Chapter 6: Reversing the Process of Creation

Whether we are to understand the onrush of the creative process in terms of scriptural descriptions of creation, or in the light of the discoveries of modern science, the consequence is similar. There is an externalising compulsive force operating throughout the cosmos. Grossly, it manifests itself as gravitation, against which nobody can stand. The gravitational pull of the outward rush of creative activity includes also the operations of the minds of individuals, who are mostly bodily conditioned, so that we think in terms of our bodies, and not independently.
The constitution of the physical organism influences the mind to such an extent that we cannot think independently of the compulsion exerted upon the mind by the physical constitution. Scriptural descriptions of the creative process, or the findings of modern science in this connection, appear to tell us that something very strange happened, and is happening even just now. The One indivisible force split into two parts: the positive and the negative of creation. Every scripture says this, and the big bang spoken of in modern scientific language is just this indescribable split of the One undivided originality into a segment of positive and negative characteristics. When the indivisible One apparently becomes two, there is a double activity taking place simultaneously: the consciousness of the separation of one thing from the other, and the consciousness of it being impossible for half of it to have no connection with the other half.
This original cosmic predicament is reflected in the lowest of social activities of human beings. We wish to be alone to ourselves, on the one hand, and find at the same time that it is not possible to be totally, literally, alone to ourselves, without contact with external things. It is the activity of the One and the many operating at the same time. If the One indivisibility has become two, then two have become four, four becomes eight, eight becomes sixteen, sixteen becomes thirty-two, thirty-two becomes sixty-four – such that the onrush of diversification, the pressure towards externality, compels itself to reach to the lowest level possible, until it reaches the utter externality of materiality, down to the atoms and the electrons and the particles of sand. The impulsion to objectification and diversification seems to be a tendency to destroy itself completely, so that there is a cosmic death, we may say, in the utter finality of the creative process.
This is what is known as pravritti dharma, the natural tendency of creation to engage itself in outwardly motivated activity. Pravriti laxano dharmah nivrittistu maha bhagah, says the Smriti. It is a natural tendency of everyone to act according to the law of this descending, precipitating, onward movement of creative force.
 But, if it is possible to resist this onward rush of external­ising tendency, we will be more blessed. It is what they call, in Tantric language, wrongly interpreted, vama achara, the return process. It does not mean the left-hand path; it is the return process of the current of externalisation in creation.
Inasmuch as nobody can stand outside this process of onward movement of creative energy, we are helplessly driven, like insects floating in the onrush of a powerful flooded river that carries with it elephants, and insects, and logs of wood, and whatever; nobody can stand the onrush of the waters of a flowing river. This is like the flowing river.
"Create!" says Brahma in the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana. "Let me create!" says God in heaven, in the biblical language. Why did this desire to create arise at all? Why should He create? It is an indescribable potential seed of outwardness, which is supposed to be inexplicably present, whatever be the language through which we speak of it. Nobody can explain why creation has taken place. It is a tendency to destruction, self-annihilation in the utter externality of material existence, so that what we seek in this world is just material objects, material benefit, and material acquisition. Anything that is non-material cannot attract us.
We ask a question, like a businessman, "In what material way am I going to be benefitted? What is the material advantage that accrues to me if I do this act?" We always use such language. Material benefit is the final benefit; any other benefit is not. We do not consider an increase in understanding and knowledge as having any worth, because an attempt at the increase of the wisdom and the understanding of life is an inwardising process of the mind, whereas the asking for material gains of any kind is an externalising force. As we are ourselves bodily just a heap of material elements, we are compelled to think in terms of this material embodiment only. Matter asks for matter.
The body, which is material, seeks material contact. It does not want anything else. This is called pravritti dharma, or the externalising tendency in creation. Philosophically, in Indian parlance, we say the universally spread out, ubiquitous Absolute Brahman became a potential for creation called Ishvara, in the same way as a painter would stiffen with starch the otherwise clean canvas, or cloth. Painting begins with a clean background of a canvas. The externalising process takes place when we stiffen it with starch, so that the porous structure of the cloth is filled in by the starch that is spread; it becomes a little stiff. The first step in externalising the cloth is the stiffening of the very same cloth with starch.
A further externalisation takes place, which is the drawing of an outline of the picture on the stiffened, starchy background of the canvas. With a pencil, the artist starts sketching the pattern which he would like to present as a piece of beautiful artistic presentation. Then, a further externalisation takes place, by filling this sketch with colour and ink, and we have a fully manifested, externalised form of the painting – by looking at which, we completely forget the outline behind it, forget the starch, and forget even the screen itself. When we see the painting, we cannot see the canvas.
When we go to a movie, we cannot at that time see that there is a screen behind it. When we see the world, we cannot see God; when we see God, we cannot see the world. If we go on concentrating on the canvas and the screen behind, the show will not be interesting, because our mind is diverted to the background and not to the actual performance. But if we are concentrated on the movement of the shadows or pictures, we cannot, at the same time, think of the background.
So is the case with us in everyday life. When we are engrossed in the perception of the material things in the world, the background of it is completely forgotten. When we look at Virat, the colour-filled painted picture of creation is actually this visible cosmos. Originally, the cosmos was not a visible object, because there was no one to see it. The seeing principle gets involved in the very process of the manifestation in creation.
The grosser is the manifestation process, the greater is the tendency to segregate, to cut the subject from the object, the seer from the seen, the inside from the outside, the top from the bottom, the right from the left; everything is scattered in such a manner that a person who looks at the world with his eyes cannot know what is there at all.
This distracted presentation of the variety of creation is the cause for the flitting of the mind from one thing to another. No one can keep quiet looking at one thing only, because every little thing looks equally good, so no one can sit in one place. We have keep moving from place to place. We cannot be satisfied with any one kind of endeavour. We have to go on doing different things continuously, all for the sake of a material gain that is expected to accrue to us by the contact of the material components of our body with the material components of the world outside.
The Bhagavadgita tells us that when matter comes in contact with matter, actually it is not two hard substances that come in contact with each other; two different forces meet each other. The material object, so called, is a concentrated form of energy. In Sanskrit we call it the gunas – sattva, rajas, and tamas. The forces which constitute the objects of the world, assuming a material form, have three conditions: status, dynamics, and equilibrium. When there is no activity, and a status quo is maintained, it is called tamas; it is status. When this state of complete inactivity gets disturbed by the activity of rajas, there is diversification of consciousness, and we move our mind in different directions, with varieties of desires.
But there is a third state which scientists do not know. We have only status and dynamics in science; equilibrium is unknown to science. When the externalising impulse and the stabilising force meet together in harmony, there is an equilibrium created that is called sattva in Sanskrit.
So, these forces, which are the strands of the rope of the object so-called, look like hard material substances. The hardest rock is a bundle of intense vibrations. Due to the intensity of the vibration, we cannot see the porous condition of the object, in the same way as a very powerfully moving electric fan may look static, as if nothing is moving at all. Increase the speed of the fan to the highest point; it will look as if it is not moving at all, because the mind and the perceptional capacity of the eye cannot catch up with the speed of the movement of the wings of the fan.
Why do we see people standing in a movie? There is nobody standing there. It is a rapid movement of pictures, rushing at the rate of about sixteen pictures per second, and the rapidity of the movement gives the illusion of a static condition of a particular object there. Everything is rapid motion, but the eyes cannot catch this motion; therefore, the illusion of stabil­ity of a form is created before our eyes. Our eyes are the deceptive media through which we are trying to envisage and judge objects of sense. Since the eyes in their dull, low potency vibrational capacity cannot catch up with the high-speed vibration of the objects of the world, we imagine that everything is in one place, and not in another place.
Actually, the objects are only concretised forms of this threefold energy, and they are touching each other in their essential level. You will find every object is touching every other object at its base. There is a fluidity, as it were, behind the apparent solidity of the perception of objects, but this cannot be observed by the sense organs, since this so-called fluidity of the basic nature of the objects is so rapid in its vibratory motion that the senses cannot catch up with it. If the structure of the retina and the perceptional faculty also moves with equal rapidity, we would not see the world at all, just as two trains moving at equal speed will create the illusion of stability of the two trains; we cannot know which train is moving, or if anything is moving at all, because two trains are moving parallel at the same speed, and each one looks like a static existence, though it is moving fast.
This is the illusion that is made by the externalising force of creation, one thing becoming multitudinous, and we become helpless because of our notion of isolation from this cosmic drama that is taking place. If we are not an observer of the moving picture, if we are one of the participants in the series of moving pictures and are inside the screen, we will never see the movement of the pictures. We are standing outside the movement of the pictures; therefore, they seem to be moving there.
If we are able to counteract this gravitational repulsive process which takes us away from the centre of the universe, and turn our tables round, and think in terms of the very structure of the objects of observation, then we will not see objects. We will see our own selves. When we see our own selves, we would not know what type of thing we are.
God is playing a drama, as it were, in this vast creative process. He remains Himself, in the same way as, in the dream world, varieties of movements and activities taking place are observed by the one indivisible waking mind which still exists as it was; it never changes, never creates, never absorbs, from its own point of view. This is the reason why we say that there is an illusoriness potential in the very perceptional activity of the world.
The impulse of creation that I mentioned, which is externally motivated, is what is grossly known as the gravitational pull. Nobody can resist this pull of gravitation. The mind is pulled towards the body. It cannot think independently, because the material components of the body exert a gravitational influence upon the thinking process, also; therefore, when we think, we think like bodies, and if we want or desire something, we want only bodies. Because of this involvement in the externalised onrush of creative process of pravritti dharma, we are unable to concentrate our mind on the ideal of our meditation.
Chanchalamhi manah krishna pramathi valavadridham: Impossible to control is the mind; impetuous, turbulent, is the tendency of the mind to turn back towards the body and towards material components connected with this body and its relations. Turbulent is the world; impetuous is the mind. It is resisting any kind of attempt to bring it back to the point from where it has arisen. The outward rush is as impulsive as the waters of a flooded river in which even elephants cannot stand and will be washed away.
So, any amount of physically conditioned thinking will not be a proper medium for meditation. We have to develop within ourselves a touch of the cosmic, in order that we may be saved from this trouble of individual gravitational pull of the bodily condition. Unless there is an element of God in us, it will be difficult to succeed in this world. Pure devil cannot get on; it is not possible. There must be some spark of light even in the utter darkness of sensory perception. All this means intense austerity of the mind, or retention of the mind from its onward movement towards things, and trying to think not in terms of the outwardly located objects, but in terms of the very basis of the creative process, which includes all these objects and our own selves.
For the time being, psychologically at least, we have to be cosmically located; otherwise, the mind will not come round. It is only when our mind gets tuned up to the cosmical situation that it will yield and listen to any kind of advice. It is unable to appreciate the fact that it is not cosmically conditioned. It is wrongly made to believe that it is physically conditioned – bodily, socially, financially, and politically conditioned, and in every way restricted to physical operations.
How would you change the way of thinking into a cosmical fashion? It requires a tremendous effort of the mind. Aneka janma samsiddha tato yati param gatim: Often it is said that the difficulty involved is so much that we may have to take several births to be able to think in a cosmical fashion.
We should not think in terms of our relations, in terms of the objects that pull us in their direction, or in terms of the body, which also conditions us. Transfer this body, with all its affirmations, to the vast sea of objects, so that we become a member of the cosmic medley of individualities, and it does not stand in the position of the onlooker of the forest of individuality in front. Let not anyone stand outside this vast forest of individualities, but become one of the plantations in this vast cosmic operation. That is to say, we enter the world, rather than look at the world. We make the world our own, rather than convert it into an object of perception. 

Sensory perception is the reason why we are unable to concen­trate the mind on anything that is of a universal nature. The senses do not know what universality is. They are wedded to individuality, particularity, segregation, and isolation. To make matters worse, we have five sense organs; five different affirmations are made at the same time. Like a head of a family pulled in different directions by the members thereof, the individual consciousness inside is pulled in five different directions externally by five different sense organs.
If we see a thing, it is not enough; we have also to hear it. A deaf man does not enjoy the world, though he can see the world. A person who cannot smell cannot enjoy the taste of a dish. If we have caught cold and the nostrils are clogged completely, we will not enjoy our daily meal. You will be wondering what the connection is: "I am eating with the tongue; why is the nose interfering?" They are interconnected. It is necessary to touch the food, to hear how it is made, to smell it also, to see it, and to taste it. All things should take place simultaneously. If one limb is not operating, the food is not tasty. We cannot enjoy it.
So, there is a fivefold onslaught of sensory activity taking place, even in our little contact with a single object of the world. There is a deliberate attempt, as it were, on the part of these fivefold apertures of sensation to deceive us completely. Every moment we are deceived by the activities of the sense organs, which tell us five different things.
Fortunately, we have only five sense organs. Suppose we had ten or fifteen; then, it would be still worse. Now, because of the five sensations, we are seeing five different objects – earth, water, fire, air, and ether – because these five elements are the five counterparts of the five sensations. Suppose we had one hundred sensations; we would see one hundred elements, and there would be no end for the variety in creation.
It does not mean that we are seeing all the variety of crea­tion with the eyes. We see a limited segment of creation, due to the limitation of the sensory activity. If we have got all eyes, and all ears, and all taste, then we will be just seeing endless cosmic variety of creative dissipation, and we would not know where we are standing. Because only five senses are there, we are saved this tragedy, but they are doing enough mischief for us.
It is said that sense control is necessary for the purpose of engaging oneself in meditation. What is the meaning of 'sense control'? Is it closing the eyes, plugging the ears, and stuffing some cotton into the nose? It is nothing of the kind. We may plug the holes of the sense apparatus; it does not mean that these senses have been restrained. The senses are not what we see outwardly. The eyeballs are not the eyesight.
There is an impulsion inside, an energy content, a potential for outwardness; that is the sense organ. Whether it is the eye or the ear, or whatever it is, the sensation that we feel through these apertures is the sense organ. The sensation is the organ, not the physical fleshy substance of the organ, so any kind of plugging the nose, closing the mouth, and stuffing the ears will not work, because even a blind man has a desire to see, a deaf man has a desire to hear, and a person who has lost taste in the tongue has a desire to eat. Desire cannot be absent merely because the organs are not operating.
This is the reason why we must understand, first of all, what sense control is. It is the reverting of the very consciousness of wanting a thing through the sense organs, and universalising it. A particularising tendency of the sense organs is to be absorbed into a universalising tendency of mental perception. Rather than think­ing through a particular sense organ, we should think purely in terms of the mind, proper. Pure reason, uncontaminated by the influence of sensations, should be our guide.
But, where is the pure reason? It does not operate at all; it is dead already. Usually, our reason corroborates and confirms the reports supplied to it by the sense organs. If the sensations say, "It is like this," the reason says, "Yes, it is like that." The reason cannot operate imper­sonally, in a detached way. But there are occasions when the reason can operate in an independent manner – for instance, your feeling that you would like to be much better than what you are now. This is a rational operation; the senses do not tell you like that. No sense organ can tell you that it is better to be more than what you are. It is the pure reason that is operating when telling you that you are a finite individual, and you would like to break this finitude. The sensations will not tell that; they are satisfied with finitude. But you have got an inter­nal higher buddhi, or intelligence proper, uncontaminated by the reports of the sense organs, which tells you, like a good friend, that you are not so important as you think you are. You are a finite non-entity. You are helpless. Your very existence as a finite is due to the cooperation of other finites, like many donkeys joining together and forming a good United Nations organisation; it will not help you.
The reason is still alive in every one of us; only, it is submerged by the impetuous activities of the sense organs that run outward, while the reason moves upward. The reason moves upward in the sense that it tells you that there is something higher than what you are. The Infinite does necessarily exist, and this conviction follows from the very acceptance of the fact that you are limited and located in one place. You do not feel happy because you are locked up in one location. You do not like to feel that you are just one Tom, Dick and Harry among many other people. You would like to be much more than this.
This desire to be more than what you are is an activity of the higher reason. You are aware that you will die one day, but the higher reason says that it is good not to die and you must find out some means of perpetuating yourself eternally. This is the reason's longing. But the senses interfere: "Keep quiet! You will die one day, and you cannot become immortal." There is a clash between the higher reason, which is our real friend, and the turbulent sense organs. The senses know that the body will perish one day, but the reason tells us that there is something in us which is more than the perishable element.
How can such a desire to become deathless arise in a world where everything is dying? Every person goes; no one lives forever. In such a world of utter destruction, how is it possible for anyone to develop a tendency to expect deathlessness?
There is a universalising force operating within us, an ishvarabrahman, we may say, as an undercurrent of the activity of the externalising process. We know very well that we will perish together with other perishing objects, but still we have a hope that we shall be better: "Even if I take another birth, I would like to be a better person in the next birth." This is the desire. Nobody thinks that one should be worse in the next birth. If possible, I shall be wider, larger, tending to infinitude." These are the voices of the higher reason. It is the atma shakti getting reflected through the perspicacious intelligence in us, which we call the intellect.
The intellect is of two kinds, the lower and the higher – ashuddha buddhi, and shuddha buddhi. Shuddha buddhi is the transparent intellectuality, the rationality which reflects the cosmic operations in their integrated form, whereas the lower one reflects the diversity seen by the sense organs.
We are simultaneously living in two worlds - the world of phenomenality, and the world of noumenality. We are in the world of eternity, and in the world of time; we are in the world of death, and at the same time in the world of immortality. Viveka shakti, vichara shakti, the capacity to investigate into the truth of the matter in this fashion, is the precondition of attempting to sit and meditate. Unless the mind is free from the muddle of confused thinking, concentration will not be possible. People complain that their mind is not concentrating. How will it concentrate when the reason is dead, the senses are active, and the body is impetuous?
The inward restraint of these kinds of forces that are contrary to the injunctions of our higher reason is the tapas that we have to practise. Tapas is not a torture; it is an educational process. When you study more and more, and learn things larger and larger in their comprehension, your educational career rises from one level to another level; you move towards larger universalities. A person who is sufficiently educated can think in general terms, but a person who is not so trained will think only in particular terms. He says, "My land, my property, everything is mine." When he says "mine", he means only this bodily individuality.
But a person who is properly educated in the art of general­ised principles can draw conclusions of a universal nature from particular instances. That person will be able to generalise the mental activity also, and then it is possible that the mind will yield. Unless the mind is satisfied, it cannot be made to work in any direction. An unsatisfied servant cannot do any work. You should see that the mind is not unsatisfied. It should not feel that you are bullying it, belabouring it, or cudgeling it; that will not work.
The mind has to be trained by an educational method, an application of reason which is called viveka and vichara, the investigative capacity. Perpetually, we should be engaged in trying to probe into the structure of experience, like a scientist in a laboratory – the more he discovers, the less he is satisfied; he wants to know more and more things. Distant things look near, afterwards; particularised, located things appears as pervading everywhere when we generalise things.
In this way, gradually, by effort of days and months and years, we must come back to ourselves. As I mentioned yesterday, coming back to ourselves is the most difficult thing ever. That which is far away can easily be seen and understood, but a thing that is nearer cannot easily be understood, and the nearest thing is your own self. So, you cannot control yourself.
The most turbulent, repressive element in us is our own selves. We can be masters of everybody, but we cannot be masters of our own selves because here, in our case, we are the teacher as well as the taught; we are the schoolmaster and the classroom, at the same time. It is the mind that becomes the investigator and the teacher, and it is the very object that is to be investigated and studied. The mind is the subject and the object at the same time during self-analysis. As nobody can understand how one and the same thing can be subject and object, it is not possible to handle the mind so easily.
It requires satsanga. Good things should be dinned into our ears every day. Wherever you go, you should see and hear only good things. If you are not able to hear good things, go to a place where you hear good things, because the habit of inundating the mind with good information adds to the strength of the mind in the direction of universalised perception.
Avyabdhipanan mahatah sumero unmulanad api api vanyajanat sadho vishavat chitta nigrahah. This is the advice given by Sage Vasishtha to Ramachandra in the Yoga Vasishtha: "Do not be under the impression that you can subdue yourself. You can subdue anybody else, but not yourself. You can drink the whole ocean, you can simply shake the whole Himalayas; it is possible. You can drink fire, but not control the mind, because who are you to control the mind? You yourself are the mind." The controlling activity becomes inoperative, because here the controller is the same as the thing that is to be controlled.
It is self-inwardisation, also known as self-analysis, tending towards self-consciousness, with the aim of Self-realisation. That art of the higher reason which is purified of the dross of sensory desires will help us. Years of effort may be necessary.
You have to learn the art of being alone to yourself. I have mentioned all this in the earlier days. Do not be always thinking of other people. You are sufficient unto yourself. You are your own strength, and you are your own failing. All that is necessary for you is hidden inside you. You have only to bring it out. This conviction that all potency, all power, and all that is necessary is hiddenly present in our mind will convince the mind that it has a self-sufficient comprehensiveness, and it can be happy wherever it is. If you can convince yourself, then you can be happy wherever you are, under any circumstances, because all that you need is potentially present within you, and you can summon it at any moment. If you cannot believe this, if you think that your welfare lies in others' hands, in other things, then the mind will go outwardly with the impulse of creation.
The liberation of the spirit, called moksha, is capable of demanding the greatest price. What does God want from you? It is not some banana, not some kichiri, not some prasad, apples and jam; no, because these things that you are offering to God do not belong to you.
What really belongs to you should be offered, and what really belongs to you is your own self. Self-sacrifice, or self-surrender is the act that pleases the Universal Being. No amount of study of the Vedas, no austerity, no study of books, no charity, no philanthropy, and no goodness that you can consider worthwhile in the social sense can touch the spirit, which is unrelated to everybody else. 'Unrelated' effort is the word. Any amount of thinking in terms of relationship with another thing weakens the mind. You have to think independently by yourself, as an all-inclusive force, sufficient unto yourself – you are complete in yourself, and you do not want anything else; you are happy with what you are, not with what you have.
Do not be satisfied with what you are, but be satisfied with what you have. Be satisfied with what you have, but do not easily be satisfied with what you are, because you cannot know what you are. Various shapes will be seen in what you are, and they will be kaleidoscopic, chameleon-like pictures, and you can misguide yourself by imagining that you are a perfected being. Be humble before yourself, with humility, utter self-negation, and self-satisfaction, and not wanting anything outside. Belief in the perfection that is hidden in one's own self will bend the mind in the direction of perfection.

Chapter 5: Meditation is Bringing the World into Oneself

All processes of sadhana or spiritual practice culminate in meditation. Principally, meditation is the only worthwhile sadhana. It not only sums up every other aspect of our spiritual effort, but stands head and shoulders above any other conceivable method, either religious or spiritual.
What we are searching for in the end, if we carefully analyse the situation, is our own selves. We have not lost God or the world; we have lost our own selves. The meaning of this circumstance has to be understood clearly. The great sorrow which is within us and around us at all times, causing anxiety from all directions, is attributable to the loss of self - our becoming something other than what we really are.
What does all this mean, actually? Whenever we think something, that something draws the attention of the mind, and the movement of the mind is enlivened by the consciousness that is the nature of our own selves. We can compare the movement of the mind to the stretching of an electric wire; consciousness can be compared to the electricity that passes through it.
There is a magazine of electrical force within us. We have a tremendous generating power of strength in our own selves. Incalculable kilowatts of energy are hidden inside us, but just as too many consuming connections from the power house lessen the capacity of this producing power plant, so also the inner reservoir of energy that we have gets diminished gradually, day by day, by consuming too much of this energy in the direction of mental operations connected with the various objects of sense.
The moment we think an object, part of the energy moves towards that object. The object, so-called, is something like the consumer point. It may be a gadget – an electromagnetic gadget, an electric bulb, or any kind of mechanism which draws energy and consumes energy. The more are the connections given in this way from the original source of power production, the lesser is the quantum of energy available in the producing centre.
Our activity through the senses is an unending process. There is no single minute when we are not thinking something. To think something is to go out of oneself for that moment. The thing is not ourselves, and therefore the thought of the thing is a transference of ourselves to that which is not ourselves. Here is the sorrow.
Why is it necessary for the mind to think that which is not one's own self? The reason is the inherent tendency of the mind to move externally in space and time. It cannot think itself; it thinks what is other than itself. The vehemence with which the mind moves outward is due to the structure of our psychophysical personality itself. Our whole life is outwardly motivated. The whole body, with all its energy content, is eager to rush outside itself, in order that it may come in contact with another body. The senses equally are intensely eager to rush outside, out of themselves, and be another thing different from themselves; so is the case with the mind. The whole personality, the psychophysical complex, is rushing outwardly from moment to moment, so that we are perpetually other than our own selves. We have no single moment to be our own selves.
All joy and satisfaction arises from the deepest self within us, and sorrow arises from the departure of our own selves to a location which is not ourselves. It is the non-self pulling us in one particular direction that takes away all the quantum of our energy, and makes us weak. The greater is the intensity of this vehement movement of our own personality towards outer conditions, the weaker we become – physically, psychologically, and in every manner conceivable.
What is meditation, then? It is a technique and an art of drawing back this excess of energy that is moving outside and getting depleted in the direction of objects, and turning it back towards one's own self. If all electrical connections are cut off everywhere, the dynamo that produces electricity will run with tremendous speed; otherwise, if the consumer points are too many in number, the dynamo will start moving slower and slower, and very, very reluctantly.
The objects of sense are the consumer points, and oneself is the producing centre. You can imagine what actually should happen to us if there is continuous consuming of ourselves in the direction of what is not ourselves. What is the meaning of this 'not ourselves'? Anything that you cannot consider as yourself is the not-self.
When you look at an object, do you consider it as yourself? Actually, if you go deep into the matter, you will realise that there are three kinds of self, and we mix up one with the other continuously, due to haste in our way of thinking. One of the selves is the physical self: "I am here; I have come; I go." Statements like this indicate that you are referring to your bodily personality as the self. "I am so many inches tall, so much wide. This is my weight." These descriptions pertain to the physical self.
Mostly, we are that self only. The bodily self is the all-self for us. The magnetic externalising force of the physical components of our individuality automatically depletes our energy, and even if we do not do anything, we become old, automatically. Even if we do not put forth any effort to harm ourselves, the internal metabolic process itself will see to it that we deteriorate gradually, due to the spatio-temporal pull taking place, without our knowing it, upon the personality.
This world is a world of death. Everything has to die, because everything is contaminated by the suffering caused by the pull exerted by the outer circumstances of space and time, so that we are servants of space-time pulling. We are pulled every minute outside to distant stars, and we cannot revert our energy into our own selves. This is the physical self that one can speak of.
There is another self called the secondary self. They call it gaunatman. Objects that are attractive, that we like very much, take away part of our own selves, and become another kind of self themselves. The love that we evince in regard to an object is actually a love that we evince in regard to our own selves, transported, for the time being, to that location which is spatially distant, away from our true Self. All attachments, loves, and hatreds taken together divert the attention of consciousness in the direction of that which we consider as very important. That which we like is very important; that we dislike also is very important. Either way, the two act as the obverse and the reverse of the same coin, and we are none the better if we hate. It is only another name for a kind of love.
Now, in all these processes we transfer ourselves to the location of that which we like and dislike. So, as long as we like something and dislike something, we are not in ourselves; we are elsewhere. That kind of self, which is in the form of the object of like and dislike, is known as the gaunatman, or the secondary self. The true Self is mukhyatman. It is deeper than the body, deeper than the sense organs, deeper than the mind, the intellect, and the causal body. It never wakes up, generally. It is like a sleeping lion, and it has no occasion to wake up, due to the fact that it is under sedation, as it were, caused by the bombarding activity of the externalising sensory impulses, so that from birth to death a person thinks of what is not oneself, and has no time to think what is one's own self.
When we feel happy at the time of our so-called obtaining of a desired object, we may be under the impression that the object emanates joy, that satisfaction oozes out from the object of our affection. It is not so. We have found ourselves, somehow, in that object that is physically and spatially distant, and so we are hugging and clinging to that object. Actually, we are clinging to our own spatially alienated self.
When that object comes nearer and nearer, spatially, we feel happier and happier, because that alienated self of ours is actually coming nearer and nearer to the true Self within us. When we are actually in possession of that object, the mental activity which moved out in the direction of that object ceases and reverts to its original source. When the mind reverts to its original source, it tastes the bliss of the Atman inside.
So, the joy of sensory satisfaction is a negative activity taking place by the nearness of the object of affection and the apparent feeling of possession of the same, all which is totally artificial, make-believe, and an illusion. This has to be understood carefully by every spiritual seeker. Without understanding the psychological turmoil that one is unwittingly passing through, any amount of activity as an external symbolic performance of sadhana may not help us. Wealth acquired in the dream world is not a real wealth, and misconceived practice is not real practice. An erroneous sadhana cannot lead to any kind of palpable achievement.
To the extent that we know ourselves, to that extent our effort becomes successful. If we have a total misconception of our own selves, then the fruit or result that follows from our activity will be a paltry illusion, which will escape our grasp.
There is not merely a source of power within ourselves, but there is something more. The entire sea of energy is pulsating within us. Every particular object in the world is inundated by a universal principle, of which it is a part. All things can be conceived in two ways: as universals, and as particulars. That we are able to conceive the presence of many particularities, and we can imagine millions of stars in the sky, and an endless variety of things in the world, shows that there is a universal apprehensive capacity in us pervading all these particularities, whatever be their number, and it superintends over all our psychological computation of the particulars. Unless there is a universal background, we cannot have a knowledge of the particular.
The other day I mentioned that when you know that one thing is different from another thing, you at that time are neither the one thing, nor the other thing. If you are one of the two things, you cannot know that one thing is different from another thing. You are a third knowing individual.
In a similar manner, it is not only one thing that is different from another thing; everything is different from everything else in this world. But to know that all things are different from one another among themselves, there must be a capacity in us which transcends these particulars, and which is pervasive in its nature, inundating every particular, and still standing above it. This capacity within us is transcendent in the sense that it is above all the particulars; it is immanent also at the same time, because it is present in all the particulars.
There are two ways mentioned in the Yoga Shastras by which we lose ourselves and become poor in our daily life. One is a psychological contact of ourselves with things that are not ourselves, really; another is an emotional contact of one's own self with things outside. Contacts can be emotional or non-emotional. Impersonal contact is, for instance, that I am looking at this big spread-out pandal; I have no emotional connection with this, but yet, I am aware of it. Mere awareness of an object in perception is also an operation of the psyche; it is one of the vrittis, as they are called in Yoga psychology. Every vritti is a psychosis, or a modification of the mind. Though it may look harmless, really it is not harmless, because it is a self-modifying activity that is taking place.
In every perception, even if it is a harmless perception, the modification of the mind makes it other than what it actually is, integrally. But there are harmful modifications, painful vrittis as they are called, which are emotionally charged.
Objects which are emotionally connected with one's own self disturb the mind more intensely than objects which are just objects of general perception. Looking at a tree in the vast forest, with which we are not concerned, is also a vritti, no doubt. The mind has moved out in the direction of the formation of the tree. But, if it is a plant that we have grown in our own back yard of our house, it becomes an object of our emotion. It is "my plant", whereas a tree in the forest is anybody's. This is the difference between general perception of an object, and emotional perception.
Before we enter into the art of meditation, we must distinguish between the two activities going on in our mind – the general psychological perception, and the emotionally charged perception. In the same way, as in medical treatment we take care of acute diseases first and the chronic ones a little later on, we have to take care of the emotional aspect of our personality first and foremost, and other things afterwards. There is no use thinking of God suddenly, in a large universal fashion, when the mind emotionally pulls us down, with great force, to a target which it considers as immensely valuable.
The reason why the minds of people operate in this manner is to be understood first. The mind cannot be trained, except by understanding. Any amount of will power exerted upon the mind will not make the mind yield. The mind is turbulent, but it can be educated. The only way of harnessing a person or a thing is by educating it into the true nature of its relation to other things. We cannot command even a dull servant, because what is required is not a command, but an educative process which makes that servant feel the obligation that he has in respect of the performance which has become his duty.
All trouble arises on account of lack of understanding, and miscalculated understanding, and knowing oneself in a wrong position, as one is not really oneself. Many people are under the impression that we have rights, and we have no duties. These days there are departments of activity, involved in which, people have developed a cankerous attitude of asserting their rights while thinking that they need not have any duties: "If I get my salary somehow, why should I work?" They strike work until they are assured that their salary is given. It is forgotten that duty includes the rights of a person.
A duty is not an obedience to any particular individual in the world. It is an obedience to a principle of life. The principle is mutual cooperation. Life is a cooperative process, and if each one asserts oneself as totally isolated from others, the cooperative feature of social existence would crumble down and there would be nobody to exert towards any achievement. There would be neither rights nor duties; there would be chaos in society.
To assert one's rights minus responsibilities is the height of selfishness and egoism, and miscalculation. It is like cutting the ground under one's own feet, or cutting the branch of a tree on which one is sitting. What we lack is education, understanding, and a proper assessment of our own selves in respect of our location in society.
Do we have any obligation to human society, or are we just scot-free, and let anything happen anywhere? This attitude is born of total ignorance, because while we are spirits, Atmans, we are also units of society. We are entangled in various ways, and not in one way only. A social implication is inseparable from social existence. Can you imagine yourself being somewhere without any relationship to humanity outside? Our existence depends oftentimes on the activities of other people. Our needs are supplied by the efforts of people outside us, and we ourselves do not produce all the goods that we require. But in return for the facilities given to us by the effort of other people, we owe an obligation to them. If you say, "I have no obligation; I have only a right to acquire," you are misplaced completely.

The Bhagavadgita announces this great point that we have also a social obligation, apart from an obligation to our own mind psychologically, and an obligation to the God who is superintending over us inside. With turmoil of any kind in the mind, and depression, sorrow, and disgust of any nature, one cannot sit for meditation. The disease has to be cured before we take to the healthy way of concentration of the mind.
If the sorrow has arisen on account of not having something which you expected to have, it is up to you to find the way of getting out of this mess. There are things which you want, and you may be able to get them without actually harming yourself. All right. If you want to have a meal, have a meal; if you want to have a cup of tea, have a cup of tea. But there can be dangerous desires in the mind which cannot be fulfilled, because they will be contrary to the welfare of society and one's own self. Harmless desires and harmful desires are two varieties of things, which arise from the emotions of people. Intelligence is the only way of handling harmful desires, because one is required to understand the consequences that follow from trying to fulfil a harmful desire – harming not only others, but simultaneously one's own self, also. But in the eagerness to fulfil the wish arising within oneself emotionally, one jumps in a fit of passion, not knowing what consequence follows.
The rightness of an action is supposed to depend upon certain consequences which are to be considered at the same time. Firstly, when we take a step, there must be a justification for the step that we take, for some reason or the other. The aim before us is to be justifiable. The end that we conceive in our mind should not be a harmful thing to any person.
Secondly, the method that we are adopting to fulfil that desire also should be justified. It does not mean that if the end is alright, the means can be bad. It is not true that the end always justifies the means. Oftentimes, in the modern world, we find the policy of the end justifying the means is followed, because what we are going to achieve is more important: "What does it matter in what way we are getting it? By hook or by crook we want to get it." No. Anything that is achieved successfully by wrong means will tumble down one day, because the foundation is not strong.
And finally, it should be beneficial to oneself in the long run. That which brings immediate relief is not necessarily a really beneficial thing. Sreyas is supposed to be different from preyas. The pleasant thing is different from the blessed thing, because the pleasant thing is that which is to the liking of the sense organs, but the sreyas or the blessed thing is that which is to the benefit of the soul within us.
Meditation, therefore, is an art of becoming our own selves. In all these three ways of self-alienation just mentioned, we become other than what we are. When we think that we are the body, we have become other than what we are; when we think that we are that object which we love or hate, there also we have become other than what we are. That which we are is imperishable. Though circumstances are perishable, objects that we like are perishable, and the body itself is perishable, we are not perishable. That is why we have an infinite longing within us. If we were really perishable individuals, our desires also would be fulfilled immediately by a little effort of the mind. Any amount of effort cannot fulfil our desires, because desire arises from the infinite source of our personality.
There is an infinite longing within us, which can be satisfied only by an infinite possession, but the world does not have anything that can be called infinite. Therefore, we may say, we ourselves do not belong to this world. That is the reason why nothing in the world satisfies us. It is so because all things come today and vanish tomorrow, and they are really not organically connected to us. Though we may imagine that some things belong to us, they are not vitally related to us. They stand apart from us. Brother or sister, father or mother, any kind of relative, money, or land all stand outside us. They cannot become the vital being of our own selves. Our property cannot enter into our body, so our longing for it is futile. There is bereavement and loss of property; nevertheless, we cling to them, knowing well that this effort on our part is going to be futile.
I mentioned that we do not bring anything with us, nor do we take anything with us. Do we realise that we cannot have anything with us, even in the middle? An illusory phenomenon of possession takes hold of us in the little tenure of our life between birth and death, and we live like utter fools. There is a deceptive activity going on in the sensory world, and if there are dacoits, the senses are the dacoits. They take away whatever we have, and give us nothing in return.
What have you got, actually? You have your own self. What you have with you is your self. Do not say, "I have got relations. I have got land and money." Do not say that. They do not belong to you, because you have not produced them. You have not created the land; you have not manufactured the money; the relations also do not belong to you. They are totally independent, like you. You have nothing to call your own. That is why you go like a pauper when you leave this world.
That which you have thought, that which you have felt, and that ideology that you have entertained in your mind will come with you wherever you go, because that which comes with you is an operation taking place in your own self. That operation taking place outwardly will not come with you.
Have you seen people dying and going away, and people forgetting them after three days? It may be your dearest relative; three days you mourn, and the fourth day you do not even know that the person existed at all. What has happened to that great person who was inseparable from you? You burn the body of your father in the cremation ground; you throw into the pit that very father whom you adored. Who is your father, then? If it is your father whose photograph you have taken and hung on the wall of your house, why did you discard that father and bury him under the earth? If you say, "This is not my father", then, who is your father? Think over this matter. What were you clinging to, actually, throughout your life? You were clinging to an ideology which has escaped your notice.
So is the case with your own body, also. If the body of the father is not the father, this body of yours also is not you. Nothing that is visible is the real thing. The visible is the perishable; the invisible is the reality. This is how we have to educate ourselves gradually, and turn back to our own selves in our infinite capacity.
The very fact that we are infinitely longing for infinite pos­sessions and achievements should convince us that there is an infi­nite potentiality in us. Moksha or liberation is the attainment of the Infinite. The Infinite is not a large accumulation of particu­lars. If all the atoms in the universe, innumerable in their number, are brought together into a large heap, we cannot say that we have touched the Infinite. The Infinite is not a numerical accumulation of particulars. It is an undivided Being, outside which nothing is.
Yo vai bhuma tat sukham: Great joy is in the bhuma or the plenum of felicity. What is bhuma? What is plenum? What is Infinite? Yatra na anyat pasati: It is that condition where you do not see anything outside you. Yatra na anyat srunoti: You do not hear anything outside you at that time. Na anayat vijanati: You do not think and understand anything outside you. Sa bhuma: Where there is no necessity to look outwardly through the eyes, or hear anything externally, or think externally, because of the filledness of the plenum of infinitude attained in one's own self; that is yo vai bhuma tat amritam; that is the Immortal. Anyat alpam yatra anayat pasyati anyat srunoti anyat vijanati srunoti tad alpam: Perishable, paltry is the nature of that thing which you see with your eyes, hear with your ears, or understand with your mind. Where it is not necessary for you to see anything, or hear anything, or think anything, because of the fullness of your being; the All-Being does not see anything; the All-Being does not have to hear anything; the All-Being does not have to think.
Yatra hi dveita meva bhavati tatra itaram itaram pasyati : Where there are two things, one sees the other; where the Infinite alone is, yatra tatreiva atmeiva abhut tatra kena kam pasyet? Kema ka srunuyat? Kena kam manyatha kena kam vijaniyat? Vijyatara aare kena kam vijanat: Who will know the Knower Infinite? God cannot be known by any person, because God is not a person; He is an inclusiveness of every person. God knows God.
Actually, the highest meditation in the infinite sense is God meditating on Himself. The whole universe contemplating its own completeness is meditation. It is not that we sit in a hall, close our eyes, and think something outside in space. That is not actu­ally the right meditation, because in all these meditations that are externally motivated, we are contemplating some perishable phenomenon, and therefore imperishable results cannot follow from that. That which we contemplate in meditation should get absorbed into ourselves, so that we become a larger being, in the sense that the object has entered into us, and it has enhanced the dimension of our being. If that which we want has entered us already, we will not want it anymore. If hundreds of things have entered into us by the pervasion of our consciousness in all these objects, we have become dimensionally overwhelmingly large – not large in possession of any external wealth, but large in our own spiritual dimension. The 'being' has expanded, not the 'becoming'.
The art of meditation is actually the art of enhancing the dimension of our consciousness. Our being has to become a larger being. It is not a thought of anything particular. There is a difference between being and becoming; becoming is a process, and meditation finally is not a process. It is a tendency to being one's own Self – Being, as It is in Itself – Being that is undivided in Itself. Being cannot be divided into two parts, because if Being can be split into two sections, one section becomes becoming; the other, finite being.
Akhanda, undividedness, is the nature of Pure Being. This can be realised only if the tendency to externalise the consciousness in terms of objects outside ceases, and the things that attract us become our own selves. The object flows into the subject.
How is it possible? Can you imagine how a thing outside can flow into you? This is phenomenally attempted in telepathic commu­nications in a psychological manner, where you touch distant objects through your mind. You touch persons who are very far away – not physically, but by your mind. The mind of that person, the mind of that particular location, enters into your mind, and there is en rapport established between your mind and that mind. It may be the mind of even a non-human thing; that will vibrate by the force of your mind that has entered into it.
Unless we have become that object, the object will not yield. Unless we love our servant, the servant will not serve us. There are no servants in this world, but we treat the objects of sense as our servants. They refuse to yield to that. They have to become our own bosom friend. The master and servant should be on parallel ground. If we treat a servant lovingly, he will work more efficiently than when we cudgel him and treat him as dirt, as a discarded element.
Are we not behaving like that with the objects of sense? Today we want them; tomorrow we throw them out. Do we love anything perpetually in this world? Think over it yourself. Today you want a thing, and tomorrow you throw it away; today he is your partner in business, lovingly working in unison, and tomorrow you file a case against that person because you have a grudge against him.
Father and mother, son and daughter separate themselves in a moment of disparity of thinking. These things are the visible sorrows of life that we have to see with our own eyes so that we may not plunge into them again and again. By knowing that there is a pit in front of you, there is no need of falling into it and then learning a lesson. If someone has fallen into the pit, you can just listen to him, and not fall into it yourself.
The psychopathological or psychological phenomenon known as telecommunication is an outer symbolic shape of the capacity of our own selves to touch the distant stars. We have come from the stars. Our body is made up of planetary influence – the sun, the moon, Jupiter, Venus; all these are the substance of our body. Astrologers say that every limb of our body is a force generated by one of the planets. There is nothing in us minus this. Not only the planets, but the stars themselves exert influence. "We are what our stars are," we usually say. What is the star under which you are born? The star which is so far away, incalculably distant, has such an exerting power upon us, that we are made of stars.
Such is the capacity that we have within us to touch distant things, because they are really not distant; they appear to be spatially outside, but inwardly they are organically connected with our own selves. All objects are ourselves only; therefore, there is no necessity to run after them.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says: "If you consider an object as outside you, it will run away from you." If you consider me as an object, I shall not see you again. You tell any person, "You are an object for me." Will anybody like to hear that? He is a subject. Every person is a dignified subject, but who is an object here? Tell me. If you utilise any person, or anything in the world, as an object, it will flee away from you, because even if it cannot speak the language of a human being, it will speak a language of resentment by your treating it as an external object. Everything dislikes being externalised. If I come to your house as one of the guests, and you treat me as some kind of externalised intrusion, I will leave the place immediately. No object will come to you.
It is futile to imagine that the world will give us satisfaction, because we are thinking that it is an outside servant. The world is not our servant. The objects are not going to yield to our commands, but they will yield to our affection, and affection is the word for the manner in which we have to deal with the world of things. They become ourselves. That is the meaning of yatra na anyat pasyati. "You need not have to see the world. The world has become you." Who meditates? The world contemplates itself. Where are you at that time? You have become part of the world.
No, it is not easy to think like that. You can never, with any effort, imagine that you are a part of the world. You are inside the world; you are outside the world; you are looking at the world; you are harnessing the world; you are utilising the things of the world. This is how you think. You cannot for a moment think that you are included in the world.
The very elements that are the substances of nature are the elements of our own bodies. Where comes the necessity to feel that we are outside it? If this conviction arises within ourselves, all things will join together and enter us. Sarvah dvijoh vali bhasmai haranti: As vassals offer tribute to an emperor, all the quarters of heaven will join together and pay obeisance to you.
The Upanishad tells us that if you are the embodiment of the stuff of the whole world, you become the mother of all beings. When you eat food, all the beings are craving to know what you are eating. As children sit round the mother and ask for food, so do all beings expect you to consume the whole world within yourself, so that they may be satisfied. When you are satisfied, everybody is satisfied. This is the meaning of brahmana-bhojana. They serve food to Brahman. Brahmana means one who has established himself in the Absolute – brahma bhavati iti brahmanah. That means to say, when you feed that Absolute Being, you have fed all the quarters of heaven.
Moksha , liberation, is an entry into the structure of things, and not wanting things. You cannot want anything, and there is no necessity to want anything, either. The quarters of the heavens are your friends. The world is your friend. If you simply say, "Come!" it comes, just as you tell your hand, "Come!" and it comes. You tell your legs "Come!" and they come. If the legs come because you want them to do something, the world also will do the same thing, provided you have become a limb of this whole world.
Meditation is a total concept of consciousness, which includes all the objects, and if any object is outside, that will irritate you and see that the completeness is not achieved. For this purpose, all desultory thoughts, prejudiced ideas, and inborn traits have to be melted down in the menstruum of pure self-analysis, which will actually take a lifetime. Sadhana is a lifetime of work; from birth to death you have to do only this. The turbulent impulses, with which we have come to this world, will not give us a moment's peace of mind. They have to be harnessed as beneficiaries and made our own, rather than alienated. Never alienate anything from yourself, and that thing which was an alienated substance will become part of your being. The whole world is friendly, provided you are friendly with it.
This is, briefly, the preparatory steps that we have to take in charging the soul, which is ourselves – not the soul which is inside us. The soul is not inside us; it is ourselves. Do not say that the soul is inside. It is you. You cannot say, "I am inside myself." This idea of insideness arises due to the body, which tells you that something is inside. You have to distinguish between the 'I' that is in you, and the mind that operates.
When I am coming, the mind is not coming. I am coming. Who is this 'I am'? Think over this matter. That 'I' is the principle that contemplates the great 'I' of the cosmos. All are 'I's' only. You are an 'I', I am an 'I', everything is an 'I' only. Every little thing asserts 'I am'. If all these 'I's' join together, there is one single 'I' at that time. That Total 'I' is contemplating Itself. That liberation where the Total 'I' feels complete in Itself, having achieved whatever It wants, is real spiritual liberation.