The Mind Defined...
Continued
The brain cannot be hypnotized but the human mind can be hypnotized in just a few seconds, particularly if in a state of confusion. In fact, a person under hypnosis can be told to put their arm in a fire that is not really there, and they may still get blisters on their arm. This of course depends on the current susceptibility of the subject and the expertise of the hypnotist. (Lifestar Note)
An Observation of the Mind
“The mind at first observation seems to be a non-stop talking machine with a constant barrage of endless thoughts, ideas concepts, meanings, memories, plans, apprehensions, doubts, and nonsense verses. Then arise fragments of music, past events, stories, paragraphs, scenarios, opinions, speculations, images of objects, and people past and present. Next come imaginations, fantasies, daydreams, fears, speculations, and phantasmagoria. Interspersed with all this endless babble are fragments of news, media events, scenes from movies, television shows, and Internet conversations. On top of all this are financial and business worries, bills to be paid, schemes, family, culture, politics, concerns and so on, ad infinitum”.
“At first glance, there is a seeming overwhelm and hopeless morass over which one has very little, if any, control. With focus and concentration, some logical thought sequences are possible, but then the mind quickly lapses back into its restless sea of thoughts, images, and fantasies, with no surcease”.
“Can any sense be made of all these? Is there any place one could start to even approach this utter madhouse”?
“The Buddha said that the true self is glimpsed in the space between the thoughts, and yet, there seems to be no cessation in the mind’s endless activities. If anything, the mind seems to engage in endless frenetic activity as though it dreaded a moment of silence more than anything else. Does it fear that silence more than anything else? Does it fear that silence will mean that its end has come? It seems to pin its hope of survival on non-stop chatter. It will, in fact, quickly fill in any possibility of silence with nonsense rhymes or senseless sound bites; it will start chanting “cha-cha-cha” or “itty-bitty-boo” or “bee-bop-a-boo” —— anything rather than silence. What in the world is going on with the mind”?
Motive
“By observation it can be seen that beneath the images and words themselves, there is a driving energy, a desire to think, to mentate, to keep busy with any input the mind can find to fill in the gaps. One can detect a drive to “thinkingness," which is impersonal. With observation, one can detect that there is no “I” thinking the thoughts at all. In fact, the “I” rarely intervenes. The real “I” has trouble even getting in a few sensible words or thoughts. When it is capable of this, we call this intervention “concentration,” but it takes effort and energy to push aside the babble and distractions to be able to organize a sequence of logical thoughts”.
“The first part of such a process is to focus on the desired subject and limit the stream of content to the topic chosen for contemplation. Psychologists here surmise that the stream of thought is determined by instinctual drives, or that the content of thought is organized according to associations and conditioning. All the theorizing about the nature of thoughts surmise that there is an inner thinker, an invisible homunculus who sits in charge of this ongoing, multifactorial set of processes called mentation”.