In Tantra, the concept of the overmind is an essential one and although I'm not crazy about superlatives, I would like to find one to describe the overmind: even "breathtaking" or "fantastic" do not measure up.
For the overmind refers to an autonomous mental level that includes and is greater than several individual sub-minds. More than breathtaking, such a prospect is literally mind-blowing'. But a more specific definition of the overmind follows:
The word "mind" stems from the Latin mens, mentis, the meaning of which goes beyond the mere intellect, such as in the expression
"mental arithmetic." In this respect, the famous cogito ergo sum dear to Rene Descartes actually raises more questions than it answers! "I think, therefore I am" is just as obvious as it is insufficient. "I think,"
fine, but who is this "I"? And what is thinking? Such questions raise another thorny and basic problem, as yet unsolved in the West: the psyche. Invoking its Greek origin, psukhe (= "soul"), irks our rational-ist friends and serves only to fuel their quarrel with our other friends, the spiritualists, the two schools of thought only agreeing to disagree and to oppose implacably, mind and matter.
To "I think, therefore I am" Tantra adds the corollary, "I am, there-fore I think," it being understood that "to think" means first and there- fore-most to be aware, to be conscious, and not to reflect. The psyche and consciousness are indissociable as the empirical basis of existence. Let's keep this idea on hold for the time being and forge ahead.
Tantra reconciles spiritualists and rationalists by stating that the psyche, therefore consciousness, is a dimension, a fundamental prop-erty of the cosmos: this Tantric axiom is of far-reaching import. (On this subject see the chapter "What is Here....")
In order to try to fathom the depth of this axiom, let us begin with our habitual concepts of thought and thinking. In this context, the idea of an immaterial or supernatural psychic entity, in a word, a soul, is repulsive to the rationalist for whom thought, like automatic data pro-cessing, stems from the activity of the brain and does not exist outside the brain. Moreover, even for staunch spiritualists, to think, to be con-scious, implies a closed space - the cranium - and a unified material
s t r u c t u r e , in this case o u r b r a i n , w h i c h an A m e r i c a n h u m o r i s t described as being the most sophisticated, miniaturized, and high-per-forming computer ever, 1° mass-produced, 2° at low cost, 3° manufac-tured by people without any special qualification, 4° in the greatest enthusiasm! Indeed, comparing the brain to a computer is pretty plau-sible. For its billions of neurons can be likened to so many chips, so many living microprocessors linked to one another by wires, i.e., their dendrites, the power supply being nervous energy.
The originality of the Tantric view is that each psyche (including the cell's, considered as possessing full-fledged autonomous conscious-ness) is a force field, a subtle energy system, therefore material in the wider sense, without being limited by specific molecules or atomic par-ticles. My psychic force field oversees and encompasses all of my neu-rons, uses them, reacts with each one of them and vice versa. I think with my brain, thanks to my brain, although my psyche is neither limit-ed nor totally identical to it. What's more: my brain is "in" my psyche rather than my psyche being in my brain! My individual psyche is the overmind of all my neurons, in fact, of all the cells in my body.
The following comparison may help to clarify this idea: my psyche is to my brain what a magnetic field is to a magnet. Iron atoms are
"material," I can weigh them and even observe their structure under the electron microscope. Each iron atom is itself a miniature magnet encompassed in the total magnetic field of the magnet. And yet, this invisible, subtle, imponderable magnetic field is just as "material" as the iron in the magnet from which it is indissociable. Moreover, the magnetic field extends far beyond the limits of the magnet itself.
Now as regards our brain, physicists assert that neurons are made up of nice little material molecules which are themselves made up of atoms which are in turn made of subatomic particles. No cause for metaphysical angst yet! That's well and good, but my brain, like all matter, is mostly made up of void! This echoes an idea expressed else-where in this book: modern physics has asserted that, if matter could be compacted so as to eliminate all intra-atomic void, i.e., if all nuclei and electrons were in actual contact, then the entire planet could fit into a thimble. And what about our brain: thus condensed, it would not even be the size of a speck of dust. In other words, my brain is first and foremost a dynamic void, a force field sprinkled with infinitesi-mal energy specks, atomic particles. Scientifically speaking my "force field brain," contrary to the closed and compact structure perceived by my senses, is a cloud of energy in a relation of constant exchange with its environment, but above all it is a thinking void!
N o w for an e m b a r r a s s i n g question: s u p p o s e I w e r e an ultra-Lilliputian sitting in the middle of such a "force field brain" to look inside this thinking energy cloud. Nowhere would I see the images
The Overmind 35
which pop up in the "mind's eye" of the proud owner of the brain.
These images make up the single content of our waking or dreaming consciousness, yet no one can say where or how they arise. For Tantra it's straightforward: it all happens in the mind, i.e., in the subtle force field that encompasses the entire brain and extends beyond its limits, like a magnetic field beyond the magnet's!
Tantra transposes this idea from the individual to the universe as a whole. The latter, with its billions of galaxies, is also a force field mainly full of void (the unimaginable vastness of interstellar space).
Tantra holds that "something" thinks with the stars, just like I think with my atoms. And here once again we run into the concept of the universe as alive and conscious.
For Pascal, mankind is a "thinking reed," the weakest creature in all of nature. Tantra holds on the contrary that the universe itself is conscious just like any individual and each one of his/her cells. From the cosmic to the infra-atomic level, the universal psyche is stratified into an infinity of sub-levels of awareness or planes of consciousness that are both autonomous and distinct from one another, and interde-pendent.
The structure of the psyche corresponds to the structure of energy-matter, the two being inseparable. Einstein's energy-matter is One, from a grain of sand (or the minutest of particles) to a galaxy, to clus-ters of galaxies, to the universe as a whole. Each individual is made up of an infinity of planes of consciousness, from the cellular to the whole and beyond!
Witnessing the activity of a thinking brain is just as extraordinary as watching a starry sky at night and realizing that "something" - or someone? - is thinking with these myriad stars: from the individual to the universal, it's just a question of scale.
This stems from the fundamental concept of Tantric esotericism: the universe is alive and conscious at all levels; the psyche is one of its dimensions the deletion of which would annihilate the whole, as elim-inating the height of an object would perforce destroy it. This idea of an intelligent and conscious universe is making headway in the West:
I refer you to a book by the British astronomer-physicist-geneticist Fred Hoyle: The Intelligent Universe.
In his book, Fred Hoyle dissociates himself from the classical Western concept according to which consciousness and thought can only occur in a structure (the brain, of course) having reached a cer-tain stage of complexity. This means that in the West, people have a hard time swallowing the idea although it is a fundamental one -that each cell is alive, therefore conscious. Traditional thinking would have it that a cell has no brain, no nervous system, therefore it has no organized consciousness. The latter therefore is de trop!