Let’s start with a very big picture overview of an age-old question, "What is reality?" For thousands of years, mystics have said that there is one energy in the universe, that the universe and everything in it is the play, the dance, the vibration of one energy – that underneath the seeming multiplicity, everything is made of the same substance. This energy, then, is everywhere, and "everywhen."
This idea of Oneness is sometimes described as Omnipresence, or God. The Hindus and Buddhists call this principle, sat: one energy, everywhere, making up everything, always, past, present, and future.
In addition to noting that this one energy makes up everything, and is everywhere, forever, the mystics also said that this one energy is aware of itself being everything and everywhere and everywhen. It is conscious. It has consciousness. The mystics called this second characteristic of reality chit.
So this oneness, this unity, is aware of itself being everything. Pretend for a moment that you are this one energy. If you were everything, there would be nothing outside of you to fear. That would be like fearing your own hand. If everything is you, and you’re everything, there’s nothing to fear.
There would also be nothing to get, nothing you could lack, because you’re everything. There would also be nowhere to go, no journey to take. Seeking would be unnecessary. You’re everything, always, everywhere, with nothing to want, nothing to fear, nowhere to go.
If you were established in this awareness of who you are, knowing that there was nowhere to go, nothing to get, and nothing to fear, you would be…happy, peaceful, blissful. The third characteristic of reality, then, according to the mystics, is called ananda, which means bliss.
The mystical explanation of reality, then, is that reality is satchitananda, which means one energy, everywhere, out of which everything comes, that this energy is aware of itself being everything and everywhere and everywhen, and that as a result of this awareness, it is blissful, happy, peaceful.
This, according to the mystical view, is who you really are. Your fears, your desires, your idea that you have to get to somewhere, the idea that you lack something, is, in this view, an illusion. You are not a separate ego in a bag of skin, but, rather, this Oneness.
Mystics tell us that you don’t see and experience yourself as this one energy because of your mind. Your mind creates the illusion that you are a separate being, isolated in a bag of skin. Traditionally, meditation (as well as Holosync® meditation from Centerpointe) is the antidote, because it calms the mind and, eventually, by calming the mind, allows one to experience reality directly, without filtering it through the mind.
Meditation
Realizing that the mind gets in the way and obscures your true nature from you, the mystics came up with methods for gaining the ability to perceive reality directly, without the filter of the mind. The most effective and most popular of those methods is meditation. Meditation is designed to still the mind, until eventually you gain enough control that you can experience reality directly, rather than filtering it through the mind and creating a representation, a map, of reality.
As long as you attend to what the mind creates and see its creation as the reality, you miss everything else. When the mind wildly jumps around, creating, without your intention, your entire universe, inside and out, that universe will grab all your attention, and that’s all you’ll see.
As the mind becomes quieter, you begin to see the spaces between what the mind creates, like parting the branches in a thicket to see snatches of the meadows and mountains beyond.
One…or many?
In describing reality, the mystics said something else very interesting. At the moment of creation, this one energy of all and everything polarized itself into a seeming duality: good and evil, up and down, male and female, here and there, black and white, off and on, yin and yang, and so on. There is a tension between the two sides of each of these poles, and the mystics say that this tension between polar opposites is what causes the universe to manifest.
Notice that this duality is described as a "seeming" duality. There are two reasons why this duality, these opposites, only seem to exist. The first is that each side of the duality depends on the other side for its existence, which means that they really make up one thing, a unity. "Here" makes no sense without "there." "Not me" makes no sense without "me." "Good" makes no sense without "evil." Each of these exist only in relation to the other.
Each of these seemingly opposite poles are one thing, not two. In being opposite, they are also inextricably tied to each other, and cannot exist independently. They’re like two sides of the same coin. You can’t have a one-sided coin, and the two aspects of duality cannot exist separately either, nor can one win out over the other.
The other reason is more basic: dividing anything into this and that, or any other divisions, happens in the mind only, not in reality. These divisions happen conceptually, and where divisions are made is entirely arbitrary. Because we socially agree on where many of these divisions are made, they often seem to be "real" but they are not.
Back to the idea of the duality of polar opposites. This tension between polar opposites described by the mystics, interestingly enough, is reflected in the human brain – or, you might say that because the brain/mind creates these divisions, it isn’t a surprise that the brain is structured in a split manner.
The divided mind
Your brain, as you know, is divided into two hemispheres: a left and a right hemisphere, connected by a small piece of tissue called the corpus callosum. It is possible for one side of the brain to be more active, more dominant, than the other at any given time. This is called brain lateralization. The more the brain is lateralized – the more unbalanced it is – the more likely we are to chop the world into separate things and see the two sides of any supposed duality as being separate and opposite.
On the other hand, the more balanced the brain – the less the brain is lateralized to one side or the other – the more we naturally see how the two sides of any duality are really one thing and the more we perceive how everything is connected, and that the divisions are created in the mind and are not intrinsic to reality. When we see in this way, we get more and more in touch with that satchitananda I described.
I hasten to add that dividing the whole into separate things is a handy thing to do sometimes. It’s when we forget that we did it, conceptually, and that these divisions are not a part of reality, that we get into trouble.
When I say that the mind gets in the way of seeing and experiencing who you really are, it would be more accurate to say that the lateralized mind, the lateralized brain, gets in the way of seeing who you really are: the one timeless energy of all and everything. When you do see who you really are, you relax. When this happens, there’s nowhere to go, nothing to get, nothing to fear, and you relax and experience yourself as happiness, love, peace and bliss.
Meditation is designed to balance the brain, which allows you to increasingly experience who you really are. Meditation, in balancing the brain, helps to get the mind out of the way, allowing you to experience yourself, and reality, directly, and when this happens, everything flows.
Once you learn how to direct the mind, and clearly see how the mind creates your reality, it hits you that if the mind can be directed in such a way that it can create an infinite number of possible realities, then what is being created can’t be the reality. What, then, is the reality? What, you begin to wonder, is behind, and fundamental to, all the possible realities created by the mind?
Most of these methods of meditation, including Holosync meditation, have many other benefits that affect the world created by the mind, such as improved mental health, better mental abilities and greater well-being.
