Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Six Blind Elephants > Chapter 7

Mind/body

When we think of the �mind/body split� we presuppose that the mind and body are separate scopes that interact somehow. Take a minute or two to pause and notice your images of your mind and body right now...

Experiencing them as overlapping scopes can be a first step in integrating the two in your experience. Try the following experiment:

Most of us usually think of our minds being located in the brain, right? And then there is the rest of the body that is separate from the mind, so the mind is smaller than the body. Now try dissolving that boundary, however you represent it, and think of your mind flowing out and extending throughout your whole body, into every cell, right out to your fingertips and your toes, and everything in between, so that your mind becomes exactly as large as your body. As you do this, notice how that feels, and whether there might be some soft sound that accompanies this.

That�s a really nice feeling, isn�t it? Mind and body are just different aspects of your whole functioning organism, and I�m sure you have all heard those words before. But what makes it really impact your experience is to see, feel, and hear your mind extending throughout your whole body. That�s a way to actually put your mind/body thinking back together, and reunite them.

Most of us also think of the heart as occupying only a small part of the body, but you can also extend your heart out to your fingertips in the same way, to experience your heart/mind/body. If you reach out and touch someone, you can feel yourself touching them with your heart and mind as well as your body. Take a few minutes to experience what that is like, and include at least one example of a difficult or stressful situation in your experimenting.

While most of us usually think of the mind as being smaller than the body, your mind is actually much larger. Your mind can include stars that are 13 billion light years distant, and it can be interesting to try extending your heart/mind/body identification far beyond your skin. We all do this to some extent, depending on what other people or things we include inside the boundaries of our identity. But what if your heart/mind/body included everything that you experience, so that all of that is felt as being inside you and part of you? Imagine that your heart/mind/body is so large that the most distant stars are within your fingertips! Take a couple of minutes to experience what that is like....

This is the kind of experience that many mystics report, and I think it has a real basis, because everything you experience does take place in your heart/mind/body, even when you think of it as occurring outside you. Let�s follow Einstein, and try a little mind experiment. Imagine that an evil neurologist from the �dark side of the force� crept into your room last night while you were sleeping, anesthetized you, removed your brain, and put it into a nutrient solution and hooked up very sophisticated electrodes to all your sensory nerves, and then fed in all the detailed electrical inputs that exactly duplicated the experience of waking up and doing all the things you did today. How would you know the difference?

I assume that many of you have seen the movie �The Matrix,� which is based on this realization that all our experiences actually take place within our brains, even when we think of them as external. There are even mathematicians who claim to have proved that any brain with sufficient complexity is unable to distinguish whether there�s an �outside� or not. Our brains only get electrical signals from our senses, which we interpret to create our experience of external �reality.�

This process usually works quite well, and presumably there is an external reality outside of ourselves. We see a glass of milk on the table and when we reach out to grasp it, we feel it, and if we lift it to our lips and drink, we are not surprised to find that it tastes like milk and nourishes us.

So although we all have experiences that we describe as �other,� or �outside of us,� or �external reality,� all of that actually happens inside our brains, and is a part of us, despite the separation that we usually assume.

So in one sense, we are each isolated universes unto ourselves. But in another, we are all one. And this is not an either/or choice, but a �both/and.� As many mystics have said, you are already one with the world; it�s just a matter of realizing it. You all exist inside my brain and I exist in yours. You are all part of me, and I am a part of you. We are all connected together. As a friend of mine said once, �The human being has many bodies.� That�s a very different way of thinking, one that provides a very different and more unified perspective, and one that you might consider exploring, to find out where and when it could serve you. I have no idea whether it�s �true� or not, but if taking that perspective could be a useful choice for you, why not try it to find out? (8, pp. 237-238)