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In this chapter, I would like to return to the issue of thinking, to the issue of the mental plane, and continue to clarify it. Once again, I would like to emphasize a very important point: in our Free Away teaching, the mentality, the mental plane does not mean consciousness, does not mean individual consciousness, but rather an instrument for describing the world, which is secondary to direct experience and perception. It develops as a service structure for our direct experience, it is more the intellect than consciousness in our terminology and in our understanding of the mental plane. Thinking arises as a processing of immediate direct experience received through the senses, therefore it can be called another feeling. As we have five senses, the mentality as well can be called the same sense organ, because it does not develop without other senses. For example, if a child has some problems with his direct experience, with the sense organs – vision, hearing, touch, smell – then his intellect also develops weaker, because some channels of perception of the world are blocked. Therefore, in teaching this is a very, very important point, and we clearly distinguish between consciousness and the mental plane, mind. We can say that the basis of your spiritual healing is a very clear and precise distinction between these two things, because today many western masters use the word «mind» as a synonym for consciousness. They adopted it from Buddhists and Zen Buddhists, or from someone else. But we have not adopted such a definition, we can name it soul. The meaning of the word soul more corresponds to such a concept as consciousness, but the word mind is usually used when we mean intellect, intelligence, mental plane.

Let’s touch on this mental plane a little more, but not from the position of «living one». In the first chapter, I discussed four sectors of the mental plane that serve different kinds of experience. One sector only engaged in serving the illusion of the «living one» including serving the author’s program which also occurs there. If you’re interested, you can watch the very long video «From Contrast to Comparison» on my YouTube channel, where I go into great detail on the damage to the mental plane by the ego structure. In this chapter, there will be more information about mental functioning. I would like you to understand not only these four sectors, but also what kinds of thoughts exist.

We can often hear that the mental is a conceptualization, the mental is a running line, that for someone it has stopped, for someone it has slowed down, and for someone it has completely disappeared. No, it’s not like that. First of all, the basis of the mental plane is figurative thinking. What is it? Figurative thinking functions by means of creating images. Creating images is the same thing as photographing. Your camera or phone takes a photograph and in the same way imaginative thinking creates a photograph, creates images. It’s like photographing objects, like creating figurative casts, everything that is perceived by figurative thinking is fixed in the form of images – this is the primary type of thinking.

Then, when a person gets an idea of these images, the photographs are labeled with words and thus we give names to the images. Therefore, the child asks a lot of questions: «what is this, what is that?» So it gives names to its images in its mind. Look around: there is no single phenomenon labeled with some name here, but you know for sure that a mug is a mug, a table is a table, a chair is a chair. So, at the same time with perception, you load an image from the mentality, and this image already has an inscription. The appearance of names is the so-called conceptual thinking, and it is the second level after the figurative one, concepts arise, names appear and then we can already operate with them. When we operate with concepts, the so-called concrete-logical thinking appears, conceptual chains are created, and we begin thinking logically. How are these images related to each other? It is the connection and interaction of phenomena with each other, which are built into conceptual logical chains. This is the second kind of thinking and it is very important for us to be adequate people. In this way we not only name the phenomena, but also build concepts into certain chains, and it is conceptualization and concrete logical thinking.

The third and most difficult type of thinking is abstract thinking. It is an opportunity to summarize our images into some symbols, which can also be called abstract-symbolic thinking. This thinking functions through symbols, where several concepts, images and so on can be packed at once. Abstract thinking is the ability to think symbolically. For example, all mathematics thinks through symbols. At first, in order to understand what 5 is we must have 5 objects, but then when we say the word 5, it can mean any 5 things: 5 fingers, 5 rubles, 5 objects; but we were taught at school what 5 is, on sticks, on objects, do you remember? We do not understand what 5 is, unless we represent 5 objects, and then objects are replaced by objects, and then we move on to a symbol 5. Therefore, when you tell a person 5, he understands what 5 is, he already imagines what it is about and substitutes numbers. There are, in fact, a great many such abstractions.

There are four main groups of abstractions. Abstractions created through the summation of images are, for example, «animals» There is no such thing as «animals», but the very concept of «animal» is abstract and presupposes the presence in our thinking of a certain folder, which contains files with animals. It is now very easy for us to fully consider the work of our thinking using the example of a computer. The computer completely repeats the work of our thinking. Here we have a folder, we labeled it «animals», and this word «animals» is an abstraction, the name of a folder, and it will contain specific photographs, images of animals, and they will have a specific name: a cat, a dog, etc. There is also a folder «nature», there is a folder «plants.» In fact, «plants» do not exist, there are specific plants that are photographed and have their own names. These are abstractions created with the help of images.

There are also abstractions that are created through concepts, and it could be rather complex concepts that are collected into one abstract. For example, such a concept is «mathematics.» It means some specific set of knowledge, but the set itself is some specific logical postulates. «Physics» and «mathematics» are abstractions created on the basis of certain concepts.

The third type of abstraction is a mixed abstraction, which presupposes both the presence of an image and the presence of certain conceptual postulates. For example, I will take such a concept as «Motherland.» This word may contain part of some conceptual meaning, and part of some figurative one. Someone thinks about birches, someone thinks about beaches, someone else thinks about some other things, but at the same time, there is an understanding that the Motherland is the place where I was born, where I lived. These are such complex, more mixed abstractions.

The fourth type of abstraction is abstraction that has arisen on the basis of other abstractions. You can also collect abstract concepts into some complex abstractions that are already based on abstract symbolic thinking. It is really very beautiful and so we have this fourth type of abstract thinking.

Why am I telling you all these things? I would like you to be aware of the depth and beauty of this mental body. The mental body is one of our individual bodies, so I would like you to know what categories it operates with. Then you will accept with a smile when you are told that someone has «killed his mind» or something like this. They certainly do not mean the lack of the ability to think. In this regard, a lot of profanities have arisen, a lot of delusions have appeared, but in fact all these gurus can still interact quite normally, can still communicate effectively, can describe the world quite well, so they have no problem with their thinking. And if they have any periods of absence of thoughts, then these are specific states in which they immerse themselves for some rest, which are akin to dreamless sleep, when our thinking is absent in the generally accepted sense.

It is often very strange to hear how sometimes the mind becomes synonymous with consciousness, which we accept as a wrong interpretation, and sometimes the mind becomes synonymous with the ego, which is also a great delusion. The ego cannot be called by this word – «mind». Sometimes it might become a direct synonymous – mind, mind, mind. Mind is here, mind is there, one must get rid of the mind, the mind should die. Guys, let’s be correct, let’s be adults, let’s be educated people. If the mind is our mental body. then why should it die? It should not die at all. Let it work, let it carry out its operations. The point is that what we register as a thought is a specific type of thought. It is the point where the «shoe pinches», as they say. «There exists thought registration and it is a specific kind of thought, and in the same time there is a background mental flow that occurs by default, and we know where we are now, what is happening around us, we know that snow is snow, that a fence is a fence and that the sky is the sky. We do not register all these thoughts; this is a continuous flow of mental information that absolutely effortlessly serves the current moment. This is our working mind, and the speed of this process is very high.

Now you can even do a brain scan and see the number of thoughts that appear in a particular brain: synapse flashes can be recorded by devices today. So, the number of these flashes of electrical signals that arise in the brain are huge, these flashes turn into a chemical reaction and then they are deciphered as thoughts. According to this research more than a hundred thoughts come to us per second. Tell me, how many of them are registered by us as thought? It’s good if we register one thought. The rest of them just become an endless stream and they are not registered as thoughts. So, very often when they talk that they have stopped their thoughts, in reality they have only stopped the registration of these specific thoughts, do you understand it? They say: «my mind has stopped, there are no more thoughts.» In fact, there is simply no secondary registration, but – everything is in order with their thoughts. A person remains adequate, he has all the completeness of information, he communicates, he interacts. There is simply no secondary loop that is registered as a thought, because this thought is registered within a special neural loop that is present in our brain, which has already been established and defined by neurophysiologists. This thought only when it passes along such a loop is registered as a thought, and it has its own specific features and tasks. As a rule, it is the thought that serves the «thinker», which means the «one» who has thoughts and this is the ego-structure in thinking. Those thoughts that are registered within this neural loop are often called thoughts, apart from all the thinking process that takes place in this information flow.

Be mature people, be sober people, and be aware of this difference. When the neural loop stops working, it seems to you that thoughts have disappeared. In fact, the registration of a specific thought that serves the «thinker» has simply disappeared. There is this ego-structure in the mind, which is called the «thinker,» and it, of course, can stop functioning. When this ego-structure stops functioning, the ability to think will not disappear, you will still be intelligent, still be smart, still be aware, but you will not have a secondary emergence of the «thinker» in the thinking process. This is the ego-structure in the mind. The appearance of this kind of tension has been the manifestation of ego structure. There appear some questions «What should I think; but I thought this was not what I wanted; I should think more; I am stupid» and so on. This ego structure can go away, but that doesn’t mean that the thinking process has stopped, or your brain has stopped functioning, or your synapses have stopped flickering.

In this chapter, I talked about the thinking process, mainly about its types and about the fact that the «thinker» is one of the specific thoughts that requires registration of other thoughts, and it can really disappear. This is the fourth type of thinking process, which in the first chapter I called the thinking process serving the ego-structure.