Outer Mind and Inner Mind

There is an outer and inner sense to things, which are quite different. This may seem extraordinary, but it is true. The same thing seen outwardly is quite different when seen inwardly. Yet it is the same thing. Owing to this being the case, a great deal of confusion and argument arises. For the sake of simplicity let us divide the mind into an outer mind and an inner mind. The same thing viewed by the outer mind becomes quite different when viewed with the inner mind.

If there are two people, one of whom is viewing a thing with their outer mind, and the other viewing it with their inner mind, they will get totally different impressions of it. It will seem that they are viewing two quite different and unrelated things. Yet they are viewing the same thing, but with two different minds. One is viewing it with the outer mind, and the other is viewing it with the inner mind. When anyone having only an outer mind reads some phrase in Scripture to the effect that God in his anger casts a man down into hell, it appears to mean literally what it says. To the inner mind the meaning is inverted, since God cannot be angry and the apparent meaning is transformed into its inner sense, which is that a person by anger casts themselves down to a lower level of being. Again, all parables have an outer and inner meaning. Now it will be evident that since the two minds, outer and inner, view the same thing in such completely different ways, they cannot be continuous, but must be discontinuous. By this is meant that one cannot merge gradually into the other. They must be as distinct and separate from one another as are the two rooms in a house, one of which is on the ground floor and the other on the floor above. This discontinuity of the two minds shows that their functions are different. That is, they have uses that are different. The outer mind is used for the world without.

It is turned towards life and its affairs through the senses. It can be clever or stupid, or well or poorly developed. It should be developed as widely as possible. Its knowledge is of the kind you can buy anywhere and at any time. The use of the inner mind is more difficult to define. In the majority of people it is not used at all. It is not opened up, like an unoccupied room, whose door has never been opened. You cannot pass freely from the outer mind into the inner mind, for they are not on the same floor. Some people assume they can. When they meet the Work and are told that a change of mind is first needed (metanoia), they use the same mind as before, year after year, and so get stuck or sticky.

As I indicated, the inner mind is comparable to a room upstairs on the first floor, while the outer mind is on the ground floor. Without possessing any sense of scale, such people do not comprehend this “higher” and “lower” in them. I will remind you that scale signifies ladder (scala) and a ladder is for going up or down and its rungs are discontinuous. If they were not, it would not be a ladder, but a plank. To go up one rung, one must leave the ground floor. You must leave your ordinary outer sensual mind, with its ways of thinking and of viewing things. This some find impossible. Yet it is possible, if you let go. What? I have no idea what it is in your case. You must discover it for yourself. You should look in the direction of what seems incredible to you—I mean, about yourself.

Now the inner mind when opened up and dusted and aired can receive and entertain guests—or let in, say, thoughts and insights—that affect the outer mind and eventually control it. This is how things should be. This is right order. When the outer mind rules us, it is wrong order. Wrong order makes us unhappy. The inner, being much higher in dignity and excellence—-that is, in scale of being—should control the lower. When, however, we exalt the lower and endow it with false dignity and excellence, that certainly is something ridiculous and painful.

Yet people do; and fail to get upstairs. Something, therefore, must happen first—to get upstairs. Now the lower or outer mind cannot open the higher or inner mind. Please understand and register here that outer is lower, and inner is higher. Outer divisions of centres are lower and inner divisions are higher in scale. Also what is higher is “cleverer” than what is lower; the higher can see and comprehend the lower, but the lower cannot comprehend the higher. This is the same as saying that what is inner can observe and comprehend what is outer: but what is outer cannot observe or comprehend what is inner. It follows that the outer or lower mind cannot open the inner or higher mind.

That is, sensual thinking cannot open the inner mind. As long as you are thinking sensually, you are on the ground floor of your own being. You have to start thinking in a new way to get upstairs. The first object of the Work is to make you think in a new way—to change your mind. As I said recently, you cannot do this if you persist in thinking about the Work from life—that is, with your outer mind. You must begin by thinking about life from the Work. When you receive the Work inwardly, it begins to open the inner mind, for it is designed to do so. You then begin to see life from what the Work says about it. You see it quite differently from the way you did when you viewed it from your outer mind. This is because you are beginning to view it from your inner mind, which the Work is opening. This illustrates how the same thing, viewed from the outer mind, becomes quite different when viewed from the inner mind. It is the same thing but viewed by two quite different and discontinuous minds, placed on different levels—in yourself.

 Do not think that you can casually get hold of this Work by adding some knowledge of it to your outer mind. It will never take root there. You cannot sow wheat in Piccadilly. Only the right quality of valuation of it will make it fall in the right soil in you where it can grow—and that is, the inner mind. And by valuation I do not mean valuing it in terms of life-values, such as eminence or ruling or power or distinction or fame or position or opulence or luxury or possession. These are the driving forces of life. They belong to the outer mind.

Adapted from: Psychological Commentaries, Vol. 5, by Dr. Maurice Nicoll

Dr. Maurice Nicoll