My understanding of K’s teaching is that the brain is too busy to commune with the Mind, so it is on its own, alone, with nothing but its thoughts to relate to. But when it is quiet, unoccupied, it comes into contact with the Mind and, no longer the arbiter, the authority, thought assumes its proper place, and the brain’s primary relationship is with the intelligence of quiescence rather than the activity of the intellect.
I think i would probably agree with Inquiry here.
K often talked with Bohm about a one-way relationship between the mind and the brain. The brain has no relationship with the mind, but the mind can have a relationship with the brain, when the brain is quiet.
What do you think about this?
It makes sense to me that a holistic vision of existence can accommodate the concept of “parts” without breaking down - however the point of view of the separate individual loses all substance when confronted with the concept of a unified whole.
It reminds me of the holistically inclined right hemisphere of the brain, which is conscious of whats going on in the analytic left hemisphere - but the left hemisphere cannot be privy to the holistic view, which would probably mess up its limited, subject/object goal oriented projects.
I think this is where one has to be aware that what K means by the word mind changed over time. You likely know that over the years he has used the word to mean thought, intellect, the brain, the whole movement of thought, feeling, the senses, which includes the brain, etc - and any of these meanings might go hand in hand with the notion that the mind is produced by the activity of the brain.
But in later years, beginning in the late 70s and becoming central in the 80s, K often uses the word mind to mean ‘mind that is outside the brain’, or the ‘mind not made by man’, or even ‘universal mind’ - and it is clear that he is using the word to also mean intelligence (in the K sense) and love (in the K sense) - which is not reducible to the brain.
It reminds me a little of Aldous Huxley’s (popularisation of the) notion of the brain as a reducing valve, which reduces what is ‘out there’ to be perceived, so as to make it relevant to the limited survival needs of the brain. What is ‘out there’ to be perceived he called Big Mind, a mind that is ultimately infinite and so not reducible to the brain. But the brain has to be in a certain constituent form - chemically and genetically - to be capable of receiving the influx of Big Mind (which Huxley believed required asceticism or the use of pharmaceuticals).
For K, asceticism and drugs are out. But the brain still needs to be in a certain state to be the instrument of the ‘mind outside the brain’ - which involves a certain emptiness or quiescence of thought, so that thought sees its right place and doesn’t interfere psychologically.
Since we’re using the word “mind” for both the intellect and the universal mind, I refer to the latter as the Mind because the compulsively chattering mind is dependent on communion with the Mind for intelligence, and its incessant activity precludes that communion.