Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I'm out on an evening stroll in Exeter.
I'm helping look after my elderly mum and you might hear the occasional car go by.
I'm in some of the quieter streets around her home and it's a lovely cool evening.
We've had a few days that have been very very hot but today is lovely and cool and over the past few days I've been in a conversation with you about the three principles.
Do you remember we've been exploring how the three principles are not at all a technique.
The three principles give you an understanding of what it is to be human and I haven't yet explained what those three principles are so over the next three days I'm going to take a bit more time to talk about what those three principles actually are and the three principles are the principle of mind,
The principle of thought and the principle of consciousness.
Today I'm going to talk a bit about the principle of mind but first let me give you a flavour of where these three principles came from.
They were first articulated by a man called Sidney Banks.
He was a very humble man,
A Scottish welder that lived in Canada and in the 1980s he had an enlightenment experience.
It was a two-step experience.
Firstly he saw through the nature of thought and then the next day or in the next couple of days he had another follow-on experience where he saw the oneness of everything and from that point his life actually changed completely and he went on to solely share what he had seen or try and find words for what he had seen to share it with the world.
What was a bit different about Sidney Banks is that he wanted to illustrate that there were three elements that were shared by all human beings.
He wanted to give the study of psychology some principles.
It was like saying what is the starting point for all human beings irrespective of their differences and the three elements and the three areas he articulated were these principles.
The principle of mind,
The principle of thought and the principle of consciousness.
And today we'll talk a bit more about the principle of mind.
Just before I talk about the principle of mind I do want to share though that he was absolutely clear that ultimately there is a unifying energy,
A oneness,
A consciousness that we all are part of.
So although he talks about the principle of mind,
The principle of thought and the principle of consciousness he is actually pointing to something that is the same and the best way I can describe this I think as a metaphor is to say if you imagine water in its different states,
Water can take the state of liquid,
It can take the state,
It can be in the state of a gas like steam and it can be in the state of a solid like ice.
It's all made of the same stuff but it has different states and it appears in the world in different states.
And that's what Sidney Banks was talking about when he talked about the three principles.
He was kind of saying they're the same but they show up differently.
So the principle of mind is where we'll start and the principle of mind is looking at the natural intelligence of life.
The natural intelligence,
The wisdom that seems to be inherent in all of us.
I'm not talking about cleverness or being smart or academically smart.
I'm talking about that intuitive intelligence.
Our bodies are intelligent.
If we cut ourselves they naturally heal.
If we're ill the body naturally wants to get better.
My heart,
Your heart,
It beats.
We don't breathe,
We don't have to remember to breathe.
Our body breathes itself.
There is a natural intelligence to all of us.
That you listen to this and understand this is a natural intelligence that is interpreting my words that means you can understand.
This is a fundamental,
This is a fundamental characteristic that is shared by all of us.
The fundamental characteristic of mind is of wisdom and an innate intelligence.
So that's where we started today.
We're looking at the principle of mind and tomorrow we'll move on and I want to share a little bit more about the principle of thought.
