June 2015
Concentrating on me, I give the power of discrimination and dispel ignorance with the light of wisdom- B’Gita – Ch. 10
Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond it.
The art of meditation is the art of shifting the focus of attention to ever-subtler levels, without losing one’s grip on the levels left behind. Progressively expanding conscious ‘wakefulness’, effectively having sleep and distraction under control.
In a mindful state of objective consciousness, discriminating reality in the here and now, from what is not, one begins with the consciously obvious: social circumstances, customs and habits; physical surroundings, the posture and the breathing of the body; the senses, their sensations and perceptions; the mind, its thoughts and feelings; until the entire mechanism of personality is grasped and firmly held.
The final stage of meditation is reached when the sense of identity goes beyond the conscious identity -‘I-am-so-and-so’, beyond ‘so-I-am’, beyond ‘I-am-the-witness-only’, beyond ‘there-is’, beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being; pure choiceless awareness.
Not by power, study, austerity or gifts, but by devotion am I seen – B’Gita – Ch. 11
At the end of your meditation all is known directly, no proofs whatsoever are required. Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity; the eternal now.
Definitions and description have their place as useful incentives for further search, but you must go beyond them into what is indefinable and indescribable, except in negative terms… not this, not that. After all even universality and eternity are mere concepts; the opposites of being place-and-time-bound.
Reality is not a concept, nor a manifestation of a concept. It is nothing to do with concepts. Concern yourself with your mind; let impurities and distortions dissolve in the light of attention. Once you have had the taste of your own self you will find it everywhere and at all times. Once you know it, you will never lose it; it was never lost, only hidden in ignorance.
You must give your heart and mind to brooding over the ‘I am’, what it is, how it is. Follow it to its source, its life, its meaning. It is very much like digging a well. You reject all that is not water, till you reach the life-giving spring. Let the light of eternal, unchanging self be revealed as all that is not is dissolved through quiet, persistent, choiceless attention.
You will know you are moving in the right direction by your progress in intentness, in clarity and devotion to the task.
The limited only is perfectible. The unlimited is already perfect. You are perfect, only you don’t know it. Learn to know yourself and you will discover wonders. All you need is already within you, only you must approach your-self with reverence and love.
Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your-self. Make love of your-self perfect, deny yourself nothing – give your-self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.
Changeless reality is beyond mind and its contents. To go beyond you must let your attention turn away from all other interests. All directions are within the mind. You are not being asked to look in a particular direction. Just look beyond all that happens and allow the feeling ‘I am’ as it arises. The ‘I am’ is not a direction. It is the negation of all direction. Ultimately even the ‘I am’ will go, for you need not keep on asserting what is obvious. Bringing the mind to the feeling ‘I am’ merely helps the mind to go beyond everything else.
When the mind has let go of its preoccupations, it becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you will find that it is permeated with a light and a love you have never consciously known, and yet you recognise it at once as your own nature. Once you pass through this experience, you will never be the same person again. The unruly mind may break its peace and obliterate its vision, but it is bound to return provided the effort is sustained until all the bonds are broken, delusions and attachments end and life becomes supremely concentrated on the present.
As a beginner, certain formalised meditations, or prayers may be good for you. But for a seeker for reality there is only one meditation: to hold on to ‘what is, here, now, present, and with rigorous attention reveal what is not, and you will no longer be lost in the world of thoughts and distractions.
You can learn to do this by first holding on to the present, and letting thoughts flow and watching them. Just pay attention, and the very act of observation reveals their false grip and frees the mind into the calm sea of reality. Once the mind is quiet, just hold still, here and now. Don’t get bored with peace, be in it; go deeper into it. When new thoughts arise, experiment anew. Don’t go by past experience. Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. With persistent patience, the state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognise it.
Be satisfied with watching the flow of your life; if your watchfulness is deep and steady, ever turned towards the here and now, it will gradually move upstream to the source, till suddenly it becomes the source. Put your awareness to work, the ‘I am’ that you know you are, not your mind. The mind is not the right instrument for this task.
Timeless awareness can be reached only by focussed attention in the here and now, breaking the bindings of consciousness; as a chick breaks its shell to be free. Your body and your mind are both subject to time; only awareness is timeless, even in the now. In awareness you are facing facts and awareness is fond of facts.
As the quiet mind arises, it is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once the mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so self-awareness affects changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part.
Understand that you are destined for enlightenment. Co-operate with your destiny, don’t go against it, and don’t thwart it. Allow it to fulfil itself. All you have to do is pay attention to all that appears here and now; obstacles created by the mind. Love of self is natures will, guide, and compulsion. It cannot fail.
The fact of dwelling on the ‘I Am’ is the key. The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed. After all, what prevents insight into one’s true nature is the weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to ignore the subtle and focus the gross only. When you follow this advice and try to keep your mind on the notion of ‘I am’ only, you become fully aware of your mind and its vagaries.
Awareness, being lucid harmony in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance. This change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from inadvertence to awareness.
Concentrating on acquired ideas will not help you. Concentrating on the idea, for example of ‘a table’ is effective as an exercise in concentration, but it will not take you beyond the idea of a table. You are not interested in tables, you want to know yourself. For this keep steadily in the focus of consciousness the only clue you have: your certainty of being. Be with it, ponder over it, delve deeply into it till the shell of ignorance breaks open and you emerge into the realm of reality.
As the mind becomes quiet, undisturbed, the wisdom and the power will come on their own. You need hot hanker. Wait in silence of the heart and mind. It is very simple; pay attention here and now, the quiet will find you but willingness is rare. Let go of ambition; the least desire, exposed, vulnerable, unprotected, uncertain and alone completely open to and welcoming life as it happens, without the selfish conviction that all must yield you pleasure or profit, material or so-called spiritual.
Yes, simple, not easy. We are so programmed for a life of acquisition, turning back the way we came – no one says it is easy.
Do not try to see how it is done. If you knew how to do it you would not do it. Abandon every support; hold on to the blind sense of being. This is enough. Just turn away from the pull of distractions, let things come and go. Desires and thoughts are also things.
Since immemorial time the dust of events was covering the clear mirror of your mind, so that only memories you could see. Brush off the dust before it has time to settle; this will lay bare the old layers until the true nature of your mind is discovered. It is all very simple; be earnest and patient, that is all. Dispassion, detachment, freedom from desire and fear, from all self-concern, mere awareness – free from memory and expectation – this is the state of mind through which discovery will happen. After all, liberation is but the freedom to discover.
Silence is the main factor that makes us progress. In peace and silence you grow. Attend only to the sense “I am”. No need to follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happens, just go beyond and remain with the sense “I am”, it may look too simple, even crude. Obedience is a powerful solvent of all desires and fears. Just go beyond all that occupies the mind; do whatever work you have to complete; keep empty, keep available, and resist what comes uninvited. In the end to reach a state of non-grasping, of joyful non attachment, of inner ease and freedom indescribable, yet wonderfully real.
None compels you to Meditate 16 hours per day, unless you feel like doing so. It is just a way of telling you to remain with yourself. The Guru will wait but the mind is impatient. You do not need to do violence to yourself.
Of course there is a way that is neither violent, nor sterile yet supremely effective. Just look at yourself as you are, see yourself as you are, accept yourself as you are and go ever deeper into what you are. Persistent, gentle attention will be your guide. Violence and non-violence describe your attitude to others; the self in relation to itself is neither violet nor non-violent, it is neither aware nor unaware of itself. If it knows itself, all it does will be right; if it does not, all it does is gambling with hell, with the poorest of odds.
To know yourself as you are – before the mind, ‘I am’, is not a thought in the mind; the mind happens to me, I do not happen to the mind. And since time and space are in the mind I am beyond time and space, eternal and omnipresent.
To the realised man, he exists everywhere and at all times. To him it is as obvious as the freedom of movement is to you. Imagine a tree asking a monkey: ‘Do you seriously mean that you can move from place to place?’ And the monkey saying: ‘Yes I do’.
The world as it is, is the greatest miracle. Of what use are small miracles when the greatest miracle of all is happening all the time? Whatever you see, it is always your own being that you see. Seek within, go ever deeper into yourself. There is neither violence nor non-violence in self-discovery. The destruction of the false is not violence. It simply dissolves in the light of truth.
To find the immutable and blissful, the mutable and painful must let go of it grip. You are concerned with your own happiness; there is no such thing. Happiness is never your own, it is where the ‘I’ is not. You have only to reach out beyond yourself, and you will find it.
Do not worry about your worries – just be. Do not try to be quiet; do not make being quiet into a task to be performed. Don’t be restless about being quiet, miserable about being happy. Just be aware that you are and remain aware – don’t say: yes I am, what next? There is no ‘next’ in ‘I am’. It is a timeless state.
Those who keep their minds on me, eternal, indestructible, indefinable with unwavering faith and work for the welfare of all, will find me – B’Gita: Ch. 12
Keep the ‘I am’ in the focus of awareness, remember that you are, watch yourself ceaselessly and the unconscious knowing will flow into the conscious without any special effort on your part. Desires and fears of body and mind, social conditioning and inhibitions are blocking and preventing its free interplay with the conscious. Once free to mingle, the two become one and the one becomes all. The person merges into the witness, the witness into awareness, awareness into pure being, yet identity is not lost, only its limitations are lost. It is transfigured for the real Self, your eternal friend and guide.
You cannot approach it in worship. No external activity can reach the inner self; worship and prayers remain on the surface only; to go deeper meditation is essential, the striving to go beyond the states of sleep, dream and waking. In the beginning the attempts are irregular, then they return more often, become regular, then continuous and intense, until all the obstacles are conquered.
The word Immutable, which you are, is the bridge. Remember it, think of it, explore it, go round it, look at it from all directions, and dive into it with earnest perseverance. Endure all delays and disappointments till suddenly the mind turns round, away from the word, towards the reality beyond the word. It is like trying to find a person knowing his name only. A day comes when your enquiries bring you to him and the name becomes reality. Words are valuable, for between the word and its meaning there is a link and if one investigates the word assiduously one crosses beyond the concept into the experience at the root of it.
As a matter of fact, repeated attempt to go beyond words is what is called meditation. It is but a persistent attempt to cross over from the verbal to the non-verbal. The task seems hopeless until suddenly all becomes clear and simple and so wonderfully easy. But, as long as you are interested in your present way of living and acquisition, you will shirk from the final leap into the unknown.
You will notice yourself becoming alertly unconscious. It is something akin to deep sleep, yet aware all the same; a sort of wakeful sleep. The main thing is the freedom from negative emotions – desire, fear etc., the ‘enemies’ of the mind. Once the mind is free of them, the rest will come easily. Just as cloth kept in soap water will become clean, so will the mind get purified in the stream of pure, unattached awareness. When you sit quiet and watch yourself, all kinds of things may come to the surface. Do nothing about them, don’t react to them; as they have come so will they float away… by themselves. All that matters is mindfulness, total awareness of oneself or rather of one’s mind.
As for reality, how can you talk of witnessing the real? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, and the conditioned. To go beyond we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence. All things depend on consciousness and consciousness depends on the witness.
How can there be knowledge of the conditioned without the unconditioned? There must be a source from which all this flows, a foundation on which all stands. Self-realisation flows from the knowledge of one’s conditioning, and the awareness that the infinite variety of conditions depends on our infinite ability to be conditioned, giving rise to variety. To the conditioned mind the unconditioned appears as the totality as well as the absence of everything. Neither can be directly experienced, but this does not make it non-existent.
To help you to become true, the words ‘What I see as me, is not I’ contains all you need for liberation. Ponder over it, go into it deeply, go to the root of it; it will operate. The power is in the word, not in the person.
A person comes into being as a shadow appears when light is intercepted by the body, so does the person arise when pure self-awareness is obstructed by the ‘I am-the-body’, idea. And as the shadow changes shape and position according to the lay of the land, so does the persona appear to rejoice and suffer, rest and toil, find and lose according to the pattern of destiny.
When the body is no more, the person disappears completely without return, only the witness remains and the great Unknown. The witness is that which says ‘I know’. The person says ‘I do’. Now, to say ‘I know’ is not untrue – it is merely limited. But to say ‘I do’ is altogether false, because there is nobody who does; all happens by itself, including the idea of being a doer.
Often people come with their body, brain and minds so mishandled, perverted and weak, that the state of formless, choiceless attention is beyond them. In such cases, some simpler token of earnestness is appropriate. The repetition of a mantra or gazing at a picture will prepare their body and mind for a deeper and more direct search. After all, it is earnestness that is indispensable, the crucial factor. Our minds must be filled to the brim with earnestness, which is but love in action. For nothing can be done without love.
Before you can accept the universal, you must accept yourself, which is even more frightening. The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further. Look at the being you believe you are and remember – you are not what you see. ‘This I am not – what am I?’ is the movement of self-enquiry. There are no other means to liberation, all means delay.
Information is not enough. You may know the theory, but without the actual experience of yourself as the impersonal and unqualified centre of being, love and bliss, mere verbal knowledge is sterile. Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is ‘try’. Allot enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality, its addictions and obsessions.
Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now.
Just see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of release and freedom. After all, you are what you are every moment of your life, but you are never conscious of it, except, maybe, at the point of wakening from sleep.
All you need is to be aware of being, not as a verbal statement, but as an ever-present fact. The awareness that you are will open your eyes to what you are. It is all very simple. First of all, establish constant contact with your-self; be with yourself all the time. Into self-awareness all blessings flow. Begin as a centre of observation, deliberate cognisance, and grow into a centre of love in action. ‘I am’ is a tiny seed, which will grow into a mighty tree- quite naturally, without a trace of effort.
This ‘natural’ yoga is disconcertingly simple – the mind, which is all-becoming, must recognise and penetrate its own being, not as being this or that, here or there, then or now, but just timeless being. To delve into the sense of ‘I’ – so real and vital – in order to reach its source is the core of this Yoga. Not being continuous, the sense of ‘I’ must have a source from which it flows and to which it returns.
This timeless source of conscious being is what Nisargadatta Maharaj calls the self-nature, self-being, ‘swarupa’.
Only those devoted to the self can surmount the manifested illusion- B’Gita – Ch. 7
This dwelling on the sense ‘I am’ is the simple, easy and natural Yoga. There is no secrecy in it and no dependence; no preparation is required and no initiation. Whoever is puzzled by his very existence as a conscious being and earnestly wants to find his own source, can grasp the ever present sense of ‘I am’ and dwell on it assiduously and patiently, till the clouds obscuring the mind dissolve and the heart of being is seen in all its glory.
The body is a material thing and needs time to change. The mind is but a set of mental habits of ways of thinking and feeling, and to change they must be brought to the surface and examined. This also takes time. Just resolve and persevere, the rest will take care of itself. Don’t bully yourself, do what you feel like doing. Violence will make you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take yourself to be as obstacles on the way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, and enquire. Let anything happen – good or bad. But don’t let yourself be submerged by what happens.
Change happens instantly, it is the preparation that is gradual. You need the conviction and courage to let go. Complete conviction generates both desire and courage. Understanding through meditation leads to faith necessary for patient persistence. In meditation you consider the teaching received, in all its aspects and repeatedly until out of clarity confidence is born and, with confidence, action. Conviction and action are inseparable. If action does not follow conviction, examine your convictions; don’t accuse yourself of lack of courage. Self-deprecation will take you nowhere. Without clarity and emotional assent of what use is will?
There are many who have practised Yoga for years and years without any apparent result. Some are just addicted to trances, with their consciousness in abeyance. Without full consciousness, what progress can there be?
Both the person and the witness are both modes of consciousness. In one you desire and fear, in the other you are unaffected by pleasure and pain and are not ruffled by events. You let them come and go.
Consciousness does not shine by itself. It shines by a light beyond it, the light of pure awareness. Having seen the dreamlike quality of consciousness, look for the light in which it appears, which gives it being. There is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness in and beyond it.
When you do not take yourself to be the body, then the family life of the body, however intense and interesting is seen only as a play on the screen of the mind, with the light of awareness as the only reality.
Objects of consciousness do not last. Momentary reality is secondary; it depends on the timeless. There is no continuity in objects of consciousness. Continuity implies identity in the past, present and future. No such identity is possible for the very means of identification fluctuates and changes. Continuity, permanency, these are illusions created by memory, mere mental projections of a fixed pattern where no such pattern can be. Abandon all ideas of temporary or permanent, body or mind, man or woman; what remains? What is the state of your mind when all separation is given up? This is not talking of giving up distinctions, for without them there is no manifestation.
We complain that our inner peace is not steady. Peace after all is a condition of the mind. Beyond the mind is silence. There is nothing to be said about it. When the mind is engaged in serving the body, happiness is lost. To regain it, it seeks pleasure. The urge to be happy is right, but the means of securing it are misleading, unreliable and destructive of true happiness.
Pleasure is not wrong in itself. The right state and use of the body and the mind is intensely pleasant. It is the search for pleasure that is wrong. Do not try to make yourself happy; rather question your very search for happiness. It is because you are not happy that you want to be happy. Find out why you are unhappy. Because you are not happy you seek happiness in pleasure; pleasure brings in pain and therefore you call it worldly; you then long for some other pleasure without pain which you call divine. In reality, pleasure is but a respite from pain. Happiness is both worldly and unworldly, within and beyond all that happens. Make no distinction, don’t separate the inseparable and do not alienate yourself from life.
Acting as a saint or rehearsing saintliness is perfectly all right, provided no merit is claimed. As long as you take yourself to be a person, a body and a mind, separate from the stream of life, having a will of its own, pursuing its own aims, you are living merely on the surface and whatever you do will be short-lived and of little value, mere straw to feed the flames of vanity.
You must put in true worth before you can expect something real. You are what you think about. Look at the content of your mind. Are you not, most of the time, busy with your own little person and its daily needs? The value of regular meditation is that it takes you away from the humdrum of daily routine and reminds you that you are not what you believe yourself to be. But even remembering is not enough – action must follow conviction. Don’t be like the rich man who has made a detailed will, but refuses to die.
Not with mortal eyes but inner sight am I to be seen – B’Gita – Ch. 11
The mind is like a river, flowing ceaselessly in the bed of the body; you identify yourself for a moment with some particular ripple and call it: ‘my thought’.
Non attachment is superior to meditation B’Gita: Ch. 12
All you are conscious of is your mind; awareness is both in and beyond consciousness, just as the sea is both in and beyond the rise and fall of the waves, untouched, of no concern, attached to none
NaturesDestiny 