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Discovering the Fourth Consciousness
AI Suggested Keywords:
Workshop_Coming_and_Going
The workshop presents an exploration of various meditation practices and how these connect to different states of mind and posture without necessarily involving formal meditation. It outlines how specific postures, such as sitting in Zen meditation (Zazen), can elicit a state akin to deep, non-dreaming sleep, creating a potential fourth state of consciousness beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. The talk also discusses the application of basic elements of Zen practice to everyday life, including the Eightfold Path as a framework for bringing attention and awareness to one's daily activities.
- Eightfold Path: A seminal teaching of the Buddha that provides a framework for mindfulness, including right views, intentions, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. The talk emphasizes experiential understanding of these elements through practice.
- Diamond Sutra: Referenced as a traditional teaching method with a standard formulaic introduction, illustrating the importance of physical posture and mindfulness in delivering teachings.
- Sigmund Freud: His concept of unconsciousness is compared to Zen understanding, highlighting the Western contextual nature of Freud's ideas that may differ from Eastern practices and beliefs.
- Rainer Maria Rilke: His poetry is used to illustrate deeper awareness, hinting at the transformative potential of attentional awareness in contrast to consciousness alone.
AI Suggested Title: Discovering the Fourth Consciousness
Now, of course, I don't know most of you. So I don't know what you'd like to know. Yeah. So of course I'll try to share something from my experience that I think might be useful. And you can hear my voice all right back there. Not too well, huh? Maybe we can close. Is that closable? Or then the air will get bad. Well, we'll keep this one open. Let's keep that one open. I think I'll see... all of you necessarily tomorrow and the next day.
[01:18]
So I thought probably I should maybe speak about three different topics. So today I thought I would speak about, I don't know, basic and advanced meditation practice. And tomorrow, the three minds of daily consciousness. Which is, I find, the best entry into Understanding mind itself. And maybe the last afternoon the practice of wisdom and the practice of compassion.
[02:23]
Now I'd like to speak about meditation practice in a way that doesn't require you to meditate. Now, I know that sounds stupid. Oh, it doesn't? Oh, okay. Because I know that some people, somehow it's just not going to happen that you're going to practice sitting meditation. We know that posture and mind is connected.
[03:42]
But I don't think we realize how deeply it's connected. Or we don't realize Understand it in a way that leads us to meditate. Now we know we have, again, we know we have different minds. It's obvious we have a sleeping mind and a waking mind. And sleeping mind produces a different kind of
[04:44]
Yeah, we don't usually dream standing up. Yeah, we don't usually sleep standing up. Yeah. Or sitting up. Unless you're driving a car. And sometimes we find we can. But in general, our postures are connected with different minds. Yeah, okay, that's so obvious. So it ought to be obvious that this somewhat odd posture has been chosen because it produces a different kind of mind.
[06:03]
Okay, so let me say something about this posture. Yeah, I'm not very good at it, in fact. I've been doing it a long time, but my legs are... It was so difficult for me in the beginning that my teacher came by one morning during meditation and leaned over and whispered, why don't you just stay home? And he leaned over and whispered, why don't you just stay at home?
[07:05]
Then I brought my knees to the ground, but after five minutes they were already up again. But I assure you, at least from my own experience, there's a tremendous value to learning to sit still. And to do it regularly. Like this. Well, you sleep seven days, seven times a week. Maybe you could do meditation seven times a week. It's that fundamental. Okay. Now the main... Because I should say something about this posture. The main... The main posture of this posture is your back.
[08:24]
So your legs are important, but it's much more important that your back be straight. So if you want to learn to sit on a chair, it would be better to sit for 10 or 15 minutes without leaning back than to sit for an hour leaning back. Your energy just works different. Mm-hmm. So you want to have a lifting feeling through your back. And that lifting feeling up through the back of your head. Then you want a relaxing feeling coming down through you. That's basically the, that's about all the instruction you need.
[09:55]
But really how to come into, to find that lifting through the body and relaxation is not easy. But to really get into it, to feel this lifting feeling and the relaxation in the body, that is not so easy. It takes some time, but it's not that hard. And the legs are really just to give you stability. And to fold your heat, your warmth together. Then your body doesn't have to heat your legs. Yeah. Now, if you understand basically what the sitting posture is about, even if you don't sit in this kind of posture, you know, I think that...
[11:08]
Understanding the posture can inform your other postures. Now let me just say... Am I speaking loudly enough in the back? Let me just say what I think... Oh yeah, good. What? I should speak. You should speak. Maybe we should switch sides here. Okay, so one One thing this posture does.
[12:29]
Now again, you have three postures you're born with. Three minds you're born with. Waking. Sleeping. Sleeping, dreaming. and non-dreaming deep sleep. I think, yeah, again, that's obvious, but something we should be aware of, remind ourselves of. Yeah. And these three minds don't know each other. And I used to think, hey, you know, the dolphins or whales, big whales supposedly don't sleep. And I thought maybe that would be good for us too. But they do actually, it looks like from the little I've read, they go into some kind of actual meditative state.
[13:34]
floating with each other. But now I'm convinced that we need to sleep a certain way for the kind of intelligence we have. And that we don't just have dreaming sleep, we also have non-dreaming sleep. Now, what seems to happen in meditation, this is called Zazen in Zen Buddhism, Zazen simply means sitting absorption. Okay. So what seems to happen in this sitting absorption is that the mind of non-dreaming deep sleep, which we have no access to, surfaces in our meditation.
[15:16]
And it happens to be a very blissful, the experience of it is a kind of gratefulness or bliss. And we, as human beings, seem to need time to dream, and we need time for this blissful sleep. And it seems that somebody way back there, long before Buddha, discovered that the sitting posture, which is not the posture of waking or sleeping, a sitting posture which in some ways mimics sleeping posture allows this deeper
[16:24]
blissful mind to surface in us in wakefulness or in awareness. Okay. Now the other thing this posture does, if you sit regularly, is that you actually begin to generate a fourth mind that's neither waking, sleeping, or neither waking, dreaming, or deep sleep. So what do I mean by a mind? Well, it's almost like a different liquid. And it has the qualities of being homeostatic, tending to stay what it is.
[18:16]
And it tends to be self-organizing. Like if you're, you know, again, our own experience. If you're sleeping and the alarm goes off. your sleeping mind tries to talk you into staying asleep. Because it's homeostatic and self-organizing. And it might even tell you the alarm clock is actually a telephone you don't have to answer. And once you're awake, and a certain process is about what you have to do that day start,
[19:18]
it's very hard to go back to sleep. And you can experiment with this transition. You don't have to be a meditator. You can just experiment with the transition. Were you Awake up and let yourself go back to sleep and wake up and so forth. And see if you can retain a dream into waking. Or you can go back into dreaming, back into sleeping and recover the dream. Because they're like, again, different liquids. In waking mind, dreams sink. And sleeping mind dreams can float.
[21:00]
And Freud discovered that if you create a posture that's rather like sleeping, having people recline on a couch, that people actually slipped out of ordinary consciousness into what we would call in Zen practice an associative consciousness or an associative awareness. which knows things consciousness doesn't know, which actually has a different kind of karmic history than consciousness. So they're like, again, different liquids which allow different contents
[22:07]
Sie sind also noch einmal wie unterschiedliche Flüssigkeiten, die unterschiedlichen Inhalten ermöglichen zu geschehen. Now, so sitting meditation, joined to a posture that's, you're not born like this, verbunden mit einer Haltung, in der ihr nicht geboren worden seid, It's a wisdom posture. You have to learn it. allows a mind to be generated, which we can call a fourth mind, but also a mind which overlaps the other three, and can explore the other three. Mm-hmm. What skills are needed to explore the other three?
[23:25]
The development of a voluntary, sustained awareness. So if you develop a voluntary, sustained awareness, which is easiest to do through sitting posture. If you develop that, then you can begin to explore the mind, and generate new kinds of minds without going crazy. Okay. If you identify with your thinking, if you think your thinking is you, then it's hard to really imagine
[24:55]
generating other minds. They're not weird sort of minds from Mars. They're just minds that work somewhat differently. Mm-hmm. So you don't have to read any Buddhism to know this. You can explore this through your own bringing awareness to your posture. Okay. Now let me think about the time here. We just got started, but... It's three o'clock.
[26:10]
Lasst mich über die Zeit nachdenken. Wir haben gerade erst angefangen, jetzt ist es drei. Okay. So at some point we should take a break. Dann sollten wir eine Pause machen. Somebody already wants a break. And then we are supposed to go till five o'clock. Und dann soll es bis fünf Uhr weitergehen. Okay. So let's go to... Around 3.30. And then we'll have a break. Yeah, so maybe, could you bring me the flip chart? I think it has to be rolled. It's too big to carry, so we're going to have to clear a path. Yeah. I don't know. So I think I'll try to present the Eightfold Path, which is the Buddha's earliest teaching.
[27:36]
Thank you very much. This is called the Eightfold Path And really it's a path about what you bring your attention to. It's fine to say be mindful.
[28:37]
But be mindful of what? It helps to have certain targets for your mindfulness. One is your activity, your body, and so forth. And that's taught as the four foundations of mindfulness. But I won't try to do that today. So the eightfold path is, the first is views.
[29:38]
And the second is intentions. Resolve. Resolve. And the third is speech. And the fourth is conduct. Yeah, and the fifth is livelihood. And the Sixth is effort. Seventh is mindfulness. And the last is concentration.
[30:39]
Now, it's probably useful to know something about Buddhist pedagogy. Which is, these are really not words you can find in the dictionary. Yeah. It's based on phenomenological experience or actual experience. And then someone over generations, though, tries to develop it into a pedagogy, a way of teaching. That you're meant to bring your experience to. Okay. How do you bring your experience to this?
[32:15]
Why are there eight and not twenty-two or seven? And what's the relationship between the eight? This kind of thing you can only find out by really doing it. You've got the rest of your life. These are only eight things. I expect you'll be extremely accomplished in them soon. Well, there's no reason not to assume that. Okay. So these are also in themselves ways of bringing attention. Now, what you bring attention to is likely to become what your life is.
[33:27]
Attention is the most magical power we have. It makes a difference when you bring, make an effort and bring attention to something than just sort of passively noticing. How do we bring attention to things? Okay. Now, what I'm speaking about now is a way of talking about meditation, or the fruits of meditation that arise from the posture of your life, not so much now the posture of your body.
[34:49]
In other words, what form can you bring to your life that will bring out bring you into the kind of life you long for. I think we all have an intuition that our life isn't a feeling, that our life isn't exactly what we'd like it to be. And an intuition that the life of our society somehow is pretty off base. But, you know, leaving, there used to be a place where there was always construction driving out of Munster.
[36:06]
And somebody had taken an empty billboard and written graffiti on it. Taken an empty what? Billboard. You know, in advertising. And they said, because the cars are always in a style there. And they'd written, you think you're in a stow. But you are the stow. What? What? But that's the problem in our... I mean, we think our society is off base, but we are our society.
[37:17]
So, Buddhist teaching is, start... Somehow noticing your life. Bring attention to your life. But now what kind of attention? I have a belief that I'm proud to say, and believe it or not, I have a daughter who's 18 months old. I also have a daughter who's 39 and 23. So I'm happily pretending to be a young father. And this little girl is extremely alert.
[38:24]
As my friends who know her can testify. Okay. She has got the names of things down. who wears what shoes, and so forth. You know, a big meditation center is a lot of people with a lot of shoes. And she examines everything and wants to know about everything. But if I died today, When she's 10 years old, she would not remember me at all.
[39:26]
Think in your own life how far you can remember back to clear memories. Denkt selber an euer eigenes Leben, wie weit ihr mit klaren Erinnerungen zurückdenken könnt. So she's in the midst of what's called infant amnesia. Sie ist also inmitten dessen, was man die Kleinkindamnesie nennen könnte. Why doesn't she, why wouldn't she remember? I mean, I've had millions of moments with her. I think the reason is she has not formed consciousness yet. She's aware but not conscious. And it's the structures of consciousness which give us before and after, past, present and future and so forth, which allow the installation of memories.
[40:35]
Yes, I was given a hotel room down here. I arrived at night. I got up this morning, opened the curtains, And here's your, these your mountains. I immediately experienced infant amnesia. My mind wouldn't go around them. So I think one reason we are drawn to the ocean and the mountains for vacations, it feels awfully good to us, especially as a vacation, to have our consciousness not be able to get around something.
[42:05]
Now consciousness so... I don't think this awareness that my daughter is in the midst of... It's about being a baby. She's just at the point where everything is a name, but not a word. They're not turning into... or barely, sentences with the structure that grammar gives to our world. So she's experiencing an awareness which is very involved in the immediate and unique the immediate and unique, and the patterns that arise from that
[43:41]
So she sees patterns and connections all the time. But I would say that's not consciousness, that's awareness. And she may lose, once she's more conscious, she may lose some of this wide-ranging awareness. So my point is that the awareness she has is not infantile. It's fundamental mind. And we develop the extremely useful tool of consciousness. But when we identify with it as ourselves, we've made, I think, a fundamental mistake.
[44:51]
Now, if you can, if you understand that, or you already know that, or you can get the feeling of it, we, for the last few hundred years anyway, have so developed this identification with consciousness. That's a major act of archaeology. of excavation to try to find your fundamental mind. And everything we see is always strengthening, reifying this externalized consciousness.
[46:26]
Okay, how can we... Meditation would be also to change that. So here we have what I'm saying is the meditation of the eightfold path. We could say, to notice how these eight are captured by consciousness. So that's the problem I'd like to present you. To imagine noticing aspects of your life in some way, that they're not noticed only through consciousness.
[47:28]
It's always good to make use of the entrance. We forget that the entrance is entrance. So you step, just let's take some place where you start to practice. Some place where you can start to practice. Because you can practice this every moment. Which is what Dharma practice is. But before we get to Dharma, let's start with doors.
[48:31]
So you just develop a habit When you go through a door, as you cross the threshold, try to stop your thinking for a moment. And when you come into the room, stop for a minute before you come in. And you can stop for just one breath. And feel the room rather than think the room. Now, A mind characterized, shaped by feeling, is different than a mind shaped by thinking.
[49:44]
So if you can bring in homeopathic doses, just when you go through some doors, You try to stop for a moment and feel the room before you let thinking to happen again. Okay. Now I'll give you a... That's one little thing you can play with. Okay. I'll give you a second. Zen uses phrases a lot. Zen tries to insert into the flow of consciousness Yeah, insert into consciousness phrases that upset consciousness.
[51:11]
Or phrases that challenge consciousness. Okay, now one such simple phrase. I don't know how you're going to say it in German, but in English, just now is enough. That's a fact. Just now has to be enough. Because what other alternative do you have? But we don't feel that way all the time. I mean, if you're hungry, just now is not enough. Some of you are hoping for the toilet.
[52:17]
Just now is not enough. But since you're socially well-behaved, you'll wait till break starts. So just now will have to be enough. Okay. Now the mind, I think you know it, the mind of just now is enough, is surprisingly relaxed. And you can notice that even though it's a fact that just now has to be enough, consciousness doesn't want to accept that. Consciousness has other plans. Yeah. I mean, you know, in America, they always say to you constantly, have a nice day.
[53:35]
And usually I say, thank you. Or I say, I might. But if I, sometimes I say, my consciousness has other plans. Mm-hmm. So you can notice with such a phrase that consciousness does have other plans. Just now usually isn't enough. But I think waiting for a bus, we practice it. And it's possible that the mind of just now is enough. Is always underneath. our usual consciousness.
[54:40]
So even though you feel like, well, I have to do this and I have to do that, so forth, underneath you feel Yes, but actually just now is enough. Okay, so this is asking you to bring the... bring attentional awareness, not consciousness, to these aspects of your life. Okay, so after the break we will speak about how do you develop attentional awareness. in a way that can actually transform our life.
[55:59]
The particular everyday life we have. Not monastic life or Zen life. Or some generalization about everyday life. But your particular hour, your particular everyday life. That's what this teaching is about. Okay, it's 3.30. I'm learning to be on time. Not usually this good, but... Four o'clock we come back, or a little before four?
[57:00]
Okay, thank you very much. It's a pleasure... A sutra is a teaching attributed to the Buddha. The Buddha has been in town doing his daily alms rounds. Yeah, at least that's what it says. And then he returns and has his midday meal. Dann nimmt er das Mittagessen ein.
[58:14]
Dann stellt er seine Schalen weg. Und dann wäscht er seine Füße. Dann bringt er sich in die aufrechte Haltung. and fixes his mind in mindfulness. And then he begins speaking what is the Diamond Sutra. Now this formulaic like once upon a time for a fairy tale, this formulaic way of starting a teaching, which is, you know, you're not getting the Diamond Sutra today, only the Eightfold Path. But we could say, you know, we returned from our coffee break.
[59:30]
And I didn't wash my feet, but you know, this morning I did. Take an upright posture. And then establish myself in mindfulness. And I speak with you. Or I speak with us. Ruka has a poem where he says, not a sound... For the ear. But for a deeper ear that hears us.
[60:33]
From which we are born again. Well, I think Rilke's intuition was something like what I'm talking about. So this is not just a statement about Yeah, how the Buddha started a lecture, adjusted the microphone and so on. But it means the teaching arose from an upright posture and a mind... established in mindfulness.
[61:35]
It also has something to do, like they mentioned that he had lunch and he washed his feet and so forth. This represents a certain pace or pulse in the world. I was talking with somebody about this the other day. They said early books on medicine in the Middle Ages were primarily about pulse and pace.
[62:41]
I think in Diderot's dictionary it was a huge section in the early editions and went down to one reference in the later editions. But in this teaching I'm talking about, your pace or pulse is very much part of this mindfulness, this posture, this teaching. I didn't get that. that this pace, this pulse, this... ...is very much part of this mindfulness and this teaching. You don't have the word in German. That's what Ivan Illich suggests, shriften.
[64:14]
Ivan Illich suggests shriften. It's not about rhythm. But the word pulse, the etymology in English, means to draw near. As the rhythm in music draws you near the music. Yeah, so... I'm trying to say something that draws you near. In mental, in the pace of the mind, We usually rush by that which is nearest.
[65:32]
So this is, you know, again, he takes a posture, he puts away his bowls, he washes his feet. This is all about a certain pace where subject-object separation is less. Okay, how do we come into that? And why does this end with concentration? What kind of concentration does it mean? In this particular teaching, you start in the middle. It's too difficult to start with the beginning. Because mostly we can't see our views because they are our view. It's like how does the eye see the eye?
[66:50]
You need some kind of mirror mind. Okay, so what, again, what kind of attention do we bring to these aspects of our living? Okay, all right. So we have a physical object. And I can bring attention to it. What am I doing when I bring attention to it? I'm bringing attention is mind. I'm bringing mind to the object. and the more I can bring mind to the object without so much of an observer separating that if the observer is less
[68:04]
We're at a period in history where the observing consciousness is the strongest it's ever been, I think. We need an observing consciousness but it can melt and reappear and melt and reappear. Okay, now how do we bring observing consciousness or rather attention to our life with less observing consciousness? And when there is less observing consciousness, that attention is weaving mind and body together.
[69:32]
Mind and body are obviously connected. intimately related. But in our experience, they're not so related. For example, in Zen teaching, all mental states have a physical component. And all physical, sentient physical components states have a mental component.
[70:33]
So part of the practice of mindfulness is to discover the physical aspect of each mind. But for most of us that we just don't have that kind of attentional awareness. We can do it sometimes, but not usually. If you can do it, for example, you probably won't have headaches anymore. You're too in touch with your mind for that to happen. You'll probably have no trouble going to sleep whenever you want to. So there's certain practical fruits. to weaving mind and body together in our experience.
[71:57]
Now, I don't want to present too much at once. I might have already done that. Because usually we can absorb only one or two or three new things at a time. It's not that it's difficult, it's just that it's new. And it's, I think, familiar to you, but the way I'm speaking about it is probably new. Okay, so, but... then how, again I'm asking this question over and over again, how am I going to bring attention to these aspects of my life?
[73:09]
Well, the ancient tradition is to join attention to the breath. And what does the word geist mean, I think? Doesn't it mean breath? Spirit. That's breath. But inspiration, spirit, they're all related to breath. So in our language, we see this ancient... understanding that breath and attention go together.
[74:11]
In the language we see this old understanding that This teaching suggests you bring attention together with your speech. Okay, so that means if you want to practice this, the entry to this practice is to develop the habit of speaking within your breath. So right now, I can feel my breath in my speaking. And I'm not speaking at a mental speed.
[75:14]
I'm speaking at a breath speed. Even the word speed is a very recent idea that things go fast or slow. The pace of the breath and the pace of speech are interrelated. Language requires the activity of the mouth and breath and so forth. and watching my little Sophia, yes, she notices things, but the excitement is to speak it. And as she moves into multi-syllable words, I can see that it deepens her relationship to something when she can say the word or name of it.
[76:48]
So actually... I'm convinced that speaking actually creates the relationship and develops the relationship of mind and body. Okay. So what you do, if you just... I think all of you speak now and then, don't you? If you want to practice in this way, what you do is you try to see if you can speak with an awareness of breath. You don't have to drive your friends crazy.
[78:00]
Yes, I'll go have a cup of coffee. No, you don't want to do that. You just want to get used to sensing breath in your speaking. And multi-syllable words. Anyway, I won't go into it. Okay. Now, if you do this, you're, again, you're weaving mind and body together. If you just do this When you think of it now and then, eventually you find your speaking connected to the breath. First you're speaking and then you're thinking.
[79:31]
And you find yourself thinking with the body. People like to quote our famous genius Einstein. who said that he got his ideas from feelings in his body. And his ideas were convincing when he could do a kind of bodily feeling with the idea. Okay. What am I talking about here? Well, why do lie detectors work a great deal of the time? Because the body, doesn't lie.
[80:45]
It's much harder to get the body to lie than the mind to lie. They asked a bunch of kids, what's the mind for? Almost all of them said to keep secrets. That the body doesn't keep secrets quite so easily. What you do here is you develop through this speech-breath joining. You develop a truth body. And then with this feeling of a kind of authenticity in your thinking and speaking, you bring that into your conduct.
[81:58]
So the entry is through speech and breath. And then you begin to express that in your conduct. Your behavior, I mean, when I move my arm, is that my body? Is that my mind? Is that my speaking? I mean, I said I would move my body and look what happened. You can't separate body, speech and mind. And when you make that relationship more important, awareness itself, your conduct is transformed.
[83:08]
When you start acting in ways that is contradictory to your deeper feelings, You don't feel good. So this little exercise here I'm giving you, of bringing attention to your breath through your speech, through your breath, Is it? We can call it a meditation practice. And your conduct leads to your livelihood, how you... Work in the world.
[84:09]
Generally, this is called right views, right intentions, right, etc. And right livelihood has become a kind of, in English, a rather famous phrase. It was the phrase lots of scientists used during the Vietnam War to say, I will not do things that support the war. The phrase was just sort of part of common culture. It wasn't part of a practice of the Eightfold Path. But in these extreme circumstances of the war, they understood that they had to bring their conduct and their views and their mind together.
[85:21]
Okay. So I think I'd like to have some questions now or comments or anything you'd like me to speak about. And if you're planning to come tomorrow You can tell me what you'd like me to speak about tomorrow. Yes. I would like to see that we also practice something and not only talk about things. You mean you'd like to sit? I brought a blanket and a cushion, and I expected that we would practice something.
[86:42]
Okay. All right. That's one thing. Yeah. Go ahead. If you try to apply this to this world of ours, all its complexity, does information or knowledge come in there or does the world put its voice in there? Can you say that in German? Yes. I don't know if we have these eight... Is there a point where information or knowledge plays a role? Actually, knowledge doesn't come in much.
[87:56]
This is, you could call this a kind of knowledge. But really, what comes into this is wisdom, and wisdom is not knowledge. At least in the way, I mean, I'm not saying I'm just saying that's the way it's looked at in this kind of practice. And I think tomorrow, when I speak about the three minds of daily consciousness, I can make clear in which mind is knowledge. And this is trying to function at a more fundamental level than what we know or don't know. Yes.
[89:18]
Yes. Does awareness mean that, like you mentioned with your daughter, that it is about thinking, that thoughts disappear, they are not there? Consciousness isn't there in awareness. Okay, this distinction between awareness and consciousness is my attempt to use English words to make some sort of distinction.
[90:19]
So let me give you my example, a couple examples of my attempt to define awareness. If you go to bed sometime in the evening, And you decide to wake up at a particular time. And you don't have an alarm clock. And you say, I think I'll wake up at 6.02. And you say to yourself, I'll wake up at 6.02. And you wake up at 6.02. I mean, it's surprising. So many people can do that. But you weren't conscious during the night.
[91:21]
But something allowed the intention to be present. And I would call that... I would call that awareness. It's present while you're sleeping. And can function with dreams. It can function with intention. It can... Or let's say you're walking along in the street out here. And it's rainy and it gets icy. And you're carrying a glass pitcher you just bought as a present.
[92:28]
And you slip and fall. Probably. You catch yourself, you protect the pitcher and don't hurt yourself. But you're not exactly thinking. It's faster than thinking. Consciousness can't go that fast. So it's like awareness is waiting there, unexpressed, until you fall. Yeah. So awareness has some kind of mental activity like intention or the ability to keep you from falling, but it doesn't have ordinary conscious thinking.
[93:36]
Yeah, okay. What's the difference to unconsciousness in the sense of Freud used it? Oh dear! The idea of the unconscious is particularly Western. And I don't think, although I know I'm going against some people's views. That human beings have always had an unconscious. I think in some cultures those boundaries are much more fluid.
[94:55]
And the practice of meditation is to change those boundaries. But to say any more than that we'd need another few days, right? Another afternoon. Yes. You said something that I particularly find interesting, but I don't understand. That's most of what I say. I feel that way about you. Why don't you stand up so we can hear? Thank you. You said that various or different states of mind don't know anything about each other. Not always. But waking mind doesn't know that much about dreaming mind.
[96:08]
And waking and dreaming mind know virtually nothing about the mind of deep sleep. But one of the original inspirations, I think, for Buddhism But one of the original inspirations in Buddhism, as far as I know,
[96:32]
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