Paul Brunton - Notebook 16 Enlightened Mind, Divine Mind

203 Pages·1.518 MB·English

by  Paul Brunton

Table of Contents
PART 1 – WORLD-MIND IN INDIVIDUAL MIND
1 Their Meeting And Interchange
1.1 God Is In Man
1.2 Man Is Not, Does Not Become, God
1.3 Fallacy Of “Divine Incarnation”
2 Enlightenment Which Stays
2.1 Glimpses And Permanent Realization
2.2 Sudden Or Gradual?
2.3 Enlightenment Comes Quietly
2.4 Naturalness Of The Attainment
2.5 Degrees Of Enlightenment
2.6 Nonduality, Sahaja, Insight
2.7 Conscious Transcendental Sleep
2.8 Individuality Remains
2.9 World Continues
2.10 General Effects Of Enlightenment
3 The Sage
3.1 The Race Of Sages
3.2 Remarks On Specific Illuminates
3.3 Differences In Attainment, Expression
3.4 Wisdom Beyond Bliss
3.5 Qualities, Characteristics Of The Sage
3.6 God Alone Is Perfect
3.7 Sage Not Easily Recognized
3.8 Isolation, Privacy, Reticence
3.9 Sage Is Usually Misunderstood
3.10 Sages Merit Veneration
4 The Sage's Service
4.1 A Full Identity Of Interest
4.2 Help The Sage Gives
4.3 Effects Of The Sage's Presence
4.4 Sage As Catalyst For Higher Powers
4.5 Sage Works With Few Directly
5 Teaching Masters, Discipleship
5.1 Teaching And Non-Teaching Illuminates
5.2 Advice, Warnings To Would-Be Teachers
5.3 Value Of A Qualified Teacher
5.4 Seeking The Sage
5.5 Approaching The Sage
5.6 Qualifications For Discipleship
5.7 Master-Disciple Relationship, General
5.8 Master Is Symbol Of Overself
5.9 True Relationship Is Internal
5.10 Eventual Graduation Of Disciple
PART 2 – WORLD-IDEA
1 Divine Order Of The Universe
1.1 Meaning, Purpose, Intelligent Order
1.2 Ultimate “Rightness” Of Events
1.3 Nature Of The World-Idea
1.4 World-Idea Is Ultimate Determinant
1.5 Uniqueness, Non-Duplication
1.6 On The “Why”' Of “Creation”
1.7 Universe As Emanation Of Reality
2 Change As Universal Activity
2.1 Everything Changes
2.2 Metaphysical View Of Universal Change
3 Polarities, Complementaries, Dualities Of The Universe
3.1 Paradox, Duality, Nonduality
3.2 Opposites Constitute Universe
3.3 Cyclic Unfoldment, Reversal
3.4 Spiral Movement Of Universal Flux
4 True Idea Of Man
4.1 Man More Than Animal
4.2 Divine Essense Of Man
4.3 Purpose Of Human Life
4.4 Glimpsing The World-Idea
4.5Co-Operating With The World-Idea
4.6 World-Idea Guides Evolution
4.7 Evolution's Goal Is Not Merger
PART 3 – WORLD-MIND
1 What Is God?
1.1 Differing Views Of God
1.2 Is God Good, Conscious?
1.3 God Beyond Finite Knowing
1.4 The Active God We Worship
2 Nature Of World-Mind
2.1 Attributes, Characteristics, Powers
2.2 As Source Of All
3 World-Mind And “Creation”
3.1 How
3.2 Why
3.3 Distinguishing World-Mind And Mind
PART 4 – THE ALONE
1 Absolute Mind
1.1 Mind Alone Is
1.2 Levels, Phases, Functions Of Mind
1.3 On Knowing Why
1.4 Real As Self-Existent, Transcendent, Unique
1.5 Real As Unchangeable
1.6 Real As Void
1.7 Real As Consciousness
2 Our Relation To The Absolute
2.1 Inadequacy Of Human Symbolization
2.2 Reporting, Nonetheless, Has Value
2.3 Reality Reveals Itself Through Overself
2.4 Meditations On Mind
2.5 The Ultimate “Experience”

PART 1 – WORLD-MIND IN INDIVIDUAL MIND

The highest attainment in philosophy, that of the sage, comes from a union of the sharpest, subtlest thinking and of the capacity to enter the
thought-free state – a combination of real knowledge and felt peace – balanced, united, yielding truth. This is what makes the sage, whose
understanding and peace are his own, who does not depend upon any outside person. Yet it is not the little ego's emotion nor its intellectuality
which has brought him to this truth. It is the highest human mind, the finest human feeling. The total man cannot lose what he has attained. It is
the higher power working inside the human being.
§
He does not regard greatness to be in him but only behind him. Neither vain ambition nor false egoism can deceive him about the inner reality
of his psychological situation. He understands and feels that a power not his own and not human is using him as its human instrument, that a
larger mind is overshadowing his ego.
1 Their Meeting And Interchange
1.1 God Is In Man
1
"The God in the sun is the `I' in me" – this put tersely is the essence of man's relationship to divinity. A whole book may be needed to explain it, a
whole lifetime to get direct experience of its truth as insight.
2
We see plenty of evidence that the universe is not mindless, and therefore that there is a Universal Mind related to it – that is to say, related to us,
who are parts of the whole.
3
It might well be said that I am connected with God on the one hand, with the world on the other hand, but both connections are highly ingenious
inventions. God is literally in me. His "I" makes my "I" possible. My own sense of being is immersed in God's archetypal thought.
4
The individual mind not only exists within the World-Mind, it is born of the World-Mind.
5
Jesus' use of the metaphor, the Son and the Father, was intended to point out that man, in his inner self, was born of, and is still in relation to, the
Higher power, God.
6
The innermost being of man and the cosmos is ever at rest, and single. The incarnate being of both is ever in movement, and dual. The inner is the
Real, Changeless; the other is the Appearance, and subject to the play of two opposed but interpenetrating active forces. Because it is the
quintessence of consciousness and intelligence, I call the first Mind. It is without shape, infinite and untouchable by man, but because it is, universes
are able to appear, expand, disintegrate, and reincarnate. This activity is directly due to the agency of the first entity to appear, which I call World-
Mind. From the latter flows ceaselessly the energy which is at the heart of every atom, the life-force which is at the heart of every man. World-Mind
and Mind are for us the twin sides – a crude but simple, understandable metaphor – of God. The human being draws breath, exists, and thinks with
awareness only because of this relationship. If he declares himself an atheist, sees himself only as an animal, rejects any divine basis to his mind,
he testifies thereby to a failure on his own part: he has failed to seek and find, or because of prejudice – that is, of prejudgement – has sought
wrongly. Jesus gave two helps in this matter: seek the kingdom of heaven first, and seek it within. It is open to anyone to test this truth that he is
related to God. But if he does not bring certain qualities into the work, such as patience and humility, the going may be too hard, the result
disappointing.
7
Something of that Mind is in us, as a parent has left some legacy in the child, but at the same time we are also in that Mind.
8
Gospel of John, chapter 17, verse 21: "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee."
9
An ever-active Mind within an ever-still Mind – that is the real truth, not only about God but also about man.
10
The World-Mind reproduces something of itself in each individual entity we call the Soul, or Overself.
11
The soul in man, the Overself, is linked with, or rooted in, the soul in the universe, the World-Mind.
12
The Infinite Mind is centered within its finited expression, the human ego.
13
Because we have all – yes! sinners as well as saints – come forth from the divine substance in our bodies and from the divine mind in our entities,
there is something god-like in each of us.
14
How can a man escape from the World-Mind since he is indissolubly united with it? Through the Overself he is a very part of it, his consciousness
could not work without it.
15
The Godlike deepest Self in us knows and feels on its own level; therefore the intellect's reasonings and the aesthetic feelings are reflections on a
lower level of spiritual activities.
16
So many human sufferings are the consequences of human errors, and so many of these errors arise from human ignorance. The supreme
ignorance of all which leads to the greatest sins and sufferings is that he does not know he is an individualized part of a greater consciousness.
Although this consciousness shines through his ego it is apart from the ego, for it stands in its own right and exists as an entity by itself. It is this
consciousness which enables a man to act and think in the physical body and it is his diviner part. Blinded by the error of materialism, he identifies
it with the body itself.
17
The self of every creature is divine Being, the ultimate Consciousness, but only when evolution brings it to the human level does it have the
possibility of discovering this fact.
18
It is true that the mind makes its own world of experience, but it is not true that it makes it by itself; for behind the individual mind is the Cosmic
Mind.
19
If the world is but an idea there must be a mind which conceived it. Although my individual mind has so largely contributed to its making, it has not
contributed to its original conception. Such a mind must be an undivided universal one in which my own is rooted. It must indeed be what men
commonly call God.
20
Thus the World-Mind originates our experience for us but we ourselves mold it. It supplies the karmic-forces material and we as individuals supply
the space-time shape which this material takes. Thus there is a union of the individual with the universal.
21
Whether we think of this mysterious origin as manifesting itself in waves of energy or in particles of the same force, it is and must be there for the
deeply reflective atomic scientist. Whether we think of it as God, the Creative Universal Mind, or as God the inaccessible all-transcending Mind
remote from human communion, it is and must be there for the intuitive. But in both cases this entire universe is but a thought in the Universal Mind.
Every object and every creature is simultaneously included in this thought: therefore every human being too. Through this relationship it is possible
for a man to attain some kind of communion with IT. This is what the quest is all about.