“The purpose of the mind is to create separation in order to navigate the dream world”
Someone said this recently; I didn’t understand it at first, but I puzzled it out. I think this is true. The moment that consciousness arrives in the womb, there is nothing to perception but raw sense data–a chaotic jumble of color, sound, taste, touch, smell, and thought. This is insufficient to act on, because there is nothing solid to do anything with. The mind gives us solidity by bundling combinations of perceptions into separate concepts (e.g. a particular bundle of shape, color, sound, and smell becomes “mother”). This conceptual map of the world is a set of hooks into the otherwise chaotic jumble of sense data; hooks onto which we can hang action and thought (i.e. navigate the dream world). Separation provides this map.
So this is true, but incomplete. The conceptual map is just that–a map. In this analogy, concepts are only locations on the map, and do not tell us where to go. There is no navigation without a destination. That is the mind’s second purpose–to provide a desire to go somewhere. It does this by linking concepts (bundles of particular sense perceptions) to our built in desires for food warmth, comfort, etc. For example, the concept of mother becomes linked to satisfying desires for food and comfort, which creates an attractive force towards that concept on our conceptual map. Likewise, fire becomes linked to pain, creating a repulsive force away from the concept of fire.
So, combining the conceptual map and the desire to move towards or away from particular concepts on that map is how we navigate the dream world. I feel like there is a good analogy here that would compare the conceptual trajectory of our lives to the physical world, but it is escaping me.
