Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

I think you are present here when the Sannyasin who has come from the North spoke to me whatever he did. He was trying to say that the Self-realization process and outcome are of two kinds. One is of Shankara kind and another is another kind and he wanted me to specify whether I represent the Shankara sākshātkāra or something else or the Shankar sākshātkāra alone and he was speaking quite a lot about it. I felt that he would have been here so I would like to say something about it.

I have generally read the poetic representation by Shankara, of his thoughts and processes. Generally I am not interested in reading so much the prose. It becomes a text and it does not give me so much of interest and inspiration.  But so many Prakarna Granthas he has written and all of them contain whatever his thoughts are. When he writes a commentary on the Upanishads, Bhagavat Gita and Brahma Sutras, he has to conform to them and then explain. Maybe in some places he will go a little off and then explain because the theory or proposition will have to be connected to the Vedic and other statements. But when he writes a Prakarna Grantha he is not restricted in that manner. Whatever insight is presented by the Vedic Upanishads, Bhagavat Gita and the like, keeping that in mind he can present his own thoughts and there, there is a much freer flow and a more complete representation of his own mind and intelligence.

So far as I am concerned, I can only find interest in poetry because it gives me an inspiration, a delight. More important is the facility to remember. If our Sanskrit literature, particularly regarding the spiritual field were not written in poetry I think I would have been miserable. I would not have been able to remember them, make use of them. The trouble with all of you is that, you read quite a lot but you cannot remember anything. But in poetry there is a lot of facility in remembering and one word will drive you to another word, like that there is an interconnectedness and flow. So every point that he was raising, I was not able to agree with because when I read Shankara, I found that he has not said anything in the manner in which apparently he speaks or he represents.

There are three levels of reality. Three levels of expression so far as our understanding and experience go. One is the Vyāvahārika satta. Satta means reality which is interactional, Vyāvahārika. We are all born, we have a body, we see our body, we see the earth, we see the things around. Now it is from this premise that we proceed from anything whatsoever. So to begin with, we have our interactional front and the interactional experiences and outcome. Only when we have this interactional presence questions and investigations arise therefrom. So the first fact is this Vyāvahārika satta, interactional reality or presence.

Then we start thinking about whether what I see is really there or not in my own experience, then we are obliged to come to the conclusion that only when we wake up and the senses are activated, apparently the objects are there around us. The proof for anything is its existence and the proof for the existence is its experience by us. So in our experience, the objects including the world are there only when we wake up. Can you think of a person who never wakes up, right from the beginning he is in coma? Is he alive? Or the other people are alive? He is not alive for him nor are the others. We feel he is in coma because we are wakeful therefore we feed him and he continues to be and one day he will die. For him there is neither his body nor the world. This point you have to be very clear about. So, even when we go to sleep people will say the world continues. For whom? For the non-sleepers. Only when you are not sleeping and wakeful then the world is there. Now in the same way as you wake up and the interactional world is there you also go to sleep. Then the world along with you disappear.

Then in sleep you have a dream in which a parallel world is created where, within your body, by whom or what? By your mind. So how can the mind within your body create an extensive world of objects which are gross? But nevertheless you experience them. Where are they? In your mind. What has become the world? Your mind. So the mind displays the world all by its own power in itself. This becomes Prātibhāsika satta. Whatever we consider to be a Vyāvahārika satta, an interactional reality, becomes Prātibhāsika, elusive and illusory. The moment you wake up, the entire dream phenomena vanish and everything is gone. If the dream world were there, how could it disappear? So the entire world with three dimensions, extensiveness and the like just disappear within our own mind. So, none of the objects in the dream had an existence besides your mind. At the same time, when you were dreaming they were as real and effective as the wakefulness. So the wakefulness is interactional, dream also is interactional but the dream interactional-ness vanishes when you wake up. So we are saying objects are there, everything is there, but all these are just like the mind display in dream. So it becomes a Prātibhāsika satta. This is the second level.

Now you go to the Pāramārthikatha. What is that Pāramārthikatha? Think for a moment. You have a mind. From the mind so many thoughts arise, so many emotions arise, memories arise, reactions and urges come. Now you tell me very clearly, is there any thought besides the mind? Is there any emotion besides the mind? Is there any knowledge besides the consciousness? Everything is there, experienced also. But in none of them is a content or substance other than what you have in your consciousness. In the dream it disappears and it becomes illusory but when you go into the thought process and find out, where is it prevailing, what is the cause and source, then you will find altogether there is only one consciousness and the consciousness itself produces everything and all the productions have no content or substance besides the consciousness. Whether you call it a thought or an emotion, a knowledge, a memory, a reaction, a desire or hatred, anything whatsoever, in any one of them there cannot be a substance, a content or a nature besides what the consciousness is. Even when the thought process is on, no thought is besides and different from the mind. When you are able to understand this subtlety by virtue of your Nirvikalpa Samādhi… What is Nirvikalpa Samādhi?  It is the practice of Samādhi, the stillness, the quietitude of your mind where you are able to clearly understand that a thought arising in the mind is not different from the mind. Then why do we call it a thought? That is the mystic and inscrutable power of the consciousness. Remaining alone:

Remaining alone with its nature, bahudhā yah karoti, the consciousness is able to make itself felt as many. So the many is a notion which the consciousness is able to create and preserve. Notionally many are there, substantially or substantically or essentially only one is there. If you understand it, that becomes the Pāramārthika Satta.

Now all the three are there concurrently or parallel in us. When we are wakeful it is Vyāvahārika reality, when we are dreaming it is illusory reality, and when we are able to understand it fully it becomes the real reality. In the Vyāvahārika level things are different from us and plurality is there. In the dream, difference is there but it is in an illusory manner and when you understand the truth in the level of the intelligence and sākshātkāra then you will find, all are but one and one alone is.

Now all these three can be had by a human seeker. Depending upon one, the dispassion he has, the purity and sublimity he is able to generate and preserve. Thirdly, the sharpness of his intelligence whereby he is able to penetrate into his own mind, that inner consciousness level to know that it is the power of the consciousness that produces thoughts and not the substance of the consciousness that produces it. Like a pot maker making pots from clay keeping them one after the other different from the mother source and to the extent he produces, the mother source gets reduced, it is not that kind of a material production. It is only a production which is inexplicable but for all experiences every thought is different from the other thought and all the thoughts are mutually different, they are also different from the thinker. But in reality there is only one substance that becomes the relative thinker, relative thinking and relative thought. In reality there is only one.

Now the question is, who can understand this, how many and when and how. This is all the difference.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.