DISSOLVE THE UNREAL AND BE FREE

I have so many times heard, listened, read – be like a Lotus – attached but detached and have been also saying this during many of my classes when I share Yoga. A few times many said it is so hard, and indeed, it is not easy at all, so I had this urge in me to bring up this subject, on how to dissolve the unreal and be free. As many times when we want to detached, the first thing comes, is a thought in form of a question – how? But why does a thought in us come, from where and how, I wanted this to be a knowing and this blog is what/how I feel, no way saying I know it all.

A request to all the readers, if you read it till the end and you want to add something to it, please do let me know or if you have any questions arising, please do ask away, so that we can understand a little more deeply and let it become our experience by knowing it, rather than fill our mind, with a bit more knowledge – the borrowed one.

As I see there are three things – a feeling first comes, secondly a thought comes and finally the action happens. Maybe not totally aware but each thought is produced by a certain feeling. The feeling becomes actualized in thought which finally is actualized in the act.

Say at this moment, a breeze comes, it touches you – what happened? Or maybe you are sitting near the kitchen, a smell comes – what happened? Or maybe you took a pen or pencil out or scrolled your mobile screen or clicked your laptop with your hand/fingers– what happened? Can you see what happened – you felt and thought got created. Just feel whatsoever is the fact. Remain with the fact; don’t move in thinking. We all are surrounded from everywhere. Everywhere so much is converging on you,  whole existence is coming to meet you from everywhere, from all your senses it enters, but somehow you are in the head, and slowly the senses have or are becoming dead, and they do not feel.

I started a meditation technique from Bhairav Tantra Yoga for a certain growth to occur before I could do this because this is an inner experiment. If we cannot feel the outer, it will be very difficult for us to feel the inner, because the inner is the subtle. If we cannot feel the gross, we cannot feel the subtle. It is that if you cannot hear the sounds, then it will be difficult for you to hear the inner soundlessness.

Try and just sit in the garden or on a cooler day sit on a beach, people are passing by and there are many noises and many sounds. You just need to first close your eyes and try to find the most subtle sound there around you. A crow is cawing, a cow is mowing or waves are waving, try to concentrate yourself on that one noise. The other things are going on. The sound is such, it is so subtle, that you cannot be aware of it unless you focus your awareness towards it. But if you focus your awareness, the whole other noise will go far away and the noise of the one will become the center. And you will hear it, all the nuances of it – very subtle, but you will be able to hear it. This is one way to grow in sensitivity. So, now when you touch, when you hear, when you eat, when you take a shower, allow your senses to be open. Please do not think – feel. Don’t say anything. Don’t verbalize, because the moment you verbalize, you miss feeling. The moment words come in, the mind starts to function. Feel the feeling. Now, with eyes closed feel the thought. A continuous flow of thoughts is there, a continuum, a flux; maybe like a river of thoughts flowing. Feel the thoughts, feel their presence, from where are they coming, and the more you feel, the more will be revealed to you – layers upon layers. You will come to the knowing of not only thoughts that are just on the surface, but you will see behind them there are more thoughts, and behind them there are still more thoughts – layers upon layers.

The meditative technique says: Feel but we go on saying, “These or those are my thoughts.” But we need to feel – are they really ours? Can we say “my”? The more we feel, the less will it be possible for us to say that they are ours. And we will realize they are all borrowed, they are all from the outside. They for sure have come to us but they are not ours. No thought is ours actually as they are just like dust gathered. Even if we cannot recognize the source from where this thought has come to us at this moment, no thought is ours. But with regular Abhyasa if we try hard, we can find from where the thought has come to us.

Indeed only the inner silence is ours, it was not gifted by anyone, we were born with it, and yes we will die with it. But thoughts have been given to us and we have been conditioned to them. And if this can be felt – that no thought is mine – only then we can throw the mind. If they are ours, we will defend them. And the very feeling that “this thought is mine” is the attachment and that I begin to grow roots in myself. That I become the soil and the thought remains rooted in me. If anything that I can see is not mine is uprooted, then I am not attached to it. It is the feeling of “mine” creates attachment.

Now is a choice – you can fight for your thoughts or you can become a killer of your thoughts. Consciousness is yours, but thoughts are not yours. And well why and how this knowing will help? – well, because if you can see that thoughts are not yours, then nothing is yours because thought is the root of all. The house is mine, the property is mine, the family is mine, that and that is mine – these are the outer things. So, only if thoughts are mine can all these things, the superstructure, the illusion be mine.

So, if thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, basically if thought itself is not mine, then how can the other be mine? So, when the thoughts are uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then we can live in the world and not live in it, be like the lotus in the water, yet not attached to it.

After Ramana Maharishi's meditation technique of “Who am I”, I went to learn/study a Tibetan method which is still deeper. The technique says to be silent and then search within for where I am. It further says to go on in the inner space, move to every point, and ask, “Where am I?” You will not find it anywhere. And the more you seek, the more it will not be there. And asking “Who am I?” or “Where am I?” a moment comes when you come to a point where you are, but no I – a simple existence has happened to you. But this will happen only when thoughts are not ours. That is a deeper realm – a state of I-ness. So, when we establish in feeling, cut from thoughts, face I-ness, we will find that it exists not. It becomes clear that it was only a useful word, a linguistic symbol – yes necessary, but not real. Necessary as even a Buddha has to use it, even after his enlightenment, knowing it is just a linguistic device. But when a Buddha says I, he never means I, because there is no one. So, when we face this I-ness it will disappear.

A little of what happened during my journey – a Fear gripped me at a moment, and yes I was scared. Later my Guru said, it happens to many who move in such techniques deeply that they become so afraid that they run out of it. Now please do remember this: when you feel and face your I-ness you will be in the same situation as you will be when you die – the same. Because I am disappearing, and you feel death is occurring to you.

Well, you will have a sinking kind of sensation and will feel you are sinking down and down. And if you get afraid like I did, you will come out again and you will cling to thoughts because those thoughts will be helpful and then the fear will leave you.

I was told that the fear is very good, a very hopeful sign. It is indicating that now I am going deep – and death is the deepest point. Still in progress to go into death and become deathless, because the depth of Tantra says one who goes into death cannot die, as death is also just around; never in the center, just on the periphery. As and when I-ness disappears you are just like death, as the old is no more and the new has come into being. This consciousness that will come out will be a new, uncontaminated, young virgin. That I-ness disappears, and we will be in our pristine virginity, in our absolute freshness. And the deepest layer of our being will be touched.

Deeper into the sutra, when thoughts have disappeared or you are not clinging to them – if they are passing like clouds in the sky and we have no business with them, we will be aloof and detached and unidentified, and the I-ness has disappeared – then we can look at the internal organs, well almost all of us know the outer organs - the hands that touch, eyes which see, the ears which hear. The internal organs are those through which I feel my being, thus is Niyama the second limb of Yoga. The outer is for others, the Yama, the first limb of Yoga.

We think we know about the other, but that is through the outer. How do I know the other unless I know about me? Even though I am – how do I know about it? Who gives me the sensation of my being? - the internal organs. When thoughts have stopped and when I-ness is no more, only then, in that purity, in that clarity, can we see the internal organs. To know why, and where we feel, we need to see the internal organs first and this is what only will set us mentally and emotionally free.