Knowledge Vs Devotion
We often hear the expression ‘god-fearing’ attributed to virtuous persons with a sense of approval. A god-fearing person is supposed to be an upright, honest, reliable and generally good person. I was brought up in a society having these sort of values, in which I had the fortune to be recognized a god-fearing boy. And I always felt guilty whenever I felt that I did some thing wrong or something against my conscience.
But now I feel and understand that the basic emotion underlying the need to be god-fearing is only pure fear, and not the desire to be good. What is actually required is not fear of God, but love of God, pure devotion or divine Love. Fearing God is just fear of one’s own conscience. Of course it has its own virtue for making one desist from doing things considered wrong or ‘sinful’.
One may ask why the love of God or devotion is more important than fear of God? Because, while fear of god helps keep a person pure in mind without the feeling of guilt, and prepare him ready to seek spiritual blessings, it does not help one to experience the Ultimate. Even intellectual knowledge of the Absolute is useless without devotion. Intellectual knowledge separates the knowledge from the known. To know reality, knowledge and the known has to merge and be one with the knower. That would be possible only with utmost devotion where the knower merges with the absolute. To know God one has to be God. Only in divine love oneness happens. That is why it is said, ‘Surrender to the Infinite, the Ultimate Reality that is God’.
But is the other way around true, meaning, does knowledge of the absolute come from devotion alone without any effort to know? The logical answer is, of course, having known God everything else is automatically known. Nothing is left to be known.

talk in seminar at current books, Tellicherry

The subject today, 'Ageless body and Timeless mind’ is a very tough subject. It would have been very vague and intangible also but for the book by the same title of Deepak Chopra, a doctor and an endocrinologist. It is one of the best sellers, a wonderful book much appreciated in US as well as in India.
Deepak Chopra’s main point is that aging is a matter of choice or is optional, and not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it has to come from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided. He approaches the source deep within all of through three different paths, through body that is matter, through mind which is the transition level, and time.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained or coded in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are nothing but molecules and atoms. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons, all of which are photons in vibration. The material part ends at the atom. Beyond it, the quarks, leptons etc are energy photons in vibration with vast spaces in between. This is the quantum field or domain. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. The quantum field, the non-material mental stage, as already mentioned is composed of concentrations of energy waves and vast empty space. Therefore we can say that the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. This is therefore the transition stage between mind and matter. Our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space at the quantum field level or beyond it at the virtual level. How to access that intelligence to stop ageing or slow down aging is the question.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored impressions of thought. But no storage device is found anywhere in the body or brain. The brain is all mainly liquid. Only thing I have left is my awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat need not be anywhere in particular. In the quantum field or beyond space and time has no meaning. The source can be anywhere or everywhere. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. Attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick says Deepak Chopra.
According to Einstein’s theory time is not absolute. That is, time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. We have chronological time, psychological time and biological time. While my chronological time is eighty-two, my biological or physiological time may be only seventy and my psychological time only fifty-five. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours etc. imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We metabolize time by thinking. But if we metabolize it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Even the bio-chemistry of the body actually arises from the awareness. ( Note: in short, what Deepak Chopra has done is to give us a solid scientific basis for the spiritual experience through quantum )physics and biochemistry.)

the restless mind

I am awake for about sixteen hours every day. All this time my mind is engaged with something or other. There seems no alternative; it will anyway be engaged with something automatically whether I like it or not. If it is not engaged in work, pleasure, reading or day dreaming, it will get uneasy inviting some disturbing thoughts. That is why when there is nothing interesting for the mind to do it is called boredom. When one is bored, disturbing thoughts nag and push for entry into the mind.
Not having anything to do is not boredom. Having nothing interesting to do, or be engaged in, is boredom. Having nothing at all to do, nothing interesting or nothing uninteresting to be engaged in, can actually be a pleasant silence, a calm quietude. Interest in something keeps the mind occupied so as to avoid unwanted disturbances and uneasiness. If I keep the mind engaged in observing the mind itself, that is to say that if I am aware and attentive to the very movements of the mind, then, I am never bored. Slowly pleasant silence also quietly enters in.
Why the mind is normally engaged in something or other incessantly? There is no respite even for a moment unless one is asleep. Sometimes the thoughts are pleasant, other times compulsorily unpleasant. There are anxieties over anticipated pain. There are pleasures to look forward. Most of the time the mind is engaged with something in the present. And it gets absorbed in the incoming sense impressions. Why can’t the mind be still without being hooked on to senses or thoughts?
Is it because that is its intrinsic nature? Or is it because it is a habit acquired from birth? Or, is it to avoid things unpleasant and painful from coming in uninvited. I think it could be the last. Of course when it is engaged with known things pleasant or even unpleasant, no unknown fears can come in.
I find that in my case it is clearly to avoid the onslaught of fears or the fear that barges in as soon as the mind is empty. Can grace come in instead of fears if one cultivates some suitable habit? There is no time left!

staying with emotions

When I am angry, I am anger. I stay with anger. I become aware of anger. Anger then loses it’s strength.
I am afraid. I am fear. I stay with fear. I am aware of fear. I perceive it and become bold enough to play with it. The fear fades and subsides.
If I stay with the mood, with the emotion, the emotion does not erupt into thoughts that reinforce the mood to sustain it. It is thought that helps the continuation of a mood or emotion.
But, if the mood is a pleasant one, like say, a feeling of elation, that also fades and vanishes on being aware of it. Naturally I want to retain the pleasant ones and avoid the unpleasant moods. The trick is to allow thoughts arising from pleasant emotions to go on. It has of course, the risk of allowing thoughts to become a habit, thereby bringing in unpleasant thoughts also by force of the habit. After all, mind is a complicated, intricate maze!
I am told by a friend that my Radio Talk on ‘Aging Gracefully’ was very good, and he congratulated me on that. I feel happy and elated. I stay with the happy mood and observe it. Slowly it starts fading. But if I go on thinking about it the elation gets continued for some more time. Even after it is completely faded, the happiness can be revived for small intervals by thinking about it. If it had been an unpleasant incident like a derogatory remark, I would have tried to avoid thinking about it, and failed in the attempt. The unpleasant emotions attached to derogatory remarks are much more powerful and do persist. Complete conscious awareness can however eliminate all of them. The mechanics of how emotions erupt are to be understood.
I have to be aware of the whole process working within me. If I allow the thoughts to erupt and continue without being aware or conscious of the process, then I am either being miserable or indulging in pleasure, as the case may be. In pleasure or misery, one is not consciously aware. But in pure joy, one is fully aware.
In sexual pleasure with an element of guilt, it is the lack of conscious awareness that makes it mechanical indulgence and not joy. In the union of love there is awareness and joy.

infinite nothingness

Nothingness!
There is nothing; not even space – or time.
Reality is of the size one divided by infinity (1/∞).

The nothingness, pregnant with infinite energy,
Self suppressed,
Burst out vibrant,
Forward and backward; up and down, inside and outside.

The vibrating explosion of energy was electro-magnetic,
Of the order of lightening
Let there be light; there was light.
The Light was Life.

Light condensed itself into everything.
Nothing has become everything.
And it goes on becoming everything.
It has to finally go back into Nothing!

I too will go back to Nothing,
That pregnant, dynamic NOTHINGNESS!

the ego and 'I'

I saw my ego. That was when I got angry. The mere feeling of ‘I’, the simple fellow became an angry swollen ‘ego’ when I felt the anger. The anger joined with the connected thought stream, and condensed into ‘ego’ with the awareness. When one is agitated, the mood or emotion creates a thought stream. The thoughts, the emotion, and the awareness that illumines them, all combine together to form a single entity that is the feeling of ‘I’. The memories and images of all such ‘I’ formations together in the mind constitute the ‘ego’. It is never the same. It changes, modifies, and revises itself as memories increase on each experience.

the flow of life

I can imagine life as a flow from future through the present to the past. The immediate future is, within an instant, the past. In the process I hardly notice the present. But the present is actually noticed immediately after it is passed to the past invariably as the memory of the last moment. This is so because of the lack of attention. If attention, the focused awareness, is on the present, then things are different. Then the present is a continuous stream.

My awareness is like a magnetic head of a tape recorder or the laser head of a CD player that detects, becomes aware of what is instantly passing before it, as the sound track or video track passes from the future to the past

pure untouched awareness

When no thought, no image, or emotion is present in the mind, is it empty? Is it a vacuum? One may not find it so. Awareness is never felt in pure form. Something is always attached to it. Either it is from the past in the form of memory or from the present in the form of sense impressions. They are seen stuck to the awareness. Awareness is never without an object to be aware of. Can it exist alone without an object, or a sense experience? I do wonder.
Without memory there is no past, and if there is no past, no future can be projected or imagined. Only the present in the form of immediate sense impressions can exist. Who feels the impressions coming through the senses? It is the awareness that feels them. But without the sense impressions or memory, what is awareness? What is it’s nature? Pure awareness without anything to be aware of? Can a live mass of flesh, a blob, with no sense organs whatsoever have awareness? If it can have, that must be pure awareness. That would then also mean that the whole mass of live blob is awareness. Such an awareness will be pure untouched awareness without any impression of past, present or future attached to it. Pure life is thus ‘Pure Awareness’. With no life to apprehend non-life, no non-life can exist.
Therefore, all of us, body, mind, intelligence, universe, everything can be only a big mass of awareness. And, awareness is a movement, a pulsation, a sort of kinetic energy.

what is God and Who is God

What exactly is God? The power, the force, the energy, the intelligence behind this life and existence including the existence itself personified? Well, then it cannot be denied because the life is there before us, before me, to perceive. I am there, and therefore the power that makes it possible for me to exist must be there. When this power is conceived in a certain particular form and name it becomes a particular God.
This power apparently has no craving to continue in existence or to be reborn again and again because it seems to be just there in perpetuity. The need to continue in some form of existence even after death is not that of this god, this power or that of the awareness in Man, me. The need is that of the bundle of memory that has lived so far, and wants to continue.
So, if anything, any subtle residue exists after death, it must be the memory. But the memory of what? All the memory from birth to death? Or a selected portion only? Can memory exist without a body, without the material body? Suppose it does exist by some hitherto unknown phenomenon, what about the memory of any life before birth? Will that also be tagged on along with the memory of the present life? It should be then the memory accumulated from the beginning. And what is the beginning? A primary cell, an atom, a quark, or a boson etc. But that cannot be ‘me’ by any standard or by even the wildest form of fantasy!
The whole of my thought process is now reduced to absurdity, and attracts outright rejection. Thoughts like this can never solve the problem, or find out the truth. Then what can be done? Nothing! Shut up! And leave the God alone. Better surrender to the ‘non-existent’ Reality!
I DON”T KNOW; AND I CANNOT KNOW: THEREFORE I SURRENDER!

focussed awareness and attention

Awareness, I feel within me like a vast spread of sea, calm and placid at one time, and turbulent, restless at other times. Waves, ripples and froth at the surface are part and parcel. But attention usually is on one particular ripple, a particular wave, or a particular group of ripples. Attention is definitely not the same as awareness. It is a part but not the same. Focused awareness is attention, not the entire awareness focused, but a part of the awareness is focused on a ripple or wave. When the attention is not focused it is just part of awareness, disinterested awareness. Attention remains on a wave, say, on an event only so long as there is interest. Otherwise, the ever alert attention moves on from one wave, one ripple, i. e, one event, one thought to the other to settle for a while on each like a restless butterfly.
Awareness is vast like the limitless expanse of the sky. In that space lies everything of the present, past and future. Yet it looks empty because it is infinite. Nothing can exist without awareness, and for the same reason everything is awareness. Attention is awareness, a part of that vast space which seem to concentrate itself to form attention and flit around looking at itself and other parts of the space by focusing. Awareness is just there without moving, uninterested; but attention is forming and moving from one area of awareness to the other, probing, impatient, restless.

The 'See'er

Who sees the world and the universe? ‘I’ see the universe through my eyes? Eye is an equipment, I know. Am ‘I’ who sees through this equipment also not an equipment consisting of faculties of perception, understanding and apprehension? Yes, I am also an equipment, a system of machinery for perception, by somebody, some entity behind it. Who or what is that somebody? My awareness? It is my awareness that illumines my whole system consisting of the senses, ‘I’ and all. And this awareness does not seem to be confined or limited to my body. Sometimes, and sometimes only suddenly I feel that the awareness enclosed inside my body is separated from it and is spread everywhere. Then I am aware of everything around at the same time and the awareness does not appear to be imprisoned in my body, but released to the vast open space outside. Awareness has this quality of not being confined anywhere. The body, shape, voice, thought etc. are mere memory, and lie somewhere away from awareness. Nothing seems to be behind or beyond that awareness which is spread everywhere.
Will it remain so even when my body is no more? Or will that awareness also disappear? If it will disappear, then the present freedom from body is only mind’s play. Is there a way to find out? Or will it become self evident before the end?

drinks, dullness and Truth

I am having ‘a small’. Small as you know, is a term in these parts to refer to a small doze of alcohol. I am having it all alone without company. Is it all right or bad? I don’t know. They say it is always bad, ‘injurious to health’. But doctors are divided. Authoritative medical opinion says that up to forty ml a day is actually good for old people to help circulation. The tonics, Arishtams in Ayurveda system of Medicines, always contain alcohol. But spiritual practitioners, - not spirit practitioners, of course, - say, no, it is never alright unless one is after certain undesirable ‘tantric powers’. I am not after any ‘power’. I just want to know the Truth, the secret behind this life on earth. And drinking is supposed to be bad for finding the truth.
Why? Because drinking dulls the mind. Does it? May not, if it is within limits. Some drugs like ‘Soma’ is supposed make mind more alert and happy. I might not have been able to write this if the drink made my mind dull. The great poet Exhuthacchan would not have been able to write the epic Ramayana in Malayalam unless he had his quota of Toddy. Mind has to be, for sure, alert to think, to know, and to apprehend truth. Has one drink dulled my mind, and reduced my capacity to feel? Perhaps it has. May be while in it I cannot know.
But I do feel fully aware. If one drink can take away one’s mind, or dull it, what place it has in apprehending Truth? Truth cannot be dependant on a transient, impermanent, and fickle mind. So, logically the mind can go to hell, and still the truth can prevail! The awareness is still there without the nuisance of the mind.
Then who apprehends or realizes the Truth? If ‘I’ am not there, and my ego is not there, if the mind is not there, then who feels the truth? The awareness? That means when one realizes, the awareness is aware of the awareness; that is all. What is that to me? Why should I care a hoot? When the feeling of ‘I’ is not there, it is as good as I am dead. Then realization will have no meaning. The whole thing is a futile exercise.
So, ‘I’ have to be there, to feel, to apprehend, to realize the Truth when the time for it comes. Eliminating the ‘I’, or the fictitious ego is therefore utter nonsense. If I have to realize, I have to be there. It is a paradox, an enigma. Any answer?
For the drunken question here, are you asking me find an answer ‘off drinks’?

thoughts and moods

Fearful thoughts persist in haunting me because I want to ward them off and avoid. If I ignore they are more adamant. So, what is the way out? A solution is urgent but not forthcoming. It was then I chanced to notice that along with the thoughts I wanted to avoid, there was attached to it a depressing, fearful mood or feeling without which those thoughts have no existence. The feeling or mood was the one that triggered the thought, and was still lingering adamantly. The mood produced the thoughts. Mostly the thoughts and feelings are combined into one single unit, attacked and occupied the mental space. Therefore I decided that I should tackle the feeling or mood forgetting about the disturbing thoughts. I stayed with the mood however uncomfortable it was. It worked. Without the support of the thoughts the mood/feeling slowly subsided. The disturbing thoughts then had no place anywhere in the mental space. Feeling or perceiving or being aware of the restless disturbing mood seemed to quench it when attention is taken away from the thoughts

surrender to wonder

I was really struck with wonder! Why, actually it was nothing to talk about, something that happens every now and then. But this time it left me astounded.
A trifle event. While eating my lunch a little miniscule chip of coconut kernel got into my side gullet irritating my throat. I coughed, and coughed; it wouldn’t go down or come up. I drank water. No, it wouldn’t budge, and is still irritating. The cough and sneeze became violent. I swallowed some cooked rice to push it down. Yet it persisted in irritating without moving. I gave up! Let it be! I surrender! Let the irritation have its way. I grunted every now and then getting resigned to the trouble.
Then, Lo! All on a sudden a lump of mucus shot out of my throat through the mouth with the irritating chip encapsulated inside!
I had not given any instructions for the mucus to exude out and attack the intruder! I had not summoned it to come to my rescue. I had not stored sufficient phlegm as ammunition. I had not constructed any mini-factory or gland in my gullet to produce mucus. I was aware of no mechanism that could shoot it out. Yet it all happened. This whole life is suddenly such a wonder! Things happen in my world of their own accord. I don’t do anything except indulging in useless worry, silly struggles, and small-time strife. What happens is as they should have happened. Always!

feeling as windows: instinct

Can I know and feel what drives my heart to beat, what force or power runs me alive? Can a fridge know or feel the electricity that runs it? Can a bulb feel the current that makes it glow? The current passes through the bulb and makes it glow giving out light. But the bulb has no capacity to know or feel, whereas Man, I, have the capacity to know things provided I can compare anything new with things I already know. But no such prior knowledge is required to feel. Only for recognition previous knowledge is required. So, I have the capacity to feel the power that ticks me. That capacity is my awareness expressed though my feelings. Therefore, is it through feelings, or, is the feeling the window through which I can look at the power that runs my system, the organism?

One is able to distinguish which are the inclinations, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that come from human instinct and which all come from one’s information and knowledge. The first is inbuilt in the body and the second is learned. The learned tendencies and habits come from the mind, memory. But the instinctive behavior comes from deeper within. Why not look and observe through that instinct to find out what force powers and pushes it? The Source must be somewhere behind it. Intuitive perception must be possible on fasting and looking within.

instruments of perception

I perceive. I perceive through my senses. Senses are my perception instruments. How many are they? Two eyes, two ears, nose, tongue, and the skin having sensation throughout the body. Is that all? No. I feel a pain in my tummy, an ache inside my head or a burning within my knee. That means that the sense of touch is even inside in a modified form. When my mind is calm and silent I notice the feeling of touch at every cell of my body. At the level of the nails and hair it may be mere imagination. But it is there, and I can bring about a feeling, an indirect sensation at their roots when I am sufficiently alert and imaginative.
And I feel that the eyes are nothing but certain nerve endings of the same sensation of touch, specially developed, where the feelings are super- sensitive in a particular way so as to detect light patterns. Similarly for ears, nose and tongue. They are also specialized forms of touch. So, I notice.
That means I have only one single instrument of perception namely, the sense of touch that manifests in certain peculiar ways in certain specific areas of my body, so as to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and feel. Is it ultimately the nervous system which is the sensing instrument, or the only sense instrument? Yes. It appears so. The whole system can be alerted together when the mind is relaxed, silent, in a state of anticipation, waiting, expecting nothing in particular to come up. The mind is then ready to receive something entirely new, I feel.
Only, nothing new seem to come up yet!

chasing the heart beat

Early in the morning, I am sitting down outside in my veranda all alone with a blank mind. It is drizzling in the court yard in front. The atmosphere is gloomy. The lawn grass is all wet and the drenched orchids are drooping heavy. And I can see that the newspaper bundle lying on the iron gate is damp.
I don’t know why my hands are trembling. Must be the weakness of the nerves due to lack of proper sleep at night. I can hear my heart beat as if it is hammering off far away in a mill. I can even see the rhythm in the tremble of my hands. I counted the number of beats per breath. Seven beats of heart per every inhalation and two per exhalation.
What prompts my breathing? As soon as inhaling is completed, the urge to exhale presses making the breath collapse with no choice. The exhalation is fast. It is a sort of haste to come to rest. But only for a second, and then it is time to inhale again. The inhalation is a craving to drink in as much fresh air as possible from outside. The process, the urges and cravings, come from nowhere in particular, or it comes from everywhere. It is the very existence, my life!
But nothing like that is felt about the beating of my heart. No urge, no craving. It just goes on beating with no conscious control or power on my part. Wherefrom does the prompt for the heart to beat come? And wherefrom does the urge to think like this come? Thoughts come from memory of course. Memory is the storehouse of words, images, relationships, feelings. But the prompt or trigger for the outflow of thoughts is somewhere else. A continuous urge from an unknown source seem to pop them up.
Very difficult to grasp the entity that make the heart beat, the mind think. It looks futile to chase it, to find it.

pure fear, moods, Truth, movements of mind, hunches

noticing movements in the mind:

The UPS inverter to which my computer system is connected is down. The battery does not get charged. I had told my electrician even at the time of installing that there should be a proper power plug and socket for the inverter so that I can take it off the plug when there is a short circuit or something. But he thought it enough to connect the phase to the fuse holder base, the neutral to the supply line and the earth straight to the earth wire. Now the only way I can disconnect the UPS is by pulling out the fuse holder or switching off the mains plunging the whole house into darkness.
My own foolishness in allowing this to happen by carelessness sometime last year annoys and agitates me now, pushing up my blood pressure and increasing the palpitation of my ailing ischemic heart! The interesting part is that I notice the automatic diversion of my attention from the malfunctioning of the UPS to the agitation of my mind and the beating of my heart. The increase in palpitation is almost immediate.
Now the problem at present is not the UPS, but the palpitation and the mental agitation. Normally the agitation should have gone unnoticed, attention being concerned with the main problem, that of the UPS.
That is life. I live with problems shifting attention from one to the next, completely absorbed in each. Nobody bothers to notice the mechanism of how all these are connected to the condition of the body, mind, subconscious and even further inside. It is not enough if one starts noticing things at the age of eighty or eighty-two. What a pity!

Insight Vs Reasoning

All my conclusions arrived at after considerable thoughts are wrong because the premises were either incorrect or were adopted unsuspectingly. The premises were inaccurate because they needed to be questioned and verified.
Every day we find in newspapers and magazines, several well thought out, well reasoned articles that appear unquestionably convincing. We believe them never suspecting their veracity, and are carried away by their perfect logic. We never doubt the authenticity of facts on which the elaborate and logical discussions are made. We thus get cheated by clever writers who manipulate and distort facts deliberately for political and other purposes, and cover them up with perfect logic.
My own thinking and reasoning, I know, is limited and unreliable. It may have several flaws. Yet I have only my own power of reasoning to go by. Sudden solutions coming from inspiration, intuition, or a sudden hunch may be often much more reliable and correct. These would need only a little check up by the reasoning faculty.
Why, if insight is much more reliable, the modern world gives so much importance to reasoning and logic? And we old people are inclined to agree without giving further thought to it?

visitor from Venus

Yesterday a being abruptly landed before me in my dream announcing, ‘I am from Venus’. I was somehow not surprised, although it looked a little odd outside television screens. I responded, ‘that explains why a hallow surrounds your sphere.’ By the word ‘sphere’ I meant his head, because it was only a luminous ball. Its or the being’s body was a bright egg reminding one of Humpty- Dumpty. The friendly golden voice came from somewhere inside the being. And I ‘felt’ the voice rather than ‘heard’ it.
Being: I came visiting earth to learn about animal life. There are so many different types here. What animal are you?
I: I am not an animal. I am human.
Being: Human? You mean to say, an animal known by the name of ‘Human’?
I: No. Humans are not animals. They are quite differently made and are much superior to animals.
Being: I have already seen some of them closely. I do not find anything special or superior in you or your people. Whatever animals do, you also do. Eat, drink, defecate, make difficult noises, copulate, fight, grow old and die. The only difference I find is that you cover yourself with a lot of colored stuff.
I: May be at the level of the body I look like an animal and behave like one. But I am not an animal.
Being: So, you do admit that at the body level you are just another animal?
I: I do not admit anything. Body is equipment for me to use. Or the body can be said to be a pet animal of mine which I maintain and use for various purposes. That does not mean that I am it.
Being: Then who are you? Is not your mind also something that you use for various purposes?
I. Yes. Mind is also equipment that I use, for example, like a computer. My mind is very intricate and superior. Human mind can send rockets to the moon and further on to outer space.
Being: You mean like a porcupine sending it’s quills? Considering the vastness of the universes sending rockets cannot be said to be anything superior to shooting quills.
I: But the porcupine does not think. It has like other animals, only instinct. Apart from instinct, thinking and reasoning power, I can also develop my intuitive power if I want. Animals cannot do that.
Being: How do you know? May be they have, but is not apparent. Your reasoning power may be a little more advanced like your mental activity. But that does not take you away from the animal category. In fact that has lead to more brawls and intrigues.
I: I hope to apprehend Reality.
Being: That is fine. Apprehension and Reality may make things and animals different. So, you are different? But who are you?
I: I think that I am just a feeling of ‘I’.
Being: FEELING? You are only feeling? Hundred per cent fictitious you are, then! You don't exist!
And It/He Vanished.
* * * * * * *
I do feel within myself that I exist. Therefore I exist. But what the being from Venus said may be correct. Is it funny or stupid, this life? What is so great about being human?. Nothing. Alas! I am now convinced, there is nothing particularly significant or ennobling in this birth. I do understand that I am, after all, another animal on earth, perhaps having slightly different kinds of faculties that I presumptuously consider to be great. And I will die like any other animal whether I have these faculties or not.

awareness of awareness

When one is feeling awareness within oneself, the senses are not involved. The awareness is looking, feeling, perceiving, without the aid of any of the senses. If the stored memory is excluded or ignored then the awareness is not aware of the body also as such. But the awareness still seems to feel the alert bundle of the nerves, the nervous system as a whole. Perhaps something has to be always attached to the awareness for it to express itself. A nervous system which can ‘feel’ has to be there for awareness to be felt by itself. Otherwise how will awareness be known?
In short, can awareness be aware of awareness itself without the instrument in the form of a feeler or perceiver?

enjoyment of fear; memory of moods; search for truth

Bad moods; enjoyment of fear
Even in normal day to day situations my prevailing mood seems to be one of fear or apprehension. And I fish out and retrieve constantly from memory, incidents, occurrences, and occasions that correspond to that mood. Then my mind converts them into streams of thoughts – very unpleasant thoughts! And if a real event of anxiety happens, everything goes haywire! Worry, depression and agony are triggered producing gloom all over. Perhaps on a lower key this seems to be the case for a few days every now and then.
Once I make up my mind to enjoy pure fear as a bodily discomfort, I am no more afraid ‘of’ anything in particular. The feeling of fear is uncomfortable of course, but not that bad because observing the feeling can also be fascinating. The excitement of those who dare dangerous adventures perhaps comes from this fascination.
Pure fear is feeling of fear, and not fear ‘of’ something. Fear of something is pure fear projected as fear of that something. The object of fear is only a reason that triggers the emotion of fear.
* * * * * * *
Memory of moods
When my mind is calm and silent, what I find settled underneath as a residue, is depression. The mind is still but heavy. Depressing thoughts try to bubble up to the surface ever ready to burst out.
Mind is of course full of memories. The memories are not merely images of things and verbal thoughts. When I look closer inside the mind I find more of moods, emotions, and feelings that can convert themselves into thoughts using the stored words and forms, than of immediate thought. A word, a form or an imagery remind one of a mood, and the mood or feeling at once jumps out capturing one’s present mind making it depressed or elated. More often it is depressed!
* * * * * * *
Search for Truth:
If I persevere and struggle persistently I may perhaps be able to develop a super-consciousness or a super-conscious intelligence in spite of my age. I may experience something beyond my individuality,- individual mind and consciousness. I may also have out of body events happening around me. Anything is possible. But all that is because I am a different type of animal, a little more ‘advanced’ in evolution. But yet I am still an animal being part of Nature and therefore limited by nature. Any reality that I apprehend or experience need not be the Truth at all, although it may be the truth for me alone, and for this moment alone.
So, should I not forget it all? I need not search for the Truth any more. I must stop the search. But I must continue the search within me to know my mind and myself better. I must go as far deep as possible and be content with such a search. Something new always comes up from the inner world!
The rest I surrender to the super-intelligence and energy of this universe that sustains me right now.

God, Love, and Reality

‘God is Love’ is an accepted saying in almost all religions, isn’t it so? Should we not probe this statement?
What is meant here is devotional Love, of course. I personally notice within myself that Love, just like Compassion, Romantic love, Fear, Hatred, wonder and anger, is an emotion. True, it is the only emotion that unites instead of separates. Just because a feeling of oneness with the object of emotion is felt in devotional love, can we rule it out of the group of emotions and call it God? Is it not still an emotion that comes and goes? It is never permanent.
Perhaps it is because a deep feeling of oneness along with ecstasy is felt in devotional love that it turned out to be a good metaphor for God. God or the Ultimate Reality is naturally the original cause for the feeling of devotional love, just as it is the source for everything else also. Love with its euphoria and ecstasy is felt and misunderstood to be a substitute for the Ultimate itself.
Yet, this misunderstanding has some meaning when we consider that our awareness has always something or other attached to it, a thought, a mood, an image, a feeling or an emotion. Awareness is never alone in its pure form. In my case when the mind is bereft of any thought or image, it is a lurking fear that gets attached to awareness. And fear is one of the most disturbing of the emotions. For some others it may be resentment, anger or some other separating emotion. If instead of fear or anger, if the most desirable, ecstatic Love were to attach itself to my awareness there would be nothing more to desire for. Love being a unifying emotion, when it is attached to awareness in its pure form along with its euphoria and ecstasy, we can perhaps really call it God or the Ultimate Reality without touching upon the question of omnipotence.. There will then be a Oneness, a Unity of the whole, awareness, love, the universe as the object of love, the ecstasy and everything else combined into one complete entity!
The problem is only that Love has to rise itself from within, and cannot be forcibly brought in. I now realize the utter need for devotional Love.

breakfast, soul and Donald Walsch

We are alone today, my ailing wife and I. Our house keeper cum-cook Sarada left yesterday morning after cooking and storing out food for the noon and night. She is expected back after a month. So, what is for breakfast today? No substitute cook is available with the agency that sent Sarada to us. The alternate possibility was the maid who was working with us earlier. But unfortunately she is already booked for two days to cook for a wedding. Today therefore we decided to have our breakfast in the Udipi Hotel in Town.
Then there comes the sudden announcement through a moving loudspeaker that one of the political parties has declared a strike cum-bandh for the day. No vehicles, no shops, and no hotels allowed. Only milk and newspaper exempted. That means somehow we have to fend for ourselves. There are eggs in the fridge. There are also some old slices of bread. I can manage.
Now, according to Neale Donald Walsch, -Ref. his book Home With God- the situation is created by my own choice, through my super-conscious or sub-conscious so as to experience the situation. There is no point in feeling difficulty or disturbed. If I combine and reconcile these ideas with my own thoughts, the following position emerges:
The Soul –I presume it is my individualized awareness- wants to experience all sorts and varieties of events from a collection of infinite possibilities (of the Ultimate Reality?). The soul chooses one at the moment. It creates the situation and through my super-conscious, via my sub-conscious it makes it possible for me the ‘I’, to experience it. But if the ‘I’ knew the source, the charm is lost! If the ‘I’ knew the source, the origin of the situation, the experience loses all significance, because the effect, the difficulty and discomfort that are to be experienced will no more be there to be felt. The entire thing is therefore kept a secret from ‘I’, that is me. Incidents and situations of my own creations happen unknown to me. That would make some sense, no?
But if ‘I’ is able to identify itself with the soul and the soul can in turn identify itself with the Ultimate, the Source, an entirely different possibility may be there. To use Walsch’s terminology, everything can happen ‘sequencetaneously’.
As I was contemplating as above, our old maid came and made breakfast for us. The whole thing was a joke played by my soul on me! Naturally, things happened sequencetaneously only!

server in outer space

Now let me imagine that my mind is a Personal Computer that can be connected to other similar computers/minds through a special Internet. The internet here is of course, the minds’ good will of all affectionate, loving friends and relatives who have similar PCs. What I want to find out is whether there is any server out there with which my PC can be connected so that I can get information and wisdom from outer space?
I sit in an easy comfortable posture, and relax my mind and body. I try to connect my conscious awareness with any possible server in outer space.
Some images do come in the empty, yet alert awareness. But they are all unfortunately, clearly recognizable. That means they are only from known Hard Disk, may be a little distorted or manipulated. Nothing new. They can’t be from outer space.
The idea in trying to connect to a server in outer space is to find out the possibility of feeling the source of that server, the ultimate entity that runs the server, and all the computers, peripherals and everything. What is the software that can connect correctly my PC to the Ultimate Source Server Super Computer?

moods, thoughts, pleasant and unpleasant

Sitting in my veranda, I watch the thousands of yellow coloured butterflies that suddenly appeared from the nearby tree and are now flitting across the sunlit garden in front. The lawn and bushes are emerald green, now dotted with the yellow fluttering spots. Hanging heliconias decorate the background.
A disturbing image pops up in my mind and spoils entirely the pleasant mood. It is gloomy. A series of disturbing thoughts in a chain pass through the mind, connecting one with the other. I try to ward off the unwanted thoughts by bringing in some pleasant thoughts. The attempt seemed to succeed for a minute, but the mind soon lapses into the uncomfortable, because the ‘problem’ that first brought them lingered unsolved by the side, waiting for an opportunity to jump into any gap that might arise in the process of thought.
When the mind is calm, it seems to be an opportunity for any disturbing image to erupt in any vacant space in the mind. The disturbing images have dominance over pleasant images. Pleasant images have to be invited to the mind and deliberately retained unless they are extraordinarily strong and powerful to sustain by themselves. Even then their sustenance is never continuous. But the unpleasant ones pushes themselves in uninvited and stays put until the connected mood is exhausted.
Image creates and establishes the mood, and the mood creates thoughts, thoughts in turn reinforce the mood and the vicious circle goes on.There seems no other alternative but to stay with the bad mood, observe and study closely its behavior without letting the mood create images and thoughts that sustain it. Will it work? Moods and thoughts persist in old age. After all, eighty odd years of flowing thoughts lie in my memory!

awareness and imagery

Observing the mind is a tricky business. Throughout when I am awake, sense impressions continue to come into the mind. They are all in the form of images, visual or other sensory. There are thoughts in the form of imagination and imagery. These come from memory store house. Emotions arrive mostly in the form of feelings of the body. They have also images in the form of impressions. Thus everything in the mind at a given moment is in the form of image or imagination. And they are continuously there in the mind throughout the waking state.
Most of the images pass off with or without registering into the memory. But something or other is always present in the mind at every moment for the awareness to notice and bring it to focus or attention. What is chosen depend upon the mood in which I am at the present moment. But there is no time when nothing is there in the mental space to be attentive to by the awareness. The mind is never empty.

In such a scenario, can the mind be absolutely quiet at all? That is to say, can the awareness exist without attaching itself to any of the contents of the mind? Is not the existence of awareness without something to be aware of, against the very nature of awareness or attention?

the worm's reality

When the worm dies the worm’s universe is no more. The Reality as the worm perceives, is no more. When I die my universe is no more. The reality as I see it is no more!
Is there a common Reality from which all the universes, all the perspective possibilities arise? If there is, that could be the Ultimate Reality.

That reminds me of the ‘History of the universe’ constituted by all the possible ‘sensibilias’ and ‘perspectives’ from all points existent and non-existent, as envisaged by Bertrabd Russel in his book Mysticism and Logic. The book was very popular, especially among Mathematics students during my college days.

cheating myself

All these years, I have been naturally assuming that all my thoughts and actions were willful and deliberate. And I have even been feeling guilty for doing wrong. But, thinking back, had I any choice? None. Every prompt and urge for actions came from my sub-conscious and super consciousness. And genes are probably responsible for my conscious actions. At any rate everything is kept a closely guarded secret from me camouflaging even the smallest of things that I may have to encounter in future. What a tremendously concealed secret way of cheating! That is to say, my subconscious and super-conscious awareness within me are cheating me without revealing the secrets. In short I am cheating myself.
Why should I not therefore probe inside and find out the truth, exposing the sub-conscious and the super-conscious?

probing the mind

If one takes effort and practices in order to get something in particular he may ultimately get it. But when you do such practice you have a notion as to what you are aiming at. Otherwise one will not be able to recognize the achievement when it is obtained. One therefore approaches the object desired with a preconceived notion. Reality, Truth, or Grace cannot be thus approached because one does not, or cannot, know its nature beforehand.
But trying to understand one’s own mind, how it functions and behaves, what all complicated functions are carried by it and how, or what is the source of the mind, is an altogether different matter. You are probing something which is already there within you, that is, within me. The only thing which is absolutely reliable to me for my knowledge is only my own mind. And one is just observing and learning from the observation. When the whole mind is understood, may be that one may hit upon the source that powers it, the energy that runs the show. But one has to stop the search for anything particular. Because search means that you know what you are searching for, in which case there is no need to search!

For all that, Reality may be already there with us unrecognized.

death, fear of the unknown

Death is ok at the ripe age of eighty plus. Nothing to complain. But it can arrive at the most inconvenient or awkward moment as in the case of the famous Malayalam writer M.N.Vijayan who was very much younger. Death came to him in the full glare of cameras and microphones as he was on the stage facing an audience, in the process of talking. Discomfort embarrassed him first. Then panic reflected in his face. Later, struggle and collapse happened in quick succession.
Once you know that it is coming, perhaps there can be nothing much to bother or panic, unless one has pain. Death is inevitable and one has to be ready. My father’s youngest brother Raghava Menon, a retired Headmaster, sensed his end, asked his wife to spread a mat on the floor in the exact position he knew was proper for a dead body, laid himself on it, and passed away peacefully in a few moments!
Fear of the unknown creates panic. If I have a cold I don’t panic. I put up with the discomfort for a couple of days with the full knowledge that it will go away. If it persists and becomes painful, then I start panicking, not knowing what exactly could be its nature. The pain is then exaggerated and aggravated by the panic. And if the doctor told me it was not cold but something more serious like the onslaught of cancer, there will be sudden panic and shock at first. Yet one may be prepared to face the ultimate, and suffer the inevitable pain without further anguish increasing the suffering.
Fear of the unknown has to be tackled only as pure fear, a physical discomfort.

deeper into mind

The expression ‘deeper and deeper into the mind’ is not actually very precise. The mind has several directions and angles that can be probed. Why depth alone? Let us compare it to a computer which is somewhat similar to our brains:
1. The computer is powered by electricity through the power supply unit. Power makes the computer capable of working, and without it the computer is useless. The parallel in the mind is the Life Force which keeps the brains alive. This is the awareness of the body and brain cells.
When you probe deeper and deeper, backwards from the thought processes, can you reach the life force or the awareness of the cells? Awareness or attention, meaning focused awareness, is perhaps the power that ticks the brain. But that does not seem to explain the several intricate functions of the mind.
2. Computer has BIOS with built in memory. There is of course the built in memory in the brain, which enables the heart to beat, lungs to breathe, stomach to digest etc, etc. and also the brain to compute and mind to think. This is already there right from birth, inherited through genes from parents and forefathers.
3. Computer has RAM, the working memory. The working memory in Man is the immediate memory that can be recalled at will either from the brain or sometimes instinctively from the genes.
4. Computer uses memory storage devices like the Hard Disc, CD, or Pen Drive, and the like. All that has been stored in the human mind from birth to the present time constitute the Hard Disc, CD, and other storage devices.
5. Now comes the difficult part. Out sourced Servers have their own memory as well as memory in the Internet that supplies the computers information not available locally. Is there any parallel in life? Are there any servers there, far in outer-space somewhere, that have data and information kept ready for supply to brain servers on special requests(IRQs!). Can the human brain be specially configured by meditation to receive them?

atheists ignored

I happened to read an article in the Indian Express in which the author says that he is being ignored by the people as a childish non-entity because he is an atheist. It sounded like a complaint that nobody takes atheism seriously.
Atheists are worthy to be ignored as ignorant. They are as ignorant as most of the believers as to whether there is actually a God or not. Without making any attempt to find out, they firmly believe that there is no God (or even a universal energy equivalent). They are not non-believers but blind believers.
Is not agnosticism with a skeptic mind more preferable? Then one can freely and sincerely find out the Truth, I feel. Then like Buddha nobody can ignore you even you find out that there is no God. And do you think that the ‘believers’ believe because they know? No chance. They go through or do the rituals because they get some mental relief. They want something to rely on. If it is a saving lie, let it remain!
A non-believer is a non-entity because he is a blind believer of the negative.

going 'deeper and deeper'

My memory and my thoughts are in my mind, meaning my head. I don’t think with my hands or legs or by any other organ. Therefore I have a general notion that whenever I go ‘deeper and deeper’ into my mind, I am entering further and further inside my head. Can this notion be correct?
No. When my thought processes are slowly subdued and the mind is silent I feel the alert attention, not in the mind or head alone, but all through my body. The nervous system as a whole is in alert attention. The core of the awareness is not, as I imagined, at a single point in the head. Neither is it in the heart. Nor in the solar plexus. One can of course imagine that it is in one of these places, and he can feel it there. It can be imagined to be at any point in the whole body. Therefore the conclusion is that the attention/awareness is spread all through the body. And it can also be imagined to be at any point in space!
Going deeper into the mind is therefore not going into one’s head or memory, but directing one’s attention to whatever arises from all the recesses of the subconscious in the entire mental space.
Now, what is behind this attention awareness when it is with no thoughts to be aware of? What makes it tick? Is it at any single point, or spread through all space and time?
I stay with the question.

meditation, grace, and sexual love

In the meditation I am referring to here, the mind is ‘vacuumised’. The mind is blank, empty with no thoughts present. In spite of the thoughts, images, emotions and the running commentator in the background, the mind remains blank and hollow. Such a state seems to have no value whatsoever. It needs to be filled with devotion, divine love or grace. Is it for that purpose all the conceptual gods, idols, divine symbols etc. have been there, for centuries? Must be. If not those devices, a living Guru has to be there to create and infuse the necessary emotion of divine love.
In this scheme of things where does Ultimate Reality come?
There is a possibility of sexual love filling the vacuum in the mind. Then also the state can be ecstatic with euphoria. But that is said to be a hindrance to reaching Reality, although from sex to super-consciousness is a possibility (acharya Rajneesh). One may be tempted to stay there just like one is tempted to stay in utter devotional ecstasy without moving any further, imagining that it is the ultimate end, the Reality.
A vacuum can be filled with any muck. To avoid that, perhaps, better start devotion early enough! Now that is more convincing.

awareness; meditation and ego

Awareness –energy – intelligence
Elsewhere I had asked whether ‘a fridge can be aware of and feel the electricity that runs it?’ The answer could be that it can, provided it has the ability to look inward, and it has an attentive, alert mind to do so. That is, a man with an alert attentive mind, looking deep inward can feel what runs him from within, the energy-intelligence-awareness that we find everywhere.
* * * * * * *
Meditation and the ego:
When we speak about much misunderstood terms, we have to carefully define the words used. By ‘meditation’ what I mean here is a silent mind with which no thought, image or emotion interferes. And by ‘ego’ I mean here the feeling or self-awareness of ‘I’ with or without self importance.
I find that ego is always present in the mind. All the twenty four hours it is there including when one is in meditation. It may not be very active when the thought process is toned down and is almost silent at times. Even in silence the ego is present in the background. Only it is not active.
But in deep sleep the ego is there asleep and is not at all aware of what is going on. The nature does it work of maintaining the body and mind recouping, repairing and rearranging the routine bodily and subconscious involuntary functions.
The ego or ‘I’ has to be there and be attentive in meditation as well, to experience anything at all including the meditative state itself. The awareness may be aware of the state of meditation, but the ego has to feel it to experience. I think, only through the ego, awareness can express or experience. Therefore eliminating the ego or killing or suppressing the ego is non-sense. One may go beyond the ego, understanding it. That is another matter. But there is no need to commit mental suicide, as some traditionalists advocate not knowing the intricacies involved.

All important words in spiritual expression have been distorted and misused in the course of centuries, and it is not therefore surprising that everything we read is likely to be grossly misinterpreted by ourselves. The only way is to look within oneself and try to find out whether what we read tallies.

pleasure of feeling big: guilt; urges

What is it that makes it enjoyable in feeling bigger, greater, larger, more famous than the other, in feeling elation, or feeling superior than the other person? Why should the competitive superiority be pleasant and enjoyable? What sort of happiness is behind it?
Nature has provided the animal as well as man with a craving for possession of what it or he needs to survive, viz., food security and sex. For acquiring, possessing and retaining these competition with others and use of force might have been required. This basic urge, when satisfied might have been giving happiness and pleasure.
The habit has stuck to man, and it still persists even where there is no need for competition and fight. When a man has more money than his neighbor he feels elated and happy! The habit of unnecessary competition plays havoc and promotes cut throat competition and craving for success in all fields, money, power, and fame.
But what is the nature of this pleasure of feeling important? It tickles which part of the senses or the mind to give pleasure? Like the tail of the monkey that has disappeared in man, this craving will also slowly disappear, perhaps.
* * * * * * *
Urges and guilt:
How does guilt arise? Wherefrom does the feeling of guilt come? It is simple, anybody would reply. It arises from one’s actions against his conscience. And conscience is created by the notions of right and wrong a person acquires from childhood onwards through the talks and teachings of parents, teachers, elders and Gurus.
But is it entirely true? Suppose one believes firmly that there is actually nothing right and wrong in life, but only consequences of actions. Then if a person is willing to bear the consequences, will he not feel guilt at all, whatever his action? If not, we can conclude that guilt is nothing but fear of consequences.
Apart from this I think that there is a certain inborn guilt feeling in Man independent of action, consequences and notions of right and wrong. Perhaps it arises from conflicts of natural urges within the mind itself. This can be felt inside oneself by observing within more intensely attentive. When a child kills an ant he must be automatically feeling an image of pain within himself that is in conflict with his own well being. Sex is always a compromise between attraction and repulsion. Is guilt’s origin the conflict attached to the sexual urge, the attraction to the forbidden apple?

memory retrieval and intuition

Sometimes when we try to recollect some simple event or name that we know is in our memory we find the recollection very difficult. The more we try, the more it becomes elusive. But when we do not even try to think about them at all, the memories pop up to the surface of the mind. There is some similarity between this and the solving of mathematical problems. Several times during my college days I have struggled with one or other problems in higher mathematics till the dead of night, and had finally given up as unsolvable before going to sleep. But early in the morning while taking bath or brushing teeth, the solution glared at you with a bang when it was far from my mind.
Retrieval of memory is also I think more intuitive than deliberate. A stored item just jumps to the surface without warning. What triggers the memory to push it out has to be explored. Send the request to the memory for the retrieval of an item specifying the details and wait? No. Not that alone. There should also be an intense desire to remember the event or name; but should not think about it anymore. In the case of an intellectual or mathematical problem, state the problem in detail and think about it for some time. Then leave it and wait with the wish to have the solution. It is important to retain the desire to have the solution. Recognize it when the solution appears sooner than later!
But howsoever intuitive one might be, what surfaces from the memory may not be recognized unless the equipment that receives the intimation and presents that to the awareness is working properly and is toned up. Any intuitive signals from beyond also can be recognized only by a properly tuned up mind. Otherwise it will be like the broadcast signals received by defective TV or mobile phone.
A defective or damaged mind worn out by age and not receptive to anything new may be able to receive and recognize only very few intimations if any, from beyond. Or none at all.
* * * * * * *
Depression is physical?
Generally depression is thought to be mental. But I find that depression is not entirely mental. Actually it is more physical than mental. When a person is very active and bubbling with health, he cannot be depressed. Physical health reduces the possibility of ‘mental’ depression.
But doubt can arise that the physical well being is the a result of not having mental depression, and that mental condition is a prerequisite for physical health. May be true. Both are definitely interdependent.
Yet I notice that whenever I am depressed, I can invariably trace it to some uneasiness in the body, which is yet to be manifested into a recognizable illness. Once it is recognized, even if it is to be yet cured, the depression vanishes. Or it can be easily controlled.
I can feel or perceive almost every depression in me whenever it occurs as a physical condition. Depression can be felt as a physical discomfort if one is attentive enough to the goings on inside the body and mind.

life's fight

Life has been a perpetual fight for me, a continuous fight against all resistance to existence. Perhaps for everybody it is so in different ways. Having born weak in body, and having barely managed to survive while five siblings died in childhood, my body had to fight against various diseases. A seed sprouts and comes out fighting the earth. Man fights his environment to grow and live.
Eating your food is a fight against hunger. The enjoyment of eating is the pleasure of winning the fight. All pleasures are nothing but fights against unhappiness. Play is supposed to be mock fight. But in reality, a real fight against your opponent is camouflaged in it. Whatever job you do, there are plenty of fights in it. All competition is fight either for survival or for becoming one up over others.
Fight against illness, fight against fear, fight against pain, fight for right, fight for survival, fights for enjoyment of pleasures, fight for making money, fight for mate, fight for prestige, fight for honor, fight for everything else, life is nothing but fight.
When you fail in your fight of life, the fight to retain your body, you die.
The body fights against pain naturally. Freedom from pain is not absence of pain. Neither is it any effort to avoid any inevitable pain. It is complete understanding of the pain and developing the ability to put up with the unavoidable.
Understanding pain is becoming the pain. Does that mean one need not take relief measures? Definitely not. On the physical plane one has the urge to act, and he acts.
* * * * * * *
Body and mental restlessness:
For the last three or four days I have been having a very uneasy, disturbed, restless mind when I get up in the morning. It took at least two or three hours for the mind to become normal. It was almost unbearable today morning, leading to a tendency to get back to bed.
But quickly I noticed and traced the reason while taking the morning walk today. As part of feeling fresh in the morning I took a few deep breaths pushing my chest forward and shoulders drawn backwards. Relief was immediate. The mind also became calm with the restlessness disappearing.
So, the reason for the fatigue was the nerves that got strained in sleep due to posture defect. My old ‘spondylosis’ was returning! The problem being comparatively less now, it has manifested itself in the form of tiredness, restlessness, and unknown mental discomfort.
I think that ninety percent of the restlessness of the mind can be traced to some form of the weakness of the nerves somewhere in the body, or some discomfort in the stomach. They have nothing much to do with the mind as such!

moods, thoughts and agitations

At a given time, the mind is filled with a non-stop stream of thought on the particular subject agitating it at the present moment. The subject conforms to the mood. The mood may be the creation of the subject, or the subject may be the choice of the mood. The stream of thought is broken only by another stream stronger than the one agitating. But then the first one is only kept aside temporarily, to be taken up later. It remains by the side, still not exhausted. Every thought stream, umpteen of them likewise, lurk by the side, waiting to be taken up in the future. What more do one need to have a restless mind? Often some are pushed to the sub-conscious. They remain there incomplete to nag the present.
Those agitations that have found solutions successfully also come back often because the success is pleasant and enjoyable. One can live in a happy stream of thought, enjoying it for hours together, until interfered by a disturbing thought waiting by the side, or a new sense signal of an event in the present. So many thoughts wait by the side throughout the waking state, ready to pounce upon, showing their face every now and then, even when one is preoccupied with one stream of thought. I don’t know whether this is so for everybody. I am stating my personal experience.
The mind can become still only when you exhaust all the residues of the streams of thoughts completely by understanding them fully. One has to perceive them fully as they are. This understanding is not by analyzing the thoughts or the subject of the thoughts. It is by seeing, perceiving them straight and observing the underlying emotions from which they erupt. The seeing of it is instant and does not take time.

Direct perception of the streams of thoughts as they arise bestows complete ‘knowledge’ of them, and that destroys the agitations, the mental residue of past events and actions. The thoughts do not come back unless deliberately invited. The mind is then free to be silent

memories and retrievals

All the memories of this life of mine are stacked in my mind somewhere so that they may be retrieved when needed. When not needed also they appear, often unwelcome, in a stream of thought. Most of them may have been modified altered or distorted. But they are there.
Sometimes memories not of this life also come up either as a dream or in a day-dream. But these are not recognized as real memories because they cannot be connected to the known events of the present life. They are often mixed up images newly created into a whole by imagination, giving it a semblance of real life. They appear to be new and different from known events. They need not be memories from another life. Yet there are some vivid images and events that are entirely different and do not satisfy any explanation that they are mind’s play. They could be some memory from unknown sources.
May be they are of a previous life. If not they may be the built in memories passed on to you through parents, grand-parents, and all the other ancestors right from monkey downwards! They may be from primordial memories of the history of Man come through the genes.
Apart from all these memories available as in the storage devices and BIOS of the computers, there could also be memories stored in remote ‘servers’ outside the world in outer space which can be accessed if properly connected. And the memories could be forward as well as backward in time!
If only we could find the mechanism of the retrieval system, we might have been perhaps able to know all the past and future lives right now, in this life!

Mother Nature and my body

While picking weeds in the lawns a little splinter got into the nail of my middle finger and split it. Blood oozed out on removing it by next day it was tender with nagging pain. The pain started receding on the third day, and by the fifth day the finger was as good as normal without needing any treatment whatsoever.
The body has its own intelligence. It heals itself. The knowledge of healing is built in inside and normally one need not interfere. It is nature functioning on its own accord. Body is part of Mother Nature. But one assumes it is mine and that I have absolute control over it. And assume if I don’t do anything it cannot survive.
This vast universe and your body together constitute one whole unit run my Mother Nature. Any intimation coming to me from my body is intimation coming from Nature. Only one has to recognize it.
What about mind? Is that also not part of Nature? Yes, it is. But awareness, pure awareness seems to be different. The awareness which sees all and because of it only the senses function is felt to be everywhere, in the seen as well as in the see-er. It looks to be separate and independent, although everywhere in Nature. When the mind is calm and still it is confirmed. No proof is required. It is not a preconceived notion.
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Present and future: bl 13/2/09
The riverside is very quiet today. Practically nobody is on the road early in the morning except Dum and Dee, the pair I nicknamed, taking their morning walk. Coming from behind they crossed me going ahead a few minutes back. I can still see them far away in front with their identical yellow caps shining in the bright rising sun. Unusually for the season there are a burst of flowers of all colours to be seen shining bright in the gardens of the houses facing the river. The unexpected sudden rains that lasted for a week had made the flowers bloom when the rains stopped. Within a couple of days more the blossoms will start withering.
Not a single flower that catches my eye now will be there by the week end. For that matter not a leaf or a sprout that was there yesterday is there today in the same shape and freshness today. And what is there today will not be there to-morrow. Yet everything will look the same for sometime giving the place a semblance if continuity. Actually nothing that is present now was there a minute back and will be there a minute hence. All are different and changed, however small the change or alteration.
Only the memory, the images remain. And the memory also is distorted, modified and altered to suit each person’s perception and emotions, leaving only a resemblance for recognition. The true past is irrevocably dead and gone.
But the modified memories of the past becomes the tools and background for the earnest and deliberate attempts to alter the ‘present of the future’.
And, but for my memory, only what is there NOW exists for me. And but for my senses what will be illuminated by my awareness except my awareness itself?
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Apprehension perpetual:
When the mind is calm and steady with no thoughts interfering, what is lurking behind is not fear as such, but apprehension. It is apprehension of something untoward that might happen; the feeling that something can always happen to disturb smooth life. Normally the stream of thoughts hides and camouflages this apprehension.
On looking closer I find that it originates from a lurking danger of death, from the time one is born. Perhaps it is a self protection mechanism for all living and mobile beings. Without this apprehension of danger and the resulting alertness against danger, beings would have been exposed to attacks from predators, natural and unexpected calamities and the like.
Apprehensions lurk behind Man through out in the form of impending death, from childhood to old age through youth. The mind is therefore always apprehensive, and this apprehension is one of the things that stands in the way of a silent mind.

empty mind; silent mind

When the mind is deliberately kept empty, emotions enter it. And emotions convert themselves into thoughts. In my case the first emotion to enter is invariably fear, or an apprehension of coming fear.
The entry of fear has to be resisted, the mind decides, in order to maintain the mind empty. And that is a resistance which creates conflict or a sort of discomfort. Therefore a mind that is deliberately kept empty has no silence and is of no value. To remedy the situation I tried filling the mind with devotion, which substitutes any fear. The situation is then changed to one of peace and euphoria. But it does not seem to have any particular significance. Is that not equivalent to idling, seeking happiness?
I understand that any practice can give only the result expected of that practice. What I can do is only to be aware of the utter need to have a free, empty, silent mind, -not make it deliberately empty. And wait and be aware passively of what happens within the mind.
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Now let me see what happens in a free open mind. The mind is free, open, placid with no particular thought just now. I can feel fear attempting to come in. It is ignored. Many images and words enter and go away. Then the present enters the mental space. The sound of the fan rotating accompanied with its image, the birds chirping with some vague forms of birds because I don’t know which bird it is, the sound of running bus, a dog barking etc appear and go. Mind’s running commentary enters. But that goes away when it is recognized as unwanted. Yet it comes again without warning. Past memories start coming. But as the idea is only to watch, they are just recognized and ignored. I do not go along with any memory in a stream of thought. (Only if I am unaware my mind goes along with the past forgetting everything else) Thoughts erupt and subside. Hundreds and thousands of thoughts lurk by the side waiting for an opportunity to enter the mental space. There is of course a vast endless space for all to come in. But when one is in and the mind goes with it, there is no more any further space left.
But nothing unknown, nothing absolutely new, does appear. Even some bizarre unfamiliar things seen at times are nothing but strange interpolations and combinations of known things, as in a dream.
I notice that when one is fully aware of the thoughts, images and emotions as they enter the space, the mind can become silent with no disturbance. The river of thoughts may be flowing quietly outside.
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Change the perspective: man’s difference:
Nobody can deny that Man is part of Mother Nature. A tree grows and dies. An animal grows and dies. Man grows and dies. Why do we think that man is different? Just because he has the capacity to think differently? The difference should be taken only as a play of Nature, not any more profound than the difference between a cat and a dog.
The attempt of man’s mind to find some power behind the phenomena of life may be only a futile foolishness. There may be nothing; there is nothing. There is only what we see around and what is left to be seen around. And that itself may be the Truth. But the same thing can be seen differently. The perspective can change. The way of looking can differ.
In his anguish man finds or creates some external power to rely on for solace, - a temporary relief and ultimately collapse. May be he is destined to live and die like any other animal. But he is also made to wonder about life and existence. That is the only difference. And that is a wonderful difference in the sense that it can, if intensely desired, make him change his perspective!

violence and cruelty

From where does violence come? From where arises cruelty? Violence is there in nature. We see it every day. Cat kills the mouse. It is for food. When the dog kills a cat it is not for food. It is because of the dog’s inbuilt nature. When one bull sees another, violence erupts. That is nature playing. But there is a purpose behind all this. It is to keep up a balance, perhaps as the scientists have analyzed for the survival of the fittest. In the case of the bull it is clear. The most powerful gets all the mates. In the case of the dog killing the cat, we can say that it is for eliminating competition in getting food. But there is no logic or explanation for the cat to play with the mouse’s agony before killing. This exhibition of the cruelty of nature begs any explanation. This is only one example.
Thus there is unwanted cruelty in nature itself. Then why blame poor man who is part of this very Nature? Cruelty has to be accepted, but can be accepted with compassion where inevitable. There is the myth of ‘Kaliya’ being tortured by Lord Krishna before blessing him with death.
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Conscious or unconscious intuition:
Learning, namely knowledge acquisition, however studious one might be, does not give him the power of pure intelligence and the open mindedness of intuition. Nor does it come from precise mathematical type of logic and reasoning. Intuition comes from the right brain, science says.
Strangely, intuition comes more to the innocent and the simple minded, who are not used to much logic. In the good old days, the pundits used children and simple minded followers for seeing intuitive visions or hearing supernatural voices, in order to make predictions. I once saw a six year old boy in our own house being used to find out a lost cow grazing in a far off field by looking into a betel leaf smeared with precipitated lead!. It worked and the lost cow was caught and brought back.
The above phenomenon is an example of unconscious intuition. A child’s intuitive finding of a lost animal or article is different from the intuitive powers acquired by great Gurus on in-depth meditation for long periods. They are known to predict future and foresee things by conscious intuition. Man is definitely not yet able to tap the potentiality of his own mind because the vast majority is yet to turn it’s attention inward.

relaxation in regression and meditation

Relaxation is common to ordinary sleep, hypnotic sleep, regression, and meditation. In all these the body and mind are felt to be relaxed. In ordinary sleep, the mind is also fully asleep, i.e, in the deep sleep state; but not in the dream state. In dreams the mind wanders aimlessly imagining disjointed things without the control of the discriminating faculty, which is not in function.
In hypnotic sleep, body is relaxed, the mind although relaxed, is controlled by instructions from outside, or is self induced.
In regression, the mind wanders in the subconscious and also in the further deep areas of the mind.
In meditation, the relaxed mind seem to be waiting by the side, lurking somewhere behind, hiding, ready to spring up at an opportunity with something immediate. But the images and thoughts seem to be afraid to show themselves because they are all surely fictitious without substance.
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State of the mind:
Is Reality a state of the mind, say, like meditation? A doubt does arise.
In devotional meditation, you conceive an image of a deity like that of Siva or Ganesha, and attribute all sorts of qualities to the image. Then you put your entire trust, all faith, all devotion, all your emotions on to it and surrender your being itself to the concept. You imagine and believe that the deity with the attribute is the reality and the only Reality. Nothing else exists. The mind is then filled with the emotion of devotion, or devotional love. A euphoria is the result. Is it not that then a state of the mind?
In the other type of meditation, in the ‘vacuumising’ type, no thought or image is present. Thoughts and images have all come and gone and the mind is silent with nothing, no thought, image or anything present. There is absolute peace. Is it not also a state of the mind? In the conceptual devotion there is one image. In the other there is no image. But both are states of mind. Is Reality like that, a state of mind?
But it may be argued that when no thought at all is present, or when only one is present how can any question arise? There cannot be any space left for question. The question fizzles out even before the reality enters the arena?
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Avacuumized mind is a real vacuum. A blank slate. But any thought can erupt. Anything from the past or even from the future can come up. If the future comes up you can predict. Is that how future is foretold?

regression to the past

I decided to attempt a self-induced regression into the past. The procedure is adapted from what is given in a book. The body is made to relax completely but at the same time is alert without allowing it to sleep. The whole body is enclosed in a cocoon of alertness. There is no thought or image within that cocoon of body and mind. The empty space of the cocoon can expand endlessly into the whole universe and beyond. When a sort of reverence with euphoria enters that expanded space in the mind one is in a state of infinite expansion.
But what has that to do with regression? No incident of the past is coming to the mind, nor is the mind projecting into the future. I don’t find any, even after several attempts.
Of course, the procedure is very very pleasant and nice!
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Mental space expands endlessly when no thoughts are present in the mind. Alert attention without an object is then possible. Thoughts otherwise interfere with attention giving it an object.
Gods are, I think, toys for the mind/thought to play with so that attention can be made free to be diverted towards the infinite space of reverence.
I notice that disturbing thoughts come from restlessness – the restlessness created by the discomfort of the body in which the mind is imprisoned. One has to therefore go beyond the restlessness. In other words the attention has to function in spite of the restlessness, if the restlessness itself cannot be contained for some reason, may be congenital defect or due to chronic sickness. It is clearly difficult.
When thoughts are absorbed in the toy viz. a conceptual god, the mind freely expands. Expands to reality?

miracles from mind

Vikraman Nair lost everything in his business of running a wayside shanty restaurant. He had to sell his house and move out. A straightforward, honest and devout person, he was offered a room in a choultry, by the trusties of the nearby temple. He stayed there with his wife, for a small monthly rent. With no regular job, he was finding it difficult to find money enough to even pay that rent with the meager income he earned by selling odd things as a door to door salesman. And he knew that the trusties would not be able to allow him to stay there for long. His ailing wife added to his burden. He could only lament, and pray to his favorite deity. But instead of any immediate relief, he found himself in hospital with high blood pressure when he fell dizzy walking on the road.
In the hospital he chanced to meet a school teacher who used to frequent his restaurant when it was running well. On learning about his predicament, the teacher offered him accommodation in the small house of his which had fallen vacant and for which he said he was looking for a tenant. ‘Mr.Nair can stay there for the time being’, he had said. On leaving the hospital Nair hesitantly shifted his residence wondering what would be the amount he might have to pay, and how he would pay it. He got the house cleaned meticulously with the help of his wife who was by then feeling better and decided to discuss the rent with the teacher. After all, the landlord knew the situation well.
When the teacher visited the house next day he was happy to see it free of cobwebs and dust, appearing spic and span. When Nair enquired about the rent to be paid, the teacher replied that if he was very particular he could pay a token amount of Re 1/= per month! He said he did not expect any rent but just wanted somebody who would look after the property and maintain it clean.
Vikraman Nair could hardly believe it. He is absolutely sure that the meeting of the teacher in the hospital and his offer of the house is a great miracle brought about by his favorite deity to whom he had surrendered his fate!
Normally improbable events and coincidences are seen to be miracles depending upon the wonder element in the perception of the person experiencing them. All happenings can be miracles or supernatural events if one sees them so. The mind sees good happenings, especially those which are not expected, as miracles, but accidents and bad happenings are seen as ill luck or God’s wrath. Or it is condemned as the work of evil supernatural forces.
It is generally said that Godmen do not perform miracles, but miracles just happen in their presence. Strange things do happen on this earth. The viewers make it either sacred miracles or evil tragedies caused by supernatural forces.. This is not to discount supernatural or supra-normal phenomena for which explanations are not yet available or not yet found. But the vast majority, in my opinion is mind’s play. So many tricks are available for the mind to play, like illusions, self hypnosis, visions, unfulfilled desires, hallucinations and even strong beliefs.
For example, I have come across a paranormal phenomena believed to be supernatural by many. My friend’s wife Kala was the only child of her parents. It was her mother who brought her up after her father’s death, and they were too much attached to each other. The mother stayed with the daughter even after the latter’s marriage till her death about six or seven years ago. Thereafter every year on the death anniversary (on the day rituals are due to be performed) a crow makes its presence before Kala without fail. Kala makes it a point to feed it also. If Kala forgets the day in any year, the crow’s visit reminds her! She is of course not sure that it is the same crow which visits every year. May be a different one. But sure and certain, the crow came, sometimes when she least expected it, and when she did not know that it was the anniversary day till she looked at the calendar on seeing the crow. Kala and many others believe that it is the soul of her mother that visits her through the crow. It appears that this year the crow did not visit, but her mother herself appeared in her dream on the death anniversary day!
I am inclined to explain this phenomenon as follows. Her mother’s death and the particular day are deeply engraved in her memory. It is always there in her sub-conscious. The sub-conscious becomes automatically alert as the day of the anniversary nears. The mind has the capacity to monitor the day. There is a mental clock and a sort of calendar working in our minds. We often find ourselves waking up without an alarm to meet an emergency. The intensity of her attachment to her mother makes Kala’s subconscious to monitor the day without her conscious participation.
Crow is a universal bird. We see it everyday, but do not notice it particularly or attach any significance to it when noticed. But when Kala sees a crow on that particular day, things click into position in her mind and trigger the mechanism in the mind to remind her of the significance of seeing the crow. The whole phenomenon is coming from her own mind. This time, instead of noticing the crow, her mind showed her mother in a dream. If a person is psychic by nature these things happen all the more.

All supernatural phenomena are in our minds. Aren’t they?

anger and resentment: restlessness

Anger and resentment:
I find that anger or resentment wells up in me when I am compelled to act while I have no desire to act. Anger or resentment also rise up when I am helpless to act while I do want to act.
Of course, it is from ‘desire’ that the anger in both cases arise. But there is no attachment to any pleasure in these cases. To quote from Bhagavad Geetha, “Doting on sensual pleasures, attachments arise; from attachment arises desire; from desire- when it is thwarted- arises anger; from anger arises mental imbalances like hallucinations; from hallucinations arise memory loss; with memory loss the person perishes.”
While attachment to pleasure leads ultimately to disappointment and anger, all angers do not arise from thinking of pleasures. That is to say that the reverse is not true. Yesterday I was angry at myself for shutting the car-door with the key inside. I don’t find any pleasure angle there. It will be stretching the point too far to say that there was a hidden desire not to have any problems at all and that implies pleasure.
Restlessness:
My mind has the bad habit of always expecting something to go wrong, something unpleasant to happen, or some unexpected calamity to befall; and the mind probes into the memory to find something to tally with the apprehension. And it invariably succeeds to find out something yet remaining unattended that may lead you to disaster. This creates a perpetual situation of restlessness.
‘Let anything happen! NOTHING MATTERS!’. Is that not a solution?