Consciousness and the world of being human

We underestimate imagination. We often construed fantasy as something children do before they grow up and adults return to only when reality becomes boring. Or we recognise it only when it appears to serve a function, such as in prayer, without necessarily realising that we are already engaging the faculty of imagination. But imagination is access to many portals and universes; it is the ultimate mycelium network through which all things, and perhaps everything, are connected and can be accessed. The moment we step into the act of imagination, we are no longer entirely limited by what is just physically available to us. It is a place from where we can challenge the laws of physics and gravity; money and economy become irrelevant, time can move backwards or forwards, and the permissions of ordinary life no longer apply. It is a place of creation and from where all things are made possible. You could sit with someone who died twenty years ago and finally say goodbye or laugh with them. You can place your childhood self in front of you and tell them what nobody told them then. You can meet an ex, finish a conversation that ended abruptly, apologise, rage, forgive or simply listen. Maybe nothing in the physical world has changed because of that act of imagination, yet something within your relationship to it may have. Fantasy is a place where we rehearse life before living it. Before the meeting, the presentation, the game, a difficult conversation. We can win a marathon in that imagination, participate in an experience we cannot afford in time or economy, spend a day inhabiting another identity, have sex on a beach, become someone else entirely, or step into another person's world and discover how the same event looks entirely different from there. Imagination is pleasure, fantasy, pornography, prayer, meditation, mythology, fairy tales, music, poetry, logos, stories and inventions. Its application is everywhere, whether we explicitly speak about it or not. It lives in churches and temples, in counselling rooms and meditation halls, in the dreams that become films and stories, in the artist's work, in the engineer's design and in the scientist's question: what if? Before the moment of discovery, before the experiment confirms anything, something first was imagined. The atom, the cell, the black hole, the laws through which we attempt to understand the universe, each required the human mind to reach towards something beyond the physical hands at that point in time and context.

Every physical thing around us that was once absent had to become imaginable before it could become real. Imagination is perhaps one of the few human capacities that moves so freely across disciplines like psychology, spirituality, art, medicine, science, architecture, engineering and invention all depend, in their own ways, on the ability to see what is not yet visible. These portals of imagination have no boundaries, yet the one who imagines has. The question is not whether we enter fantasy; we all do. The question is whether we can return. Can we move in and out, access multiple realities, and still know the difference between the world we create and the one we collectively inhabit? Imagination can be creative, reparative and liberating, but it can also hold fear, anxiety, trauma and memories that return with such force that the past feels present. Somewhere beneath our deliberate thoughts, images, dreams and metaphors continue to hold things we may not yet know how to say directly. Perhaps that is why imagination matters. It gives form to what is absent, unfinished, desired, feared and not yet possible. It allows us to access multiple realities while remaining aware that we are standing at the doorway.

And then there is an ancient curiosity that I keep thinking about. What was it that Socrates, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, Muhammad and so many others who came before us were attempting to communicate? Their linguistic patterns and tone were different from that of today, their worlds and methods were different. What did they encounter, observe or understand that made their words travel across centuries? Perhaps the question is not whether we should believe them. Perhaps it is simply whether there is something in human experience worth looking beyond, deeper, within and without. If imagination gives us access to many portals, multiple descriptions and universes, then perhaps the curious question is: what stops us from accessing these states of being and consciousness? What takes us away from them? Or are they even real? Are we searching for something that exists beneath the surface of ordinary experience, or are we merely creating another theory about the ball we call Earth and the surface upon which we live? One response to the inquiry of what takes us away from such consciousness is distraction, busyness, tiredness and the endless occupations, temptations of ordinary life. Perhaps it is not that the possibility of accessing these states disappears, but that the enquiry itself disappears beneath everything else that demands our attention. We move from one thought to another, from one notification to the next, from memory to fear, from desire to whatever follows, sometimes even moving on before we have spent enough time with any one experience to understand what it is doing to us. Another answer could be attachment. Even when imagination gives us access to all that is, was and may yet be, we might immediately want to possess what we find there, repeat it, control it or want to make it stay. And when what we encounter is not desirable like fear, anxiety, pain or an old unwanted memory, we might want to get away from it as quickly as possible. Curiously, the attachment to pleasure and the attachment to getting away from suffering are both still forms of attachment. Both wanting and not wanting are, in their own way, still wanting. Milton says, non-wanting can itself become wanting what you do not want. It still keeps us within the same realm. One keeps reaching for something; the other keeps running from something. In both, our attention is occupied. Perhaps this is why attachment is such a funny thing. It can keep us deeply inside the experience, inside the wanting, inside the body that feels the wanting, while the outcome of meditation seems to be a whole new realm, a realm from which you witness and observe. Not to become indifferent, and not to obsess. The one who is attached even to the idea of attachment (or detachment) may find it difficult to observe, because they are already inside the experience, trying to hold it, change it or escape it. This is one of those pieces of learning that can sound very simple until, at some unexpected moment, you get it. I remember Judy, during a class called NLP Meets Buddha in Moscow, speaking about a structure of suffering that moved between obsession and indifference. She said, “In between lies the power.” Dick had shared something remarkably similar with us during a Gestalt class of 2011. Perhaps this is one way of describing equanimity.

Meditation may not be a method of controlling the mind, because the mind that attempts to control the mind is itself another aspect of the mind and can become distracted by its own attempt at control. The attempt to stand outside the mind and conquer it may itself be an illusion. The mind need not be conquered. It is part of the system, it is not the whole of it. Here, the knowing from Gestalt becomes particularly curious. We are not merely working with these individual parts; we are also attending to the one that has these parts. In Ānāpānasati, the practice begins with: I know I am breathing in; I know I am breathing out. But if we stay with those words for a moment, and bring in curiosity, Who is this ‘I’? There appears to be an ‘I’ that is breathing, and another ‘I’ that knows the breathing is happening. One participates in the act; the other seems to be the witness of it. The distinction is such an important distinction, even though that is presented to you linguistically, its got an entire ocean underneath it. If I am breathing and I know that I am breathing, then who is the ‘I’ that knows? And when attention turns towards that observer, what is the reflection? This is where language begins to reach its limits. It is a blunt tool and all we can offer now is the language of meditation and not meditation itself. Some traditions speak of the subtle body and of dimensions of sensory experience that become available when participation changes its quality. Yet these, too, are only finger pointing towards the moon. Stillness may be part of it, though not a dead stillness. The trees are still and yet they move; clouds continue to pass. Thoughts may arise, sensations may change, sounds may come and go. Perhaps meditation is not found by removing these things, but in discovering what remains available while they happen.

So, everything said and done, perhaps meditation is the practice of aligning all of yourself, all, all of you, into a particular quality of participation. I sometimes think of this as frequency management, though the word frequency here is simply a way of describing the act of tuning in. Like an FM radio, you have to tune into a particular station if you want to listen to what is being transmitted there. Or like dialling a number, you have to reach the right connection before a conversation can begin. Perhaps meditation is something similar, a way of tuning oneself into an experience, a state of being or a dimension of awareness, and then remaining present long enough to witness what is there. It is like being here and yet being able to access that something or someone, their world, their presence, even their conversation. These days, life itself is becoming increasingly blurred; there is often very little distance between augmentation and what we call reality. We already have so many metaphors and experiences for augmentation that perhaps we sometimes confuse the concept with the practice. But the concept is not the practice, and the practice is not the experience. You can read about meditation without meditating. You can even be sitting conceptually  without having the experience you expected. And even when you step in the experience, the question is who is experiencing it? Who is the witness?

So meditation is the bringing together of intention, attention, body, sensation, breath, memory, imagination and awareness. In no way are we required to control them or punish them, but perhaps to participate differently in what is already happening. 

"Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”.

Matthew 18:3

And perhaps imagination without conclusion, attachment, expectation, fixed points of view, conclusions or urgency is about what the kingdom is. There is ancient human literature that reads, ‘I am that I am’, or Aham Brahmasmi to reference another literature altogether. Yet the experience itself remains sensory. It is the subjective truth of the meditator. No two people enter through exactly the same door. Each one steps with a different body, history, strategy, programme, belief and understanding. One may enter through breath, another through prayer, another through stillness, movement, sound, imagination or silence. We are not the same. And yet, perhaps, when we step into the ocean, our oceans too are very different. The difference in in our linguistic organisation or experiences. And I think intuition works a little like GPS. It communicates through your sensory channels when you have hit a bump or a block, when something does not feel good, when there is an ease or when there is discomfort. It is a message. It may not come to you in complete sentences, and it may not always tell you where to go, but something is telling you about the path. Perhaps the question is whether we are listening. Consciousness is infinite; no one owns it, and no one can. We have our own languages, our own theories, our own explanations and our own experiences, but no one owns the inquiry. Each one enters the portal differently. Each one stays there with their own strategies, programmes and understanding. We are not the same. But perhaps, once you get there, it is all the same. 

Meaning or description is not one thing. To describe something is to frame it within linguistic patters and structures of culture and history, perhaps it even explains how something works. Imagination, sensation, memory, thought, body and awareness can remain distinct, while participating in something larger than any one of them. And perhaps meaning begins in that movement too, when what once appeared separate slowly begins to find its place in the whole.

The Circus, the Flesh and the Economy of Distraction

Now that we have looked at imagination and meditation, distraction begins to look slightly different. It is not only something that happens accidentally. Human attention has become valuable. There are industries, technologies and systems built around knowing what catches the eye, what produces anticipation, what makes the hand reach for the phone, what keeps us scrolling after we had intended to stop. The small notification, the vibration in the pocket, the next video, the possibility of a message, a like, a reward or something new. We are, after all, human. We are sensory beings. We are drawn towards pleasure, novelty, sex, food, approval, belonging and the promise that the next thing might contain something we do not yet have. Temptation does not have to break down the door. Often, it only has to know which door is already open. This is an old human struggle. Vishwamitra, deep in his austerities, is remembered for being distracted by Menaka. The Buddha, on the threshold of awakening, encounters Mara and the many forms of temptation brought before him. In Greek mythology, Odysseus has himself tied to the mast so that he can hear the Sirens without being carried away by them. And the same struggle has not disappeared from modern life. Bill Clinton, at the height of political power, became publicly entangled in desire and its consequences.Different worlds, different stories, yet the human struggle remains familiar. We can know one thing and still reach for another. We can decide to stop and continue. We can be aware that something is occupying us and still remain occupied by it. Desire has its own momentum, and guilt and pleasure can therefore exist on the same plane. That is how we fall into our addictions. A painfully tight shoe can be uncomfortable for hours, until the moment you finally take it off. The sudden relief can feel extraordinarily good, almost a pleasure in it. And somewhere in that strange human design lies the possibility of wearing the shoe again, tightening it again, only to experience that relief by taking it off. Guilt and pleasure, suffering and relief, wanting and not wanting, can sometimes occupy the same plane. Desire has its own momentum. Wow. The human struggle is real. In the contemporary world, this design has acquired screens, sounds, colours, algorithms and an economy around it. The circus is always open, and now even more than ever before. What makes this human vulnerability more interesting is that it does not exist in isolation. There are people and institutions who understand attention, desire and human behaviour well enough to build entire economies around them. Distraction, then, is not always accidental. It can be designed, through strategies that know how to keep us wanting, reaching and returning for more. Attention has value, and there are architects and beneficiaries of the circus. The design works because it meets something that already exists within us.

And so, the journey does not really end with an answer, the curiosity always remains. What are we doing with the life that is happening while we are busy looking somewhere else? We may spend years searching for extraordinary experiences, distant destinations and profound explanations, while something quietly continues to happen within the ordinary moment. There is no final position to arrive at and remain forever. Human beings change, lose their way, remember, begin again and change again. Some days bring clarity and some bring noise. There are moments when we feel connected to something larger and moments when we are completely occupied by the smallest thing in front of us. Both belong to the journey. What matters is not perfection. It is the possibility of coming home. To ourself, a self beyond this body. The world does not disappear when an inner journey begins. There are still people to love, work to do, bodies to care for, pleasures to enjoy and consequences to live with. Maybe that is where this enquiry finally rests. Not in leaving life behind, but in living it with enough awareness to know that we are here while it is happening. Take care, be well, and happy journey.