The quiet secret of life
There comes a time when everything becomes silent, for a brief moment.
You become the witness consciousness.
You are seated at the back of your mind, watching everything -- every single thing, including thoughts But you still notice things happening, without your conscious effort. The events just occur.
What do you feel in this state? You feel at ease, and you notice your breathing deepens. Words and movements happen on their own. There are no gaps between thought and happening. And they become one.
As Alan Watts put it, there is not a single particle in the world that is out of place.
How do I rationalize or understand this special frame of mind?
I think there are basically three states of mind.
The first state is the autopilot NPC state. Think of kids being themselves.
The second state is the aware but questioning mind. In this state, you notice your brain is on autopilot, but you get tricked into thinking you're observing it; the act of observing it raises more questions, and you get sucked in, confusing the questions that arose for awareness. These questions again sprang from the unaware mind.
The third state is called the seat of witness consciousness. You get clarity, no confusion, and you simply observe. From the outside, you seem like you returned to the first state, except that there is a calm that accompanies you. There is no hurry. What is happening tells a story of the presence of free will. The question this raises is: if you're acting like the first state of mind, shouldn't it represent a lack of free will? There are multiple explanations for this, but the short answer I prefer, given my physics background, is that in the seat of witness consciousness, you are collapsing a reality within Schrödinger's world, where all possibilities exist.