The grosser consciousness depends heavily on particles of matter. The subtler consciousness is more independent -- it does not depend so much on the brain. Luminance, radiance, imminence -- the three states of subtle mind -- all of these disappear in the clear Light, the innermost consciousness.
There is the silence in which everything exists, and then there is the noise in my head that I have come to take as the natural background to my life. It has occurred to me that perhaps the trick is to begin to see the silence as the background and the noise as moving across it. The silence, the plain existence of things, is what is real; the thoughts are clouds.
~ from THE EARTH HOUSE by Jeanne DuPrau with thanks to Mary Hazlett