Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.

As you grow in spiritual seeking and your pursuit, what should and will take place is your understanding about the subject will become simple, briefer, more compact but wholesome. There is a lot of elaboration, elaborateness in the world, in the creation that you have, in our life also. All this can be identified to some basic factors. These factors will further be sorted out as lesser in number, lesser in number, ultimately one number and no number. This is how everything progresses. This is something that I would like you to keep in mind. It is in this context that you have to look at the discussion we had last night. ‘S’ asked me about the waking state, sleep etc. Then I gave you in a manner the philosophy of avasthātrayam.

This is a philosophy that stands separately and distinctly. When I read about this philosophy and started thinking about it, I developed a name for it –“The philosophy of experientialism”. Sometimes people speak about existentialism. This is a philosophy of experientialism. We generally say the world exists. Does the world exist or is the existence of the world experienced by oneself? “Does the existence come first or the experience arises first?” - is a very crucial question.

As I told you, early in the morning when you wake up from sleep, that waking up, is it not an experience of yourself? Sleep also was an experience but in sleep you are not aware of anything. Contrary to that, you now start becoming aware of yourself and the rest. This awareness is purely an experience of oneself. This awareness is called the wakeful awareness and it is common to all people. It is not something very personal and exclusive. Many people can wake up, they have woken up and we are wakeful. When we are wakeful because wakefulness is an individual common experience, whatever we experience in wakefulness also remains uniform. Should you go into the existence and try to split it and arrive at its final particle or should you analyze the experience which is within you, there is no doubt about it, that experience which tells you about the wakeful products and the wakeful existence?

If you start thinking in this manner, two experiences suddenly come to our mind. One is the sleep we had and the wakefulness we derive from it. Both the sleep and wakefulness are inhering in oneself. There is no sleep except with reference to an individual who sleeps and there is no wakefulness except with reference to one who has become wakeful. In the same manner, in between wakefulness and sleep we also have a dream experience. But the dream experience does not have anything in the way of commonness or commonality. An individual sleeps and he has a dream. That dream like sleep is only relatable to himself whereas wakefulness is common, sleep also though individually had, is a common experience. There is nothing like one individual having a different experience or different sleep. So these are the three basic experiences that we have. And because it lasts for a certain duration, we call it a state or an avastha, state or an avastha.

We are for a few hours asleep, we are for many more hours wakeful, and we are for a short while dreaming. When you experience these three, you find that these are experiences, naturally there must be an experiencer. Any experience is an expression or feeling of the experiencing entity that is oneself. In the wakefulness we are aware of the body. In sleep in the same manner we are totally unaware of the body. So the bodily awareness along with world awareness as it arises, arises in us, it also sets in us. As the sleep arises in us, it also sets and again we become wakeful.

So, both wakefulness and sleep have the same source within us. And it is the same source that produces the dream also because the dreamer, the waker and the sleeper are the same. Because they are the same, the experiences are equally relatable to oneself. Now the question arises. Because I sleep, I wake up and I also dream, again I wake up, I sleep, then again I dream, in this way if I go on exiting from one to the other, one to the other, who is that exiting entity, what is that exiting entity? A question is very natural. That entity can survive independent of the three states is proved by our alternating states. Without sleep I can be, that is why I am wakeful. Without wakefulness I can be, that is why I am asleep or I was asleep. Without these two I can be, that is why I was dreaming.

While each of these states gets eliminated by the other and all the three are equally eliminated, there is an un-eliminatable presence that is oneself. That is what we call the fourth one, the fourth factor. That one is never contradicted or eliminated in any one of the three states. On the other hand, the three states are equally of oneself. Dream is mine, wakefulness is mine, sleep is mine. So we have three states – wakefulness, sleep and dream. And a lot of comparison and contrasts can be made between the three.

Does the world exist, if you ask, the answer is the world exists because the wakeful man experiences it. Suppose there was a world existing and we were not aware of it, will it matter to us? We are all here. A relative of ours has died somewhere in a foreign land. He has already died. Nowadays communication is very fast. In the olden times, a letter used to take nearly ten days, twenty days or one month to arrive. So till we know that he has died, he is living for us. Suppose we are asleep and very near us one of our relatives has breathed his last, will we ever know about it? Only when we wake up. So an existence by itself makes no meaning unless it makes itself felt. So in making itself felt, our wakefulness is the only factor, the only substratum.

So does the world exist? – Yes. How do you know? – Because I experience it. So is not your experience the first and last denominator in judging the existence of the world? So is existence absolute or experience absolute? The wakeful world totally becomes extinct when you go to sleep. And sleep becomes extinct when you go to wakefulness. Both of them are extinct when you dream. So all the existences we are experiencing are subject to extinction but the experiencing subject, so to say, does not become extinct at any point of time.

So here is an independent sleeper, waker and dreamer, the same, and dependent sleep, wakefulness and dream. Between the independent entity, the subject and the dependent factor or states called wakefulness, sleep and dream, it is very simple and easy to understand that the dependent one is not the reality because it becomes extinct and it is dependent whereas the experiencing entity never depends upon the others. If I were depending upon the wakeful world, then I would not have slept leaving it. If ever I were depending upon my sleep, I would not have left it to be wakeful. And both are equally invalidated in my dream.

So there is one factor here, the subject which is never superseded but the object states are all superseded and invalidated. What does it mean? The subject is the reality and the other things do not have the status of reality. Now can you get to the subject making use of these states? Yes. That is what we call this samadhi. Samadhi – I cannot call it a state but nevertheless I use, Samadhi is a wonderful condition or state in which I am neither wakeful nor asleep nor dreaming. I don’t have anything like an object to become aware of. So it is a totally object free experience. Can there be such an experience if you ask – yes because everybody feels, “I am, I am, I am”. The ‘I am’ is a very clear experience, “I was”, “I was”, “I am”, “I was”, “I am”, “I shall be”.

Who gives you this ‘I’ authority? The mother doesn’t say “I am” to you. The father doesn’t instill it into you. The child starts saying I am. So that ‘I’ factor is totally independent and it makes itself felt. But it is made felt in a conjunctional manner, conjunct with wakefulness, sleep and dream. Now by virtue of your intelligence, reasoning and absorption, you will have to get away from these conjunctions, eliminate them and get into the turiya, the fourth factor. And it is absolutely possible. And there is a way of doing it. These are the mental levels or purity, intellectual level of clarity and qualities like dispassion etc. in the presence of which this self experience will become undebatable, indispensable, ceaseless ever present. This is what I call the philosophy of experientialism. Experience alone is taken into account and existence is not run after, we don’t run after.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.