Updated: October 1, 2024
OK, I am the field and I'm also the knower of the field. The field is the field of consciousness. And the knower of the field is also the field of consciousness. In the last video, we explored a mode of knowing called, “I”, the witnessing awareness. As I said, there are about not about 24 modes of knowing as explained in the Bhagavad Gita Chapter 13, I think and also in the Brahma Sutras OK.
If the first mode of knowing is witnessing awareness, the second mode of knowing is what we call mind, mana, Mana. By the way, that's the origin of the word human woman. Mind is mana mana, a thinking biological organism. Of course, the biological organism itself is a mode of knowing is also a species specific mode of knowing. But that now let's look at the mind. OK. So the sequence of experience is as follows: being, which is the witnessing awareness, feeling, which is emotions, thinking, which is the interpretation of those emotions. And of course, then the sequence moves on to speaking and doing, but we'll get there soon. Let's just stay with the mind. So when the Vedanta the Bhagavad Gita which is also upanishads refers to mana or mind it is referring specifically to emotions and feelings, same thing, emotions are feelings because they also felt in the body, you feel them emotions, feeling, but it also refers to thinking.
And as a result of that something happens very spontaneously, the creation of images. So, feeling, thinking, imagining or creating images are entangled. If you think of something, you might generate the emotion. If you have the emotion, you might generate the thought or the image they're entangled means they're inseparable. They are part of the matrix of modes of knowing. So let's see each of them separately. OK. Right now. So let's look at emotions, emotions are generated as a result of experiences good or bad. What are the experiences? They’re modes of knowing. You know, consciousness knows experience through its modes of knowing. So emotions are basically generated as a mode of knowing, but they are the result of a storyline created by by consciousness or the mind. You might say storyline created by the mind. And if you close your eyes, as I said before, you'll see you're speaking to yourself, the invisible is speaking to itself.
And the sound you hear in consciousness is also not a sound. It's a tanmatra, which we will get to but you hear it. OK? It's your internal dialogue. And what is your internal dialogue? Its the interpretation of a past experience. The story you were having an argument with your significant other or maybe you were celebrating your anniversary with the significant other two different experiences. But they're basically experiences that are generated as qualia, and we've talked about qualia, qualia are qualities of experience and we get more into qualia as we move on. But you know, if you close your eyes, you'll see you're telling yourself stories.
And these stories are referred to as Karma interpretation of past experience. Memory, the whole mystery of memory that we have addressed and will address later. But memory is embedded as stored consciousness in awareness or consciousness, not in the brain, it actualizes through a neural correlate, but it is not in the brain according to the Vedanta anyway, and also as a result of experience. So when you close your eyes and you start telling yourself stories automatically, then there are two kinds of stories, you know, a story which you feel is a happy story, story, you feel is not so happy, maybe sad and in between all kinds of stories. OK. And those stories project as the karmic body or the conceptual body. And the stories that are most significant are emotions, emotions means level of feeling, we call them feelings because we also feel them in the body sensations. So how do we get in touch with our emotions without actually aggravating the storyline? And that's very simple. All you do is bring your awareness to the sensation that is associated with the emotion and no interpretation, just awareness to the sensation and awareness without interpretation is self organizing, self healing and self regulating and all of that.
So the emotion dissipates if you keep your awareness on the sensation, and soon you become free of the emotion. And by the way, it's good to be free of both happy and unhappy because you realize that the emotions are generated by you and you can be free of them. The awareness of the emotion is not the emotion. And why is that important? Well, if you're free of emotions, particularly melodrama, then as we'll see, there's room for creativity. OK. So that's the first way to get in touch with the mind, emotions, feelings, bringing awareness. Now let's move to the next emotions, feelings, thoughts, the entangle. What is a thought? Thought is the interpretation of that feeling. Remember the sequence is being, feeling, thinking and thought is recycled everybody else's thoughts. That's why in the there's a line, there's a phrase, let noble thoughts come to me from every side because you don't own your thoughts nor do you own your emotions.
They are a result of the condition mind. And we actually these days, particularly our emotions are generated through social media and digital technologies and so on. You'll see that those are also experiences that actually govern our emotions. How many likes you get, how many dislikes do you get et cetera? And then it affects your self esteem and all of that creates fear or happiness depending on how you interpret it. But emotions are now also today generated digitally. We have digital babies, digital natives. And as we'll see their whole identity is being shaped through Digital technology.
Just tells you how, how capricious our individuality is at the mercy, not only of every stranger on the street, but what you see on Instagram, on TikTok or Twitter or Facebook or whatever else you use that's creating your emotions as well. OK. So you need to be free of those emotions in order to be in touch with yourself and be creative. And then as I said, they're related to thoughts and thoughts are the interpretation and those thoughts are also culturally programmed in us. We are the localization of the culture and history, you know, all of that and everything else.
Economics, parents, you know, a childhood in utero experiences other lifetimes if you understand what that means and I'll explore that with you. But bottom line is you do not have original thoughts unless you have creativity, which is not in the mind, it's beyond the mind. So first of all recognize that your thoughts are also not your own. They are, they are recycled thoughts and we are as individuals programming of culture and society and history and all of that biological robots. OK. And so how do we handle thoughts? Not by forcing ourselves to have positive thoughts because that itself is a stress generator but having the ability to witness those thoughts without interpretation as well or sometimes just stopping and saying, I wonder what my next thought is going to be.
And you see that when you ask yourself what my next thought is going to be, it takes its time to emerge. And according to the Vedanta, there is a very specific sequence of that … … is the thought that is store consciousness or store memory … is the emergence of that. actually the internal dialogue and … is when it surfaces as speech. Now if you're a biological robot, all of that happens spontaneously. But if you wait for a thought or you witness a thought and you recognize that you're not a thought, you'll see it comes, it's there it disappears like clouds in the sky and you can know, that you are not the clouds but the sky itself.
OK? So that's how we understand this mode of knowing that we call thought. And then the third mode of knowing as the mind is images, they come spontaneously, consciousness modifies itself into images. But you can also generate images. If I ask you close your eyes and you know, think of a sunset on the ocean immediately the image comes the formless becomes that image. You are the formless and that becomes the image. Then I say, OK, instead of what thinking of snow clad mountains, think of a rainbow, then you return from snow clad mountains image back to the farm lesson, construct the image of a rainbow.
And I said think of the Empire State Building. You come back to the formless and there you go. So between every image between every thought and between every image you always return to the formless consciousness modifying itself has that experience and therefore that mode of knowing. So play with images, generate images, any image you want even outlandish images, you know, hybrid images, you know, mix a rainbow with an ice cream and mix the ice cream with a giraffe or on and on. The more you can play with the images you will see that's the raw material for creativity. As Einstein said, imagination is more important then whatever information or intellect or or thinking. OK. So those are the three modes of knowing that we call mind and the experience is: I'm not the mind. I'm the generator of the mind.
I know experience by generating mind by generating emotions, thoughts, images. And maybe I heard or read this little prayer from the Course and Miracles. I'm responsible for what I see. I generate the emotions that I feel and everything that happens to me I create. And I experience as my own creation. It's a paraphrasing. It's not the exact prayer, but you get the idea that you as awareness are experiencing yourself as the mind and therefore every experience then ultimately gets recycled through that mind and slowly evolves But that happens generation after generation. And that recycling of that experience is also called reincarnation. We'll go into that later. OK? So today, just that tomorrow, we'll go into the intellect and then into the ego and other modes of knowing. But let's stop here with the mode of knowing that we call thought, recognizing that it is the self that generates the mind, experiences the mind, knows the mind and also understands that that self is not the mind, it is free of the mind.