Mind - The Abandoned you

I have little use of the past and future and rarely think about it at any moment of time. This awareness came after some years of my living in anxiety and agony to such an extent that ‘I never wanted to live with myself.’ This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: “I” and the “self” that I cannot live with. ‘May be’ I thought, ‘only one of them is real.’ And, I was stunned with this realization. My internal journey to discover my ‘real’ self began…and one day all my sufferings vanished and I became light like light; as if someone had taken away all my burden and sufferings in one go. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and fearful self−the false, suffering self−which is a fiction of the mind and not real. However, I could not feel it although I was carrying it with me because my mind was too much noisy. I was in it, lost in it, and became the noise itself that I could not even be aware that a self other than that miserable self ever existed.

To explain, let me quote a parable. A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for years. He used to ask ‘spare some change?’ to passersby. One day, a stranger not being able to give anything material replied, ‘I have nothing to give you.’ He asked, ‘How long you are sitting here?’ The beggar replied, ‘Over thirty years.’ ‘What is that you are sitting on?’ asked the stranger. ‘Nothing, just an old box abandoned by somebody and I have been sitting on it as long as I can remember,’ said the beggar. ‘Ever looked inside?’ asked the stranger. ‘What is the point, there is nothing in there and why waste time,’ replied the beggar. ‘Have a look inside,’ insisted the stranger. The beggar for the first time, just to satisfy the insistent stranger opened the box. To his astonishment, disbelief and elation, he found that the box was filled with gold. Are we not like that beggar? Unaware of being on it or carrying it, searching for it outside? Or, seeking some one to provide it−the happiness? Not getting what one seeks one is unhappy. Getting something one does not want or dislikes, one is unhappy. Craving for pleasures from outside objects or an outsider to provide it and avoiding pains seeking external balms, one perpetuates suffering. It is like a child sitting in the middle of a beautiful garden crying for plastic toys to be provided by someone and suffer accusing or excusing if the toys are not made available to him. This is a fictitious self created by the mind. If one wants to be joyful, one has to get out of the clutches of that mind.

Mind is a superb instrument if you take control of it and use it at your will. The problem with man is that he allows him to be used by the mind. In fact, you do not use your mind. The mind uses you. Instead of the owner using the instrument, the instrument uses the owner. And the owner believes that the instrument is himself. Thus, the instrument taking over the owner is complete. Further, if you watch your mind you can see that the mind exists only in the past or future and never in the present. That is, the mind is the replay of the recorded past or the fear of the future. It never exists in the ‘Now’. If you analyse further you will realise that even the past never existed except in the perceptual creation of the mind. Nor, the future exists. Whatever happened in the past, the past as we refer to it, has happened in the ‘Now’ then. Similarly, whatever will happen in the future will happen in the ‘Now’ then. This is the ultimate reality. However, the mind creates a fictitious past by way of thoughts of the past and a fictitious future by way of thoughts of the future. This string of thoughts, perpetuating itself, becomes an automation with no breaks or intervals. Thoughts appear without your being aware of them. You get into it and allow yourself to be taken over. And you believe you are the thoughts. And, you say, ‘I think therefore I am.’ This is delusion. Unaware of this truth, you dwell in and identify with the incessant, compulsive and involuntary thoughts of the past and illusory future. The instrument of mind causes this delusion and illusion. And, as mind perpetuates the bad past and a fearful future, you suffer carrying the burden of the past and worries of the future. That is, you live in the past and/or in the future. And, you believe this is your self. But believing to be true is not the same as knowing and experiencing the truth. Believing the thoughts to be oneself and being taken over by its continuous flow, one misses the stillness, the silence and the space of the present ‘Now’ as one believes that the thoughts are natural and suffering is normal as everyone is suffering. And, this now becomes a means to achieving a pleasant, happy and joyful future. That is, happiness and life are at a distance, at a future time out there and not here and now. In reality it is not so. Life−the joyfulness is here and now. I realized this only when I could experience the ‘stillness’ and the eternal ‘silence’ in me being in the ‘Now’, refusing to be in the past or future.

It is like the silence between two musical notes. The sound of music will have no meaning without silence. In fact, silence is eternal and musical sounds perishable. It is like the space in a room; the furniture cannot be there without the space but no one sees the space but only the furniture. Because one cannot see the space, it does not mean the space does not exist. In reality the space is the permanent and the furniture the perishable and the impermanent. For an ordinary eye the space is “nothing” and the furniture a ‘thing.’ But if you look closer you will find that in this beginning-less and endless vast space of ‘nothing’ exists everything. It encompasses the entire universe—the solar systems, the galaxies, and everything. Without silence no sound can exist, without the stillness no movement can take place and without that nothingness no thing can exist. This is equally true of man and mind also. Man gets into the movements of mind and not into the moment, which is now. There is no beginning or end for silence, stillness and space. It is there. It has no past or future. It is beyond analysis, measurements, understanding and explanation. Knowing it and experiencing being there is the realm of eternal peace, joy and bliss. Here, the noisy mind disappears, and the real ‘I’ emerges. To put it accurately, the real ‘self’ is reclaimed−the ‘self ’ which exists in the ‘now and here’ with no past and no future. Here, ‘I’ uses the instrument called mind the way ‘I’ wants to use it and ‘I’ directs my thinking rather than the mental automation taking over me. The belief that joyfulness or happiness is when I achieve this and that or when I get rid of this and that or after that out there, etc., are mere mental fiction as time−the psychological time−has no past or future. It has only ‘Now’. Not knowing this truth, dwelling in the fictitious past and future is ‘suffering’ and is a disease. In short, mind is the disease. Liberation from that mind by taming and overpowering it to be used rightly and at will and choice is called self-mastery by atma-vidhya or self-knowledge. It awakens one to one’s divinity. Respect, reverence and compassion to all beings and a ‘help ever, hurt never’ principle of life will start flowing from you in relation to the world. Personally, it will be the end of all suffering as you have freed yourself from the mind’s games and noises and reclaimed the original land of eternal silence, stillness, and serenity. At least this is my experience. And, the ‘self which I never wanted to live with’ is no more with me. I am free.