Wisdom Notes on Spirituality

Wisdom and Jhana

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For example, if the person is a harsh ascetic, then after enlightenment he will still be a harsh ascetic. Whereas, if a person is much more emotionally balanced, then after enlightenment he will be a more balanced person. The mystical, even enlightenment, experience does not radically change a person: it just emphasises what he already is.

There may be many instances of sorrow in the seeker’s life. He may be baffled as to why this is so. He may even believe that he has been victimised many times. But when he fully understands a sorrowful issue, he drops out of the blame game and will always agree with God. He will always accept what God puts him through. Wisdom produces agreement with God, no matter what a person’s life has been like. I would not change anything sorrowful in my life.

However, not every mystic learns wisdom. Even the experience of enlightenment does not necessarily produce much in the way of wisdom. In fact, wisdom is not very important on the way to enlightenment. The lack of wisdom is not a hindrance to attaining enlightenment. Consider the 14th century mystic Jan Ruysbroeck. He was an ascetic with a low opinion of himself and a lot of self-hatred. He believed in judgement day. He believed that anyone who was his “enemy” would go to hell on judgement day. Whereas those mystics who do not despise themselves are unlikely to believe in judgement day. After my long psycho-analysis I have very little in the way of self-hatred left, so I do not believe in judgement day. In my regular explorations of the jhanas over several years, I have never come across any idea of a judgement day. So although enlightenment can produce saints, it does not necessarily produce wise saints.

As an aside, when a seeker considers his enemies, he needs to think “what have they taught me?”. Learning to resolve harmoniously the difficulties that the enemies confront him with will develop him in unexpected ways. So in a seeker’s life, what he needs to learn is partly determined by his interests, and partly determined by who or what his enemies are, who has he antagonised?  If he does not have enemies, there will be little in the way of evolutionary development for him. This approach to handling problems is the very opposite of Ruysbroeck’s sad approach.

Agent and Function

The usual spiritual inquiry focuses sooner or later on the question who am I?
The complementary inquiry is missed out: this is the question what am I?

Investigating the first question means discovering who the ego is, or what is essentially the same question, who does the ego identify with?  Does the ego identify with God, the higher self, the mind, the body, the role (businessman, plumber, housewife, politician, religious seeker, etc)? 

Investigating the second question means discovering the function of the ego. This has two parts: what is the meaning of an Earth life, and what is the purpose of an Earth life?  The function aspect is completely avoided in Eastern views of spirituality that I have read.

In the past, trying to attain enlightenment was so hard that only the first question could be explored. But now as we move into the Age of Aquarius, a different perspective seems to be opening up. Spirituality in Aquarius will be markedly easier than it was in Pisces and earlier times. Hence the second question, what the function of the enlightened person is, becomes more important and will make Aquarius very different from earlier times. 

Within evolution, it is the mind of the ego that evolves. So am I the mind?  No. “I” am an agent, since I can make choices. The mind is not an agent. The higher self “creates” the agent, which under the impact of evolution becomes the ego. So the ego is part of the higher self, but with a lot of independence.

The form of the ego is timeless, like a Platonic “Idea”. It is born out of time and therefore eternal. That is, the higher self activates the “Idea”, and the ego becomes actualised from the potential. The “Idea” is form, and the ego is content. The ego becomes the content of the form. The ego changes with each lifetime, but the form of it is eternal. This process can be generalised: everything is a mental abstraction until the higher self picks a possibility. Then that possibility is actualised into reality by adding emotional energy to it. Only emotions can make an abstraction become real.

Mind, Jhana and Being

The mind is the greatest creator in the world. The mind can take you to heaven and it can take you to hell. But the mind needs emotions in order for a person to experience what he or she has created. If the mind functions alone, without emotions, the phantasy is no different from watching a film (with the sound turned off ). 

The mind is not an activator. It merely creates ideas. How does activation occur? It is when a particular flow of ideas excites the ego that desire is born. Desire is simply the wish to experience a phantasy. Emotion activates the desires. An ideal is a desire that we have not yet experienced, so we cannot accurately judge the good and bad in it. When we try and practise the ideal, that is how we learn the goodness and badness within it.

One day it occurred to me that jhanas 1 and 2 are worlds of change and flexibility, whilst jhanas 3 and 4 are worlds of order and stability. It is Mind that changes, whilst stability is a product of Being. Being is based on will power. Therefore I see the jhanas in this way:-

Jhanas 1 and 2 are worlds of Mind, or Becoming, which means worlds of change and flexibility.

Jhanas 3 and 4 are worlds of will power, or Being, which means worlds of order and stability.

Wisdom and the Mind

Wisdom often depends on which jhana is the highest that the person has experienced.

a). Wisdom varies in the Jhanas
Wisdom is not a single product of thought. It varies with each jhana. Each jhana contributes its own store of wisdom. I present my ideas on wisdom.

Jhana-1 is based on narcissism. It contributes the wisdom that attaches to the individual person. Individual values are stressed.[¹]
Jhana-2 is based on jealousy. It contributes the wisdom that attaches to society. Social values are stressed.
Jhana-3 is based on pride. It contributes the wisdom that embraces purity and asceticism. Ascetic values are stressed.
Jhana-4 is based on equanimity. It harmonises the wisdom of the three lower jhana views. Balance is stressed.

Negative impulses are usually repressed. However, they have a positive function. They test my stability from subconscious influences, and hence my character. If you want to learn wisdom of some part of the mind, you have to learn the hard way, through direct experience. 

The heart chakra tests my emotions.
The throat chakra tests my character.
The third-eye chakra tests my mind.

The pursuit of truth is the Ariadne’s thread that leads one out of the maze of mental confusion. This is the function of truth, and it is all that it does. Truth does not lead to freedom. Instead, truth leads to mental clarity. Truth clears the mind of confusion. My problems all have to be resolved before I will be ready for enlightenment. I wouldn’t have it any other way. However, the catch is that the mind should not be something that the person bases his identity on. Hence to be a thinker or an intellectual is a secondary way to think of oneself. The mind is purely a tool, and not something that is suitable for basing one’s identity on.

b). Mind and Spectacle
It seems to me that the purpose of humanity is to explore, investigate, express and resolve the continuous play of creativity that God directs through the human mind. This play becomes the flow that I attune to when in raised consciousness.

When travelling through the unknown, then equanimity is best. When things stabilise on the known, then love is best. Love and hate are stimulants. They increase the intensity of other emotions; for example, love increases the intensity of happiness, and hate increases the intensity of despair. Intensity is additionally increased by childhood trauma: the traumas of my childhood gave intensity to my ideals. Overall, when distressed, aim for peace; then when no longer distressed, aim for love. 

Anxiety is the driver of the subconscious mind. 
Desires are the drivers of the conscious mind. 
Ideals are the drivers of the higher mind.

Mind sometimes produces spectacles. The “glamour” of reality is only the scenario of the mind making a spectacle of reality, of the mind turning reality into a spectacle. Once the mind has created a spectacle, then feelings and emotions turn that spectacle into drama, so the person “lives” the spectacle, or experiences the spectacle. And his will power enables him to change that spectacle in some ways. 

It does not matter whether the spectacle is good or bad. People who have harmed you only lead you to aspects of the mind that otherwise you would never have experienced and explored. So there is nothing wrong with Earth life. All seekers experience turmoil, and they can react to it either physically or mentally. The physical reaction is that of repression and denial, so that the physical body suffers and ages: the turmoil becomes locked into the body structures and organs. The mental reaction is that of mentally expressing the turmoil. This way the physical body is not so involved, and so it doesn’t age so fast. However, the seeker suffers as the mind creates difficulties, obsessions, compulsions, and fetishes.

c). The Beginning of Rationality
In the beginning of the ego’s existence, all thought was intuitive. Then, slowly over multiple ages, rationality begins to develop. Rationality would initially develop from cruelty, in the minds of predators. Predators would analyse how best to catch their prey.

Analysing the Mind

As my subconscious mind loses its influence, the rigidity of it gives way to a more flexible and open mind. I find more humour in life. Hence my use of the mind is changing. The mind changes positively in two main ways, those of expansion of the mind and the development of the mind. Expansion leads to a broad mind: the mind is less profound and less deep, but you have a broad view of an issue. Development leads to a narrow mind: more profound and much deeper, but you have a narrow view of the issue. So both ways are needed. My path is usually expansion first, then development. 

In my view, the ultimate purpose of my higher self in enabling me to ride the jhanas was to facilitate positive change in my character. The jhana wisdom that I have gained was the means to this end. This leads to the view that there are two ways of analysing the mind. For most of my long psycho-analysis I analysed the psychological issues facing me. Then from 2020, when in raised consciousness I analysed the psychic mind.

Psycho-analysis deals with ordinary states of mind and has the purpose of removing confusion from my identity.
Psychic analysis deals with higher states of mind and has the purpose of facilitating character development.

Meditators and mystics develop their character, but not usually their identity. Hence they gravitate to ego denial or ego repression, which leaves them still confused about their identity. However, once the person can get to jhana-4, then spiritual ethics do not matter. Even the rule "the end justifies the means" does not matter whilst in jhana-4. All that the stress means is that the greater the stress a person is under, the greater can be his attainment. Wisdom is obtained through contact with that stress. Wisdom arises from sorrow. So the greater one’s stress becomes, the greater can be the level of wisdom attained.

There is a "knock-on" effect from wisdom. As wisdom broadens my character and I understand the bases of sorrow, so I can be humorous about all the negative escapades that I have experienced in life. As my wisdom broadens my character, so the range of my humour broadens too. I can laugh about so much more of life than I could years ago.

I am analysing how the mind works. In my next life I may gravitate to the Buddhist idea of “mind moments”, which is the next stage up; call it the meta state or meta-analysis. Mind moments give the construction of a thought in its separate stages. Hence there are ultimately three levels of analysis.

The psychological level.
The psychic level.
The meta level.

[¹]. I have three articles on emotion on the Home page. See also the article My Early Jhana Riding. [1]

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