Reaching for the Highest Mind 2/25/02

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As we surrender doubts and attachments to what is already known, we open to more than realms beyond our habits.

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The distinction between the human mind and the consciousness of all other sentient beings resides in the capacity for self-reflection. This means that there is something within each of us which is a self-observing self, a unique witness that watches over the scene. This witness is separate from our smaller self, for it watches that which is called "us," the personality. As we observe ourselves, watch ourselves, see ourselves in action, we can also observe observing ourselves, reflecting on the experience itself. And that's not the end of it, for we can then go a step higher and observe that very process of observing the observation of the self. And so we come from the witness to the meta-witness, to the meta-meta-witness, and so on up in ascending steps of abstraction and abstract mind.

All of this takes us into the highest levels of mind, but is not without effort. It takes us into realms far beyond the body, and it has been said, and wisely so, that it really reaches into a mind that is outside of the cerebral cortex. There is increasing reason to think so.

The cortical apparatus is designed to inhibit--and fortunately so, otherwise we become flooded with irrelevant data. The idiot savant is a good example of what it means to become flooded. The idiot savant has so much information about single isolated instance, or item, such as the weather on a particular day, that he or she becomes an idiot in reference to all else. At the same time, this capacity of a savant provides a window into the enormous potential that resides in the reaches of the mind. A window, a kind of tube of connection with the higher and higher and highest mind that I believe lies beyond the cortex.

Further indications are the growing number of experiences of what are known as "out-of-body" experiences. These were first written about, at least in the West, by Robert Munroe in Journeys Out of the Body, and a frightening experience it was for him--at least initially. But the time came when he could actually visualize, see, his body lying inert on the bed while sleeping ... while at the same time he had risen above it, and could see it clearly--and, in fact he could travel. He could travel in a world beyond cortex. And now there are so many reported experiences like that. All of them, I believe, are related to the ordinary experiences of observing ourselves, but in our ordinary, everyday experiences, in a lesser and less dramatic way.

There are so many instances reported now, of people who have been operated, under anesthesia, and yet have a consciousness of what has been said in the operating room; so many instances now of near-death and even after-death experiences, in which consciousness and a clear lucidity remains on the scene, even though the person has achieved almost a flat line.

So what are the implications of this reaching into the higher, and higher, and higher mind? The implications are that there is an endless ascension of which we are capable as we go into higher and higher abstraction; as we momentarily surrender our effort of the will, and let ourselves be carried into a space of surrender and reception. This has become recognized as a well-known striving for the still and quiet mind that has been written about, spoken about so much in the literature from the East, and now practiced so frequently in the West. And when we achieve this quiet, surrendered and waiting mind, we receive receptions, inspirations, unexpected messages, sometimes of greatest utility. And there we are connected with the Beyond, with a mind and a consciousness of which we are capable. It is far beyond cortex, far beyond our ordinary capacities, and open not only to spiritual experiences, but also inventions, new scientific insights, new roads to travel.

There are many instances of this in my practice ... for example, a young Information Technology man who receives inspired solutions to problems about establishing codes. There was the experience of Jonas Salk, who let himself become (in his mind) a polio virus, and thus discovered the vaccine that saved so many lives from misery. There was Albert Einstein who rode a ray of light all the way up, and discovered the fundamentals of the E=mc2. There was Kekule, who opened to the higher reaches of the mind, to receive the "aha" experience in discovering the benzene ring. And there was Archimedes shouting "Eureka!" when he discovered, in the bath, the principle of the buoyancy of water. There was Mozart writing symphonies at an unbelievably early age.

All of these are instances of the higher reaches of the mind, of which we are all capable as we surrender our attachments to what is already known, as we surrender the doubts that we have about the capacities that we have for self-observation in a deeper and deeper way, as we fail to give in to the doubt that we automatically feel about the receptions from the higher and higher and higher mind, that come in as we practice a kind of discipline in which we observe, in which we become quiet in mind, receptive, awaiting, expecting the unexpected, grateful for these receptions when we leave doubt aside. These are receptions that can lead to an integrated new wisdom and new discovery.

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Maurie D. Pressman, M.D. is the author of

Enter the Supermind, Visions From the Soul and co-author (with Patricia Joudry) of Twin Souls: A Guide to Finding Your True Spiritual Partner. Dr. Pressman is Emeritus Chairman of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University Health Sciences Center. He is Medical Director at the Center for Psychiatric Wellness, clinics that operate in Philadelphia and Haddonfield, N.J. These clinics bridge traditional and spiritual psychotherapy. Dr. Pressman can be reached at 200 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106; telephone: 215/922-0204; fax: 215/922-3008; email: mauriedavid@earthlink.net; website: www.mauriepressman.com.

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