INSIGHT

Having discussed the question "What is insight", let us recap what we understand. We have tentatively seen that thought is a material process in the wave patterns interacting within the brain cells. It is not independent of matter and time, seeing that its functionality coming from accumulative knowledge based on memory. Having seen that thought is a movement within the content of the mind, we can reasonably deduct that the entire process of thought acting on memory is solely the content of accumulative past. This cannot be the immediacy of now. Our meditations together show a part of the brain that is not dependent on the material process of thought. It suggests that a flashing insight acting as a mutation of our ignorance can only occur through this untapped part of the brain. This can only occur in the immediacy of the act. Stillness shows with certitude that insight doesn’t come from the accumulative knowledge of past.

Through stillness in our meditations we have experienced a part of the brain that is completely independent of its content. This implies there is an activity of the brain that is not governed by, dependent upon or directed by the accumulative knowledge of the mind. This might also suggest there is something super-human in us and this begs extra caution for we might fall into the trap of telling ourselves we are both God and human, Atman and Brahman, being one and the many simultaneously. We experience these activities by traveling gurus from Eastern traditions playing on the content of the western mind, like the buzz-word ‘now’ churned as another mind concept and even unwittingly propagated on television chat shows as insight. It has been made clear in our discussions that none of these concepts are insight as they are all within the content of the condition in every tradition, every belief structure and in all modes of philosophical and theological deduction.

Logically, we can see that thought is a material process in the brain cells and this is acceptable to the established scientific order, not overlooking that the scientific order is also a material process. Insight is not part of this process. It is independent of it while acting upon it in bringing about change in the pattern of thought. We can partially see this from within the process whenever we look across the horizons of time into our past.

Scientifically, we can see that insight and thought are not mutually inter-active in our understanding of interaction between relationships. Insight can act upon thought, bringing about partial or whole mutation of patterns, whereas thought does not reciprocally act upon insight. This might also suggest the possibility that the material process of thought is so minute in comparison to the enormity of insight that we cannot even measure the reciprocal activity. Another possibility arises relating to the pattern’s degree of resistance which diminishes the impact of insight on the self. This correlates to our previous discussions how we can only receive an incoming insight according to our lights or degree of receptivity.

This might also explain how the partial insights as seen by the mind are slowly absorbed by the restructuring pattern, the degree of resistance within the existing pattern determining the degree of receptivity. We see this existentially in the resilience of societies refusing to let go of the known, such as the current austerity measures imposed by ourselves on ourselves highlighting the resilience of exhausted and defunct patterns. We see it in conflict zones and how the pattern repeatedly fails when trying to introduce non-violence in a causal world of violence.

We have seen that insight is causeless. It cannot be forced to happen by the mind of self that functions within its construct of causation, not even by the most advanced scientific mind making its deductions through causal analysis. We have looked at the example that violence always has a cause. But peace, does it have a cause? Can we see it is causeless? In like manner, love is causeless, whereas hate has a cause. As a corollary, it can be seen that peace and violence cannot co-exist, love and hate cannot co-exist. Peace is the absence of violence and love is the absence of hate. But the mind pattern repeatedly fails to see it. It creates a repetition of cause and effect through accumulative events until eventually the pattern implodes in its own confusion, as we can easily see in the dilemmas facing the current financial structures of the world trying to sustain the unsustainable.

We have seen that the mind pattern is the self in darkness. Insight dispels this darkness by impacting on the point from which the darkness is arising while concurrently enlivening intelligence and dispelling ignorance. But looking from our position as the self within the pattern is our partiality of vision within the content of thought. From such position, the mind can only conceptualize insight. This conceptualization is the darkness unable to see beyond its parameters of cause and effect.

From our exploration together, we can reasonably say the entirety of self is causation. The self in its darkness seeks out remedies for violence with its programs of non-violence, not seeing it’s all within the pattern of the material process of thought. Peace being causeless, whenever the pattern asks how we can bring about peace, the ‘how’ implies that peace has a cause. This again is the pattern of causation trying to invalidate the causeless. The movement of ‘how’ in the pattern is part of the material process prompting further division and conflict. The ‘how’ wrongly suggests it has cause. We have experienced it takes extraordinary stillness to glimpse this very fine point. When 'absolute' stillness arises in the mind, the way opens for insight to deliver a mutation of the entire pattern forming the material process of thought. But this cannot be believed or expected. It only happens should it happen.

We looked at the questions: Is insight selective to the rare few while not to the masses? Why does it not freely permeate our educational systems? We found that our educational systems are an extension of the self and, being a material process of thought, the self is the force of resistance. This suggests that insight and self cannot co-exist. We cannot force insight to happen, but we can negate our ignorance when looking from stillness and seeing our situation exactly as it is. This is looking without movement of thought. The act of seeing opens the possibility for dissolving the darkness of the self and this suggests that stillness of mind is the door to insight. When this is seen by a sufficient number of individual minds, a transmutation occurs. Might this be the great epochal shift already taking place as we speak?

We must listen before we can hear. We must look before we can see. Can we listen and look holistically rather than partially listening and looking from the distorting positions of our conflicting conditions? In this 'absolute' stillness of listening and looking, might this be the doorway to insight? But who is asking the question? The still mind has nothing to ask.

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