LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MIND
LET'S TALK ABOUT THE MIND – PART ONE
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MIND : YouTube talk 6a © Nigel Peace, 2023
The human brain is the most wonderful thing. Not only does it regulate the rest of the body, it stores and learns from all our experiences. It regenerates itself continuously, developing new neuron pathways. And it’s not just limited to our heads. The enteric nervous system in our belly has more than a hundred million nerve cells, linking the emotional and cognitive centres. That’s how we get those ‘gut feelings’.
But… what is it that regulates this extraordinary nervous system? Whilst there are biochemical processes that accompany all our daily thoughts and nightly dreams, where do these thoughts and dreams come from? And how is it that we can be aware of our own thinking and observe the action in a lucid dream?
This is the work of the mind. There is now a huge amount of evidence that our consciousness can separate from the body and function perfectly well. Think of out-of-body, near-death and mystical experiences, or astral projection. Yet the evidence is not just anecdotal, it’s also quite rational: new discoveries in neuroscience suggest that we each have what scientists call “a mental field existing in another dimension”.
Most of us are familiar with the idea that our minds can visit non-physical states in everyday life, and we have higher senses beyond the five bodily ones. Telepathy and remote viewing, for example, have been proven beyond doubt. We can know the future too.
The school where I used to work was selling off two old minibuses for a modest price and I wanted to buy the older one, which was in better condition, and convert it into a campervan. The Finance Director accepted my offer and we shook hands – that’s how business used to be done. But that night I had the following vivid dream.
I was driving home from a holiday when I saw a man at a crossroads selling two horses, a mare and a foal. I put my hazard lights on and went over to him, offering £450 for the mare. Still, something didn’t feel right. And when I saw the police towing my car away I went after them without buying the horse.
Now, I had some experience of dream interpretation and this one was clearly about my holiday plans and an obvious warning: the crossroads, the hazard lights, losing my car, and horse-trading being a symbol of dishonesty. A few weeks later, the Finance Director announced that the two minibuses were being sold by secret auction. When I challenged him, he denied that we’d even discussed the matter let alone made a deal. And here’s the thing: the older minibus was duly sold to someone else, for exactly £450.
Now, yes, I do pay a lot of attention to my dreams but there’s nothing special about my mind. Yours is just as capable of precognition, of time travel in the higher worlds of consciousness. The ancient Chinese even developed a method for anyone to access those deeper dimensions where everything is already known. It’s written in the I Ching, or Book of Changes.
It’s pretty easy to use. We ask a question – something important that’s on our mind – and a random act like throwing coins leads us to one of the book’s chapters. Here we find practical and ethical guidance about what’s really going on in our situation, and it even describes the likely future outcome. This is pure synchronicity at work, and the book is astonishingly accurate.
I was applying for a new job, a promotion with more money and good prospects, so I thought, and I asked the I Ching whether this move would be successful. The result was shocking, with clear references to ‘misfortune’, ‘a danger of injury’, and a need for ‘great determination’. Not at all encouraging, although the book did suggest that the experience would be very beneficial for my personal growth.
Well, I wasn’t sure I could trust a book’s advice, and I really needed the extra money, so I took the job anyway! It was a two-year nightmare. Everything foretold came true: my car was vandalised, I was personally assaulted and I struggled to keep on top of the job with no support from management. However, I did learn a lot of new professional and personal skills that led to a far better, happier job elsewhere. None of these things could have been known in advance by any normal means.
So we see that our minds are immensely powerful and they can reach a higher consciousness. This everyday physical world is only a part of what it is to be human.
Nuclear physics has now realised that it’s our observation of electrons – our deliberate awareness of them – that creates their nature and behaviour. The Nobel Prize winner Neils Bohr said, “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” In other words, physical things seem real only when we become aware of them.
The entire universe is created by consciousness. This higher source, if you like, is not physical and it transcends time and space. We could call it ‘spiritual’.
These thoughts and examples all lead us to the very reasonable belief that if consciousness does not depend on, and is separate from, the physical body, then surely it must survive the death of our bodies. But in what form? Do we keep our individual personality, character and memories? There is a lot of anecdotal evidence from mediums for this, although let’s remember that there are alternative theories about what’s happening there.
Perhaps, instead, we become part of what Carl Jung called ‘the collective unconscious’ or Deepak Chopra’s ‘field of all possibilities’, a place where everything is connected and everything is known, the so-called Akashic Record. Is it this place we reach in precognitive dreams, that the I Ching accesses or that spirit mediums are reading?
Throughout history, many mystics have taught that consciousness is infinite and there is nothing that is not part of it. It is like a thinking ocean in which we, and all other things, are water droplets and thoughts are like waves that rise and fall on the surface, yet are all still part of the ocean.
These are difficult ideas to get our heads around…
Out-of-body, near-death and mystical experiences all confirm that our consciousness can function perfectly well separate from the physical body. And this is supported by recent discoveries in neuroscience.
Almost everyone has at least one story to tell of ESP, when our minds reach out into alternative worlds.
In Part One of this talk, I offer you a truly astonishing account of genuine time travel! There is even a way for everyone deliberately to access the higher mind’s awareness, created by those clever ancient Chinese – and it’s simple.
With telepathy, precognition and remote viewing, we are touching a world that transcends time and space, confirming that consciousness does not depend on the brain and that we shall survive death. Even Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, regarded consciousness as “fundamental” with the material world being derived from it.
In other words, the entire universe is spiritual.
LET'S TALK ABOUT THE MIND – PART TWO
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MIND : YouTube talk 6b © Nigel Peace, 2023
The mind is extremely powerful and can reach into a higher world of consciousness. But what is this world? Are we, as the mystics say, merely drops of water in a vast ocean? When the body dies, do we keep our individuality? These are extremely difficult ideas to come to terms with. Mind-boggling, in fact.
I have tried to address them in my novel, The Unbroken, a love story and an adventure in mysterious worlds. Our heroine, Eva, has passed over from Earth and found herself alone on a strange island, not knowing where she is or why. Yet she is resilient, and begins to explore as her mind gradually adjusts. At length, she discovers a beautiful, calm lake in a volcanic crater. Sitting quietly by the shore, gazing at its still surface, she touches that higher state of mind.
‘Suddenly, like a moment before Creation, I felt entirely empty. I realised that I was nothing. There was nothing to know. Nothing to be. It was beautiful. I no longer needed to understand…
I stood up, limp as a wet rag, and wished the silent lake would open up and take me down. To disappear. I felt tiny, just a drop of water in an unknowable ocean.’
But this level of awareness cannot last and soon it provokes a thunderous storm throughout her mind and body, leaving a deep aching pain in her heart when it subsides. She realises that the reason she is here is love.
Exhausted, and wrestling with these thoughts, she returns to her cabin to rest. But once we’ve had this experience of the deeper worlds, they will not let us go. So later she returns, asking for answers.
‘The still water was silvery and translucent.
Silence.
Deeper silence.
Then it began.
A single B harmonic note opened up the water and drew me in, leaving my self behind and becoming a drop of water that became the unknowable ocean.’
And now she remembers everything that has happened in her earlier life and knows what she has to do, to heal the pain of the past.
‘I knew it was time to go now… I stood, thinking this might be the last time I would come here, slipped off my clothes and walked into the cool, silent lake to bathe away any last fears.
It wasn’t there. I mean, there was no water. I was just standing on black, shiny sheets of lava, feeling silly. A mirage.’
Well, Eva will soon leave this place for an even more beautiful one, or higher level of consciousness, where plans are made and different threads of the story come together and gather pace. Having left the physical world far behind, she is mind-hopping.
Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, has said, “I regard consciousness as fundamental [and] matter as derivative from consciousness.” He is saying that consciousness is the essential fabric of all reality. It is spiritual, beyond mind and certainly beyond brain. As our brains are instruments of our minds, so our minds are instruments of Spirit.
Coming back down to Earth, it is of course our brains that regulate our bodies and draw in physical experiences through our senses. And all our experiences are stored in the mind, which in turn determines our behaviour.
But here’s the thing: essentially, we are not our minds, we are conscious beings who experience our minds. We have a higher self. Some call it spirit, some call it the soul. And it does not die when the physical body passes away.
How different would life on Earth be if this were more widely understood, if more people were aware of our true nature? Instead of pouring our efforts and resources into chasing after bigger houses and cars, more clothes, holidays and worldly status, all of which will pass away, we might focus on caring better for one another and for our world.
The planet, and humanity itself, are under threat now because we are out of harmony with nature and with each other. Apart from the obvious global picture, we don’t have to look far to find a plethora of angry conflicts and self-interested prejudices that prevent the healing of relationships, the support of those in need and the restoration of nature.
If we are to evolve as a species, we must do all we can to seek this knowledge of the self. The purpose of each human being must be to achieve harmony in every corner of our lives, to live in peace.
It’s easier said than done, of course. There are many who believe that meditation leads to direct experience of the higher worlds. Written more than three thousand years ago, the Sanskrit Vedas speak of the Atman, or inner self, becoming at one with Brahman, the universal consciousness. Meditators say that their practice changes how they think and behave, as well as having physical benefits.
But even if meditation is not for us, everyone can learn to calm the mind and become receptive to the transcendent spirit of life. It just takes deliberate mindfulness in everyday life: paying attention to dreams, recognising daily synchronicities, and realising that every event can be meaningful. In these ways we learn self-knowledge, what is important in this world and what is not.
Let’s face it, we have little control as individuals over what happens around us. But we can control our inner lives and how we respond to events and other people, when we recognise that worldly achievements are transient. Yet we do not have to withdraw from the world; rather, just understand that spiritual values are what really matter, whatever the world throws at us.
This is self-mastery. This is stoicism. And it is the path to true freedom from the storms of life. In his 1971 book, The Way of Transformation, the Zen master Karlfried von Dürckheim wrote, ‘The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life.’ By following the spiritual path, we reveal the true depths of who we are and our indestructible nature can arise within us.
Our lives can be transformed. We can become greater.
In my spiritual novel The Unbroken, our heroine Eva finds herself alone in a very strange, alternative world. And just as she’s beginning to make sense of it, she has a profound mystical experience that reveals the essential nature of life and why she is here… hers is a love story and she has work to do!
It’s not news to say that our planet, and humanity itself, are under threat now because we are out of harmony with nature and with each other. Yet how very different would life be were more people aware of the true nature of our minds – and recognised that worldly achievements are transient?
The spiritual path is not easy, but it reveals the true depths of who we are.