by Paul Allen.
 

More considerations about the Emptiness of Mind exercise.
 

Since the emptiness of mind state is so essential to the upcoming magician and we have seen a number of postings to the FB-Forum questioning about this technique I will cover this subject a bit more in depth and add an account on how I experienced the training process.

First we should try to define what we mean when talking about emptiness of mind. Many definitions are possible here but I like to term it as: "the absence of ..." Fill out the 3dotted space with the concept you like most (=which you experience most in your ordinary state of mind) and you have the definition which meets your needs best. This brings us to a consideration which is very important in my opinion: Many possible states of emptiness are possible with a varying degree of proficiency or experience. To complicate things further is the fact, that every human being has a different frame of mind in his ordinary state of consciousness which then has to be banished in order to reach the emptiness state.

Why is emptiness necessary for the beginning magician? The answer to this question is quite obvious: you first have to make some place in your mind throwing out all unnecessary rubbish before you can put something new into its place. Magic is, in part, learning new abilities and in order to be able to progress quickly you must be able to concentrate = focus your mind onto the new ability you want to acquire.

Say you're a very good cook and you're therefore thinking most times about dishes to serve next. Probably you'll see in your mind pictures of various types of food, smelling and tasting them to some degree and commenting the scenes by your inner voice. Now when you want to learn say transplanting consciousness and you have all the time pictures of rice dishes, fish, second plates, salads, potatoes and so on popping into your minds eye how will you be able to transplant your consciousness? Of course you can learn it regardless weather you master the emptiness state or not, but it will be a more difficult and even painful process. On the other hand, if you master emptiness in the first place  then you can enter most times this state of peace and tranquillity and later move on to concentrate on your chosen faculty.

When beginning to train emptiness of mind most of us experience to be pulled back to our usual way of thinking all the time, i.e. in our case to think about dishes and food (Disclaimer: it's only an example: I won't say here that cooks are thinking only about their profession).
For a certain period when I practiced this exercise it was customary to me to check how long it took me to realize that a new thought-train had begun to run. Sometimes it took me about 1-2 or even up to 5 minutes to realize "oh, I'm just having a new thought, I must stop it immediately". At other occasions I realized it almost immediately.

Sometimes you will be trapped by a very interesting train of thoughts and get so absorbed with it that you will forget completely your task namely to train emptiness. In our example you could have a very good idea about a dish which may fascinate you and you would like to follow this idea more thoroughly. In my personal experience this occurred very often: a most enjoyable but nevertheless distracting experience?. Never before had I experienced such compelling ideas and fascinating thoughts as when I sat down trying to enter the emptiness state. I had to learn first to relinquish the temptation to follow these fantastic avenues of mind until I was able to move on with emptiness.

Another point encountered by most beginners is that it's almost impossible to enter a quiet state not to say emptiness if you have had previously any upsetting emotion. Such emotions are constantly generating new thoughts in your mind and you have no chance to banish them. This is one reason why it's very important to get your emotional state balanced.

A further point to consider is that when you get your very first success you will immediately start to think about it. Say you succeeded in not having any thought or picture for 30 seconds or so. At a certain moment you will get very exited about this accomplishment and you are likely to begin commenting about it like: Wow, I'm doing it, it's great, I never thought to be able ..., hey man what's this, stop now, this is just a new thought, oh shit, why must I always comment on everything... (and so on). First you will get angry whenever such a thing happens, but after more practice you just accept it as a normal thing which happens now and then.

One more interesting fact about emptiness is that most people will have sooner or later strange and/or unfamiliar feelings and experiences. In my case it was most surprising to me that after a certain amount of training the region of the "third eye" (you know, the region between the eyebrows) began to pulsate. A most pleasant feeling but nevertheless it was distracting me from my task: emptiness. Other feelings I got at this stage are very hard or even impossible to describe. Simply because we have no adequate vocabulary for such things. For example I felt like something of myself was pulled like a rubber band and I expanded to somewhere I can't explain but very 'distant'. By having such feelings again I lost track of my wish to get to emptiness of mind. But all these experiences were transitory in nature.

Next I will discuss how it's like to experience the first periods of real emptiness.

(To be continued in a few days ...)
 
 
 

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