Dear Burt,

It is interesting that you mentioned yesterday about “wholeness”. Some time ago I titled my poetry book(let) “A touch of wholeness”.

Is it the vividness of seeing mental pictures that might cause a person to become a mentally ill person and people who “don’t see mental pictures” get physically ill?

I did look deeper this morning into the questions you asked me. There is no pay off in holding on to anything, except one might feel justified to remain “sick” by not looking and by holding on to what one thinks is real. It does indeed revolve around the capacity of seeing mental pictures clearly as just mental pictures. Also the story of Nisagardatta comes up — it takes that enigma to remember who I am.

Much love, L.

Dear L.,

You asked: “Is it the vividness of seeing mental pictures that might cause a person to become a mentally ill person and people who “don’t see mental pictures” get physically ill?”

To answer your question from a more direct approach it would be to see it this way — There is only consciousness but ordinarily human beings are NOT aware they are consciousness. So, the whole journey on earth is to make the ‘unconscious’ part more conscious (more aware). The more aware we become, the more loving and fulfilled we get. Now, on that basis, becaomes the answer to your question...

Mental pictures is daily mind, but how many people know fully that there mind is a mental picture. They believe that what they ‘feel’ is real. We know now that any emotional feeling is a mental picture, an impression, a thought. Therefore it is the unconscious mental pictures that cause illness. Once we start seeing that all that we suffer is coming from mental pictures then we have taken a giant step to awareness. However, the greatest step is taken when we see clearly that everything that happens in our mind is a fictitious imagination.

There are three steps:

1. First the average person is unconscious of his mental pictures and therefore suffers blame, complaining, things wong with people and the world and so on.

2. Secondly, one becomes aware that all their emotional pain emerged from mental pictures and already they start feeling clearer but emotional pain still continues somewhat because the mental pictures are still believed to be real.

3. Thirdly, here is peace when we see clearly that all mental pictures are JUST mental pictures like a movie or a TV show... it is fiction appearing real in the moment. However it is a lie, a deception, an untruth. When we are convinced that whatever the mind is telling us is a concept then we are free and at peace.

It doesn’t matter whether you see the mental pictures vividly or not, it matters whether you know they are fictitious mental pictures or not. But please remember that the average person has no idea that these mental pictures exist except their emotional feelings of pain, suffering and ego defence.

With love,

Burt