61. The Cosmic Glue - Part 1

Every once a while most every person has a completely clear and calm mind. This may happen as a result of efforts of various kinds, such as running processes to resolve the case of the person. Or it may happen in the context of watching an awe-inspiring natural wonder, or perhaps after facing a major loss or threat in life, or - in rare cases - during the usage of hallucinogenic drugs.

In either case, this clearness and stillness of the mind commonly doesn't last very long, and - much more important - the Being _still_ sees itself bound to the body if it would ever try to wander around elsewhere in this Universe.

This binding to Body and Universe will be called 'direct attachment' in the following in order to differentiate it from 'derived' attachments that arise from playing games
in the Universe (for example, the attachment to the outcome of a game or action, or the attachment to elements in the games, such as loved or desired persons in one's current life - or any past one for that matter).

The 'direct attachment' cannot be observed when the mind is occupied with whatever is going on in life in the moment. And when it is observed, it vanishes from the view instantly with the rise of even a glimpse of a thought.

The following is therefore only relevant for those who are either able to bring about a clear and unobstructed mind at will or to at least able to bring about the state of the mind which has been called 'ekacittam' in Indian literature and is achieved by the exclusion of every thought except one.

Note: 'Ekacittam' means literally 'one-mindedness' and this
state of the mind is characterized by a complete relaxation of the entire body, often in a sudden, scary shift. It is more difficult to reach then a clear mind which is free of any thoughts. However,
there are specific meditation techniques to bring about exactly this state of mind.

Even though the 'direct attachments' are talked about in ancient scripts as the basic mechanism of entrapment in this Universe, there doesn't seem to be a single
description of _how_ attachment actually comes about.

Before presenting a working model of how 'direct attachment' can happen and how it can be disintegrated and reintegrated as necessary, here is a short overview of the perhaps only two known sources in history that explicitly mention this phenomenon (as always the author will be grateful to learn more about other sources and techniques; pls e-mail).

The earliest written record goes back to Gotamo Siddharto (the 'Buddha') who outlined the descent of a Being into this Universe in great detail and length, but who did not
explain this central piece of the puzzle (or, if he did, nobody in his audience deemed it necessary to relay it to posteriority).

His solution was to exercise and train the mind to differentiate between 'self' and 'non-self'. This approach makes perfectly sense, especially when seen in relation
to the working model presented later in this chapter.

However, if the process of recognizing 'non-self' is done without a basic understanding of perceptions and
emanations of Beings in general, there is the danger that followers of this approach may begin to encapsulate the outside world as an alien object instead of permeating the Universe as a whole.

Such an encapsulation is _increasing_ the separation from the person and the Universe instead of resolving the Being's confusions. The result is therefore the _opposite_
of  Gotamo's goal and, unfortunately, it can be observed in many Buddhist circles in our times.

This wrong application of a basically correct technique must have happened rather early in the history of Buddhism and may have contributed greatly to the Mahayana movement which essentially (and radically!!) revokes the basic premise & promise of immediate and in-this-lifetime liberation of the Being.

The proponents of Kashmir Shaivism (around 800 AD and a thus about 1,300 years  after Gotamo) therefore  rejected his approach for this and other reasons. This school is mentioned several times in the 'Little Purple Notebook...' because of the clarity and depth of its propositions and it clearly recognizes the basic problem of 'direct
attachments' and is offering an alternate path.

One of the other reasons why this school rejected Gotamo's specific approach (while respecting his other views very highly), is a reason that is _very_ relevant in today's
times as well:

if purely  mental technologies are used in order to bring about a liberation (and thus under exclusion of the other parts of a human), the mind  can easily dub-in or mock-up the desired outcome without changing anything at the core of a case.

Exactly this seems to happen these days on a big scale. 'Processes' are run to free the Being but the Being arrives at a mental picture of "being free" without having
addressed the 'direct attachments'. Whenever this happens, the event of 'being exterior to this Universe' will happen only and only in the imagination of the person.

Since this is a mental picture, such a person never arrives at a state of existence that is free of thought and therefore it never becomes aware of the circumstance that it is still tightly bound to both body and Universe.

This illusion becomes especially apparent when a person like this talks about higher states of awareness, especially about the 'nirvana' (meta-)experience. Such a person will often volunteer the surprising insight that these states would be 'boring'.

To anybody who has ever reached any such state, however, such an 'insight' provides an infallible proof that the person has never reached any of these states in any way whatsoever.

The fallacy of the argument that states exterior to this Universe would be 'boring' can be recognized also by means of either one of the following considerations:
 

• 'feeling bored' is an emotion. There are no emotions in higher states of awareness. The only (meta-)sensations are of *very* high frequencies and not ever possibly as low as the emotion of 'feeling bored';
• being bored means that the Being feels kind of bad because it wants to play with something but it can't. This demonstrates a pre-existing urge to do something. If this urge is present, the Being wasn't free of at least one games condition to begin with - the Being MUST play and it has not the freedom of choice. In short, it never entered a state of freedom from games.


There is a startling absence of processes addressing the phenomenon of direct attachment in modern 'technologies' of
liberating the human mind, too.

This may be due to the circumstance that few people ever reach a completely 'cleared' mind void of any obstructions for longer periods of time. Thus, the problem never appears as such and 'attachment' is often thought of as a case condition which can be handled by known processes such as 'time-breaking'.

Again, the basic attachment of a Being to the body is still present when the mind remains clear of any thought or is concentrated on a single object of choice.

As long as the problem of attachment is not recognized as such, a person will bounce back rather quickly after reaching a state of mental tranquillity or a view of body transparency.

It is then often illuding itself by claiming that a state free of thoughts or emotional emanations would be 'boring' (see above).

In contrast to this claim, persons who have entered such higher states successfully are usually reporting that their experience was so profound and excalting that it seems impossible to find any words for its splendor and magnificence within the human language.
 
 

(continued)