5.4 What is the meditation on the model of reality?

The root Implicate Technology image of reality is: consciousness without content, which none the less permits all contents to exist. The truth of this is all-embracing. The function of this meditation is limited to preparing your understanding only; the meditations leading to experience of the final stage of enlightenment will be included in the follow-up teaching from the Implicate Technology Centre on the nature and purpose of reality: The advanced guide to enlightenment.

The nature of your mind reflects the nature of reality: your mind is a microcosm of reality. The first stage of the process leading to a fully unfolded experience of reality is to develop an understanding of your mind. When you have understood the structure and functioning of your mind, you will then be in a position to experience the inherent unity and fulness of reality.

The function of meditation, when sustained with committed effort over time, is to produce a still mind. Put simply, this is the mind in its natural state, fully aware and freed from the tyranny of the thought process. You need give no thought at this stage to this process of developing a still mind; it will occur quite naturally as you develop your work in meditation, as taught in this chapter and chapter 2 of The advanced guide to enlightenment.

The mind, when uninhibited by the process of having thoughts, perceives clearly that the true experience of reality is of existence unfolding spontaneously, according to the inherent implicate laws. A measure of your progress towards advanced meditation is the development of the capacity to experience your life as unfolding naturally and spontaneously. Be clear: any thought or action, occurring outside of Act‘s guidelines, acts against the flow of reality and incurs negative karmic consequences, whose nature will be according to the true needs of your nature.

Through sustained, committed meditation, the thought-process slows gradually and imperceptibly. The richest fruits of meditation can only be realised once one understands, through experience, that the true nature of mind is emptiness and silence. A measure of your progress towards the advanced meditative practices is to be found in the relative decrease in the pace of the thoughts; when you experience thoughts as unfolding interminably and endlessly, but more slowly this week than last week, then you are progressing in meditation.

A mind which has attained emptiness and silence is far more aware and more powerful than a mind operating at the level of normal consciousness or the first stage of enlightenment. Such a mind is aware of its contents and is no longer preoccupied with compulsive satisfaction of needs and desires. The world, as rich and beautiful as ever in its fulness, still unfolds moment by moment, but it no longer dominates consciousness.

When the fulness of the world ceases to press on consciousness, then the mind turns naturally towards understanding the nature and purpose of reality. Before you can fully understand reality through experience, you must understand the nature of your own mind. You must first understand that the thoughts in your mind create your experience of reality.

From your own attainment of the psychological stage of enlightenment, you will be aware how the experience of emotional conditions is significantly determined by one’s unconscious emotional projections. The emotions you were unaware of, before the first stage of enlightenment, none the less deeply shaped the experiences of your life. Changes in your feelings produced corresponding changes in your conception of the external world.

From your current, relatively enlightened, perspective, you now can understand that the emotional conditions experienced are relatively illusory, because they are the externalised products of mind. There is a general principle embodied here which is equally applicable to all conditions. Meditate on this long and hard; when you have developed an intuitive understanding of this principle, you will be clearly set on the path to advanced meditation.