Insights—Subconscious Mental Programs
Channel: Consciousness Research Centre
Date: 27/01/2024

So the response to our last episode of Atma Bodha was so amazing, it indicates to me there's a great interest in the subject of the last two videos really, which is subconscious mental programs. And I would use the example or the metaphor of a computer. Now, I don't think the mind is a computer. This is just a metaphor to explain the phenomena that we observe in the mind. 

When you first boot up a computer, there's just a blank screen and maybe some icons or whatever. But basically, there's nothing going on. And it'll just sit there forever until you give it a command. Once you do, you open up some program and start using word processor or graphics or video, whatever it is.

Does that mean that nothing is happening? No. Because as soon as you boot up the computer, you have something called an operating system. The operating system is a collection of programs that run invisibly underneath the surface of the graphical user interface. It appears like nothing is happening, but actually there's a constant activity, you just don't see it.

And as soon as you click on something, then it makes a window and stuff appears to start happening, but it's been happening the whole time underneath. And it keeps running underneath whatever programs you have open to provide services to those programs to use in their various functions of whatever you're trying to do.

The mind is similar.

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Śaṅkarācārya's Ātma-Bodha (Nikhilānanda) PDF
Contains an excellent overview of Advaita philosophy:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RHm9w9I-glivFN-st6IqsIuOQeUgrjgV/view?usp=share_link