Mind : ( 24/10/2012. )

The glory of Hindu Sastras:-(Sciences) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ The Hindu Sastras not only declare the Truth and point out the goal, but they also clearly prescribe ways and means to achieve that goal. This technical know-how available in the Upanishads makes them the most practical and useful literature on Self-perfection available for man in this world. The know-how, however, is lying scattered all through the texts. When a man meditates upon that which  is entertaining and pleasant to him, his mind, in its gathering joy and satisfaction, quietens itself and the Chittam becomes steadily rooted in contemplation. Thus the poets, while in their poetic moods scientists in their laboratory, artisans at their work---all of them discover a joy which is not the usual type of joy or peace of mind. This joy arises subjectively from their steadiness-if mind.(Chittasthairyam). However steady the mind may become --and...

TOTAL TRANSCENDENTAL AWAKENING:- As a witness we remain in the present, without being conditioned by the past associations or being enchanted away by the future expectations. This state called neutral condition of personality, is that which will grow, in its sweep and depth, to bring ultimately the experience of the thoughtless condition. This no mind state is the very Divine Substratum upon which the present exists, and serves as the threshold of time, where the future becomes the past.  At this state is the experience of Pure Awareness, with no distracting objects, the Infinite Self, the Changeless  and the Unique. This is the goal to be reached, the Truth  to be released, the experience divine to be lived as the maditator's own essential Self. It is not a thing to be objectively recognised, or even intellectually to be comprehended. This is a state that is to be spiritually apprehended, in an immediate personal inner experience. This is where meditation gets ...

"UNCONCERNEDNESS":- Not to identify ourselves with our rising tides of thoughts (sangalpa), but to remain as a witness of them all, is a definite stage in the efforts of meditation. In an atmosphere of your own unconcernedness   your thoughts will get suffocated and will die by themselves. So the Rishies advise the seekers on the path of meditation. "Moment to moment disassociate yourself from continuing any thought that consciously rises in the mind. This practice sweeps the mind clean of all rising thoughts, leads you to the state of  thoughtlessness ( A-chitta-ttvam) and you arrive at the Holy of hollies". This non-association with the rising thought disturbances is achieved by training ourselves to remain as a "witness" to the flood of happenings in ourselves. To be a mere "on-looker "of the lusty parade of thoughts-in-revelry is to withdraw from thoughts their ability to continue longer their inner carnival. 

"INDIVIDUAL   ENTITY:- The sum total of the memories that we retain in ourselves, of our own experiences in the past, together gives us a false notion of  ourselves as an individual entity. This is the personality of our ego-a mere bundle of memories of dead moments -that is meeting the present, and interpreting it consistently in terms of its diseased past. Never can the ego ever see the present truly as it is. Again when the past, the ego meets the present, it always strives to weave, out of the present, a future pattern, a web, spun by the very fancy ego out of its own imaginations. Hence life is a confusing jumble of meaningless sorrows, purposeless tensions, unproductive strains, pith less sorrows, depth less joys--------------all together a mad roar of an inconsistent destiny, dashing against the unyielding actualities of life. On the bosom of this frothy confusion the individual feels hopeless, a mere raft dancing to the whim of the surge around him.

The content of the present moment, divorced from all relationship with the past and future, is the absolute fullness of the Infinite. Eternity is experienced at the sacred depth of the present moment. To live the present, independent of the past and the future, is to experience Samadhi, the the revealing culmination of meditation. Seek it yourself. Nobody can give it to anyone else. Each will have to reach there all by himself/herself, in himself/herself, with no other vehicle than himself/herself.[ to be cot---d]  

In short, when our minds are not rattled by the perceptions-of-objects ( Cittam ) let us not thereby conclude that we have quietened our thoughts. Often, it is not so. Mind, when it is not engaged in the worldly objects that are right in front of it, can choose its own private fields  of agitations, subsequently in itself, by dragging up the buried corpses of a diseased past, or it can bring up vivid or throbbing  pictures of a tragic hopelessness  as the sure possibility of the immediate future!! In either case the mind of the individual at meditation can get sadly disturbed. Therefore, the Rishies advise us : "Moment to moment engage the out-going mind ( Cittam ) to live the present. Reject completely the past. Renounce totally  the future. Then in such a bosom, agitated mind shall reach the state of "mindlessness"( A-Cittam)." This state of mind is called the "No-mind".

Wasteful regrets on dead and buried moments:- Often, we are flown upon the wings of our minds fancy and imagination, to dreams, where we made to shudder at the future possibilities of failures and tremble in hopes of successes and swoon in the expectation of total losses or large profits. The past really is made up of dead moments and to unearth the buried moments is to live with the dead. We do so when we waste our energies in unproductive and wasteful regrets,  for things we had committed already. The more we remember them, those very vasanas are getting, alas, deeper and deeper fixed into our personality-structure. When we are not engaging ourselves with the negative pre-occupations of entertaining regrets of the past, we are wandering in the fairy-castles of our fancied future, peopled with ugly fears, horrid dreams, unnerving hopes, and, perhaps, thousands of impossible expectations.  [to be cont------------d] By Swami Chinmayananda.     ...

ABHAVANA :- When the mind comes to drop its perceptions of sense-objects, this state of mind is called to attain Abhavana, at this stage in meditation, mind is really a "no-mind". When thoughts are rushing out in their mad fury to hug objects-of-pleasure they constitute "Cittam", is a fact we already know, and to quieten  the Chittam  is the sacred function of the Yoga-of-Meditation (Yogasutras). Where these outgoing thoughts (Cittam) are eliminated it is known as the no-thought "A-citta" state, and that condition of mind (Manam) is recognised as "No-mind"(A-manam) state of the highest in meditation. Thoughts are gushing in, to flood our bosom and to make our mind an ANGRY GUSH of self-ruinous compulsions, mainly from two sources. Thoughts stem out from the PAST, dragging along with them the MEMORIES of the good and bad done in the days gone by. These confuse the individuals, with their regrets and sorrows, joys and pleasures, raise...

Devotion and Bhakti :- The nature of the mind is that thoughts will flow towards any object of its love. Where our Prem is, there our mind reaches and lingers lovingly. This being its natural and instinctive mode of behaviour, if we supply it with an alternative field of joyous love, it is sure to turn towards it, and in so doing, will be turning away from the world-of-objects, where it is now getting totally dissipated of all its rich potentialities. This creative alter provided for the mind to hold on to, away from the storms of worldly temptations is called the "point-of-contemplation",  ( Alambanam).   With devotion when we worship, adore and meditate upon the chosen Lord-of our heart  ( Ishta-devata) , we have given the mind a refreshing alter of contemplation upon which we may dry-dock the mind, away from the stormy confusions of sense-enchantments, and repair it. Devotion (Bhakti) thus contributes much to prepare the quietude of the mind, which is the...

When the direction of our thoughts is towards the objects, the agitations are more  and the thoughts in that state of agitation are called chittam. So long as the chittam is riotous there cannot be any mental quietude, and, naturally, there can be no success in meditation. Therefore it becomes clear that to quieten  the mind it must be switched off from its blind, passionate run after sense-objects. Left to itself, the mind in its irresistible energy would run towards its own familiar and known fields of pleasures. Thereafter it becomes habituated only to move in the limited field of gratifications. Once this extrovertedness has become a firm habit with the mind, to persuade that mind from its self-destructive preoccupations becomes painful and almost a herculean task.[ to be cont-------d]   

PURE MIND, [SUDDH ANTAHKARANA :- We need not conquer the sense organs one by one, nor need we run away from all objects of sense fascinations. Control the mind : and then go wherever you will. With shoes one can walk over thorny bushes and stony slopes. You are protected from them all. Conquer your mind, then you are insured against everything, everywhere, at all times. A meditative must thus direct is attention consequently in capturing the wild mind and taming it to obey his own pure decisions and sattwic commands. Once the mind is conquered all else is conquered. A conquered mind is called "pure mind"in Vedanta [Suddha Antahkarana], and it is a mental-equipment which is not agitated by every passing mood of passion, or is disturbed by every fascinating object that comes across it. A pure mind has less agitations--but there are agitations still in it. We are--through following ethical and moral codes of conduct, through the cultivation of devotion to the Lord,...

In order to thus conquer the mind one need not run away physically from all sense objects or living beings in one's life. All that we have to do is to attend consistently to the taming of the mind. Objects [vishayas[ are helpless against a mind under control of the clear intellect. The sense organs will not dare run out into the cess-pools of sensuous gratifications, when the mind behind them is a fully disciplined and strictly cultivated one. Therefore, instead of unnecessarily wasting our energies in regulating the world of objects and environments instead of exhausting ourselves in vain attempts at controlling the sense organs, let us attend to the mastering our mind. Say the Acharyas: "Extrovert thought [chittam] is the commander of the sense organs, and so to win all; not to win him is to win none------just as to one who is wearing shoes the whole world is covered with leather."[to be cont----------d] By swami chinmayananda.

In fact, without this subjective conquest of one's own mind, no conquest anywhere is real conquest. Even if you have won the whole world, of what avail is it to you, if you have not won over the soul (mind ) in yourself? No success is a success, no joy a real joy, no beauty unless the individual has conquered his/her own mind. Even though you have not conquered, in battles, the world, you become the world conqueror when you have conquered your mind; and although you have for long conquered the world by force, you have conquered nothing of the world so long as you have not conquered yourself.  

When this idea "I am the thinker-feeler"is renounced by a meditator, he/she becomes, thereafter, an interested observer of the flood of thoughts rising in him/herself, and, soon enough, the very gurgling springs of hie/her thoughts dry up in him/her. The mind in him/her then, in due course, ends. In the ego less attitude of detachment one's mind becomes extremely subtle and gathers to itself a greater power of penetration to reach deeper meditations. The mind in us determines the quality and beauty, the dynamism and glory, the nature and arrangements of the world around us. An extension of our mind in the constant perceptions and interpretations, unveils for us our private world of sorrows and joys, likes and dislikes, successes and failures. By conquering the mind we conquer our world. The outer circumstances and the available objects and beings around us can no longer make us dance to their will and whim. We shall come to call the tune, and the world around u...

RECAP:-  We left last when we were discussing how by refusing to feed the mind ( Abhavana ) with object perceptions ( Vishaya--Bhavana )  the mind shall slowly grind to a stop. Some Rishies go still further and declare that the meditator should give up even the attitude ( Bhavana ) that he is an imaginative-thinking -entity (Sankalpavan). It is the mind's function to think, to feel, or to imagine in short, to make Sankalpas. These feelings and thoughts cannot arise, and they cannot be maintained by themselves, without an intimate reference to the thinker -feeler-ago.    

The engine of the mind functions on the oil perception. The mind running out through the sense-organs reaches the object, and their it moulds  itself into the shape of the object, when that object-thought glows in the light of consciousness in our bosom, the knowledge of that object is born. This is perception, according to vedanta. The more the perceptions, the more the agitations. Therefore, perceptions [vedanam] supply the grit for the mill of the mind, say the wise. The rising of the pictures of the outer objects and memories of the past experiences in the mind [ vishaya-spuranam ] constitute perception- and so long as these perceptions are rising, the mind will be buzzing with its irresistible activities. To summarise, therefore:- to conquer the mind we must- 1.Reduce our clinging attachments. 2.End our thirst to enjoy objects. 3.When we are eager to master our mind, less number of thoughts arise in us. 4.Perception of objects  feeds the engine of our mi...

Students of meditation, not knowing the mode of their mental functioning, unnecessarily struggle to quieten their minds, and feel utterly disappointed and discouraged because they themselves are thereby unwittingly exciting their mind and feeding their thought-agitations therein. 

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-10. Thoughts, turned extrovert and functioning in the objects are, together and in their entirely called CHITTAM. All meditation is our sincere effort to capture and destroy the Chittam; the inward running thoughts. When the mind is not engaged in any object, how can thoughts [ chittam ] manifest on the empty horizon of the mind?

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-9. When the seeker has, as explained so far eliminated from himself all clinging attachments to, and thirst for the world, he will find that the concentration proportionately increases. In a purified mind  the power of concentration becomes more  dynamic as applied in his meditation-cannot waver as he has conquered all his eagerness to possess and enjoy the objects of pleasure. When this anxious urge to seek joy in objects has dried up in his bosom,how can any thoughts arise in it to drive the seeker into idle mental wandering during his deep meditation?

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-8. By bringing up our personality in this way, in the very contentious and competitive market-place of life and in the midst of tensions, we can spiritually grow and gather more and more steadiness of mind, called purity of the inner equipments. Without a steady mind spiritual explorations are indeed impossible. The earliest prescribed friendliness, kindness, etc, are values of right relationships; when practiced for sufficiently long time they will lead the intelligent seeker to discover in himself a more steady mind at his contemplation seat.  

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-7. VALUES OF LIFE WHICH ARISE ONLY IN OUR CONTACT WITH OTHERS IN SOCIETY CONSTITUTE OUR STRATEGY AND POLICY, REGULATING AND BEAUTIFYING ALL OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS. THE RISHIES OF YORE EXPERIMENTED WITH THESE. THEY COME TO PRESCRIBE THE RIGHT ATTITUDE TOWARDS GIVEN SPECIFIC TYPES, OR SETS OF CHALLENGES. THUS, FRIENDLINESS TOWARDS HAPPY ONE'S, KINDNESS TOWARDS UNHAPPY ONE'S JOYOUS ENTHUSIASM TOWARDS THE VIRTUOUS AND THE RIGHTEOUS, DISREGARD TOWARDS SENSUOUS SINNERS ARE PRESCRIBED AS HEALTHY ATTITUDES TO BE CULTIVATED AND MAINTAINED BY ALL SEEKERS. IN THIS WAY WE LEARN TO INVOLVE OURSELVES WITH THE GOOD, COMMIT OURSELVES TO THE RIGHTEOUS, AND AVOID ALL THE EVIL INFLUENCES OF THE " SINFUL".    

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-6. For all spiritual conquests the forces we employ is our single pointed  concentration. But, however large one's army may be, its strength lies in the education, culture, and discipline of its members. Else the army may win the battle yet lose the war by its own indiscipline and victorious excesses. Similarly, concentration is the secret weapon which we must have to storm the citadel of truth; but this weapon in an impure heart may convert all its very successes into a suicidal self annihilation . Therefore, we must cultivate the ethical and moral virtues side by side, and a bosom rich in these glorious traits alone can use its powers of concentration for the creative programmes of mastering mind.    

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-5. Thus, once sraddha, the sincere urgency for mastering the mind has manifested in us, spiritual enthusiasm in applying ourselves to its achievement immediately follows, and where there is this enthusiasm we cannot but steadily remember our determined goal. When a seeker lives thus in the constant remembrance of hie/her ideal to be attained, his/her concentration naturally grow. The capacity of the mind to entertain consistently one idea, to the exclusion  of all dissimilar thought, is called concentration. This single pointed, mental self application to an exclusive idea becomes inevitable in a seeker who remembers his/her goal constantly.[ to be cont--d] By Swami Chinmayananda.     

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-4. When our anxious demand to master the mind reaches its peak, a sincere and deep urgency comes to assert itself to accomplish, as quickly as possible, this release of our individuality from the suicidal tyranny of our own mind. This anxious urgency is called " sraddha". As a seeker    cultivates himself/herself, and grow in his/her depth-sraddha, he/she discovers in himself/herself an endless enthusiasm to put forth any amount of joyous efforts at mastering his.her mind. Without such a spring of enlivening enthusiasm, the sraddha becomes laborious, unrewarding, burdensome, and sooner or later the seeker leaves the field, vanquished and routed by the mind. Once we generate in our heart a certain  amount  of this spiritual enthusiasm, we can readily remember our chosen goal constantly. If the constant awareness of the goal is blazing in the highways of our mind, then in our hurried living and rush of the events and happenings we...

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-3. Man and woman  cling only to things that they understand contain some pleasure/joy for them. Thirst for happiness is natural with every living organism in this universe. The drunkard believes that his happiness is in his bottle; the killer expects happiness for himself after the killing of his enemy; the devotee finds his happiness in his prayers; the poor in searching for crumbs,and the rich and the powerful in trying to gain economic and political domination over the whole world-all are seeking their individual fulfillment in happiness.   The thirst is a built-in urge natural to all thoughtless men and women. A little quiet contemplation and self--enquiry can reveal that the outer objects do not contain what we are demanding, and that our demand is not really for these objects. Yet, all of us dissipate our energies  in this futile, mad quest, with a quixotic fervour, a consistent foolishness, and a charming idiocy. We refuse t...

MIND DISAPPEARS TO VISION:-2. ONCE A DESIRE IS GRATIFIED, THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE A PERMANENT SATISFACTION:IT ONLY KINDLES MORE DESIRES,MORE THIRST. THEREFORE THE SUBTLE THINKERS OF THE PAST RIGHTLY ADVISED THE SEEKERS WHO ARE STRIVING TO GAIN MASTERY OVER THEIR MIND "MY SON ! TOWARDS ALL OBJECTS GIVE UP EVERY TRACE OF ATTACHMENT. THIS IS THE SECRET MEANS OF WINNING OVER THE MIND". OUR ATTACHMENT TO THE OBJECTS POWERFUL, AND THEN THE OBJECTS COME TO RULE OVER OUR MIND . HE,/ SHE, WHO IS SEEKING TO MASTER HIS /HER MIND MUST  THEREFORE  LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT ENTANGLING HIMSELF/HERSELF IN THE ENDLESS MESHES OF ATTACHMENTS BY WHICH HIS/HER PERSONALITY GETS IRRETRIEVABLY BOUND TO THE OBJECTS AND BEINGS AROUND HIM.HER LIFE. THUS WHEN THE SEEKER GETS ATTACHED TO THE GOAL OF CONQUERING HIS MIND, ALL HIS/HER FASCINATIONS AUTOMATICALLY END AND COMPLETELY DROP OUT OF HIM/HER. THE MORE HIS/HER ATTACHMENTS TO THE EXTERNAL OBJECTS, HE/SHE NOW REALIZES, THE MORE WILD AND UNCO...

2. MIND DISAPPERS TO VISION :-1. IN THE LAST SERIES - PATH OF SPIRITUALITY WE FOUND THE ENTIRE PERSONALITY COMPLEX IS MAINTAINED AND RUN BY THE "VASANAS"AND THAT THEY ARE GENERATED BY OUR EGO-CENTRIC CONTACTS WITH THE WORLD OF OBJECTS. IN PASSIONATE HUNGER FOR SENSE GRATIFICATION, WHEN ONE'S PERSONALITY RUNS OUT IN EXTROVERTED SEEKING AND CLINGING TO THE JOYS OF SENSE OBJECTS, THE SENSUOUS VASANAS INCREASE IN ONE'S PERSONALITY COMPOSITION. THE MORE THESE SUBCONSCIOUS URGES AND MOTIVATING FACTORS IN AN INDIVIDUAL, THE MORE GROWS HIS/HER SURGE  OF DESIRES, AND THE MORE BECOME THE DEVASTATING  AGITATIONS OF HIS/HER MIND. AND IN SUCH AN INDIVIDUAL THE SENSE ORGANS CANNOT REMAIN WITHDRAWN AND QUIET. THEY MUST GALLOP ON TOWARDS INDULGENCE IN SENSE OBJECTS THAT PROMISE  BUT PERISHABLE MOMENTS OF PLEASURE. BY SWAMI CHINMAYANANDA.