The mind is movement. Since this is so, there are thus two basic approaches to “seeing beyond” the mind.

The first can be found, for instance, in Zen and Advaita Vedanta. Practice, in the language of Zen, aims at bringing all conceptual activity to a halt. What remains once mental activity has ceased? What, indeed, is your Original Face? This, indeed, is the path of renunciation: one turns away from sense pleasure, away from the gross and energy sheaths, and ultimately goes beyond the mental sheath to Pure Consciousness.

The second is Tantric. It accepts that the mind is movement and so it seeks to “work with” that movement until rest or relaxation–the shining of own’s True Nature–can be felt. Accepting the fact that one-pointed concentration is, in the initial stages of one’s sadhana, nearly impossible, Tantra invites the mind to visualize certain “alluring forms”–a yantra, a mantra, the movement of subtle energy, and so on. Slowly, purification enables one to “go higher.”

The question, then, becomes: “Which approach is most suitable for Westerners living in the kali yuga period, a period in which life is chaotic, materialism abounds, and the mind is deeply unsettled”? If one is, by temperament, very ascetic, then the first is the right one. If, however, one cannot renounce, then it would be best to find “alluring forms” that draw one slowly and by turns to the very nature of Being-Consciousness. The key, here, is to really want to know the Formless Reality that’s being expressed in this particular form.