Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.

I was speaking about introspection, how important, exclusive and wholesome it is. Somewhere on listening to it I think it was Uma who developed or who grew a question on it. If introspection is so important and it is inevitable, necessary and wholesome, is it by itself sufficient and no meditation is called for? Apparently somewhat like this was the question. I shall give you the answer for it.

The word introspection has to be understood. Then only it can be practiced well. All our interactions are to a very large extent or almost exclusively sensory. Now I am speaking to you and interacting with you in a way making you listen to what I say. In doing this you should understand I am using my mouth and tongue. Now this is a bodily act.

Suppose you want to do introspection, to help you, you start reading the book. That is also a sensory activity. In order to help introspection you will have to read books or listen to somebody speak, your Guru or a Mahatma’s speech. When he speaks, you look at him, that is a visual interaction. You hear him, it is an auditory interaction. Side by side, you also receive the words and try to understand them. That is a mento-intellectual exertion.

Now when from this interactional level we recede to the introspectional level, when you do introspection by yourself, the physical body or senses are not involved. Introspection is done primarily by the mind and intelligence. So it is an internal activity.

What will you introspect on? You will introspect on the truths that you have heard. And what are the truths? In the four Vedas, there are four mahāvākyās. The first mahāvākya is “prajñānam brahma”. The supreme reality is in the nature of knowledge. So your introspection should take you to this concept. ‘I want to get hold of Brahman and Brahman is in the nature of knowledge. Where is this knowledge? In order to have knowledge what should I do? I must take up the knowing process – enquiry. Enquiry is purely and solely a mental, intellectual activity.’ So you recede from sensory activity and you get focused on inner activity.

In the inner activity too, introspection can be a little spread out, plural. You can think of many concepts, try to rationalize them, arrive at one concept. And what is that one concept? Prajñānam brahma.

The next is ‘Aham brahmāsmi’. I myself am Brahman. So your introspection should recede to ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I’, ‘I am Brahman’. So Brahman is myself. What is this ‘I’? What is this ‘am-ness’? Does the ‘I’ express itself as ‘am’? What is the difference between ‘I’ and its ‘am-ness’?

Suppose you start introspecting in this manner, the introspection will become briefer and briefer, lighter and lighter, shorter and shorter, until at last what will happen? The very introspectional process will stop. If you have to know ‘I’ and ‘am’, ‘I am’, that ‘am-ness’ it comes from the ‘I’. So what is this ‘I’?

In order to understand the ‘I’, you have to leave every thought process. When you are thinking, this ‘I’ is thinking. When you are feeling, this ‘I’ is feeling. Now we have to transcend the feeling, transcend the thinking, transcend the memorizing and reach the source ‘I’. Does it not mean meditation?

So introspection itself when it is closely followed, it becomes nididhyāsana. There are three steps. One is śravaṇa – listening to the truth from the Guru. After listening, stabilizing it by your own introspection – manana. And the manana itself resolves into nididhyāsana. In the nididhyāsana you only contemplate upon the truth. Here the truth is ‘I’. Does it not automatically mean that the whole mento-intellectual process will recede?

See, here is a verse from Kaṭhopanishad.

When the five senses remain quiet, non-active.

Manasā saha, along with the mind. So the senses and the mind should remain non-active.

Buddhiśca na viceṣtati, even the buddhi, intelligence becomes non-active. So what does it mean? The senses – non-active, mind – non-active and buddhi – non-active.

When all the three are non-active like this, tām āhuḥ paramām gatim. That is the supreme state.

Suppose you introspect over this statement, what will you do? If the introspection becomes true, ‘oh, my senses have to be non-active. So let me not do anything with the senses. No seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no touching, no tasting. Then mind also should not do anything. So no thinking, no enquiry. The intelligence wants to know. Even the knowing effort and curiosity should stop. So senses stop, mind stops, intelligence also ceases.’ In that state, you have the supreme. This is how introspection becomes meditation.

But when you go to a Guru, he cut shorts all these elaborate processes and initiates you into a sādhana and that sādhana you hold on to and never be misguided with regard to that by any statement elsewhere.

So the long and short of what I am saying is when introspection becomes refined and refined and refined, automatically it becomes meditation. Not only meditation, it becomes samādhi. When you get into the ‘I’, that is the source of all your activity, interaction, memory, knowledge, dream, wakefulness, sleep. When you get into that ‘I’, is it not full absorption into your being? That is why it is said, jñeyam tasya āntarevāsti.

If you follow introspection in the true sense, then you will find whatever you seek to know is in the very introspection itself. We want to know what thinks, what enquires, what understands, what sleeps, what dreams and what is wakeful? So the introspection itself is such that it reveals to you what you want to know. That revelation will be in a state of absorption and inwardness.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.