It turns out that sanity is not found in conforming to the correct idea of reality, but in the direct experience of the basic sanity of conscious awareness.
Finding sanity in beliefs or concepts is stressful and leads to the idea that you are insane if you do not believe in the correct version of reality.
Wars have been fought over correct versions of religious scriptures and ‘non-believers’ have been executed; it’s no wonder there is so much pressure to believe the same as everyone else and ‘fit in’. But increasingly modern people no longer fit into the traditions of the past.
In modern times, belief in scientific ‘facts’ predominates, but these facts change over time and total scientific consensus is rare. Common sense belief in scientific “facts” is little better than consensus reality and is deeply problematic. Jiddu Krishnamurti points out:
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
Robert Anton Wilson calls this a ‘reality tunnel’ and everyone lives in their own little world. Common sense doesn’t necessarily stop all the different reality tunnels, but it helps put personal perception into perspective.
Certainty is a gateway to arrogance. It is rigid and there is no room for sensitivity or compromise. Certainty actually diminishes intelligence, blocks the wisdom of curiosity, and is a subtle form of violence that imposes its own meaning on events.
As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki says:
“The mind of the beginner has many possibilities, but the mind of the expert has few.”
Perhaps sanity can be found in trusting our senses? ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ attitude – that should be common sense. But it has been shown that our senses are limited to a small spectrum of reality; our ears can only hear certain pitches, our eyes can only see part of the spectrum of all light. This small part of reality, derived from the five senses, is also raw data that must be interpreted; as the French philosopher Henri Bergson puts it:
“The eye sees only what the mind is willing to understand.”
So where can we seek refuge or sanity when what we perceive and how we interpret our senses is limited and biased? The answer awaits in the silence of meditation.
Mental health is the silence and space inherent in the consciousness present in every moment. It could simply be called clarity. Some meditation traditions call it wakefulness.
Eckhart Tolle claims that when you touch the stillness of the present moment, you have stepped out of thousands of years of human conditioning, and Deepak Chopra promotes the idea that you always have a choice between conscious awareness or being pushed by the habits of the past.
The Western idea of common sense seems to be more conformity than common sense; you are healthy if you do not deviate from the norms. JD Krishnamurti was highly critical of this version of common sense when he said:
“It is not a measure of health to be well adapted to a seriously ill society.”
Increasingly, common sense means ‘fitting in’ and psychologists, counselors and social workers all too often succumb to simply helping individuals adapt and fit into our current social structures. I don’t want to be too critical of this approach because there aren’t many alternatives to it at the moment. Deviance in our society has historically been criminalized, medicalized and institutionalized, but that is a story for another blog.
Meditation helps to find sanity through the qualities of detachment and the wisdom perspective that sees appearances as illusions cleverly constructed through sensual input and conditioned views. Mental health is a place of rest, the place we can call home and feel at ease, where we reside as a non-conceptualizing natural consciousness. The stability of the mind to perceive without judgment and the intelligence to hold experiences lightly, without reacting compulsively. Being the ‘silent witness’, as it is popularly known.
Common sense means that we also see clearly the effects of our actions and this requires perspective and some psychological distance from the situation. Osho says, ‘I’m just saying that there is a way to be healthy. I am saying that you can get rid of all this madness created in you by the past. Just by simply being a witness to your thought processes.”
Being healthy means having a ‘bird’s eye view’, a broader perspective that lifts you above and beyond the current situation while simultaneously connecting you more deeply with it by seeing clearly. The more you can observe something without judgment, the more you will learn from it, and understanding will naturally arise.
Common sense can be that simple. The uncomplicated natural awareness waiting to be noticed and practiced in every situation. The radical immanence of this basic mental health makes it difficult to accept for people accustomed to striving and achieving. When meditation teachers say that there is “nothing to do” it seems ridiculous to most, and then receiving directions to get somewhere you already are is a paradoxical adventure, to say the least.
Despite all the effort required for hours of endless sitting meditation, there should be some reward for doing all that, but basic common sense was always there and it is not something new that has been added. There is nothing you ‘get’; it is more noticing and discovering what was there all along; the basic sanity of the non-grasping consciousness.
The way to meditate is to slowly return to health by immersing yourself in the simplicity of open consciousness, which emphasizes basic mental health and puts perceptions and ideas into perspective. This is nothing other than our present-oriented natural consciousness that is always available. The basis of an experience that is open and spacious, the continuity of vastness. The more comfortable you become with staying in touch with this vast nature, the more it will slowly bring you back to health.