The Highest Truth

All Upanishads are trying to say what they constantly fail to express – the inexpressible. And yet, were in such a helpless condition that we have to study them because they are the best and they go nearest to the Truth. Yet, Truth is never expressed in words. It cannot be.

            Language – sounds of words- and experiences of the infinite belong to two different categories. One cannot express the other. Therefore, however much you may attempt to study, you will still remain as far away as you were before you started the study,. Mere study does not guarantee spiritual unfoldment. Many people who never studied any spiritual books have yet been spiritual giants, There are people who have studies all the scriptures, yet are known to be more perverted than the ugliest of us.

            All our temples, churches and mosques; or scriptures, rituals, study and discussions are useful only to those students who can workl strenuously towards the higher Consciousness.

            Brahman, the Reality, is nothing other than ‘mindlessness’. So long as there is a mind, there is no Brahman or Reality. Where the mind has ended, there is Brahman. Absence of mind is the presence of the Reality,. Where the mind exists, Reality is covered, veiled. Just behind the mind is the Truth. So long as the mind exists you cannot see it. The flower is kept behind the mirror,. So long as the mirror is there, you will never seen the flower. So long as the mind exists you see only the OET (objects, emotions and thoughts) and the PFT (perceiver, feeler and thinker).

Remove the Mind-Mirror

                The mind is to be destroyed. The mind has to be transcended. The mind has to be annihilated. If the mind is to be thus exhausted, the various sadhanas that have been prescribed have to be followed. The process by which the mind can be annihilated at the body level is karma yoga. The process by which the mind can be annihilated at the mental level is bhakti yoga, and at the intellectual level it is jnana yoga. All these yogas are merely processes by which the mirror is to be removed.

            The flower is not describable in terms of the mirror nor what I am seeing in the mirror,. The shape, the colour and the experience of the flower are something totally different,. So don’t go about with the idea ‘I have read the Upanishads’, ‘I am the group leader’, I am taking classes’, etc. It will take you nowhere, unless you make use of the knowledge to rise above these delusions.

Limitations of Examples

                Examples have their limitations. The example of the flower and the mirror cannot be extended beyond the point it is meant to illustrate. Words also have their limitations. However, if the  words of the Rishis are false, my words are 20,000 times falser – with reference to the statement: “ When the mirror is not there, the flower is there.”

            Similarly, the statement: “When the mind is not there, there is Brahman,” is also  not true, because Brahman is not behind the mind alone. Brahman is not only behind the mind, but also in front of the mind It is where the mind was, it is all pervading and infinite. That which is all-pervading is not limited That which is limited has a form, that which has a form is perishable, finite. Brahman is imperishable without form, unlimited and infinite.

            When my mind is not, then I alone am. Where? Nowhere. You may say nowhere or everywhere. It is the same thing. Everywhere and nowhere are again falsehoods – because they are there only with reference to  the front or the back, the sides and the up and the down. There is really no up, no down, or below. When you are sleeping, what is your dimension? Where are you? Silence alone is. In deep sleep what is your dimension? Where are you? you cannot say, because there is no front of back, or right or left, or above or below. You are just all pervading darkness. Think.

            Thus, where the mind has ended, the experience is the infinite Brahman, the infinite Reality. That alone is aham. I alone are. Again, ‘I’ cannot be used. ‘I’ has no existence without ‘you’. Therefore, ’I’ also cannot be used,. When that experience comes, any word you utter is nonsense. Think.

            Advaita is not a thing to be preached. It is to be experienced – anubhava gamya. Again, when you say ‘anubhava’, who is to experienced? Thus any word that you use turns out to be false – delusion.

Remove the Four Veils

            Let us pull down the mind. How to do it? Think. The mind exists only because of four things – gunas  (attributes), kriya (activities), visesa (particular and unique features) and sambandha (relationships).

            When we look at an object through our mind, we never see the object as it is,. We always see it coloured through our mind. Pasyannapi ca pasyati mudhah –one who does not have the right knowledge, even when looking at it, sees it not, He sees nothing but his own projection, Look at a flower and write down the thoughts that come into your mind: “It is a beautiful flower, It is yellowish in colour. Its botanical name is such and such. I have seen such a flower in Gopalakrishna Iyer’s place , It was in Coimbatore that I first saw it, It was in Chettiar’s house, But the Chettiar is not a good person,” and so it goes on. You are thinking of the Chettiar while looking at the flower. You never seen the flower. It is only a  spring-board for the mind to shoot ahead. Think.

            The mind is a flow of thoughts. Therefore, I don’t really see it – pasyannapi ca na pasyati mudhah.

            If you can see the flower as flower, as it is, you see Brahman only. Remove the guna, kriya, visesa and sambandha – attributes,  activity, special features and relationships, and then look at the flower, What you see is nothing but Brahman. These four are but interpretations of the mind. The mind functions in these four spheres only. The mind sees the qualities of the object. Or it starts thinking in terms of its activity; ‘The fragrance of this flower is good,’ or ‘It is dancing.’ ‘The flower is yellowish in colour.’ Or the mind begins to think of  its name or relationship- where you saw it first,  the girls on whom you saw the flower, the puja in which that flower was used, etc,. In the process, you do not really seen the flower.

            Try to take a flower and see it as it is. See a blade of grass. Don’t name it, Remove the four – guna, kriya, visesa and sambandha – and look at it Loot at me. Forget my name. Forget my guna, my actions – forget. Look at any object, whether it is a particle or the whole universe. If these four are not there, the mind is ended, In that still, alert moment of the objectless awareness, you are.

            These four are nothing but the interpretations of the mind, the prattling of the mind,  Remove them and look,. There is nothing but a spread of alertness, awareness or consciousness alone.

The No-Mind is That

                The mind in this alert state is the mind at meditation, Mind at meditation is mind no more. Where thus the mind has dissolved, a bhava, an attitude, is. That experience is called amani bhava. Amani bhava is Brahman; mani bhava is samsara. You and I are nothing but the mind. So long as we are identified with the mind,  we are far, far away from the Reality. The moment you forget the mind, you are that. Tat tvam asi.

            To do this you need not seek anyone’s permission, It is your prerogative, If you are not ready to do this, no amount of studying the scriptures, preaching, or sashana will help. You will only complain that even after so many years of studying and sadhana. You have achieved nothing.  Naturally, because you were only following you own mind!

            “Do not follow me,” say the Rishis. The supreme Truth transcends everything, It is more than the known and the unknown, As long as the mind functions, it not realised. Stop its functioning, Then you will be face to face with the Truth. This is the maximum evolution.

            The challenge now is to transcend the mind. To the fully grown ‘man-man’, the challenge is to grow into the ’God-man’. For this you have to work. You have to stop the play of the mind. The play of mind is nothing but the play of these four – name, form, etc. It is not necessary to transcend these for a long period of time. A fraction of a second is enough, After thus knowing the real and wider reaches of our own true nature, continue to play with the mind. In all activities thereafter, there is a new sense of freedom because we know we are not bound by these imitations, These limitations are not our own, We do not belong to them. We are only sojourners here. We are natives of another realm altogether.

            In this way, it you look at any fleecy cloud, any twinkling star, any winging butterfly, any nodding leaf, each object is but a spring-board for you to rocket yourself into that ecstatic experience of the Highest.

Do Nothing

                It is said that when three young men were going up the Himalays on a hiking expedition, at a certain turning, they saw a langoti-dhari (a person clad in a loin cloth) standing on a ridge and looking into the amplitude of the distance. One of the young men surmised: “That man is standing there searching for the cow that has strayed away.” The other one remarked: “What are you saying! He is a young man. He won’t be standing there like that for a cow. It must be a girl”. The third one said: Don’t impute such gross things unnecessarily. He must be a poet. He is looking into the sky, lost in the sheer poetry of it.”

            The three men started quarrelling among themselves. At last they decided to accost that person and ask him directly. There went near him, and yet the man was not disturbed in the least. He continued to look out into the vastness of the cold sky. They looked at him and at what he was looking at. They tried to adjust their eyes to the angle in which his were turned. But they could see nothing so enchanting as to absorb their attention.

            At last they gathered courage and asked him, “What are you doing? He said, Don’t disturb me, I am very busy. I am trying to remain doing nothing.”

            In the same way, doing nothing. Forget even the fact that you are doing nothing. These are the methods by which you  can try to express how this state can be reached. In a way, it is the poverty of language. Language cannot express it. “I am trying to do nothing.” It seems simple enough, but when you try, it is very difficult. Even if you keep quiet, you know that you are keeping quiet, which is doing something.

            The mind has to be transcended. Any method by which the ambit of the mind’s activities can be reduced may be called sadhana. Reading the scriptures is one method. If Gita chanting helps, it is also a sadhana. Any method, be it serving the poor, or a political activity, or the domestic activity of looking after your family- but for which the mind would have rambled into various fields, and because of which the activities of the mind are reduced to some extent, can be called spiritual.

The quiet Mind

                Remember ultimately that what is to be reached is this hushed quiet. The quiet of the mind, even if it is artificially created, is good. But the mind revives itself. When you are exhausted, and go to sleep for ten minutes or half an hour, you feel revived. Why? You mind has had rest. Disappointed people who have lost the election need a sleeping pill so that they may sleep and wake up to find out methods by which they can get back the seat! The agitated mind that is made quiet, revives. The quietened mind cures its own ulcers. When it was in activity, it was bruised and ulcerated. When it is hushed, it is cured and healed. It gets positively recharged.

            If the mind is brought to an halt consciously, that is called mediation. Even though this may be just for a split moment, not only are its ulcers cured, but the mind also gets recharged with terrific force. A mind so charged with energy is a dynamic mind capable of great things. Hence the importance of meditation that I insist on.

Why don’t we progress?

                When members of the study group have attended classes for some time, they will definitely reach a stage when they feel that they know all these things. They feel that they have understood everything, but there is no expansion, no inspiration. After having gone through a few books like the Gita or the Upanishads, they begin to stagnate in their sadhana. This happens because they are not being initiated into the ampler fields of inward experiences. I am not talking of the experience of colour or sound, but inner experience – the experience of expansion, of soaring to new heights, of exploration of the deeper depths of life. This can come only when the mind is folded.

            The mind cannot be folded so long as it is extrovert in nature. Extrovertedness of the mind means that it is more and more poignantly active in these four directions – jati, guna, kriya and sambandha. When it functions in these channels, the mind always gravitates towards objects, emotions and thoughts. It is tied to the lover depths of cravings.

            Lift the mind. Expand the mind. Sublimate the mind. Purify the mind. Spiritualise your existence. These are the words used by the teachers. Avoid the prattlings of the mind and soar to the higher realms.

*This article is by Pujya Swami Chinmayananda