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Today I will talk some philosophy. Listen to it in an impartial manner, open enough to accept a fact when it is pointed out.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
In our philosophical exposition including spiritual exposition, I have always been struck by two important pronouncements. One is māya, māya, māya. I always disliked this māya reference saying that nothing is existing, everything is illusion. In order to illustrate this māya and such other factors, two examples are given. One is, as Dakshinamoorthy Ashtakam says,
The entire world is like a city reflected in a mirror. All people will chant this Dakshinamoorthy Ashtaka, they will hear. I don’t think people think about it. Is it really so? Is the world reflected? Is the world like a reflection of a town or a city in a mirror? Yes, it is. It is not 'nagarī-tulyam', it is not like a city reflected in a mirror. It is the city reflected in the mirror. “Swamiji, how do you say so?" I will say so. I will also show it to you how it is.
Whenever you make a reference to the world, are you not making a reference to the world as you find it surrounding you? If you take away the ‘you’ from the world, is there any world left? Whenever you refer to any object including the world, you are referring to it as a perception of yours. If you are not there, the perception would not be there. If the perception were not there, the perceivable product also would not be there.
You are not produced by the world. I am not referring to your body. Your body is not perceiving the world nor do the senses. It is the inside factor, consciousness or mind that perceives, employing the senses for the purpose, and the senses are made by the individual inside. The inside consciousness makes the senses. I hope this idea is clear to you.
Everything in the child’s body is made by the power and potential within the body itself in the form of sentience or life. There cannot be a world except when you are first there. And in your perception of the world, tell me very clearly, you may say this is a solid object, this is a gross object, this is an outer object. All these pronouncements you are making by virtue of your eyes and the eyes are very small. With the help of the eyes, all the perceived objects are like bubbles floating on water, reflections as in a mirror. This point, can you ever doubt?
But there is one more step to go. What is that? In the case of a mirror and also in the case of your perception, you seem to be thinking that the objects are independent of the mirror which the mirror reflects. Is it so that the objects are different from us and then we reflect the objects? If you ask this question - No, even the objects are not different from the perceiving consciousness. How do we understand it?
Go to the dream. Dream takes place in sleep. In sleep, you are disconnected from the world, from the body, from the mind, from the intelligence, from the ego. And then in a lonely manner, solitarily you sleep where the entire world is effaced. In such a situation, the dream occurs. And while dream occurs, it is not a dream at all. You are in another wakeful state where you have a new body, new senses, new mind, new intelligence, new world, new world objects, new hunger, new appeasement, new marriage, new children, new building, all these are taking place. But will you not agree that in the dream, the dreaming body, mind etc. along with the objects and the distinction between them, all these are produced by whatever is within your body which slept? That sleeping consciousness is not at all an object. It is a subject. That subject consciousness, all of a sudden produces a world which later you call dream. Whether you call it a dream or not, was it not a few hours or half an hour experience of yours? How is it that in that experience you remained, then you produced many things different from you and you interacted with them? So, were not gross objects produced there?
If you say God is necessary to bring about creation, a God was produced by your mind. So, is not that mind capable of producing so many different objects? If the mind is producing them, the mind being inside the body, the sleeping consciousness was within the body and the consciousness being very, very subtle, tell me now, can you apply the principle, the subtle produces the gross? An elephant cannot deliver a horse, a tree cannot deliver a human, sand cannot be crushed and oil produced from there. So, if consciousness is considered subtle, the subtle consciousness cannot produce gross things.
Now come back to the wakefulness. In the wakeful interactions that you have, in as much as all the experiences are inner and mental. In these experiences, however much you may feel the presence of gross objects like sun, moon, panchabhūtās, so many different creatures, rocks, sand, water, mind you, all these are experiences which your mind feels and produces. Can you deny the fact that when I see you all, my seeing is inside me and I am seeing the impressions my mind produces? Mind’s imprints cannot be external or gross. The subtle cannot produce the gross in as much as I experience and interact with the world only within my body in the subtle sphere. The subtle consciousness cannot bring about gross things.
Then what are these gross things? They are illusions. Gross is an idea the mind produces. Subtle is another idea the mind produces. Object and subject are distinctions the mind produces. Outer and inner, they are also ideas. All are in the form of ideas, imaginations, perceptions. Perception is not material, perception is not energial, perception is taking place in the perceiving consciousness within the body and that is neither material nor energial. It is something different from and above both. That consciousness is unlike matter and energy. Matter and energy themselves have great potential. Nuclear bombs sufficiently exploded will pulverize this earth; the planet will disappear. What is the power of energy then? So, what should be the power of consciousness, the source of both? It has got inscrutable power. With that inscrutable power, it brings about the whole thing and creating a feeling that the objects are solid, gross and external. But this externality is created, felt and experienced within in as much as it is experiential and all experiences are inward. The experiential outcome can never be outward. Outwardness is an idea that our consciousness produces and preserves.
Now we finally come to the comparison. The first, the world is like a city reflected in the mirror. Secondly, the world is nothing but a dream. Dream is individualistic but the wakefulness is common and universal. We slip into dream and we don’t continue with the dream. We slip away from wakefulness and we come back uniformly, all of us into the same wakefulness. Wakefulness is not a state or a quality belonging to the world. Wakefulness is yours. You wake up and you wipe off everything in the waking and go to sleep. Then you slip into dream. Again you wake up. So, throughout your life, it is your wakefulness, your sleep and your dream that occur. Nothing other than that. Naturally, the outcome of these three states also must be your own, in your own inside, in the mind, in the consciousness.
Compare all these and you will find how flimsy whatever we hold on to is. By this philosophy you understand the futility of this externality. It doesn’t deserve and warrant that much of love, fondness and infatuation that we have. Here is a lady who comes and tells me her husband died two months back. Others come and report to me that the children committed suicide. Something happened to X, Y, incurable disease; all these are things we don’t like, we don’t welcome but they are the part of life.
What is the consolation for the human mind? When you understand the truth of the three states in this manner, automatically our clinging becomes weaker and weaker, our attachments grow thinner and thinner, ourselves become stronger and stronger. The entire world becomes bubbles floating in your inner mind. The mind loses nothing, gains nothing. It remains itself. There is nothing that the world can add to you, there is nothing the world can take away from you. We are what we are. We will be what we are. Nothing is going to be the am-ness and the ‘I’, the our-ness and the ‘we’. This is a full experience in realization which any keen seeker, reflective and introspective seeker cannot escape. So, these propositions have absolute meaning, purpose and truth.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.