This article describes a specific observance made while meditating. I made this observation when studying the Franz Bardon material and addressing it with someone who had more experience.
Not Quantum Mechanics
Let’s be really clear before we get going that there’s been a lot of conflation of quantum mechanics (often by people who do not understand any quantum mechanics) with meditation techniques. This article does not concern the quantum mechanic phenomenon where observing a wave or particle seems to change its behaviour. Instead, we are talking about the very act of trying to meditate, by observing the mind, changes that mind. I am entirely referring to the meditative phenomenon, and there is little to no benefit in conflating it with quantum mechanics phenomenon, which is only similar when the description is reduced to this one line the act of observance changes the observed. This conflation is probably a tool by authors to try and add a level of scientific credence to their work, but if they had confidence in the effectiveness of the meditation that they were teaching, they would probably not need to add credence to it.
What is the Observer Effect like?
I hardly remember when I started working through Franz Bardon, but it was sometime around 2007 or 2008. However, I remember talking to a friend and, at least from my perspective, an accomplished worker of the Franz Bardon system. “It says the thoughts will come less and less, but I don’t experience that. I feel that I just end up replacing the thoughts with thoughts about managing my thoughts.”
I was attempting to maintain a passive observer mentality, where I simply watched my thoughts. I watch them flow in and watch them flow out. This is often a preliminary type of meditation and Franz Bardon offers this as a primary exercise in Stage 1 of his training.
When you first start meditating, some teachers will set an initial preliminary exercise to their students. The students will need to watch their thoughts for an extended period like 10 minutes. They watch the thoughts flow in and watch them flow out. When a thought comes in, they practice not engaging with that thought. Maintaining the passive watcher mentality. Then keep doing this until this becomes more natural and easier.
The hard part is when you try to tell your mind to do that, you begin to spend a lot of time in your head, discussing with yourself how you should maintain the passive state.
“Am I letting the thoughts flow out?… Oh there goes another one… Why am I worrying about dinner for fuck sake… I’m not even hungry… Okay, what would it look like or feel like for the thought to flow out. Right let’s visualise that…”
That’s the active mind. We are trying to let the active mind flow out of the door. When you practice this, you will still have activity in your mind, however the activity you want to achieve is the passive mind. The mind that is waiting patiently and watching thoughts. Through this practice, you will develop your association with this passive mind.
So the important part of this entire article is recognising that you’re not expected to have a completely clear mind at all times, but if you focus on the feeling of the mind having thoughts clear out then you can passively watch them flow out without having an active and engaged mental chatter about it.
Have you ever noticed how you can sweep the floor without thinking about it, but if you actually begin thinking about how the broom moves then you can obsess with the broom and how it moves… well then the floor doesn’t efficiently get clean anymore. This is like our attempts to “clear the mind”. But we are not actively clearing the mind, but instead letting the mind return to its cleared state by allowing the thoughts that come in to it, go back out.
I remember my early years of learning and working through Ordo Templi Orientis stuff, and to keep my mind clear, I would mentally try to jam the brain’s thought process with a spanner, metaphorically… however I supposed if I jammed a literally spanner in my brain I would certainly have achieved a state of no thoughts … but let’s leave my own demise until its proper time.
When I was clearing the mind in this aggressive way I was trying to shortcut the process. I did not have the patience to wait for the brain to adjust to a new way of living, but then I did not achieve the level that was really needed to proceed from.
When you’re doing this sort of meditation, you want the silent-observer-feel to the mind, the watcher of the thoughts. It does take time for the mind to adjust and this separation between the thoughts and thinker to become apparent. But yeah, the main focus of this article is recognising that the aim of this preliminary exercise is not no mind, it’s more a gentle hushing that is maintained for longer and longer periods until the mind is more used to it.
Summary
The feeling of this first meditation exercise is the silent observer of the thoughts. Not “no thoughts at all”, but instead a gentle separation of thoughts and thinker. The thinker does not engage with the thoughts, but instead watches them flow in and watches them flow out. Repeatedly returning to the canvas on which the thoughts are manifest.
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