ABIDE BEYOND THE MIND

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

82. ABIDE BEYOND THE MIND

This body-house of yours if rightly understood, if you rightly relate yourself to it and recognise its true implication to you, is your field for spiritual evolution and liberation. It is not your bondage; it is not your problem; it is not your enemy. But you make it your bondage, your problem and your enemy. This is unfortunate because time and again the great mystics and path-pointers tell us that after having gone through countless other states of subhuman life, the individual soul attains human status “by great good fortune.” When this is so, how can you say it is a great fall, a great bondage? It is irrational. It does not stand to reason that the peak point of the evolutionary process should be labelled as a problem and a bondage. It does not make any sense! It cannot be so. It is not so. It is lack of enquiry and discrimination and succumbing to desires on the part of the jiva that makes an asset into a liability, a precious gift into a problem, the doorway to liberation into a so-called bondage. Sense-objects don’t come to us to harass us, to catch hold of us. We move towards them. It is your imagination and desire that propels you to undergo this foolish process of chasing sense-objects. It is a process of folly based upon unwisdom and ajnana. Because, the truth is that what you are seeking, you are That, a hundredfold That, a thousandfold That. You are what the whole world is seeking. You are ananda svarupa atma tattva, where there is no pain, no sorrow. Peace and joy is your real nature, your own Self. This is the truth that has been proclaimed to us since ancient times in every generation. But we have turned away from it. So through God’s indescribable grace, our ancients have called: “Why unnecessarily continue in this self-created bondage? Arise, awake, attain illumination and be filled with bliss.” Therefore let us be frank, impartial and truly admit squarely that our problem lies in our indifference to this call. For the plain truth is a fact that we must recognise and admit: We run after things. Therefore, while we blame the world—things, situations and persons—for all its distractions and attractions, as we pointed out last time, it is our lust and greed, our turbulent senses, our cravings and desires that really constitute the problem. And to prove it, we imagined that we were sitting in our room at night with the lights off. There are no longer any outer distractions, yet we do not go into samadhi. It is because, in truth, the dispersing factors are not outside; it is we who make them by our attitude, by our inner relationships of attachment and desire, by our “I and mine.” Why does it happen? Because you are indifferent. You neglect to realise the reality of the Being within, your eternal companion that shines as your indweller, as your inner Self, and which is hidden from all your senses which are outgoing. Not one second is He absent from your life, but you choose to ignore that Presence within. You choose not to recognise It. If you but recognise It, your problem is solved.

When you are within you dwell with Him. You cannot help thinking about the indwelling Presence, for It is nearer to you than the nearest of things in this existence in which you live. It is the nearest of all. Therefore, the correction has to be made where the problem prevails. How can we do this? Silently Dakshinamurti and Sankaracharya show us. Silently, without words, they indicate it to us. Know, recognise the fact that you and that Being are always connected, always related. There is an unbroken, eternal relationship between you and that Being. You are not apart. On the contrary, you are apart from everything else in this creation outside you, because they are separated from you by physical distance, by duality. Whereas, you and that Being are always connected, you are always one. Do not close your eyes to this truth, for it is the key to the problem. The problem is not without; it is within. Refuse to move away from this union. Be centred always in that union. Do not leave that Being. Cling to Him with all your might, with all your being. Abide in that Reality, abide in the centre. Insist that you shall do it. If anything, even in the slightest way, tries to disturb you, say, “Hato (Get away), I abide in this centre!” Be centred in this oneness within. Be in your own innermost spiritual guha (cave), as it were, where no distraction can reach. Abide in the Self! And what about the distractions created by the mind? What have you to do with them? “Mano buddhy ahankara chittani na’ham (I am not the mind, intellect, ego-sense or mind-stuff),” says Sankaracharya. And Gurudev has given us the sutra: “Nothing exists. Nothing belongs to me. I am neither mind nor body. Immortal Self am I.” The first line of this sutra cancels the whole world. Nothing exists. And even if you think that something exists, the second line makes it clear that nothing belongs to me. For, all belonging is created by the thought of the mind, by imaginations, by the attachments and the feeling of mineness of the mind. And none of these can bother me because I’m neither mind nor body. And if they bother you, why should you worry? Countless thoughts, attachments, desires and longings are there in the minds of everyone around you. Are you bothered by them? Do you concern yourself about them? Are you in any way distressed about them? Why don’t you think of this important truth? Chaos may prevail in people’s minds around you, but you are not bothered because they don’t touch you, they don’t affect you or in any way create a problem for you. Why only this mind? Why should it create a problem? Deal with it the same way as you do with the chaos that prevails in any other mind. Why should you think this is a problem? Say: “It’s going on. Somewhere, something is going on. Why should I bother about it? I am where I am, closely united with ananda, closely united with santi, closely united with That which is dwelling in the hearts of all.” You’ll be in that state which you really are. Don’t unnecessarily make a big thing about this one mind only. Why this attachment? Why this identification with this mind? Millions of minds are milling around you, but you don’t identify yourself with any of them. They don’t hold a problem for you. Why only this mind?

This is the root cause of your problem. It is needlessly, unnecessarily identifying yourself with some phenomena that is going on. Treat these vagaries in the same category as all the others that are going on all around you. “It may be going on; it has nothing to do with me. Such things are going on in a million different little centres; I shall be in my eternal centre. Why should I move and go into this other false, non-existing centre?” It is, therefore, making your centre your upadhis, your anatman, instead of making your centre your reality, your own Atman, that is the central problem, the beginning point of this paristhiti (situation). Therefore, realise it, reject it and abide in the Self. Transcend time and space and name and form and be ever in a state of God-awareness—that really and truly prevails permanently in the innermost centre of your wondrous being, the innermost centre where you are untouched, total Divinity. This is the task to be done. All outer, external forms of spiritual discipline, processes and sadhana are intended only to achieve this inner state which already prevails there. It is a restoration of the state from which you have turned away. Once that state is restored, heaven prevails within you.