“What do we know about the mind itself? Although we say the mind knows, what is mind? Where does mind live? Does it have color and taste? What is its ancestry? Where does it come from and where does it go? “- Tarthang Tulku. Knowledge of Time & Space: An Inquiry into Knowledge, Self & Reality
Now we can go back and look again at one more important kind of experience covered by the term ‘mind.’ What happens if, due to earlier life experiences, that the mind turns up in a way that doesn’t fit our idea of ‘mental’?
You’re somewhere in nature, peacefully relaxing. Nothing to think or do, right now. And, the thoughts, memories, images, dreams, wishes, desires, judgements, and preferences drop away. They are not relevant. Suddenly you are aware of a silent, still, open, boundless mind. What kind of mind is this?
It doesn’t fit in the scheme of conventional Western categories. This both is and is not an ordinary state of mind. When psychologists began to explore this kind of things, a pioneer in this field Charles Tart named them ‘altered states of consciousness’ (ASC). He wrote a book of that name in the sixties.
However, one of the wonderful facts is that this subtle level of mind and other such associated states arise when you are not altering anything, when the default mode of ‘actively directing’ your consciousness is in abeyance.
In the Mindfulness Sutta this possibility is invited by the particular direction to release grasping after narcissistic states: “Practitioners, a contemplative – ardent, mindful, having put away longing and distress regarding the world, in full understanding – dwells contemplating: the body in the body, feeling-tones in the feeling-tones, the psyche’s states in those same states; and, the dynamics of phenomena in the phenomena themselves.” (Translated Christopher. J. Ash)
For the realisation of boundless states of mind to occur, the contemplative person has to be willing to suspend their usual ‘appetitive’ way of being, and instead dwell in non-clinging and non-grasping. This is where the love of truth comes in. This attitude is often called ‘detachment,’ but the English word carries a lot of baggage. For the uninitiated, it’s important to entertain the possibility that such a ‘hands off’ attitude is actually a form of love.
And, there is no seeking after a reward, here. The practitioner becomes acquainted with being alone – not outwardly necessarily, but inwardly. In this way, we intend emptiness (empty of division) alone, and this justifies what the Nikāya Buddha says in the Mindfulness Sutta that when discernment and attentiveness are established, a contemplative is “is one who dwells independent, not clinging to anything in the world.”
So, when we make our list of what mind-states are possibly met in mindfulness, the first-level kinds of states are not enough to account for the territory of experience sometimes called ‘spiritual.’ (I acknowledge that ‘spiritual’ means different things to different people. So, what I want it (provisionally) to mean, here, is a kind of intelligence regarding immateriality.
When the fox in The Little Prince a charming story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry says to the Little Prince: “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes,” then that is the territory of Spirit. (As a by-the-way, I observe, too, that ‘spirituality’ can) indicate both a line of development and also a level of development, to use Ken Wilber’s terms.)
When I was a young man, and I asked my friend James what he thought would happen if thinking stopped, he said ‘I’d die.’ But, well-developed meditation experience shows that this isn’t the case. That being so, we might have to widen the definition of the ‘mental’ or ‘mind’ category, to include these subtle and not-so-readily-accessed states.
So, ‘mind itself’ – as distinct from the ‘contents’ (thought, image, memory, etc.) – mind has no colour, form, or location; no limit. Yet, mind can be experienced, and when its ground is reached, it has the nature of meaningfulness. That is the territory of the ‘spiritual’ – in this project, at least – and the Nikaya Buddha includes these kinds of states in the Mindfulness Sutta. The practitioner is to be mindful when a state of the mind is boundless:
“She knows an expanded psyche as an expanded psyche.”
“She knows a psychic state not capable of being surpassed as an unsurpassable state.”
“She knows a centred psyche as a centred psyche.”
“She knows a liberated psyche as a liberated psyche.”
The whole of the early Buddhist traditional approach to meditation (the Nikāya approach) is oriented to helping a contemplative person achieve boundlessness. The most common instances of these boundless states are a) those called The Dwelling Places of Brahma (Brahmavihāra) – that is, unlimited friendliness (or loving-kindness), compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity; and, b) the four, formless, higher states of meditation (arūpajhāna) – that is, boundless space, boundless clarity, boundless no-thingness, and as state of neither perception, nor non-perception.
These are incredibly peaceful, and blissful. They are divine, so to speak, hence they are they are named after Brahma.
Now, the point here is that meditation, if practiced without hankering and aversion, tends toward such spaciousness. The whole path involves an increase in a mind like space. ‘Mind,’ then, is not always mentation (by which I mean the aforementioned operations – thinking, cogitating, imagining, and so on). Yet, mind is always present as a non-ikonic substratum of meaningfulness.
How can this be? The modern (and evolutionarily plausible) answer is that no matter what state of mind is present (or, what states of mind are absent), the body is the on-going process. The traditional answer, on the other hand, comes from the Nikāya Buddha, when he observes that when one’s mind is empty of discriminative thinking, there is nevertheless understanding (which can be turned over in thought afterward), because the experiences leave a ‘non-conceptual impression.’ (adhivacanasamphassa). (See Sue Hamilton-Blyth’s Early Buddhism: A New Approach: The I of the Beholder for a discussion on this point.)