The Big Switch: From Mind/Matter To Mind/Image

There is a rising new way of understanding consciousness. It’s been around for quite a long time, but now it’s ripe. Let’s hope for the best because Humanity needs massive access to this wisdom as soon as possible, before things can start to massively change. The old order is like a sinking ship, and we are in sort of a void, trying to reach out for this new thing.

So I am going to join a lot of wise men who are doing their best to spread this grrreat news. The Buddha spoke about it. Krishnamurti spoke about it. Eckhart Tolle spoke about it. Deepak Chopra speaks about it. Douglas Harding spoke about it. Etc, etc, etc. How not to feel pedantic in such a company?

But it is necessary. Words do not exhaust this phenomenon, and even though words cannot really grab the direct experience of it, maybe some people who have affinity with me can find something worthwhile in the words I choose by trying; so here are the words I choose.

The conventional conception about human life on Earth goes like this: there is mind =inner world, states, intangibility, and there is matter (=three dimensions, weight, shape, etc).

The new and liberating conception simply sets a different contrast: mind and image. It does not imply denying other properties of objects, but changing the focus to a more practical and advanced working model.

We have come to live in such a visual world that such a division should come intuitively and be easily to welcome. Maybe there hasn’t ever been an age that provides so much resources to promote that kind of enlightenment. Films, for example, are a rich resource of metaphors to compare consciousness to. The ancients did not have that. Using films as a tool, we can try to describe the new paradigm as follows:

think of your life as a film. A succession of images. You are not in your body, your body is in you; your body is constantly in the image, but there are always more things in there. And, in terms of image, there is no difference between seeing your hand, and seeing the cup it holds for example.

You are your body PLUS a whole lot of things. Perspective enlarged already. You, then, are whatever comes into the ‘screen’ of your life. It is vast and it is always changing. That’s what Buddhists mean when they say ‘everything is void’ (please notice there is a difference between ‘void’ and ‘nothing’).

Now close your eyes and recall what you were doing a couple of hours ago. Bring to your consciousness the precise images you had in front of you. Were you in your kitchen, or at the subway, or talking with a loved one? Were you using a telephone, driving a car, looking at the clouds? So, the question is: specifically talking about images; do they look alike what you have in front of you right now? Not the slightest similarity, even if you have a very boring life and you haven’t moved from the computer in six months. Because nothing is permanent, everything mutates. The river metaphor is very accurate.

And yet, different as they are, you never fail to register and perceive any of those new images that enter your radar. Your system never ‘crashes’ because of this or that image. It contains whatever arrives. In that sense, from an image point of view, you are unlimited.

And changing matter for images it’s such a relief! You suddenly feel lighter. The people who fully realize such a change live more and happier years. You are not the guy who looks at the screen, you aren’t even the contents within the screen; you are the screen itself. The day you get a glimpse of that, you’ll never have enough of it again.

(Although, generally speaking, it takes practice to stay in that state; the ego is trained to maintain stability, so such a radical change, even for the best, causes eustress… again Buddhists have that very beautiful metaphor of a child who learns how to walk: first only a couple of steps before falling, then a whole meter, then a long promenade maybe… till walking comes naturally).

That is the big switch indeed, and taking it is just a matter of choice; as the only rational creature known so far in this corner of the universe, you have the gift of making perceptual choices, of choosing the relevance you grant to the pieces, thus selecting the interpretation model that works in your best interest. Is like the visual trick of the young/old woman (see the picture below); at first you’ll predominantly see either one or the other, but once you’ve got to see both you get to choose.

So this is the Big Switch, I’m fully committed to it and I’ll discuss it furthermore in this blog; it is not only nice-it is necessary. And besides, as in many things, I have a feeling that the best way to learn is by teaching.

Have you ever experienced this Switch? Do you have tricks or ‘anchors’ to get back to such a state? Which words would you choose to define it?