Knowing without the Mind and the ‘I’

Syamala D. Hari

murty_hari@yahoo.com

309 Melvin Jackson Dr.

Cary, NC 27519

USA

Alan J. Oliver

thinkerman1@dodo.com.au

17 Resolute Avenue

Normanville, South Australia 5204

Australia

ABSTRACT

As long as we are awake and even while dreaming, the “I” seems to be present in any conscious experience: “I am seeing”, “I am hearing”, or “I am doing”, etc. So, one may wonder whether it is ever possible to have a conscious experience where the ‘I’ is not present.  By doing a little introspection, we find that ‘I’-less moments exist in ordinary lives and may indeed initiate selfless acts that we do sometimes. We will then describe a few not-so-ordinary experiences of one of the authors of this article (Oliver). In what he called Sampatti sessions, by focusing on a human or animal subject, Oliver’s mind became completely free of thoughts; he was then aware of some of the physical and psychological states of the subject. While all his subjects experienced peace as their anxieties gradually cleared during the session, some of them got relief from the physical cause of their anxiety later. The mysterious Sampatti experiences and ordinary selfless acts both suggest the possibility of knowing without the mind, the ‘I’, and the limitation of physical senses. Such knowing grasps reality without any distortion. It also points to two kinds of memory in our minds, which may be called factual and psychological memories.

Key Words: Consciousness, Sampatti, Samadhi, knowing without mind, I-thought, factual and psychological memories.

Figure 1. Knowing without ‘I’ and “I am the universe” experience

SAMPATTI and SAMADHI

• In Hindu and Buddhist (H&B) philosophies mind is said to be the sixth sense and the ‘I’, or ego, or self to be part of mind. The implication is that similar to the physical senses: see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, mind is also instrumental in creating our conscious experiences but it is not awareness itself. 
• However, mind is subtle and not accessible to the other senses in normal circumstances. One’s thoughts are not known to others unless one conveys them verbally or by other physical means - making it very tempting to lie! One may ask: if so, similarly to a sensory experience which need not involve all the five physical senses, do we ever have a conscious experience with no ‘I’ in it? 
•  Samapatti is an aspect of the more familiar state of Samadhi which is gained through meditation. 
• In the H&B traditions, Samadhi is a state of consciousness that lies beyond waking, dreaming, or deep sleep. It may be attained by single-pointed concentration that slows down mental activity to a complete stop. 

When Oliver focused his mind on a human or animal subject, he entered the Sampatti state and became aware of some physical and psychological conditions of the subject. While all his subjects experienced peace as their anxieties gradually cleared during the session. This communication between two minds without any physical connection may be called an “entanglement of minds” in that it is similar to communication between entangled quantum systems without exchanging material signals. It should be noted that Samapatti does not allow the seer to read the subject’s mind.
 

Figure 2. The Yoga perspective of creation

MIND AS A MEMORY

•  “Mind” is an accumulation of information, a memory containing experiences, desires, aversion, emotions, etc., the ability to think (logical reasoning), and the intellect with ability to make decisions based on existing contents. 
• ‘I’, or ego, or self is an inevitable feature of a memory; the essence of ‘I’ is to distinguish oneself from all others. 
•  The abilities to reason, and make decisions based on memory are similar to computer programs in that they can exist in an active or a passive state. They create new experience and information by being active; after new experience is created they remain in the memory in a passive state until they are called upon for action. 

This description of mind agrees with Vedanta (Swami 2014) and the Buddhist view that one part ofmind (called mano-vijnana) is a mechanical or reactive process of perceiving mental objects, and another part (called manas) is the seat of ego identity (Sangharakshita 1998).

 MEMORY AND SELF

• Is the essence of ‘I’ to consciously distinguish oneself from everything else in the universe?  
• A computer indeed distinguishes itself from others. That is why we are able to develop and use computer communications. Communication, whether verbal or otherwise, involves at least two distinct entities, living or non-living, and depends upon the participating entities’ ability to distinguish themselves from one another.  If the programmer gives the name “I” to a robot, it will thereafter say “I know this”, “I did this” but it does not have what we call self-awareness or any awareness in fact.    
• How does a computer distinguish itself from the rest of the world without being aware of anything?  It is like this: Nowadays, we are very much used to expressions like "the computer knows this", "it understands that", etc. Such phrases simply mean that the computer has in its database, a description of the object referred to in the phrases. Once an object’s description is entered into its memory, thereafter, the computer can add, subtract, draw a picture, on and on, and do almost anything that a person can do with that object. It behaves as though it knows and remembers the object, without actually knowing anything! So, given any object, the computer either already “knows” or does not “know” the object, where “knowing” means to have a description of the object in its memory. The memory establishes its identity by its very existence as the common point of reference to all objects whose descriptions it contains. One memory differs from another by having different sets of contents. A memory can communicate only what it “knows”. 

Krishnamurti (1949) associates  self with memory: “It is the memory of yesterday – of possessions, of jealousies, of anger, of contradiction, of ambition, of what one ought or ought not to be – it is all these things that make up the I; and the I is not different from memory … memory is the self”.

IDENTIFICATION VERSUS SEPARATION  

• The computer episode shows that a memory although not conscious, behaves as if it has an identity of its own; it suggests that consciousness and the sense of individuality may be independent of one another.  
• It raises the question, “If one with no consciousness can manifest individuality, can one have consciousness but manifest no individuality?”   

The answer is yes in both H&B philosophies.  To understand this answer, we take a look at what identifying oneself with, and separating oneself from others mean in our ordinary lives.

1. To put oneself in somebody else’s shoes.
2. Acts of charity can be initiated by selflessness. Note that the actual physical action can be the same whether it is initiated selflessly or by the self. Only an unbiased introspection, that is, one without the involvement of self can reveal the true nature (selfish or selfless) of an action.
3. Risking one’s own life out of compassion for others starts with forgetting one’s self.

People like Jesus Christ, Buddha and Sai Baba are said not to have had self-interest ever in their whole lives; whatever they did was for the well-being of others and without discrimination of any kind.  This means that their balloon of identification covers everybody and everything and all the time.  Ishavasyopanishad says in verse 6, that the wise one beholds all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings; for that reason he does not hate anyone. Similarly, Buddhism says that one who breaks down the notion of a self that is separate from the world, and completely identifies with others has a will which no longer comes into conflict with the will of any other. He/she wants what others want; others want what he/she wants (Sangharakshita 1998, p 52-53).

Delusion and self

A computer can recognize patterns in the data presented to it.  To do so, some heuristics need to be coded and entered into it beforehand.  If heuristics are changed, the computer may find a different pattern when the same data are presented to it again. Or, if different heuristics are entered into two computers, then they recognize different patterns even if the same data are presented to them both. Hence the pattern that the computer perceives in the presented data depends upon some contents of its memory. Unlike the computer, which generates and stores purely material patterns but not their meanings, the human brain-mind system generates the neural mapping of any observed object along with the associated meaning or interpretation; an object’s or event’s description has both physical and mental parts in our brains. The interpretation part is almost always based on values, experiences and desires all existing in the memory.  It is similar to the computer’s interpretation of data to recognize patterns using stored heuristics. Hence, how one perceives an event depends upon his/her past, that is, his/her personal memory and self. That is why human perception is subjective; two people observing the same event may interpret it differently and usually they do. If two people describe the same event in two different ways, which one is the correct description?  In the well-known trial of murder by OJ Simpson, from the same evidence presented in the court and witnessed on television by the public, most blacks concluded that he did not murder his wife and most whites concluded that he did so. What is the truth? Clearly, one group was under delusion.

Attention and self

 At the moment of complete attention, there is no ‘I’-thought; the object of attention alone occupies the mind. In the Sampatti experiences described above, Oliver’s mind became still by first focusing attention on the subject.  His ‘I’-thought and therefore all other thoughts stepped aside not momentarily but for a much longer duration.

 

THE YOGA PERSPECTIVE OF CREATION

 

OLIVER’S SAMPATTI EXPERIENCES

• A person with Huntington’s chorea:His uncontrollable movements ceased for the duration of the session, typically around 45 minutes while Oliver’s mind was still. Since the random movements ceased while he was asleep as it is the nature of the disease, obviously during the Sampatti session, this person’s mind and brain also calmed down similar enough to sleep, although he was awake.
• Disturbed cat which was antisocial and refused to wash itself for an year began washing itself after waking up from Sampatti session with Oliver. 
• Lady with fractured leg found the bone healing in the x-ray done after Sampatti session.

 

Figure 3. A pictorial representation of sequence of events in Samapatti

TWO KINDS OF MEMORY - PSYCHOLOGICAL AND FACTUAL MEMORIES

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali described two kinds of memory (http://www.swamij.com/yoga-sutras-10511.htm) which closely correspond to the psychological memory and factual memory so named by Krishnamurti (1953); the latter contains what one may call pure observations; the former contains facts with one’s values and emotions attached to them. The psychological memory contains an impression of the object colored by ‘I’-ness, attachments, aversion, ignorance etc. (called Samskaras) whereas the factual memory contains an unbiased observation of the object/event that is unmodified/un-colored by any factors. (An essentially identical notion of two kinds of memory exists in Buddhist philosophy (Carter 2010)).

When an object is observed with complete attention, the brain records the observation immediately although the self is absent. No contents of the memory are involved in recording such an observation. The recording is similar to a person’s writing observations on a clean paper directly; the paper has no influence on what is being written on it. It is unlike a computer’s recording of patterns recognized with the help of heuristics already in its memory as mentioned earlier. Thus, a perception colored by emotions is recorded when the self participates in the act of recording whereas factual knowledge is recorded directly when the self does not participate.

Krishnamurti (1953) explains: “The memory of technical things is essential; but the psychological memory that maintains the self, the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, that gives identification and self-continuance, is wholly detrimental to life and to reality.  When one sees the truth of that, the false drops away”. 

CONCLUSION

By means of some personal experiences in our lives, we tried to show that knowing is possible while the mind is free from the ‘I’ and other thoughts.  Sampatti experiences of Oliver seem to show that such knowing is possible without the help of even the physical senses.  Completely selfless acts that we do in our ordinary lives are also initiated by knowing without-the-‘I’ although we do not realize it because it is momentary unlike in Sampatti.  When the self involves itself in creating a perception of the world, the perception is influenced by the contents of one’s mind, and therefore may be a distorted view of reality. Withdrawal of self from the act of observation reveals reality. Thus our mind has two kinds of memory and may be called psychological and factual memories. One who always observes without-the-‘I’ experiences oneness with everything in the universe. 

REFERENCES

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Hari S. (2011). How Often or How Rarely Does A Self-Transcending Experience Occur?  Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 2 (7), 949-964.

Krishnamurti J. (1949). 14^th Public Talk (Ojai, California). http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/1949/1949-08-28-jiddu-krishnamurti-14th-public-talk

Krishnamurti J. (1953). On Memory. http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/the-first-and-last-freedom/1953-00-00-jiddu-krishnamurti-the-first-and-last-freedom-on-memory

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http://vixra.org/abs/1001.0015

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