Consciousness and Mind

What is the difference between Mind and Consciousness?

Thank you for listening. More talks and courses with Sananda and Christopher at www.heaven-on-earth.co.uk.

Transcript

The question is about the difference, if there is a difference, between consciousness and mind. Different people use these words in different ways, so it's good to be aware of that from the beginning. As we use these terms, there is a real difference between consciousness and mind.

00:28
Let's begin with consciousness. You'll appreciate, both as a theory and through direct experience, that it's very difficult to describe something that you can't get outside of; and you can't get outside of consciousness. It is, we might say, the fundamental in any kind of manifest universe, as we know it, as we know them. So consciousness is the beginning of it all in a way. From the Source of All, which we might consider to be all consciousness experientially condensed into Presence (and the Source of All has that which is not consciousness, as you would understand it or describe it large though consciousness is) but as the first outbreath, expression, demonstration of the Presence of Source, then we have consciousness.

02:24
Wherever in your universe you find some degree of order, you will also find some degree of consciousness, and we think that anywhere you look in the Universe, you will find something of order everywhere. From your perspective the degree of order can be very wide, from something that looks as close to chaos as you can imagine to the very highly organised energies at many levels that constitute the finest manifestation of the Divine that you can imagine.

03:29
So consciousness is behind all that you know of existence. It is present in all that you know of existence. One way of organising consciousness is what we call mind. We draw a distinction between consciousness and awareness and a distinction between mind and thought, brain, intellect, those other terms that are often applied to the action of mind in your life, your world.

04:22
So we're dealing with fundamentals here, both consciousness, as I've said, and mind too. Mind is only one way of organising consciousness. It's not used everywhere, but it is pervasive. It's very widely used. We will come back to the nature of mind shortly.

04:48
But first of all, just pause. Over for the next breath or two as you listen or read, let yourself open to the largeness of All That Is. From the human perspective, it might feel like an impossible largeness. It doesn't matter if your imagination can't quite reach out to the infinite, but you can feel it expanding towards that. And as that awareness opens out, play a game with yourself. See if you can find your sense of consciousness - consciousness as this fundamental expression of presence.

06:08
What you may notice Is that, at least to some degree, actually you can do this. Within yourself you know what consciousness is. You are, after all, a conscious being. But as I suggested at the outset, knowing something and experiencing it is not the same thing as being able to describe it. You can't get outside of consciousness. To put it another way, you can experience it, but you can't not experience it, at least not in any way that is real to you at this time.

07:04
Consciousness has its own way of expressing. In this Universe consciousness expresses itself, as its primary expression, as light. Light in turn can express itself as consciousness. It can create consciousness. So you have this wonderful relationship. Consciousness can create light; light can create consciousness.

07:48
In this particular lifetime that you're living many of you are reaching in to a greater awareness of that miraculous relationship. A very simple way of understanding this process of mutual creation is to think of consciousness as all the potential that exists and light as all of the potential that is manifest.

08:36
As potential manifests, it has a purpose to create more of that which is the source of the potential. So consciousness expresses its potential as light, and the light has the reciprocal purpose of creating more consciousness, and this is how universe expands, whether you take that in a literal, physical sense or in a more subtle sense, a process of becoming more alive, more fully present, a greater richness of existence.

09:33
Imagine yourself now, again treating this as something quite playful, imagine yourself as consciousness creating light, almost as you might blow a bubble, and then imagine that light that you've created, that you've blown as a bubble into existence, becoming more and more beautiful, expanding literally or metaphorically, and at some point creating more consciousness.

10:21
You are part of this continuum. You are of course conscious. You're also being of light. You are using your consciousness to express your light, and you're using your light to build consciousness. Neither light nor consciousness are limited. There can always be more, but the more is a little different in each. To put it very simply, consciousness can grow. Light contains within it - the tiniest portion of light - contains all that light is. In that sense, it doesn't really need to grow. It just becomes more itself or develops greater potential to manifest as consciousness.

11:50
These are only images, ideas, models. But you might think of consciousness as an infinite ocean, but an infinite ocean that can grow larger and light also as a sea of light that is unlimited, but doesn't exactly grow larger, but rather we might say richer. The words are inadequate. Don't put too much weight upon them. Instead, tune into the feeling behind the words.

12:44
Let's talk a little more about mind. Mind, as we've said, is one primary way of organising consciousness. The fundamental purpose, if we can use that term, of mind, is to make evident the purpose of the Source of All, to make it, so to speak, available and consciousness is a wonderful medium for the energy of thought to become available everywhere under all circumstances in all conditions.

13:41
In that sense, mind is ubiquitous, but then if we come a little closer to the energy that manifests as beings like yourselves (and some very different) mind becomes localised, specialised. It is adapted by individual beings in alignment with their own sense of purpose, their own sense of Divine Purpose within them, so that if you think of mind as a template that is delivered into the Universe through the medium of consciousness by the Source of All, then understand that that template is not a fixed thing, that part of the wonder of mind is that while it exhibits structure and order, that structure is responsive beyond all responsiveness you can imagine. It changes according to what is asked of it and what is given to it. It's a wonderful tool. It connects so many with so many.

15:23
You use the energy of mind, the structure of mind, to build your mental body. Your mental body in turn allows you to create a local mind, your mind, your personal mind, and as a physical being, you create an interface between that non-physical mind and the expression of your existence in physical form. As you, human you, that interface is the brain.

16:22
These transitions are really just a brief summary of many complex transitions there are between mind, universal mind, and your personal experience of having a mind of your own. You have designed yourselves as human beings to have minds that are both porous and contained - porous in the sense that you very easily tune into the minds of others. This is so natural and automatic to you that often people are not really aware of how few of their thoughts are actually their own.

17:22
So there is that porosity. But there's also a sense of the mind existing, your mind, your personal mind existing as a complete and contained unit. You have so to speak, the right to make of the thoughts you absorb from elsewhere, whatever you will. As you become more conscious of that quality of porosity, it becomes easier for you to discern that which is of you or of value to you and that which is, so to speak, passing through.

18:18
One of the characteristics of mind in the universal sense is what we will call infinite flow. The energy of mind is (and this is somewhat similar to the way that light functions), the energy of mind is available in all its detail everywhere simultaneously, infinite flow. Your personal mind, your human mind, is evolving to experience greater flow, but it's still a long way from infinite flow and purposely so.

19:09
It is not really that whilst you are in human form, that you are seeking to experience that infinite flow of mind. The human energy field is not geared for that just yet, but you're moving towards it, you’re evolving towards it. One of the ways in which you're evolving as human beings is to look again at this whole issue of porosity and compartmentalisation, to understand that, by analogy not unlike the way in which many computers can join together and process large amounts of data, that so human minds at the higher level, at the level of the flowing open mental body, can very beautifully share experience, understanding, innate wisdom, learned wisdom, and multiply the value that exists within each individual to become something that is shared by all.

20:33
Many of you listening or reading these words are engaged in that process. As you become more conscious, you generate light and light is very good at clarifying and adding flow to the mental body. There can be a winnowing out or a filtration whereby denser, slower moving thought energies, so to speak, sink to the bottom and can be released and the higher, more flowing energies that connect beautifully become more available.

21:31
Humanity is learning in a certain sense to have one mind. It's not that you abandon your recognition of individuality and the contribution that that can make, but in some ways you may find that as humanity evolves the experience of individuality becomes secondary to the experience of a oneness, a sense of shared creation, a largeness of mind that is filled with light and increases in consciousness.

22:26
Pause a moment. Imagine yourself able to travel some distance into the future. Never mind how many generations or how many hundreds or thousands of years this might be. That doesn't really matter. But make an imaginative leap to a time where you are choosing to be on the earth plane, whatever that looks like then, and feeling your connection with all with whom you are sharing the planet, the beautiful flows of light, the inspiration that so easily alights in your own individual mind, the joy of co-creation, conscious co-creation. It is as if that largeness of a shared mind is able to enable you all, both as individuals and as a whole to experience direct connection of the presence of the Source of All, and you find yourselves in a communion, a state of communion, a sharing of consciousness.

24:05
You can sense, you can intuit perhaps, that a point comes, a something equivalent to a critical mass of light and of consciousness takes off. Something new, something previously unknown comes into being, a sense of a continuous interplay between light and consciousness that you might imagine to be like a new universe coming into being or a new dimension of the current universe coming into being. And an important part of how that comes about is how you as individuals and collectively have chosen to use mind.

25:18
Again, let yourself pause. Come back to yourself. You now here, just as you are. We often say and encourage you to say to yourself, you are beautiful presence, you are present here now and you are beautiful. Take a few moments to consider that, to feel what is it to be a beautiful presence. We would suggest that it is a dance of light and consciousness and mind enables you to recognise it. Thank you for listening. Goodbye for now.