| Listen to Prabhaata-rashmih Audio |
Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
Today I thought I will tell you some important secrets about the path of Self-realization. Whenever we refer to the Self or we hear about it, we always readily think that there is something called distinctly “The Self” and the Self is something like a personal presence like the body, like so many other form-full substances. This very idea should be corrected. If the Self had a form, then it would have been one amongst so many other form-fulls in the world and all the people would have seen him and you can bring others and say “Here it is. Please see”.
The Self is not like any of the other substances. If others have a form, self is without form. Whatever is form-full is not real. Whatever is form-full cannot be throughout happy or pleasant. So, the only comparison is one of full contrast. Self is not a form-full presence. If it has no form, then we must develop the keenness, attunement and dexterity to think about it and understand it because throughout our life we are only familiar with form-full objects of the world including our body. Our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, our knowledge, our enquiries, you can say that these are not form-full. That is why we find it difficult to know about them and understand them.
If the Self is not a form-full presence, then what is it? After sometime you will find that your approach to the self and self-realization undergoes a drastic change and the entire change is in your mind and intelligence. Whatever your mind is, it starts becoming different from whatever it is now. So, we must have an interpretation about the self in the language of the mind. Our Upanishads say:
Mind is said to be of two kinds: śuddha - the pure and aśuddha - the impure.
Aśuddham kāma-sankalpam. What is the impure mind? Desires and imaginations, expectations and calculations, these are the impurity of the mind. Will you please listen to it carefully? Desires, expectations, imaginations, assessments, calculations. All these are considered to be impurity of the mind. Then what is purity?
Śuddham kāma-vivarjitam. The mind becomes pure when you have no desire and allied imaginations. So, the self has disappeared so to say and you have to understand matters in terms of the mind. A mind coupled with desires and desireful calculations is impure and a mind devoid of these is pure. It becomes very clear to us. You have to get rid of all desires and desire-oriented calculations. Is it possible or not? It is possible. So keep the self in abeyance and be only concerned with the mind. See whether the mind can be without desires and without sankalpas. Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita:
One cannot become a yogi except when, na hy-asannyasta saṅkalpo, all the sankalpas and imaginations of the mind are forsaken, left. Now where should your focus be? Your focus should be on the mind and make the mind pure, impurity being all the desires and associated products. How beautifully the idea is conveyed now! The Upanishad says:
Mind alone is the cause of bondage for human beings. When the mind fosters desires for the objects of the world, it causes bondage.
Muktyai nirviṣayaṃ smṛtam. When the mind becomes free of the objects and their allurements, then it becomes liberated. Will you catch these points and work on it? A desire-free mind is liberation. A desireful mind is bondage. Forget about all other considerations. This is what Krishna says in the sixth chapter of Bhagavad Gita.
Bring the mind and fix it on the self and do not think of anything. Think but of nothing. Just see? Unless you proceed in this manner with discretion, to understand what are the niceties of the whole self-realizational process, you will not improve at all. Everybody feels that he should meditate and in meditation he must have smell, light, sound, this pleasure or that pleasure.
So, the sole focus should be on the mind, on the mind, on the mind, on the mind, on the mind and make it desire-free. How can the mind be made desire-free? To understand the non-existential nature of desire, thoughts, mind etc. the entire world you miss it for seven hours of the day when you are asleep. When you wake up, you produce the world. So the producer and also the dissolver of the world is your own mind. So, mind is the Brahma, the Vishnu and the Maheshwara of the world. Will you value this mind consider it to be a very potent factor? And if you are able to fulfill the needs of the mind, I think you become liberated. The fulfilling of the needs is not an objective and sensory process. It is an inner mento-intellectual process. You start feeling that “I don’t need anything at all. Whatever I need is okay.”
Why don’t you orient your thinking in this manner?
I am editing a portion of ‘Quietitude of the Mind’ for Vicharasarani. Janaka is speaking to his mind in such a wonderful manner! It is in ‘Quietitude of the Mind’. He addresses the mind. So, let us understand that impurity of the mind is bondage and purity of the mind is liberation.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
