| Listen to Prabhaata-rashmih Audio |
Harih Om Tat Sat, Harih Om Tat Sat, Jai Guru, Jai Guru.
Yesterday, we heard the seeker inmates of the Ashram, speaking from their own levels and experiences about how they feel now from what they were when they first of all came here and started their saadhana and intimate contact. A variety of presentations has been made and all of it should have given you a lot of illumination and insight into what exactly is this saadhana and the mind.
Yogavaasishtha Ramayana is a text which discusses the mind in all it’s complexity, potential and possibility. There are many types of description about the mind, about the atma, the self, about liberation, moksha, about enlightenment, jnana, and all allied matters.
The knowers of truth are not always alike. The degree of actualization and the sublimational effects this actualization produces in them will also be different. That is why we have knowers of truth like this. One is a knower, who has understood and realized his self, that’s all. Another is a person in whom the realizational merits or the realizational effects have started becoming pronounced, then he is called a brahmavid-varah, the first being named brahmavit. Then again, after a period of time, the effects of Self-realization start becoming deeper in him. And they have their own functional influence and sublimation in his all-fold vyavahaara interactions. Then he gets into the next stage called brahmavidvariyaan. Then if his body lives long, he will get into the third state, after what exact length of the period, we cannot say, he becomes a brahmavidvarishtah. And there the scriptures end. They have nothing more to say about Self-realization. So this kind of categorization also is there.
We have something called saptabhumikaa, the seven pedestals of Self-knowledge journey. That also is there. Everything is explained in terms of the mind, in terms of intelligence, in terms of knowledge and functionally how these things are becoming effective and pronounced. Right from the time you have your enquiry strong, you are considered to have got in to the first bhoomika, the first pedestal. Then the introspection becomes deeper and deeper, then you get into the second stage. I think it is called vicharana, which means reflection; it is the state of reflection. Then you get into the third state called asam-sakti-bhaavana, if I remember correct that tells you that your mind really feels that quality of dispassion and attachment. So to have dispassion, to feel it and to have the sublimity and enrichment of dispassion, itself is considered to be the third step in the ladder of spiritual evolution and attainment. Then in the fourth level, I think, you have something like enlightenment and that enlightenment further grows into what I told you earlier. While Yogavaasishtha Ramayana makes such descriptions, there are occasions when Vasishtha speaks very profoundly about the human mind, how complex and how sometimes hard also the mind is, and at one point of time, he says:
One has to gain victory over his mind. The mind can become very notorious, very mischievous, very turbulent, some of its pet emotions will be very difficult to overcome, so he says one has to do it, hastam hastena sampeedya. You try to twist and turn one hand with the other hand, may be fingers by rubbing them, to the extent of even inflicting a little pain, hastam hastena sampeedya, dantairdantaan vichurnya cha. This also we sometimes do. Try to crush the teeth by the other row of teeth. angaanyangaih samaakramya. Sometimes press your head, scratch your head if necessary, hit gently on your head, scratch your body. By all these means he says jayedaadou svakambanah. You have to gain control over your mind.
When R was saying that Swamiji tells me some process and it’s all effective and she was referring to her rolling on the ground. This is something I had suggested to others also. When you find that you are so aggrieved and you are not able to overcome the grief, the mind becomes very mischievous, that is the time you should engage yourself in some physical process. I always say, a very harmless exercise; in military, as a punishment, they are asked to side-roll, go on rolling and if one individual, say one member of the team misbehaves, that the whole team is asked to side-roll.
We had a punishment in our young days, I don’t know how to explain. Stand and then cross your hands and touch your ears so that both the elbows will be pointed lower and we are supposed to kneel and let both the elbows touch the ground. Absolutely pain free exercise but very very difficult to take. Our teachers used to ask us to do it in the school classes also. Father and mother also would do. Whenever we make a mistake, we are suppose to. “Ok, go and do this seven times…go and do this eighteen times…go and do this twenty one times…go and do this fifty one times” It’s very difficult, only difficult, it’s not at all painful.
So these exercises will be helping you, when the mind becomes mischievous and you start getting into a physical process, automatically the mind will have to shift itself from its own botheration to the exercise that you are taking. So this rolling is very very effective. Naturally when you start rolling, you have to exercise your mind to get the body roll. That point, the suffering of the mind becomes reduced, it becomes lesser and lesser, I was very happy that R mentioned about it. I would like all of you to do it.
You all say our mind should become better, better, its not becoming better. I can give you some very pious and devotional exercises, whereby the mind will become purer and purer. But you have to do it. Again the answer will be that “Swamiji, I cannot do it, I will not do it.”
Why don’t you stand up and simply prostrate once. Then again get up, prostrate a second time, and do it something like hundred and one times. By the time you will find, the mind would have become very docile. Do not just leave the mind to its own vagaries. At one point of time you have to control or gain victory or control over it, it is very important. Actually, the mind is also nothing other than your brain work. It is in a way the functional note of the brain. But you cannot always say that it is the physical mass of the brain alone, because, all our body consists of matter and energy and neither matter nor energy has got the power to think, know, feel, understand and memorize. But mind is associated with all these functions. So there is something other than the body, in the way of the power of the animation, as I put it, the power and presence that animates the body. Consciousness, you call it, in Sanskrit we can call it prajnaa or chetanaa or chaitanya. It is an expression of that, that you call generally the mind and the intelligence. So there is a way of controlling the mind and I think one should do it, if necessary, in extreme cases, just remember this.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
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