean--

LR: But what is your experience?

LD: I mean even, even the dead man's eyes still retain retinal images when there's no perceiver to behold those images. I mean, the s-- the senses, insofar as they're an idea, that will stay.

LR: So you-- so you're interpreting experience as sense experience doesn't change.

LD: No, I'm--

S (simultaneously): Sensible [couple words inaudible] [S simultaneously: You can't--] (experience).

LD: No, I'm just--

S: Speak up.

LR: So I mean that would make sense, [LD simultaneously: No he--] to say the sense experience remains the same, your understanding changes.

S (faint): Uh-hm.

LD: Well, the sense [student assents] experience, my mental ex--

AD: I think that's what Dickie said before. The perception [student assents] doesn't change.

LR: Well--

AD: The hardness, the softness, [LR simultaneously: Ok.] the roundness. [LR simultaneously: But-- then that's what's meant by the words--] all the qualities that the object have doesn't change.

AH: Could you say that in this case--

AD (simultaneously): This-- your understanding is changed but it doesn't change the pulpy orange, the bittersweet taste, [LR: No.] the yellowness, it doesn't change those things.

LR: No, that sense (experience) is--

AD (simultaneously): But your understanding has been altered.

LR: But, wouldn't you say in some way--

AD: Yes, I would say that of course that's going to lead to tremendous consequences. [AS simultaneously: Right. (one/two words inaudible)] But I don't think that's what the point is here, he's [LR simultaneously: Ok.] just pointing out that the shift in the understanding, alright, doesn't mean, like it was so beautifully put, that you're lying on the ground and that you go through the ground because you understand it mentalistically now.

AH: Anthony, when you said that the experience is the same but the understanding is different, could you-- could you phrase it perhaps by saying the locus of the experience is different?

AD: No, I wouldn't say that. The space hasn't been altered, the place hasn't been altered.

AH: Well instead of experiencing the pole from the center of my own bodily-based experience, that also becomes part of the presented image.

AD: When you understand that a mirage is a mirage, does it alter the perception of the mirage as such?

AH: Not the mirage but--

RG: But-- but when you do understand that the-- that the pole is within your own mental field and not external to what you took yourself to be before, it does seem to change the experience [one/two words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): Does it change the distance between you and the pole?

AH/S(?): (No.)

RG (simultaneously): Not between my body and the pole, no.

AD: Yes, between your body and the pole, has it changed?

RG: No, not-- not at all, of course.

AD (simultaneously): Everything remains in the sense world the way it is.

RG: Sure, yeah.

AD (simultaneously): Ok.

AS: Also I did s-- wasn't there another word in there, wasn't there a word 'form', the experience of form? I'm not sure.

S (faint): (Of course.)

LR: Experience of its forms does not change.

AS: Yeah what-- he didn't say experience doesn't change. I mean I think that's your objection. Read the understanding being part of his experience, obviously that part of the experience changes, the understanding part. I think he said the experience of the form of it, as in the illusion or the s-- even the one with the Sun. [student assents] You go on seeing the Sun as if the Sun were rising even if you understand it properly. Doesn't take away [student assents] typewriter, you know-- [S, very faint: That's good.] yeah, the form of the typewriter.

S: Sure.

[9¾ second pause with very faint background student talking]

AD: Read it once more Tim and go on. Or read it (then/and) go on.

SENSATIONS ARE IDEAS PROJECTED BY THE MIND

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading]: "It is not possible to explain intellectually how sensations of the physical world are converted into ideas, how the leap-over from nervous vibrations into consciousness occurs, and how a neurosis becomes a psychosis. (laughter) No one has ever explained this, nor will any scientist ever succeed in doing so. Truth alone can dispose of this poser by pointing out that sensations never really occur, but that the Self merely projects ideas of them; [RG assents] just as a man sees a mirage and mistakes it for real water merely by his mental projection, so people regard the world as real when they are merely transferring their own mental ideas to the world."

[students assent, faint, bit of laughter]

RG: Uh-hm.

S: Yeah.

JG: What volume, 10?

S: [couple words inaudible]

TS (simultaneously): Volume 10, red volume 10, page 75, number 22.

JG: Thank you.

S: Would you read the text again and see if [few words inaudible]

S (simultaneously, faint): Yeah.

RG: Read the whole thing.

S (simultaneously): Read, I--

LD (simultaneously): Yeah.

TS: Read the whole thing?

[students assents, faint]

S (faint): Yes, please.

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading]: "It is not possible to explain intellectually how sensations of the physical world are converted into ideas, how the leap-over from nervous vibrations into consciousness occurs, and how a neurosis becomes a psychosis. No one has ever explained this, nor will any scientist ever succeed in doing so. Truth alone can dispose of this poser by pointing out that sensations never really occur, but that the Self merely projects ideas of them; just as a man sees a mirage and mistakes it for real water merely by his mental projection, so people regard the world as real when they are merely transferring their own mental ideas to the world."

[13 second pause]

JG: Sensations never really occur?

AH: Because (you're/your)-- there are no material senses from the point of view of mentalism. There's no-- there's no materiality to the-- to the senses themselves. The senses themselves are mental. And really I think refers to the materiality-- the material poser. If they did really occur, the material world could not be sublated by mentalism.

JG: I thought sensation already--

AD (simultaneously): Would you continue then, continue Andrew? Then the sensation of yellow or the sensation of pain [AH: Yes?] would only be an idea projected.

AH: That's right. [short pause] Like the [one word inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): Well you use the term all the time, "the instantiation of ideas," you might as well know what it means.

S (faint): Right.

AH: It's not-- it's not the-- it's the belief in matter, the belief in materiality, is the issue.

AD (simultaneously): Yeah, if you believe that there is such a thing as matter then you can have sensations of it. This is yellow, this is bittersweet, etc, right?

AH: Right. But he's suggesting in this quote that there are no sensations based on that belief. The--

AD: Well--

AH: There can only be-- there can only be instantiation of ideas.

S (faint): Yeah.

AD: Yeah.

AH: Senses included.

AD: Senses included. [short pause] That's why, Andrew, if I wanted to be really picky now, I could point out that ideas are always presuppositions of the way your mind understands.

AH: I just don't know where you stand to say that but I'm--

AD: I'm referring to an ar-- a discussion we had some-- couple of days ago.

RC/S(?) (faint): You don't have discussion(s). (bit of laughter)

AH: I don't know where to put my feet to say that but I could believe it Anthony. (some laughter)

S: Here we go again.

RG: Where are you? (more laughter)

RC: Wasn't there something about the feet having no abiding place [few words inaudible]

S: No.

[student assents, faint]

LD: Yeah but Andrew, it seems though--

AD (simultaneously): Why don't you go over that again? It's worth it.

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading]: "It is not possible to explain intellectually how sensations of the physical world are converted into ideas…"

AD: Can't be done, period. Go on to the next part.

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading]: "…how the leap-over from nervous vibrations into consciousness occurs…"

S (faint): Obviously. (laughter)

S (faint): What?

VM (faint): [couple words inaudible] either way.

S: Right.

LR: [couple/three words inaudible]

VM(?): [couple words inaudible] reports.

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading (simultaneously with VM(?) above)]: "…and how a neurosis becomes a psychosis. No one has ever explained this, nor will any scientist ever succeed in doing so. Truth alone can dispose of this poser…"

TS: The poser being how sensations are converted into ideas.

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading]: "Truth alone can dispose of this poser by pointing out that sensations never really occur, but that the Self merely projects ideas of them…"

[short pause]

TS: He does capitalize Self here. But I would-- don't think that one would expect otherwise.

AD: Well you could leave it for discussion. The thing first have to be in the senses before they could be in the intellect and he's just-- he's just tearing it up.

VM (simultaneously): Tearing it up.

AD: He says, no, it has to be in the mind. Then you can have a sensation of it. In other words, yellow is an idea. [S simultaneously: I thought he's--] It's not something you're going to find in matter.

TS: Isn't he saying even that the sense-- that the sensation first occurs in the mind and that's it? That it-- [student assents] and I thought that-- it's not that [one/two inaudible student words simultaneous with TS] it first occurs in the mind and then--

AD (simultaneously): Well a sensation is what? Yellow, [S simultaneously: Thought.] blue, hard, soft, heavy, light.

VM (simultaneously): Thought, it's a thought.

RG: It's a thought.

AD: These are sensations?

TS (simultaneously): I thought it would be a modification of the mind.

AD: Huh?

TS: I thought of it as being-- a sensation being a bare modification of the mind prior to any perceived form.

AD: Well I first want to know what do we mean when we use the word 'sensations'.

TS: Well, ok.

AD: Is that what we mean? Yellow, green, heavy, light, sweet, sour.

[student assents, very faint]

S: Uh-hm.

TS: Ok, uh--

AD: Now, what could the mind have besides ideas, anything else?

TS: No.

AD: Well then the consequence would be that sensation is an idea.

S (very faint): Yeah.

JG: Yeah but that's different than saying that they never really occur, I don't-- I don't understand that.

RG (simultaneously): No, no, no it isn't [possibly one/two words inaudible]

VM: They never occur as material sensations, I think that's the point, they never occur [JG simultaneously: Well--] as the kind of sensations that the physiologist would like to explain consciousness with.

DD/S(?): They're not [S simultaneously: Yeah?] delivered to the mind.

RG: It's only this special understanding [VM simultaneously: Nothing at all.] of sensation [student assents] as idea where you could say sensations occur but he's try-- he's trying to argue against every-- every other possible meaning of sensation than this one we just talked about.

LR (simultaneously): No but he means they never really occur. Just like the mirage was never really water.

RG: No, but he [S simultaneously: No, (yeah).] doesn't mean that i-- he'd never-- I don't think he means that ideas don't a-- don't have within themselves the power to be sensations.

TS: But when they bec-- when they are sensations they remain mental, not physical.

RG (simultaneously): Right, right.

VM (simultaneously): (Right/Yeah).

RG: And they're not the (causal--)

TS (simultaneously): In that sense they never really occur.

VM: I think (though/there) the occurrence (is physical).

AH (simultaneously): I think there are [couple words inaudible] There can be no such thing as a mental sensation, the two terms are contradictory.

JG: No. [S simultaneously: No.] Sensation is mental.

RG (simultaneously): No, two terms are identical.

AH: Sensation and-- and mental are contradictory terms in this quote.

S: Not to me (they're not).

RC (simultaneously): Are you saying the senses can't be in the mind?

JG: In this--

RG(?): No.

S: They're not.

AH: Of course not.

S: Yeah.

VM (simultaneously): Where they gonna--

AH (simultaneously): Not--

S (simultaneously): Why not?

S (faint): [one/two words inaudible]

RC: It's the block that we're always dealing with is that automatically sense means (external to mind).

AH (simultaneously): There are no senses from the point of view of mentalism, there's no sensation [one word inaudible]

RG (simultaneously): That's not true!

VM: Oh, come now, I mean--

LD: That seems to be the distinction between sense-impressions and sensations which he withdraws and that-- and sense-- sense-impressions is not what gives you the sensation.

AH: You can't say-- you can't give validity to senses any more than you can give validity to stones with this point of view.

RG: No, from this point of view they both have identical validity as ideas.

AH: Ok.

RG: But that doesn't mean they're not-- they-- that you take away their validity by saying they're ideas.

AH (simultaneously): But stone-- but stone-- stone-ness is contradictory to mentalism.

RG: Not-- no, no. Why? Why!?

AH: Because you-- what--

RG (simultaneously): Only stone-ness as outside the mind is contradictory.

AH: Oh, oh.

S: (Uh-hm.)

RG (simultaneously): Stone-ness as essence of stone (bit of laughter) which is an idea is an e-- isn't contradictory.

AH: But how does this hard, 50 pound, jagged chunk of granite--

RG: Get in your brain?

AH (simultaneously): How is that-- how is it that (the--) (laughter)

RG: We can try Andrew! (laughter)

AD (amidst laughter): (Release) [couple/few words inaudible] (laughter, student words)

AH(?) (amidst laughter): Double talk.

RG: It's hard. (laughter)

AH: No like, the notion of hardness and the notion of-- yeah, in this discussion of mentalism are contradictory.

S: Uh-uh.

VM (simultaneously): No! How about that man down here banging on the pole saying, "You think hardness into existence!" Remember that? I could still hear him and see him. (laughter) That whole point is that the mind unfolds itself in the form of that sensation, I mean that's one--

AH: Right. I don't know, I think there's a strict way of interpreting this quote.

S: [couple words inaudible]

VM (simultaneously): Yeah, I think the only thing is the-- those sensations that are reputed to generate consciousness, (bit of laughter) reputed by the physiologists and the scientists who want to say that the image is in the retina and so on, then generate a sensation, then a knowledge of blue sky and all that, those sensations as physical sensations don't exist. The only ones that can be said to exist are in this very special way of the mind thinking the blue into existence, the hardness, [AD/S(?): Uh-hm.] [student assent, faint] the 50 pound weight.

AH: But is it-- the point is and-- that I'm trying to get to, the whole dynamic of sensation is what provides us with the experience of error.

VM: Air?

AH: In the sense [RG: Error.] it's not a mental--

RG: Not air.

AH: Error. (bit of laughter) Yeah, arrow.

VM: I-- I really [AH simultaneously: Like--] lost you when I thought of air. (laughter) Do it again please.

AH: I think this quote, you know, I'm not-- I-- I mean this quote specifically is [one/two words inaudible] [student assents] There can be no sensation. Because it-- that's the very-- that's the very mistake in perception. The fact that there is sensation is a logical consequence of that-- you-- you don't experience the mind.

TS: He doesn't say that they don't exist.

S (very faint): No he doesn't.

TS: He simply they-- says they don't exist but that the mind projects them. I'll read exactly just--

PB [V13, 21:2.78 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #35, TS reading]: "Truth alone can dispose of this [poser] by pointing out that sensations never really occur, but that the Self merely projects ideas of them…"

TS: And he doesn't say they never really occur, period, he says they never really occur except as it is that the mind projects ideas of them. [student assents] And as ideas, sensations occur. As physical, they never really occur. That's the assertion that's being made.

AH: I just don't understand what it means to talk about sensations as ideas, that-- that doesn't [three/few words inaudible]

AD (simultaneously): Yes, I'm aware of that. (laughter)

VM: Leave that hole to the (worm). (laughter)

AD: That's the problem, we know.

RC: Should we go into a bunch of quotes on that?

AD: Yeah, [RG assents] go ahead, sure.

TS: Ok.

RC: I don't know if they'll help but--

AD: It would be worth it if it can be cleared up already, huh? And others.

RC (simultaneously): Well, let's do this one here and then we can go into a bunch on sense.

TS: Ok. Um--

THE OBJECTS WE KNOW DO NOT EXIST EXTERNALLY BY THEMSELVES

PB [V13, 21:2.81, TS reading]: "We must firmly grasp this principle, that the only objects we know, the only world of our experience, have no existence apart from the mind. They do not and cannot subsist externally by themselves. That which projects them into space is mind, and as space itself is within the mind, their independent existence is sheer illusion, or Maya as Indians call it. We must look behind their illusory independence into the mind from which they spring."

AH: That helps me to frame my question. I'm-- my understanding of sensation in this context is as independent existence.

VM: Ah.

S: Ok.

S: That's a problem.

RG: Right, but he's correcting that (Andrew).

VM (simultaneously): If you look-- if you look at it that way then I agree they don't exist.

RG: But in-- but he makes that transition in that quote. I mean that seems to be exactly what that quote was speaking to. Yes, the first part of the quote we assume sensation is independent. If you assume sensation is independent, it's impossible to prove that sensation causes thought. Once you realize that sensation can't tho-- can't cause thought, and you allow for the experience of sensation, the only conclusion you can come to then is that sensation is itself a thought.

AH: And how-- how is it other? How does it escape the status of independent existence?

VM: It never had it.

RG: Insofar that any other thought has no independent existence as separate from the mind that thinks it, it too has that same status.

AH: Ok.

EC: Andrew? Didn't--

AH (simultaneously): Yeah.

EC: Even the scientist in this empirical world has told us that that hard rock is in a state of constant motion. Now your apparent-- your sensation doesn't tell you that, do you believe that? You believe the scientists who say, "Oh yes, yes, that's true." Or maybe you don't, I have, I believe that's true, but I don't experience that. I mean, even here at this level there's-- there's all those grades.

AH: That's really not my point Eleanor, I understand-- I understand what you're saying, I'm asking something quite different.

EC: Well, but-- but if you go from there to there, it's not such a hard jump. If you can believe [AH simultaneously: I--] that that rock which is so hard can be in a state of motion, seems like you could take another step.

AH: Which would be?

EC: That it's all within the mind.

AH: Oh I'm not arguing that at all, I accept mentalism theoretically. I'm saying-- (laughter)

EC (amidst laughter): Well, that's the point.

AH (amidst laughter): I'm--

EC: Well you don't.

RG: No you don't yet. Not-- from what you just said you don't even do-- accept [EC simultaneously: Yeah.] mentalism theoretically yet.

EC (simultaneously): (Obvious.)

[students assent, very faint]

AH (faint): Your [three/few words inaudible]

RG: No I-- I'm not, I haven't seen that. (laughter)

S (simultaneously, amidst laughter): That's alright Andrew, we all are.

TS: [one word inaudible] parking, (uh-hm).

THE SENSES ARE NOT THE SAME AS THE SENSE ORGANS; IN DREAMS, THE SENSES FUNCTION WITHOUT THE SENSE ORGANS

RC: Maybe we read three or [S simultaneously: I'm not the only one.] four quotes to get us-- to get us a few more terms and-- and then I think we can fill out the discussion a little more.

PB [V13, 21:1.30, RC reading]: "In mentalism we separate the concept of the senses from the concept of the sense-organs. The two are not the same. The senses must be mentally active before they can be active at all. Although the physical sense-organs are the usual condition for this activity, they are not the indispensable condition. The phenomena of dreams, hypnotism, and somnambulism demonstrate this adequately. The physical sense-organs do not operate, and cannot operate, unless the consciousness takes them into its purview. Absent-mindedness is a common example of what happens when it does not do this. (bit of laughter, student assents) There are even commoner examples, however, of which we never think at all until our attention is drawn to them. A man sitting at his desk will not be aware for long periods of time of the sense of touch or pressure where his body makes contact with his chair; the nerve endings in his skin may report the contact but the mind does not take it in, and consequently is not aware of it. The sense impressions of touch are simply not there at all."

JG: Page please and--

RC: 50, number 48.

S: [one/two words inaudible]

S (faint): Exactly.

JG: Volume 10?

RC: Yes. (1.49/149).

PB [V13, 21:1.49, RC reading]: "Even the physiologists tell us that the working of the mind is necessary [RC adds: in order] to complete the act of seeing. Philosophy says, however, that the working of [RC adds: the] mind is necessary even to begin the act of seeing."

[9¼ second pause]

AH: Randy? I'm sorry, go ahead.

S: Could you read that again please?

RC: Uh-hm.

JG: And page number also.

RC: Haven't finished yet.

Couple students at once: Oh.

PB [V13, 21:1.34 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #36, RC reading]: "…the thing receives its existence partly at [RC reads: in] the very least from us. It does not stand alone. Sense-experience actually takes place in consciousness itself: the five senses do not create but limit, canalize, and externalize this experience. We receive the various sensations of hardness, colour, shape, and so on, but they are not received from outside the mind. They are all received [from] within our consciousness. This is because they are received from the World-Mind's master image within us. [RC: And"within" is underlined.] The objects which cause those sensations truly exist, but they exist within this image--which itself exists within our field of consciousness. The things of experience are not different from the acts of knowing them. Hence the world exists in our thoughts of it."

JB: Ten times more.

RG: Uh-hm.

S: Yeah. And slower. (bit of laughter)

VM: Not yet.

S: From the top.

RC: Page 70, number 6. Volume 10, red. (bit of laughter) (Typed.) (laughter)

S (amidst laughter): What'd you say?

S (amidst laughter): He said [one word inaudible] (bit of laughter)

PB [V13, 21:1.34 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #36, RC reading]: "It is natural for the materialist to ask how any sense can function without a sense organ. It is natural for the mentalist to point to the experience of dreams [RC reads: dream] for the answer. All the senses are functioning during the dream but they do so without the apparatus of sense organs. This fact alone indicates in the clearest possible manner to anyone sufficiently perceptive to understand [the indication] that it is the mind and the mind alone which is the real agent in all the senses' experience. When, because of distracted attention, our mind is not aware of a thing which stands before our eyes, that particular thing temporarily ceases to exist for us. This means, if it means anything at all, that the thing receives its existence partly at the very least from us. It does not stand alone. [RC: And this seems to be the key part.] Sense-experience actually takes place in consciousness itself: the five senses do not create but limit, canalize, and externalize this experience. [RC: This experience in consciousness.] We receive the various sensations of hardness, colour, shape, and so on, but they are not received from outside the mind. They are [all] received from within our consciousness. This is because they are received from the World-Mind's master image within us. [RC: And"within" is underlined.] The objects which cause those sensations truly exist, but they exist within this image--which itself exists within our field of consciousness. The things of experience are not different from the acts of knowing them. Hence the world exists in our thoughts of it."

S (very faint, possibly part of background): (Let's finish that.)

S (faint): That's amazing.

VM: He's really summarizing the Hidden Teaching [student assents] and the first couple of chapters of the Wisdom all in one quote?

RC: So could you-- could you buy-- like where it really becomes crucial there, that the sense experience [AH simultaneously: I--] takes place in the consciousness.

AH: I understood what I was struggling with.

RC: Yeah.

AH: And I was looking for a distinction between senses as mental, senses as consequence of the mind, and mental senses. Like, I thought-- I thought you were speaking as if there was a difference in those two ways of seeing. [S simultaneously, very faint: No.] Like there's a kind of sensing that's at a-- analogous to the physical sense and we're going to call it mental sensing. And that that was my confusion, you're not positing that.

RC: Right.

AH: You're positing senses as mental.

RC: Yes.

AH: They're a consequence of the mind.

RC: Yeah. Anything you could think of, we'll probably keep it. It's just in the mind.

AH: Yeah. No I underst-- I-- my confusion was a-- was a-- a very personal misunderstanding [S simultaneously: Andy--] of the way the term was used.

S: Uh-hm.

RC: Somebody speaking?

S: Yeah. Could you just read over that last part where he talks about the objects really exist?

RC: Yes.

PB [V13, 21:1.34 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #36, RC reading]: "…they are [RC adds: all] received from the World-Mind's master image within us. The objects which cause…"

RC: Back up one more.

PB [V13, 21:1.34 and Perspectives, Chapter 21: Mentalism, #36, RC reading]: "We receive the [RC reads: these] various sensations…but [they are] not [received] from outside the mind. They are [RC reads: They're] all received from within our consciousness. [This is because they are received] from the World-Mind's master image [RC adds: which exists] within us. The objects which cause those sensations truly exist, but they exist within this image--which itself exists within our field of consciousness. The things of experience are not different from the acts of knowing them. Hence the world exists in our thoughts of it."

[short pause]

LD: I still have some confusion. Can sensations be interpreted almost as the karmic seeds which come up and get projected as the primal image? We are located in that primal image and sense-impression takes place then. Is that so or am I understanding it wrongly? The sen-- I'm interpreting the sensations almost as the karmic seeds which come up--

RC (simultaneously): Our body is located within that primal image.

LD (simultaneously): Yeah, we, yeah.

RC: That primal image itself including our body is within the field of our own consciousness.

VM (faint): Yeah, I think that was--

LD (simultaneously): Definitely, yeah.

RC: Ok.

S: (What if) the karmic seeds live? What does that mean? I'm just--

LD (simultaneously): (What are you) calling the seed-thoughts that come up from the [students assent] heart and he speaks [one/two inaudible student words simultaneous with LD] of the brain which must-- he must-- in "The Birth of the Universe", "The Birth of the Individual", where the-- the brain he speaks of as taking these and projecting an image. Now the brain he's speaking of in some sense must be a power of the soul or a subtle brain or whatever.

RC: I think one of the reasons that they be called karmic seeds, I mean rather than just plain old ordinary seeds, [S, faint: (Exactly.)] is that the very body-- (some laughter) [VM simultaneously, faint: 'Cause we think of a lot of karma.] I mean, the very body that you get, you know, the very org-- the way that your organism is going to react to stimulus seems to be in keeping with your historical development. But there is-- it seems to me there is-- there is a difference to my mind between the World-Mind's ideation pure and simple and what I make of it. And most of the time I don't get it right. And the reason that most of the time I don't get it right is because I haven't sufficiently evolved to be able to do so. So that every perception, every time the World-Mind speaks to me I automatically adjust it to my entire history. And that adjusting of it to my entire history is its being adapted to this karmic seed.

S: You mean as opposed to trying to work off the vision that the soul has of the Ideas.

RC: Now I don't know if it's possible to even-- even do that, I mean, to have any kind of vision of-- any kind of experience of the World-Mind's ideation without your own-- I don't think it is, I don't think you can experience a field of objects except insofar as you are part of the creating agent of that field of objects.

S (simultaneously): Then why do you say you get it wrong?

RC: Let's say I don't get it--

S: That implies that you could get it more right by [RC simultaneously: Ok, let me (one/two words inaudible) it that way.] conforming more to s--

RC: Let's say-- let's say I have a certain sense of beauty within me, and I try to paint a painting. I don't know if this'll work or not. As I actually paint, what I'm painting is not what I'm seeing inwardly. And there's a tension, a(-)tension between the two, that what I am creatively doing is not what I would inwardly be disposed to want to do.

S: Right, so the expression of that can never conform to [RC: Ok, yeah.] you know, that's-- that inward vision.

RC: Yeah. [short pause] And I'm trying to use that analogy to indicate that like say the World-Mind then determines for me what I am to experience and then I go ahead and determine how I'm going to experience. It is-- the "how" is very seldom adequate to the "what", I have to keep trying. I don't have this [RC snaps fingers] visionary "in a moment" experience. I have to fabricate, I have to mess around, I'd have to keep building things, rewording things. I don't [RC snaps fingers] in a moment-- in a timeless moment perceive that ideation and its meaning devoid of any idea of imagery whatsoever. I don't think the World-Mind needs an image to know what it's talking about.

JB: Well, to [S simultaneously: (Ok.)] imagine the kind of evolved condition that you said we haven't reached yet and that's why we do it wrong, is there a notion in which in an evolved state there would--

[Audio File 1983 0209a Ends. We are missing the second audio file for this class.]

Anthony Damiani Archive

Class

Wednesday, February 9th, 1983