Chapter 10 - Seeing Something Strange!

IN NOVEMBER 1997, a lady doctor from East London came to our Centre for a special meditation session with her daughter. She is a general medical practitioner. She said she often saw a terrible picture like a coffin while meditating at home. That created a lot of fear in her mind. The experience looks more horrifying from her cultural background as people do not discuss death in Western culture. People in the Western world are very open compared to people from other parts of the world but they cannot bring themselves to be open about death as their minds are prejudiced with fear.

Another gentleman with about 20 years of Yoga practice frequently reported in the Wednesday meditation session at our Centre that he saw a blue colour and asked what that might mean. Recently, someone asked me what could be meant by her dream. She dreamt of her father who passed away ten years ago. That happened just before her brother wrote to her of the arrangement the family in Thailand had made to have an ancestral worship ceremony She was surprised because she had not thought of her father for quite some time.

We see objects in two ways, through our eyes and in our minds. Both are real. We see a lot of things. Some things make a lasting impact on our minds and some do not. Usually, we interpret what we see. The lady doctor interpreted the coffin to be inauspicious, and that she was unlucky to see it again and again. As she interpreted, fear began to arise. The real problem is not about the coffin she saw in her mind but the interpretation of what is being perceived through her mind. This is not reflection but speculation and interpretation. One starts forming an opinion on what one sees. In many of such instances, it is a probable when one goes on to create an illusion through interpretation just to feel better. This is where the problem lies.

We as human beings with conscious minds interpret ourselves all the time. We do so in terms of "what I am" and "what I am not", and "what I want to be" and "what I dont want to be". The coffin, the blue picture or the dream were being interpreted in the same way — "what it is" and "what it is not", perhaps in line with what they wanted it to be. As the interpretation becomes dominant, we lose the ability to appreciate the real object being perceived through senses, eyes or mind. The mind is being coloured and blocked with opinions and interpretations.

By observing the bare object, being aware of only seeing, and not interpreting or judging it, we open ourselves to what really exists there. What is best known here is what is being perceived through our eyes or mind. We have to start with this bare perception. It would be a fruitless effort to try to start with what is not known, which is here the reason why one sees. We want to know "why" before we know "what." Mindfulness is to start knowing directly "what" — the object presented to the senses really is here and now. The present moment is best known, compared with the future or the past. The mind that is engaged in the less known or least known object tends to create fear and anxiety. It is a strange object because it is beyond what a person is capable of perceiving through the senses.

Buddhism accepts the existence of knowledge obtained through inference. However, this inferred or abstract or indirect knowledge can only be safely acquired when it is derived from experiential knowledge that is based on observation.

The object of mindfulness is always one that arises in the present, not that has not yet arisen or has already gone. The unknown objects such as soul, God and Atman are not an appropriate subject of contemplation. There is no reason to believe that we can begin successfully with something entirely unknown to us.