Astral Body Is a Capacity of Sense Perception Montreal, Canada — June 05, 2015
W
elcome, friends. I am very happy to be in Montreal again and to see so many friends, some new ones and some old friends sitting here.
The purpose of my visit here is very simple. It is to convey to you what I learned from my own Perfect Living Master, Hazur Maharaj Baba Sawan Singh, that the only way to find the truth about anything, especially the truth about our own self, the truth about our own origin, the truth about where we belong, what is our true home, is to be found only within ourselves and not outside.
If we can go within our own self, we can get answers to all the questions we have ever been asking. This is a simple message. The difficulty is that we have spent our entire life looking for things outside. We have never even attempted to go and see what is meant by “inside.” Where do we go when we say, “Go within yourself, go within and go inside”? The reason is that by “inside” we understand “closing our eyes” and not seeing outside.
By closing our eyes, our vision does not change. The direction of our vision is still outside. By closing our eyes, we just close our eyelids and still start looking outside. We see darkness in front of us, not because there is darkness inside, but because we have shut out even what we could see outside. By putting our eyelids closed in front of our eyes, we are not looking inside at all. We are preventing ourselves from looking outside. So, we see neither inside nor outside. And people think that closing eyes and sitting quietly is meditation. That is not the true meaning of meditation at all. Meditation is when you can look inside, not when you can close your eyes and prevent the vision from going either outside or inside, and that is why we have never understood what is looking inside.
Looking inside means turning your vision from something that is always looking outside to something that will start looking inside. These eyes of ours, in our physical body, have no capacity to look inside, no matter how hard you try. By closing eyes, we do not change the structure of the eye. The eye is receiving its input from outside and creating images on the retina, which is only capable of seeing what is outside. The whole system of vision built into this body is designed only for looking outside. Therefore, to think that we can see inside with these eyes is a great fallacy. If we want to see inside, we have to use some other eyes, eyes that belong to inside, eyes that do not belong to this physical body, eyes that belong to something which we do use every day and yet we don’t know that those are different eyes. When we go to sleep and have a dream, we do not use these eyes at all, and yet we see. We imagine things, and we can see those imaginary things. We do not use these eyes at all.
What eyes are we using then? What eyes do we use when we imagine something and have a visual imagination? What eyes do we use when we see in dreams? They’re certainly not the physical eyes, yet we can see very clearly with those other eyes. Those eyes which can see dreams, and those eyes which can see imagination, are the eyes which can look inside. Those eyes belong to a separate set of sense perceptions other than those built into our physical body. These sense perceptions of seeing, touching, hearing, smelling — these different sense perceptions built into this physical body — are only designed to have experiences of a physical, material world outside.
But the sense perceptions built into an inner body of ours, which has capacity to see inside, is also the same capacity to see which is being used by these physical eyes to see outside, the capacity to see something different from eyes. Eyes are merely an organ, whether they are internal eyes that see imagination or external eyes. It’s just an organ, just an equipment we are using. But the power to see does not belong to either eyes, whether they’re outside physical eyes or they’re inside inner eyes. They belong to consciousness. If we are not conscious, no matter how open our eyes are, we cannot see. If we are unconscious, we can see nothing at all, whether with the inner eyes or the outer eyes. And that is why it is consciousness that creates the vision. It is consciousness that creates all experiences. But, in order to have experience of consciousness or consciousness, we use various equipments which are placed one within the other.
This physical body is the outermost cover that we are using for having physical experiences through physical sense perceptions. Within this body lies another body, which carries the same sense perceptions, the same capacity to see, the same capacity to hear, to touch, to smell. The same capacities that are there in the physical eyes are also there in an inner self of ours. The inner self, which we sometimes refer to as a “suksham shrir” or an astral body, is nothing more than the capacity to use equipment of sense perceptions without the use of the physical body.
The sense perceptions exist independently of the physical body, and those, when embedded in the physical body, enable the physical organs of sense perceptions, to function. When we are looking out from these eyes of ours, we’re actually using the sense perception of the inner eye and using the physical eye to have physical experience. If we want to close the physical eye, we must open the inner eye. Then we can still keep on seeing. There you’ll see with the inner eye without using the outer eye at all. And that is meant by seeing something within yourself…that means not something that is being seen with the physical eyes but something that can be seen with the inner eyes.
This is just one step. To see who is inside us, and what function it is performing, is a very great skill. It’s a mystic skill. It’s a skill of using meditation in the right way. Meditation is to meditate upon your own self. The inner self. Meditation does not mean relying upon repetition of words, or listening to music, or listening to something that is inspiring us, to listening to poetry or song. Meditation means to meditate upon our own self, the self that is functioning within these covers upon our self, the self that is making alive this physical body, as well as the inner body, as well as all else that is lying within us. Therefore, the object of meditation is to put attention on our own self and thereby discover that this physical body of ours is merely a cover upon ourselves to have physical experiences, that once we leave this physical body, we don’t die. We just get back to our inner eyes, in our inner self, in our inner body.
This physical body has a much shorter life than the life of the inner body. The astral body has an average life, in physical terms, of one thousand to three thousand physical years. So, you can imagine…this physical body we are covering only for a very short time of the astral body. We have had many covers during one lifetime of our astral body. The body that is creating sense perceptions and which can continue to see, touch, taste, and smell, does not die with the death of the physical body. It continues till its own death takes place, after much longer time. So therefore, to discover that we have an inner body we use meditation as a technique to withdraw our attention from the physical body, from physical experiences to inner experiences, to experiences directly with sense perceptions without the use of physical sense organs. So, meditation is to withdraw our attention from outside to inside.
Looks simple that if we just have to withdraw attention from outside to inside it should be very simple. It’s not simple, because we have never practiced withdrawal of attention. Putting attention on something is very different from withdrawal of attention. We are all used to, and are trained in, putting attention on various things. We go to school, we study, we read books, we attend to lectures, we listen to people, all the functions that we are performing are using our attention outside.
When do we withdraw attention? There’s nothing in life that we do here which constitutes withdrawal of attention. Everything we do is to put attention outside. Therefore, we have never learned, in our entire life, how to withdraw attention. We have only learned how to focus our attention on things outside. Therefore, we have moved our attention from the self to the experiences outside and, thereby, have that experience by putting attention on it.
Attention is a very valuable gift given to us. In fact, I think it’s the most valuable gift given to us in human consciousness, because consciousness, per se, does not mean awareness. Consciousness is the capacity to be conscious, whether you are conscious or not. It’s a capacity, a potential, that you can be conscious of anything. And consciousness has the power. Whatever it wants to be conscious of becomes reality for it. Therefore, consciousness is a very great creative force. But when we are aware of something, we are using only part of that consciousness. Awareness is that which we are currently using out of the big storehouse of consciousness that is available to us.
As souls, as living entities, as those which have the power of life, we are all conscious beings. That means we have the greatest capacity of consciousness, and we use part of it by becoming aware of a very small section of it. Therefore, awareness is a small part of consciousness. Currently, we are aware that we are all sitting in this auditorium. We are aware that people sitting here…our awareness has been limited to this…what is happening outside. We are not putting our attention on that. It is not part of our awareness. What’s happening in other cities, what’s happening in the rest of the world, what is happening in the galaxies around, we are not aware of. Our awareness is limited to what we can be aware of right now, around us. And therefore, awareness has become a very limited part of consciousness. But when we have awareness, it does not mean that we are fully aware of all the awareness around us. We put our attention on something. You are listening to me…you are not aware of what is behind you. You are not aware of what is happening around you, because your attention is placed towards me. When we put attention on something, we pick up part of that awareness and use it.
Out of these three things: consciousness, awareness and attention, the only thing which is within our control is attention. We do not change awareness. What is around us is always there. Wherever we go, the awareness is of what is around us. We don’t create it (at least we don’t know we create it). But attention is within our power at all times, that we can put our attention on any part of awareness. And that is why, when we use our attention, we can move ourselves from wherever we like to wherever else we like. That is…therefore attention is the greatest gift given to us out of consciousness. It is within our ability to use attention where we like.
Now, we have used this attention throughout our life in having physical experiences outside of our self. We have never used this attention to discover what is inside of us. Where does this attention come from? Where is it flowing out from? Is it flowing out from someplace outside of ourselves? Is it being generated within ourselves? Let us examine. As a practical person we should be able to see where is this attention coming from? When we are looking at things around us, listening to people and sounds around us, touching things around us, using sense perceptions around us, where is this attention coming which we are shifting from one place to another, shifting from one experience to another, where does it come from?
It doesn’t take very long to know it comes from within this body of ours. Not only that, it comes from a very, very limited space in the body, namely our head. It’s not coming from our hands or feet. It’s not coming from our torso. It’s not coming from anywhere else, except from our head, and we are using most of it, the bulk of it, through the eyes. They say that the use of sense perceptions is so remarkably divided that 83 or 84 percent of our total perception is coming through the eyes. And about 13 percent is coming from our ears. And most of the rest of the 6 or 7 percent is from the rest of the sense organs. So, you will see that we are using most of our attention from the eyes, from behind the eyes, somewhere from the head.
This does not take very long to look back at it and see where is our attention flowing from. The attention is flowing from our head, going through the eyes, sense perceptions, picking up experiences of the physical sense perceptions. If we can know, understand, this simple point, that the attention flows from within our head, we can even narrow it down further. It is not the whole head from where it is coming. It’s coming from a single point, behind the eyes, where the two eyes are in an angle, meeting, at the back. It’s the center of the head. It can be so clearly pinpointed — that’s the center of the head, near what they call is the pituitary body or the pineal gland, in anatomy, where they will say that’s the center of the head — that the flow of attention, when we are conscious, when we are aware, is coming right from that point. If we know that much, that the whole attention is flowing from there, and we have to withdraw attention in order to have an inner experience, we know where to withdraw the attention. Therefore, we can withdraw attention to the middle of the head.
But how do we do it? This requires some practice, because we have never done it! The use of our physical sense perceptions has never been to see anything inside the head. It’s always been outside. How do we reverse this? How do we reverse the direction of flow of attention, which has always been out, and when we try to focus attention, listening to people, listening to people who have been successful in doing it, reading books about it, knowing for certain that what is to be found is to be found within ourselves at a location known to us, within the physical body, within the physical head…after knowing all this, what do we do? We still close our eyes, look in front at the darkness and say, “Where am I inside?” How can you be inside? You’re still looking outside! You can’t see because you closed your eyes! But you’re never looking inside. You’ve never known how to reverse this direction of looking. There’s no way that these physical eyes can ever look inside.
Therefore, you have to use something else to look inside. And what is that which you can use to look inside? Your power of attention. You can shift your attention from outside and put the attention right in the center of your head. And if you do that, you will see inside. It is that simple really! The art of discovering yourself is very simple! We have made it difficult for lack of experience, lack of practice, lack of knowledge about how to do it. Therefore, if we want to find out who we really are and find out the truth about all questions we have ever asked, they are all sitting right inside, inside us, behind the eyes, at what has been sometimes called the third- eye center.
Why do they call it third eye? Because, even when we are seeing with these two eyes, the two eyes are giving us two separate pictures, which merge because of the position of the eyes, merge to create the distance, sense of distance, and that merger is actually taking place within ourselves, at the third-eye center. Are we looking at two pictures when we use these physical eyes? Of course not! We merge the two pictures to see the stereoscopic effect outside. And where are we seeing it from then? If they are not two eyes are not seeing, where are we actually seeing from? The two eyes have to merge it backwards in order to see the stereoscopic effect in front. And they merge backwards exactly at the same point which we call the third-eye center.
The third eye has several meanings! It means that we are using these two eyes also, to merge the two images, and see one single picture, at the third-eye center, outside. And it’s the same third-eye center with which we can see inside by withdrawing our attention to that point. Withdrawal of attention to the third-eye center requires a lot of practice just because we have never done it. Once you do it, it’s as easy as looking outside. Once you get practice of withdrawing attention, it takes no time. You just switch over to that side. Like you’re looking outside, look inside. But without practice it takes a long time to understand even what is withdrawal of attention.
To make it easy, there are many ways to make it easy to do it, to practice, and I have come here to share with you those simple tricks, simple techniques, that make it easy to withdraw your attention inside, to the third-eye center and be able to see what is inside and discover the truth about everything that you ever questioned. It’s as simple as that! That’s what I’ve come here to share with you. And I’ve not come to share a theoretical model or something. I’ve not come to share any books with you. You have read
the books. You have got the books. The libraries are full of them. I’ve not even come to give you a discourse on what is written in the books. I have come to tell you some practical tips on how you can achieve this great opportunity that human beings have. Human beings have this great opportunity of using what is called “free will.” An opportunity to make choices. You can make a choice. There are living things right outside — the plants are there, the insects are there, birds are flying, even unseen angels are flying around — none of them have that opportunity to make a choice. They are living just exactly according to their destinies, according to their instincts built into them, according to the programming that is done for them.
We are also living by that programming, but in the middle of the programming we have this unique opportunity to feel, and experience, free will. The opportunity to make choices. And that is what we use here, the opportunity to make a choice. So, we can make a choice to find answers to our fundamental questions about who we are, what is our origin, who’s a creator. Is there a creative force who we can call God? Is there something else that we don’t know about? Is it all possible to have knowledge? Yes! The answer to all these questions is yes. And the answer lies within ourselves, if we withdraw our attention to third- eye center and open all the venues, all the opportunities that are lying there. So that’s why it’s a very important thing to be able to do it.
Now, the tips I was going to give are also known to us. We don’t practice them. First thing is, when we try to put our attention there, looking has no value in that. If we close our eyes and start looking for it, we’ll always be looking outside. Don’t make that mistake. So many of us make this mistake for life. People who have been initiated into a path, a mystic path, people who have been trained how to go within, have made that fundamental mistake of closing eyes and looking in front. And thinking they’re looking inside. You are still trying to see with the same eyes — how are you looking inside? You’re looking outside. Closing your eyes only prevents you from seeing what is outside also. You’re denying both outside and inside. Therefore, the looking with these eyes has no value, at all.
What you have to do first is to imagine, with the imaginary eyes, which are not physical eyes, that you are inside your head, that you’re actually sitting there, that you are not outside at all, that the physical body of yours is merely a cover upon yourself! And to make it simple, one can practice in a slightly different way. And that is: do not consider this body to be yourself at all. Think it is a house in which you live, a house which has several floors. And I call them floors because the physical functioning of this body is divided into sections, so the…that we call…the different energy chakras, the energy centers, which divide this body into different functional parts, and since there are six of them, I call this as a house with six floors, and we are at the eye level on the sixth floor of that house.
If you can figure that out, and make believe, or imagine, that this is a house in which you live, that you are currently sitting in the sixth floor of this house behind the eyes, and you imagine you are there, what eyes are you using? These eyes have no value in that at all. You are using the eyes of imagination, which are not these eyes, but they are the eyes of your astral self. When you imagine you are sitting in your own house, which is built like a body, and you are sitting behind, and sitting in the center of the sixth-floor room, right in the center, when you imagine you are sitting there, you have actually put your attention where it belongs.
But what happens when you try to do that? So many people have even tried that. When they try to do that, all the thoughts about other things they have to do in the world come up, and the mind races to think of everything that is outside, thereby taking your attention away from that point, outside once again. Without opening your eyes, you’re still running out. Because the thoughts of outside things start keeping up. Even those things which you have forgotten, they come up during meditation at the third-eye center. Such strong ties we have made with things outside that even when we want to sit inside with our imagination, even when we want to just make believe to ourselves that this is our house [and] we are sitting on the sixth floor behind the eyes, the mind does not let us sit there and takes us on a journey outside continuously. And we start thinking of all the things outside and totally forget that we were supposed to be sitting inside.
This is one of the big fundamental problems in trying to even imagine that you are inside. I tell you: If you can imagine for five minutes that you are sitting inside without any thought of outside, you have become enlightened! And you’ll get answers to your questions. Five minutes is required to not think of anything outside but only think of what is happening inside. Our mind doesn’t let us do that. We are so used to thinking of outside things.
Therefore, some prescriptions have been made how to handle this situation. And one of them is: repeat Mantra, repeat simran, repeat words. Repetition of words is not going to lead you anywhere. They are physical words. Some people think that if we repeat words of any types that the repetition of words are so magical that they will take you back to your true home. How can physical words, spoken with physical tongue, even repeated by physical mind, take you to your true home? They are all connected with physical world here. No matter what the words are, no matter how powerful the mantra is, they are still spoken words. And we are talking of an area of experience where there is no words at all, there is no language at all, and there are no speeches to be made at all. And we are thinking that some words being spoken can take us there? What a fundamental mistake we are making, thinking that the words can take us
somewhere. Words are merely an aid to make us replace the words of thought by other words, so we don’t have to think from outside. The main purpose of repetition of words is to prevent the mind from thinking of outside things, by forcing these words into our mind and continuously repeating them, repeating them to such an extent that we do not allow space for mind to think of other things.
But here again, we make a very fundamental mistake. We repeat the words, very often with our tongue and still allow the mind to run amok all over the world. Even when we succeed, to repeat the words with our mind, we do not realize that there is a second channel of the mind that keeps on talking of things outside of ourselves. Have you ever noticed that even when you are repeating words of a mantra, repeating words of simran, repeating any holy words, that the mind is still commenting upon it and saying, “Are you speaking too fast, too loud, too slow? Can you change this?” It is a second channel of the mind still taking you outside, not letting you stay with those words even.
So how can we handle that? There are some simple tricks of that. And one of them, which I’m going to share with you now is, that when you are sitting repeating words, don’t pay attention to repetition of words — pay attention to listening to what you are repeating. It’s more important to listen to what you are repeating than to repeat the words. We think repetition of words will give us something. They don’t. Listening to those words brings our attention back to ourselves. Because when you listen to the words, you will also listen to the overlaying other words that are coming above it and you will be able to see that you are listening to two sets of words, your own words you are repeating and the words of the mind that is commenting upon those words and commenting upon other things, taking you outside.
The best way to repeat words successfully, in order to bring your attention within yourself, is to listen to those words, as attentively as you can. Put the entire attention on listening to the words that you are repeating. And if you hear any other words, listen to them also. Put the whole attention on listening. And since you have chosen some specific words to repeat, if you hear any other voice, make that voice also repeat the same words at the same time, so you hear two voices repeating the words. Sometimes there will be a third voice coming up. Use all three words to repeat—sometimes more than three—four, five… Sometimes when you occupy your mind at every channel, you will see some picture, an image of a friend coming up, somebody else coming up and talking something else…you are busy. Don’t try to fight that image. Make that friend, make that other entry of an image into your head also repeat the words. To make good use of repetition of words to withdraw your attention inside, you must make everything that happens, every voice that comes, every image that comes, repeat the words simultaneously. It’s always a big chorus going on, of everything repeating the words, and your attention will be pulled in. This is one of the great tips I can tell you. It works. Otherwise you can keep on repeating, the mind will run all over the world. As you know that it has been said by one of our mystics, Kabir. He says (in Hindi), “Maala to kar mein phire, jibh phire mukh maahi, manua to chahun dish phire, yeh to sumiran naahi.” He says, “You can be using the beads in your hand and repeating the words with your mouth, with your tongue, and the mind is running all over the world. Do not even consider this as simran. It’s not repetition of words.”
Only when the mind repeats the words continuously, with no part of it thinking of anything outside, can you call it proper simran. And then, do not forget that simran is merely a means of finding something. It is not the end! Just by repeating words you don’t get anything, except that you use it for the purpose of withdrawing your attention within yourself. And, once you’re able to achieve that, the other results come up automatically. You discover what is inside. What is inside is so immense, to discover merely by thinking about what is inside, putting your attention on inside, not thinking of anything outside at that time, you open up a flood of lights, a flood of colors, a flood of images of internal self that has no bearing on this, a flood of memories of past lives, a flood of memories of your life of the inner self, which has lasted so long — they all come up, flooding upon you. Just by one step. But yet that one step is the most difficult one. It is, in fact, the only step that you are supposed to be taking.
If you have been guided by somebody who has already achieved these things, somebody who has reached the highest level possible in consciousness, which…the person we call a Perfect Living Master…if you have been guided by somebody who is a Perfect Living Master, his whole instruction is to go up to that point. After that, you should be able to see that person inside. Because when such a person, a Perfect Living Master, initiates us, he accepts us, settles himself down within us, sits waiting for us at third-eye center for us to come in so we can have a journey to our true home together. That is a deal about initiation by a Perfect Living Master, that it is not a journey alone.
A Perfect Living Master is not a teacher who is teaching us how to meditate. There are thousands and thousands of teachers available to teach us how to meditate. A Perfect Living Master is the greatest friend we can have, the greatest friendship we can experience, because that friendship, once you meet the Perfect Living Master in his inner form, inside yourself, created by initiation by that ordinary human being outside — when you meet him inside, the spiritual journey to every level of consciousness, including the totality of consciousness or our true home, is in the company of that Perfect Living Master and not alone. And there are so many other experiences which can come on the way which are negative experiences, which can put you astray, even on our spiritual journey, and by having that guide with you all the time, inside, you are never led astray and you’ll never lose the way, and that is the guarantee of initiation by a Perfect Living Master, that he can guide you, continuously, right up to your true home.
But the meeting point is the third-eye center. The meeting point is where you can see his inner radiant form, inner form. We call it the radiant form because, actually, when you reach that point, everything you will see will be radiant. Everything has its own light. Here, when we see things in the physical world, we see them with external light. If we shut off all this light, and it’s all dark, we won’t see each other. We are seeing things here because there is light falling upon things, falling upon people — we see them. Inside there may be total darkness, which there never is, not at that first stage — we are able to see things because things themselves have their own light. Everything has illumination. We can see in total darkness. So that is why the things we see there, including our Perfect Living Master, are called radiant and the radiation means…it’s not that there are light bulbs and there is a lot of light falling out of them…it means that they are visible even in total darkness. And that is why that experience is called “the meeting with the radiant form of your master.” This spiritual path, of a Perfect Living Master who initiates us and takes us to our true home only requires that we gather our attention and assemble at the meeting point, the rendezvous point — the third-eye center.
And that is we struggle sometimes our whole life for doing that, because we are used to putting our attention outside. This is an amazing experience, that once you are able to forget what is outside and continuously think of what is inside, what is around you, you can even confine yourself to a small area of thinking. Say you are inside your head. Okay, you imagine you are inside your head. Use the power of imagination, that you are sitting in the center. This is a house built and you can look down and see there are several floors below. Now you have got the ears outside of this house, you’ve got a head on top — complete imagination of this being a house — you are sitting in the center. You draw a chair, sit in the center. It becomes a great meditation place!
The greatest meditation place to have successful meditation is inside the head, in the center, the third-eye center. We try to make our meditation places outside. I have been to my friends’ houses and they say, “Here, we’ll take you to our meditation room. We admit, it’s very special,” and I go, and it is very well decorated. There is essence, there is sandalwood, there are all kinds of things, there are candles there, and I said “When you sit in that room and you meditate, do you know what you are meditating on? You’re meditating on the room. You’re meditating on the candles. You’re meditating on all the different kind of smells that you created with these little essences and so on. This is not meditation on yourself at all! By making it special, a special meditation place, you are just putting your attention entirely on the outside space.”
Some people buy special chairs. “This is my special meditation chair.” I said “If you sit on a meditation chair, you are meditating on the chair. How could you be meditating inside?” Some people buy special cushions, special rugs, mats, to meditate on. Don’t they realize that when they know there is a special rug or mat or pillow on which they are sitting, the attention is all on that! We don’t need any of these things. The real place for doing meditation is always inside your head, behind the eyes, at the third-eye center.
If you want to buy something special, say a special chair to meditate on, place it with your imagination behind the eyes, inside, and place it there. This is such a beautiful place you can make. Your meditation chamber — behind the eyes at the sixth floor of this house we call our body — can be made decorated so well! You can put the best of curtains there, best drapes there, nice carpets there, beautiful chair there. They cost nothing because they’re all imaginary, and yet they are the most wonderful and most effective. For doing meditation they are the most wonderful things. But every day you can decorate it better. Every day you go and meditate there, that’s where this really belongs. And by doing that, where is your attention going? To that room. Attention is behind the eyes. Attention is always at the right place.
So, these are simple things that we miss out, and we are continuously putting attention outside. Forty years, fifty years we have been meditating, and had no experiences. How can you have experiences when your attention is all going outside, not going inside? So that is why, when we can put our attention there, and use the process of repetition of words to prevent the mind from thinking of outside things, main thing is listening, listening to the words you repeat.
And I want to tell you a little bit power of listening. We have, in our system of consciousness, a living force, a life force we call consciousness. If we are not conscious, we are not alive. It’s consciousness that makes us alive. Consciousness has a power of its own — several powers, but one of them is listening. It’s constantly listening. It does not speak. It does not need to speak. It’s constantly listening. Then we have, attached to this, another accessory called the mind, a thinking machine, a machine that thinks constantly, that never stops thinking. And that machine is attached to our own self. I might call our own self, our life force, “the soul.”
The soul, which is a unit of consciousness, gathers upon itself for a function, for an experience, another accessory called “the mind.” The mind thinks; the soul listens; the mind speaks. Thinking is speaking. The mind uses words and images to speak. And the soul listens and has a spectacle. The power of seeing and listening belongs to the soul. The power of speaking and creating images is power of the mind. So, they are both doing their own functions. There’s one big difference in the two. The power of listening is independent of the power of the mind. The power of the mind is dependent upon the power of listening. If you’re not listening, the mind won’t speak. Unless you listen, you won’t even know the mind has spoken. They are connected. The mind functions in time and space. Always. Mind cannot function without time. Even the smallest thought takes time. Soul functions without time. A gut feeling, an intuitive feeling, comes to us from the soul, not from the mind. It takes no time.
The functioning of the mind and the soul should be understood. The soul listens; the mind speaks. The soul functions without time and space; the mind functions only in time and space. Big distinction between the two, and we don’t realize it. We just think its mind/soul, whatever it is, which is making us conscious. That’s not true. These functions are taking place in us all the time. And if we pay attention to it, we’ll see they are functioning right within our head, behind the eyes, and both these are functioning from there.
When we use the mind, we are creating an experience of time and space, and that is why, actually, you will find out that the entire experience of physical and astral levels is taking place because of that power of the mind to create time and space, and then create events in that, and then experience them. The mind is being used for that. We are using the mind as one of the covers upon the soul to create a new kind of experience of time and space. If you take the mind away, your own spiritual experience of the spirit, or the soul, will be without time and space.
When you have certain experiences…three experiences I can mention to you, which are unique to the soul: one is the intuitive awareness. When you get suddenly a feeling, “This is it!” without any thought, without any time, it’s a spiritual experience. Intuition is purely a function of the soul. But if you have the thought, it takes time. Intuition cannot be practiced, because all practice involves time, and the mind needs practice for everything. So, to use mind you need practice and time. But the intuition, the gut feeling you get, does not require time.
Then there is another experience, the experience of love. Love is not a mental experience. It’s a spiritual experience. You get it suddenly! There’s no time frame in which you feel love. It comes at once. Of course, the mind comments upon it — it takes time. The mind creates doubt about it — it takes time. You have an experience of love, the mind begins to question, “Is it real? Are you sure?” That’s the mental function. The mind thinks. Love does not require that.
Then, experience of beauty and joy and bliss are timeless — they just come. Then the mind, examining it, takes time through thought. So, you will notice that there are clearly divided responsibilities of these two parts of consciousness, that the consciousness, per se, which is our soul, perform the functions of love, intuitive knowledge, appreciation of beauty, joy, and being in a state of bliss.
It’s amazing that these are always happening from the soul. And then the mind has its own power of absorbing sense perceptions, making sense of sense perceptions, creating thoughts, continuously thinking, putting things in rational order, using logic — inductive logic, deductive logic — to make sense. Continuously thinking, “Does it make sense or not?” and trying to use the power — life force of the soul — to function in these dimensions of time and space and cause and effect.
These — time, space, and cause and effect, the functions of the mind — create the whole law of karma which we are facing today. There is no karma on the soul, ever! There were never any karma on the soul. Only by using the mind for an experience we generated a new pattern of experience in which there is cause and effect. And by creating the period of cause and effect, we created law of karma, that everything that happens must have a cause, and therefore everything that happens leads to an effect. So, this thing is creating a frame of life for us in which we keep on moving from one event to another. And we think that we are moving. The mind does not need to move through time. It creates time in one instant. The entire time that we have ever experienced, in millions of lifetimes, was created in one instant. And then we move from one event to another.
Some people told me the Egyptians were very clever. They learned how to time travel. I said, “There’s no need to learn time travel. We are all time traveling right now! Are we not moving from one moment to another? Are we not moving from one event to another, even now? Who is moving? We are all experiencing moving! We are time traveling right now! Time is not moving. Time never moves. Events are all placed in advance. We go from one event to another — it’s time travel. The mind enables us to do that.” So therefore, these functions that we are having, are covered by different covers upon ourselves. Our true self is just a unit of consciousness. Just the soul. The soul itself is also a cover. The soul is not a separate entity by itself. The soul is merely a cover upon totality and creates the feeling of individualization, that we are individual. There is no individuality actually. It’s all part of the whole, continuously.
I must share with you…when I was young, somebody explained to me the spiritual path as a journey of a drop — from the ocean — which has been separated from the ocean for many years, for thousands of years, and now the journey of this drop of ocean, which is the soul, is to somehow travel back with great difficulty, go back and merge in the ocean. I was told that’s the spiritual path. And even as a child, I questioned. I said, “If I am a drop from the ocean, at least I am a drop. When I get merged in the ocean, what will happen to me? I’ll destroy myself, and it will make no difference to the ocean whether you put one more drop into it or not. Who is the winner? I lose every identity, everything I have and the ocean gains nothing? It’s a very lose- lose situation. Is this called a spiritual path, that we are separated from the ocean and we have to go back and merge in it? The ocean doesn’t need another drop, nor do we want to be merged and forget who we are?” So, I thought, “This was a very wrong notion, and I will never follow such a spiritual path.”
Gradually, I discovered this was totally untrue! This not the truth. The truth is: We are a drop but never left the ocean. We are a drop, we are the ocean! We are the ocean at all times! That we contracted our awareness to the size of a drop within the ocean. And the journey is not going anywhere! Because we were never separated! The journey is to regain our awareness that we are the ocean! It’s a journey of awareness; it’s not a journey from one place to another. We are not away from there. We have only shrunk our awareness to that of a drop. And by spiritual practice we will expand our awareness to discover we were always the ocean. And that’s what we discover. When we reach our true home, we don’t feel, “Oh, we were somewhere very far away, and we have come back.” We discover we were always here. And we were just not knowing we were here. We thought we were just a drop, and now we find we are the ocean.
So, this is a discovery of our totality. It’s a discovery of our true self. Our true self is the ocean, at all times! It’s only an experience of being a drop that we are having now. So, that is why it’s important to know that this is not that kind of a journey that we are somewhere far away. And how did we do this? By covers upon ourselves. The ocean took on the cover of one becoming the many. Within itself! It never…nothing left. The ocean was never emptied out of anything. Totality was always totality! It won’t remain totality if even one part of it goes out. Therefore, the totality remained totality but had an experience of the many, as there were many units.
Somebody once explained this by saying that it is a point of view of totality that becomes soul, that you can see from different points of view and those are the souls, but never separated. So, when we have individual experience, that individuation is the first cover upon ourselves and gives us a feeling of the many. And I’ll explain to you why that feeling came up, what was the purpose of that. The purpose was that totality’s nature is intuitive knowledge, love and bliss and joy. And to experience that, you create the many! You create the many, you experience love in a different way. You experience intuitive knowledge differently. You experience joy and bliss differently. The whole purpose of separation, of having the many, was exactly to experience the original nature of the totality of consciousness, in this form. It’s still experiencing it right here. And at all levels.
When we took on another cover upon ourselves called the human mind, the human mind was used with a very wonderful way, to create space, time and vastness. Vastness of time! Infinite time! Infinite space! It was the capacity of the mind to do that. So, we enlarged our area of experience in consciousness by using another cover, called the mind, which we also call “the causal body.” The mind has also been termed the causal body because all causes are taking place from there. There is no distinction — is not a body — the mind itself is the causal body. Then, to make the experience have even greater variety, we put on another cover called “the astral cover” or the cover of sense perceptions. Astral body is not a body. It is the capacity of sense perceptions independent of physical and mental things.
So, these are different bodies, we call them, because they are covers upon the original soul to create different experiences. And then we had a physical body to create a physical, material experience, using all of these things inside, and they all are overlapping our true nature inside. So, when we sit here as human beings in the physical body, we have this whole stuff inside. And, as we become unaware of each cover upon ourselves, we open the inner one. We don’t destroy it! Of course, we have the experience of destruction also, which we call death of a cover. Physical body dies, the inner covers are all intact, the mind is still the same. Mind has a life, in physical terms, of several million years. Three to five million years, it’s estimated, the life of one mind. Then it dies! Then it’s born! Another mind! But lasts so long, that one mind, and mind carries what we call karma. Mind creates and carries karma. So, karma is being carried on one of the covers. And the soul experiences it by identifying with the mind. The soul experiences the mind and then experiences sense perceptions by identifying with sense perceptions. The soul experiences physical experiences by identifying with physical body and everything inside.
These are just covers upon ourselves. Now we don’t have to destroy the covers. We can destroy the awareness of the cover. You can have the inner experience of the inner body by dying, or you can die while you are living, which means remove the awareness of it. So that is why we recommend, if you want to find out what is inside of you: die while living. Dying while living means that you do the same thing, through meditational practice, which happens when you physically die. When your time is up of this cover, it gets old and worn out, and you want to get rid of it, it dies.
You can do the same thing. How do you die? Have you seen people dying? When they die, they don’t die in their whole body at once. They die progressively, starting from their hands and feet. They become unaware of their hands and feet. They become unaware of their legs and arms. They become unaware of the bottom of their torso…it goes up…they are still speaking to us and unaware where their limbs have gone. And ultimately, if you’ve seen people dying, normally in small little steps, you’ll find out they die progressively. Ultimately, when the brain dies, finally they are dead.
It’s the same thing that you use by dying while living. When you sit behind the eyes, and practice this meditation of withdrawing your attention, you will first not know where your hands and feet are. Then you won’t know where your legs and arms have gone. Then you will start feeling you’re floating in the sky — you don’t know where your torso has gone. Ultimately you won’t know where your body has gone. But your body is still there. Everything is there. Nothing has happened! Your vital force systems are working. Your heart is beating. Everything is normal! Yet you have become unaware of it, through meditation. And that is called dying while living. And dying while living gives you the same experience of your inner self as physical death gives us.
So, we can examine what will happen to us in our physical death while we are sitting here. Just by following the simple exercise of withdrawing your attention, you will die and see what happens that you are still alive, that you are not dead, even when you are unaware totally of your body. The same thing happens in actual death. And I can tell you — those who have had that experience of knowing that they can withdraw their attention and become unaware of their body and know that they haven’t died, there is something else still alive in them, and alive for a long time — they are never afraid of death after that. Till this experience comes, we are all afraid of death. We think this is the only life, this is the only body, this is the only self we have, and once we die it’s all over. And by through meditation, we find out that this is not all over. Nothing is all over! With deeper meditation, if you can keep on becoming unaware of each layer upon yourself, ultimately you’ll find you never die! There is no such thing as death! That the soul never dies! It is immortal! Completely immortal! It has no beginning, no middle, no time frame at all in it! So, all these experiences are possible right to the inmost experience, through good, well guided, meditation.
I came to share these few tips with you. I’ll continue with a few more, especially telling you what will be the role of listening to yourself, listening of what we call the “sound current,” listening to something that’s emanating from our soul, listening to something that emanates from our true home and continuously runs through us, and which is a very good way to go higher and higher up in meditation. I’ll talk to you about that later in the day, in the afternoon.
And I’m very happy I got a chance to share these experiences with you. And, these are not theoretical speculations of philosophy. These can be practiced by anybody. And I make it a point that I will not share something with you if I have not tested it out myself, because then I’m just spreading philosophy that so many people are spreading.
And if you have a question about this thing, ask me. You can ask me a question and I will share the answer with you, based upon experience, not based upon speculation. You will find that when you have your own experience of things there’s no need to speculate, because you know it! True knowledge and true awareness is very different from trying to figure out, sitting in a totally different context, sitting outside of everything, and trying to sit here and speculate what could be inside. You’ll get all that philosophy, and so much of it does not fit in with your actual experience. But there’s nothing like actual experience.
Meditation is an art of knowing exactly the truth, about yourself, about creation, about the creator, and any other question that you have. You’ll also get answers about the law of karma, how it operates, how it doesn’t affect you unless you identify with it. And you can be just…just become aware of the whole process of creation for the purpose of having experiences. And enjoying the show! And ultimately, finding out you set it up. I’ll see you later in the day again. Thank you very much. We’ll have a break now.
https://youtu.be/QzBixPOkmoQ
By : Ishwar Puri
Ishwar Puri is the founder and principal speaker for the Institute for the Study of Human Awareness. For more than forty years he has conducted lectures, workshops, and other events
on the nature of consciousness and human awareness. His lectures and teachings have been recorded and transcribed into numerous books and other materials. Each of his many lecture presentations is founded upon his own unique experience and he expresses himself with humility and love as his guide. His broad range of lecture topics include science, art, religion, philosophy, human relations, education, health, human awareness, and consciousness.
Ishwar Puri attended Harvard University prior to retiring from service with the Government Services of India. He later established citizenship in the United States of America. He continues to serve as a consultant, board chairman, and senior advisor to a number of corporations worldwide.
Ishwar Puri is a devoted disciple of the Great Master Hazur Sawan Singh Ji. The Institute for the Study of Human Awareness provides a venue by which Ishwar Puri can carry on his work by way of speaking engagements and the dissemination of educational materials.
Here is the link to their website : http://ishanews.org
Image Credit : Pixabay.com
