The mind as crucial bridge between matter and consciousness

Evolution has endowed us, “homo sapiens,” the thinking beings, with a nervous system designed to unconsciously handle vital functions, thus providing the foundation for cognition to evolve and freeing our conscious mind to focus on solving challenges to our survival through planning, cooperation and adaptation.

It is through the finely tuned integration of both systems working together that the mind just happens to have provided a crucial bridge between matter and consciousness.

We are born with the intrinsic capacity to experience life in all its colors and flavors as a “tabula rasa,” an empty vessel of perceptions, of receptivity, of allowing, where all ordinary human experiences just “happen” in their unadulterated state of primal innocence, without the mind’s interference, without our “doing.”

The list of these ordinary experiences that are outside of the mind’s purview, of things we cannot “do,” includes everything that makes us positively human: love, laughter, joy, gratitude, intuition, sleep, authenticity, change, inspiration, relaxation, creativity, meditation, silence…. For what are these happenings but the very essence of “being”?

The mind on the other hand only knows doing – going from A to B. It is the great achiever.

Doing is its engine, like a bicycle that needs constant pedaling to keep moving. And yet, to its credit, the adaptive evolutionary drive that produced the development of the mind allowed in its wake for the evolution of consciousness to happen.

So, it is clear that the mind itself is not the enemy.

In fact, as Osho points out, the mind has to be not only “befriended” but also “decorated”:

“Start loving your mind – and if you love your mind you will decorate it, just the way you decorate your body.

“You keep it clean, you keep it fresh; you don’t want your body to smell horrible to people, you want your body to be loved and respected by others. Your presence should not be simply tolerated but welcomed….
“Then you will not be unfriendly to the mind. Then you will rejoice in the mind.
“Even if mind is there in your silence, it will have a poetry and a music of its own, and to transcend such a refined mind is very easy. It is a friendly step towards higher peaks: poetry turning into mysticism, great literature turning into great insights into existence, music turning into silence.”¹

Resolving the dilemma – The secret of allowing

All Eastern religious traditions, from Jainism to Buddhism and Zen, have tried to address this dilemma of the mind – at once a critical agent of consciousness and an obstacle to meditation, a bridge and a barrier, in a state of constant conflict – with mixed results at best.

For what are contemplative methods of introspection, contemplation and self-inquiry but a game of cat and mouse, in which the mind itself is engaged in the quest for its own transcendence?

Osho:

“That’s what my unique contribution is to you. With absolute humbleness I want to tell you that I am far ahead of even Gautam Buddha, for the simple reason that he is still fighting with the mind. I have loved my mind, and through love I have transcended it….
“It is a totally new beginning. Naturally I have to be condemned; my people will be condemned. Many will come to me but will not be able to walk along with me even for a few steps, because soon they will find that their prejudices are preventing them from going with me.
“Their prejudices are ancient, and naturally – I can understand – they cannot think that anybody can go beyond Gautam Buddha, just as the contemporaries of Gautam Buddha could not believe that he has gone beyond the Vedas and beyond the seers of the Upanishads, just as contemporaries of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu could not believe that they have gone far beyond Confucius….

“My approach towards meditation is absolutely new, absolutely fresh, because it depends on love – not on fight, not on war.

 “Mahavira I have left twenty-five centuries behind. His name was not Mahavira – mahavira means ‘the great warrior.’ His name was Vardhaman, but people changed his name because he was a great warrior. A warrior against whom? – against his body, against his mind. And I don’t think that anybody who is against his body and against his mind is capable of reaching the beyond.
“Only love is the path.
“Make your mind as beautiful as possible. Decorate it with flowers….

“First let your mind be decorated. Only beyond this perfumed garden of the mind will you be able to go silently, without any fight; mind will be a help, not a hindrance.

“I have not found it to be a hindrance; hence I can say with absolute authority: it is not a hindrance. You just don’t know how to use it.”¹

Meditation “happens,” not through effort but through “allowing.”

So, the real question we should be asking is: how can we experience ourselves again as empty vessels of receptivity and regain a state of mindlessness? What tools of biology do we have at our disposal that can trigger, without even our “doing,” a state of inner stillness? How can we leverage our natural physiological processes to bring us closer to the lightness – and silence – of “being”?

 

Understanding the neurological underpinnings of attention

Osho calls our attention to a much-needed new era of science in the service of consciousness:

“As far as I am concerned and my vision for a new humanity is concerned, I see science as having two dimensions: one, the lower dimension, working on objects; and two, the higher dimension, working on consciousness.
“And the lower dimension has to work as a servant for the higher dimension. Then there is no need of any other religion; then science fulfills totally all the needs of man.”²

To grasp why these traditional Eastern approaches intrinsically miss the target, it will help to go back to nearly 600 million years ago – a time when our early marine ancestors’ nervous system developed the capacity to enhance some signals over others. This evolved mechanism is arguably the simplest and most fundamental neurological underpinning of attention – our human attention being merely an elaborated version of it, made of the same building blocks.

When Michael Graziano, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University, shined a light in the eye of a crab, he discovered the neuron touched by the brightest part of the light became highly activated while suppressing the activity of the neighboring neurons, thus creating a ring of darkness around it, in a process called lateral inhibition.

The activated neuron can be said to be in a state of “concentrated attention,” a state of alertness, albeit at the expense of the surrounding neurons that remain, quite literally, “in the dark.”

Intrigued by the implication of this phenomenon, we wrote to Professor Graziano, asking him to elucidate what happens to these cells when the spot of light is abruptly turned off? In particular, what happens to those neighboring cells that were laterally inhibited when the light was switched on? Do they simply return to their original uninhibited state or is there a rebound effect before they return to the original state?

Dr. Graziano confirmed that when the light is turned off, there is a transient rebound.

The surrounding cells display a burst of activity – a state of alertness – and the central cell is suppressed.

Then, in the absence of visible stimulus, the network stabilizes into increased and protracted neurogenesis.

The rebound in alertness is followed by a state of relaxation.

As with the visual cortex, the same mechanism is found in the auditory cortex. Instead of light, sound is experienced; instead of darkness, silence is experienced.

Active listening to sounds creates its own arousal that studies have shown progressively decreases as our concentration, our attention diminishes. After all, in our world of instant flashes of information delivered in subliminal micro-second installments, attention deficit disorder is inevitable.

But, regardless of the level of sustained attention on the part of the listener, what happens when that constant stream of input is suddenly interrupted?

Researcher Luciano Bernardi, conducting a study of the physiological effects of music and the state of arousal produced by the sounds of music, inadvertently discovered that “randomly inserted stretches of silence also had a drastic effect, but in the opposite direction. In fact, two-minute silent pauses proved far more relaxing than either ‘relaxing’ music or a longer silence played before the experiment started.

Silence seemed to be heightened by contrasts, maybe because it gave test subjects a release from careful attention. The total absence of input was having a more pronounced effect than any sort of input tested.”

In other words, prolonged exposure to silence prompts higher levels of alertness and attention.

Meaningfully, the high level of sensitivity and activation results in neurogenesis in the hippocampus region of the brain that is associated with learning and memory. This adaptive response to the sudden absence of environmental stimuli could be seen as playing an important role in the building blocks of the mind itself and the development of consciousness.

Osho’s unique approach – Silent gaps between words

Osho makes use of the same mechanism to provoke us into alertness. His simple strategy is unique as it entirely bypasses the controlling mind.

Nor does it engage us into any effort, focusing instead on the natural arousal of awareness induced by the sudden contrast between sound and silence.

“If you have listened to my silence, maybe my words can be helpful as a contrast to my silence. When you write on a blackboard with white chalk it comes out clear and loud, because the blackboard gives the contrast. If you write on a white wall with white chalk it will not be clear and loud. It will be lost. I can keep quiet here, I can sit silently here, but then you will not be able to understand my silence at all. It will be writing with white chalk on a white wall.
“I talk to you – I create a blackboard of words, of language, concept, logic, philosophy, religion – and then I leave just a few small gaps, silent gaps, intervals. Those gaps come very loudly.

“Against the black background of language, silence comes very clearly.”³

In his attempt to instill in us an abiding experience of emptiness, Osho deliberately embeds silent pauses in his speaking, inviting us to listen not to the words, but to the silent gaps between the words in a seamless interplay. The continuous contrasting rhythm opens up instant doorways into meditation and gives us sudden glimpses of enduring silence, practically “in spite of ourselves”.

As Osho explains:

“My speaking is one of my devices for meditation. Speaking has never been used this way before; I speak not to give you a message, but to stop your mind functioning.
“And it is not only here, but far away…anywhere in the world where people will be listening to the video or to the audio, they will come to the same silence.
“Sitting with me in these discourses is nothing but creating more and more meditativeness in you. I don’t speak to teach something; I speak to create something. These are not lectures. These are simply devices for you to become silent because if you are told to become silent without making any effort you will find great difficulty….

“I am making you aware of silences without any effort on your part. My speaking is being used for the first time as a strategy to create silence in you….

“Just a moment – when I became silent, you become silent. What remains is just a pure awaiting. You are not making any effort; neither am I making any effort. I enjoy talking; it is not an effort.
“I love to see you silent. I love to see you laugh, I love to see you dance. But in all these activities, the fundamental remains meditation.”⁴

Osho continues….

“My purpose is so unique – I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are not important so I can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation. And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being….
“I cannot force you to be silent, but I can create a device in which spontaneously you are bound to be silent. I am speaking, and in the middle of a sentence, when you were expecting another word to follow, nothing follows but a silent gap.

“And your mind was looking to listen, and waiting for something to follow, and does not want to miss it – naturally it becomes silent.

“What can the poor mind do? If it was well known at what points I will be silent, if it was declared to you that on such and such points I will be silent, then you could manage to think – you would not be silent.
“Then you know: ‘This is the point where he is going to be silent, now I can have a little chit-chat with myself’’ But because it comes absolutely suddenly…. I don’t know myself why at certain points I stop.”⁵

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the “listener” falls into a silent blank space, suspended in time. Even the presence of attention – inevitably associated with the effort of listening, even if only minimally, – is not a prerequisite for the chain of events to take place.

“What remains is a pure awaiting.” 

The mind is a verbalization mechanism that has evolved as an internal predictive model.

It evaluates, creates anticipatory scenarios of what comes next. So, when faced with sudden silence, the mind interprets the omission of sound as an active violation of the predictive processing. An “attention spike” is immediately triggered that temporarily suspends ongoing mental processing to assess potential threats, very much like the impala in the jungle who freezes into a state of heightened vigilance as the lion approaches.

 

When silence has meaning – The language of existence

So, it is not that when sound stops, nothing happens. Quite the contrary.

The absence of expected sensory input is experienced more acutely than the presence of the sensory input.

The brain treats this absence as a positive detection of silence rather than a mere lack of detection.

The mind’s active response to silence is the key to understanding our internal model of attention.

Within a fraction of a second, in the immediate wake of the attention spike, the Default Mode Network is activated. The DMN is a specific brain system involved in introspection. It internalizes external stimuli, consolidates memory, learning and future planning. Its activation represents a shift from external vigilance to internal awareness, a transition from sensory processing to internal awareness.

Osho calls this inner awareness arising in silence the language of existence:

“Silence is also a language, the language of existence. Trees use it, and the stars use it, and the mountains use it, and the mystics use it. I am saying that which can be said; I am also saying, through my silence, that which cannot be said. Now it is up to you whether you can get a silent whisper and allow it into your deepest being, because only there its full meaning will be revealed to you.
“Your mind is incapable, inadequate.

“The mind has no way to understand silence, it can understand only language, only words; but the wordless…” ⁶

The natural tendency of the mind is to “choose” to listen to the words, to listen “intently”, to “engage” the mind in the listening, to take interest in what is being said.

The sudden shift from engagement to silence involves no “doing” at all.

So, when the sudden gap of silence abruptly comes, unexpectedly, the mind has nowhere to go but to drop into a space of “silence with no effort.”

During this initial stage, we fall into the gap unawares, in spite of ourselves. Then, as we becomes immersed in the enduring imprint of the repeated silences on the screen of the mind, listening to the words takes on a new quality. The attention shifts from the one-pointed narrow scope of the narrative, the words, to an unfocused state. It becomes more like listening to music, where we are just receptive to the sounds rather than “minding” the words. The less we choose between the words and the gaps, the deeper and longer will be the experience.

This experience of the inner happens all by itself, but only if we are present to its happening.

What matters is not what we are listening to, but if there is anyone listening.

Osho:

“While you are listening to me as I am speaking, do not focus all your awareness on me; also be aware of the one who is listening. Someone is outside, someone is listening within. Between the two, words are passing. Do not get lost in the speaker or become so hypnotized that the listener is completely forgotten – because the listener is more important. His remembrance must be there. The arrow of consciousness has to be double-pointed: one pointing towards the speaker, the other towards the listener.

“Consciousness should stretch in both directions. Only then, your understanding will be very deep.

“If the listener is asleep, what can the speaker communicate? But if the listener is awake, then even if the speaker remains silent you will be able to understand the silence.” ⁷ 

Over time, as the imprint of the silent gaps gets more deeply embedded in our consciousness, they no longer happen unexpectedly, but become the default undercurrent of alertness, of choiceless awareness, as the listening takes on the quality of pure receptivity, blurring the contrast between words and silence into a unified stream of awareness.

Alertness and relaxation merge into one. The words and the gaps take on the enthralling rhythm of poetry. Sound and silence meld into a sweet melody.

In part two of this article, we will dive into the purifying process necessary for the smokescreen of the mind to be wiped clean and reveal how Osho’s unique use of Stop Exercises creates a lasting imprint of silence and meditation in our daily lives.

END

1. Osho, The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here, Talk #13 – Human Mind Is a Miracle
2. Osho, The Golden Future, Talk #36 – Science Has to Become Religious
3. Osho, Ecstasy, The Forgotten Language, Talk #5 – The Way of Wisdom, the Way of Love
4. Osho, The Invitation, Talk #14 – Silence Is the Right Soil
5. Osho, The Great Challenge, Talk #2 – Dynamic Meditation
6. Osho, The Rebellious Spirit, Talk #29 – Pregnant with Enlightenment
7. Osho, Behind a Thousand Names, Talk #7 – Meditation Is the Way