Training for Jedi Knight Types Lesson 2: Brahman-Atman Thinking

Chapter III

By Stephen Cheney

Previous Chapter: From Clay We Came

Different methods of thinking can be used for different situations.

An ancient method, called Brahman-Atman Thinking is useful in negotiations. When you are discussing matters with another who is not close enough to reach you with a blow. For discussions where the other is trying to dominate you and they are using every manipulating and dominating trick in the book. In an argument, when things turn physically sour, you need to be prepared to immediately switch out of this mode of thinking and into a combat mode.

It is common, when facing and talking to an aggressive person that your mind may become clouded, a deliberate effect from what the aggressor is doing, and your responses to their verbal aggression are inadequate. You do not know what to say. Later you may be able to come up with all sorts of good responses, when your mind is more settled, however, in the key moments when such wisdoms were wanted, they were wanting because your mind was unsettled, being dominated and clouded by the angry storm of the mind in front of you.

In short, Brahman-Atman Thinking gives you a new perspective, a method for dealing with fear, when you are with people who are deliberately frightening. Freeing up your mind to allow clearer thinking and more effectual verbal responses.

There are different ways of thinking in order to solve problems. If one method does not obtain results then another method should be tried.

SITUATION

You are in discussion or dispute with another person and talk is going back and forth. They may be anyone, your boss, an aggressor who wants a fight, a neighbour who wants their way, a family member who wants conformity, someone above or below you on the social scale. Later on, you can think of better things that you could have said, but didn’t. Better ways of conveying your points, better forms of persuasion. But at the time of conflict and confrontation your mind was not freely creative/ objective because of the tension. The mind needs to be relaxed to freely associate ideas and convey them. Your speaking ability can freeze because of the other person’s emotional dominance.

Because you are IN a situation you are immersed in it and restricted by a situation’s confining barriers. What is needed is a universal mind that can take in much more at once. Not only to talking such as in business meetings but this need applies to confrontations and the verbal preliminaries of physical fights. Later you may come up with better replies to your opponent’s statements/claims/ opinions, but later is after the event and no longer useful. ‘I should have said this’; ‘I should have said that’. Your method of thinking in an altercation can be insufficient to your needs. You need a new method of thinking, one that will distance yourself from the tense moment and allow a clearer mind.

What does Brahman and Atman Mean?

These are concepts from ancient India.

Brahman: is the highest Universal Principle; the Universe’s ultimate reality. The supreme existence. Omnipresent. All of space. Looking at the stars, what if you were them? You would then have a different perspective. If you could look down on all things you would re-evaluate their importance. You would see as the ancient gods in their lofty heights were said to see.

Atman: is the Individual Soul or essence. The innermost radiant self uncluttered by one’s outermost characteristics.

In short: Atman is You, and Brahman is All Else.

The enlightening concept is: Thou art That.
Thou-Atman are That-Brahman.
This relates the Chinese concept of the Tao, Yin and Yang, the circle of existence in which all dualities are blended.

To be liberated as a human being you need to realize that your inner self (Atman) is the same as the pure outer self that is the Universe (Brahman). You and the Universe with its myriads of stars are ONE. Your mind has the ability to recreate all that is within its own self. Indeed all that your eyes see and ears hear are but vibrations that your senses detect and convert to nerve impulses that your mind translates into images of the outside world. Much like the dots that sketch in lines to fill to a picture on a TV screen. What is outside of you, you recreate inside. A merging of two worlds.

Next Chapter: What is a Bully?

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