Hari
OM
Monday is AUM-day; in search of meditation.
Meditation & Life, with Sw. Chinmayananda
(Gurudev).
We are now exploring the writings of Gurudev on our focus subject of
Meditation. The book is a thorough treatment of the subject and extends to over
170 pages of closely printed text. No attempt is intended, here, to present the
text in its entirety. However, important paragraphs and quotes will
be given, within a summary of each section. You
are encouraged to use the links on sidebar to obtain a copy for yourselves from
CM publications. Please remember that each of the posts under this title is part of a
thought flow and it is important to go back and read the previous post in order
to refresh and review the context.
Illusion and Reality.
The world we experience is an assortment of varied forms, names,
tastes, smells and sensations. These sense impulses are reported by our sense
organs to the mind (via hardware of brain), which then consults with intellect
and forms opinions based on the input. Generally speaking, any thoughts which
arise from this are based upon comparison with present experience with previous
experience (or lack of in relation to present), plus a mingling of vaasanas
(predispositions which colour our thoughts and opinions).
It is this inner variety which results in outer variety, in terms of
individual reactions and behaviours in same situations and around same objects.
Neither is this a static situation within each individual, as all current
experiences add to the store of past experiences and vaasanas to colour future
experience and the thoughts and opinions can change - sometimes to polar
opposite.
| You can make this picture stand still ...if you focus! |
The worldly person seeks joy amidst their ever-changing moods as
well as seeking to satisfy the mood with what is on offer in an ever-changing
world. Two shifting parameters will always yield short-term results of
satisfaction, if any at all. The only permanent solution is to fix at least one
side of the equation and make it a constant factor. The seeker, even during
early days of practice, with correct discrimination, comes to the understanding
the subject within who seems to
experience all the roundabouts and roller coasters of life is, in fact, a false
entity and that an equally false world of objects is external to that entity.
The misconception is that of the "I" as
"Mr/Mrs/Miss/Doctor…" has substance, when in fact it is a mere bundle
of thoughts; the mind. In this process, the subject begins to see that
mistaking the "I" for being part of the sensory world. Once it is
accepted that there is no permanence to it and the problem is the mind which
attunes itself externally rather than internally, positive changes can be made.
The Illusory World.
Using the deep sleep model as being the bliss state, we an postulate
that if the world and its objects were indeed 'true', they would pervade that
bliss also. They do not. Anyone who says they had a bad night's sleep,
disturbed by the intrusion of 'the world' has not actually entered deep sleep
state at all. That which is the permanent, blissful underpinning of life cannot
be affected at all by the vicissitudes of that life.
In deep sleep, mind ceases to function - where, then, is the world
and it's mischief? The Vedantic philosophers of old brought to bear their
extraordinary analytical acumen and vivid intuitional experience and observed
that, in deep-sleep, even the most intimate emotions and memories are shut off
from cognitive experience; then as the individual re-enters the plane of
waking, there is a bursting forth of memory and experience. Our own knowledge
of the world and its objects, the memories of such knowledge, is but trickery
of the mind. Where mind is, jagat also is; where the mind is not (as in
deep-sleep), jagat is not.
"To gain freedom, we merely
have to understand that our enemy is the illusion of our own mind, then to
train ourselves to calm down the dreadful emotions that our mental mistake
caused!"
Vedanta explains that the world (jagat) has about as much venom as
the rope mistaken for a snake. We suffer from our own mistaken perception of
the Real Nature of things. Only Knowledge will remove ignorance. Deep and
steady inquiry into the nature of the world, of God and of the subject
"I", constitutes the pursuit of Self-perfection. Currently we do not
know that the objects and the world we crave more and more of holds no more
reality than the snake on the rope. We are so identified with the sensations of
the world; we yearn for immediacy and ever more extreme consummation of our
desires.
The mind must be controlled, for the mind alone is our interface
between inner and outer. The mind must be curbed of its tendency to roam
randomly from us, bringing back offerings of false desires, illusory fears and
fancied joys. The mind has to be decluttered so that it can see the rope and no
more mistake it for a snake.
Inner War.
If, then, we think of the mind as 'satan', we come to understand
that the real war of life is within us. By seeking the divine within us, the
truth mind's delusions and the fact that it too is but an illusion will finally
be ours. It is through the five sense organs that the mind experiences the
outer world, leaving impressions (vaasanas) which rumble away and generate our
thoughts and desires anew. Thus it can be seen that to control mind, we must
also take control of our external sensors. Self-discipline begins at physical
level.
In truth, meditator, meditated and meditating do not exist. There is only One Single Truth
upon which arises all this illusion. This is the pinnacle of the meditative
journey - where all is left behind for the full union with the Divine. The
state of samaadhi. Walking in Godhood, such individuals bring such profound
wisdom and Love and Peace to the world around them. Such as these are the
saints and sages and prophets. They are rare, but not at all an extinct species!
The exist in the world even today. Who would recognise them in today's race for
the material, however? "...if God Himself
were to come right now, He would probably not even be offered a seat unless He
wore a clean suit and pretended to be an agent of Mssrs Sin & Sorrow Inc,
the famous multi-billion-dollar manufacturers of illusion and falsehood!"
