By George A. Boyd © 2015
The mental faculties engage progressively as the Kundalini Shakti begins to awaken higher and higher vehicles of the mind. These layers of mental functioning, from the outside in are:
- Sensory engagement – used in tracking and hunting, this seeks specific objects in the environment; this faculty also expresses in product inspection and food tasting.
- Analytical reasoning – this faculty uses reason, testing, and verification to assess the truth of an assumption or hypothesis. It uses mathematics and deductive reasoning to arrive at a proof.
- Narrative and myth – this faculty of the mind tells stories and relates personal lived experience; it creates meaning from experience.
- Imagination – this faculty of the mind is able to creatively modify visualized objects to come up with new inventions, to personify others, and to generate humorous ideas.
- Planning and goal setting – this faculty of the mind itemizes points for a presentation, schedules, plans, and sets goals for the future.
- Reflection and problem solving – this faculty engages inductive reasoning and the problem-solving strategies of the intellect; it organizes information and presents this information to others in a variety of ways.
- Personal encounter – this faculty allows a person to intuitively know themselves and others; it enables empathy and understanding of others.
- Dialectic reasoning – this is able to look at two opposing ideas and find a synthesis between them.
- Multi-factorial, simultaneous comparison – this faculty is able to look at several viewpoints at once; this type of mental processing, for example, is able to examine the viewpoints of the Seven Rays side-by-side.
- Conscience searching and introspection – this faculty permits the examination of behavior and performance against a standard; it is able to compare behavior with a moral rule or commandment, to see if one has lived up to it.
- Intuitive discernment – this faculty brings awareness of the content of each vehicle of consciousness up to the level of the Soul. It is called spiritual discrimination, or viveka.
- Mandalic reasoning – this is the ability to detect the stages of unfolding of the Soul’s consciousness, up to its current level of spiritual evolution. This form of knowing brings exact knowledge of the Soul, and confers Gnosis.
Aspirants should ascertain whether each of these faculties is active in them, and they should learn practices to engage each of these 12 modes of mental functioning.
Meditation is key to activating these mental faculties. We teach methods to access these bands of the mind in our meditation courses.
In the Introduction to Meditation Program, you learn techniques to contact levels 1, 2, 4, 5, and 10.
In our intermediate courses, the on-line and by-mail Accelerated Meditation Program and the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation, you additionally learn tools to engage levels 6 and 7.
In our advanced course, the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation, you learn how to activate levels 9, 11, and 12.
We encourage you to utilize the full capacity of your mind so you may connect with your Soul and express its innate inspiration and genius.
