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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
I have been emphasizing for quite some days or weeks or even months, the importance of being able to understand the mind and handle the mind. I would like you to know that you are primarily and ultimately a mental being. When I say this, I am doubtful whether you understand the message.
“Swamiji, how do you say we are a mental being?” Even the speech that you deliver, it is done by the tongue, the mouth and the body. I don’t deny it. We are born in and through a body and we live in the same way. It is looking into the body that we say a person is dead. So, embodiment or life in this world is solely in and through the body. I don’t deny it. But please listen to me, what I am saying.
Do you have a living body or a dead body? Obviously you have a living body. What makes the body alive? In the whole of our embodiment, in the whole of our embodiment, can you at any point of time miss the enlivening factor in the body? The body has to be made alive. What makes the body alive? So, though we are living in a body, understand what lives in the body is different from the body. That is where the mind comes. Only as long as the mind is at work, it is able to function with memory, with sensibility, with responses, with thoughts and emotions, our life is worth living. So, the mind part of your embodiment is very, very crucial and indispensable. This is what I want you to understand.
If you are primarily a mental being, are you conscious of it and what do you do to spend some time with your mind? What we call meditation is important because we are a mind being. Throughout the day, you are functional with the body, with the senses, either you are acting or you are interacting. If at all you think, you think as a part of your activity and interactions. Leaving all these things, at least for half an hour minimum, you should sit in your room, closing the doors and windows, alone and make the body still and inactive, close your eyes and then commune with your mind.
Just find out, where is the thought process arising? What exactly is the thing which you call "thought"? What sources it? Where does it exist? Where is it present and where does it go? One thought after the other arises in you. This much we are able to understand. When so many thoughts arise in your mind, should you not know how the thought process is, what is its genesis, what is its source, what is its terminus?
In this way if you are able to sit in a place, and you commune and interact with your own mind, life completely changes. Meditation becomes crucial, indispensable in life only because, through meditation alone you will be aware of your mind and what all the mind does. Otherwise we are aware of only the body and only our actions and interactions done sensorily. In the whole of this sensory life, action and interaction, what plays the fundamental and ultimate role is the mind. Every action is thought of, designed by the mind. It is initiated by the mind by employing the respective organs and the history of the action, the result and outcome of the action, they are also registered and kept by the mind.
At what point of time do you get distanced from the mind, can you tell me? My mouth produces words, one after the other, one after the other, one after the other. Do you think the tongue can produce all these words? After all, the tongue is something inert, it is only a piece of flesh with various biological processes, organs, nerves etc. But it cannot produce intelligent sounds, ideas. So, besides the tongue, our mind is constantly behind every word, letter, sentence, paragraph, essays, etc.
When I close my eyes, even as I am talking to you, I become still physically. Instantly I feel a fullness in my system. That fullness is experiential, something in the form of a radiance. A radiance, radiation, maybe sometimes it is like a buoyancy. I am able to understand that something in me senses the body from head to foot. Obviously that is not the body. When you heat an iron rod, the iron rod is generally black, solid and non-brilliant. But when I pass fire into it, fire into it, it becomes red hot and whatever is the property of fire namely heat and brilliance, what was earlier black and inert, now becomes hot and radiant. Tell me, is it only the iron rod or something different in the way of heat and brilliance, the fire? Exactly in the same manner, your body is the iron rod and it is heated by the presence inside, call it consciousness, the soul or God.
I would like you to simply sit, sit sit, close your eyes, interlock your fingers, put them on your lap and, and, and feel your body. When you start feeling the body from head to foot, you feel "I am feeling the body", but actually you are feeling the inner presence. This can be done only when you meditate, means remain still, inactive but attentive to the inner processes. What are the inner processes? Thought, feeling, emotion, doubt, enquiry, knowledge, memory. All these are going on within the body and there is a source for all of them. That is what you call the mind, that is what you call the consciousness, the sentience, that is what you call the soul and God.
So, this meditative stillness is very, very important. In meditation, the attention to what is present inside the body is fulcramatic. Unfortunately people don’t know, we are grown with going to the temple, chanting the mantras, chanting shlokas and all that. Actually they are all good. They fill your mind and the body with good, good, goodness, purity and more and more sensitivity. So, the long and short of what I say is, you should sit in a place, closing your eyes, still, and try to feel the presence inside, the presence inside, the presence inside. The purpose of meditation is this. Only by meditation you become more and more conscious of your mentalness, mindfulness.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
