Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru. 

I am wondering why it becomes difficult for all of you to understand the simple fact that our experiences are in the level of the mind. While sleeping, our body moves to the left and right, hands also move. Are we aware of it? No, not at all. Why? Any experience, by its very nature is not at all object-al.

There are only two constituents in the world - matter and energy. Both the constituents do not have the experiential power, potential or quality. Our body is made up of matter and energy. How can it experience then? That we have a body is itself an experience. Experience by its very nature is beyond the ken of matter and energy. As we say we have a body, we also say there is a world around us. Both the body and the world are experienced by the mind. Everything is to be judged on this fundamental factor. When you think like this,

This is in one of the Upanishads and also in the Karika of Gaudapada for Mandukyopanishad. Nirodha – what does it mean? It means dissolution or even pralaya. What is dissolution? It is primarily a word and like any other word, it denotes a certain idea. An idea is a unit of knowledge. Word, idea and knowledge, only the mind has got relevance to these. It is the mind that formulates the idea, expresses it in the form of a word and constitutes a unit of knowledge. So, whether you speak about the pralaya of the world or something else, pralaya is a concept. This concept becomes relevant only to the mind. So what is pralaya, when properly understood, it is a concept.

Na utpattih. Similarly, birth or emergence, that is also an idea in the mind.

Na baddho na cha sādhakah. The sense of bondage and there being somebody bound is also another definition, another assessment of the mind.

Na cha sādhakah. That one is a seeker of truth and does sadhana, this is another proposition of the mind.

Na mumukshuh. One is a seeker of liberation.

Na vai muktah – the idea that one is liberated, all these are ideas and concepts of the mind. Any idea or concept of the mind, tell me whether it has got an independent existence. Can you extract it and show it to me? Where is this idea? The idea is co-existential with the mind. Besides the mind it has no existence. Like waves, no wave is there besides the ocean. No bubble is there besides the ocean and the ocean is nothing but water.

Now what prevents you from understanding that experiences belong to and are created by the mind? And in the mind level, no thought is an addition and no thought is really an emergence or an extinction. It is all a play of the mind.

Mind is unlike matter and energy. Being consciousness, sentience, it has got the inscrutable power or putting up any kind of a projection, display or manifestation. It manifests the wakefulness. It manifests the sleep. It manifests the dream. Dream is an internal creation. Wakefulness is seemingly an external one and sleep is an inward one. All these are expressions and manifestations and displays of the mind. The mind never undergoes any change whatsoever in producing a thought or no thought. If the thought itself is mind’s own display which cannot have any material or gross or objective ground or basis, then are they not reducing themselves to nothing? This is the meaning of this wonderful verse.

Can you do vicara and probe into your own mind to find that mind is supra-material, it does not require a place like any other object to be? It is itself present, where we cannot say. And in the mind, letters, words, phrases, figures, images, all these are only seemingly there. They cannot be really there because so many thoughts are evolving from the mind. Suppose the mind was something like one thousand tones with so many thoughts evolving, evolving, evolving disappearing, disappearing, these one thousand tons must have reduced to 900. Has it happened?

So I think there is something wrong with the people. They are not able to think and understand that experience is not in the bodily level. It is not in the matter-energy level. It can only be in the sentience and sentience is non-matter, supra-matter. And it does not swell, it does not increase. It has got the inscrutable power to give you any kind of a notion. So, all these are notions of the mind. And as a notion, it has no existence separate from and apart from the mind, means consciousness.

When you are able to understand that janma means something new, something like an addition, addition never takes place in reality, when you are able to understand and realize this, that is the pinnacle of advaita.

Na kaschit-jāyate jīvo - Jeeva is not a fact. It is an idea. As an idea, it has got no existence separate from the mind. No idea is born to be separate and remaining forever. Similarly, the birth of the universe is another idea. That is also not separate from the mind.

Na baddho na cha sādhakah - Nobody is bound. Bondage is another idea. Na cha sādhakah - the seeker and the striving soul, that is another idea. Na mumukshur-na vai mukta ityeshā paramārthatā.

So, the right enlightenment is one where you understand that all these are notionally there. The notion producer, consciousness alone is there and all the notions are unfactual, not separate, not concrete, not objective, not at all there. The mind becomes free. It becomes absolutely relaxed and there is nothing like a bondage ever felt.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.