The Mind That Runs Us, and the Rare Freedom of Seeing It.
Sunday Musings.
The mind is a brilliant but compulsive projector and storyteller. It creates the illusion of “me”.
True freedom is not a change in your external circumstances, but a shift in internal awareness. The freedom lies in direct seeing. In observing the mind’s loops without participating in them, staying grounded in the physical body, and resting in the quiet reality of the present moment.
Mind builds endless future loops, chases temporary blips, and keeps most people imprisoned in their own simulations. Result is that they are talking, planning, achieving, and performing without ever truly seeing.
How it happens?
Human Mind Does Not Record Reality. It Invents It
The brain doesn’t passively record the world. It actively constructs a simulation of reality.
What we call “reality” is not something we passively receive. It is something the brain actively constructs. This is a sophisticated simulation built from incomplete sensory data, expectation, and continuous error-correction.
Neuroscientists like Anil Seth12 and Karl Friston34 describe this through predictive processing. The brain issues top-down predictions about what the world should look like. It adjusts its model only when incoming sensory signals fail to match those predictions.
Everything you see, hear, smell, and feel is a mental creation. The brain invents the experience of color from raw light wavelengths. It fills in your blind spots with fabricated details. It presents you with a version of the present delayed by roughly 100 milliseconds. In a very real sense, we are always living slightly in the past.
This internal storytelling goes even deeper. Memories are not faithful recordings. They are actively reconstructed each time they are recalled. This reconstruction often incorporates inaccuracies, as shown in the work of Elizabeth Loftus.
Even pain is not a direct signal from the body. It is a protective output generated by the brain itself, according to researchers like Lorimer Moseley.
In the end, our everyday experience of life is a highly evolved, shared hallucination. It is a brilliant biological illusion that lets us navigate and survive in our world. We can never directly perceive this world in its raw form.
This is where science ends. Let me now share from the lived experience of navigating a world of minds.
Slow Absorbers and Fast Reactors
Different people operate at different levels of perception and reaction. Most do not notice. But there are some who have deliberately chosen to be slow reactors. They wait before reacting. This is not out of indecision. It is a conscious instinct to let the mind data update before committing to a response.
Their brains accumulate more sensory evidence before crossing the decision threshold. The result is a slower reaction but a richer, more accurate experience.
Others react before the update arrives. They respond not to what was actually said or done. Instead, they react to what their brain predicted was being said or done. They run heavily on top-down processing. Their pre-existing internal models override the live input.
Ask them something and they reply to the question their simulation generated. They do not respond to the question you actually asked. They pull in unrelated events from the past. They invoke irrelevant comparisons. They justify positions they formed before the conversation even began. Arguments ensue and sociologists write papers on why this happens.
“Sorry, what did you say?” is actually the other variant. Asking seeks to fill the brief awareness of the mismatch. The worse version is when someone confidently defends a response built on a hallucinated version. They never realize the gap. As stated, arguments are the result.
A practical wisdom emerges from recognizing this. When dealing with a fast reactor, ask twice. The first question is absorbed into their autopilot. The second question actually reaches the person.
Face is The Human Tell Tale
Phones strip away most of what human communication is actually made of. People are sleep talking or from some ecstasy or some pain or just in some lost place. They speak like a subroutine. Like a bot taking care of the task without any interest in the actual transaction.
Face to face, however, the whole picture is available. We see micro-expressions, eye focus, and breathing rhythm. We can read the quality of attention or its absence.
Once you learn to look, it is hard to miss. Their eyes do not quite settle. Their reactions are delayed or mismatched. They execute a technically correct social script while being clearly somewhere else.
Many people run in a subroutine mode. Their body is physically present, but their mind is elsewhere. They may carry an unresolved burden or daydream. They might chase the next thing. Often they simply go through rehearsed motions with no conscious participation.
This is not malice or stupidity. It is the brain doing what it evolved to do. The brain predicts, automates, and conserves energy.
Most conversation is two people responding to their own simulations of each other. It is a form of shadow-boxing.
Rarely, two people are actually present to each other. When they genuinely listen and update their models, these exchanges stand out sharply against the rest.
The Crowd of Thought Riders
Most people are tethered. They carry the weight of their own narrative. They constantly carry plans, comparisons, pending achievements, and slights. They worry about maintaining status.
Because of this, genuine presence becomes the exception rather than the rule. They are available for real conversation only when it touches their personal story. The rest of the time, they are just riding on their thoughts. They are the thought-riders.
The immediate result is that one person looks like a bundle of persons. One day s/he is very nice and well-behaved. On another day, arrogant, and charming on yet another. The person changes with the underlying thoughts.
Those who live less cerebrally often slip into presence more easily. They are not preoccupied with perpetual intellectual striving or achievement. The mind that is not always calculating has spontaneous gaps. In these gaps, something real can occur.
The others are dream-walking toward their goals. There is little point in disturbing them. Speaking of these insights to them would register as a provocation. It would not be received as help.
So one moves among them carefully. This is like a tongue navigating thirty-two teeth. One chooses when to speak and when to stay silent. One tells a joke only when someone cares to listen.
The Keyboard Feeling
When someone reaches out only for a need, a specific quality enters the exchange. They pour full attention into you while composing their request. They will charm you with affection or adoration. Once the need is met, they disengage completely. They return to their own tethered journey.
For the duration of their need, you are a keyboard. They type with full focus and then they are gone. This is not always conscious. It is simply the mind using whatever is available to serve its current goal.
There is nothing emotional about it. That is optional like alcohol. It is a moment of truth if we survive the emotions.
Emotion and Intoxication
Intoxication is a great escape. The need for a high is escalating forever. As per some estimates, the business of all types of intoxicants would surpass the business of food by many times over. There is a built in capacity within humans too. It is called emotions or feeling.
Emotion as an intoxicating internal state. It is a manufactured high. The mind generates it through prediction, simulation, and self-reinforcement. We often mistake this ‘high’ for information or meaning. We believe it is the truth of the situation.
People chase emotional drama the way others chase substances. It produces a powerful sense of being alive and real. It makes the sense of self feel confirmed and vivid. But like all highs, it fades. The mechanism immediately begins manufacturing conditions for the next hit.
But the fact remains. It exists as a product of the simulator, not a verdict on the world. Realization means arrival. This arrival has been given different names in different philosophies.
The Zen Farmer: Before and After
There is a Zen story told in two pictures. In the first picture, before enlightenment, a farmer tends his farm. He drinks beer, eats food, and goes to sleep at night.
In the second picture, after enlightenment, we see the same scene. It is the same farmer, same farm, and same beer. He eats the same food and sleeps the same way. He even wears the same wax on his moustache.
Nothing external has changed. The actions are identical. The difference is invisible to anyone looking from the outside. It is only in the quality of the farmer’s seeing that anything has shifted. He is no longer a prisoner of his own mind.
He does the same things, but from a different place. He lives without the extra weight of the constructed self. He drops the continuous striving for a transformed picture.
‘Success’ is like a blip on screen. It arrives and then vanishes as the event becomes the new normal. Most people spend their lives chasing the next blip. They chase achievement, recognition, acquisition, and new experiences. Each blip arrives and fades. The mind goes right back to hunting for the next hit.
The belief that things will finally look different is the trap. The farm remains the farm. The beer remains the beer.
Only one thing changes if anything shifts at all. One stops searching for a different picture. One realizes that the picture was never the point.
Mahabharata Precedent
The epic story of Mahabharata is an eye-opener. The Pandavas built the magnificent city. They invited their enemies (the cousins who already hated them) into their own home. Then, in a moment of carelessness and fast reaction:
- Duryodhana fell into the deceptive water (due to the illusory architecture).
- Draupadi, in that sharp, fast-reactor style, mocked him: “The son of the blind man is also blind.”
That single mocking comment, born in a moment of ego and lack of awareness, poured fuel on the fire of existing hatred. It was not the main cause of the war, but it became a deep, personal humiliation that Duryodhana never forgot.
Both sides were completely blind to the bigger picture. The Pandavas did not see how displaying their success and inviting envy would play out. Duryodhana could not see beyond his humiliation. And one fast, unexamined reaction from Draupadi helped set the entire Mahabharata tragedy in motion.
Sri Krishna’s observation that war is certain and he has full confidence in Duryodhana is devastatingly insightful. Duryodhana embodied the unwavering, rigid mind:
- Completely enamored by his own thoughts and narrative.
- No space for review, correction, or second opinion.
- Once an idea (envy, humiliation, entitlement) took root, it became fixed. No amount of advice, diplomacy, or reality could update it.
- He was the ultimate fast reactor who never slowed down to truly see.
The Pandavas (especially through Yudhishthira and Arjuna’s struggles) were more open to counsel, doubt, and correction. They could still be influenced by Krishna, by elders, by their own conscience, even if imperfectly.
Indraprastha Repeats
The rigid, non-updating mind (like many of the “fast reactors” and prisoners we discussed) creates their own Mahabharata.
Whatever is built (success, house, status), inviting people, especially those with existing envy or enmity, is dangerous. And any moment of fast, ego-driven reaction inside that space can plant seeds that later grow into full-scale destruction.
The mind creates the conditions for its own Mahabharata through display, invitation. Uncontrolled sharp reactions happen, all while believing it is just living normally.
We repeat our own Indraprastha every day.
The Loops of Mind
The realisation that the mind is the creator of all the chaos brings the challenge back to the mind. The mind is clever at building loops to escape them.
Suppose you decide to keep things simple. You choose not to build a grand house. If you must build, you will not invite guests. If you invite them, you will keep conversation minimal. If you must speak, you will never insult another.
This planning is already a loop. It is a defensive simulation built to prevent another simulation.
The mind has projected the problem and generated future scenarios. It begins strategizing while claiming to step back.
Indraprastha is built. The guests are already arriving in your thoughts. The battle is already underway in the planning stage.
The mind does this at every scale.
The Ctrl+C of Direct Seeing
The remedy is disarmingly simple. It is not planning. Do not strategize against the strategy. Do not build better defenses. Just look directly at what the mind is doing.
Seeing a projection as it arises collapses it. It is like pressing Ctrl+C. The loop simply terminates. No further intervention is required. Pure seeing interrupts the mechanism automatically.
Alongside this, keep the mind busy in doing what you do best. Use your hands. Use your body. Read. Write. Paint. Tend to garden.
These sustained practices channel its energy. They prevent the mind from running wild into projection. Over decades, this weakens the mind’s grip. More precisely, it weakens the force of the self.
The mind is the self. The separate self exists only during the simulation. When observed, that self becomes thin and transparent.
This is a discovered fact, not an intellectual position.
Paradox of Talk and Silence
Talking is a low-effort way to keep the mind running. It helps people avoid facing the mind.
Every time someone speaks, they discharge mental pressure. They reinforce their own narrative by externalizing it. They receive energy from the listener to run the simulation.
Talking also avoids the one thing the mind fears. That thing is silence.
Reading and writing demand sustained presence. They require organization of thought and facing confusion. Talking allows endless movement without depth. The mind can wander and still feel productive.
In silence, the external audience disappears. The discharge valve closes. The mental chatter becomes uncomfortably obvious. The mind fears silence because it threatens the game.
The constructed self depends on talking to feel solid. In silence, it begins to thin.
The opposite of talking is not listening. It is not thinking quietly either. The real opposite is pure seeing. We rest in direct awareness without feeding the simulation.
There are no words and no stories, which reinforce the self. Just see what is actually here. This includes the mind’s attempts to escape.
Silence is where the projection loses power.
Be Silent and Know
Analysis carries us only so far. At a certain point, the map is not the territory. Continuing to name things becomes another layer of simulation.
Be silent and know. This is not a poetic instruction. It is a direct description of what remains when noise subsides.
It is already here. It has always been here. We have simply been too loud to notice. Anil Seth will notice it too. Some day.
Be silent and prevent one Mahabharata everyday
References: