Today, while meditating, certain thoughts entered my mind. If “I” am beyond this body and mind, why is it so hard to leave them? Whenever we sit in meditation, so many thoughts rush into the mind. We start experiencing pain, itching, vibrations, and heaviness in different parts of the body. But do we experience what we are? The question is: who will experience whom? All our experiences lie in the mind, and the mind cannot experience the “I”; so how can we ever experience our real form?

Imagine being in a movie hall. Our favourite movie is playing on the screen. We look at the screen, and our minds follow the movie’s plot. We feel as if we are a part of the movie and get emotionally connected to the characters. We react emotionally. We cry with the hero and laugh with him. We remain quite oblivious to what happens behind the screen. Behind our backs, a projector room projects light onto the screen. The projector has a light source, plus many lenses and mirrors. Before the light reaches the screen, the lenses and mirrors add colours and images to the light beams, and the beams project these images onto the screen.

What if we are also like that light source, and our unconscious mind embeds likes and dislikes into the light beam before it reaches the brain’s screen, where the conscious mind can read and interpret it? The conscious mind is quite oblivious to the fact that the unconscious mind has embedded the memories of likes and dislikes in the light beam. The memory of the last trip we enjoyed with our friends, the last time our boss scolded us, the last time we failed an examination or the last time we had great fun at a party. Can the conscious mind see the game? Can it ever understand that what it sees on the screen is what the unconscious wants to project?

That’s difficult unless we move back and see the projector. How many times have we done that? I remember that mostly children do that because they are not very interested in the movie on the screen because they are unable to relate to much of what happens on the screen, and therefore, out of curiosity, they try to find something interesting and get to discover the light beam of the projector and ask questions about that from their parents. My children also did the same. But the adults are so lost in the movie and the popcorn that they hardly look at it. How many of us would recall looking at the projector while watching the movie?

That’s true of the conscious mind also. Unless it looks inward, it cannot understand the reality behind the projection. When it looks inside, it may see that beam of light. The energy that flows in the body and makes everything happen. Again, the difficult question remains unanswered. Who am I? The conscious mind that sees that beam of light, or the beam of light itself? I am not sure. But probably without this instrument of body and brain, the light can’t have any cognition in this world. That’s why the soul takes the form of body again and again. It needs a body and brain to have cognition. What matters after that is whether that body and brain are lost in the projection or can see through it.

When the conscious mind sees through the unconscious mind’s projections, it knows the projector can project anything. It knows different people project different realities onto it. The screen is the same, and the conscious mind perceives what its unconscious mind projects onto the screen. Their conscious minds can also look beyond what is projected on the screen. However, they are so occupied that it’s difficult for them to turn back and look at the projector. That’s why all the perspectives are relative. Once we understand this, we know the true potential of that light. We will not waste that light by just projecting what we like. We will use the light to illuminate the lives of everyone around us so they can see reality. We get out of our comfortable chairs and actually create something. We leave the dark hall and, with that inner light, create and explore the world.