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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
I was telling you for the past few days about how the poetic learning of the subject of Vedanta has a very, very special effect. Spirituality is something where your mind and intelligence will have to be reflecting and ruminating over the truths repeatedly. This rumination is not just for the sake of knowledge. It is to remind you alright. But more than that, that is the only mento-intellectual process by virtue of which whatever you want to become can be assimilated into your inner personality and the personality will be like that. Whatever you think, that you become.
We have some proverbs like “To know God is to become God.” Tell me now what is this knowledge? The process of becoming is by knowing. That knowing process means what? Keeping the subject in your intelligence in the form of introspection, so much so that with every intelligential introspection the idea is assimilated by your system. I would like to describe it as infusional introspection, an introspection which will infuse into the introspecting agency namely the intelligence and mind, whatever you introspect. Brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati - One who knows Brahman becomes Brahman. One who knows God becomes God. The knowingness is not different from becoming. The becoming is facilitated or caused by knowing.
When I know a food item is poisonous I never use it at all. The information or knowledge that it is poisonous is sufficient. I always cite the example, you are about to sip a sweet drink. You have taken it in your cup to the lips, touched the lips. At that time somebody tells you “Don’t drink. It is poisonous.” What will you do? Simply throw it away. Keep quiet. In the same manner when something is undesirable in you, the moment you know it is undesirable you must be able to relinquish it, distance yourself from it. The moment you know something is desirable, the system should instantly incorporate it as part of it.
So effective, powerful and sharp the knowing process will be! Normally it is not. It is okay 5+3=8, 8 multiplied by 3 = 24, that much is okay. If you know counting, if you know deducting etc. then you must be able to handle 5 Rupees, 500, 5000, 5 lakhs and 5 million. Counting is the same. There is no difference at all.
This is from Vivekachudamani.
Atīva sūkṣmam paramātmatattvam, what is this paramātmā? No other than what functions in you as the mind, intelligence and ego. Our body is matter-energy, it is inert. In the inert body something keeps the body alive, active and cognitive. What is that? It is a presence. That presence is what we call ātmatattva. Don’t think that it is ātma living in an edifice inside the body. No. It is the same functional factor called the mind, intelligence and ego. It is your thought, the thinking substance and the thinking process. So what you have to do is, atīva sūkṣmam paramātmatattvam, the paramātmatattva is very, very subtle.
Na sthūladṛṣṭyā pratipattumarhati, by your senses, even by your mind which is given to always knowing the gross, external objects, a vision, an idea, a perception where only gross things are taken into account, you think of an elephant, you think of a tree, you think of a mountain, you think of the sea, you think of an ant, you think of a cow, now all these are gross objects. By that gross vision you will not be able to perceive the self. Then what is the way?
Samādhinā atyanta susūkṣma vṛtyā, close your eyes, sit in a place, interlock your fingers and put them on your lap, then go into your mind, intelligence and their processes. What we want to observe and learn should be and will be the internal processes. Observe your thought, observe your emotion, observe your mind, observe your intelligence, observe your enquiry, all these are processes taking place in you. Let them be very slow, light, feeble. Now they are very gross, powerful like a cyclone. They have to be like a gentle wind, a breeze.
If an ant crawls fast and runs, you will not be able to observe it. It has to crawl gently, gently, like a centipede. Then you will be able to observe it well. The same is the case with a powerfully flowing river. You will not be able to observe and understand the water. So let the thought processes be gentler, feebler, slower, let the speed be less, tell me when it becomes the slowest, what will it do? The mind and the thought will stop. That is the time you can observe ‘What is the substance that thinks? What is the substance that functions?’
If you are running, nobody will be able to observe your leg nor will you be. Stop running. Then take a grand look at your own legs. In the same manner make the thought processes subtler, more sūkshma, more sūkshma, let the number be less, let the kind be less, let the thickness become thinner, thinner, thinner, until at last the thinker and the thinking, the thinking will become so slow, the process will stop and you will know what or who thinks. The thought will disappear, the thinking process also will come to a stop and what became the thinker that will be revealed. It cannot but be revealed. Just see how beautifully the idea is put!
Now if you are not able to understand, what is the reason? Jñātavyam-āryair-atiśuddha-buddhibhiḥ, this subtlety of the inside consciousness can be known only by you when you are sufficiently enquiring, you are a seeker. Āryaih, you have that human śreshtata, that human elegance in as knowledge should be the first and last factor.
Atiśuddha-buddhibhiḥ, your intelligence and mind should also become pure. So that when the mind is pure, intelligence is pure and you become noble, great, grand and sublime, then this inner understanding will come. There is no magic or a secret here.
Just see how beautiful it is! Have you ever thought of handling your mind processes to make them thinner, finer, gentler, slower, until at last you reduce the pace of your walking? Reduce it further, reduce it further, still become slower, what will be the maximum? Stop. This is the way to proceed.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.