Chapter Five

Exiting our Mental Holodeck

In Buddhism, the biggest issue which everyone has to tackle is the sense of self-centredness. In fact, this is also the last step which all practitioners have to take before attaining the ultimate goal of life or Arahantship. A Pra-Arahant is known as the one who has no mind and therefore no sense of self. All their deeds and actions are simply called innocent movement, movement that is not conditioned by any desire or defilement. Their innocent perception has become permanent, not momentary like the rest of us.

In this chapter I would like to spend a bit more time talking about the sense of "I am" and trying to prove to readers how this powerful sense of our mental self can just be an illusion. How can this be possible ? This is the most distinctive feeling which all humans can identify with and share. How can we get it so wrong ? Some can't help thinking that maybe it was the Buddha who was wrong. Well, wise people will not judge too quickly without any investigation.

I would like to remind readers to understand the scale of depth I am talking about. We are still in the process of delving into our life form, body-mind and trying to find out what causes our mental suffering. As we delve into the core of the problem, we find that they are thoughts and feelings which are the two abstract entities that cause our mental turbulence. These two abstract entities are also responsible for creating the sense of I am as Rene Descartes said "I think, therefore I am". Descartes was quite right up to that point but what he didn't know was that there was one main factor which conditions people to have a sense of self and that is the state of spiritual ignorance. So, I will focus on the point of how our spiritual ignorance can cause us to hold very strongly onto that illusive self.

We are living in a time and age where the use of words as well as technology is quite sophisticated. I realise I have limited ability to express myself in English, nevertheless, I can truly make use of the sophistication of this time. Ever since I began my teaching and producing literary works for my students, I found enormous joy in trying to work out some modern explanations and approaches for my students to understand themselves better. What follows is one of these ideas. The readers can easily guess that I am one of the many millions of Star Trek fans. The idea of the holodeck in Star Trek, the next generation can portray a very clear picture of what we can see during Vipassana-bhavana. People who have never watched Star Trek, the next generation with Jean Luke Picard will have a problem because they won't know what a holodeck looks like.

Trying to see the illusive nature of our mental objects (thoughts and feelings) is very much like looking at a rainbow, a mirage or being in a holodeck. We all know that these three things are just illusions; they are not real and don't exist. The tricky bit is that they do exist for a period of time and that's why we can see them. As long as the factors which cause their existence are still there, we can see them. When the factors come to an end, the existence ceases too. Let's look at mirages first. We have all had the experience of driving on a long stretch of road in the hot sunshine. We cannot deny that the wet patch on the road some fifty yards in front of us is real. It is real at that very moment. The factors which make it real are 1) our position on the road. 2) the bright sunshine. Without one of these factors, the mirage won't be there. This works the same as rainbows. The holodeck is real as long as it is being programmed by the computer. Once the computer exits the program, all the holograms which make up a holodeck vanish too.

The point I would like the readers to follow is that when we talk about illusion, it doesn't mean that we are talking about nothing. In fact, we are talking about something which is actually there for that particular moment. They are real for a certain period of time but not real because they are not there all the time. While its existence still lasts, it does have influence over those who experience it. Now, rainbows and mirages might not have that much impact on us while they last but at least, we can truly see the beauty of rainbows and that might inspire a lot of artists to create something beautiful for the world.

With rainbows and mirages, we can view them detachedly from a distance and we can see the illusive side of them. However, being in a holodeck can be a different story altogether. I know I am just talking about science fiction but I would like the readers to imagine themselves as one of the Star Fleet officers on board the Enterprise. Being in a holodeck is very much like reality, isn't it ? Everything in there is real, one can actually see, hear, smell, taste and touch and all those perceptions have a real impact on people. Now, apart from the Star Fleet officers who knew what the holodeck was all about, there were people in the series who didn't know. Those who did not know the true facts about the holodeck and were put in there; they would have no idea that they were not in reality, would they ? For them, being in a holodeck was real enough and that world was their reality; they knew nothing else unless someone came along to tell them the truth about the illusion they were in and bring them out into actual reality. We can say that those people were ignorant about the facts of the holodeck being a hologram, can't we ? And of course, the enlightened ones were the Star Fleet officers.

I would like to stress once again that illusion doesn't mean that nothing exists. To be more precise, something does exist while the factors are still combined together. This comparison to the holodeck is essential for us to understand our mental-self. We are, in fact, dealing with a kind of illusion which is very much like being in a holodeck. Of course, this is a much more complex matter which we cannot afford to ignore because this means the true survival of humanity. What makes it worse is that we are born into a holodeck right from day one and there is no way we can know the truth about reality unless we listen to someone who does know, such as the Buddha. People who have a high level of spiritual ability can understand this right away, seriously investigate into the matter and quickly get themselves out of it. There are also people who have a lower level of spiritual ability and would view all this as nonsense and take no notice.

If we observe carefully our mental constitution, the part which makes us feel like we have a self is in fact our consciousness. In Pali is called Vinnana which is one of the five fundamental elements (the five khandha) which constitute our life form according to the Buddha's analysis. The breakdown analysis of the functions of consciousness is as follows:

1) eye-consciousness enables us to see objects.

2) ear-consciousness enables us to hear sounds.

3) nose-consciousness enables us to know smells.

4) tongue-consciousness enables us to know tastes

5) body-consciousness enable us to know touch.

6) mind-consciousness enable us to know mental objects such as thoughts and feelings.

As I said before, the completion of our five perceptions has to be filtered through the mind channel, therefore the first five consciousnesses can become possible only if the mind-consciousness is working. (Please refer to the chapter calls The host mind and its vivitors) When we go into a deep sleep, our mind-consciousness doesn't work and puts a stop to all other consciousnesses too. The awakening of our life-form actually means the coming back of our mind-consciousness. Once the mind-consciousness works, everything else works too. We can see that the mind plays the biggest role in everything concerning our entity of life. That's why we always have to delve into that very abstract area especially if we want to know ourselves better.

According to the Buddha, the sense of self begins at lacking of the right knowledge about nonself. Let's find the starting point of the sense of I. The sense of self become apparent when there is a full engagement between these three factors: 1) consciousness 2) perception 3) spiritual ignorance towards the state of reality. If we write this in an equation, we will have

consciousness + perception + ignorance = I

We can clearly see that consciousness and perception are natural functions. We cannot change them. The variable factor is indeed ignorance. So, if we replace the ignorance with the right knowledge, we will have

consciousness + perception + knowledge = nonself

With the right knowledge, our natural functions of consciousness and perception will become innocent. Therefore, the equation can simply be as follow:

innocent perception = nonself

We can see that this equation can be solved by putting in the right knowledge.

Let's put the first five consciousnesses aside for the moment because we know that they won't work without the mind-consciousness. So, we can see clearly that with the help of ignorance, the sense of I arises in the mind-consciousness first. It means that when thoughts and feelings arise and the mind-consciousness does not view them innocently, the sense of self or the I is born. We can also say that spiritual ignorance gives birth to a self. From this sense of self, we begin to extend and build our life on it. With the help of a metaphor like a holodeck, I will try to explain why we have such a powerful sense of self.

When thoughts and feelings arise and the mind-consciousness does not view them innocently, a full-blown sense of I is created. When thoughts arise and we let ourselves follow that thought or go into that thought, metaphorically it is like walking into a holodeck, to be more precise a mental holodeck. At that moment, the sense of I or self-centredness has reached maturity. This is the point that Descartes meant by I think, therefore I am. That is the very beginning of the sense of "I am".

When we go deep into our thoughts or our mental holodeck, a mental world is built inside us according to what the thoughts and the feelings are. Let's imagine that we are actually in one of those holodecks on board the Enterprise. If they are good thoughts and good feelings, a happy world is built and if they are bad thoughts and bad feelings, an ugly and unhappy world is built instead. We can identify with the day-dream state, can't we ? We build our mental world exactly how we wish. Quite often, it has to begin with a thought which says: "If I ...” From then on, we build our mental holodeck according to what we expect. In one of those five basic elements which constitutes our life form, there is one called Sankhara which acts like a builder, an engineer and an architect all in one. With the help of ignorance towards actual reality, the Sankhara or the builder will enjoy building a mental world for us to live in. We often hear people talk about winning the national lottery and what they would do with the money. The most ridiculous thing is that people even start arguing because they cannot agree on how to spend this dream money.

When we are in our mental holodeck, we can't help creating expectation. Once we have expectation, we are bound to have disappointment when that future dream doesn't come true. A very simple example is a holiday. From the moment we book our holiday, we begin our mental journey by entering into our mental holodeck. We imagine the dream holiday of a life time: a good journey, good accommodation, good food, good wine, fine weather, spectacular scenery, no accidents, everything going well, and so on. At times, from looking at the glossy brochures which are meant to attract people, we even delve into the minute details of our dream holiday, such as how we are going to sit by a swimming pool with a glass of cold beer in our hands, sip along and soak up the sunshine, etc. I am sure we are all familiar with this mental act. And along comes the real holiday. When reality matches with our dreams and expectations, everyone is happy. But when nothing is like what we have created in our dream, this is when all hell breaks loose. We have seen enough examples of this kind of incident on television. People cannot stop moaning and complaining and make their lives a misery. The worst case is when the dream holiday of a life time turns into a tragedy like what happened in Luxor when a number of innocent tourists were shot at indiscriminately or when a cable car plunged 300 feet and killed twenty ski tourists when a plane flew into the cable. I know a couple who have just one precious son who is extremely intelligent. They live a comfortable life and often holiday abroad especially in France where they have a villa. While they were on holiday in France, the son who was then 17 jumped off a diving board and something went terribly wrong. He broke his neck and is now in a wheel chair.

However, day dreaming or entering into such a mental holodeck as I mentioned above is still quite innocent. The troubles of our society mainly come from people who build weird and bizarre mental holodecks and cannot come out of them. There is no way we can judge people by their appearance and there is no way we can know what people are thinking unless we have some psychic ability. The Law merely controls people's actions but not their thoughts. The decline of our moral standards in society has caused some people to have less conscience or none at all and therefore they have no control over what they think. There is nothing which can stop people thinking in the way they want. Judging from the repulsive magazines on sale in the market from sex to murder, what chance do we have to ask for a more peaceful society ? Those sick magazine simply indicate the state of people's sick minds. Mentally sick people can enter into the most strange, bizarre and weird thoughts, such as having unusual sex and so on. I can't even give many examples because I don't know what kind of mental world these revolting people have gone into. I just know the problems of stalking, dirty phone calls, paedophiles, serial killers and so on. The most bizarre case, in my opinion, is the necrophiliac, those who enjoy having sexual intercourse with corpses. These are things which are too far beyond my comprehension. I cannot even imagine what exactly goes through these people's minds. From some weird mental holodeck which some people build up, it can gradually materialise and turn into real action where people get hurt or even get killed. This is a terrifying issue which authorities do not know how to deal with. This is also the root of problems which really threaten the peace of our society. If the government gives green light for those sick magazines and viedo to be on sale, who exactly should be blamed ? Of course, it is the government who is responsible for the well-being of their people, the future of our children and yet, they let this happens. What can we say ?

We might think that psychologists, psychiatrists or mind experts should be the ones who have the power to put these strange people in the right frame of mind. Let's investigate this matter. People who have no knowledge about the Buddha's wisdom, about the host mind and its visitors are all in the same boat. That is not knowing the state of real sanity and therefore they have only the full ability to enter into mental holodeck or go deep into our thoughts. Knowing about the host mind means knowing the state of real sanity. However, insanity in this sense doesn't necessary mean bad and negative thoughts. It can be any positive thoughts but the point is people have lost the state of their host mind or sanity when thoughts drop in for a visit. When a shrink doesn't know about the host mind or real sanity, they will not have a good rule to base their opinions on. Their best rules are only about using rational and positive thoughts, using a bit of conscience, being objective and trying to go by the book as much as possible. This is all mind experts can lean on which obviously is not good enough and that's why we cannot seem to solve our social problems. If the world's problem tangles up like a ball of cotton, simply undo the immediate knots cannot solve the problem; we must find the begiining of the cotton first and undo knots from there.

Now, we come to look at people who suffer from different levels of mental turbulence and need psychiatric help. We can easily single out those who reach complete madness. Their behaviour is what we expect to see from the totally mad. We say that they lose their consciousness. The alarming ones are those who appear to be very normal both in their appearance and speech. They don't walk around and scream like those who have lost their marbles. These people can be psychopaths and we don't know because they can be quite charming and know how to get around people. How could Fred and Rosemary West get away for so long despite the horrific crimes they had committed ? When the truth was revealed, their neighbours all said what a kind, friendly and charming man Fred was. Who could possibly think that he and his wife could commit such chilling and atrocious acts. The film Silence of the Lambs with Anthony Hopkins as a serial killer is not at all far from the truth we are now facing. These people can appear to be very normal and they can also have very strong mental powers. We hear about people, especially women, writing letters to serial killers in jail like Peter Sutcliffe and others whose names I don't know. These women really get emotionally involved. This shows how some psychopaths can manipulate others with their words. When people believe in something, they also build enormous strength around their thoughts and this is what some psychopaths have.

This is the point when even a shrink has to be very careful. We have a Thai saying that: Take no notice of mad people and don't ever argue with drunkards. The meaning behind this is that these two types of people have a very strong mind and will power. If we ever spend an evening with a drunken person, we know what it means. People who have strong minds and will power can be compared to having a powerful magnet in them. They can suck others into their way of thinking. I went for a meditation retreat on New Years Eve. Half an hour before midnight, the three monks at the temple began their chanting into the New Year for blessing. There was a monk whose voice was very powerful. Everytime he came up with a new tone of voice, a little while after, the other two monks had to go along. This works the same as people's characters. Housewives who find themselves becoming doormats will normally have manipulative husbands or vice versa. The stronger one can create a mental holodeck for the weak one to enter into. A strong minded man can easily take away his wife's confidence if he wants to just simply by stressing all her weak points and playing on her inferiority complex. The woman soon becomes mentally powerless. We often hear of school children and adults were driven into suicide because being bullied. Many old people who live near some young trouble makers are driven to breakdown. One simple sentence like "you are fat and ugly" can cause some innocent young girls their lives. According to the Buddhist concept, we like to think that when we are good persons, daities or guarding angels will look over our shoulders and look after us and we'll be safe. The reality is far from that ideal nowadays. There are many good, innocent people who are being bullied into corner and tragic consequences often happen to them while bad people got away very lightly. Being good and innocent people does not necessarily mean that they have to have strong mind power too. Their state of mind can be much weaker than bad people. That’s why they are subjected to be bullied. Good and bad people all have their own mental holodeck to live in. Unfortunately, the mental holodeck of some bad people are much stronger than good people's. Consequently good people cannot defend themselves mentally and are driven to breakdown or suicide. This is not the issue of being good or bad people but it is about how to get to know the state of true sanity which is much more important.

This is something which can also happen to those who offer counselling to people. I do realise that all analysts have to go for analysis regularly. They have a base mental holodeck to come back to so that they know that they don’t go out of line. The point is that no one is safe without knowing the state of true sanity or the host mind. Simply coming back to a base mental holodeck doesn’t always gurantee mental safety. Counsellors who have no knowledge of the host mind and its visitors will not know how to return home to sanity. If the counsellor's mental state is not really strong, they still have high chance to be sucked into their patient's mental holodeck in a way they don't realise or simply make very wrong judgement. And this is extremely dangerous. Then, we end up not knowing who is actually mad. We are dealing with state of mind which has no form whatsoever. If an object is misshape, we can easily tell but not the mind. So, this is a very difficult issue to deal with.

I am sure reader can remember a bizarre event which were headlines for a period of time in the mid eighties when many parents were accused of practicing satanic act and abused their children. Consequently, many children from those families were taken away from their parents and put into care for quite a period of time. That wasn't the worst news yet, not until the investigation was carried out and the truth was revealed. That was, there was no element of truth in the accusation at all. In the end the children were returned to their parents and a lot of social workers were in dire trouble.

An article in Daily Mail Wednesday April 1st 98, page 26 confirmed the very point I want to make about the dilemma which mind experts are facing. It was reported that a method of recalling long forgotten childhood sex abuse is bogus. False or recovered memory syndrome has no scientific or medical evidence to support it, claimed professor Brandon from the Royal Colledge of Psychiatrist. It was suggested that "dangerous techniques" such as hypnosis and mind-altering drugs, then "planting suggestive ideas" into patients' head have been used by some psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counsellors. This controvertial treatment was originated in the U.S. in the 1980s and has wrecked marriages, split families, made some patients suicidal and left others needing long-term mental care. Some patients who originally sought treatment for minor problems such as shyness or nervousness were trapped into believing they were suffering from the syndrome, said Professor Sydney Brandon. Adult patients with symptoms ranging from depression to sexual promiscuity are told they stem from blanking out memories about childhood sex abuse. "Many of the symptoms checklists are so all embracing that few people would be excluded." say the report. professor Brendon also said; "It's one thing to ask someone whether they were treated cruelly or sexually abused. But it is dangerous to instill in them a false idea that it actually happened if they have no such memory in the first place." There was also a story of a father who suffered two years of agony after his daughter named him as a paedophile. Allegations, later withdrawn, included him raping her as a child, beating up a six-year-old girl to terrify her into submission and carrying out sex attacks with the collusion of her brothers and mother. The daughter also accused 17 other men of abuse, including two MPs. Eventually police found no evidence to back the allegations. The father said that health and social workers gave his daughter the discredited treatment and wrongly concluded his daughter's deteriorating mental health was a symptom of years of abuse.

This is hardly a surprise. How can mind experts help their patients if they don't know the true state of sanity themselves ? This is a situation when we are dealing with thoughts which are abstract and dynamic. It isn't a tangible thing which we can see and follow and find fault with. They are intangible and changeable and yet very powerful and have a real impact on people. If we can clearly see how real a holodeck is on the fictional film, we can also realise how real our whole life can seem when we enter into thoughts and all their accessories like ideas, concepts, imagination and so on. From nothing, it can easily well up into something and that thing will have a real impact on us especially when it materialises. When mind experts don't know the true state of sanity, they can easily make the situation worse by putting false thought into people's head like what happened in the news I mentioned above. It is extremely dangerous. One of the unique and powerful abilities which makes humans different from animals is that we can transform our thoughts into action. We look at the moon and simply whisper into our minds that it would be nice to go to the moon and then we make it happen. All the objects which are the products of our high technology are simply thoughts which turned into matter. The British can remember the havoc caused by the Poll tax under Mrs. Thatcher's government some years ago. When we look back now, we can see the whole process of how an illusion was formed from nothing, lasted for a period of time which had a real impact on people as well as the staggering amount of money spent on the program and how the whole thing disappeared into shredding machines. Yes, the whole issue of Poll tax seemed to disappear into thin air, just like that, whilst in-between there were people killing themselves because they could not cope with the financial pressure. Now, the Poll tax is merely a bad dream for those who were most affected once. The Poll tax is only one little example. In fact, our whole life is exactly like that. Basically, from nothing, a life is created and everything involved has a real impact on that life. We float along up and down the scale of our emotions, drifting from one problem to another. Everything is so real. And suddenly death emerges from nowhere and this life disappears into thin air. All the sucess, material gains and future plans which meant everything to our lives, are suddenly without an iota of importance when sudden death arrives. Princess Diana's life could clearly represent this view.

When mental holodecks are based on some religious and political issue, people will be affected globally. We have seen enough examples of cult movements which have already claimed the lives of many thousands of people in the past three decades. According to the Sunday Times 22 March 1998, World news, page 25, it said : As we are approaching the millennium, there is an alarming growth on neo-Nazi and radical riligious groups. Many of those groups belong to the Christian identity movement, which believes white people are God's chosen and that Jews and blacks are decended from Satan. Some groups foresee an impending radical Armageddon for which military preparations are essential. Many of the movements's loosely affiliated followers support violent opposition to abortion. According to Mark Potok, he said " These people expect Christ to return after the battle of Armageddon, and they believe they are charged with fighting the battle themselves." These are the most dangerous mental holodecks people can built for themselves.

When those misconceptions have never been put right, they will materialise and turn into action in the end. This is how wars, big ones and little ones came about and affect the peace of humanity. I am sure some people have had the experience of wanting to ask questions like: "What on earth is all this for ?" "What exactly is going on ?" Sometimes, we really cannot understand and don't know what is what anymore. I remember hearing myself screaming in my heart with frustration and agony while I was working in the Cambodian refugee camps from 1979-1980. From witnessing the scale of suffering in those millions of people, I just could not comprehend how one person like Pol Pot could have caused such staggering pain to his fellow people. What was more absurd and most ridiculous was that the political issues involved were also amazingly dirty. To find out that ordinary people are simply pawns on a chess board and are being moved around by a few powerful people was far too much for me to handle at the time. That was the time when I felt so strongly that I must know what is what.

Thanks to the sublime Buddha who gave me the privilege of knowing what is what. This is what Buddhism all about. The whole issue of the world's madness all comes down to not knowing the state of sanity or the host mind and not knowing how to exit our mental holodeck or get rid of our mental visitors. From ignorance, once we let ourselves go into our mental holodeck, it is a very compelling moment. What makes it so compelling and magnetic is either the feeling of greed fulfilment or the satisfaction of ridding ourselves of anger in different ways. If not the greed nor the anger, it is the sheer ingnorance towards the ultimate purpose of life, in not knowing the host mind and its visitors. However when mind-consciousness is fully engaged with thoughts and feelings, we become mentally powerless. We are being dragged along by whatever thoughts and feelings we have. If our mental holodeck is led by greed, we all know how long is a piece of string. If it is led by anger, we know as well how destructive anger can make people. As time moves on and I feel calmer in my inner self, I often feel amazed by how easily people can flare up for some very trivial reason such as being trapped in a traffic jam, stuck in a long queue at the supermarket checkout or simply feeling miserable because of bad weather and so on. City people are so fragile and vulnerable as far as our mental states are concerned. We don't know that we are actually our own enemies. Every time we get annoyed, angry, jealous, greedy, selfish and so on, the first person we hurt is ourselves, not others. Ajarn Khemananda compares this to dust trapped in a wheel of a moving cart which is totally powerless; they are thrown in whatever direction the cart goes. When we begin climbing up and down the scale of our emotions, we have become dust trapped in the wheel of a moving cart. The trouble is that people who have a low level of spiritual ability do not want to admit how useless they can be. Nevertheless, people who have a high level of spiritual ability will find this very frightening and naturally want to know how they can come out of it.

The next step is trying to make the readers see how we can get out from our illusive thoughts and back to the actual reality. The Star Fleet officers can get out of the holodeck by saying: "Computer, exit the program.". Suddenly, whoever was in the holodeck would find himself or herself standing in a square room with a black and white square pattern and he or she could just walk out of that room into the reality. I wish we could do exactly that to our minds.

Mental matters are very complex. The greatest difficulty lies upon their abstraction. The other difficult part is our inability to observe our own thoughts detachedly. Without vipassana-bhavana, one can only manage to use one thought to observe another thought or feeling. In other words, we use our intellect or rational thought to judge another thought. And this is the wrong practice right from the very beginning. The readers who can understand this part of the explanation cannot just be anyone but have to have gone through some level of vipassana-bhavana training or have practised innocent perception which is exactly what I teach in my Tai chi class. In Star Trek term, knowing how to get out of the holodeck is a power of the Star Fleet officers, not the ignorant ones who were picked up during the journey. Trying to understand this through its literal meaning would result in very little benefit or none at all. Instead, doubt and uncertainty might take over and result in more conflict. That's why I always put stress on the students to practise. So, to have a full comprehension about how to exit our mental holodeck is based on the assumption that readers have at least adopted the vipassana-bhavana or innocent perception.

Practising vipassana-bhavana or innocent perception allows us to be detached from all things and understand what it means by exiting our mental holodeck. If I am standing on top of a mountain, I have the privilege of looking at the view below me and I can clearly see the connection of different places. A map-drawer can only draw a map of a town when he is high up in a helicopter. He can look at the view and he is also detached from the view itself. If I am standing in the middle of a town with everything flat and on the same level with me, I cannot see the view detachedly; in fact, I become the view myself. If thoughts and feelings are the view we want to see and observe, we have to stand at least above them, not below them and not even on the same level. This is the meaning of being detached from thoughts. If we don't know how to do it, we usually end up using one thought to look at and observe another thought which is totally wrong. Being able to see thoughts and feelings detachedly as though they are the view in the valley, we have to at least go through some samatha-vipassana bhavana.

May I bring you back to where we were. We were talking about how we could walk out of our illusive thoughts or our mental holodeck and back into reality. While a holodeck on the Star Ship Enterprise is programmed by a computer, our mental holodeck is also programmed by the natural law of impermanence; that is everything except Nirvana or the absolute element in nature is in the process of changing all the time. I will assume that the readers know about the natural law of impermanence just like the Star Fleet officers who were enlightened about the true fact of the holodeck. Simply knowing the facts about the nature of the guests (thoughts and feelings) can help us to get out of our mental holodeck much quicker. Let's say when we are in some level of mental trouble, we are actually in our mental holodeck. The method to get out from that illusion is by knowing the law of impermanence or knowing that the guests will leave the host mind soon. The actual practice sounds very blunt. That is just letting go. By bearing that crucial knowledge in mind and looking directly into the thoughts or feelings, they will soon disappear. This is a matter of knowing how to balance the mind well on the ground of having the right kind of wisdom, not just any kind of mind balancing. People who can understand this part of practice have to have a very high level of self-awareness; alternatively, Tom has been trained to run very fast and can catch up with Jerry every time Jerry is running. Once the troubled thoughts and feelings vanish, that is how we come out from our mental holodeck and back to reality, then we'll be all right.

Only through vipassana-bhavana, can we manage to walk out of the mental holodeck at a much quicker speed than normal. The length of time, while waiting for the mental illusion to disappear, can be reduced drastically from months, to days, to hours, minutes, seconds and even instantaneously depending on how diligently one works. Having a compatible teacher who can guide the students through shortcuts is also an important factor. When the teacher and students are not compatible, it is like dealing with a nut and bolt of different sizes, they can not fit properly and need more time to work. However, through vipassana-bhavana, practitioners can have the power of walking out of any awful mental holodeck instantly. After long practice of just looking and observing into one's own thoughts and feelings, the practitioners can gradually see the arising as well as the departing of each individual thought and feeling vividly. They will find out for themselves that by just looking at those mental objects, they disappear on their own without them having to do anything. At first, they can be quite good at catching up with the feelings and seeing the feeling disappear quicker and quicker as long as their consciousness (Tom) is sharp and acute. While the practice carries on developing, the learner can see more clearly that if the consciousness is quick enough to catch up with the individual thought, the feeling will be aborted before it has the chance to be born. They can even see that sometimes, the mother (thought) is just about to give birth to the baby (feeling), the high level of self-awareness can detect this right in that instant and abort the baby there and then. The thought does not have enough time to turn into a feeling because the awareness is good. Therefore any feeling is aborted before it can be born. A vipassana-bhavana veteran will improve the quality of their self-awareness even more until the mother (thought) does not have much chance to be pregnant. Therefore, diligent practitioners will deal more often with just the mother or the thought itself. Life from then on will become much calmer and more stable as far as our mental state is concerned.

Once we can walk out into reality, all problems are solved. To be more precise, our mental problems are solved but it doesn't necessarily mean the external problems are solved too. Mental imbalance is individual, everyone has their own mental turmoil. vipassana-bhavana delves right into the root of all our human problems. If our mental turmoil is removed, the external world is not a big problem at all. Only a peaceful person can contribute in building a peaceful world.

It is difficult enough to view that diamonds and pebles are essentially have zero value all the same. This cannot be done by way of thinking or using reason. If our mental holodeck tell us that diamond is special and very expensive and pebles are worthless and have no value whatsoever. There is no way we can view diamond and pebles as just hard stone. Through the constant development of science and high technology, we have created for ourselves more complication as far as coming out of our mental holodeck is concerned. Nowadays, we have created something called virtual reality which basically is illusion on top of illusion which is like standing in a room with mirrors all round. We can easily lose tract of knowing which one is the real person. Our fundamental problem is that we do not even know what actual reality is. People who never practise innocent perception and don't have a clue what I mean by this, have no knowledge of what actual reality ( the absolute element in nature) is. To complicate the problem even further, we create more illusions on top of illusions. It has reached the point where now, children are thrilled when they can mess about with their computer games and play with these virtual realities. If this culture is not changed and put right it will plunge humanity deeper into an abyss because these children will run the world one day. The concept of virtual reality is merely trying to cover up the natural track towards the ultimate reality. And it is dangerous to humankind as far as its spiritual journey is concerned.

Before the birth of the Buddha, humankind was living in the darkness of spiritual ignorance. People had to rely on supernatural beings hidden in trees, fire and mountains or rely on different gods and goddesses and so on to give them courage and drive away their fear of the unknown and their suffering. Nowadays, our problems and our fear are nothing like what we had in the past. Science has revealed a number of the unknowns to us and we have no fear anymore. Our fear has turned to a different nature such as being scared of losing our wealth and status. One of the most significant problems people face nowadays is loneliness. It is amazing that we have thousands of millions of people all round the world but a lot of us still feel terribly lonely. Walking along a busy street full of people, we feel that no one can understand us and we cannot understand anyone else either. Parents cannot understand their children and vice versa. Married couples cannot understand each other. Everyone is trapped in their own designed mental holodeck. The higher up our status go, the more we lose touch with others. What a strange paradox ! What exactly is happening to us ?

In the end, what we urgently need most is the true wisdom. The wisdom which gives us the privilege to know what is what. This profound knowledge of the Buddha acts like a torch whose batteries has been fully charged and gives us a powerful light. It doesn't matter how long we have been living in the dark. An eternal darkness can be taken away by just lighting one match. The ultimate enlightenment of the Buddha took away the darkness from mankind just like opening up a box we were trapped in to allow us to see the sunlight. The knowledge of the Buddha allows us to be equipped with a good torch. The Buddha said that humanity would find it very difficult to survive without his profound wisdom. (Quoted from Ajarn Khemananda's tape.) Indeed the survival of humanity is not about how far we can go into space, not about whether we have enough smart cards which allow us to be more stupid and lazy, not about finding out that we can now clone human-beings or know that pigs are actually cleverer than dogs and monkeys, not about how we can salvage our crippled economy, not about whether the US and the allies could get rid of Saddam Hussien or not and so on. The survival of humanity is about how to build quality human-beings who have less greed and less anger. It is about how to create peaceful human-beings. It is about how to take away our spiritual darkness. In the end, our mental holodeck is the only darkness we need to tackle. This is the only domino we need to knock over and everything else will resolve on its own. We should all ask ourselves whether we have a good torch yet. If not, how long should we wait until we have one ? And how can our governments all over the world assist their people to have one ? How can we possibly know or learn anything at all while we are living in the darkness of a box! We mustn't take this too lightly.