Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

I have been writing during the past two days “Science of Inner Redemption” series. I was summarizing the forty-ninth chapter in the Nirvāṇa Prakaraṇa Uttarardha. I read the whole chapter in a hurried manner and felt that the subject should be presented to our readers. Actually Nirvāṇa Prakaraṇa like any other Prakaraṇa discusses exhaustively about the same subject. What is the subject? On the one hand it is the mind of human, on the other hand it is intelligence, an interaction between the two, as a result of which the mind will become dispassionate on the one hand and peaceful and absorbed on the other.

That the mind has got a complete state of absorption is evident from the fact of our sleep every day. In the waking state we undergo a number of interactions and interactional impacts. These impacts can be very notorious in their effects. There will be grief, there will be agitation, there will be craze, there will be hatred, there will be war, again war the next day, many things, extremely worrisome etc. In spite of it, everyone goes to sleep and after the spell of sleep he wakes up.

When I was writing Srimad Bhagavatam, Sri Krishna, Arjuna and Bheema went to see Jarāsandha masking themselves as Brahmanas. They entered through the back door. Jarāsandha welcomed them. He was very hospitable and he would give everything to the guest. So after having gone there, established themselves as guests, at one point they asked for a duel with Jarāsandha. Before that, he had already suspected that the guests who had arrived were not Brahmanas but Kshatriyas looking at their hand and the hard skin their hands had. Ultimately, Bheema was chosen for the duel and they went on fighting. I think it went on for twenty-eight days. And it is written there, every day they fought during the day and in the night they were friends. One was a host and another was a guest. Why I said this - they may be stark enemies during the waking state and they will revolve in their mind, thoughts and plans of enmity but still they go to sleep.

Why I mentioned this? That we have got a state of absorption for the mind and that can be effective in any kind of circumstances and challenges. If anybody can draw a conclusion from this sleep, it is that as the mind is agitated and outward, it can also be peaceful and inward. It is this inwardness and peacefulness that we are trying to develop as an art, as an achievement by spirituality. Vasishtha discusses the subject in the forty-ninth chapter in such a manner that I thought somebody should know about it. At least a few people should know that such elevated scientific discussions are there. Vasishtha would not leave the subject. He started discussing it in a threadbare manner.

At one point He says, there is no object at all! Before that he says the entire grossness and solidity that the world appears to present is not a reality; it is only a myth. I am sure that none of you will agree with this proposition but you have to. Why, because the entire world is perceived only in the wakefulness and this wakefulness is whose? It is your wakefulness. Are you all the wakefulness? No, you are sleepiness also, you are dreamfulness also. Wakefulness cannot claim the absolute life of ours. As is waking, so is our dream, so is our sleep. For every wakefulness, sleep preceded and sleep succeeded. So tell me whether wakefulness is the truth or sleep is the truth.

And in sleep we slip into dream and in dream we produce another wakefulness. That wakefulness is completely authored by the mind you have no doubt. But here, when you are wakeful, you see so many objects outside and you are inclined to think and argue that these objects are independent of you, they are not your creation. That is the peculiar illusion that our wakefulness and consciousness bring about.

Okay, accepting that the objective world is there, tell me, who tells you that the objective world is there and where are you experiencing it? You are experiencing it within your body, in the consciousness or mind. Do you think mind is gross? No. Is consciousness gross? Certainly not! Are they not inward? Yes, absolutely. If the inward mind and inward consciousness alone glimpses the objects and the world that you are perceiving and referring to is the world that your mind and consciousness experience within the body, can within the body gross objects be there? Certainly not. Can the expanse of the world be within the body? No. But still how the mind within the body is able to imprint the world and show it you?

You see a mountain, you see the sea, you see the space expanse. All of them are experienced within your body. The body is limited. Within the limited body, there cannot be the expanses and solid structures like the mountain, the planets, the sea, space etc. Now you tell me, so far as your experience is concerned, are the solid objects which you refer to, are they really solid or are they imprints which your inner mind, subtle mind produces in itself? If the subtle mind produces gross objects, can the gross objects be really there or gross objects are more an idea created by the mind than a fact existing around you?

Vasishtha continues to discuss and he makes you understand that wakefulness along with all the objects disappear in sleep. No existence and no experience is ever found or reported. From where the wakefulness and objects arise? So the whole scenario is within the body. Because it is within the body, the solidity we are attributing to objects can never be true! Whether it is true or wrong, this is to be decided by the buddhi. So ask the buddhi to decide the solidity you perceive within the body and experience there, can it be a fact. Buddhi will say no.

Then what is a fact? He says the fact is neither solid neither objective nor subjective. The subject part will be there only in relation to an object. When you sleep, is there any distinction between subject and object? No, no object is felt. Naturally, the relative subject will not be there. The subject-object distinctions totally disappear in sleep. Like they are disappearing in sleep, in wakefulness also when you start spiritually introspecting over the truth of substances, there comes a time when the solidity and solid objects completely prove fallacious. Once it is fallacious, it will also disappear within your own mind.

When the objects disappear, the subject has no place and purpose. So the subject also becomes extinct. Now what survives is neither a subject nor an object. Maximum you can say the subject-object distinctions arise from that transcendental level. So he says, in the transcendental level which you experience, you can experience, there is neither the world nor the soul different from it, neither the body nor the soul different from it, neither the object nor the subject different from it.

All distinctions, references, perceptions, experiences, imaginations, concepts, everything simply takes to heels and what survives is neither ‘is’, nor ‘is not’. What is this wonderful proposition and what is this discussion! I am sometimes wondering, hundred percent of what I have said is experiential, experiential, experiential. If you can work upon the one proposition, that all the objects you see are experienced in the mind and mind being subtle and within the body, it cannot have a presence which is besides the boundaries of the body. And a solid object cannot be inserted into the body proper. So where is this solidity which you nevertheless perceive? That solidity is only conceptual or imaginary or visionary.

Our mind can using its imagination produce anything! So it is producing the objectivity, producing the extensiveness and producing the solidity and other things. In reality, there cannot be anything solid at all because you are experiencing it within your body in the mind and that is the ground for your knowledge, analysis, finding, everything. So if you are banking upon your mind for all your life experiences, the mind tells you very clearly solidity is not factual, liquidity is not factual, gaseousness is not factual, the three dimensions are not factual. What is factual is something that precedes and succeeds these, where neither is existence nor is non-existence. This is what Rigveda sang:

At that time, there was nothing called ‘sat’ nor ‘asat’ but something different from both.

Nachiketas asked Yama:

“My dear Yama, tell me, I don’t want to hear anything else. My primary question was whether there is anything called soul surviving death. Now I am raising a question in connection with the same enquiry. What is that?

Anyatra dharmād-anyatrādharmād - different from dharma and adharma, the differentiations, Anyatrāsmāt-kṛtākṛtāt - different from the created and uncreated,

Anyatra bhūtācca bhavyāccha - different from past and future.

If you see and know anything, please tell me. Otherwise close your mouth and go”.

My dear souls, can you imagine the gravity of this question? A little boy from earth stands before the mighty cause of death, Yamadharmarāja and he flings this question at Him.

अन्यत्र धर्मादन्यत्राधर्मादन्यत्रास्मात्कृताकृतात्‌।
अन्यत्र भूताच्च भव्याच्च यत्तत्पश्यसि तद्वद ॥

“If you see anything, then speak, not otherwise.”

Somehow your Swamiji is very much caught up by this consciousness proposition. When I was in Calcutta, I happened to read about Avastātraya particularly Mandukya Karika where Gaudapāda ends up the whole narration by a statement.

Na kaschit-jāyate jīvaḥ - No jīvaḥ is ever born.

Sambhavo’sya na vidyate - this creation has never come into existence.

Etat-tad-uttamam satyam - this is the most pronounced truth.

Yatra kinchin-na jāyate - where anything like birth never takes place.

Na nirodho - there is no dissolution, na chotpattih - no creation, na baddho - none bound, na cha sādhakah - nobody striving for liberation, Na mumukshuh - no seeker of liberation, na vai mukta - none liberated, ityeshā paramārthatā - this is the 'SUPREME TRUTH'.

I read it when I was perhaps in my twenties or just before that. It was so inspiring, wholesome and appealing to me that I had no resistance against this proposition or reluctance also to accept it. I was wondering, “Is this the Supreme Truth? Is this the way a seeker, a sādhaka comes to feel at the end of his proposition or at the end of his sādhanā? Wonderful! wonderful!”, I thought. See what Vasishtha drives home to the young boy, prince of sixteen years old.

The whole discussion is a very scientific discussion. Scientific discussion where just like our judiciary people, they don’t bring telescope and microscope, they only see the Court presence, they listen to whatever is said by the witnesses, by the lawyers and they come to conclusions. They come to conclusions about the death of people, the murder of people, things which they have never seen. They come with a verdict which is final in the matter of the world. Can you imagine?

So our intelligence and mind have got such a paramount place in our life. The intelligence does not need any objective instrumentation in order to arrive at a finding especially with regard to the world, its creation etc. because all these depend upon the three states of ours. So it is called Avastātraya philosophy. I wanted to call it not existentialism but experientialism. Whether the objects can be brought about by the mind if you ask, the answer is ‘yes’. It can be brought about, it is brought about by the mind and dream is a conclusive proof for it. Now think.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.