One of the reasons for our confusion is our unruly mind. It obscures clarity. It keeps dragging us outward. It puts before us myriad baits and makes us forget our true nature.
By the way, this mind is not something that came from nowhere! That is also a form taken by the Atma. And as every form has a certain assigned role, this mind also has two roles. The first one, the most notorious one, is to confuse you 😉; make you believe what you are not. In that role, it is quite unruly. It never listens to you. It is you who are totally controlled by it.
Under its influence you assume different roles for yourself, go after enjoyments totally unmindful of their limitations. The result is pleasure and pain.
The other role of the mind is to serve as an obedient servant and take you out of all the confusion. That is a well reined in mind. It is a friend and not a foe. If you develop the mind in such a way, it can lead you to your real nature. And this restraining of the unruly mind is what Patanjali calls as Yoga. It is like bottling up a mischievous genie which if left loose can take you astray.
This process of restraining the mind is what is called as meditation. Upanishads use various words for this process – Nidhidhyasana, Upasana, Dhyana and so on. Upanishads suggest using the sound OM as a target for meditation. I have explained how meditating on OM helps in quickly calming down the mind, in some of my books such as “How and Why of Yoga andMeditation”. Even Patanjali suggests that.
In a beautiful allegory, one of the Upanishads namely the Mundaka Upanishad suggests how one should meditate. It says
praNavO dhanuh sarO aatmaa brahma tat lakshyam ucyatE
apramattEna vEddhavyam saravat tanmayO bhavEt
One should use the sound OM as a bow to direct the arrow which is the self or the individual. The target is to know the Atma. One should shoot the target with an unperturbed mind.
-- Mundaka Upanishad 2.4
Why target the Atma? Only when you target the Atma do you realize that you are a form taken by the Atma. That clears all the confusion created by the mind. Once you attain that realization, you are no longer limited by the form. You attain omniscience, at least for a moment. The veil of ignorance between you and the Atma is lifted momentarily and you attain all the clarity. You will get answers to all questions.
Whatever truths enunciated by the Upanishads are all believed to have been attained by the sages when they were in such deep states of meditation.
But there are two problems.
Firstly, the moment you come out of your meditation; you are back to the limitations of your form. That limitation restricts your vocabulary to explain what you experienced since it is only capable of explaining things in a space time limited world.
That is the reason why these sages could not explain the complete story of what they experienced. You can listen to what they say. Ponder over it. But you will know the complete story only when you restrain the unruly mind and meditate. That is why the Upanishads emphasize on sravana, manana followed by nidhidhyasana – listening, pondering and finally meditating. You have to experience it by yourself.
However, reading the Upanishads may give you a motivation or some initial push. It may assure you that there is something you are going to gain by going through the arduous process of meditation.
But one can go straight away to the final step without any Upanishadic background. That needs a specific way of life and concerted effort. That is what I jokingly meant somewhere in the beginning that ‘any one who lives in a particular way and puts concerted effort, can attain the same truth that sages experienced and explained in the Upanishads’.
But unfortunately, many modern Advaiti Gurus insist that sravana, manana, and nidhidhyasana is a must. They take Upanishadic truth as self-evident and probably the only way. But there are many places in the Upanishads that make it clear that the Upanishadic truths are arrived at after prolonged meditation.
There is another problem. You may attain the ultimate truth by going through the process of meditation. During meditation the mind is completely restrained and it cannot distract you from the truth. However, the same mind becomes active again once you come out of your meditation! So, you are back to square one!
The mind also puts more hurdles by keeping track of your past experiences. These records, which are called Samskaras, overshadow the new clarity that you just gained through meditation. So, you get confused once again. You again start moving on the path shown by the mind. You once again get deluded. That is why I said that mind is like an unruly genie 😉 It gets suppressed for a while but cannot be kept down for long. You need to neutralize it completely. You need to bottle up the genie 😉
Patanjali explains how that can be done. He says that attaining the final stage of meditation or Samadhi is not a onetime thing. You need to enter that state again and again. Each time you attain the Samadhi, some of your past Samskaras get erased. After a sufficiently long time, you may reach a state where the past Samskara are completely neutralized. They become like burnt seeds which can no longer germinate. Patanjali calls that stage as Nirbeeja Samadhi – a state with no potent seeds left.
Even after attaining the ultimate state, experiencing truth, and eradicating all the past Samskaras, one still needs to be on the guard since the mind can still try to lure you and pull you back into a confused state. It does it because that is its nature.
So, even a realized person needs to live in a specific way even after he has attained the realization. Otherwise, he may fall once again back into the trap laid by the mind. This is true as long as the form remains. I am emphasizing this since there are many who claim that they can live any which way they like, since they are realized souls.
Living in a specific way is also needed to set an example to other forms which are yet to attain the realization.
What if someone cannot discipline oneself to undertake prolonged meditation? Most of us cannot. The easiest way is what I normally call as ‘kitten’s way’. Just cry out to the mother or the Atma 😉 That is what a kitten does when it is scared. Mother would surely help the baby. But the minimum that the kitten needs to do is to cry out convincingly 😉
Let us talk about this second option in the next episode.
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