• Beyond the Horizon of Time – Is Reincarnation Buddhist?
• The Philosophy of VesakReturn to Tranquility
• Ariyamagga Bhavana Meditation Guide Level I – Selective Thinking
• Ariyamagga Bhavana Meditation Guide Level II – Tranquility of Mind
• Ariyamagga Bhavana Meditation Guide Level III – Seven Steps to Awakening
• Buddha The Radical Shrink – Buddhist Psychotherapy
• Did We Cross The Threshold of Hope

“He studied modern science and Western medicine in Sri Lanka and he obtained

two doctorates while in the United States, one is Western psychology

and another in Western philosophy and comparative religion. Bhante

Punnaji has made an in-depth research into the original teachings of

the Buddha which he thinks is different from all the modern schools

of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana including Zen

and Pure- land Buddhism. This research was not only academic but

also experiential. Bhante also did research into the form of Buddhist

Psychotherapy which he thinks is the best way to introduce Buddhism

to the modern world. As Buddhism in its original form was not a mere

religion of faith and worship but a psychological technique of growth

and evolution of the human consciousness.”

Foreword

Buddhist meditation, as taught in this retreat, is not a

mystical practice. This technique of meditation is for people

who are living a secular life as householders, who go to work,

have responsibilities, and who are involved in various social

relationships. What such people need is freedom from stress,

and freedom from worries and anxieties of life. They need

peace of mind, healthy relationships, self-confidence, success

in life, and efficiency at work. This means learning to gain

control over the emotional disturbances that prevent them

from thinking clearly or acting rationally. These problematic

emotional disturbances come in the form of anger, lust, worries,

fears, and anxieties. The form of Buddhist meditation taught

here helps one free the mind of emotional disturbances and to

think clearly and act rationally.

It involves a systematic technique of consciously

purifying the mind. All impurities arise from self-centred

emotional states. The pure mind is the tranquil mind. When the

mind is purified, one experiences an inner happiness, a physical

comfort, and a kindness and compassion that one has never

experienced before. The happiness referred to here is not a state

of emotional excitement, but a tranquil undisturbed state of the

mind. The kindness and compassion taught here is not based on

attachment. It is a state of unselfishness. Emotional excitement

is not true happiness, and attachment is not true love. Happiness

and kindness are attributes of the pure and tranquil mind.

Therefore, the aim of this method of meditation is to

purify the mind and relax the body resulting in happiness,

kindness and a mature intelligence. However, the mind can

only be purified by first restraining the behavior in the form of

sila.

The rest of the book in PDF is in the link below:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pgMXw2PEOESIEV6WcaV7sbnO-KmZpltd/edit 

The video above is him explaining the dream of existence. His work is both knowledge and experiential in nature. So one would get lots of insight from him. He writes clearly and simply so all is easily understood. I gather Buddhism was never a religion to him but a practice of the mind and through observation to get to a stillness of mind and to see how it can be taken to its pure clean clear state of mind that does not trigger thoughts and emotions in mind and body and control emotion. 

He passed away on July 27, 2018, but left behind lots of experiential information on the human condition and mind, and how to get it to its purest state of being. 

16 December 2019.

Earlier this year they had recorded speech signals in the auditory cortex of the brain to see where in the brain they were present. They were signals measured from the speech centre of epileptic patients’ brains who were already undergoing surgery. These experiments are normally done in a non-invasive manner but this time they took advantage of an open skull where other work had to be done and decided to ask the patients to read aloud and also read silently as they wanted to see where in the auditory cortex these signals we recorded so they could use this data in the future. Especially in those patients who could not communicate verbally with them. These self-talk inner sound recordings were not sounds that were vibrations in the air or sounds that have gone past the hearing system. Silent speech were inner sounds that were also shown to make an impression in the auditory cortex that can also be recorded.

But what they have done here is really showed us that silent speech has a place in the auditory cortex that records its intentions. It helps some of us who are saying that thinking is really silent speech first, or sound first, also has a place in the brain where it tells the brain what it wants to think. The brain needs to hear what you want to think first for it to start processing one’s thoughts. In fact, the brain needs to hear what you want to think through silent self-talk first before you can continue to think at all. No self-talk first then no thinking. If the brain does not hear what you want to think then it cannot continue to process your thoughts. 

In fact, see if you can read a sentence or comprehend what is read, without also having to self-talk first. You will feel the slight flutter of your vocal cords or the soft sound of your chest cavity while you are thinking. In this experiment earlier this year they showed us where in the brain sound, not from the vibrations in the air or through your hearing, but sound within your inner self which is also recorded in the brain. Why would the brain want to know what you are self-talking to yourself? Because thinking itself is self-talk and it needs to hear you first to process your thoughts, or to spin it into an idea. It needs to know what you want of it. This is an anomaly in oneself that one can use to bring on a silent mind in oneself as they do in meditation. Stop self-talking and then no thinking which brings on the silent mind. Use the anomaly to your advantage. Don’t think if you do not have too as in psychological thinking.

Inner speech. Covert speech. Verbal thinking. Self-talk. “Speak Thinking”. Different words for the same thing. All inner sounds recorded in the auditory cortex of the brain. But we can very easily prove to ourself if thinking itself is also all of these things above. That thinking itself is sound first. That the brain needs to hear you first for it to know what you want to think and that the thinking process can only proceed of it is also simultaneously followed by self-talk of your intended thoughts. 

‘They’re not thinking a sentence, they are speaking a sentence silently,’ says Mark Huckvale, head of the Research Department of Speech Hearing at UCL. 

‘They’re imagining how they would speak a sentence and, in doing so, they would excite the motor cortex related to moving the articulators.’ 

This same mechanism could work the other way, similar to how cochlear implants work to help deaf people now.

‘Somebody with a set of electrodes in their auditory cortex could get sensations of sound,  even though there were no physical vibrations of the air,’ says Huckvale. 

‘The reason it’s possible in the auditory cortex is because there’s quite likely to be a sensible, straightforward mapping between the characteristics of the sounds and places on the auditory cortex.’

Yes, but thinking itself is self-talk. There can be no thinking without simultaneous self-talk. There can be no comprehension in reading if there is also no simultaneous self-talk.

These experiments have shown us that inner speech has a place and a purpose in the brain. We either speak aloud so someone can hear us or we silently speak what we want to think so the brain can hear us and process our thoughts.

(self-talk thinking is only one aspect of thinking. As a personal observation: it is mainly our frontline thinking process that is an interactive form of thinking where we can take an observation and spin it into an idea, drives creativity in oneself, and creates the rest of the shenanigans in us.

There is also pictorial thinking and intuitive thinking which are non-interactive: daydreaming a form of pictorial thinking of just watching; intuitive thinking a similar non-interactive thinking process. Pictorial thinking can seem to ride the intuitive wave or is part of it. Psychological thinking can seem at times to be pictorial daydreaming in character and at other times interactive in nature.

One can stop the interactive self-talk thinking easily by stopping the sub-vocal speech. This brings on the silent mind and my experience is that the mind with time remaining in the silent mind state will also see pictorial thinking and intuitive thinking disappear altogether resulting in a no-mind state of just being and consciousness awareness of just observation and watching with a kind of non-judgemental state of being and with no interaction with anything one observes. If one remains in this state, the mind and memory of it all disappear completely into nothingness. There is no memory of existence itself until the mind returns from the void and the whole dream of existence returns which reminds one that reality and life itself is just an illusion of the mind.)

 https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/04/human-telepathy-natural-progression-communication-10683038/ 

Source of the article in the link above.

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37359-z 

Diagram below:

Overt speech: speaking aloud.  Imagined speech: silent speech, self-talk

Diagram from: Reference 16 from the source article:

 16.  Martin, S. et al. Decoding spectrotemporal features of overt and covert speech from the human cortex. Front. Neuroeng. 7, 14 (2014).

 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneng.2014.00014/full#F9 

9th December 2019

Here he goes into enlightenment and truth but I was interested here in how he comes to it via the existence of the opposites. 

At the end of the video above he says:

“The ultimate thing which is truth is not to be achieved through time. It can never be achieved. It is there or it is not there.”

It is interesting that he comes to this, “it can never be achieved. It is there or it is not there” by looking at opposites. Take vanity and humility: One cannot say that I am humble. You cannot create true humility. One can create a lie in one’s head that one has humility in him/her but the fact of both these opposites is vanity. Vanity is easily seen that one is vain: it is a fact. But when vanity disappears then humility is. It cannot be achieved like vanity. It has to filter through and exist by getting rid of its opposite.

He also uses the example of violence and non-violence. One is violent; we can see that clearly. It is a fact. But when violence naturally disappears then non-violence ensues.

If you take all the opposites and work on them, look at the fact and naturally make it disappear then what stands before you is the Truth. As the Truth cannot be achieved but it has to come about in oneself. So that is a lot of opposites to start working on before the Truth shows itself.

But what if we can take all the unwelcome opposites in oneself in one go and destroy them in oneself. This will be a much easier and a faster route to enlightenment. Agreed? 

Then seriously, all we have to look at is the theory-of-everything baseline of the thinking mind and see what it does: where the frontline thinking of verbal thinking is: the creation of ideas and subjectivity that is creating all the violence as it falsely show us that we are different in our minds and we take action and cause suffering based on this falsehood in our minds. One needs to see how the mind works and find the other mind spaces and the existence of the silent mind where compassion and humility can naturally come into being and exist. 

We need to experience these other mind spaces and know that they exist and see how they work. We cannot only live by spinning everything out of control with the frontline verbal thinking mind and thinking that this is all there is to it. There is an opposite to even this state of the mind of chaos which is the silent mind. 

All your opposites exist in these 2 compartments in your mind: one, the violent, destructive, subjective and chaotic spinner of the frontline self-talk thinking mind: The Lie in You.  The other the silent mind of conscious awareness: The Truth in You. The more time one spends in the silent mind state and through conscious awareness and as one filters through and “tunes” oneself to the “intelligence” of the Cosmos and into the repository of its natural laws, the mind starts to see ALL its disruptive opposites for what it is, unreal and an illusion in oneself made up by the frontline thinking mind and is a lie in oneself. The end of this is that the Truth slowly filters through as one sees The-Truth-in-the-Lie-in-You and humility in oneself naturally ensues.

When one sees all this in an instant and in anything that is in existence and debunks all that chit chat and rituals in mysticism and religion and becoming – it really is difficult to remain humble but one share’s it anyway just in case others might see it and also have an aha moment and see how everything starts to shuttle into place in their life’s when everything starts to point in the right direction. 

When one has a whole town pointing in the right direction just by the simple process of exploring other mind spaces and lining up with the repository of the “intelligence” in the Cosmos then transformation ensues and everything changes through a brother-sisterhood who do not know each other, but have thing in common and that is they are all pointing in the same direction in their minds.

7th December 2019.

J. Krishnamurti following the thought.

Just because it has never been said in the past does not mean it does not exist and that is thinking is silent self-talk and if one does not simultaneously silent self-talk what one wants to think, then one cannot think at all. This anomaly is a sure way to stop your thoughts in its tracks if you don’t want to use it. Thought is sound first. Not very different from speaking aloud. It makes sense that they both evolved simultaneously and together: one to be heard and the other for privacy.

When one has definite and instant control over thinking and with the advent of the silent mind, other mind spaces easily open up and are exposed for one to observe: intuitive thinking, consciousness awareness and pictorial thinking. These are a bit more difficult to control but can only disappear with time as one spends more time in the silent mind. Now you can observe them working and disappear as one starts to ignore them as they come up. It is more difficult to end compared to verbal-thinking as there is no anomaly to take advantage of, to use against it. But in meditation, one can see it disappear as the mind becomes “nothing”.

The magic about seeing this anomaly in verbal thinking is that you can use it anytime and not just during cross-legged meditation. When psychological thinking starts to bother you – put it away in an instant by remaining silent in silent self-talk thinking. The self-talk is observed by the tiny flutters of the vocal cords where one is verbalising your thoughts and if you do not verbalise there is no thinking as you know it. Leave it long enough this way with no thoughts in your mind and other mind spaces will open up in the silent space. explore them too by remaining silent and observing. It is all there in front of you: your whole world to Travelodge and explore in your own home. You will see how one’s mind creates everything that is you and then disappear at the end of the journey, lost in memory at the edge of the mind’s horizons and then it all appears again when you return to the present. It is a shocking reminder of the reality of the present moment in mind in oneself as life continues. All that thinking back again.

6th December 2019

Subliminal test pattern. It is a repeat recording so the message gets reinforced with time. The repeat recording can be anything it wants to be depending on circumstances. Seasonal purchases. Voting Subliminals. Silent sound subways, unseen and undetected, coming in under the radar and into the mind taking advantage of the limitations of the hearing spectrum 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz: low infrasound to high-frequency tinnitus ultrasound all coming in at the edges of the hearing spectrum. So are your perceptions really your own.

5th December 2019

Sometimes it is easier to write about spiritual stuff when it is personal while “talking” to another. One explains it a lot better than if it is a blog or writing in book-style. Writing in conversational-style makes it up close and personal. 

This “speak thinking” anomaly that I discovered for myself that made it easy for me to silent my mind instantly and then being able to discover the other hidden mind spaces in me was an immediate shift of possibilities for me. The advent of the silent mind in oneself is so easy to bring about and how it will solve all the problems of psychological thinking and make it easy to bring on the Samadhi state of mind was not taken quickly enough through the ages is wonder to me. The mantra was used to stop frontline verbal-thinking to bring on the silent mind, but meditation though very necessary has a limitation in that it confines you to a place. What happens when you are up and about your daily activities? This is where seeing the anomaly in verbal-thinking is important as then you can carry the meditative process and the silent mind anywhere and at any time.

There is 2 of you in yourself: the personality you know so well and the other: your true Self is hidden behind all the noise of personality and the frontline verbal-thinking process. Stopping verbal-thinking will bring on the silent mind and help you find the other hidden mind spaces and eventually experience Samadhi.

Mysticism has always been this thing explained via metaphors, mythology and storytelling. I wondered if there were such other anomalies for the body that can be used so we have a tangible process to replace the mystical in us. It is not mystical anymore when all things are known of how it works. This way it is accessible to everybody with no boundaries of society and religion and culture and rituals to make it exclusive. So I came across the Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges PhD, a neuroscientist that discovered how the vagus nerve connected to all our organs had a feedback relationship with the brain and controlled our emotions; whose spectrum was Samadhi at one end and the chaotic fight and flight process at the other. So one now has a tangible mind-body control from science that can replace the mystical in oneself.  With the advent of the silent mind, we need to get to mind-body-Universal-mind. So with science and its discoveries, the whole process becomes universal and accessible to everybody. With the polyvagal theory, you will see why yoga was created, why silence in mind is important as a realtime process by seeing this anomaly in frontline verbal-thinking, what meditation can do for you and why it works etc. Spirituality without borders, the future.

In conversation with Universal Minds:

1. SIRI
2. I think this whole process of finding the final state of Samadhi is a lot easier to do if one can understand what thinking really is. This site had mentioned removing time from the mind and I guess thinking is that time in mind. Thoughts separated by a quiet space in between thoughts. If you can find a really easy way to stop thinking then you are already in the final stages of Samadhi. You notice in meditation a mantra is really a distracting to your mind away from thinking so it becomes silent. But look at the thinking process itself – it is with time the creator of illusions or lies in the mind. Patanjali wants us to get rid of this thinking so when in silence in mind you can see the real thing. Tell me if I am wrong but this is the gist of it right. There is a Truth in the lies in me, stop the lies created by thinking and the Truth or reality shows itself. Remove the lies and the Truth is literally staring you in the face.
   So here is the gem in all of this: what really is thinking. If I can find just what the source of thinking is or to see its process clearly then I won’t need that mantra or to sit in a corner of a room cross-legged to be silent in mind and void of thoughts.
   I need to be in that meditative silent state of mind in realtime while I am up and about my daily activities, completely silent in mind whenever I want to.
   So what is thinking? There are different types of thinking.
   -You notice that there is a kind of pictorial thinking like in daydreaming. Just watching images pass your mind. You will notice that you cannot interact with these images and change them or spin them in images into an idea.
   -There is a different type of thinking which I call self-talk thinking. I call it “speak thinking”. This type of thinking is very flexible and is also responsible for spinning an idea in the idea. It creates all the illusions and lies in your mind. I think this is the type of thinking that Patanjali wants to do away with to you can get to that quiet Samadhi space in mind so you can see reality for what it is and also what your true self is and its relation to the whole universe. Not just see it in mind as an idea but actually to be in that samadhi space and become one with it. What if I told you that this self-talk thinking is sound- first type of thinking. For you to think at all you need to self-talk what you want to think and if you don’t you cannot think at all. The brain needs to hear what you are thinking for it to process what you are thinking. If it does not hear you via silent self-talk then it does not know what you are thinking and it cannot process your thoughts. This is an anomaly in us that self-talk is wired up to the thinking process. The movements in the vocal cords are minute and the brain needs to hear what you are thinking to know what you are thinking. You can try it now: think something and see if you have to self-talk it too for you to be able to think at all. So you can see how you can silent your mind immediately if you want too – just break the link and do not also silently speak what you are thinking. You can now see why you use a mantra during cross-legged meditation – to distract you from your thinking.
   – you will almost immediately find your mind in the quiet zone if you stop self-talking your thinking. This quiet state is easy to maintain because of the link between self-talk and thinking. Self-talk is a physical process which is easier to control like raising your arm rather than concentrating on an intangible process of the mind like thinking to stop thinking. Don’t self-talk thinking is not allowing your mind to hear your thoughts then it has nothing to process.
   – In time and the longer, I spend in this quiet space I also found my mind had reverted to a kind of intuitive-stream-thinking mode and me to a listening mode only. This is only a receiving space. I cannot manipulate the information I get from this entity that I am communicating with. I can ask a question and get an answer via intention in mind. There is a sense of knowing in this space and everything seems true. I think it is an evolutionary space. It is quiet and peaceful. Hence you want to stay in it longer. I think it is an evolutionary space. I seem to develop certain “powers” the longer I stay in this space. As time goes by I seem to b able to communicate with my background noise. I understand what it is saying through tonal-modulations. I wonder what new powers I will develop with time the longer I stay in this newly discovered space in my mind.
   I think I found the last place in Samadhi by just knowing what the process of thinking was all about – self-talk first if not the brain will not know what you are thinking. Pictorial thinking in time will also disappear in this space the longer you spend in it and you will end up staring at your true self when all else is gone.
   • MARCH 19, 2019 AT 11:18 AM
   • DONDEG
   •  
   • Dear Siri
     Thank you for your insightful comments. It is very kind of you and adds very much. The distinction between the image and self-talk aspects of thinking is very useful and I think your conclusions are generally correct.
     The only point I would make in addition is: what is the source of the images and self-talk? The answer is these stem from the deeper unconscious layers of the mind. They are hidden movements that give rise to the movements in the mind of which we are conscious, i.e. the images and self-talk. Don’t forget Patanjali points out the need to get to these deeper levels to “burn the seeds of the kleshas and samskaras” so as to allow the mind to stay in the quiet (nirodha) state for as long as it wishes.
     Other than that point, I think your insights are very valuable. Thanks for reaching out and adding them here. 
   • Best wishes, Don
     • MARCH 19, 2019 AT 1:03 PM
     •  
     • SIRI
     • Hi, Thank you for your feedback. Much appreciated and this idea of self-talk thinking was difficult to get across to busy minds. I think thinking is the culprit that we need to control.
       Thinking is also responsible for the Kleshas (mental states) and Samskaras (patterns) and notice that when we stop thinking and be it in a mechanical way half the battle is won with the patterns created by the mind. Some of the Kleshas are inherently build in into our psyche and to keep thinking off the mind (apart from just using them for practical purposes) will help subdue them and not allow them to keep rising and taking one further away from Nirodha. I am not used to the Sanskrit terms and hence had to look them up, and have come to most of my discoveries through observation and with the help of websites like yours. I see that the state of Nirodha is very much like that space one experiences when all thinking ceases yet the resultant state of being is very much alive and is an interactive space with a kind of intuitive form of thinking. I think (observe) the mind space is evolutionary and at times can be completely silent. This 2nd mind is a long way away from the mind that we know.
       • MARCH 19, 2019 AT 10:16 PM
3.  
4. CHRIS
5. Absolutely thrilling write-up, made me excited to practice again. Toast!
   • DECEMBER 1, 2019 AT 5:42 PM
   •  
   •  https://dondeg.wordpress.com/2014/05/28/patanjalis-ten-types-of-samadhi/comment-page-1/#comment-4133 
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   • 2 December 2019
   •