It makes me
sad every time I read, hear or see news in the media. By far the largest part
of all news can be easily sorted into one of only three categories:
No matter
whether religious or unbelieving, smoker or non-smoker, meat-eater or vegan
and, and, and, and ... Everyone raises his opinion to an ideology, to a dogma,
which has to be defended. Followers of their own ideology are good and are
always right, all others are evil and are always wrong. They must, therefore, be
excluded, converted, re-educated, fought against or, in extreme cases,
destroyed. We live in a dictatorship - a dictatorship of our mind, our
consciousness. This dictatorship has controlled humanity since the beginning and
has led to violence, torture, war, and bloodshed at all times. Everything that
happens around us is a consequence of this dictatorship of consciousness.
Because our consciousness creates our reality. If we want to survive in our
modern world with its weapons of mass destruction, genetic engineering,
robots, artificial intelligence, and all other modern achievements, impending
environmental and climate catastrophes, we need a new morality, a new awareness,
a higher level of consciousness. We still live with a version of consciousness
thousands of years old that no longer meets today's requirements. It creates
chaos, destroys our environment, is directed more and more against ourselves,
our children and our children's children. Our consciousness urgently needs an
update. But it is not new technologies, new laws or prohibitions, new theories
or ideologies that are leading us there. The further development of our
consciousness cannot take place on a material level, cannot take place in our
outer world. It must be achieved through our mind, through our consciousness
itself, it must take place in our inner world. Without a profound change in our
consciousness, our world will not change either.
But what is consciousness? How do we develop it in the right direction? How do we reach higher
levels of consciousness? And finally: What do we get out of it
personally?
I would like to answer these questions in this blog. It shows a method, a way,
to a higher level of consciousness. This path is not difficult, it is
independent of our knowledge. We need not belong to any particular profession,
religion, political party or ideology. We do not have to register anywhere, and
it does not cost us any money. Sounds suspicious? And justifiably so! Because
this path has one big, one very big disadvantage: we have to go it
ourselves!
That's hard. We are
used to getting an answer to everything, from doctors, scientists, teachers and
professors, politicians, TV stars and for the not so profane things from
priests, shamans or gurus. There are pills, seminars or other things for
everything, you just have to have enough money to afford them. We scold the
scientists, priests, and politicians. But here it is not enough to point the
finger at others. It's up to us, to every one of us. Freedom and
happiness never come in from the outside, they always come out from within.
Nobody can breathe for us, nobody can think for us, nobody can eat for us,
nobody can live for us, nobody can go our way. We have to do it ourselves. The
clarity within us cannot be given or forced upon us, nor can anyone take it from us. It was
and always is there. But we usually do not recognize them because we are
looking in the wrong direction.
That's why there are no unrestricted answers in this blog, it should lead you
to your own answers, to your own insight.
"It's not about stuffing what's in my head into yours. It is about
remembering you to your own knowledge"
(Anthony Paul Moo-Young, Advaita teacher)
This blog wants to help you expand your consciousness, overcome your
self-imposed limits and develop your full potential.
Plato is
one of the most famous of the many famous ancient Greek philosophers. He lived
around 427 to 347 BC, was a student of Socrates and one of his students was
Aristotle. Plato's teachings have influenced and shaped the faith and worldview
of millions of people at all times and all over the world. One of his teachings
says that man has an immortal soul that lives on after his death separately
from the body. His allegory of the cave is probably the best-known parable of
ancient philosophy. What's that about?
In this parable, the people live as prisoners in a cave. They are so tied up
that they can only see the shadows cast by a light on the wall, but not the
source of the light. People think the dimly shadows on the wall are reality.
Even their own shadows. When they stand up, cast off their shackles, turn
around, they recognize the light, the true origin of their images and can set
out on the path to the exit, on the path to freedom.
On the long path of evolution, man is the transition from an unconscious to conscious evolution. Man is the only being in the world able to cast off his
shackles, to turn away from the shadow play on the wall, to turn back and walk
the path to the true source of light, to the exit, to freedom. Some have turned
around and some have described how to get there. But only a few have followed
them. Even today the masses sit in this cave and follow the fascinating shadow
play on the wall. Why do we not use our potential? What's stopping us from
turning back?
Admittedly, the shadow play became more and more extensive, more and more
fascinating. The possibilities in this game seem endless. We are attached to
this illusion, we cannot detach ourselves from it. In Buddhism, this is called adherence.
This shadow world is our outside world and we are attached to it, to its
comforts, our successes, our possessions. We have learned to ignore all the
unpleasantness of this world, its unreality, its suffering, its transitoriness.
We constantly see how other shadows are affected, but we believe and hope that
our shadows will be spared. We enjoy the shadow play and completely ignore the
fact that the curtain will fall soon.
When we turn around, when we turn back, we see the source of light. We see
things as they really are. There are no more illusions. We can't fool ourselves
anymore. Death shines in the light and we recognize the transience of shadows,
even our own shadow. Since we still identify us with our shadow, we fear death.
We fear death because it is something we do not understand, at least not from our own
experience. We do not understand it because we have repressed it and when it suddenly
appears before us, we panic. But death is no more the end than birth is the
beginning. No one can teach us more about life than death and if we do not
understand death, we will not understand our life. But only if we understand
our life, we can live it self-determined.
If we let go of our outside world and take the path to our inside, we cannot
block out death. But we can see what it really is. Death is not passing away;
it is an awakening. With this awakening, we pass through the gate to a higher
level of consciousness – the conscious death. For thousands of years, mystics
from all cultures and religions have experienced this level of consciousness
and some have tried to describe it. We can simply believe them, but we can also
experience this state ourselves and pass through the gate to a higher level of
consciousness.
"Nothing
comes from nothing" is a saying that I often heard in my childhood. Since
there is definitely something there now, e.g. something writing or reading this
text, this something cannot have come from nothing. So, there must be something
there from which the something has been created. But also this something, from
which the something has arisen, must have arisen from something, and so on. Is
there a beginning without a beginning? A beginning from which everything has
come into being and what is this beginning?
If such a thing exists, then it must have always been there, there can be no
before it. It's eternity. If everything has been created from it, it must
encompass everything. It's infinity. When we speak of infinite or eternal, we
often mean an unimaginably long distance or a very long time. But
every distance, every space and every time is always finite. Infinity is
spacelessness and eternity is timelessness. The beginning was before space and
time. The beginning was dimensionless.
Something dimensionless has no extension, no weight, not even duration. Laotse,
a philosopher who lived long before our time, called this primordial state the
Tao, the Buddhists call it the void, the Hindus Brahman, the Christians call it
God and physicists perhaps quantum field or zero-point field. We do not want to
argue about names and terms here. We call this primordial state, the primordial
ground, in this blog pure consciousness. Of course, if you want, you can
give it any name you like.
Something dimensionless is information. The Information has no extension and you
cannot weigh it. This primal ground, pure consciousness, is thus something like
an infinite, timeless field of information. Information is derived from the
Latin "in-formare“, which means "to bring into form", "to
imagine something". This "imagining something" describes
possibilities, potentiality. We, therefore, call the information about
opportunities potential information.
The potential information is infinite. Pure consciousness is, therefore, potential
information, is potentiality.
The infinite potential information is all kinds of things. It's everything, but
somehow it's also nothing. It is of little consequence. In terms of information
technology, it can therefore also be described as non-knowledge. If we
want to know something, we need something concrete, we need facts. We need to
get something potential in form, in shape. We call these facts, what is brought
into shape, classical information. Classical information is knowledge.
All knowledge comes from potentiality, from not-knowing. All knowledge, however
great it may be, is always just a tiny fraction of non-knowledge. The "brought
into form" is only that in which the formless is expressed; knowledge is
only that in which non-knowledge is expressed. Everything that exists is only
the expression of nothingness, of potentiality.
Each expression, each section, each knowledge, is finite, is different in size.
If we look at these sections of not-knowing, then we start with the smallest
section, without anything concrete, without facts, i.e. the nothing, and end at
the largest section, the all-embracing, the all-knowing, the omniscience. The
Nothing and the All are only different sections (the smallest and the largest)
of the one, pure consciousness. All sections, from the smallest to the largest,
are also referred to here as states of consciousness or levels of
consciousness. The only difference between these levels is the information
content, the amount of information. The lowest level, the nothingness, is death
and the highest level, the omniscience is conscious death. In between lies a
multitude of states, some familiar to us, such as being awake, asleep or deep
sleep.
The source,
pure consciousness, is an infinite potential field, an infinite, timeless
information field. It contains all knowable, i.e. potential information, but no
actual knowledge. It is the indeterminacy, the not-knowing. The potential
information, the not-knowing, can comprise an infinite number of states. Actual
information, the classical information or facts comprise finite definite
states. It is knowledge. How does not-knowing become knowing? How does
something become something out of nothing?
A static potential field would exist forever and ever without anything
happening in it. In other words, if there were no working God, there would be
no one to ask such questions. No reality can arise from potentiality without
effect. A God who does not work cannot be recognized. When all is one, we can
know nothing. We need the Two, duality, creator and creation. Information only
makes sense if there are at least two states. Duality enables the transition
from non-knowledge to knowledge, from nothing to something.
God never left heaven. He sent out an inner entity of him, his son. Father and Son are two
instances of the one God. In the Vedic religion of ancient India this inner
core is called Atman. This inner instance is identical with Brahman, the
eternal source. In the individual human being, it is called Atman, in the cosmos, it is called Brahman. Atman and Brahman are eternal, are one. "The cosmic soul," it is said
in the Upanishads, "is one and
present in all beings." We call this inner instance of pure
consciousness in this blog subjective consciousness.
The subjective consciousness creates our
reality from potentiality. Subjective
consciousness is the gateway through which the manifestations of potentiality
enter our world. Everything that is, originates from pure consciousness and
also returns to pure consciousness. In the end, the subjective consciousness
also returns to its original state.
The
subjective consciousness is an inner instance of pure consciousness. An inner
area, a section of the infinite potential field. Let us imagine this instance
as a potential pot, like a bucket of water from the ocean. From this pot,
subjective consciousness generates our reality. How does it do that?
Emergence
is dynamics, is an effect, movement. Physicists call the beginning of everything
that came into being the Big Bang. In the old Indian philosophies, it was a
sound. The sound of the sacred syllable AUM (OM). In Christianity, it was the
word. So says the gospel according to John:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and God was the Word. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things are made by the same, and without the same nothing is made that
is made."
Different
names, different terms, different metaphors, all trying to describe the same
thing that cannot be described by terms, names and metaphors. Whether loud
bang, soft sound or spoken word, every vibration is energy, is information.
What is a word? A word is not a material thing, it is something immaterial. We
use words to communicate, to exchange information. Words are information.
Information is the beginning of our world and the basis of all things.
In quantum
Physics, one speaks of wave-particle duality. The wave is a superposition of all
possible states. It is fixed to a certain state by an observation. By an
observation the wave becomes real, becomes a particle. A probability
distribution, an abstract wave function, a potentiality, becomes something
specific, a concrete particle. In order for something to emerge, dualism needs
a third thing, a kind of observer. Which brings us to the trinity.
In the
Christian Religion, the Trinity consists of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. In the ancient scriptures of Hinduism, the Bhagavad Gita, one speaks of
the three Gunas: tamas (the inertia), rajas (the movement) and sattva (the
light). Physics deals with matter, energy and information, and in psychology, Sigmund Freud speaks of the id, ego, and superego. Trinity is eternal change, is
coming into being and passing away.
In many ancient mythologies and philosophies, the number three appears again and
again. Lao-tse, a Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism, writes in chapter
42 of the Tao te Ging:
"The Tao creates one.
One produces two.
Two produces three.
Three produces all the creatures of the world."
Translated into the language of this blog:
"Pure
consciousness (potential) creates subjective consciousness.
Subjective consciousness produces subject and object.
Subject and object produce classical information, energy and matter.
Classical information, energy, and matter produce all the creatures of the
world."
In this
article we finally come to the solution of the question: How does something
emerge from nothing? How does consciousness create reality from potentiality?
Before we
now digress into a religious, philosophical or even esoteric direction, let us
try to summarize the previous contributions on a neutral, factual level as
possible.
The source
is pure consciousness, which is potentiality. The subjective consciousness is an
inner instance of pure consciousness. It creates our reality, everything around
us. From the dimensionless potentiality, space and time emerge, our universe,
our world, emerges. Potential information, possibilities, is transformed into classical
information, facts. Information is processed.
Classical information is created from potential information. Classical information is the common
basis of energy and matter. Energy and matter are quasi condensed information.
Classical information, energy and matter are equivalent. They form an
inseparable unit. Everywhere and at any time information, energy or matter is
transformed, transported or stored. There is no place and no moment where this
does not happen and there is no place and no moment where anything else
happens. This event is called a process. According to the German Industry
Standard DIN IEC 60050-351 a process is defined as
"The totality of interacting operations in a system by which matter,
energy or information is transformed, transported or stored".
We see, hear, feel and deal almost exclusively with things. We separate these
things from each other and believe that they are independent of each other. We
cannot recognize the wholeness because we see ourselves as such a small, detached
thing. But every thing, from the smallest particle to us humans to the big
universe, is only one sequence of processes, is only one process consisting of
many sub-processes. Not things, not matter, are elementary, but processes
create things. The matter is basically nothing solid, but rather something like
energy vortices, driven by processes. Each process is linked to other processes
and is part of a higher-level process. Just as all the waves of the sea are
interconnected and are part of the one sea. We cannot understand things if we
do not understand the processes that take place in and between things.
Each process consists of three sections, which describe the sequence of
processing. First of all, the raw material is needed, the input into the process.
This is followed by the processing of this input, which finally leads to a
result, an output. This results in the abbreviation: IPO. IPO stands for
input-processing-output and is generally valid for everything that happens
around us. Let's take processing at the levels of mathematics, physics,
chemistry, biology, no matter at what level, no matter what we do: Everything's
IPO.
In further contributions to this blog, we will talk about the IPO or the consciousness
process. Through the IPO, by subjective consciousness potential information
(input) is transformed (processed) into classical information (output). Thus,
reality arises from virtuality, the universe from nothingness, knowledge from
not-knowing. However, knowledge only makes sense if it does not immediately evaporate
but can be stored.
Energy and matter are necessary as data carriers in order to record the results
of this process, the classical information, and thus create something like
memories and continuity. Time results from the storage capacity of matter.
Without the storage of information, there would be neither memory nor
continuity and thus no time. From the dimensionless potentiality, space is
created by classical information, energy and matter and time is created by
information processing.
All processes influence each other. Each process requires input data, processes it and thereby generates an
output, which in turn serves as input for another process. We can consider the
inputs as stimuli and the outputs as reactions. We react to stimuli from our
environment and our reactions evoke reactions in our environment, which act on
us as new stimuli and so on. But every stimulus, every perception, is
information that we receive and every reaction is information that we send out.
We can call the received information, the input, also cause and the sent-out
information, the output, corresponds to an effect. One cause leads to an effect,
which in turn is the cause for the next effect. IPO is karma, the law of cause
and effect. Our existence today is the result of a long chain of causes and
effects and our future is the effect of the causes we create today. When we
inflict suffering on another being, that suffering is the perception, the
input, into another process. The output of this process will again be
suffering. If a lot of suffering is created in this way, it is likely that this
suffering will, in turn, come in some form as input to our process or that of our
children, partners, relatives or friends. We believe that if we destroy things
that are separate from us, as long as we do nothing illegal, we have nothing to
fear. But this is an illusion. Because in doing so we overlook an important
detail: There are no things, there are only processes. Everything's IPO. Things
are only the manifestations in which processes work. If our expenditure, our
work, generates suffering, this will eventually come back to us as the cause of
our suffering. If we want to reduce suffering, including our suffering, we must
stop creating suffering.
The three stages of the IPO are not accidentally. It is the Trinity: the input
stands for the Father or potentiality, the processing for the (holy) spirit and
the output for the creation or the incarnate Son. IPO is the process of creation.
The creation was not a one-off act. Creation takes place in every moment. New
classical information is generated at every moment. This is how the universe
expands. The size of the universe is the measure of the generated classical
information, the reality. Everything's IPO. IPO is the Trinity, is the working
God.
We call the Trinity experienced by us time. The input, the potentiality, is the future. The output, the reality, is the past. The tiny moment in which potentiality becomes reality, in which we turn the future into past, is the present.
According
to the current theory of evolution, the founder of which is considered to be
Charles Darwin, organisms change by chance, pass these changes on to their
offspring and a blind selection process ensures that only those life forms best
adapted to their environment reproduce. Adapting to the environment also means
asserting oneself against competitors, i.e. overcoming "weaker" structures,
mastering them. The losers in this game are eliminated. This theory has been of
great help to scientists in understanding the origin of species, the
development of living structures and functions. It provides many answers but
leaves important questions unanswered. The theory of evolution begins with
life. The first traces of life that have been found so far are about 3.8
billion years old. But by then the universe was already a good 10 billion years
old. Why was life created? Why did something emerge that had to adapt to an
environment? Didn't anything have to adjust to anything before that? Since in
evolution everything is based on chance, without any plan, there is neither a
sense nor a goal to which it leads. Nature is just teeming chaos of molecules
and chance decides if, when and where physical and chemical reactions take
place. However, every conscious being who walks through nature with open eyes
must have doubts about this interpretation.
Life is not separated from the environment, life is a part of the environment.
Evolution adapts nothing to the environment, evolution shapes the environment.
It's not being against each other, it's being with each other. Evolution is not
an adaptation, not a struggle of a selfish gene against the rest of the world.
Evolution is optimization, is teamwork. Life was not created by competition,
life was created by symbiosis. Symbiogenesis unites small, diverse lumps of
molecules into large, complex structures. Living beings tend to
connect and to form a new, larger whole on a higher level of organization.
Nothing is really ever extinct. Forms have disappeared and have changed into
new forms. The Information has passed from one form to another.
The term evolution comes from the Latin evolvere
and means "to roll out", "to
develop". Today, this is primarily understood to mean biological
evolution. But this development has not just begun with life. The starting
point, the seed, was the Big Bang, the beginning of our universe. This was the
first IPO and the evolution is the development of consciousness, the constant expansion, and improvement of consciousness processes. Everything has arisen
from consciousness. Everything's IPO.
The entire development from the Big Bang to the first living beings was anything
but self-evident. Everything depended on a fine-tuning of all natural constants
which determine the interaction of the elementary forces. Even the slightest
deviations from this would have prevented the formation of stars, the formation
of heavy elements such as carbon and thus the formation of planets and life.
This fine-tuning of natural constants is one of the greatest mysteries of the
natural sciences. The physicists assume that the values of these natural
constants resulted completely by chance at the Big Bang. However, the
probability of such an exact match was extremely low. Just as the
seed of a tree already contains all the information about the structure and
shape of the future, a fully grown tree, the Big Bang already contained all the
information about the future universe. It is not by chance that an oak tree
seed becomes an oak tree, only the shape, the growth is random, depending on
the environment surrounding it. Living structures that
are capable of learning and experiencing did not come about by chance. Their
development was planned from the beginning. There are no structures that are separate
from the environment and have to stand their ground in it. Everything is a
single process, everything belongs to the environment, everything follows a
common path, everything is connected. Through IPO, the "in-form" has
evolved to generate even more information, knowledge, and insight. These are the
stages of evolution, the levels of consciousness. Each of these new levels is
characterized by more information, more knowledge, more insight. Evolution is
shaping "stupid" matter and processes into increasingly intelligent
information processing structures. Evolution is an increase in information.
Life always comes from within and cannot be brought into something from the
outside. It was not dead matter that accidentally created life and
consciousness, but the consciousness process has worked towards the creation of
life from the beginning, i.e. with the Big Bang, by gradually creating the
conditions for it. Life is a step on the path of consciousness. Not matter is
the primary, but consciousness. It is the consciousness that creates matter and
tells it what to do, not the other way around.
When we are born, our freedom of choice is very limited. As we develop, we gain
information, knowledge, and insight. We become members of communities that share
information. This makes us smarter and more intelligent. The
more we have knowledge and insight, the greater our possibilities, our
potential and thus our freedom of decision. The aim of consciousness is to
increase the available potential by increasing information, knowledge and insight
in order to finally reach omniscience, unlimited freedom of decision and thus
to return to the starting point, the source. The way to get there is constant
development, is evolution.
There are a goal and a plan, but the way to get there is undefined. This leaves
room for mutations and a selection process. Evolution is the
feedback/feedforward process between the potential and the classical world, the
virtuality and the reality. Evolution is neither deterministic nor pure
coincidence. It is the indeterminacy of quantum physics.
The
origin is pure consciousness. You can imagine it like an eternal, endless
ocean. The waves of the ocean are constant change. In the Yoga Sutras
according to Patanjali, the movements, the ever-changing patterns of
consciousness are called vritti. The Sanskrit term vritti is derived from the
root vrit, which means "to choose", "to prefer".
Consciousness selects one of the infinite states of potentiality or prefers it
to the other states and creates the unambiguous real state from it. But
"moving" and "turning" are also derived from the root vrit.
This moving is the consciousness process, the IPO, from which everything
arises.
Everything that exists are only excited states, only waves of different height,
of this initial state. Consciousness is a spectrum of excited states of the
primal ground that begins with death, pure unconsciousness or non-knowledge and
ends with conscious death, pure consciousness or all-knowledge. The
consciousness left the consciousness level of death by creating inanimate matter.
All matter, every atom, has some kind of consciousness. However, it can only
assume the lowest states here. Through the evolutionary process, the structures
became more and more complex, more and more information-rich. From the
elementary particles like quarks and electrons, atoms were formed. These
combined to form molecules that became larger and more complex. From the large,
complex molecules, the polymers, cells finally emerged. The cells arranged
themselves into aggregates to perform certain tasks. Such organized
many-particle systems, which maintain their internal organization
independently, are called organisms. These organisms were eventually able to
produce copies of themselves. With these self-reproducing organisms, a new
process has emerged on earth: Life. Living structures are the most complex consciousness
processes we know today.
Each of these countless steps is an expansion of consciousness, characterized
by more and more information, more and more knowledge, more and more insight.
In order to be able to record and store this ever-growing information, the
structures of the data carriers have become increasingly complex. And so, step
by step, consciousness rises higher and higher on its ladder to heaven.
Just as visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, so
life is only a small part of the spectrum of consciousness. Living beings can
occupy different areas in this section. Just as we can only perceive certain
areas with light, there are also areas outside the life spectrum that we cannot
experience with our subjective consciousness. Just like our physical perceptual
apparatus, our subjective consciousness is also limited. Life does not just
fall from the sky. Also, no new substance or force has come into existence,
neither outside nor inside of matter. Life is the expression of consciousness
from a certain level of consciousness onwards with correspondingly high
information content and complex consciousness process. The basis of life is not forms, but functions, processes. Not matter is
the primary, but consciousness. It is the consciousness that creates
matter and tells it what to do, not the other way around.
Like electrons on their shells, the process of consciousness moves on different
levels. The higher the level, the more information or corresponding energy is
needed. Processes at higher levels can therefore only be maintained for a
limited time, after which the process "jumps" back to levels with
less information or energy. On the higher levels of consciousness, these jumps
are called life and death and on the lowest levels, they are called quantum
leaps.
We humans can create complex machines, automatons, robots, and even artificial
intelligence. But all these are only forms of matter. Sequences, processes on
very low levels, far away from the levels of consciousness
on which life is created. Man cannot create new life. If we reproduce, we can
only pass on life. Life never comes into something from the outside, life
always comes out from within. Things are only the manifestations in which
processes work. Living beings are only the manifestations of the life process.
Living beings are the clothes with which life dresses itself. But if humans
cannot create life, why do they think they can destroy life? Man cannot destroy
matter, he can only transform it. He can only destroy the forms to which matter
has joined together. Man cannot destroy life either, he can only destroy the
processes through which it is expressed. He can only destroy
the clothes, but not life itself, which
does not make it less bad. On the contrary. No process is independent of all
other processes. If we obstruct processes in their natural development, if we
destroy processes, this always affects our process. Because the
outputs of the other processes are the inputs to our process. The task of man
is to protect the expressions of life, not to destroy them. We should live in
such a way that we do not deliberately harm any living being, because sooner or
later this harm will come back to us.
Although
every person is different from other people and even more so from other beings,
we are all built from the same building blocks. We consist of the same atoms
and are subject to the same physical-chemical laws as the inorganic nature. No
single element, protein or enzyme is alive. It is always the whole system, the
community, the organism that lives. Life does not arise from an accumulation of matter;
life arises from an organization. Life comes from information and information
exchange. We are a huge communication network, a gigantic information
processing structure. The human
organization consists of about 70 trillion individuals called cells. In order
to sustain life, these must be precisely coordinated. How do all these cells
communicate with each other?
As the German biophysicist Fritz-Albert Popp discovered, the direct
communication between individual cells and cell assemblies takes place via tiny
light particles of low intensity, the biologically created photons. These are
stored and emitted by all living beings. The intensity of this radiation is a
measure of the state of health of the living being. The existence of biologically created photons is now undisputed. Photons
are the carriers of the electromagnetic force that control all chemical and
biochemical processes of a living being. All phenomena in our everyday life
(except gravity) are based on electromagnetic interactions and thus ultimately
on the effect of photons, i.e. light and information. All matter in the
universe constantly exchanges light and information with each other, including
our cells, including our bodies. We are light stores, we are information. The
emissions of the biologically created photons can be measured. The stronger the
emissions, the more communication takes place between the cells and the
healthier the organism. The ultimate cause of all diseases is, therefore, nothing
more than a communication disorder within an organism. If a cell compound can
no longer coordinate itself sufficiently, malfunctions are inevitable.
All communication, all information processing, are ultimately consciousness processes.
Human beings, like everything else, are also a consciousness process. But this
process is very complex and takes place at a high level of consciousness. This
complex process is dependent on all other processes, at all levels. For
example, processes on the biological, chemical or physical level. Like any
other IPO, we humans transform potential information into classic information.
In other words, we transform potential opportunities into realities. In doing
so, we stride through time and transform the future into the past. With our
birth, we enter a probability space, a potential pot. This varies in size
depending on our physical and genetic make-up and the environment into which we
are born. It is full of possibilities (our future) but still quite empty of
facts (our past). Our non-knowledge is great and our knowledge is small. In the
course of our lives, we pass through this space and constantly decide where to
direct our steps. With every step we transform one of the many possibilities
into a fact, transforming non-knowledge into knowledge. We have thus
transformed a piece of our future into a part of our past. With every decision
we make in the course of our lives (and we decide constantly, at every moment,
sometimes consciously, mostly unconsciously), we determine our further path
through our space of probability and thus our future potential is reduced each
time until it is exhausted at some point. At the end of our lives, the one path
has been taken that has written a story that we call our life. It's burned in,
it's just history. All the future has changed into the past. Without existing
potential, our IPO no longer receives input and stops working.
The matter is
an information store consisting of countless small light stores. In the end, the matter is only a coagulated light. The matter is only an aggregate state of light. It
is not characterized by its components such as atoms and molecules, but by the
interaction of these particles, i.e. by the exchange of information. For
example, water and ice are made up of exactly the same atoms and molecules, yet
they are very different. It is not the atomic particles, it is the vibrational
state, the energy level, of these particles that makes the two different. Even
a dead horse (a freshly deceased, not a decayed one) and a living horse consist
of the same atoms and molecules. If, for example, in the brain of a living
being some of its building blocks are exchanged, for example, electrons or
protons with electrons or protons of a grain of sand, the state of the living
being after the exchange is not only indistinguishable from the previous state,
but it is exactly the same. The individuality of a living being cannot be
traced back to its material components, but to the processes that organize
these components. The difference between living and non-living systems lies not
in their atomic building blocks, their complexity, but in their information
processing. The death of a living being is not the disappearance of matter, but
the termination of communication and processes. Sub-processes stop working
until the whole process comes to a standstill due to missing input information.
All life is
an information processing process, an IPO. Through our perceptual apparatus, we
receive information and process it by converting possibilities into facts. From
our future, we generate our past in our present. If we do not receive and
process any information, we do not generate any facts, no more past. The
process stands still. Death is the state of the stagnant IPO, is the spacelessness
and timelessness. Death is the primordial state from which everything has
arisen. Death is nothingness and death is everything. Death is the potentiality
from which we come and to which we return.
Waking -
sleeping - death are only three states of our subjective consciousness. With
our death, subjective consciousness becomes pure consciousness. Our ego, all
that we think we are in this world, disappears. There is no more individual
experience. Just as we wake up from sleep and return to another state of
consciousness, death is only an awakening that brings us back to our original
state of consciousness. From the point of view of this state, our life is as
unreal as the dream for the waking state. Dying is awakening from life. Our ego
is only the vehicle with which we make our way through life. Our problem is
that we identify with the vehicle, with matter, and with form, and not with the
driver, the self, the consciousness.
Death is not the end of life, death is only a process in life. Death and life
are one. One cannot exist without the other. They are only different states of
the one consciousness. Birth and death are not beginning and endpoints, but
transitional phases in the continuous existence of consciousness. Life itself
is eternal, but not the material existence as it appears.
What comes
after death? That depends on who we ask. Representatives of the different
religions will tell us their own versions, as well as philosophers, scientists,
Darwinists, esotericists, etc., depending on the respective world view. At best
we can believe it, but we cannot know it. Yes, I'm sure we can. We just have to
ask the right person. There's only one person who can tell us. No one else can
do that. That's the one we have to go to. Where do we find this one? Well, this
one is our Self.
But our Self
cannot tell us with words, it can only show us. To gain the knowledge,
we must experience it. We don't have to die first. However, it is not possible
to do this simply at the push of a button. We have a long, long way to go until
then. The path to the Self leads us far inside, deep inside, to our center, to
the source of life, to silence. There that which does not come into being and
does not pass away, that which was not born and will never die, is acting.
So, the
question is not whether we can know, but whether we want to know. Let us be
satisfied with our superficial existence, let us accept our suffering, let us
live with comfortable illusions, or let us take the arduous path to the source
and find the answers we think we cannot know.
The state of death is outside the dimensions of our space-time, outside of
space and time. In order to reach this state, we have to leave our levels of
consciousness and come to a higher level of consciousness. This level is higher
than our mind, our mental. I therefore call it the supramental Level. It is the state of being one with everything,
the state of pure consciousness, of conscious death. For thousands of years,
mystics from all cultures and religions have experienced this state. They tried
to describe it and called it enlightenment, redemption, awakening, liberation
or whatever. They are just different names and terms to describe something that
cannot be described. We can read these descriptions as parables, as visions and
metaphors in old writings. But we can also set out and experience this state of
consciousness by ourselves.
How can one experience the state of death in life? For my attempt to explain
this, I must once again resort to quantum physics. Our universe, our world, is
a quantum system, i.e. it is not analog, but is composed of tiny quanta (tiny
little energy packets). Our life is also
quantized, composed of many tiny moments. Between these moments space, time,
matter and energy have disappeared and dissolved in a cloud of probabilities,
potentiality. Just as a film is only a sequence of many single frames, our life
is only a sequence of many discontinuous moments. It is our IPO that creates
these moments from potentiality and our life from the sequence of moments. The
gaps between our life moments are timeless, so that we cannot perceive them
with our space-time-oriented level of consciousness and in which our
consciousness goes through the state of death. By creating a fact, this
timeless state is ended and we are in the next moment. Our life is a constant
alternation of waking, sleeping and death states, of which our consciousness
can only perceive the first two. If we run a film very slowly, we can see the
transitions between the individual frames. Likewise, in deep meditation, when
we are in our center, at the source of our life, we can slow down our IPO to
the point where we can look into the gaps between our life moments. These gaps
are not in space-time. When we experience it, we experience potentiality,
oneness with everything, pure consciousness.
Meditation is like dying. During meditation we let go of everything, leave
everything behind. Our feelings, our thoughts and above all our memories. Our
memories of our lives, our achievements, our pleasures, our fears. Our memories
of our families, our friends, our profession. Our entire past disappears until
nothing remains. This is what Jesus means when he says that we should become
like newborn children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Because these have
(still) no past and therefore no memories of it. We are born with an empty mind
and in the course of our life we fill it - with past. Our brain, our mind, is
just a huge collection of antiques. When we empty our mind again, when we have
left our memories of our past behind, we can remember the future. It is
potentiality, the kingdom of heaven. This shift from the past to the future,
from reality to potentiality, from the in-form to the formless, from the
earthly to the kingdom of heaven, is dying. Dying is resurrection. In
meditation we can experience this state.
With the
last contribution, the theory ends. If we want to go on, this can only be done
through practice. But maybe this theory is just nonsense, just big bullshit.
One could argue that it is completely unscientific, and the religions also tell
a different story.
Let us first consider the objection of unscientific. Science can only investigate where
forces can be measured. Since these forces always arise at masses, they are
limited to matter. The scientific view looks at the external, the material
world. This matter known to us, i.e. everything we see in the huge universe,
all atoms in our bodies and our environment, all dust, all planets and all suns
in and outside our galaxy, makes up just about 5 percent of our universe. We
know nothing or practically nothing about the rest, by far the largest part
(about 95 percent). About 25 percent of the energy and matter in the known
universe consists of something physicists call "dark matter". We know
that they exist and how many of them there are approximately, but we do not
know what it is. However, more than two thirds, or about 70 percent, still
remain in the universe, which is neither normal nor dark matter. Physicists
call this almost completely mysterious part "dark energy". It has the
largest share in our universe, but we do not know what it is. So, science still
has a long way to go.
The most accurate description of our world that we have today is quantum
theory. Not a single experiment has ever contradicted quantum theory, and
nowhere in our nature is a field in which quantum theory provides false predictions.
Let us look at some statements from the founders of this theory:
"There is no matter, but only a web of
energies that have been given form by an intelligent spirit. This spirit is the
basis of all matter."
(Max Planck, physicist, Nobel Prize
1918)
"Reality is created by
observation"
(Nils Bohr, physicist, Nobel Prize 1922)
"The reality we can speak of is never a reality in itself, but [...] a
reality created by us."
(Werner Heisenberg, physicist, Nobel
Prize 1932)
"My personal view is that in a future science reality will be neither
'mental' nor 'physical', but somehow both and somehow neither.
(Wolfgang Pauli, physicist, Nobel
Prize 1945)
"Consciousness, by its nature, exists only in the singular. I would
like to say: the total number of all 'consciousnesses' is always just 'one'.
(Erwin Schrödinger, physicist, Nobel
Prize 1933)
"Light is energy and also information - content, form, and structure. It
is the potential for everything."
(David Bohm, physicist)
The citation sources can be found on the Internet, as can many other statements
by famous physicists and Nobel Prize winners in this field.
Let us now turn to the religious objection. Religions are based on very old
writings. Their parables and descriptions are adapted to the world view,
culture and spiritual horizon of the time. They were often misunderstood,
distorted and misinterpreted. If one delves deeper into the original teachings,
one often recognizes many similarities, which were often only expressed by
different names and terms. With the names, it is like with the identifiers in
mathematics. You can use completely arbitrary characters for a variable, the
result does not change by choosing the character. So also in this blog every
reader can use his own terms for the terms I use, at any time.
It is my concern to keep the theory
presented by me as compatible as possible with science and religion and to use
as neutral terms as possible. Is this theory now true? Certainly not. It's just
my interpretation of the truth. I cannot and will not convince you. I don't
want you to believe me, I want you to experience it for yourself. Only what you
experience yourself can convince you. Only your own light can show you your
path. Like a running coach, I can prepare you for a kind of inner marathon, give
you advice and tips. But I can't carry you to the finish line. You must make
your own way. The description of such a path, the way inwards, will be given in
the next articles.
Most of the
time we are concerned with our outside world. With our body, our family, our
job, our possessions, with hobbies, politics, entertainment, etc. We are
concerned with the material, the put into form, the facts, the knowledge. This
is the outer way. In my book "The Conscious Death" I have called the
inner path also a spiritual path. Spiritus comes from Latin and means
spirit or breath. It is that which gives life to matter. The outer path deals
with the "getting into form". In order that life can arise from the
"in-formation", it still has to be "in-spired". Only the
combination of information, knowledge with inspiration, experience, leads us to
wisdom.
The way inside is neither strenuous nor complicated. It is a very simple and natural way. People
have always gone this way. In the age of technology, however, it has gone
somewhat out of fashion and fallen into oblivion. Our outer world provides us
with an excess of material things and possibilities, a variety of external
distractions, so that we lose contact with our inner being. To follow
the path within, we do not have to belong to any particular religious
community, worldview or ideology, nor do we have to have any particular
talents. We don't have to leave our friends and families or give up our jobs
and hobbies. We don't have to move to a monastery, to solitude and become an
ascetic. But you can't do it without everything. We need the will to do this,
we have to create certain conditions and take the time to do so.
I often compare the way to the inside with a marathon. The theory is simple,
there are plenty of training plans. The method, running, is not difficult
either. Any healthy person can run. However, reaching the goal is somewhat more
difficult and usually means a long, regular training. First of all, we must be
clear about our goal. What is this blog about when we write about the inside
way, the spiritual path? First of all, it is simply about our lives. Our life,
as explained in the corresponding article, is an IPO, a consciousness process.
The inside way changes this process and with it our lives. Most people try to
achieve changes in their lives through changes in the outside world. To are
more is to have more. Thus, like our earliest ancestors, they are constantly on
the hunt for prey, which nowadays consists of more and more possessions to
satisfy more and more pleasures. They always choose what they find pleasant and
think it is good for them. But this is often a fallacy. Despite all the changes
in the outside world, they always remain what they are. With every problem they
solve in the outside world, new problems arise as long as they do not solve the
problems at the root, their inner world. The outside world is always created by
the inner world. Our consciousness creates our reality. At this root, at the
source of our life, our consciousness process, we start in this blog. The
methods presented here show us a way to deliberately change our states of
consciousness with the goal of not only consciously changing these states but
ultimately expanding them. It is about monitoring and controlling our IPO. This
means that we are no longer controlled by life, but we control our lives. We
update our consciousness to reach an expanded consciousness, a higher level of
consciousness and finally the supermental level and experience the state of
conscious death.
These methods for the inside way are completely natural and simple, no more
difficult than running in the outer world. Each of these methods starts at a
stage of IPO. For the input part we will deal with concentration, for the
processing with mindfulness and for the output with meditation. The only things
we need are our body, our mind and some time.
Although
running is quite easy and many like to jog regularly, not everyone runs a
marathon. Why should you run a marathon at all? When I started jogging a long
time ago, a marathon was out of the question. But at some point, I felt that I
could run longer and longer and longer. I ran the first marathon out of
curiosity, after that I realized that there was more to come. Where's the limit?
The goal on
our inner path is an expansion of consciousness, are higher levels of
consciousness. But who needs it? Even if we wanted to, there is no guarantee
that we will achieve it. Do we even have to reach it or can we just jog on?
That is exactly what I recommend. Let's just get out of here and see what
happens. If we like it, we'll move on. If not, we stop. But do we get anything
out of it? Where does that leave us? If we start to go the inside way, in time
our habits, our likes and dislikes, our way of life will automatically change.
These changes are individual. They are different in each person, come faster or
slower, are weaker or stronger. They come by themselves, we cannot force them
and we cannot prevent them. These changes are not the goal of our path, but
they help us to achieve our goal. Below are just a few examples:
1. Health:
On the inside way we gain access to the autonomous nervous system, to the
lower levels of consciousness, which automatically take care of all bodily
functions. They guarantee our health and keep our body alive. We change our
biology and significantly improve our health. In various scientific studies and
researches, the following positive effects of meditation on our body have been
found, among others
- hypotension
- Reduction of the resting pulse
rate in a healthy natural way
- Increase of blood circulation
with simultaneously reduced heart rate
- Improvement
of the immune system
- Slowing down mental and
physiological aging processes
- Effect against depression,
insomnia, overweight and headaches
- Improvement of brain performance
- Increase in communication skills
2. Addiction:
An addiction is something that we think we can no longer give up, even if
it makes us sick and unhappy. We become addicted to substances such as drugs,
alcohol, nicotine, but also the body's own hormones, which are produced and
released by emotions. This is then manifested in compulsive behavior, such as
the pathological striving for recognition, the (adrenaline) kick or sex, the
occurrence of ravenous attacks, coma binge drinking or consumption orgies or simply the compulsive grab for the next cigarette.
We have lost sight of the healthy measure, damage our body and often even
accept illness and death. On the inside way, we learn to overcome our addiction.
3. Sleep:
The path to the inside leads to less tension, less stress, and better stress
relief, which means that fewer relaxation phases are necessary. Our need for
sleep is regulated to a healthy level and the quality of sleep is increased.
4. Physical sensation: Researchers from
North Carolina have found that regular meditation exercises can significantly reduce
the sensation of pain. In the experiment, it turned out that pain can be
relieved just as well through meditation as through strong medication.
5. Intuition: Intuition, our gut feeling,
is nothing magical or paranormal. It is a natural ability of man, which has
atrophied in many people as a result of our rationalized, externally controlled
way of life. Through our exercises, through concentration, mindfulness, and
meditation we can train our intuition, comparable to a muscle, and thus
strengthen and expand our intuitive abilities. We can perceive ourselves, our
fellow human beings and situations more precisely, understand them better and
come to adequate decisions and actions.
In summary,
we become healthier, more attentive, more sensitive, more efficient and happier
on our inside way. And this without expensive drugs and package inserts with
endless descriptions of the risks and side effects. However, these examples are
only possible side effects. They are not the goal of our path. The goal is not
external changes, but inner growth.
On our inside
way, we influence and change our biology, namely our body as well as through
changes in the brain our mind. Two processes are mainly responsible for this:
gene expression and neuroplasticity.
Until recently, scientists rigidly claimed that genetic activity is a process
that occurs independently of the environment. All information and instructions
always flow in one direction only, starting from the DNA (deoxyribonucleic
acid) via the messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid) for protein production. We are
guided and controlled by our genes. "There's nothing I can do about it,
it's my genes," is a frequently used excuse when we are too comfortable
taking necessary measures to change our biology ourselves. The science of
epigenetics has shown that it is not genes that cause disease, but our
environment, both external and internal, that program genes to cause disease. A
gene does not change physically, only the gene expression changes, i.e. which
genes are switched on, switched off or modified. The only task of the genes is
protein production. Protein production is controlled by changing the
information coming from the outer cell environment. For example, meditation
downregulates or suppresses inflammation-promoting genes and upregulates
anti-inflammatory genes. As studies show, the changes in gene activities
through meditation take place surprisingly quickly, sometimes within an hour.
The altered gene expression can be passed on to the next cell generation. This
causes real physical changes over time.
Our brain is a learning organ. Our thinking, feeling and acting, our
experiences, shape the circuits in our brain. New synapses form within minutes.
Not only in our childhood but all our lives. Scientists also call this
neuroplasticity. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have found that
with regular mindfulness meditation, more gray cells actually form in the brain
regions of the neocortex associated with awareness, attention and memory,
stress management and emotional integration, that this area is actually
enlarged and condensed. In contrast, the density of cells in the areas
associated with stress and anxiety, primarily the amygdala, decreased. Using
imaging techniques, scientists now have measurable evidence that through
regular meditation the brain grows and changes in a way that is consistent with
the subjective reports of the meditators. Meditation is a way to change
structures in the brain and thus its way of working. Man can
"update" his mind and thus reach higher levels of consciousness.
Those who do not take advantage of this opportunity leave it to other forces,
such as the media, the entertainment industry, intrusive people, unpleasant
experiences of the past and thus make themselves dependent on random events in
their outside world.
Our attention
is like the beam of a flashlight wandering in a dark room. We perceive what our
attention is focused on and suck it into our brain like a vacuum cleaner. It
doesn't matter what it is. Via attention, we control our perception and via
perception, we control the input into our IPO. These inputs are processed in the
IPO and change the structure of our neural network. We see the result as traces
in our brain. This not only creates new synapses, new connections in our brain.
The mode of action of our genes is also influenced by gene expression. The
output, the result, of each process depends on its input values. Through our
perception, we control our condition and our actions in our environment. If we
increase our input quality, we can begin to improve our quality of life.
Usually, our attention wanders automatically and we have little influence on the
input information. Our attention is largely controlled by the outside world.
Constantly it flashes and beeps somewhere and screams for our attention. But
physical pain and serious worries also take their toll. Nature has programmed
our brain in such a way that we perceive negative signals easier and faster
than positive ones. In order for our ancestors to survive and reproduce, it was
important to recognize dangers quickly and to react to them. Pessimists, who
saw problems and dangers everywhere, usually had a higher survival rate than
optimists who trusted in their luck. Even though we mostly live in a safe
environment and rarely get into situations where we have to fear for our lives,
our brain is still structured in such a way that we react more strongly to
unpleasant events than to positive ones. Negative, i.e. unpleasant, events
shape us much more than positive, than pleasant events, even if we have
predominantly positive experiences. It takes many positive experiences to
balance a negative one. This effect is also called negative distortion. In the
course of time, we become more and more receptive to negative messages and get
into a vortex that pulls us into permanent fear and dissatisfaction. With
all the negative consequences to our psyche and our body. To escape this
vicious circle, we must begin to consciously direct our attention and focus it
more on positive experiences. This will also gradually restructure our brain.
It will bring our reality, our mind, and body, in a positive direction. The
remedy that can help us with this is called concentration.
In psychology, concentration is understood as the deliberate focusing of
attention on a section of our external world. Concentration is controlled
attention. Through concentration, we can control our attention and thus the
input values into our IPO. In this way, we can influence our state, our neuronal
structures, positively or negatively. This has nothing to do with so-called
positive thinking. We can try, but it won't work. It's just a placebo. It also
does not mean that we should ignore negative experiences. They're here, they're
not going anywhere. But we can just accept them as they are and not pay as much
attention to them anymore.
Our first step, our first exercise, consists of consciously directing our
attention to the good, the beautiful, the pleasant. We will see that there are
many more of them than we have been aware of so far. In time, we will learn to absorb
positive experiences not only from the outside, but to create them for
ourselves from within. It doesn't happen overnight, but if we work at it
consistently, our lives will gradually change in a positive, happier and more
satisfying direction.
In the last
article, I described how we can control our attention, similar to the beam of a
flashlight, and thus increase the input quality to our IPO via our perception.
This article describes how to bundle the light of the flashlight and thus
increase its energy. At a young age, we had learned to focus the sunlight with
the help of burning glasses, convex collecting lenses, such as magnifying glasses
or spectacle lenses, to light a campfire or cigarettes without matches
or lighter. Just like the sun's rays, we can bundle our attention by focusing.
In this way we influence the quantity of input into our IPO. The remedy for
this is concentration again.
If you are engaged in a demanding activity, such as a pianist at a piano
concert or a doctor at an operation, you must fully focus on this activity and
hide everything disturbing. Only then will the result, the output of
the IPO, deliver the desired results. The goal of our next exercises is
therefore to focus our attention on one thing for some time. Which one this might
be is at the discretion of the practitioner. Here are some suggestions:
Object: In this exercise we look for
an object in our environment to which we can direct our attention. This can be
a candle flame, a Buddha statue, a mandala, an apple, a coffee cup or anything
like that. It should not be too complex and it should not evoke any memory in
us. We do not think about the chosen object, we do not evaluate it, we just
observe it. We try to suppress stimuli outside of this object, such as sounds
or smells, as far as possible. Our attention will quickly drift away. When this
happens, we bring it back and point it back at the object.
Music: The music for our
concentration exercises should not be too hectic, not too wild. Slow
instrumental music is suitable. It wasn't meant to bring back old memories. We
try to get completely involved with the music. After each distraction we return
to the music.
Mantra: A mantra is a sound that,
unlike music, does not come from outside but from within. A mantra refers to a
sacred syllable, word or verse, the most famous and for Hindus most important
mantra is the syllable "OM" (spoken "AUM", as a symbol for
the primal sound of the universe). AUM is a triad. It symbolizes becoming,
unfolding and passing away, represented by the deities Brahman, Vishnu and
Shiva. You can use both traditional mantras and melodious, meaningless
syllables. We do not need any special or sacred mantras, but some syllables are
more suitable than others. Research has shown that syllables with long vowels
are perceived as more pleasant than syllables with short vowels and hard
consonants. For the concentration exercises, mantras should be recited in
thought, i.e. not spoken aloud.
Breath: Like the exercise with a
mantra, the breathing exercise also directs our attention from the outside
world to the inside of the body. Our breath is always there. We can't just forget
him, he usually doesn't turn out easy either, we can always go back to him. The
important thing is that we do not try to influence our breathing, for example
by breathing particularly deeply or slowly. We're just watching it. Breathing
exercises are often recommended as an introduction to relaxation methods. In
yoga, breathing techniques form their exercises (pranayama) to bring body
and mind together. No complex breathing exercises are required for our
purposes. The simple perception, the observation of our breath, is completely
sufficient for this.
In the
beginning, we certainly find it difficult to concentrate and requires mental
strength. We constantly stumble from one distraction to the next, from one
thought to another. Therefore, one should start with short concentration
exercises and when one gets used to concentrating, gradually extend the times.
Not the length of the concentration exercises is decisive, but regular
practice.
With
concentration exercises we will gradually improve our quality of life. But this
is only a side effect on our inside way. When we have come far, very far, we
will experience their true power. We are space-time structures. By influencing
the input in our IPO, we will learn to control and manage our space.
In our
Environment, there are no colors, no sounds, no smells, and no taste. It is only
information about vibrations of particles and molecules, of which only a small,
tiny fraction is absorbed by our sensory organs, converted and transmitted to
the brain as electromagnetic waves. These are the input values of our IPO,
which are converted, filtered and interpreted during processing. This is the
origin of our actuality, our reality and our reactions to it. Like the input,
we can also influence the processing. The remedy for this is called
mindfulness.
As with
concentration, we also focus our attention here. This time, however, not on
space, on an object, but on time, and this time a very narrow time period, the
present moment, the now. Mindfulness is the directed, non-judgmental attention
to the present moment. This moment is the transition from the future to the
past. Everything that happens only happens in the here and now. We always act
and live in the present moment. In a single, tiny moment you can win everything
and lose everything.
When we begin to train our mindfulness, the first thing we become aware of is
how careless we actually live. As a result, we miss much of what is happening
inside and around us. We overlook many things or misjudge situations. This
includes processes in our body, our mind, our actions or our environment.
Countless moments of our lifetime are lost to us unused. With mindfulness we
increase the extent of our personal freedom, recognize hidden possibilities, we
become more creative and can better achieve our goals.
The
foundations of mindfulness are:
- Mindfulness of the body
- Mindfulness
of the feelings
- Mindfulness
of the mind
- Mindfulness of the objects of
the mind (the environment, the situations)
The present
is the transition from the future to the past. Through mindfulness, we can shift
our focus towards the future. If we are mindful, we are closer to the future,
recognize situations quickly and can act before they become critical. If we are
careless, we are close to the past, we only notice everything when it has
already happened and we no longer have any influence on what is happening. We
can often only react and no longer act. As we get closer to the future, our
options expand, we have a greater overview and can choose more freely from the
options available. If we are careless, we have to accept the option that we
have stumbled upon more or less accidentally.
In our
mindfulness exercises, we create an instance of an inner observer. We are
withdrawing from the event. We focus all our attention on everything we
experience, do or think at any given moment, without judging, without
evaluating or analyzing. We're switching off our interpreter. Just perceive
what is and accept it as it is.
Mindfulness is scientifically studied at many universities and research
institutes in Europe and the USA. Studies and meta-analyses conclude that
mindfulness exercises have been shown to be effective in improving physical and
psychological symptoms, for example as a supplement in the treatment of cancer,
cardiovascular disease, chronic pain, depression, anxiety disorders, ADHD,
borderline personality disorders, eating disorders or burnout and stress.
