Sometimes I find myself making a thing of the “mind.” And I think of this thing as something I must have to survive.

Control my mind, lose my mind … without the mind, I’m not me. …

I guess it all depends on what you mean by “mind.”

And, really, it’s super-difficult discussing the matter because our Third-Dimensional language hasn’t been used to describe higher-dimensional phenomena very often. We don’t have words or understandings that reach that far. How to discuss consciousness?

What I’m sure we’ll find, however, when we do have words is that consciousness can form itself in many ways. Some of these ways can be laid down and become design features of human life or angelic life. Some of them apply to some dimensions and not others.

The way we reproduce is not the way they “reproduce” on higher planes. The way we breathe, eat, expel, travel, on and on. Consciousness shapes itself differently on different planes, according to the developmental needs of individuals at that level of spiritual evolution and the design solutions the archangels choose.

Take the “ego,” for instance – “ego” meaning “I” in Latin. The ego is a lower-dimensional construction created, I believe, to protect the individual against threats like predatory animals, fires, floods, etc.

I use it to cross the street. It’s not that it doesn’t survive our higher-dimensional experiences. Ramakrishna says it does:

“The ego does not vanish altogether. The man coming down from [kevalya nirvikalpa] samadhi perceives that it is Brahman [God] that has become the ego, the universe, and all living beings. This is known as vijnana [sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi].”  (See 1)

It’s more that it returns when we return to everyday consciousness. As we “reconstitute” on the lower dimension, so does the ego:

“You may discriminate, saying that the ego is nothing at all; but still it comes, nobody knows from where. … You may drive it away, but still it appears from somewhere.” (2)

Our weathered old clothes are sitting by the river, waiting for us, after we’ve bathed in the pristine Ganges.

***

But there is help!

The ego has a range in which its voice makes itself most compellingly felt. That range is below the reach of higher-dimensional love.

Once we drown in higher-dimensional love, so powerful is it, that the ego holds its peace. If Jesus suddenly materialized in the room, I’d hold my peace. It’s as compelling as that. No ego would dare speak in the presence of transfigurative love, so to say, lest one lose the experience of it.

But if we were to lower our density, as we regularly do when we return from a higher-dimensional interlude, the ego returns as well.

The only way I’ve been able to reduce the damage the ego does is that, when I feel feelings I know are associated with my ego, I don’t act on them. By now I know they’re not of love.

I know they don’t result in memorable, wholesome outcomes. And I have fewer and fewer excuses as I grow older for indulging them. I remain aware of the ego speaking until it disappears. But it’s a constant practice (oooo, and I’m not always very good at it).

Tomorrow I’d like to get at what happens when this same mind, that tells us when to cross the street and what to eat, falls silent? Do we cease to function?

Footnotes

(1) Paramahansa Ramakrishna in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 104. [Hereafter GSR.]

Kevalya nirvikalpa samadhi, also known as Brahmajnana or God-Realization, is the highest experience in the Third Dimension; the kundalini has reached the seventh chakra; Shiva unites with Shakti. But this is not liberation.

Rather, in sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi, downstream of Brahmajnana, one experiences moksha, mukti, or liberation from the Third Dimension and redemption, salvation, or resurrection to the higher planes.

One has reached the other side of the river. One has crossed the rainbow bridge. One has become a buddha. One’s own consciousness has ascended to a higher vibratory plane.

(2) Paramahansa Ramakrishnas in GSR, 210.

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