The Map and the Territory
El mapa y el territorio
A student describes feeling two parts of the mind in tension during meditation: one trying to dissolve boundaries and another fighting to maintain them. The teacher explores how all perceived boundaries are mental maps overlaid on raw experience, and how seeing this clearly dissolves the conflict without force.
The Map and the Territory
A student describes feeling two parts of the mind in tension during meditation: one trying to dissolve boundaries and another fighting to maintain them. The teacher explores how all perceived boundaries are mental maps overlaid on raw experience, and how seeing this clearly dissolves the conflict without force.
One or two things came up in the meditation. When you were guiding us to that sense of being, I felt it clearly in the area behind the head and the chest. At first I noticed that this sense is there almost all the time, and sometimes it's as if the boundaries relaxed. But what I felt I was doing is: I could see the images, I could see the tension in the body, I could see how the projection works (the space outside is the birds, inside is me). At the same time, I felt as if one part of the mind was pushing against the other. One part was trying to push the part that creates the boundaries, trying to make it see that they're just mental boundaries, just mind. I noticed that dynamic.
And the other thing that arose was this: when we talk about what is limitless, are we talking about the sense of who I am, the "I am"? Because it's the same as saying I'm not the body. Obviously a body has some kind of limit. I've touched the limit of my skin; if I pinch it, it hurts, and if I pinch the computer, it doesn't hurt me. So even though physics says that limit is also imaginary or not really real, there is some kind of boundary. But we're talking about who I feel I am, which really isn't even infinite; it's spaceless. Something like that, right?
Yes.
The brain that can't feel itself
Consider this: if you have brain surgery, you don't need anesthesia for them to do a lot of things in your brain, because you have no sense of pain there. Your skull could be fully open and they could be poking your brain, and you would not feel it. It would be as if somebody were touching a table.
To start, you have a reasoning that justifies a boundary. There's a kind of reasoning that justifies "I am the body, this is me, and that's not me." You're saying, well, physics says this, but there's still some justification because your body is appearing just as the world is appearing. If you identify with the body, then you will create and find some kind of separation. But you could say you are not your body. Your body is appearing inside your experience, your awareness. If your body is something you call "I," why isn't the rest of the world also "I"? That's the question.
But there is some kind of link to our body. It hurts in the body and it doesn't hurt outside, that kind of thing, right?
Yes, but I'm pointing out one example of something you could say is intimately you. Most neuroscientists would think consciousness comes from the brain, and yet you could touch the brain and not feel anything. That's just a small point to show how the reasoning that justifies some kind of separation has flaws.
You can't fight a belief with force
So look at the tendency to justify, and the resistance. You're talking about two parts: one that wants to dissolve the boundaries and one that's fighting to create them. What I'm pointing to is that there's nothing to dissolve. There are no boundaries, really. It's just believing that they're there. You can't fight a belief by pushing or forcing. You just have to see reality.
If you believe something is true and it isn't, you can't have an inner debate fighting yourself to convince yourself. You just have to see. As soon as you see what is true, that belief is gone. What I'm pointing to is all the different angles from which you can explore these beliefs. It's really this sense of "I am here, I have a boundary, and the rest of the world is out there."
You're saying, "If you touch my body, I feel it. If I touch the table, I don't." I'm saying, "If you touch your brain, you don't feel it." So your brain is like the table. You're using the sense of touch as a way to define the boundary. But you can go even deeper and look at the actual experience, because right now you're trying to debate maps. You create a map and try to debate where the boundary is on that map, justifying the rationale of the map. What I'm saying is: can you see that it is a map? The whole process of creating a boundary is a map. That's the reality you need to see.
Layers of map upon map
The meditation is designed to walk you through a whole range of territories where you would naturally think there are lines and boundaries, like where your toes are. But if you look at your current, direct, raw experience, you don't even know there's a foot there unless you're looking at it. You only know through memory. Through memory you can build a mental construct of a map, which is the image of a foot, and then you can superimpose that on the sensation. You can do this with your eyes closed or eyes open. The mind is very powerful, very complex, and it's constantly projecting these maps onto all of our experience.
That doesn't have to stop. You can't function without it. The problem is to believe that it is absolutely real, that reality is like that, that it is separated. All of that supports a primal sense of separation, and any questioning of it is going to bring up resistance. You can't push against that with force and try to break down a barrier of separation, because there is no such thing. It's just the belief that it is real. So look at the belief.
Experiment with things you can focus on, like your foot. It sounds like a silly experiment, but you can go so deep into it and notice how, even when you think you're just having the sensation of "foot," there are very subtle layers of map upon map upon map. When you really go into the sensation, you will feel like you are disappearing into it, because the sense of "I" and "sensation" is also a map. The sense of "I am feeling my foot" is something that happens through a subtle layer of thinking.
Starting with the foot, moving to the chest
We start with something like a foot because it's far away from where we identify. It's going to bring up very little resistance. But as soon as you start moving to the chest and the head, that's where you're going to start to fight it, because there's a part of you that doesn't want to let go. Then you can also look at that: why don't you want to let go? What's the gain? Because there are a lot of people in this process of working to wake up, and there's a hidden agenda.
Imagination and reality are at the same level
When I say the world is not absolutely real, I'm referring to the map. You will be so accustomed to having this layer of thinking, dividing, and identifying everything that at every waking moment you will be projecting a map onto reality. That is fine. I describe this projection as mind and imagination, because when you imagine a unicorn flying in the sky, it is as real as the sense of you walking to the bathroom. They exist at the same level of reality. One is more practical than the other; one map may be a better map for navigating. But they're both at the same level of reality, in the sense that they are just imagination, just mind.
We tend to separate them and say, "Oh, the unicorn is not real, but I and the world are." But in raw experience, there is no unicorn, there is no "me," there is no any of that. All of it exists in the world of imagination. Sometimes that world of imagination has problems, and that needs to be addressed. But when somebody is somewhat functional and interested in this topic, then we can talk about it. "Okay, this is imagination." I call it imagination purposefully, so that we don't think it's separate from any other kind of imagination.
When you think about where you come from right now, all of what you can conceive is imagination. You can refer to it as memory; it's imagination informed by memory. When you think of where you're going, it's one hundred percent imagination. You can predict and be more or less accurate about what's going to happen, where you're going to go, what reality is going to be, but it's one hundred percent imagination. Some people need a lot of work and adjustment there. But it's still the world of thinking and imagination.
The deepest assumed layer
What I'm pointing to is this: you will have a whole functioning of imagination that you will take for real. You will say, "This is not imagination. This is real. This is how raw reality is. And then over here is me thinking about it and having imagination about it." But there's a whole layer that is going to be assumed to be real. One of them, the deep one, is that there's a me and there's a world.
This is the work of self-inquiry. The more you look at "What am I? Who am I? Where am I?", you cannot answer it. Everything starts to break down, because there's really nothing there other than in the world of thinking and imagination.
Raw sensation versus imagination
What that can do is help you see, with discerning clarity, what is imagination, what is mind, and what is sensation. We know very easily what is sound and what is sight; we don't confuse them. But what can happen is that we think sound and sight are separate: there's a world of sound, there's a world of sight, and we can alternate our attention between them. We know they're running in parallel. But actually look for where sound ends and sight begins. It's a really interesting one.
Then there's the world of sensation, what you feel and have mapped as coming through the body: touch, basically. Sight, sound, touch, and then the world that we project, that we see and touch as "outside." But even a neuroscientist will tell you that everything you're experiencing is built one hundred percent by your mind.
Now we get into the complexity of two kinds of mind. One is the mind that builds the world through perception and sensation. The other is the thinking mind that maps it. What I'm trying to point to is that one I call raw sensation and perception, and the other is imagination. Notice those are two separate things. Notice how you overlay imagination on raw sensation and forget about raw sensation. The imagination becomes the real reality, and raw sensation becomes secondary. They are the other way around.
Then there's more, because raw sensation is also projected by awareness. But I don't want to confuse things too much.