BEYOND MINDFULNESS………….MINDLESSNESS

Reflections and Experiences

Prof. Dr. Erhard Meyer-Galow, Honorary Consul of BHUTAN in Germany

From October 1-3, 2024, an INNOVATION SUMMIT took place in Paro/Bhutan, organized by the BHUTAN INNOVATION FORUM. The forum introduces itself:

“The Bhutan Innovation Forum is a global initiative dedicated to sustainable development and mindful entrepreneurship. It unites international leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs to support Bhutan's vision of a Mindfulness City. Through dynamic workshops, networking, and interactive sessions, BIF promotes ethical practices, eco-friendly innovation, and cultural preservation, blending modern technology with Bhutanese traditions to drive holistic growth and environmental stewardship.”

This event is the next step after His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck announced in December 2023 that a 1000 km2 area is to be created in the Gelephu area as a SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION (SAR), in which people will live and invest with their own legislation with a focus on MINDFULNESS.

The King's speech:

https://hon-consulate-bhutan.de/de/aktuelles/17-12-2023-translation-of-the-national-day-address-17-december-2023

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the INNOVATION SUMMIT either as a speaker or as a participant for important personal reasons.

The presentations and discussions are now online.

I listened to a few very good lectures and discussions.

Therefore, I feel inspired to contribute my own thoughts and experiences as a supplement and basis for discussion, so to speak.

My focus is on:

MINDFULNESS-LETTING GO-CONSCIOUSNESS-BEING-INFORMATION-EFFECT AND IMPACT

1) MINDFULNESS

Those who practiced mindfulness in earlier years, like myself, or talked about it – and I did – were ridiculed and discriminated against as esoteric by all those who neither understood nor experienced esotericism, the path within yourself, as opposed to exotericism, the path in the outside world. During my professional years until 1996, I never revealed that I meditated. But after that I started talking and writing about the path within ourselves.

See Meyer-Galow Youtube Channel and my websites at www.ligw.de

www.hon-consulate-bhutan.de

Today, mindfulness is a buzzword on everyone's lips and there are numerous followers. They are all looking for a way out of their personal dilemma.

But often mindfulness is defined, felt and practiced in a too limited way.

I am concerned with the realm of experience BEYOND MINDFULNESS………

Isn't it essentially about not getting stuck in THINKING, DOING, ACHIEVING (i.e. MIND or RATIO), but opening up to our spiritual dimension (SPIRIT) beyond that? Unfortunately, in German we only have one term.......GEIST. In English, it is distinguished between MIND and SPIRIT.

I would therefore prefer the term MINDLESSNESS.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche also mentioned this term at the INNOVATION SUMMIT during his dialogue with Mathieu Ricard when he was asked what he meant by MINDFULNESS. He is a Buddhist teacher, film director and author.

Mindfulness is only the gateway to an expanded consciousness. Many decide to practice mindfulness but get stuck at the cognitive level without knowing it.

Recently a meditation teacher said to me: 

“It saddens me very much when I see so many faces in the sesshin who have been practicing mindfulness for decades, but nothing has happened.”

They have remained stuck at the level of thinking, feeling, doing, wanting and achieving. The dawning of an expansion of consciousness is always a grace that cannot be forced. In mindfulness practice, it happens quickly for some, but never for many.

An episode that Walter Schwery, my teacher of Jungian Depth Psychology, liked to tell makes clear what the meditation teacher meant and what also corresponds to my experiences:

“I was at a sesshin in Tuscany with a Tibetan Rinpoche. We were 120 students practicing mindfulness. The master came to us, saw us, very concentrated to our mindfulness practice and shouted:

Don't meditate, just relax!

Everyone laughed, let go completely and were in their inner center. Before that, they were only in their heads.

They were suddenly in a space beyond mindfulness......

Please don't get me wrong. I don't want to disparage mindfulness and the necessity of practicing mindfulness, especially in today's fast-paced, crisis-ridden times. We can't live and survive without mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness, preferably daily, has many advantages and leads to a more conscious life. Empathy and Compassion can be the result. Better ways of dealing with yourself and others grow. It is similar to autogenic training. It works, but only briefly. The effect quickly disappears with the next disruption. The opening of consciousness is not sustainable. The source of change lies deeper within us.

2) LETTING GO

Mindfulness is only the gateway to all meditation. Perhaps 10%. However, the more difficult part must then follow in the mindfulness exercise and that is the LETTING GO.

The mindfulness exercise often has a focus to make it easier: the breath, a mantra, an image, a prayer......and even nothing. All of this must be let go.

LETTING GO leads to SERENITY and SERENITY leads to COMPASSION.

David Hawkins expressed this exactly and wonderfully. In the introduction to his book:

LETTING GO

THE PATHWAY OF SURRENDER

(The following ist the translation oft he German text and not the original English wording!)

“During the many years of clinical psychiatric practice, the primary goal was to find the most effective ways to alleviate human suffering in all its many forms. To this end, numerous medical specialties were explored, such as psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, biofeedback, acupuncture, nutrition and brain chemistry (neurochemistry).

Beyond these clinical modalities, philosophical systems, metaphysics, a variety of holistic health techniques, self-help courses, spiritual paths, meditation techniques, and other awareness-expanding avenues were explored.

In all this exploration, it was discovered that the mechanism of surrender has enormous practical value. Its important significance demanded the writing of this book to share with others what has been clinically observed and personally experienced.

The previously published ten books were focused on advanced states of awareness and ENLIGHTENMENT. Over the years,

during our lectures and satsangs, thousands of spiritual scholars asked questions that revealed the daily obstacles to ENLIGHTENMENT. It is pragmatic and helpful to share a technique that supports their success in overcoming such obstacles: How to deal with the vicissitudes of daily life, with its losses, disappointments, stressful situations and crises? How to become free of negative emotions and their impact on health, relationships and work? How do you overcome all these unwanted emotions?

The present work describes a simple and effective means by which one learns to let go of negative emotions and become free The letting go technique is a pragmatic system of eliminating obstacles and attachments. It can also be described as a mechanism of surrender. There is scientific proof of the effectiveness of this technique, which will be explained in a later chapter. Research has shown this technique to be far more effective than many of the other approaches available today for alleviating the physiological response to stress.

Having researched most of the different stress reduction and consciousness methods, this approach stands out due to its sheer simplicity, efficiency, clinical effectiveness, lack of any questionable concepts and the rapidity of its observable results. Its simplicity is deceptive and almost belies the true benefit of this technique. In simple terms, it frees us from emotional attachments. It confirms the observation of every sage that attachments are the main source of suffering.

The mind, with its thoughts, is driven by emotions. Each emotion is the concentrated derivative of many thousands of thoughts. Since most people throughout their entire lives repress, suppress and try to flee from their emotions, the suppressed energy accumulates and seeks to express itself through psychosomatic suffering, physical disorders, emotional illnesses and misconduct in interpersonal relationships. The accumulated feelings block spiritual growth and awareness as well as success in many areas of life.”

It is always also about the integration of the shadow (C.G. Jung); that is, becoming aware of everything that has been suppressed and repressed. We are still aware of what has been suppressed, but no longer of what has been repressed. I know many spiritual people who practice mindfulness, but in crisis situations the shadow breaks through and wants to become manifest in the world through classic projections. Then everyone wonders how this “do-gooder” can do that?

3)CONSCIOUSNESS

What exactly is consciousness? This is a fair question, as there is a lot of talk and writing about consciousness. Who knows what consciousness really is? Difficult to describe with words. If you yourself has experienced consciousness then you may know. If you ask, you usually don't get a satisfactory answer.

I agree with Eckhart Tolle, who distinguishes between an objective consciousness and a non-objective consciousness. In our lives, we are almost always in objective consciousness. Otherwise, we would not be viable at all. At this level, we are aware of matter and energy. We are aware of our ego, our feelings, everything we have learned, everything we perceive with our senses, etc. We experience this objective consciousness all the time, which is why many people only understand this objective consciousness when it comes to consciousness.

When asked how we can experience non-objective consciousness, Tolle said, in essence:

“When you meditate in the mindfulness exercise, thoughts and feelings arise that need to be let go. When thoughts and feelings then disappear through letting go, the next thoughts and feelings do not immediately arise. In between, there is always a small gap without thoughts and feelings. Just NOTHING.

This gap, this NOTHING, that is the non-objective consciousness.

Through the practice of mindfulness and letting go, the aim is to enlarge this gap, that is, to expand the realm of experience of non-objective consciousness.”

This is EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Consciousness is the basis of everything. Everything arises from consciousness, from objective and non-objective consciousness.

I would like to refer here to the physicist Federico Fellini, who, from his own experience, has dealt a great deal with consciousness.

The trained person can switch from objective consciousness to non-objective consciousness at any time. That‘s what I call:

CLICK – CLACK--PRACTICE… over and over again. It is important to practice this. This mechanism

is how you become a whole person.Body-soul-spirit (spirit and not mind!)

This is the process of individuation according to C.G. Jung

Out of this process grows empathy, love, compassion, resilience, creativity, health, etc.

4) BEING

Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, my first teacher, speaks of the double origin of man.

The earthly bound origin is the consciousness of the Ego; the divine origin is the Essence, which is defined as follows:

The essence is the way in which the transspace and transtime BEING wants to manifest itself in us and through us in the world.

In Jungian diction, the essence is the SELF. The transspace and transtime BEING is the HIGHER SELF, or, as just mentioned, the non-objective consciousness...

So, after the important development of the ego, the aim in life is to free the SELF from the suppression of the ego and to let it work in one's own life and in the world. All attachments come from the ego and lead to suffering. It is a life task to anchor the ego in the self. I am not a fan of overcoming the ego. We need our ego. It is extremely important to master our lives. But it must be anchored in the self, otherwise the ego spreads as selfishness and egomania. These are undesirable developments. But there are also many people with a weak ego. This is also a negative development. The ego must be strengthened through exercises.

We suffer in this duality. There is often an unconscious yearning to reunite the ego with the self; a yearning to achieve the wholeness in which we were up to the age of three.

This can only be achieved if we become transparent to immanent transcendence.

We rarely succeed in doing this with the mindfulness exercise only. With the practice of mindfulness and letting go, there is a greater chance of experiencing immanent transcendence. That is why, for Dürckheim, the meaning of life is:

TRANSPARENCY FOR IMMANENT TRANSCENDENCE

The trans-space-time BEING is the non-objective consciousness.

5)INFORMATION

For my current teacher Thomas Campbell, a physicist and consciousness researcher, consciousness is also the basis of everything from which everything arises. However, he goes one step further and sees the information that comes from the non-objective consciousness field (Larger Consciousness System) as the basis of everything, as he describes in detail in his book

THE BIG TOE (Theory Over Everything)

and on his many Youtubes.

The Larger Consciousness System stores all information from the past, the present and the future.

In the practice of mindfulness and letting go, we can receive information from the Larger Consciousness System. This information manifests itself as matter and energy, as word and image, so that we can recognize it.

Information rarely flows when we are only on the level of thinking, feeling, doing, achieving and having in our objective ego consciousness, despite all our efforts at mindfulness.

It requires a leap to the level of BEING. He calls this level “BEING STATE”.

This level can be reached through exercises of mindfulness and letting go.

He facilitates this leap in consciousness by playing frequencies that differ by 4 Hz between the two ears through headphones.

Physicists have found that the corpus callosum, the membrane between the two halves of the brain, vibrates at 4 Hz in enlightened monks; at 2 Hz when they are sleeping and at 8 Hz during the day. If you now apply the 4Hz frequency, the corpus callosum actually vibrates at 4Hz and you enter a being state.

In this state, information can be accessed from the Larger Consciousness System, but rarely from the cognitive level.

Incidentally, the placebo effect can also be explained in this way.

Ultimately, the practice of mindfulness and letting go is about conscious information flow.

6)ACTION

The point is that by practicing mindfulness and letting go, we open up the possibility for the non-objective consciousness, the transspace and transtime BEING or the Higher SELF to take effect in us and, as a result, to make a contribution to evolution from an expanded consciousness in the outside world.

My meditation teachers always pointed out to me that meditation should be practiced without intention.

However, with Thomas Campbell, I learned that you can definitely combine the intention to work and make an impact with meditation.

He says: “If you are already in the BEING STATE through the practice of mindfulness and letting go, then you have to express an INTENTION of what you want to achieve. You can ask the Larger Consciousness System and receive information. Regarding the future, you will receive information with the highest probability.

You can not only make a difference in yourself, but also in others by connecting your consciousness with the consciousness of others, through the positive influence of the information stream. Examples are diagnosis and healing in the case of illness.”

7)MINDFULNESS WITHOUT MEDITATION

Finally, it should be mentioned that you can also get to the Being Level without mindfulness meditation and do a lot of good.

My friend Hans Peter Dürr, a quantum physicist and Heisenberg student who unfortunately died much too early, never meditated. To achieve the state of absolute presence, he preferred the LOVING DIALOGUE.

“You know Erhard,” he said, ”when I meditate, I simply lack spontaneity. When I engage in loving dialogue, that is, a dialogue with empathy and compassion without judgment and prejudice, with another, the COOPERATIVE BACKGROUND FIELD can unfold freely, manifesting itself in matter, emotion and energy. The prerequisite is that one has learned to experience the background field. The cooperative background field is empty. But it has a property and that is the POTENTIALITY to manifest itself constantly in fractions of a second as matter or energy.

Cooperative backgroung field is my translation of the German expression used by Dürr „Kooperatives Hintergrundfeld“. Als ich Hans Peter Dürr fragte, wwas denn die aus seiner Sicht richtige Übersetzung sei, sagte er:

                 „EVER ACTING PROCESS“

The cooperative background field is the Actual-Truth-REALITY from which all reality of  the objective consciousness arises. Reality is the frozen COOPERATIVE BACKGROUND FIELD.”

This Actual-Truth-Reality of Hans Peter Dürr corresponds to the non-objectivel consciousness of Eckhart Tolle, the Essence of Karlfried Graf Dürckheim or the Higher Self of C.G. Jung.

For Hans Peter Dürr, the lasting meaning of life is:

               Make the Living more lively

Isn't that also the meaning of our life with every exercise of mindfulness and letting go, of our individual and collective consciousness, of our being, and of opening up the flow of information as the basis of all being and to have an effect in our so problematic world and to achieve something positive. Day after day!

We don't have to search. We encounter these situations. It is therefore about perceiving and acting out of empathy and compassion.

Incidentally, these openings are also a prerequisite for any kind of creativity, intuition, inspiration invention and innovation.

But the prerequisite for creativity to be sparked and bear fruit is that you have to be able to reach the essence or the self of the other person, and not just the ego!

However, this can only be achieved by someone who has allowed their own inner dimension to grow.

That's why I think it's important and great that mindfulness plays such an important role at the INNOVATION SUMMIT.

So it is essential.

With your rational mind, you first have to define and construe the task or problem. Then it's time to let go and turn inward. Because INTUITION comes from the Latin intueri (to turn inward). The thalamus and limbic system become active. Ideas fly to you. The next step is important, INSPIRATION, from Latin inspirare (to breathe in). We have to breathe in new creative ideas and let them become our own.

Our INTELLECT then links the idea with our knowledge and thinking skills.

This may lead to an INVENTION, something new.

A successful market launch of the invention is called an INNOVATION.

Innovation therefore requires this chain of action beforehand, intentionally or sometimes unintentionally.

This is very important to me. There are often complaints about the lack of innovation. The key to understanding why innovation is prevented lies in the realization that people are afraid of making mistakes, of being criticized or punished. Those who complain about the lack are to blame themselves. Their ego puts pressure on and creates fear. The ego of the other person closes down as a form of protection.

Since mindfulness is so deeply rooted in Buddhist Bhutan, Bhutan should actually have the ideal conditions to solve the tasks and problems of today's modern world through innovations.

However, intuition needs the knowledge of the intellect as an anchor to create something creatively new. A lot of positive things have happened in Bhutan in recent years in terms of imparting knowledge in a good education. Now it is about offering the well-educated citizens a way to apply the knowledge and gain experience.

May the INNOVATION SUMMIT trigger an       INNOVATION BOOST.

So much for my reflecions on the INNOVATION SUMMIT in PARO/BHUTAN

October 2024