Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
PART III
MECHANICAL MIND
The useless mechanical mind is very active, while the useful recording mind has fallen silent; it can't do any thinking or even note down the experiences!
Perhaps it is waiting for a higher mind to act from above.
How is it that when I talk with someone, with whom I do not usually converse, his thoughts and ideas hover round my mind for a long time?
It is the nature of the mind acting for itself to do that. It always chews and rechews the subject in which it has been engaged, provided that the talk catches on to its memory.
Why does my mind chew and rechew what I hear from others?
It is a movement in every mind; you probably did not notice it before when the mind was not accustomed to silence. For everybody whatever takes hold of the mind tends to be ruminated like that.
I am afraid I may go mad if my mind continues to be so restless.
That is absurd. There is nothing to get mad about in that. It is a normal movement of the mind which has to be got over like other movements. Things have to be taken quietly and simply (difficulties included), not unduly magnified like that.
My mind often wanders, thinking about unimportant things. This movement has a strong power of recurrence, in spite of my efforts to check it.
You must go on rejecting it till you get the mastery of it.
The mechanical mind is a part of the constitution of human nature and its activity is a well-known phenomenon, not due to something wrong in the spinal chord. What is unusual in your case, is the absolute helplessness of your will in the face of this
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very ordinary phenomenon. If that is due to the spinal chord, it is another matter, but the real cause there too is psychological.
The mechanical and subconscient minds are stirred up by the inertia. When the inertia is strong they become more active.
That only means that they take advantage of the inertia to be active. There is no other activity in the mind, so they become active, and there is no will or energy to stop them, so they continue. But the inertia itself is not a dynamic principle. The nature of inertia is apravritti [immobility] - the action of the mechanical mind is a pravritti [movement] though a tamasic obscure pravritti.
Cannot the mechanical mind be fired out by a spiritual Force? What is the need of transforming it?
You can't fire out a part of the being. What is called the mechanical mind is necessary for the maintenance (in the physical) of things gained - it is by conservation and repetition that Nature does that. The subconscient is the basis of conservation and the mechanical mind is the means of repetition. Only they have to be enlightened and change and conserve and repeat the new divine things and not the old undivine ones.
When I asked if the subconscient and mechanical mind could be changed by a direct higher action, you replied, "It is possible if you can bring the direct higher action into this part of the consciousness or else let the Force pass there." I have often concentrated the higher Force on this part and also on the vital but without any result.
It is a question not merely of concentrating but of bringing the Force into that part and keeping it there long enough to bring light and silence. If the Force does not pass there, it means that something obstructs and does not let it pass.
Can knowledge and experiences change this mechanical mind?
Knowledge and experiences can change it only if they act
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within it and occupy it driving out the old things. The other way to get rid of it is to develop the psychic being and its power over the nature.
Can knowledge and experiences act within the mechanical mind to get rid of what is in it?
The question is whether they merely act upon it or act within it and occupy that plane of the nature.
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PHYSICAL MIND
Are not the physical mind and the intellect two separate parts of our being?
They are closely connected and act together.
At times suggestions come: "You meditate for so long and work so little. This Yoga is not to attain motionless Samadhi. People here are expected to lead a balanced life working, meditating and reading."
These mental suggestions are of no use when there is experience and development going on - one must not turn from the experiences in obedience to a mental rule.
Is the dynamic descent obstructed by my physical mental?
It is probably that your physical mental is too active, putting its ideas between the Force and the field of its working.
How to stop the physical mental from that activity before it takes deep root?
What do you mean? Activity of the physical mind is not a new thing that needs to take root. It has been there very well rooted since you began your human evolution in the primaeval forests.
The physical mental or externalising mind is part of the mental consciousness, not part of the physical consciousness. But it is closely connected with the mental physical - so that the two usually act together.
It is not by a general descent that people come out of the physical mind. If one chooses to remain in the physical mind, one million descents can come down and make no difference to him.
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My physical mind often insists on mental questions and guidance.
That insistence of your physical mind comes up very strongly whenever the sadhana is interrupted. It has always the tone "Why don't you answer? Why don't you answer? Can't you see that you are not giving me what I need in my difficulties? I must have answers, answers."
To overcome the obstinacy of the physical mind I had better stop asking you so many questions about the sadhana, and only state what happens and what I fail to understand by myself.
Out of one thousand mental questions and answers there are only one or two here and there that are really of any dynamic assistance - while a single inner response or a little growth of consciousness will do what these thousand questions and answers could not do. The Yoga does not proceed by upadesh but by inner influence. To state your condition, experiences etc. and open to the help is far more important than question-asking - especially the questions about why and how which your physical mind so persistently puts.
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STUDY AND SADHANA
A question often stirs in my mind: Why is the Ashram atmostphere so full of mental activities? If people remain engrossed in them where will he the chance for sadhana?
There is no obligation on anyone to be engrossed in mental pursuits; sadhana must be done by one's own choice, not by rule or compulsion.
Do you suggest that people here should have some mental development if possible? Would it really help the sadhana?
I don't know if it helps the sadhana and I don't quite understand what is meant by the phrase. What is a fact is that mental like physical work can be made a part of the sadhana, - not as a rival to the sadhana or as another activity with equal rights and less selfish and egoistic than seeking the Divine.
One has to do some physical work as part of the Karma Yoga, also some personal work. Where is the time then to read for one's mental development except at the cost of the time spent in meditation?
If the power to meditate long is there, a sadhak will naturally do it and care little for reading, - unless he has reached the stage when everything is part of the Yogic consciousness because that is permanent. Sadhana is the aim of a sadhak, not mental development. But if he has spare time, those who have the mental turn will naturally spend it in reading or study of some kind.
For one who wants to practise sadhana, sadhana must come first, - reading and mental development can only be subordinate things.
I want to study as part of my sadhana, as an offering to the Mother, just as I do physical work with her Force supporting and
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guiding me. But I am sorry to say it is not so as yet.
Probably you are still too much identified with your mind when you study, so that you cannot stand back and watch it working or the Force working through it.
How can one build up a well-developed intellect? By studying and reading?
By training it to see, observe, understand in the right way. Reading and study are only useful to acquire information and widen one's field of data. But that comes to nothing if one does not know how to discern and discriminate, judge, see what is within and behind things.
Is it true that a person with a well-trained intellect will not have much inertia?
A well-trained intellect and study are two different things -there are plenty of people who have read much but have not a well-trained intellect. Inertia can come to anybody, even to the most educated people.
Are the limitations and defects of my mind likely to go, at least to some extent, through reading and studying?
They may, but they are more likely to go by an increasing capacity coming from above.
I have been asking you many questions, from different angles, about study. The subject confuses me a bit. I came here very young, without enough schooling. Mental development was foreign to me.
X is about my age. He was asked to continue his studies here, while I was asked to give them up and take up physical work. Consequently his mind is more developed. He can reason much better than I. Well?
X is more reasoningly stupid, that is the only difference. Intelligence does not depend on the amount one has read, it is a quality of the mind. Study only gives it material for its work as
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life also does. There are people who do not know how to read and write well who are more intelligent than many highly educated people and understand life and things better. On the other hand a good intelligence can improve itself by reading because it gets more material to work on and grows by exercise and by having a wider range to move in. But book knowledge by itself is not the real thing; it has to be used as a help to the intelligence, but it is often used only as a help to a logician's stupidity or ignorance - ignorance because knowledge of facts is a poor thing if one cannot see their true significance.
If I could study properly, I think it would be good not only for my mental development but also for my sadhana, for it would divert my consciousness from the lower or subconscient mind.
Yes.
Study is of importance only if you study in the right way with the turn for knowledge and mental discipline.
What do you think would be good for me to study?
These are things that must come from yourself; imposed, they will not succeed and have no value.
Now I have finally decided to study. Arjava (Chadwick) has consented to help me. He will teach me the subject which you think would be good for the development of my mind.
I think some knowledge of science will be most useful to you -that field is quite a blank for most people here, and yet the greater part of modern thought and knowledge is largely influenced by it.
While writing essays I concentrate to bring down fine expressions, but they don't come. Where is the defect?
It may be in an insufficient command of words in the instrument or else in an awkwardness of the transcribing mind.
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When I tried to resume my French lessons, the mind proper was completely absent. The physical mind found the activity too difficult to support. Some parts of the being wanted to read stories, but I continued to study.
It is what people usually do in life - they control the physical mind and don't allow it to do whatever it likes.
What is lacking in your French study is attention to details and entering into the spirit of the language. Grammar and syntax not [only] must be correct, but also, even if grammatically correct, English turned into French is not French. There is a turn, a way of writing that is proper to French and that has to be learned.
You should pay more attention to correctness of grammar and phrase. Otherwise one can go on studying forever without much progress in entering into the spirit of using properly the forms of the language.
What is the need for so many here to learn French? Are you preparing them for giving lectures or opening centres in France or French-speaking countries?
Are life and mind to be governed by material utility or outward practicality? Spiritual life would then be inferior even to ordinary mental life where people learn for the sake of acquiring knowledge and culturing the mind and not only for the sake of some outward utility.
Is my French study of any help to the sadhana?
I don't know what you mean by help. One can do sadhana without knowing French or for that matter English either. Knowing languages is part of the equipment of the mind.
One does not learn English or French as an aid to the sadhana; it is done for the development of the mind and as part of the activity given to the being. For that purpose learning French is as good as learning English and, if it is properly done, better. Nor is
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there any reason, if one has the capacity, to limit oneself to one language only.
Learning languages makes the mind active. Does not the Yoga mean to keep the mind quiet and turn it always to the Divine?
Do you mean to say that in order to have quietness of the mind one must do nothing? Then neither the Mother nor I nor anyone else here has a quiet mind.
Doing nothing with the mind is not quietude or silence. It is inactivity that leaves the mind thinking mechanically and discursively instead of concentrating on an object - that is all.
Keeping the mind without occupation is not the same thing as peace or silence.
Is it not a fact that most of the true Yogas demand a passivity of the mind as a first important basis? Does our Yoga differ from them in this discipline? If not, why does it allow the sadhaks to keep their minds constantly active in learning languages? Or has it created for them such a climate that they can keep their minds calm and quiet somehow, in spite of this mental activity?
One can go on without anything except a little rice daily and some water - without clothes even or a house to shelter. Is that what you call true Yoga and what should be followed in the Ashram? But then there is no need for an Ashram. A cave somewhere for each will do.
Why do you use a fountain pen? You can very well go on with an ordinary one. Why do you take these cahiers [notebooks] from the stores? Cheap papers would do. Why do you write? The mind should be passive.
If by passivity of the mind you mean laziness and inability to use it, then what Yoga makes that its basis? The mind has to be quieted and transformed, not made indolent and useless. Is there any old Yoga that makes it a rule not to allow those who practise it to study Sanskrit or philosophy? Does that prevent the Yogis
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from attaining mental quietude? Do you think that the Mother and myself never read anything and have to sit all day inactive in order to make our minds quiet? Are you not aware that the principle of this Yoga is to arrive at an inner silence in which all activities can take place without disturbing the inner silence?
Your objection was to learning languages and especially French as inimical to peace and silence because it meant activity. The mind, when it is not in meditation or in complete silence, is always active with something or other - with its own ideas or desires or with other people or with things or with talking etc. None of these things is any less activity than learning languages. Now you shift your ground and say it is because owing to their study they have no time for meditation that you object. That is absurd, for if people want to meditate, they will arrange their time of study for that; if they don't want to meditate, the reason must be something else than study and if they don't study they will simply go on thinking about "small things". Want of time is not the cause of their non-meditation and passion for study is not the cause.
At times the mind is too passive and refuses to attend to any intellectual activity. Then how can I do my study?
If it refuses, of course you can't - unless you allow the Force to work through you.
Do you think I should study only when I feel an inner urge for it, when my mind is disposed to study?
It need not be insisted on if it is found difficult to do it owing to the pressure.
Should I stop my lessons if my consciousness is not responding to the higher working as adequately as it does during an inactive period? Or should I put a will on my consciousness to make it capable of responding to the higher working at the same time as it carries on the mental activity?
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The latter course is the best.
I have sanctioned your studying because it is good for you to study - so you can go on with it.
Making it [study] a part of your sadhana depends wholly on the spirit in which you do it.
You seem to use the word meditation for a state of higher consciousness; or do you use it for thinking about the Divine? One can have a state of Yogic consciousness behind the reading or study or one can read or study from a state of Yogic consciousness, but that is not called meditation.
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LEARNING LOGIC
Does logic help us to observe, think, judge, imagine in the right intellectual way?
No, not necessarily. It is a theoretical training; you learn by it some rules of logical thinking. But the application depends on your own intelligence. In any sphere of knowledge or action a man may be a good theorist but a poor executant. A very good military theorist and critic if put in command of an army might very well lose all his battles, not being able to suit the theories rightly to the occasion. So a theoretical logician may bungle the problems of thought by want of insight, of quickness of mind or of plasticity in the use of his capacities. Besides, logic is not the whole of thinking; observation, intuition, sympathy, many-sidedness are more important.
When Dr. Sircar came to teach logic and philosophy to Shanti I found out that they are concerned with the mental things and have nothing much to do with the practice of Yoga.
Why should you expect the theory of logic to have anything to do with Yoga - it is concerned with mental reasoning, not with spiritual experience. Cooking also has nothing to do with Yoga; you can't cut up Brahman and the Purusha and surrender and put them into the dishes either as a vegetable or a sauce. All the same, cooking is a part of existence, even of existence in an Ashram.
Can logic and philosophy help one in his sadhana?
They can help to prepare the mind or they can help to express the knowledge properly in the mental way. What else do you expect them to do?
I am not aware that by learning logic one gets freed from physical things. A few intellectuals lead the mental life and are indifferent to physical needs to a great extent, but there are very few.
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Would a developed mind help the sadhana?
It may or may not - if it is too intellectually developed on certain rationalistic lines, it may hinder.
You wrote to N that though people call you a philosopher, you have never learnt philosophy. Well, what you have written in the "Arya" is so philosophical that the greatest philosopher in the world could never hope to write it. I don't mean here the bringing down of the highest Truth, but the power of expression, the art of reasoning and arguing.
There is very little argument in my philosophy - the elaborate metaphysical reasoning full of abstract words with which the metaphysician tries to establish his conclusion is not there. What is there is a harmonising of the different parts of a many-sided knowledge so that all unites logically together. But it is not by force of logical argument that it is done, but by a clear vision of the relations and sequences of the knowledge.
In course of the sadhana, can one receive intellectual or other training by the direct power of Yoga? How did your own wide development come?
It came not by "training", but by the spontaneous opening and widening and perfecting of the consciousness in the sadhana.
You say that you never developed your intellect. Then how did it become so keen and powerful before you started the Yoga?
It was not any such thing before I started the Yoga. I started the Yoga in 1904 and all my work except some poetry was done afterwards. Moreover my intellect was inborn and so far as it grew before the Yoga it was not by training but by a wide haphazard activity developing ideas from all things read, seen or experienced. That is not training, it is natural growth.
An unintellectual mind cannot bring down the Knowledge? What then about Ramakrishna? Do you mean to say that the
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majority of the sadhaks here who have not learned logic and are ignorant of philosophy will never get Knowledge?
But what a difference there is between Ramakrishna's expressions of knowledge and those of a perfectly developed intellect like yours!
His expressions are unsurpassable in their quality. Don't talk nonsense. Moreover I never developed my intellect and I made zero marks in logic.
And who preached Ramakrishna's gospel to the world? Vivekananda, a highly developed intellect.
And who taught Vivekananda the Truth? Not a logician or highly developed intellect certainly?
Is there not a world of difference between an intellectual man and an unintellectual one expressing the Knowledge?
Expression is another matter, but Ramakrishna was an uneducated non-intellectual man, yet his expression of knowledge was so perfect that the biggest intellectuals bowed down before it.
I never heard that learning logic was necessary for good expression. So far as I know very few good writers ever bothered about learning that subject.
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MIND AND ITS ENLIGHTENMENT
My English teacher and I read the following passage from your book:
"What has to be surpassed and changed is the intellectual reason which sees things from outside only, by analysis and inference when it does not do it rather by taking a hasty look and saying 'so it is', or 'so it is not'."
Here, did you mean to say that the intellect usually judges things after forming hasty conclusions and that when it cannot do so it tries analysis and inference? That is how my teacher interpreted the passage. My understanding of it is just the opposite! It is only when the intellect cannot decide by analysis and inference, which is its usual process, that it forms hasty conclusions. Well, which of the two explanations is really correct?
Neither is correct. Each of these statements is a hasty conclusion of the intellect.
Both the interpretations are absurd. I have said nothing about "cannot". I have said "when it does not rather", and that means that what it ordinarily does is to take a hasty look, that is what most people usually do, and the habit of careful analysis and inference (which is no doubt the proper function of the intellect) is the exception.
If even the intellect usually takes a hasty look without reasoning in a logical way, why should people spend so much time, energy and money developing it? The growth of the physical mind should serve their purpose!
People don't take time etc. for developing the intellect. It is only one man out of thousands who has a trained intellect. In others it is either ill-developed, undeveloped or very partially developed.
The intellect of most men is extremely imperfect, ill-trained.
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half-developed - therefore in most the conclusions of the intellect are hasty, ill-founded and erroneous or, if right, right more by chance than by merit or right working. The conclusions are formed without knowing the facts or the correct or sufficient data, merely by a rapid inference, or the process by which it comes from the premises to the conclusion is usually illogical or faulty - the process being unsound by which the conclusion is arrived at, the conclusion also is likely to be fallacious. At the same time the intellect is usually arrogant and presumptuous, confidently asserting its imperfect conclusions as the truth and setting down as mistaken, stupid or foolish those who differ from them. Even when fully trained and developed, the intellect cannot arrive at absolute certitude or complete truth, but it can arrive at one aspect or side of it and make a reasonable or probable affirmation; but untrained, it is a quite insufficient instrument, at once hasty and peremptory and unsafe and unreliable. That is why I laid stress on its habit of hasty look and conclusion.
You said, "The intellect of most men is extremely imperfect, ill-trained, half-developed." What is the right way of training the intellect so that it may become perfect, fully developed and turn always to the truth and be able to deal with more than one side of the truth?
To look at things without egoism or prejudice or haste, to try to know fully and accurately before judging, to try to see the truth behind other opinions than your own, etc. etc.
Is not the usual function of the intellect to see, reason, analyse, infer, scrutinise, judge?
If it is its function, what prevents it from trying to do all that by a hasty look? Does everything in this world discharge its function perfectly? Very few people scrutinise before they judge.
What is the characteristic of a well-developed intellect? Is it helpful to a higher knowledge?
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A well-developed intellect is one which is plastic, wide, free from rigidity and stiffness, - that can be of use.
You said, "The intellect is made up of imaginations, perceptions, inferences. The pure reason is quite another thing, but only a few are able to use it." What is the pure reason made of?
Pure reason deals with things in themselves, ideas, concepts, the essential nature of things. It lives in the world of ideas. It is philosophic and metaphysical in its nature.
How to get a strong, firm and clear mind?
That can only come either by mental training or by a working of the higher consciousness on the parts from above.
What sort of "mental training" do you mean here?
Reading, learning about things, acquiring complete and accurate information, training oneself in logical thinking, considering dispassionately all sides of a question, rejecting hasty or wrong inferences and conclusions, learning to look at all things clearly and as a whole.
Is it not true that a proper mental training greatly helps the higher action to work upon a sadhak?
If so, it should have been done before taking up sadhana; for in sadhana the mind has to be quiet, not active.
Is getting knowledge from above and getting it by the mind in its own capacity the same thing? If the mind is capable then there is no need of knowledge from above, it can do the getting of knowledge by its own greatness.
Mental knowledge is of little use except sometimes as an introduction pointing towards the real knowledge which comes from a direct consciousness of things.
It is not a mental knowledge that is necessary but a psychic perception or a direct perception in the consciousness. A mental
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knowledge can always be blinded by the tricks of the vital.
To perfect our actions, feelings and thoughts, we have to teach the outer being first with the mind. We cannot wait idly for the psychic or higher consciousness to take up that work.
Obviously the mind has to teach the outer being, so long as the psychic or the higher consciousness are not ready to take up the work.
It is impossible for a yogi to do anything without having more than one thought.
Don't understand. A yogi can do hundreds of things without having a single thought much less "more than one thought". If you say you cannot do that at this stage, that is quite another matter.
When you do not answer my questions about sadhana, my mind falls into confusion and doubt. It argues with itself. All this disputing disturbs my sadhana.
Your mind is too active. If it were more quiet and less questioning and argumentative and restlessly wanting to find devices it seems to me that there would be more chance of knowledge coming down and of intuitive, non-intellectual consciousness developing within you.
It seems to me better to call down the Force and let it work in its own way rather than the mind always asking "Shall I do this, shall I do that? Will this device serve? Will that device help?"
You have to develop the inner intuitive response first - i.e. to think and perceive less with the mind and more with the inner consciousness. Most people do everything with the mind and how can the mind know? The mind depends on the senses for its knowledge.
I don't feel at all happy, gay or fixed on anything. Almost
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constantly I see my thoughts opposing each other. There is hardly any stable condition. Some parts of the being feel that I am good for nothing, neither for sadhana nor for work.
Don't accept and hug and dandle these ideas. Everybody has thoughts opposing each other - it is the very nature of the mind -one has to draw back from all that and fix on the straight things alone that lead to the Divine. The rest one must treat as external rubbish.
When I give intellectual answers to my friends, the answers seem to be dry. Why so?
Answers about what? Intellectual answers about spiritual things are usually dry, except to the intellect.
Has an intellectual no emotions - love, joy for others?
There is no reason why he should not have.
To understand and dismiss the delusions and devices of the vital and the ego, we need a deeper consciousness; an undeveloped or half-developed intellect is seldom sufficient.
Yes. The intellect easily deceives itself, putting forth the idea and saying "it is done" when all along the vital reactions are there.
What I write usually helps only the mind and that too very little, for people do not really understand what I write - they put their own constructions on it. The inner help is quite different and there can be no comparison with them, for it reaches the substance of the consciousness, not the mind only.
You said, "What I write usually helps only the mind and that too very little, for people really do not understand what I write. " Is it because you are writing from too high a plane for our little mind to understand what you write?
It is because the mind by itself cannot understand things that are beyond it. It constructs its own idea out of something that it
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catches or thinks it has caught and puts that down as the whole meaning of what has been written. Each mind puts its own ideas in place of the Truth.
About my recent questions you wrote, "They are mental questions seeking a mental answer." Are questions regarding things of the sadhana considered as mental ones?
Mental questions are questions put by the mind which expects them to be answered according to its own habits and standards although the happenings of the consciousness do not follow any law which accords with the mind's standards.
This morning I had a direct meditation with the Mother, that is, 1 took her embodied self as the centre of my concentration. This had a unique result. She poured into me certain thoughts which changed my oscillating mental attitude. These thoughts did not merely tell me something in the form of words, but revealed before me vividly and expressively what the proper place of mind in sadhana should be. Never in any book have I come across these thoughts in such an illuminating form. It might take ten or twenty pages to describe them adequately. Each thought was full of light and had several sides. Every thought was not only received as an abstract thought but felt at the same time as an experience. Wherever it penetrated into me, it created spontaneously a full consent to it and a resolution to abide by its truth. So far as I remember now all that took place within a few seconds.
Very good.
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SEPARATING MENTAL PURUSHA
FROM MENTAL PRAKRITI
When my consciousness keeps itself separate from reading or talking, it cannot understand what is being said or read.
That only means that you cannot separate yourself from your mental consciousness in its activity. Naturally, if you take your mental consciousness off the reading, you can't understand what is being read, for it is with the mental consciousness that one understands. You have not to make the mental consciousness separate from the reading, but yourself separate from the mental consciousness. You have to be the Witness watching it reading or writing or talking, just as you watch the body acting or moving.
I try to separate myself from the mental activity, but what happens is that, instead of the witness Purusha, the mental consciousness gets separated from the mental activity!
It is, I suppose, because you have not yet got the mental Purusha separate from the mental Prakriti - so when you pull the Purusha back, the Prakriti comes with him.
What can be done to prevent this from happening?
The only way is to separate the Prakriti and Purusha. When you feel something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside on the street, then that is the separation of mental Purusha from mental Prakriti.
Still I cannot separate the mental Purusha from mental Prakriti!
You will have to learn the trick. You must learn to become the observer of thoughts and no longer the thinker.
This morning I could not stop my thoughts. So I tried to catch them after detaching myself from the mind. But, when I pursued them, the only trace I found was voidness.
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That would mean the thoughts were coming up only by the quiescence of the mental Purusha and as soon as they were looked at could go on no more. Usually one has to reject them before the mind falls silent.
What are these things we call thoughts?
They are forms of the play of mental forces. These mental forces come from general Nature and make use of the individual mind for expressing themselves. Usually the mental Purusha accepts and allows the play - if he draws back and refuses his consent, then they persist for a time, but afterwards lose their control of the mind and the mind falls silent.
The whole day the useless activities of the mind simply go on, wandering like vagabonds without aim. Of course, my intellect has nothing to do with them.
In that case, are you separated from those activities? Do you watch them going on, wandering like vagabonds, or do you wander with them?
The crowds of mechanical and subconscient thoughts have increased to such an extent that they have become intolerable.
They cannot decrease until you definitely separate yourself from them and refuse to accept them or respond.
At this stage of the sadhana, should I try to divide my mental consciousness into two, one part doing mental work, the other part doing the sadhana?
It usually comes of itself, not by trying.
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