Limitless Mind. Russell Targ

in a trancelike attachment to our story of who we think we are. Our “business card,” over which we lavish so much attention, is really a kind of “story card” that we give people to tell them who we think we are. If we believe that story, it can cause us a lot of suffering.

      In his book on the enneagram, psychologist and spiritual teacher Eli Jackson-Bear makes this important idea poignantly clear. He writes:

      When identification shifts from a particular body... to the totality of being, the soul realizes itself as pure, limitless consciousness. This shift in identification is called Self-realization. In this realization, not only do you find that love is all that there is, but you also discover that this love is who you are.²²

       FOUR-VALUED LOGIC

      I believe that we are neither a “self” nor “not a self,” but that we are awareness residing as a body. This is the sort of apparent paradox about who we are that may not be solvable within the framework of what we call “Aristotelian two-valued logic” — the logic system basic to all of Western analytical thought. In two-valued logic, we frame our reality with questions like “Are we mortal or immortal?” “Is the mind or soul part of the body?” or “Is light made of waves or particles?” But none of these have “yes” or “no” answers. The exclusion of a middle ground between the poles of Aristotelian logic is the source of much confusion. Other logic systems have been suggested in Buddhist writings; the great second-century dharma master and teacher Nagarjuna introduced a four-valued logic system in which statements about the world can be (1) true, (2) not true, (3) both true and not true, and (4) neither true nor not true — which Nagarjuna believed was the usual case—thereby illuminating what is known as the Buddhist Middle Path.²³ According to Nagarjuna, the Buddha first taught that the world is real. He next taught that it is unreal. To the more astute students, he taught that it is both real and not real. And to those who were furthest along the path, he taught that the world is neither real nor not real, which is what we would say today. (In an interview in the magazine What Is Enlightenment? the Dalai Lama singled out Nagarjuna as one of the truly enlightened people of all time. He is thought to be a contemporary of Garab Dorjé, the spontaneously awakened discoverer of Dzogchen.)

      The two-valued Aristotelian logic we use every day is simply inadequate to describe the data of modern physics, while the four-valued logic system appears quite outside Western consideration and thought. A seeming paradox in physics that may well find its resolution in “four-logic” is the so-called wave/particle paradox. It is well known that, under the conditions of various experimental arrangements, light displays either wave-like or particle-like properties. But what, then, is the essential nature of light? This question may not be amenable to our familiar system of logic, and may be better addressed by an expanded logic system. We might say, for example, that light is (1) a wave, (2) not a wave, (3) both a wave and not a wave, or, most correctly, (4) neither a wave nor not a wave.

      This is how we are able to be both a self and not a self — both separated as bodies and not separated in awareness. Four-logic shows that the so-called problem of mind-body duality is not a paradox at all. I discuss this here because four-logic is really the handmaiden of nonlocality, wherein things are neither separate nor not separate.

      In the Sutras of Patanjali, which are still in print, the great teacher was not primarily trying to interest people in developing their psychic abilities.²⁴ He was actually writing a guide on how to become a realized person — how to experience God. He would say that knowing God is part of knowing yourself. The mystic had observed that, once people learn to quiet their minds, they begin to have all sorts of interesting experiences, such as seeing into the distance, experiencing the future, diagnosing illness, healing the sick, and much more. But his goal was to help his students achieve transcendence, rather than to display these siddhis, or powers.

      I see these abilities, and the mental interconnectedness that they imply, as part of the “perennial philosophy,” and I believe they should be seen as matters of experience rather than items of belief. They provide an opportunity to step outside the accepted contemporary paradigm (or religion) of “scientific materialism,” in which we are viewed as just being some kind of remarkable sentient meat.

      Patanjali also gave step-by-step instructions for what might be called omniscience, as well as the quiet mind. He taught that if one wants to see the moon reflected in a pool of water, one must wait until every ripple is stilled. So it is with mind. He wrote that “yoga (union with God) is mind-wave quieting” and is a first step to either transcendence or knowing God. Achieving omniscience doesn’t mean we can know everything. But by asking one question at a time, we can know anything we need to know. It is important to remember that these teachings are not aimed merely at self-improvement; they are designed as a guide to self-realization, or the discovery of who we are. There is a recurring Buddhist caution that “no powers are sought before wisdom” (or liberation from the illusion of who we are). That is, although you may feel that omniscience is coming on, don’t get attached to it!

      Western spiritual seekers of truth can choose to consciously cultivate what Eastern spiritual traditions describe as mindfulness by developing what can be called “an intimacy with stillness.” In Andrew Harvey’s book The Essential Mystics, he asserts that we may discover that true spirituality is not about passive escape from earthly living but, rather, spirituality is about active arrival here “in full presence.” He describes the experience of oceanic love that is available to the quiet mind:

      It always transcends anything that can be said of it, and remains always unstained by any of our human attempts to limit or exploit it. Every mystic of every time and tradition has awakened in wonder and rapture to the signs of this eternal Presence and known its mystery as one of relation and love.²⁵

      Limitless Mind is an invitation to experience this loving syrup, beyond romance. Although a body can definitely be a vehicle of transformation, love in the Buddhist sense is not about bodies; it is wisdom wedded to compassion. To take the first step toward residing in this state of loving awareness, the Dzogchen master Longchenpa teaches that we must move out of our daily acquiescence to conditioned awareness and learn to become aware of, and head in the direction of, timeless existence. Conditioned awareness is a distortion of our daily perceptions and experience that is caused by all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that we have suffered during the entire course of our lives. Almost all spiritual teachings tell us — often to our annoyance — that these experiences are merely illusions. What we are striving for is disillusionment. Conditioned awareness is the crazy-making process of focusing one’s anxious and fearful attention on the future, while feeling guilt over the past, and missing out entirely on the present.

      A Course in Miracles, which I discuss in the final chapter, explains that by “illusion” we refer to the fact that we subconsciously give all the meaning there is to everything we experience — usually based on something in the past. Things happen, and we then have an opportunity to experience them with naked and unprejudiced awareness, or we can push the events through our filter bank and assign meaning in accordance with today’s set of fears, judgments, and agitation.

      One of the important repeated teachings of Dzogchen is that samsara (everyday material existence in the “rat race”) is the same as nirvana (the blissful state of surrendered loving awareness). How could this be? My understanding of this paradox is that they are both simply ideas held in the mind. As ideas, one is no more real that the other. Like any idea, fearful or pleasant, it can be released to float away and pop like a soap bubble. Although these teachings were elaborated in the eighth century, they have great currency today, even in the engrams of Freudian psychoanalysis. Engrams are buried memories of traumas, abuse, or indoctrinations that give rise to our subconscious fears, prejudices, and reactions, and which constantly give meaning and color to our experience — without our knowing why.

      The spontaneously awakened Dzogchen master Garab Dorjé taught what he knew by direct experience: that our awareness is nonlocal and unlimited by space and time. All of us today can know this truth, based on the data of psychics and parapsychology. But my hope and reason for writing this book is to encourage you to personally investigate the divine opportunity