Superconscious inspiration or subconscious intuition

Simple ways to distinguish superconscious inspiration from subconscious/unconscious intuition. (Daaji's terms [1])

Both inspirations and intuitions may come during closed-eyes meditation or whenever the mind shuts down - through tiredness, accepting its inability to grasp something, switching to a subtler level, and so on. Sometimes though, an excited or hyperactive mind may also have creative ideas. Both occur outside the usual conscious mental processing and may be considered abnormal mental states.

But superconscious inspirations are beyond current and past human knowledge while subconscious or unconscious intuitions are beyond just my own conscious knowledge. A subtle implication is that once I have an inspiration, it becomes part of me, and thus part of my conscious, subconscious, or unconscious awareness.

Subconscious intuitions are mine, as in whatever I have built up in my life.

Unconscious intuitions are also from others - family, friends, and so on, encompassing all humanity. And if you accept past lives, from them as well.

How to distinguish inspiration and intuition

1. Inspiration:
   Anything completely new and original, especially a solution or idea not found in standard references, or even a different emotion/mental condition - superconscious inspiration
2. Intuition: 
1. Any solution or idea or emotion, perhaps new at the moment, but remembered later. Read, watched, otherwise experienced, but forgotten - subconscious intuition.
2. When later found in standard references or described and found elsewhere on researching - unconscious intuition.

Since verification by research is needed, one may not be sure whether it is inspiration or intuition at once.

Why does it matter?

A superconscious inspiration makes our consciousness subtler and inspires us positively, even transcendentally. Most, if not all, people would accept it is for the good of everybody.

A subconscious or unconscious intuition may be positive, negative, or neutral. Since it is based on past events, it need not be helpful. When used to remember technical solutions and positivity or past inspiration, dipping into the sub-/un-conscious is useful. For reinforcing past negativity and behaviour, it is not.

NOTES

[1] Daaji in Evolution of consciousness series

Meta, sat-kārya-vāda, and simple awareness

SUMMARY (TL;DR)

The mind is a reflexive entity, i.e., it can look at and analyse itself.

Yet, what if there are multiple levels in the mind, ranging from grossest to gross to subtle to subtlest?

To observe and analyse one level, attention has to reach a level subtler and also causal to that level. Or, awareness has to become subtler.

Reflexivity in this sense does not exist for the ātma since, by definition, it is pure (no impurities => zero distinct or separate parts), simple (or indivisible), and absolutely subtle.

This explains very simply why such a thing, the ātma, cannot become an object or observed.

META

"Meta" started out meaning "after". So meta-physics, which now connotes knowledge "above" or "about" (physical) knowledge, initially referred to Aristotelian books or texts that came after his texts on physics.

The currently popular connotation, with reference to a set of activities, means a more abstract level of activities describing or manipulating them. For example, counting or arithmetic, when abstracted becomes algebra. That is, 1-2-3-4 or 8-9-10-11 or even 10005, 10006, 10007, 10008, can all be expressed algebraically, and more generally, as n, n+1, n+2, n+3.

Why abstract or generalise? A variety of reasons. For easier manipulation. For coming up with a single solution to a similar set of problems. For concise representation of a pattern. For easier learning and teaching.

Layers of abstraction and generalization build over the years, followed by reduction of layers as people return to the underlying physical or actual data and find out simpler patterns and simpler representation.

This analysis may also be considered meta with respect to meta itself!

SAT-KĀRYA-VĀDA

sat-kārya-vāda is a simple idea with an overemphasis on subtle implications that has overwhelmed its simplicity. E.g., a clay pot. Going from physical cause to effect is from clay to clay pot. Looked at differently, a clay pot is imbued with clay even after it is made. Or clay is still present in a clay pot, though baked and no longer a ooey-gooey mass.

A subtler, though still obvious, implication is that all things made of clay contain clay. A not-so-obvious implication is that all clay things can be returned to their initial ooey-gooey state. Similarly for gold articles being meltable back into an unformed gold mass.

A subtler implication is that since all known clay vase forms came from clay, all forms of clay vases made till now, and those yet to be made, exist in clay. This, though, is obvious from the name "clay article" meaning made of clay.

(So far, so good, obvious and commonsensical.

But what if this is extended to organic products? Does every sort of organism exist in some general, undifferentiated, mass - or maybe soup - of organic matter? Or are there only certain organisms that can be produced, or better, that can evolve or manifest from that mass? How subtle should that mass be and how few elements need there be in that mass?

And an even more intriguing idea. What if all organic and inorganic things can manifest or evolve from a single mass? Isn't this the idea of the singularity underlying the Big Bang? Or that there were less than a handful of particles or energy fields then?)

This much as background.

REFLEXIVITY

Now, consider reflexivity. This is a "meta" activity in which one looks, analyses, judges, etc. oneself or one's actions or thoughts. Confusion about actions - what to do or say, or how to solve a problem, i.e., how to think - arises when reflexive (inward and circular or looping) activities are mixed up with actually doing the actions.

(Thus, one may decide what to do to achieve a goal. Then one must execute one's decision or plan. And after execution, check if the goal has been reached. Then, even if execution is not according to plan, reaching the goal may be enough, while how the goal was reached may not be important. If the goal is long-term, say many months or years, one may set interim goals, and stay on plan by checking every so often that they are being met.)

META and SAT-KĀRYA-VĀDA

What is the connection between meta and sat-kārya-vāda?

Consider algebra - it is at a subtler level of thinking than arithmetic. Thus meta. And if one does some assessment or monitoring or scoring of one's own arithmetic or algebraic activity, including thinking of oneself as the doer, that activity becomes both reflexive as well as meta.

Now, consider the idea that arithmetic does not evolve into algebra as a meta activity, but instead that algebraic patterns, or an algebraic level of thinking, is a necessary precursor to understanding arithmetic patterns. This somewhat convoluted and back-to-front idea can be associated with the sat-kārya-vāda notion that just as physical effects come from physical causes, so do non-physical or mental effects from mental causes.

Please note that in Sāṁkhya-Yoga, mind and mental are also material, and mental activity is not the same as conscious activity. Thus, mind, and even intellect and ego, may be considered mechanically and algorithmically.

Putting them together, there are levels of thinking or mental levels which go from grosser to subtler as one goes from the outer physical world to mental inner world. One level is subtler than another if it is the cause of the other. Or if the other level manifests from the first. Subtler or meta activity occurs when attention shifts from one actual material - though mental - level to its causal level. It seems reasonable to assume that attention can also jump to non-sequential, yet ancestral, causal levels, perhaps to even the subtlest root causal level.

SUBJECT-OBJECT AWARENESS  FOR ĀTMA

Two more points.

Consider this sentence: "I throw the ball". "I" is the subject, the ball is the object, and there is an action "throwing" by the subject "I"  upon the object. The awareness of subject, object, and action is a meta activity, and from the reasoning above, at a subtler level than the physical or mental activity. 

Now, if the highest or subtlest mental level or activity is reached, can there be any meta activity? An activity above the highest?

So all this reasoning was to get to a simple idea - there is no meta level for the higher self - ātma or puruṣa. Since, by definition, it is the subtlest level of a living being.

From an advaitic point of view, ātma (= brahman) is subtler than the mind. It cannot have awareness of itself as either subject or object as, being without parts or levels, there is no part or level to know another. And it just is, or there is only being, no doing.

From a Sāṁkhya-Yoga perspective, it is even simpler. All activity, including mental, physical, meta, etc. occurs in prakṛti. Puruṣa has no mental activity since it is eternally separate from prakṛti, even while illuminating its activities. And being partless and without levels like the ātma, again, there is no subject awareness.

Inner Freedom - structural definitions

"Structure" here means a mental counterpart of some physical storage or structure. Words like "veils" or "layers" have a physical meaning - as objects or parts. Complexities and impurities are other words usually used to describe changes or residues. But their physical connotations are less immediate and direct.

Below are two definitions of structures blocking jīvanmukti or inner freedom. Removing them and preventing their re-generation, much like treating a disease and building future immunity to its recurrence, result in mental freedom, or regaining the eternal that is overlain by the structures.

In Saṃskṛta, using Yoga and Rāja Yoga/Sahaj Mārg idioms:

1. prācīna saṁskāra bhoga
2. navīna   saṁskāra niruddha

In English, using Daaji's idioms:

1. Unwind/remove/clear old emotional residues and impressions
   
2. Prevent new emotional residues and impressions
   

In English using J. Krishnamurti's idioms (not a direct translation of Saṃskṛta phrases):

1. Relinquish existing self- and other- images
2. Prevent new self- and other- images

The light within

The light within is eternal and always there.

We just have to turn inward and look.

And discard our familiar shades and discomfort at seeing reality as it is.

For some, discomfort and strangeness become fear. Shading the light even more.

Why should we feel anything other than joy?

Or wonder?

Or gratitude?

The light within is truly our source and we are only going home.

Turn that changed gaze outward.

See that light within everyone and everything.

Simply look within first before looking without.

Take the "red pill."

But there is no real pain or hardship.

Just eternal strangeness.

Continually letting go, of the familiar.

Continually freeing, one's consciousness.

A little paradox or invertendo

A little paradox or invertendo.

Looking or attending deeper and deeper inside myself I experience more and more common things and states, and unifying me, with others outside me.

Looking or attending outside my body, I experience more and more things differentiating and separating me from others.

Yet if I go outside to subtler and subtler levels, I again find things and states that are common and fundamental.

But going to such subtler levels outside (finding bosons, e.g.), needs immense physical and mental energy, money and outside resources.

Going inward needs only interest. From interest, giving time, opening up to inspiration, letting go of mental strictures - all these follow naturally.

Understanding the natural rhythms of life - both inner and outer rhythms - comes mainly by going inward. Though outer rhythms are understood in a cyclical way - outer experience, inner pondering, inner experience, ponder, change expectations, experience, and so on. Understanding inner rhythms also involves a similar cycle, but outward attention is not needed.

The Real Problem

Here's the real problem of inward meditation.

When we spend all our time looking outward, we do not get an experience of the inward path. Simple, no?

Even if I sit with eyes closed, if I still think of other people or other things which are outside me physically, I am still looking outward.

My eyes cannot be turned inward to see inside my head, so I have to discard sights in order to go inward. Similarly for the other sensations.

Attention can be turned inward or outward. But if it keeps flitting between inward and outward, I am still vacillating and not able to go deeper and deeper inward.

Suggestions for meditation

Everything coming up mentally referring outside my body must be relinquished. This is the obvious, true, and completely ignored meaning of going inward.

But why relinquish? Because everything that drains mental energy - emotional hurts and pleasures - is based on things outside.

Stop chewing the cud of past events and worrying about future events.

Simply stay in the now, which keeps moving, flowing.

Let the attention move in time from second to second, but remain in the same place physically. If it has drifted away physically, let go of the distraction and the attention will come back on its own to where it was before, and where you placed it first.

This is meditation and training the attention and thus the mind.

(Please note this training is only the first step in Heartfulness meditation.)

A little exercise

(Please take a few seconds - pause - to experience each line and also pause at each comma)

Pausing, with eyes open.

   Becoming aware, of the present moment.

   Letting go, of past, and future, moments. 

   Letting attention dissolve, go to subtler levels.

   Paradoxically, letting physical senses become aware of everything happening, from moment to moment.

   Letting the attention jump lightly, easily, from sensation to sensation.

  Letting it drift lightly, continuously.

  Staying in the present, lightly, continuously.

   Again drifting,

     inward, subtler,

     outward, grosser.

Attention - thinking to feeling

Meditation is simply paying or giving attention to something without effort or with minimal effort. That thing could be outside or inside the body.

Orthogonal to inside or outside is the idea of limit. That is, that something is limited in space or time or both. Or that something is unlimited.

So something outside and limited, like a candle flame.

Or something outside and almost limitless or unlimited like universal space or universal life, by which I mean that from which all life in the universe has come.

For both inside and outside, for both the limited and the unlimited, when one uses attention the same way - with minimal effort - it is meditation.

As one rests one's attention on something, effort-less-ly, one learns about attention from practice:

• Over a brief meditation session, or a long session,
• over many iterations,
• over the ease of bringing the attention upon something at will,
• over the frequency of attention slipping away,
• over the quickness and ease of recovery to the starting object,
• and so on.

All this (and more) is training the attention through daily practice.

The choice of object decides whether meditation transforms one internally in specific ways or simply hones one's mental prowess.

A transcendental or unlimited object, inside or outside, means one's attention cannot rest on the object for a long time. It necessarily slips away.

A simple example - infinity of natural numbers. I can only hold about, say, 7 or 10 numbers in working memory at once. Beyond that, I switch to general patterns or generating algorithms or whatever helps me to think about the entire infinity of natural numbers at once.

From our own experience, and reports of unethical and immoral scientists, we know that meditation on an infinite object outside does not change us.

Not permanently.

But there are reports of people who have been transformed by meditating upon, or constantly remembering, some entity either immanent or transcendent or both (both within and without - technically called omnipresent).

Sometimes we ourselves have had a numinous experience. As we could not hold on to it as a continuing experienc-ing, it became a memory. It is still useful, for inspiring oneself and others, but one must go beyond a single, or even many, such past experiences. [1]

Feeling the meaning or presence is the next step up from meditation, simply, from thinking to feeling, when one's attention is completely filled by the object chosen to represent that presence. [2]

This complete washing out of attention is technically called samadhi. [3]

It is like tuning an old TV receiver manually and the screen then filling with images decoded from that tuned signal.

But here, when an infinite conscious presence is represented by the object of meditation, the TV screen of the attention and mind is taken over by that presence, which then works on increasing the sensitivity, resilience, and empathy of the meditator. Put differently, changing an old TV receiver from tuning into only the TV spectrum of frequencies to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. With analog and digital decoding as well!

Now, after enjoying and ruminating over it, please drop the TV analogy completely because a TV is not a conscious entity.

While there is indeed a mechanical or physical aspect to the meditative process, it is not rule bound in the way one would think if only one person were involved. As one goes deeper and deeper inside, separative factors (I vs. others) are replaced by factors more and more common to all conscious beings. For example, life and the source of life are about as abstract and common to all living beings as one can consider.

Thus, in a very simple way, one shifts from the definition of meditation itself to different objects of meditation and then from thinking to feeling.

NOTES

[1] One difficulty is due to the habituation ability of the body and mind. They like to feel and then put that feeling into memory to chew over later.

[2] The presence need not be infinite, at least initially. There is a gradation of objects from limited to unlimited to beyond.

[3] Per Sw. Vivekananda in his Raja Yoga, it takes 12x12x12 seconds, approximately 28-30 minutes of effort-less mental attention upon an object for its internal representation to fill one's attention. Once it happens many times, though, it can occur much faster, even reducing from minutes to seconds or less.