If there is One Infinite Consciousness why can't we know other people's thoughts? Some people may find it difficult to accept that there is One Consciousness. We perceive a world of differences. There are many people with different beliefs, languages, cultures, ethnicities, fashions and interests. We all seem to have our own mind, think our own thoughts and make our own choices. How can I be the same consciousness as all those other people? I don't know their thoughts. Surely I would know all thoughts if I was the same consciousness.
Let's understand this better. I could say that in my mind I experience my thoughts, images and dreams. However, I'm already limiting my mind there. It would be more accurate to say that in my mind I experience thoughts, images, dreams, feelings, perceptions, the body and the world. It would be fair to say that all my experience is in my mind. I don't experience anything of the world outside my mind. Even my sense of inside my mind and outside my mind is actually all in my mind. The mind only seems to be inside the denser human form. So where does my mind end?
Truly we cannot find a limit to the mind. I can close my eyes and reach out indefinitely in the mind without finding a limit. Even the perception of the universe I experience in my mind when I look up at the sky on a clear night has no end. We will search forever trying to find true limits.
Is this mind then the same as Infinite Consciousness? Yes, but we call it the mind when it has a sense and belief of being limited and separate. It's not really 'my' mind, and really there is no mind. There is only Infinite Consciousness. But Infinite Consciousness cannot know a multitude. It cannot know many. The human experience allows Infinite Consciousness to seemingly focus and limit itself to perceive itself as a being in a world of many. Our dream experience is a smaller representation of this, where we experience our mind through the activities of a being in a dream world. The sense of limits in the dream world are weaker but it's not unusual to meet a character in the dream world and not know what they are thinking. Yet the dream is wholly the mind. In a dream my character, the other characters and the places I go to are all the mind.
This world that we experience then is wholly Infinite Consciousness appearing to be limited and separate. The apparently limited mind is like a mini Consciousness, with similar qualities. What happens in the mind is that thought forms develop a sense and belief of separation, limitation and identity. If we truly let go or dispel these false senses and beliefs of limitation, the mind sinks back into its true nature of Infinite Consciousness. This is what we call Nirvana, Moksha, Self Realisation, or Enlightenment.
This doesn't mean then that an Enlightened One can hear all thoughts or indeed know all things. The thoughts, the being and the world only appear by Consciousness focusing and condensing. When Self Realisation occurs it is a withdrawing of focus and a letting go of limits. As mentioned earlier, Infinite Consciousness cannot know the many. Although Infinite Consciousness is at the heart of all experiences, the experiences of the many beings belong in the apparently separate world, not in the Awareness of Pure Being. As far as Infinite Consciousness is concerned, there is not a world, there are not many people, nothing happens, and there is no space or time.
So it is not that Infinite Consciousness knows all things. Infinite Consciousness knows only itself. Although it is the essence of intelligence it does not know many things, because 'many things' is not the reality. Infinite Consciousness is the reality and the peak of knowing. It is the Pure Clarity of Being. It is our core nature, self knowing and knowing no other.