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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
I would like to, I would always like you to listen to me with attention, today more particularly, as Krishna always says, I am telling you something of a greater secret, greatest, super greatest, like this. Last night generally our Nandita comes to my office when I am working, prostrates before me and goes before she retires. Last night she came and I was doing my work on the computer. Then she started a little conversation.
She generally goes through the final form of Vicharasethu in English and any kind of a mistake, spelling mistake or even grammatical mistake if she is able to notice, she has to read it well, understand it, correct it when necessary. So she is one of the final readers of the matter. Depending upon her interest and capacity she can say anything and do but mistakes should not be there. So this is the way.
So this time I had written a very significant conclusional part of the Sikhidvaja-Choodala episode and referring to that she was saying, “Swamiji, I have been living here for so many years and you have been telling us about purity of mind, clarity and lightness of intelligence etc. How well you write! Being associated with you for such a long time, why is it that I am not able to understand and realize the self?” So this is something that she speaks to me often. So yesterday in between my writing, I also started speaking something and she was saying….
“Have you had no improvement after coming here?”
She said “Yes. I am very, very peaceful.”
This is a point at which I would like you to introspect. Suppose a person realizes the self, knows the self, what are the benefits? There will be an inner torch burning from the forehead lighting up all the darkness in your path in the sense if you are walking at night there will be a torch like light from the forehead?
What is that you will have when you have self realization? Our śāstras list quite a number of excellences virtues etc. but all of them primarily and ultimately say “satyam śivam sundaram”. In all the śānti-pādās of our Upanishads you will find “śāntih, śāntih, śāntih….” Now this śānti which simply means peacefulness, this peacefulness she says she has and she says she doesn’t know the self. What shall I tell all of you?
Whenever you have an experience, that experience must have a base, a foundation. Every day you sleep. What is this sleep? On the one hand, it is withdrawing from all the things including your body. The senses withdraw from the objects, the eyes close. Eye can see nothing even. All other things must have something specifically but even if nothing is there the eyes will see. So the eyes close themselves. The senses withdraw. The mind withdraws from the senses. The intelligence withdraws from the mind, the ego withdraws from the intelligence and something else withdraws from the ego. That is why you are not aware of the world, body, mind, intelligence, ego, nothing you are aware of.
Now you have withdrawn from all these. Now where have you gone to and what has withdrawn you? Have you ever thought about it? You always refer to sleep as a negative outcome. What is that negative outcome? Withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing from everything. After withdrawing from everything, where did you cling yourself to? What is that factor which prevailed in sleep other than the sensory imprints, mental imprints, intelligential imprints, ego imprints? Is there anybody who thinks about it?
We are speaking about a lot of anxiety, agitation, suffering, jealousy, hatred, ambition, this is all a wakeful witchcraft. While you clearly identify yourself with the wakefulness and its effects, what about the sleep? It is the same ‘I’ who went into sleep. I am ‘aham asmi’, I am ‘aham brahma’, I am the sleeping ‘I’. In sleep, for six to seven hours of the day I was away from everything and I was ‘I’. While you have such a strong wakeful identity, why don’t you parallely have a sleep identity? So you are not having. Why? Probe into it and have it. Every day you are experiencing six to seven hours of sleep. And why don’t you identify with sleep? I am the sleeper ‘I’. I am the sleep, I am the sleep, I am the sleep, I am the substratum of the sleep. If you consider sleep to be samadhi, don’t you everyday have seven hours of samadhi?
So apart from the experience, there is something required whereby you try to probe into, assess and understand it. I will tell you how things are dropped from one and acquired from another. I take bath in my bathroom. Generally the geyser is on and also light is on. I have got a curtain outside the bathroom that is drawn when I go to the bathroom, then I come out. After coming out I put on my dress after wiping my head etc. with a dry cloth. Then after going back, putting on my tilak etc. when I come away, I switch off both the light and the geyser switch.
Now and then, very infrequently Nutan Swamiji comes there to see whether I have had my bath. Very infrequently he comes especially when I am late in taking bath, I have to come here also. So whenever he comes, he will switch off the geyser. After seeing him switch off the geyser, I started feeling, “What is this?” He is switching off. That means I am taking more time. The first time when I exit from the bathroom, that is the time I can switch it off. I am not doing it.” The habit is - switch off the light as well as the geyser. After everything is off and I come away from the bathroom. Meanwhile the geyser switch can be put off which is on that is why he does it. So every time he does it, I will almost curse myself. “Why is it that he has to put it off? Can I not do it? Can I not do it?” This wrestle is going on in me, I don’t know, maybe for months, and very rarely I will succeed.
Today maybe perhaps for the first time just when I was exiting and I was taking my small towel to wipe off my head, that time I switched it off. But I would do it a little later (generally). Now can you imagine for months I was trying to substitute or update my habit? But I was not able to do it. Even now I cannot say whether I will be able to do it regularly and when Nutan Swamiji comes there he will not find the switch on. When I am inside the bathroom he perhaps will not switch it off. When I am outside and he finds the switch on, he will immediately switch it off.
Now I am sensitive enough and I have been just like I was seeking Brahman, I was also seeking this sensitivity and habit by virtue of which I would be able to switch it off. You know, it certainly created difficulty in my mind; I can call it suffering also. Why is it? For Nandita, it is a self-finding business. For me it is a geyser-switching-off business. In both cases, the mind is working, sensitiveness is being hunted.
Now if this is the case with a habit that is installed for a number of years perhaps and a correction requires not days, not weeks, not months, what about the sensitivity that you need to say “I am aham brahma”, “I am aham brahma”. The one that I refer to ‘I’ is itself what I seek. So do I have to seek it? No it is already there, I am saying “I am”. So the seeking itself terminates and you will be constantly in a state of awareness. Is there any time when you are disconnected from the ‘I’ even when you become unconscious?
So if you ask me, mere meditation, absorption or samadhi, certainly no. It is the tip of the iceberg. Knowledge, ātma-jñāna is far more different and lofty. Will Nandita take up this point which I have brought? I am peaceful. What makes me peaceful? Where from this peace comes? It does not come from outside. If she is peaceful, the peacefulness comes only from the self. How is it that she can feel heat and brilliance and she can miss the fire? She is searching fire besides the heat and brilliance. Will she ever be able to find fire besides the heat and brilliance it reveals itself as? Is there any fire different from heat and brilliance? Who will ask this question? Who will chase this question and who will find the answer?
This self realization is a subject which is very, very abstruse when you go close by. A teacher can repeatedly provoke you, induce you, inspire you, compel and persuade you to reflect, reflect and reflect. Ultimately it is jñāna. It is not a state, it is not a condition, it is not samadhi. We already have the samadhi called sleep. Everybody is sleeping but still we don’t realize the sleeper. After having slept everyday seven-eight hours, how do you miss the sleeper? Then will you not miss the samādhishta also if he sits in samadhi for one hour, two hours, five hours? You will miss him because the samadhi and sleep are alike. The difference is only that you will say “I am sleeping”, that is the only statement that you will make. But even then “you” are missing. She is already missing the self but she is enjoying or experiencing the peace.
So will this girl take up this higher search? Sarva-guhyatamam, what I am telling you is very, very rare, lofty and exclusive. Will you stop your search saying “I don’t have to find”? I am what I am seeking. I am running and walking looking for the legs which do them. I am running, I am walking, I am standing, I am sitting, I am lying but I am looking for the legs. The legs are doing all these things but I don’t understand. I am blind. In this case of the leg, the leg as well as walking both are gross , physical, external actions. Therefore both are equally visible. But here, the thinking somehow you feel, peace somehow you feel, not by the senses, it is not objective but the peace-giver you miss. Both the peace and peace-giver are subtle, invisible and internal. Somehow peace you feel but the peace-giver you miss.
I don’t know whether I have told you something good. I believe this is a great and wonderful presentation. But remember what I told you about the bathroom switch. Even now I may not be able to do it but today I felt a sense of release. What? I was sensitive enough to put off the switch soon after I took my towel stepping outside the bathroom threshold. And you know, in order to bring this correction how many hours of sensitive thinking about the subject I have undergone? I think many hours, I cannot specify how many. Every time I feel guilty, not guilty in that sense, I feel bad, bad, bad. “Today also Swamiji has come and switched off.” Afterwards I also switch off every day late. Then also I will feel “Today also I did not.” “I did not, I did not, I did not, I did not”. I hope this will help you to do good introspection.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.