The Magic of the Runes

CHAPTER 17

MEDITATION

Intellectual information is not life experience.  Erudition is not experimentation.  Exclusively three-dimensional tests, proofs and demonstrations are not unitotal and integral

There has to be some faculty superior to the mind, independent of the intellect, capable of giving us knowledge and direct experience of any phenomenon. 

Opinions, concepts, theories and hypotheses do not signify verification, experimentation and full consciousness of this or that phenomenon.

Only freeing ourselves from the mind can we truly experience THAT which is truly real, THAT which is found in a potential state behind any phenomenon.

Mind exists in everything.  The seven cosmos, the world, moons and suns are nothing more than crystallized, condensed mental substance. 

The mind is also matter, though more rarefied.  Mental substance exists in the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms.

The only actual difference between the Intellectual Animal and the irrational beast is that thing called intellect.  The Human Biped gave an intellectual form to the mind. 

The world is nothing more than an illusory mental form that will inevitably be dissolved at the end of the Great Cosmic Day.

At the bottom of it, myself, your body, my friends, things, my family, etc., are what the Hindustanis call Maya (illusion), vain mental forms that must sooner or later be reduced to cosmic dust.

My affections, the loved ones around me, etc., are simple forms of the cosmic mind; they do not have real existence.

Intellectual dualism such as pleasure and pain, praise and condemnation, triumph and defeat, wealth and poverty, constitute the painful mechanism of the mind. 

True happiness can’t exist within us while we are slaves of the mind. 

It is urgent to ride the donkey (the mind) to enter the celestial Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.  Unfortunately in this day and age the donkey rides us, miserable mortals of the mud of the earth. 

No one can know the truth while they are a slave of the mind. What is real is not a matter of suppositions but of direct experience. 

The great kabir Jesus said, Know the Truth and it will make you free.  However, I say to you that the Truth is not a matter of affirming or denying, believing or doubting; it must be experienced directly in the absence of the self, beyond the mind. 

Those who liberate themselves from the intellect can vividly experience and feel an element that radically transforms. 

When we free ourselves from the mind, it then becomes a malleable, elastic and useful vehicle through which we consciously express ourselves in this world. 

Higher logic invites us to think that freeing ourselves, emancipating ourselves from the mind, escaping all of its mechanicity, is in fact equivalent to awakening consciousness and putting an end to automatism.

That which is beyond the mind is Brahma, uncreated eternal space, That which has no name, the Real.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter: Who or what is it that must escape, be freed from the troublesome mind?

The obvious answer to these questions is: The Consciousness, the inner Buddhistic principle, what there is of Soul in us, is what can and must be liberated.

The mind only serves to embitter our existence. Authentic, legitimate, real happiness is only possible when we emancipate ourselves from the intellect.

However, we must recognize that there is an inconvenience, a tremendous obstacle, a roadblock to that longed-for liberation of the Essence. I’m referring to the tremendous battle of the antitheses.

The Essence, the Consciousness, although of a Buddhic nature, unfortunately lives bottled up amidst the exaggerated intellective dualism of the opposites “yes” and “no”, good and bad, high and low, mine and yours, like and dislike, pleasure and pain, etc.

It is clearly brilliant to comprehend in depth that when the tempest in the ocean of the mind ceases and the struggle of the opposites ends, the Essence escapes and submerges itself in that which is the Reality.

What is difficult, laborious, grueling and arduous is achieving absolute mental silence in each one of the mind’s forty-nine subconscious departments.

It is not enough to reach or obtain stillness and silence in the mere superficial, intellectual level, or in a few subconscious departments, because the Essence continues being bottled up within the submerged infraconscious and unconscious dualism.

Blank mind is something too superficial, hollow and intellectual. We need serene reflection if we truly want to achieve the absolute stillness and silence of the mind.

The Chinese word "Mo” means silent or serene. "Chao" means to reflect or to observe. Mo Chao, therefore, can be translated as serene reflection or serene observation.

However, it is clear to comprehend that in pure Gnosticism, the terms serenity and reflection have much more profound meanings and should therefore be comprehended within their special connotations.

The feeling of serene transcends that which is normally understood by calmness or tranquillity. It implies a superlative state that is beyond reasoning, desires, contradictions and words; it designates a situation that is outside of worldly noise.

Likewise, the meaning of reflection is beyond what is understood as contemplation of a problem or idea. Here it does not imply mental activity or contemplative thought, but rather a kind of clear and reflexive objective consciousness, always illuminated in its own experience.

Therefore, here "serene" is the serenity of non thinking and "reflection" means intense and clear consciousness.

Serene reflection is clear consciousness in the tranquillity of non thinking.

When perfect serenity reigns, one achieves true, profound enlightenment.