Editor Vadim Prostov
Illustrator Elena Kozyryatsky
Translator Nadya Gugulashvilli
© NGO-MA, 2023
© Elena Kozyryatsky, illustrations, 2023
© Nadya Gugulashvilli, translation, 2023
ISBN 978-5-0060-1013-0
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
I realized that I had to start from the very beginning. This way many people can use this course of mine «Mysticism from A to Z» as a way to get acquainted with mysticism. I consider mysticism to be an exact science, I would like you to be able to comprehend this teaching from the very beginning, as a science, without all sorts of insinuations and profanities, so that it would serve your interest, so that it would be your journey into the world of practice, to the world of comprehension, to the world of new revelations, and would not be associated with any mystifications, with some secrets, understatements. I will formulate as much as possible, and what cannot be conveyed in words, you can check yourself in practice and make sure that all the indicators are correct, although not all of them are sufficient.
I want you to understand that any teaching is a map, a map of the path that you will have to follow yourself and check everything from your own experience.
1. About thinking and the Moment of Now
Dear spiritual friends, I am very glad to welcome you to the pages of my book. I decided to record a short but complete introductory course for you, for those who are interested in mysticism.
Recently I have received an interesting question that concerns a schematic understanding of the mental plane system. It is closely tied to the question of what is the practice of staying «right here and now» in the Moment of Now, and I would like to discuss with you whether we understand this practice in the same way and whether we understand what the mental plane is, what is the cutting off of the fantasies of the mind, and what is staying in the Moment of Now. There is a lot of confusion around this topic. It is primarily associated with the fact that in a huge number of traditions Mind is equal to consciousness, they often write «Mind» (with a capital letter), equal to «consciousness.» In our country, in our colloquial and in our conceptual apparatus, it is written that the mind is thinking, intellect, mental plane. Because of this, there is a lot of confusion associated with misreading Buddhist and Zen Buddhist texts. I want you to have a complete clarity on this subject, so I have separated the concepts of consciousness and mind. This will correspond to the fact that there is a «small» and a «big» mind. So, for example, in India in general there are several concepts of the mind, so the most important point is to be aware of what do we mean using this word. I am referring to our intellect, using the word «mind», I mean our descriptive ability, this little mental plane of ours. In that way, it is by no means consciousness. Therefore, you and I will consider the mind as a collection of thoughts that describe our direct experience.
The main activity of a working mind is to describe, to interpret, to evaluate, and to compare our direct experience. In my model, which I give to my students, we divide the mental plane into sectors. It is very simple and you need it in order to be aware of what is at stake. So, the first sector is the mind serving our direct experience. This is what helps us to survive in our daily life. Every day we understand what we see, we interpret it, we evaluate it, we compare it, draw conclusions – all this is a working mind that really deals with direct experience.
The second sector of the mind activity is work with mediated experience; it is our way to receive mediated experience. This is the mind that helps us to understand speech, to create images when we hear words, to remember them, and this is the most important element of experience in the modern world. Experiences that are mediated are of paramount importance: these experiences you do not put into practice. You, as it were, accept it from people who have gone through something in practice, but accept it in the form of words, descriptions, images, explanations, clarifications, and you may check a small part of it directly in practice. A modern person, a social person does not exist without the ability to receive mediated experience. If we were told that you shouldn’t stick your hands into the electric plug, few people would check this out by experience. Many will be able to understand this intellectually and to get indirect experience from other people that this act can lead to some kind of damage. They would never test it in their entire lives. They would just take other’s word for it. So, the ability to gain experience through words, through description is very, very important, it is the most important ability of a modern person, in whom this experience is already much superior to the experience that you get directly. These are books, films, dreams, and communications. This all gives us a kind of indirect experience. Thus, the second most important part of the mental plane is the part of the mental plane responsible for indirect experiences.
