"Mind" capitalised, is Paul Brunton's modern western term for that indescribable Reality which in various traditions has been named the Absolute, the One, God, or the unfathomable Tao. This Reality cannot be grasped by our senses or intellect, but is still available to us. If we cultivate an inner seeing, or insight, we will one day discover it.
"We are not saying that something of the nature of mind as we humans know it is the supreme reality of the universe but only that it is more like that reality than anything else we know of and certainly more like it than what we call "matter," says Paul Brunton in explaining his choice of the term. The simplest way to express this is to say that
Reality is of the nature of our mind rather than of our body, although it is Mind transcending the familiar phases and raised to infinity. It is the ultimate being, the highest state. This is the Principle which forever remains what it was and will be. It is in the universe and yet the universe is in it too. It never evolves, for it is outside of time. It has no shape, for it is outside of space. It is beyond man's consciousness, for it is beyond both his thoughts and sense experience, yet all consciousness springs mysteriously from out of it. Nevertheless man may enter into its knowledge, may enter into its Void, so soon as he can stop his thoughts, let go of his sense-experience, but keep his sense of being."'
Thoughts are inconceivable without mind but, according to Paul Brunton, that doesn't mean that the mind is inconceivable without thoughts.
Mind has a primary existence. When it is absorbed in itself, it has no content and is indivisible, unitary. This Mind, which his our most fundamental reality, we first discover when we have withdrawn our attention from sensations, thoughts, and feelings, and directed it inwards.
"How can we be assured of the truth of insight? By the disappearance of ignorance, its opposite number; the two cannot coexist. Its
truth is not an argument but an achievement. The coming of insight means that blindness has gone. The man can see where before his eyes were firmly shut by illusion. Henceforth
there is that in him which fixes its gaze steadfastly on the timeless, the Real, and the Impersonal. Insight alone has the power to pronounce on the universal truth and eternal reality of existence, because it alone has the power to penetrate the world appearance and to contemplate that bliss behind it."
"It is only in the rational, balanced growth of the mind and the sympathetic heart, the disciplined body and the tranquilized nerves, the philosophic reflectiveness, mystic peace, and ultramystic insight, that one arrives at maturity and thus becomes really sane."
"When this truth is at last seen, that heaven is not a place in space but a condition of being, and that therefore it can to a certain extent be realized even before death, a feeling of joy and a sense of adventure are felt."
"If he lets this purpose penetrate his entire life, he will soon joyously feel that
he is part of the eternal structure of the universe, that he fits into the idea of it at some point, and that with such a high relationship all things must work together for his ultimate good."
Originally Posted by timewaster
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