When I say mind, I do not mean the emergent property of the chunk of meat in our skulls. I mean the consciousness that resides in our soul — the higher mind that is connected to everything. In the Western model, the mind is irrevocably linked to the body, its physical manifestation. I believe this to be wrong.

The mind acts through the brain and the corporeal body, yes, but it exists, and is capable of functioning, without that flesh. I do not intend to say the mind does not exist in a physical manifestation — by virtue of affecting and interacting with the physical world, it must exist on the same plane. I believe the mind exists as an infinitesimally small pocket of energy, sympathetic to the body we currently inhabit.

This energy can be divested from its body temporarily, in what we in the West call astral projection. Sometimes this is done unintentionally — in dreams or out-of-body experiences, for example — but it may also be trained as a skill to be done on command. I read once on a web page that when you're in your astral body, you can travel through time. They described it thusly:

Time travel is a reality but a bit complicated. Just know that The future is open to new possibilities, Nothing is meant to be it's just that God knows everything and sometimes shows it to us. Traveling into the past is also possible (its like back to the future but real).

I believe time is an illusion, as I discuss elsewhere, and I do believe it is possible to transcend that illusion with our discrete mind. However, I bring this quote up because it is amazing that the simple act of reading a passage by someone else who shares my beliefs makes me question those beliefs more deeply than having someone intelligent disagree with me. I bring it up because I want to share my profound appreciation for how insane I sound. After all, this is LIKE BACK TO THE FUTURE BUT REAL. And, one must assume, without the cool car.

I believe I have experienced astral projection. I do not think I am deluding myself, but I am open to the possibility. I found my way there by carefully working on my ability to experience lucid dreaming — first by focusing on conscious recollection, then by going to sleep with a strong intentionality of awakening within my dream. Once I could regularly 'awaken' within a dream state, I attempted to move my consciousness back to my sleeping body and explore from there. Every astral experience I have had could well have been a dream; it has been years since I did this, and at the time I was much less interested in testing the reality of it than experiencing it. I will work on achieving it again, and try to set up fairly objective experiments to relay to you all. But for now, I've gotten side-tracked. We were talking about the mind.

This illusion we live in is fundamentally energy, and ever bit of energy is linked to every other bit of energy. This connection can exert itself instantaneously, ignoring maximum speed barriers or other such concerns. From what I gather, scientists believe this may be true on some level (in quantum field theory you do have superluminal particles), but that is it imperative these virtual particles not be able to transmit information. So, so much for looking for current science to validate this belief structure.

Our discrete mind is capable of profoundly affecting all other energy in the universe, simply through its force of will. Very few of us reach any level of intentionality with this process, but many of us experience it through the power of our unconscious will. When we pray, or engage in 'positive visualization', we are channeling the power of our discrete mind to affect the universe around us in a very real way.

Practitioners of magic engage in their manipulation of the illusion in much the same way — using ornate rituals and fetishes to focus their belief, they allow their discrete mind the freedom to affect those things around them. Whether it be a tribal elder performing a rain dance, a shaman casting bones to divine the future, a Wiccan engaging in some modern ritualism, or a voodoo practitioner using a fetish of their subject — all these are simply lenses to focus the power of belief, to aid the individual in sidestepping the seeming concreteness of reality by creating a tangible justification for the changes they create.

These tools are ultimately unnecessary. It is our belief — the intentional focus of our discrete mind's power upon the illusion — that controls everything around us, not the trappings or props we choose to employ. It is only our failure to believe — our investment in this static paradigm — that holds us back from manifesting whatever it is we choose to bring to reality. Even the most highly trained of us retain our superstitious beliefs in objective reality: the guru who can still his own heart, yet refuses to believe he can affect his external environment; the monk who can fly, but thinks death comes to us all; the priestess who has overcome even death, but sees time as a boat we are all trapped on. These limitations are not to be railed against or denied — indeed, it is our very imperfection that makes us human.

I believe and yet I do not believe. This struggle is at the cornerstone of much faith. Whether it is heaven you profess to believe in (and yet cling to life with a fear borne of doubt), or objective reality (unable to zap even a single cloud from the sky with your thoughts), many of us are faced with the intellectual belief in an idea, and the indisputable evidence of our fundamental doubt.

I believe it is from the gross mind that this doubt is born — the mind that exists within the brain itself, burdened by the limitations of a single lifetime of experience. The discrete mind exists with all knowledge of all time, and yet is hazed and clouded by the gross mind's bulk, shadowing the truth it attempts to cast upon us. It is in moments of extreme clarity — touching the divine, attaining Nirvana, or perhaps simply a random glimpse at the nature of Truth — that we are connected with our discrete mind in unfettered perfection. When you have experienced this contact, it remains with you, though the gross mind quickly swallows up any detailed recollection of what was glimpsed — the sensation, the feeling of utter knowing lingers on, driving us further towards achieving a state of near-perfect harmony with this mind.

In death we are reunited with our perfect mind. Our discrete mind travels, utterly disconnected from our corporeal being. The Tibetans call this period bardo (more specifically, the chonyid bardo) , and it is a time of great potential — for it is during this time, when we are able to view reality in perfect harmony, that we have the clearest path to attaining great leaps in our spiritual development. For others it may prove to be a disastrous time, as fear and doubt cloud our choice of our next host, and we place ourselves in a body for which it will be much more difficult to achieve perfect clarity, and ultimate release from the illusion of objective reality.

For now my mind drifts, but we will pick up these musings in another tangent. I'll see you there.