Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Mind... The Heart... and Self Realisation


The purpose of the group “Guruji Of Gurgaon” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/157918097566202/) on “Facebook” is to bring the followers of Guruji on a platform where they can share their views and experiences. Also to reach out to those, who intend to follow His path in future. This blog is probably to take that forward.

 A few months back I had read a quote written on the group’s wall by one of the Guru-bhakts which struck my imagination. Not only struck me, it stuck with me and the thought process started. I re-produce the quote here below:

“We are all born as essentially spiritual beings --- perfect in our imperfection. As we grow older, we get guided to absorb negative patterns.... parents, teachers, society, making us get farther and farther away from our authentic selves. Gurudev directs us to return to our essence and rediscover who we really are....to get back to the perfection we once possessed before we allowed so much negativity to cloud the lens through which we see the universe.”

When I read this quote, two things came to my mind. First, how many of us read it more than once to try and absorb it. Did we just read it and moved ahead? I don’t know the name of the scholar who wrote these lines, but the summarisation in them was too good to ignore. This is the time, when the second thought crossed my mind. The essence of this group is to share thoughts with each other. Therefore, for all my friends, who missed out on putting some time to think about it, here is a small start, wherein all of you can add to the ideas, the feelings about the thoughts expressed. Just hope that every such discussion will take us closer to what we all seek..........because as the quote says.......we are all essentially spiritual beings!

Whatever I write now, I don’t claim to be mine. These are thoughts which have been sent or shown to me and I have just tried to string them together. The idea is not to just read what is written. The idea is to understand and relate to it.
To actually relate to the thought process below, you will have to read beyond this point, really slowly.

Whenever we talk about Spirituality, the first thought link that we make is with God. What is God? How can God be reached with our senses, our mind, heart and soul? Such questions routinely spring up in the minds of the seeker.

God is a synergetic experience. Such an experience cannot be explained by the principles of science or the depth of philosophy. It can only be understood by a very passive and a very loving approach.

Listening is one of the basic secrets of being passive and thus moving forward towards entering into the temple of God. Listening means passivity and forgetting yourself completely. If you cannot forget yourself, you never listen. You cannot reach God by being aggressive. You can reach God only...or it will be better to say God can reach you only when you are receptive. When you become receptive, the door is open - and you wait. Listening is the art for becoming passive and receptive. (Whom do you listen to? is another question which pops up... we’ll talk about that later.)

Being receptive not only entails being a good listener, it also means to listen with your heart, keeping your mind aside.  Two things just cropped up, the heart and the mind. Though ‘both’ belong to ‘one’, they can be different. The man, who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, is Brave. Seeing the world without the spectacles of the mind is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. People are seen as people. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior – in such a vision, there are no distinctions whatsoever. Suffering seems real because we don't have a clear understanding of our true nature. Instead, we believe the passing thoughts, such as 'I am no good, 'I am not there yet,' 'I am stuck' or whatever the thought may be. Eventually we understand that we are not those thoughts. Once our real self is pointed out, the suffering loses its grip.

Let us look at it in a more tangible way. When we go to see a movie in a cinema hall, we look at the screen; we never look at the projector which is at the back. The film is not there really on the screen; it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film actually exists just at the back, but we never look at that. And the projector is always there......

Our mind is at the back of the whole thing, and the mind is the projector. But we always look at the other person, not at our mind because the other person is the screen. When we are in love, the person seems beautiful, no comparison. When we hate, the same person seems the ugliest, and we never become aware of how the same person can be the ugliest and the same person can be the most beautiful.... So the only way to reach to truth is to learn how to be immediate in our vision, to drop the help of the mind. Without the ‘projection’ of the mind, our vision starts becoming synergetic. The same people start looking equal, devoid of perceptions and thus, beautiful. The mind deals and operates exclusively in the realm of thought. Since "you" are not a thought, it cannot know "you."

Pain is felt by the body. Suffering is felt by the mind. Both arise in awareness. On the surface, suffering is the mind's resistance to or refusal of pain. On a deeper level, suffering is the result of believing yourself to be a separate self. Withdraw identification from the ego idea and all suffering drops away immediately. Will things still hurt? Yes, Of course. But they will not produce unnecessary suffering. This agency of the mind is the problem, because mind can create only dreams....

When we see dreams, we get excited. Through our excitement the dream starts looking like reality. At the peak of this excitement, we start losing our senses and then whatsoever we see is just our projection.....our own!

The mind also spars ego. As the mind projects to our eyes, the image of people we see, it also projects an image of our self to us. This image can lead to inflationary opinions and harbour the ego. To be with the divine, we have to lose our self, our ego. For example, when we look at a sunrise, just for a second, if we are able to forget our separateness; then, for that moment of time we are no longer ‘seeing’ the sunrise............we ‘are’ the sunrise. That is the moment when we ‘feel’ the beauty of it. That is an experience of what salvation could be like.

The moment a person says that it is a beautiful sunrise; he is no longer ‘feeling’ it. He is merely ‘looking’ at it now, with the vision projected by his mind. He has come back to his senses......to his separate, enclosed entity of the ego. Now the mind is speaking. Ever wondered that why the mind can speak, even when it knows nothing; and the heart knows everything, but still cannot speak............ Perhaps to know too much makes it difficult to speak; the mind knows so little, so, it is possible for it to speak.

The heart is on the left, but is always right-- whenever there's a question of choosing between the mind and the heart; probably because, the mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. You have been given that educated mind by the society, not by existence. The heart on the other hand, retains its original state. It is unpolluted. Probably, that is why people say that a child is the image of God, because the child has his heart in place.....and his mind is yet to be educated.

And yet, is it just enough to have a heart and close the mind to synergise?  Not always. The heart is like a flower - unless it is open it cannot release its fragrance into the world. The fragrance of the heart is made up of the qualities and virtues of our spirit. Most of us have learned how to keep our heart closed in a world that would trample all over us if we let it. Being open hearted today seems to require tremendous courage. Such courage comes only when we realise that no one can hurt us, no matter what they say or do. They may hurt our body, but if we have realised that we are the spirit, nothing outside can touch us...........if we so decide.

Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. Let come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens.

What is the way? How to go about it? Will a man always be entangled in this battle? Where to make a start? Endless questions like these are bound to spring up by now. What is said is very difficult and yet so easy. Slowly and steadily, practice opening your heart to those, whom you think have hurt you. Realise it wasn’t them that hurt you, it was yourself. And it taught you not to trust and you closed your heart. A closed heart is in need of opening. And when you do, you will have begun to heal yourself.

Somebody might ask, “Does this mean that we should start trusting the person who is not making our payment and go and give him a new line of credit?” No, opening your heart does not imply being foolish. (The previous paragraph says it all). In the same way closing your mind may cut off your intellect, but in no way does it reduce your intelligence. We always have to think intelligently.

Intelligence is a natural phenomenon -- just as breathing is, just as seeing is. Intelligence is the inner seeing; it is intuitive. It has nothing to do with intellect. One should not confuse Intellect with intelligence, they are actually, opposites. Intellect is of the head; it is taught by others, it is imposed on you. It has to be cultivated. It is borrowed, it is not inborn. But intelligence is inborn. It is your very being, your very nature.

We have talked about the energies of the mind and heart in self realization today and there are so many more things to talk about, which we will do in future as and when I am guided to write more.

The discussion has taken a lengthy route so a summarisation is now essential. To achieve closeness to the almighty, it is necessary to be in a state of thoughtless-ness. It is essential to remove the existence of the mind and to get closer to your own heart. This feat is impossible to achieve by a mortal.

Then how can one transcend on this path. It can only and ONLY be achieved under the guidance and blessings of your Guru. Become more and more innocent, less knowledgeable and more childlike. Take life as fun - because that's precisely what it is!

You don’t need to understand what we discuss here. It is not there to teach you anything, just to arouse the zest for seeking. It will lose importance as soon as the lamp of self-realization is lit. Movement toward the goal of your soul can be achieved in a much more simple way. Start loving your Guru. Close your mind to what he says and listen with your heart. Enlightenment will be now the beginning, not the end. It will be a beginning of a non-ending process - in all dimensions of abundance.

To all seekers of self – realisation........all that I am capable of saying is.....................Jai Gurudev.