Some Thoughts on Mind

[Guest guest]

Greeting Murthygaru:

 

My mind enjoyed your random thoughts from your mind with the focus on

the right question -

"What is mind made up of? What is the mind and how does it function?"

My mind agrees with your mind on the importance of understanding the

role of mind in Vedanta. Both our minds have the tendency to simplify

the complexity in order to avoid confusions! But unfortunately, mind has

its own limitations. Never mind, this does not mean that we shouldn't

make an honest attempt!

 

Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswathi (Dr.N. Prahalada Sastry) from

Vishakapatnam, Andhra Pradesh referred to as Guruji by his followers has

given some beautiful explanations. Guruji gave a speech on Meditations

at Sri Rajarajeswari Peetam, Rochester NY on July 18th 1996. An

article based on his speech has been made available at the WEB SITE:

http://www.srividya.org/Guruji/talk.html

 

I find his speech quite powerful and his explanation is quite extensive

and interesting. This is one of the most beautiful explanation for the

role of meditation for the confused minds. I strongly recommend

Murthygaru to make use of this article during his presentation. I take

this opportunity to congratulate Murthygaru for a fine article and thank

him for sharing his view points.

 

Ram Chandran

 

 

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Everyone of us exists in two modes, one which I call a localized mode

and one which I call a diffused mode. In the localized mode of our

existence we are identifying ourselves with our body, mind or intellect.

This is the limited state of our existence. The non-localized, diffused,

spread-out form of our existence,consists of our consciousness pervading

all life forms - plant, animal, bird, the sun, the skies, the stars...

everywhere. There you are a witness to all these things and you are yet

none of these things. The relationship between these two modes is like

that between a circle and its center. You cannot have a circle without

its starting point, the center. The center is within the circle, it is

not attached to the circle. Just like when you a sphere through the

center, the center is unchanging and the circle is always changing. The

center has to remain fixed. If the center is moving, the circle cannot

be formed. There has to be a center. You have to be centered on

yourself. We need both these states of our existence to discover our

roots, our inner most desires, the purpose of our lives and to be able

to express the purpose of our lives through our daily lives.

You need the non-local diffused mode where you are not your body, you

are not your mind, you are not your intellect, but you are the whole,

you have spread yourself, your conscious is part of the entire universe.

You have to get in that state a few times a day. Maybe three times a

day. If time does not permit, at least two times a day. It is in the

silence of the mind that God is known. This has been called

sandhyavandhanam : three times a day you have to take the shakthi up

into a transcendental state and be there for sometime. In the

delocalized mode of your functioning, the importance is not on the

content of information, but on the container of the information. It's

not how much you know that matters, but how much you can forget. It is

not subject to logical reasoning, not even to emotions. It's beyond

reasoning and emotions. And you have to reach that state.

I'd like to say a few words about how to access this state, what is

called samadhi. You have to make a commitment in your lives to spend 15

to 20 minutes in the morning and 15 to 20 minutes in the evening doing

this. Now, you may ask, why do you want us to do this ? We have already

so many pressures at work. Why should we do this? What do we gain by

doing this? What is in it for me?

First of all, we need proof that we need to do something. Let me give

you that proof. Let's suppose there is a school, an elementary school,

and there is a teacher at the blackboard. The history teacher comes and

writes a few lines there. He's telling the story of the Ramayana. He

says, "Once there was a king called Dasaratha", and writes "Dasaratha"

there. "... and he had four sons named Rama, Lakshmana, Bharatha and

Shatrugna", he continues, and writes their names on the board as well.

After a little more story-telling, the class is over. Then the

mathematics teacher comes, and he writes the equation (a+b)^2 = a^2 +

b^2 + 2ab on the board and he explains the meaning of this and he goes

away. The student, when he goes back home, has the following information

in his mind: Dasaratha = (a+b)^2, Rama=a^2, Lakshmana =b^2, Bharatha =

2ab, and Shatrugna is nothing.

It is not only the chalk piece that puts the information in your mind

that is important, but also the duster. If you do not clean your mind of

the information you have received, the selected information that's going

to get into the mind gets mixed up and there is lot of confusion in your

mind. If we do not let our minds be cleared at least twice a day, then

we cannot have clear perception. Which is more important, the chalk

piece or the duster? Without the chalk piece you are stupid, without the

duster you are confused. You need both. You need the chalk piece, the

world, which writes the information on your mind and you have to be able

to clear it also.The clearing process of the conscious part of the mind

and being able to remain thoughtless for some time is the duster. We

need both these things. This is one aspect. The other aspect is that

once you are really able to achieve silence of the mind, stop all the

dialogues, all the monologues in your mind, then you enter a state

called yoga : Yogah cittabuddih nirogah.

When all the manifestations of the mind, the fluctuations of the mind

are subdued then your body identification is gone; when you are in the

witness state and only the subject remains, the object has merged into

the subject. The object is not there, because the subject has become the

object. We are seeing the world and we have become the world and you

stop seeing yourself. That is the state which is called manolaya - where

you have eliminated your mind. You have got to try to reach that state,

three times a day preferably. If you can manage a wink at the office,

nothing like that. If you can't, at least do it twice, once in the

morning and once in the evening. It is necessary in this day of high

tension living, high pressure work; you need this relaxation process.

What are the steps that lead to the relaxation of the mind? I think

there are basically four steps involved. If we eat heavily and then sit

down for meditation, what happens? We sleep like Kumbakarna. Kumbakarna

is a guy who sleeps for six months continuously. If you are totally

hungry, with the burning sensation in the stomach, you can't sit and

meditate. So a slight hunger should be there, but not too much.

If your mind is totally fresh, you have just woken up from sleep, and

you want to sit for meditation, the mind wants to think. It has finished

it's sleep. It wants to become active. That doesn't create the slope

that is necessary for the mind to settle down into a thoughtless state.

So, if you are totally fresh, again, it is a conducive state for

meditation. The second important step is that as you should have a

little hunger, you should have a little tiredness also. When your body

is tired and your mind is tired, the mind wants to stop thinking and

start relaxing. This will set up a small slope in the mind and it starts

gently rolling down. If you take a bottle, fill it with water and put

some mud in it and shake it well and let it stand, it will start

settling down. The settling down is because the mind has naturally a

tendency to be lazy. So you try to go into a state of non thinking in a

natural gradient.

But what happens is that when you sit for meditation, some kind of

disturbance or the other, some trigger comes. A little sound, and you

start analyzing what that sound is. It starts a train of thought. So

when you have these trains of thought, it's like a ball that is rolling

down the slope of a hill comes across an obstacle. It stops there. It

doesn't roll down further. Or sometimes the obstacle is such that it

pushes it up. So, what do you have to do?

Have you observed that no thought has never remained all the time with

you? Is there any thought that has remained forever with you? No, not a

single thought. All thoughts come, they are born, they grow, and they

die in your mind. The nature of the obstacles in your thoughtless state

are the thoughts. If you observe that the thoughts are temporary in

nature, they will never stay for long, they cannot. The mind has a

natural tendency to kill them. What do you have to do? Remain a passive

witness to the thought, don't get involved with the thought. Don't

invite the thought, put it on a pedestal and do puja like you do to

Devi. Nor do you ask the thought to go away. If you push it away, you

are working with the emotion of the thought. "This is a bad thought, I

should not be having it". Why do these thoughts come to me when I am

trying to clear my mind? I should have only good thoughts, not bad

thoughts". So, suspend your judgment of these thoughts. Your judgment

that this is good or bad, this is what I should have, this is what I

should not have, is a thought. If I think it is a good idea, then I want

to hang on to it, if I think it is a bad idea, I want to push it away

from me. Thoughts are not the problem, your judgment of your thoughts

is. If you judge not, then you are in a passive state of mind, a witness

state of mind. A witness is not affected. If my name is Sastry, I can

witness this guy Sastry having this thought, that's not me, I am

witnessing this fellow having this thought. Take yourself a little away

from yourself. Detach yourself a little. And without judgment, let the

thought come, let it stay as long as it wants, let it go if it wants to.

Let a new thought come, let it go.

We talked about three aspects. The first is a little hunger, then a

little tiredness to set the slope of the mind. And the obstacles in the

way of reaching the settling of the mind are the judgment of the

thoughts and therefore you remain a witness to the thoughts, not judging

them.

There is one more important thing. This is the most important. We accept

or we say we accept God. But we do not accept His creation. We start

asking, "If there is a God then why in the name of Heaven does He create

all this misery, all these pressures ? Why should He reward the impious

and why should He punish the virtuous? Why should He allow those hapless

220 people to die in the plane crash? He doesn't know how to make the

world !"

We are not accepting His creation for what it is. They say there are

three pivots for a stable mind : bhakthi, gnana and vairagya. Bhakthi is

devotion, Gnana means knowledge and vairagya means detachment. In my

opinion, bhakthi and vairagya are not different from each other. They

are one and the same. Being able to accept God's creation, good or bad,

whatever it is, as being perfect, that is surrender to God. We thank God

that we receive gifts from Him. We ridicule God when we receive

brickbats from Him. We should be able to thank Him both when we are in

misery and when we are in pleasure.This equanimity is surrender to God's

will. Not surrendering to God's will is criticizing it, and saying, "If

only I had the power I would create a better world." What kind of a

world will I create? I will create a blank white paper. Well, no color,

no contrast, everything is fine...there's no picture there. God is the

picture of this world. God is His creation. God is the earth, He is the

sorrow, He is the misery, He is the pleasure, He is the pain. He is

everything. So accepting God is accepting God's creation also. What does

this imply that applies to meditation?

Sometimes the meditation goes wonderfully, absolutely no problems, I'm

in seventh heaven, walking on the rainbows, with the Mother leading me

with Her little finger and showing me different worlds. They are singing

for me, they are dancing for me - an aesthetic state of union with God.

And sometimes nothing happens. It is just routine. Where does boredom

come from? Because you have an expectation that something is going to

happen, and when that something does not happen, then you are bored.

It's not helping you, and you lose interest in the meditation. So you

have to understand that expectation is the cause for the disappointment.

Expectation is the cause of the boredom. So what is it that you have to

do ? You should have no expectations whatsoever about how the meditation

is going to proceed. If you have no expectations, no disappointments. If

you have expectations, you will have disappointments.

So, to reach that thoughtless state of the mind, spend about 20 minutes

in the morning and in the evening. I am not asking you to do mantra

japa. Mantra japa is a thought. That is also an addiction; you are going

to get rid of it one day. You may use it for sometime, but then when the

mind starts getting cleared, you have to let go of that too. A little

tiredness, a little hunger, non-expectation of the results and being a

witness to your thoughts. These are the four essential conditions that

are necessary for settling the mind down to a quiet state. All that is

needed is that your mind settles down to a quiet state and once you have

learnt the trick of how to go about doing this, it comes naturally to

you. This is the duster which you have got to apply once in the morning

and once in the evening. You choose your time. But try to see if you can

stick to the same time everyday because it builds up a habit. Try to see

if you can create an environment around yourself where not much of

external disturbance is present. Try to see that you are not over full

or over eaten, try to be comfortable. Take a simple posture where you

can forget your body, don't contort yourself into a position which you

cannot hold for any length of time without discomfort. If you are used

to yogasanas, that's a different story. But otherwise what you do is

sukhasana : whatever asana, whatever posture is convenient for you,

where your body doesn't keep hurting you and bringing you back to your

body consciousness. What you are trying to do is forget the body, forget

the mind. But not going to sleep.

So, this is called Sandhyavandhanam. There are several mantras we

know...there is pancadashi the 15 letter mantra, shodashi the 28 letter

mantra, then there is balatripurasundari shadakshari - aim kleem souh

souh kleem aim, and then you have hamsa - soham mantra and the shuddha

pranavam AUM. Then there are the mahavakyas. And beyond all these

things, there is the silence of the mind. There you don't have Her to

hold on to, the sastras say niralamba margah . There is no support,

supportless you have got to be. Any kind of support that you try to hang

on to does not give you independence. If you are seeking any kind of

support, whether it is the guru, whether it is the mantra or whether it

is an expectation, nothing, you have got to let go of everything. You

have to be yourself, without expectations, and try to remain in that

state. All these rituals that we do are to help us to reach a state of

mind where it is balanced.

Having practised this, I have known that it is in that state that

clarity of perception comes. It is in that state that universal love

springs forth in your heart. It is in that state that you are able to

feel the oneness with entire universe. It is in that state that you are

at the bottom of the ocean of awareness. There you see the oneness, not

the diversity. It is in that state that you start feeling that when you

give to somebody, you not giving to somebody else, you are giving to

myself. In that state you will know for certain, that when I improve

myself, I am improving the world around me. It is in that state you will

understand that if I am helping myself, I am helping the world. We have

an equation - I am You - that is established in that state of non

localized mode of existence.

We are very much used to the localized mode of existence and we've

forgotten that we can exist in the other mode. In physics, we have got

what is called the quantum phenomenon. There is the particle mode of

existence and there is the wave mode of existence. This applies to you.

Your mind is a quantum phenomenon. It knows of no distance nor time, it

knows of no path, it jumps from this to that without being in the

intermediate state of time or space. In the classical model, if I want

to go from Rochester to New York, we can put the sentries on the way, at

Syracuse, at Troy, Albany and then New York. And you can say, he has

just crossed Syracuse, now he has crossed Troy, now he has crossed

Albany before getting to New York. In quantum mode of travel, this does

not happen. What happens is that you disappear here and you appear

there. That's how the mind functions. The mind being a quantum

phenomenon, the classical model of continuous path does not have to

apply. The mind being a quantum phenomenon, it can disappear being an

individual, become a wave, dematerialise here and materialize there.

You've got to learn how to be a particle, you've got to learn how to be

a wave. We have learned how to be a particle throughout our lives, what

we have to learn is how to become a wave. So I hope that you will

practise this, and perhaps I can talk about this again. I've got

tomorrow and I've got, maybe the Guru pournami day.

We'll meet again. Thank you for listening to me patiently. God Bless

You.

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