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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
Man’s deepest difficulty is not simply that he faces pain, loss, conflict, illness, or death. These are conditions of life that occur in one form or another throughout nature. His distinctive difficulty is that he develops an individual mind and then becomes deeply attached to the individuality produced by that mind.
This attachment gives rise to a basic anomaly: a person mistakes what he has accumulated, inherited, learned, performed, or imagined for what he fundamentally is. He does not merely possess a body, a social role, memories, abilities, opinions, and possessions. He gradually comes to be them in his own estimation.
When any of these forms are threatened, criticized, changed, or lost, he experiences the threat as a threat to his very being. Much of human suffering begins at this point.
Individuality is a distinct collection of qualities, characteristics, traits, memories, habits, capacities, preferences, physical features, relationships, social roles, and beliefs. No two individuals have precisely the same collection.
One person may be quiet, analytical, physically strong, proud of family tradition, trained as an engineer, politically committed, and devoted to a particular religious outlook. Another may be artistic, socially expressive, ambitious, sensitive to criticism, proud of appearance, and identified with professional achievement. Each collection forms a recognizable personality.
There is nothing inherently wrong with individuality. A distinct body, temperament, skill set, and history make practical life possible. Individuality permits cooperation, communication, creativity, and responsibility. We need names, roles, memories, and abilities in order to function in the world.
The anomaly begins when the person identifies with these elements as the totality of himself.
To identify means more than to recognize that something belongs to oneself. A person can say, “This is my coat,” without thinking that damage to the coat is damage to his essential being. Identification occurs when the distinction between the observer and the observed disappears.
The person no longer says, “I have a body.” He feels, “I am this body.”
He no longer says, “I perform the role of a parent, teacher, businessperson, or artist.” He feels, “I am only this role.”
He no longer says, “I hold certain ideas.” He feels, “I am my ideas.”
At that point, any change to the body, role, or idea becomes psychologically charged. The person reacts not merely to a circumstance, but to a perceived threat against “I.”
A common identification is with the body and its appearance. A person may believe that he is a body that must be attractive, youthful, strong, healthy, admired, or sexually desirable. He may organize his sense of worth around a physical condition that inevitably changes.
Consider a person whose self-image depends heavily on being good looking. As long as he receives praise, attention, and admiration, he may feel secure. But if he ages, gains weight, loses hair, develops an illness, or sees someone more conventionally attractive, he may feel diminished.
The suffering does not arise solely from the physical change. Bodies change by their nature. The suffering arises from the conclusion:
“If this appearance changes, then I am less.”
This conclusion turns a natural physical process into an existential crisis.
Similarly, an athlete may identify so completely with physical capability that an injury becomes more than a practical limitation. It becomes a collapse of identity. The person may think, “Without my strength, speed, or performance, I do not know who I am.”
Yet strength, speed, beauty, and health are conditions of the body. They are not the awareness that knows those conditions.
A person can observe that he feels strong one day and weak another day. That which notices strength and weakness cannot itself be identical with either condition. The body is experienced; therefore, it is an object within awareness rather than the ultimate subject that is aware.
A person may also identify with a role that he believes must be successful. Such a role may be that of a professional, parent, spouse, leader, scholar, teacher, religious devotee, public figure, entrepreneur, or citizen of a particular nation.
Roles have practical value. A surgeon must perform surgery well. A parent must care for a child. A teacher must teach. A business owner must make decisions. But when the person’s existence becomes tied to success in the role, the role becomes a prison.
For example, a businessperson may spend decades building a company. He may gradually come to regard the company’s success as proof of his own worth. If the business fails because of a recession, technological change, competition, or an error in judgment, he may experience not only financial loss but personal annihilation.
He may say, “I am a failure.”
But this statement confuses an event with an identity. A business may fail. A plan may fail. A particular attempt may fail. None of these facts establish that awareness itself has failed.
The same confusion can affect a parent. A mother or father may identify with being the parent of a high-achieving child. If the child chooses an unexpected path, struggles in school, rejects family expectations, or becomes independent in a way the parent did not foresee, the parent may experience shame or resentment. The child’s life becomes entangled with the parent’s need to preserve a particular self-image.
The role that was meant to serve life then becomes something that life must serve.
When a person is identified with a role, he may no longer see the people around him as they are. He sees them according to whether they support or threaten his identity. His child becomes “my success” or “my embarrassment.” His employees become “my proof of leadership.” His spouse becomes “my source of validation.” His community becomes “my audience.”
Such possessiveness creates conflict because living beings do not remain fixed in the forms demanded by another person’s identity.
Another powerful identification is with thought. A person may believe that his opinions, philosophy, political position, religious doctrine, scientific theory, artistic taste, or intellectual reputation must be admired and accepted.
Ideas are useful instruments. They allow human beings to organize experience, test possibilities, communicate observations, and make plans. But ideas become destructive when they are treated as the self.
A person who holds an opinion may say, “I believe this is true.” That statement leaves room for inquiry. It permits evidence, correction, dialogue, and learning.
But a person who identifies with an opinion feels, “If this idea is wrong, I am wrong. If someone rejects it, they reject me. If I revise it, I lose myself.”
This makes honest examination difficult. The person may defend an idea long after evidence has weakened it because he is no longer protecting a proposition; he is protecting an identity.
For example, two friends may begin a discussion about politics, religion, education, or philosophy. If each treats his view as an object available for examination, the discussion may be vigorous but constructive. Each can ask, “What evidence supports that?” or “What am I missing?”
If, however, each experiences criticism of his view as a personal attack, the conversation becomes hostile. Neither person is listening. Each is defending the psychological territory called “me.”
This is why arguments about ideas can become more emotional than arguments about practical facts. A disagreement over where to eat may be resolved easily. But a disagreement over a deeply identified belief may evoke anger, contempt, fear, or hatred, because the belief has been fused with the person’s sense of existence.
The mind then treats a challenge to thought as though it were a challenge to life itself.
The body is a form of matter. Social position, wealth, physical action, and status involve forms of energy and activity. Ideas, memories, beliefs, images, and opinions are forms of thought. A person may become possessive of all three.
He may be possessive of matter:
He may be possessive of energy and action:
He may be possessive of thought:
Possessiveness is not limited to physical ownership. It is the demand that a form remain under one’s control and continue to support one’s identity.
A person may be possessive of his pain, for example. He may repeat an old grievance so frequently that it becomes part of his identity. The original injury may have been real, and justice may still be needed. But the mind can become attached to the role of the injured person. Letting go of the grievance may then feel like losing oneself.
Likewise, a person may be possessive of success. Even after achieving security or recognition, he may be unable to rest because he fears losing the form through which he has defined himself. The more he clings to it, the more anxiety accompanies it.
Thus, possession develops into identification, and identification develops into bondage.
A person can become so immersed in his identifications that he lives as though he were nothing but the forms with which he identifies. He may not know that he is doing this.
The individual who lives as the body is governed by appearance, pleasure, pain, age, and physical comparison.
The individual who lives as a role is governed by status, approval, duty, success, failure, and social expectations.
The individual who lives as thought is governed by agreement, disagreement, intellectual pride, ideology, and the need to be right.
In each case, life becomes defensive. The person is constantly engaged in maintaining a constructed self. He seeks praise because praise appears to strengthen that self. He fears criticism because criticism appears to weaken it. He resists change because change threatens the continuity of the identity.
This is the anomaly of Man: he uses forms that are temporary, variable, and observable in order to establish a permanent and unchanging self.
But no form can provide that permanence.
The body changes. Roles change. Circumstances change. Possessions come and go. Relationships develop and end. Opinions mature, dissolve, or are replaced. Even memory is incomplete and subject to reinterpretation.
To demand permanence from impermanent forms is to create inevitable suffering.
Some identifications may be inherited through the biological and psychological blueprint passed down by ancestors. A person may arrive with certain temperamental tendencies: caution, aggression, sensitivity, sociability, competitiveness, anxiety, resilience, or a particular way of responding to threat.
He may also inherit physical features, predispositions, family patterns, and cultural narratives that become part of his initial sense of self.
For example, a child may inherit a tendency toward strong emotional reactivity. If that tendency is reinforced by family responses, he may later identify himself as “an angry person,” “a fearful person,” or “a person who must always be on guard.” What began as a tendency becomes a conclusion about who he is.
Other identifications are acquired through upbringing and society.
A child repeatedly praised for intelligence may identify with being “the smart one.” This can create pressure to appear knowledgeable at all times. Later in life, he may avoid asking questions, admitting uncertainty, or attempting difficult work because he fears appearing unintelligent.
Another child may be repeatedly told that he is troublesome, weak, lazy, clumsy, or disappointing. He may carry that assessment into adulthood as though it were a permanent fact. Even when his abilities change, he may continue to act from the old identification.
Social institutions also provide powerful identities:
These descriptions may be factually relevant. A person does have a nationality, background, occupation, and history. The error lies in treating any description as the final answer to the question of being.
The person experiences these identifications as “I.” Because he experiences them as himself, he wants them to endure forever.
He wants the attractive body to remain attractive. He wants the successful role to remain successful. He wants the admired idea to remain admired. He wants the family name, reputation, possessions, memories, and self-image to continue.
This desire is understandable. The mind seeks continuity because discontinuity appears as death. If the constructed “I” changes or dissolves, the person may feel that he himself is disappearing.
But the constructed self is already changing continuously. Its content is never fixed.
The child, adolescent, adult, employee, parent, student, spouse, leader, believer, skeptic, success, failure, victor, and victim are changing positions in the movement of life. They are real as experiences and practical descriptions, but they are not permanent identities.
The problem is not that these conditions arise. The problem is the insistence that they must remain and that they must define the whole of one’s being.
A person who identifies with youth suffers from aging. A person who identifies with health suffers from illness. A person who identifies with success suffers from failure. A person who identifies with certainty suffers from doubt. A person who identifies with being needed suffers when others become independent.
In every case, suffering is intensified by the attempt to preserve an identity against the nature of change.
The person is not fundamentally any of these identifications. He is, basically, awareness.
Awareness is that by which bodily sensation is known, emotion is known, thought is known, memory is known, and identity itself is known. It is present before the particular thought “I am this,” and it remains present when that thought changes to “I am that.”
A person may remember being a child, but he is not now the child’s body, knowledge, preferences, or social role. Yet there is a continuity in the fact that the experiences of childhood are known. The content has changed, but awareness remains the condition in which the changing content appears.
This does not mean that one must deny the body, reject practical responsibilities, abandon relationships, or stop using thought. Awareness does not require the destruction of individuality. It requires freedom from mistaking individuality for one’s ultimate nature.
A person can care for his body without worshiping it. He can pursue excellence in his work without making success his existence. He can hold strong views without becoming hostile to inquiry. He can love his family without trying to possess them. He can remember the past without being imprisoned by it.
The distinction is simple but profound:
The body, role, and thought are experienced. Awareness is that which experiences them.
Forms come and go within awareness. Awareness need not be defended in the same way that forms are defended, because it is not threatened by the changing content it observes.
For this reason, the most useful question for Man is not:
“What am I?”
That question can become another search for a more refined identity: “Am I a soul? Am I a personality? Am I a body? Am I a profession? Am I a belief system? Am I a special kind of person?”
The more practical question is:
“What am I identifying with?”
This question directs attention toward the actual source of disturbance.
When a person feels insulted, he can ask, “What in me has been threatened?” Perhaps it is his image of intelligence, goodness, authority, attractiveness, social position, or moral superiority.
When he feels fear, he can ask, “What form am I trying to preserve?” Perhaps it is physical security, financial status, reputation, a relationship, a belief, or control over the future.
When he feels envy, he can ask, “What identity do I think another person possesses that I lack?” Perhaps another’s beauty, wealth, recognition, talent, status, or apparent happiness has exposed an identification in himself.
This inquiry does not deny the reality of practical problems. A financial loss may require action. An illness may require treatment. An injustice may require correction. But clear action becomes more possible when it is not distorted by the desperate need to defend an imagined self.
The Vedic exercise neti, neti offers a direct method for loosening identification. The phrase means, “Neither this, nor that,” or more personally, “I am neither this, nor that.”
It is not a statement of indifference toward life. It is an exercise in discrimination between awareness and the objects appearing within awareness.
A person may observe:
The exercise does not require replacing one identity with another. It asks the person to see every object of identification as an object: something known, something that appears, something that changes.
Suppose a scholar receives harsh criticism of a book he has written. His first reaction may be anger, shame, or defensiveness. Rather than immediately attacking the critic or collapsing into self-condemnation, he may pause and examine the experience:
“There is a thought that my work must be admired. There is fear that I will be seen as inadequate. There is anger toward the person who challenged me. But I am neither the praise I sought, nor the criticism I received, nor the thought that I must be admired.”
This does not mean that the criticism is automatically correct or that he should abandon his work. It means he can evaluate the criticism without being wholly governed by an injured identity.
Likewise, a person facing illness may use neti, neti not to deny the illness, but to avoid reducing himself to it:
“The body is ill. Pain is being experienced. Fear may be present. These require care and compassion. But I am not exhausted by the description ‘an ill person.’”
This creates inner space. Within that space, there can be practical action without total psychological bondage.
The resolution of the anomaly of Man is not the elimination of individuality. Individuality is an instrument of life. It provides a particular body, perspective, capacity, history, and field of action.
The resolution is the withdrawal of false identity from the forms of individuality.
A person can say:
“I have a body, but I am not confined to bodily appearance.”
“I have roles, but I am not limited to their success or failure.”
“I have thoughts, but I am not identical with any thought.”
“I have a history, but I am not imprisoned by the past.”
“I have qualities and traits, but they do not exhaust what I am.”
When this understanding becomes more than an intellectual statement, possessiveness weakens. The need for constant approval diminishes. Criticism becomes more tolerable. Change becomes less frightening. Other people become less useful as mirrors for one’s identity and more visible as living beings in their own right.
The person can still act, love, create, learn, succeed, fail, and participate fully in the world. But he no longer needs every event to confirm that he exists.
This is the freedom toward which neti, neti points. It is discussed further in Chapter 11 of Postulate Mechanics, where the exercise serves as a practical means of separating awareness from the changing forms with which it has become identified.
The fundamental movement is from possessiveness to observation, from compulsive identification to conscious participation, and from the fragile self-image to the awareness in which all self-images arise and pass away.
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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
A life organism is not merely a physical body moving through a mechanical world. It is an active center of maintenance, perception, response, and development. Whether it is a bacterium moving toward nutrients, a plant bending toward light, a bird building a nest, or a human being solving a social problem, every organism confronts the same fundamental task: it must preserve and regulate itself within an environment that is continually changing.
From this perspective, the mind of a life organism is the organizing activity through which the organism notices disturbances, evaluates their significance, and directs action toward restoring or increasing harmony. Mind is therefore not simply a collection of thoughts in a brain. It is the functional intelligence expressed through a living body in relation to its surroundings.
Every life organism has a body that it must maintain. The body is not a static object; it is a dynamic system requiring continuous balance. It needs nourishment, protection, rest, repair, and suitable environmental conditions.
A human body must maintain temperature, hydration, blood chemistry, immunity, and energy. If body temperature rises too high, the organism sweats. If blood sugar falls, hunger appears. If the body is injured, clotting and healing mechanisms are activated. These processes show that the organism is not indifferent to its condition. It continually detects departures from a workable state and acts to correct them.
The same principle appears in simpler organisms. A plant’s roots grow toward water and dissolved minerals. Its leaves turn toward sunlight. If a plant lacks water, it may close its stomata to reduce moisture loss. A single-celled organism can move toward food or away from harmful chemicals. Even at this elementary level, life displays an orientation toward maintaining an organized condition.
The body, then, is the instrument through which the organism exists in the physical world. It is both the organism’s vehicle of action and the primary field that must be cared for.
An organism senses its physical environment through its body. The senses may be highly developed, as in animals with sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, or they may be comparatively simple, as in microorganisms that respond to light, temperature, pressure, or chemical gradients. In every case, sensing allows the organism to detect what is occurring around it.
But perception alone is not enough. The organism must also recognize anomalies: conditions that disturb, threaten, obstruct, or limit its orderly functioning.
For example, a deer grazing in a field may hear an unfamiliar snap of a branch. The sound is not merely registered as a vibration in the ear. It is evaluated as a possible anomaly: perhaps a predator is nearby. The deer becomes alert, changes direction, and may run. The body is activated to resolve the disturbance by moving to safety.
An anomaly does not have to be a physical danger. It may be a lack, an inconsistency, a conflict, or an unfulfilled need. Hunger is an anomaly in the body’s energy condition. Thirst is an anomaly in hydration. Loneliness may be an anomaly in a person’s social environment. A broken bridge is an anomaly in transportation. An unanswered question is an anomaly in understanding.
The life organism is therefore continually engaged in a cycle:
This cycle is one of the basic expressions of mind.
A part of the organism carries out the functions of resolving anomalies. In animals, this involves the nervous system, sensory organs, brain, hormones, muscles, and learned habits. In humans, it also includes memory, imagination, language, planning, and deliberate reasoning.
When a person touches a hot stove, the body withdraws the hand almost immediately. The nervous system detects pain, and muscles are activated before extended reflection takes place. This is a simple and direct resolution of an anomaly.
More complex problems require more elaborate mental activity. Suppose a farmer notices that crops are failing. The farmer may investigate rainfall, soil quality, pests, seeds, irrigation, and seasonal patterns. The anomaly is not resolved by a reflex. It requires observation, memory, comparison, judgment, and experimentation. The farmer’s mind coordinates bodily action and accumulated knowledge to restore a better relationship between the farm and its environment.
The mind may therefore be understood as the organism’s capacity to organize responses to disharmony. It identifies what is out of place and directs activity toward a more suitable condition. Its function is not confined to emergency survival. It includes learning, adaptation, invention, communication, cooperation, and long-term planning.
Every organism possesses characteristics and capabilities. A bird flies, builds nests, regulates its body, finds food, and cares for offspring. A tree draws nutrients from the soil, grows toward light, produces seeds, and responds to seasonal changes. A human being reasons, communicates symbolically, creates tools, forms communities, and reflects upon existence.
Many of these capacities belong to the species as a whole. A human being shares a common biological form, range of senses, basic needs, and general mental potential with other human beings. A wolf shares instincts, bodily characteristics, and social tendencies with other wolves. This common pattern gives the organism a species identity.
Yet each organism also has individuality. No two organisms occupy the same position in space, experience exactly the same events, or develop exactly the same responses. Even identical twins differ in memories, habits, preferences, relationships, and personal histories.
Thus, the organism has two dimensions of identity:
| Dimension | Meaning | Example |
| Species identity | The common characteristics and capabilities shared with organisms of the same kind | Human beings share language capacity, social needs, bodily structure, and the potential for reflective thought |
| Individual identity | The distinctive organization, history, and pattern of a particular organism | One person becomes a musician, another a physician, another a farmer, each shaped by unique experience and choice |
Both dimensions are real. The difficulty begins when the individual mind identifies exclusively with its limited individuality.
The individual mind acts separately from the universal mind because it identifies itself with the individuality of the life organism. It says, in effect, “I am this body, these memories, this name, these possessions, these opinions, and these personal interests.” Such identification gives the individual a sense of separateness from other organisms and from the larger processes of life.
This separate identity has practical value. A person needs to know which body requires food, which commitments need attention, which memories belong to one’s own history, and which actions one is responsible for. Individuality makes local action possible.
However, when individuality becomes absolute, the mind functions below its full potential. It becomes narrow, defensive, competitive, and overly concerned with protecting a limited self-image. It may treat other beings, nature, and even other people as fundamentally external or threatening.
For example, a person who identifies completely with social status may experience another person’s success as a personal threat. Instead of seeing success as a contribution to a wider human situation, the person may become jealous, hostile, or anxious. The anomaly is interpreted narrowly: “Their gain diminishes me.” This interpretation produces conflict rather than harmony.
Similarly, a business owner focused only on immediate personal profit may ignore pollution caused by the business. From the standpoint of the isolated individual, profit appears to be the only relevant outcome. From a wider perspective, however, the pollution harms workers, neighbors, ecosystems, and future generations. The mind has acted, but it has acted from a restricted identification.
The universal mind refers to the broader intelligence operating through life. It is the capacity for order, adaptation, relationship, creativity, and harmony that is not limited to one individual organism. The individual organism is a local expression of this wider field of intelligence.
The individual mind begins to overcome its limitations when it becomes aware of its identifications. It notices that it has been treating a temporary role, opinion, fear, memory, or possession as if it were the whole of its being.
A person may say, “I am a failure,” after losing a job. But this statement confuses an event with an identity. Losing a job is a real difficulty, but it does not exhaust the person’s capacities, relationships, intelligence, or future possibilities. Awareness of this identification allows the person to respond more intelligently. Instead of remaining trapped in shame or despair, the person can learn new skills, seek assistance, reassess goals, and act constructively.
This does not mean that individuality disappears. Rather, individuality becomes a more transparent instrument of a wider intelligence. The person still has a body, a name, responsibilities, memories, and particular talents. But these are no longer treated as a prison. They become means through which the universal mind can work.
When the individual mind merges into the universal mind, it does not necessarily mean that the organism loses consciousness or becomes passive. It means that action increasingly arises from an awareness of interconnectedness. The organism acts not merely for narrow self-preservation, but for greater harmony in the larger environment.
A doctor who treats illness only for prestige or income may still perform useful work. But a doctor who recognizes the patient’s well-being as inseparable from a larger human concern acts from a broader awareness. The doctor’s knowledge, hands, training, and personality remain individual, yet they become vehicles for a more universal purpose: reducing suffering and restoring health.
Likewise, a community may face the anomaly of polluted water. If individuals act only from private interest, they may argue over cost, blame, or inconvenience. But if they recognize their shared dependence on the same environment, they can cooperate to clean the water, change harmful practices, and protect future generations. The response becomes more intelligent because the field of concern has expanded.
This expansion of concern is a form of evolution. The organism evolves to higher levels as it brings greater harmony to its environment. Evolution here is not only biological change across generations. It is also the growth of awareness, capability, responsibility, and cooperative intelligence.
The movement is from immediate reaction toward conscious participation in a larger order:
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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
The postulate underlying Scientology is the STATIC. Theta is the mathematical symbol used for static. Thetan is the “property of individuality” assigned to static. In short, a thetan is an individual static.
Hubbard differentiates static, theta, or thetan from matter and energy; but he does not differentiate it from thought. He says, “theta is thought, life force, elan vital, the spirit, the soul, or any other of the numerous definitions it has had for some thousands of years.”
We have,
SUBSTANCE = anything substantial enough to be sensed
AWARENESS = the capability to sense.
When we become aware of an object we gain consciousness that we can express as a thought. We become aware of the presence of a chair. This is expressed as a thought, “There is a chair.” This means that we are conscious of a chair.
CONSCIOUSNESS = awareness of substance
Hubbard talks about “aware of being aware.” But, this is basically having consciousness of one’s own thoughts.
Just like one can be aware of physical objects, one can also be aware of thoughts.
We may look at thoughts as “thought objects” that come in different forms. This means thoughts are sensed just like physical objects are sensed. Thought is a substance like matter and energy.
This differentiates AWARENESS from THOUGHT. Thought exists in the dimension of substance; but awareness is its own dimension. Consciousness results from awareness of substance. Here, substance means matter, energy, and thought.
We have a sense of “I”. This is sensing “individuality.” This individuality is made up of thought. We don’t give much attention to what this individuality represents, or what the source of individuality is.
The thetan, in Scientology, is an individual static.
Static is pure awareness; but thetan is awareness identified with thought of individuality.
Awareness can be exterior to thought; but Scientology looks at awareness “interiorized” in thought, and fashioned into individuality.
A person is pure awareness, that can be “exterior” to not only to the body, but also to the individuality. He is not the individuality called thetan.
The primary conditioning in Scientology is the identification of awareness with the thought of individuality.
This identification with “I” is the source of all human suffering. This is the basic-basic of Scientology.
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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
The intention to harm is morally so unacceptable that when not fully confronted it gets buried deep in the psyche. It then causes anxiety and unhappiness when it is seen expressed by others.
Some of the forms of this intention are as follows:
(1) SELFISHNESS. One thinks of the satisfaction of one’s own desires without caring of the effects it creates on others in its wake.
(2) EXPLOITATION. Any action that exploits others for personal gains has the intention to harm underlying it.
(3) CAUSING PHYSICAL HARM. Any action that physically harms another and causes suffering.
(3) SEXUAL EXPLOITATION. This is a special instance of the above.
If you find yourself reacting to such intentions emotionally rather than responding to them rationally, do the following.
Some may find this remedy unnecessary because they have gone totally numb at some point, and have even flipped the other way in their mind.
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Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
Thought is commonly treated as something private, invisible, and abstract—a fleeting event occurring somewhere inside the brain. Yet this view may be too narrow. Thought can instead be understood as a subtle kind of substance: something that has form, presence, and effects, and that can be sensed by awareness. Matter is sensed through sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste. Thought is sensed through a different faculty: the mind’s capacity to notice, recognize, and assimilate mental content.
In this sense, thought is not identical with the mind. A thought is an object of awareness, while mind, in its essential nature, is awareness itself. Mind is that which can sense a thought, distinguish one thought from another, recognize its significance, and integrate it into a broader understanding. It is the knower rather than the thing known.
To call thought a substance does not necessarily mean that it is physical in the ordinary sense. It does not mean that one could weigh a thought on a scale or hold it in one’s hand. Rather, it means that thought has an experienced reality. A thought can appear, persist, change, combine with other thoughts, or disappear. It may be clear or vague, light or heavy, welcome or disturbing. It may carry images, words, memories, impulses, intentions, emotions, and conclusions.
A person can often sense the arrival of a thought before putting it into words. There may be an indistinct pressure, an image at the edge of attention, an emerging idea, or a feeling that “something is there.” With closer observation, that unclear impression can become recognizable: a memory, a worry, a plan, a judgment, or an unanswered question.
Matter is recognized through its characteristics: shape, location, movement, texture, resistance, and relation to other things. Thought also has characteristics, although subtler ones. It may be repetitive, charged, confused, insistent, distant, fragmented, orderly, or coherent. It may feel self-generated, inherited from experience, learned from others, or seemingly directed toward oneself from another person. Thus, thought can be approached as a field of experience that awareness can examine.
If thoughts are the objects being sensed, mind is fundamentally the capacity to sense them. Its basic nature is awareness: the ability to observe what is present without necessarily becoming what is observed.
This distinction is central. A person may observe anger without becoming angry. One may notice fear without identifying with it. One may recognize a judgment without being compelled to accept it as true. In each case, awareness creates a space between the mind and the thought.
The mind can perform several related functions:
When these functions operate freely, thought becomes useful material for understanding and action. A thought is then not an authority over the mind but information available to it.
Human beings often experience thoughts not only as self-contained mental events, but as influences moving between minds. In ordinary life, this is familiar in less dramatic forms. We can sense another person’s attitude from their expression, tone, silence, posture, and manner of attention. A room may feel tense after an argument, expectant before an announcement, or calm in the presence of someone composed. We sometimes recognize that another person is upset, suspicious, affectionate, or preoccupied even before they explicitly say so.
From the perspective developed here, such experiences may be understood as the mind sensing thoughts that originate beyond its immediate stream of self-conscious thinking. A thought projected toward us may register as an impression, an unexpected emotional shift, a sudden suspicion, an image, a phrase that seems to arise unprompted, or an awareness of another person’s intention.
This does not mean that every passing feeling is necessarily a message from someone else. The mind contains memories, habits, expectations, and emotional residues that can color perception. Careful observation is therefore essential. The point is not to replace one unquestioned assumption with another, but to become more attentive to the sources, qualities, and effects of thought.
With sufficient concentration, it may become possible to notice not only thoughts that seem directed at oneself, but also the general thought-patterns surrounding other people. An individual may be immersed in worry, resentment, ambition, grief, confusion, or hope. These patterns can shape the atmosphere of their presence. A receptive and observant mind may detect such patterns without needing them to be verbalized.
The greatest difficulty is not merely that thoughts occur. The difficulty begins when the mind identifies with them.
To identify with a thought is to lose the distinction between awareness and the thought being observed. Instead of saying, “I notice an angry thought,” one says, “I am angry,” and the thought becomes the apparent self. Instead of recognizing, “There is fear here,” one concludes, “I am helpless.” Instead of seeing a judgment as a judgment, one treats it as unquestionable reality.
Identification makes thought opaque. The mind can no longer fully sense or recognize what it has become fused with. A thought that is being observed can be examined. A thought that is being identified with becomes the lens through which everything else is interpreted.
For example, suppose a person is identified with the thought, “I will fail.” They may no longer see it as one possible prediction among many. The thought colors their perception of every circumstance. Neutral events become evidence of failure; opportunities seem dangerous; encouraging feedback is dismissed; and small mistakes become proof that the thought is true. The person is not simply having the thought—they are living from inside it.
An average mind is usually identified with many thoughts at once. These may include conclusions about the self, other people, society, success, morality, safety, status, relationships, and the future. Some are inherited from parents, teachers, religion, culture, or painful experiences. Others arise from repeated reactions that have become habitual. Because these thoughts are familiar, they often go unnoticed. They appear not as thoughts, but as reality itself.
Identification with thought is a source of error because it prevents direct observation. When awareness is absorbed into a thought, it cannot easily assess the thought’s accuracy, origin, limits, or consequences. It accepts the thought from within rather than examining it from without.
This can produce many forms of aberration:
The resulting errors may be intellectual, emotional, ethical, or practical. A person may misinterpret another’s actions, act impulsively, defend a false self-image, cling to resentment, or submit to a belief that was never consciously chosen. The more completely thought and awareness are fused, the less freedom the individual has in responding.
This does not mean that thought is inherently harmful. Thought is necessary for memory, planning, learning, communication, invention, and reflection. The problem is not thought itself but unconscious attachment to thought. Thought becomes aberrative when it takes possession of awareness rather than remaining available to awareness.
The resolution of identification lies in looking: sustained, concentrated observation of what is actually present. To look does not mean to analyze compulsively, condemn oneself, or force thoughts away. It means to permit a thought to appear clearly in awareness without immediately accepting, resisting, suppressing, or becoming it.
Concentrated looking begins with a simple shift:
Instead of being inside the thought, one becomes aware of the thought.
A person who is troubled by anxiety, for instance, may begin by noticing the exact content of the anxious thought. What does it say? What images accompany it? What sensation does it produce in the body? When did it arise? Does it repeat? Is it a present perception, a memory, a prediction, or an assumption? Who or what does it seem connected with?
As the thought is looked at directly, it becomes differentiated from the awareness that observes it. This differentiation weakens identification. The thought may still be present, but it is no longer the unquestioned center of experience. It has become an object that can be recognized, understood, and—if appropriate—released. For the laws of looking, please see Chapter 3: Resolving Anomalies.
Through looking, the mind regains its natural function. It becomes capable of sensing thoughts without being controlled by them, of recognizing influences without automatically absorbing them, and of assimilating useful insight without losing its own clarity.
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