Mind

Most of our thoughts & beliefs are attempts of Mind to realize itself and bring about religions, philosophies, sciences, cosmologies, collective- ego- and innumerable other constructs, as well as plenty of problems & confusions.

“Our essence of mind is intrinsically pure. If we knew our mind perfectly and realized what our Self-nature truly is, all of us would be enlightened.” (liberated)
Hui Neng

"Know thy Self" is the first maxim inscribed on the temple wall of Apollo at Delphi (ca.450 BC) and made famous by Socrates who said “Knowledge is inherent in man, not outside. Wisdom is to recollect.”
That it made it barely beyond philosophical exercises, is probably because in the Occident developed around the same time the ratio of Dualism which confines Knowledge to operations of the intellect and Self to the Ego-complex.

Being more openminded Oriental, foremost Daoist, Hindu & Buddhist thinkers researched this omnipresent, yet evasive, organism called Mind for more than 2000 years and came – despite their widely varying ways of investigation– to the conclusion that Mind is responsible for All.

The phenomena of existence are in perpetual motion - they manifest instantaneous and contact the senses as flashes of energy - Mind interprets the reactions of the senses.
“What we have called matter is energy whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses” (Albert Einstein)

“It has been stated that during these contacts, both the sense-organ and the object with which it is in contact undergo changes because both are aggregates of particles in movement.
The intensity of the different contacts varies. Only some among them awake an echo in the mind.”
(“Secret oral teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects” by Alexandra David-Neel)

As the energy flashes that contact the senses reach mind at random, its self- and reality constructs are incoherent.
And as the reactions of the mind turn into actions that effect reactions, action/reaction-chains come about, whose endings are unforeseeable and beginnings hard to recall.

All is energy.
Some patterned some random.
The body is a dynamic unity of a multiplicity of patterns in conjunction.
Mind is this conjunction interacting with what is other than, interpreted and reacted to.

Know Thyself refers to these dynamic patterns in conjunction connected over time by memory - DNA is memory.
Self  refers to this continuum connected via memories. Changing, yet remaining true to the memories informing it on how to react and internet.
Consciousness evolved to deal with what is not patterned, otherwise it would be unnecessary and too costly too persist over time.
Consciousness is mostly subconscious, therefore know thyself is the process of making the unconscious conscious, as well as to recollect what lies in memory.

Using the old fashioned projector as a metaphor:
Organism - organs including the brain - is the machinery and the film.
Memory - DNA - is the blueprint on how to work and repair the entire mechanism, and how to process and project the data.
Each part of the projector corresponding to a part of the entire allegorical mechanism.
Film, for example, would represent experiential memories, abstracted to a form that can be processed. Experiences are interactions reduced to neural energies transported to the processing hub - brain - if one exists. This reduction is the interpretation of patterns participating in the organism with patterns not participating in the organism.
Mind would be the projected movie, when light is projected - interacts - with the image on the film.
The movie is internal as the entire process is encased within the skull.
The organisms reaction to the movie can be converted back towards the outside via the same process.

So, organism, i.e., body/mind, is a manifestation of past - past made present, and interpreted by other conscious organisms as appearance.
The apparent is how a mind interprets what is present - viz., what it is interacting with - both consciously and subconsciously.

Interaction can either occur directly or through an intervening medium, such as light, atmosphere.

An organism is part of what is present.
It is not only becoming aware of other - as a primary step - but is also participating - gradually becoming aware of its awareness, so that it can perceive self as another.
Now, at first, this is confusing, just as an eye that cannot see itself other than via another - reflection.
The part of the self that perceives itself cannot perceive all of itself - there is always a mystery left to know thyself.
For the reason stated above and because all is dynamic, and so constantly changing, interacting, dynamic - by the time you manage to know yourself you are no longer that self which is known.

This means that the only thing you can know of yourself are the patterns that determine your probabilities, as a range of probabilities in an expanding field of possibilities. Chaos is also a factor, as random energies confront the conscious mind with novelty it must adjust to on the fly, and with each encounter it learns what is beneficial - if it survives - and what is detrimental, adding to its memories.
Memories are the core of individualism and of life.
From DNA to experiential.
DNA = inherited memories informing the organism how to grow, how to react etc.
Experiential = accumulated over a lifetime, sometimes overriding, usurping inherited memories and at other times accentuating improving them.

Mind does not create the cosmos, it interprets it and then lives within these interpretations - its reality.
The degree to which these interpretations are accurate - precise - determines an organism's potential success.
Objective world/cosmos - interpreting subjective mind.
Brain is an organ dedicated to pattern processing, and recognition.
An organism can affect the cosmos by successfully interpreting it and then successfully converting these interpretation into actions.
An organism is part of the cosmos it is interpreting, therefore its judgments - based on these interpretations - and subsequent actions - choices - also affect the cosmos to a degree equal to its power and free-will.

Modern man is the final man to worship his own mind.
A method he learned over 2000 years, from Afro-Asiatic peoples.
A solipsism concealing itself as spirituality.

"Logos" is its pinnacle - worship of the "word" as divine - word representing a creator mind - mind creator - which is itself; admiring itself and seemingly omnipotent ability to overcome what limits the body.
Mind fabricating nonsensical art of novel beauty and complexity, that pretends to be revealing what it is concealing; that pretends to be saying something when it is saying nothing....suddenly awakening to its own duplicity it mischievously blames the world for what it has done to itself.
Mesmerizing words of magic, promising potency to the impotent, and delivering exactly what is their secret motive.