Thinking is a process. The emerging of concepts, words, and so forth, is the thinking.

You do not do something and then, some fraction of a second later, a thought arises—such that you have to wonder what you did before you thought. Rather, all evidence of thinking is the thinking. You do not do something before you think.

Thinking is simply another form of functional apparatus and structure and medium (or field)—like other aspects of the body-mind. And thinking very much connects to the core of awareness and complexity and energy.

In some traditions, “speech” (or “speech-mind”) is a word (or term) that also refers to energy-processes, energy-disciplines, and so forth. Therefore, it is another elemental. When it is functioning, you are not different from it, somewhere else operating it. Your awareness of speech-mind and the “objects” of speech-mind are one. They are the same event.

The mind is also like other organs and processes in the body-mind—such as breathing, for instance. You can intentionally breathe—intentionally inhale and exhale—and intentionally participate whole bodily in the process of breathing. In that case, the event is something like thinking. Insofar as you are aware of breathing, your awareness of it and the “object” itself are one with one another. And, yet, if you turn toward some other locus of “experiential” awareness, the breathing does not stop. It also goes on, on its own.

So it is with the mind. You can deliberately think. You can observe thoughts merely arising, or you can become associated with another framework (or locus) of “experiential” awareness, and not even notice the mind. The mind still goes on, on various levels—but you can be completely unaware of it, just as with breathing, the circulation of blood, the heartbeat, and so on. You do not have to be intentionally associated with them—yet, you are not separate from them. They need not be in your field of awareness—but they can be in your field of awareness.

And what if they were all in your field of awareness simultaneously? Total psycho-physical “self”-awareness and function, including the speech-mind—you aware of all of them in every detail, simultaneously. Is this possible?

Is it possible to be totally aware and functioning through every sense and the speech-mind, all simultaneously? Can you be aware of them and functioning as them intentionally and in every detail? You know what it is like to concentrate in thought—and, then, in another moment, to fully breathe every stroke. But can you fully breathe every stroke and fully enter into concentrated thinking? And, then, can you add similarly intentional, completely aware functioning as all the rest of your body-mind, all simultaneously?

I suggest that you cannot do this. And, therefore, you cannot entirely, in the active sense, “be” yourself completely—ever!

There is no “you” about the body-mind, because you cannot be it. You can concentrate on various locations, and with some degree of complexity—but, as soon as you concentrate on one function, you exclude the other functions, and let them go on “automatic pilot” (so to speak). Thus, they are doing the body-mind. You are never doing it. You become associated with one function, or locus, or another, by concentrating all the faculties in it. But, as soon as you do similarly with some other locus, then the one that you were just fully being is doing itself again.

Where is the “you” in all of this? You can tune in to various functions, but you cannot be them, except through that tuning in. And you cannot be very much of them simultaneously. You concentrate. You become what you meditate upon, and you exclude the rest—allowing the rest to take care of itself, and (in the process) to take care of you (whoever “you” are), by continuing breathing and all the rest of it.

Without getting metaphysical about it, just who are “you”? You have to really seriously examine all of this. If you cannot be the totality of the body-mind, with fully concentrated exercise of all the faculties, in every detail and relative to every aspect of the whole, then you are not that. Whenever you are perceiving by virtue of attention, and perceiving some dimension associated with psycho-physical functioning, then you are not different from that event. This is what must be Realized, Ultimately.

You presume to be different from the “object”. That is “Narcissus”.¹ You claim you are the body-mind. Generally speaking, that is the presumption of people. And, yet, you cannot be that which you say you are. You can only tune in to dimensions of it, fields associated with it—but not all of them simultaneously.

The totality of existence (even of your own existence) is not “experienceable” by you. Basically speaking, only dimensions of it, one at a time, are “experienceable” by you. Therefore, you are not the totality, because you cannot be it as a totality. You cannot be it in any active sense. You can only be it in the passive sense. You can tune in on it, but it is not necessary to do so.

The body-mind is not necessary. You are not it. You can only tune in on it. Nonetheless, when it is arising, you presume to be it.

The body-mind does not arise independent of you, but it is not necessary. It need not arise, and may not arise. When it does not arise, there is no separation from it.

If the body-mind arises, it arises only as a modification of That Which Is Always Already The Case.

If the body-mind does not arise, it is simply that That Which Is Always Already The Case is not modified, not apparently broken.