Swami Venkatesananda

Let’s have look into an inspiring though not extremely popular text called the Yoga Vasistha. It’s sublime, but it is not as well-known as for instance the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads.

The purposes invented by the me may be necessary, may be expedient in our lives, may make our lives run in an orderly and smooth ways, but the fundamental problems that plague our hearts and minds cannot be dealt with by such superficial means, by inventing a purpose. One day or the other, there will be disillusionment. Disillusionment is a good thing. One day or the other, there will be disillusionment, and there may be great shock, and it may be too late.

Before it is too late, is it possible for us to investigate the ‘me’, its relationships, the way it behaves, the movements that are associated with the ‘me’, and, by taking it to its own source, what consciousness, what life is – not what it is for, but what life is?

That is the theme of this Yoga Vasistha which we will continue to discuss on the coming Saturdays.

“Puzzled and bewildered by what we see around ourselves, which of course includes what we regard as ourselves, we begin to look for a meaning to all this. And since the observer, the me, the ego arises in life, it is unable to comprehend the true meaning, the totality of life. And yet, such is the nature of the inquirer that it cannot give up!

This is the paradox, this is the enigma, this is the puzzle. You don’t easily give up your attempt to understand something which you regard as vital. And so a compromise is affected:  I don’t understand the meaning, or I cannot understand the meaning,  so let me try to speculate on what might be the meaning, or more appropriately the purpose (of) why am I here.

I can make the distinction sort of (more) clear: What is the meaning of my coming here and sitting here? To contemplate the Yoga Vasistha in your company. Isn’t it? That’s the purpose! Because, coming here and sitting here – what is the meaning of all this? Not merely the restricted purpose of talking about the Yoga Vasistha, but a lot more! If the meaning of my coming here is merely to talk about the Yoga Vasistha, I shouldn’t be drinking a glass of water, I shouldn’t be blinking, I shouldn’t be blowing my nose. The meaning is comprehensive. It’s vast, whereas the purpose can be very limited.

The meaning cannot be altered, the purpose can be modified as you go along. The meaning has to be discovered, the purpose is invented, manufactured, put together. Why is the purpose put together? Why does one ask “What is the purpose of life?” at all? Because we are unable to understand the meaning of life.

All philosophies, all theories concerning life, and what our duty is concerning life, what we should do and not do, “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not”,    all these are products of inquiring into the purpose of life. It is valid as far as it goes. But, it is not adequate to bring satisfaction to the inquirer! “

How do you expect a thought to answer the question: “What is life?”

In that case: Do we have any other instrument of knowledge?
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How does such a question arise and what does that question mean?

The Yoga Vasistha, the Supreme Yoga, begins that way.
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I won’t take much of your time telling the whole story.

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The king asks Rama to be brought to the court and hands him over as it were to one of the greatest sages of that time, Vasistha. And it was in answer to the sage’s questions that Rama gives vent to his ideas. And the sage compliments him (…): “Wonderful! You have had an inner awakening! That is what I would call viveka.” (…) We are told that unless there is this stirring of this viveka in us, it is not possible to find an answer to the fundamental questions concerning life: What is the meaning of life? What am I here for? Who am I?
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Viveka is something which questions: “What is the reality of this?” The reality is permanent, the unreality is impermanent. (…) But is the permanent something which can be seen, touched? Is there something which is permanent which can thus be defined? You don’t find anything as permanent as this! When you do not define those words – permanent/impermanent, real/unreal, then a different type of intelligence arises from that – if you keep inquiring into everything to see if it is real or unreal, if it is permanent or impermanent. Then a different, very different type of intelligence arises:  “discrimination” (between the real and the unreal) arises, wisdom arises, and a certain attitude, a certain behavior, a certain vision flows from this “discrimination”. This is viveka, and the action that flows from that is vairagya. 

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Viveka in that sense means absolute clarity of vision, absolute clarity of perception

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Then, there is a revolution in your behavior.

One might be awakened from one dream, and might slip into another dream which for the time being the dreamer considers to be an awakened state.
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But as soon as he was awakened, he slipped into another dream, calling it a state of waking. It is only from that point of view that some great masters assert that this awakening is also a process, and that there could be several series of awakenings. 

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There is an awakening which thinks that the world is  outside: “The outside world is vicious,  and I must renounce that!” That is an awakening. Quite valid. But that is not a complete and total awakening. There is a little more!
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There is a second and a stronger awakening. And this stronger awakening leads to an even more drastic form of vairagya. And here,  it it is not merely a sort of dispassion which can be an absence of passion, or absence of craving, (not merely the) absence of desire, but vairagya in the sense of uncolored-ness leading towards un-conditioning of the mind,  or un-conditioning  of the awareness. 

Vasistha (says) “Yoga is the art of blending (or)  harmonizing these actions (of self-effort) with destiny and with grace without trying to run counter (to them).” Hence, after having taught the “supremacy” of self effort, Vasistha reminds us that only that is self effort in which is there is harmony with dharma.  What is dharma? The cohesive force or that which keeps us together; that which promotes harmony, integration of ones personality, harmony with others, with the entire cosmos, and leads us intelligently to the understanding of the state of  freedom. That is self effort; not merely beating about the bush.

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The effort must be there and one should recognize that in making the right effort, one should ensure that the means are as right as the ends, that the instrument are as pure efficient and appropriate as is needed for the effort in the right direction. When you come to that,  then immediately you realize that certain instruments like the senses (the eyes and ears and so on) are not appropriate instruments for understanding the meaning of life. When you come to that point, you realize that even the intellect or the mind is not  the appropriate instrument for understanding, for knowing the meaning of life. And you also realize that assertive discipline is vital to fashion this instrument in such a way that it is able to probe and discover this truth. Otherwise, it cannot.

Last week we looked into Vasistha’ imagery of the hall of freedom, the hall of liberation, the hall of knowledge, wisdom and the four gatekeepers with whose help alone we would be able to enter this hall of wisdom. Self-control, self inquiry, contentment, and satsanga or the company, depleted in a very simple way. I suppose you realize that means nothing. You have to define what good means, what company means, all that.

Supposing with the help of all the four (gatekeepers), three, two or,  by intensely cultivating the friendship of one of these, you are able to get to the door, and you begin to knock,  and the most important factor here is to knock “Knock and it shall be opened!”  Your knocking does not open the door. If you knock hard and long enough, maybe the skin comes off a few knuckles, but (laughs) it doesn’t open the door. Why?

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So, perhaps, when you knock, and eventually, when the door is opened, you see …  (pause) … what do you see? You suddenly realize, that all that is seen is a projection of the seer. You may say or think it is an illusion. But, the seer of the illusion exists. You may think  you see nothing, but the seer of nothingness … exists. Or, you may come back to that, the source of all wisdom: the seeker was already the sought, there is no distinction. The seeker was merely a word, moksha, liberation ,,, another word. Bondage is one word. Emancipation is another word. Illusion is one word, enlightenment is another word. We are living in a world of words!

To some of you, I am a friend. To some of you, I’m a stranger. To that child,  I’m just a noisy (laughs) … noisy man.  But supposing a tiger happened to come here and look at me. To that tiger I am something entirely different: food, dinner!  And depending upon the tag that you hang around your neck, your attitude towards me changes. This is the danger.  Otherwise, you don’t care.  If she  (pointing to a girl in the audience) were to be  considered a girl by everyone in this world, there will be no problem.  To someone she’s a girl.  To somebody else she’s a daughter.  To someone else she’s a sister.  To someone else, she is so-and-so, or so-and-so.  And (because of that) that becomes) a problem, a very serious problem. Each one expects something else from her, something else out of  her, and therefore,  there’s a problem.

So the world  “as God created it,”  to use a popular expression, is totally unknown to us! We have projected our own mind, our own thought into each one of those objects and meddled with it, distorted it.  And this is also the latest theory of modern science; that the observer’s interferes with the object by his observation, enters into the object and interferes with it. And that’s what we have been doing.
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Can that be eliminated? Yeah, sure. And in order to eliminate that we must withdraw the mind from creation, from the object, from the objective universe. If we do not do that, then we keep pursuing these objects as if they were real and as if our lives are dependent upon them. Hmm. (as if) .. Happiness comes from them, unhappiness comes from them from them, salvation comes, bondage comes from them from them. What happens then is described in a fantastic story in the Yoga Vasistha called the (Mandapar) or the Story of Lila.

It is a difficult but not impossible problem to understand the origin of creation for very simple reason that when you discuss something that someone else has  produced, you have no idea how it was done, why it was done or if it was done at all. However, whatever this creation may be, it is something that happens at different levels and different timescales …

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… this question of creation and the arising of objects and the consequent relationship that seems to come into being is of immediate concern to us.

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Consciousness did not create unconsciousness. Consciousness cannot even become conscious of something unconscious. Consciousness cannot come into contact with unconsciousness. Consciousness cannot grasp unconsciousness. Consciousness cannot comprehend unconsciousness. But you think you can.

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… consciousness being consciousness can think it is unconscious, just as a girl can play the role of a boy (in a play) , and  a boy can play the role of a girl.

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… pure consciousness by thinking that it is unconsciousness creates a thing called mind space, a space within itself.

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… having created that thought space,  there is self-forgetfulness, forgetfulness of oneself, and getting deeper and deeper involved in the other (…), in a way forgetting oneself, where self-knowledge is completely veiled and lost, and there is a total acceptance of the world as if it were an independent reality, as if my whole life is dependent upon that world  …

When the dream goes on, and even that little awareness of the self as disintegrated, it becomes a sort of hallucination. There is not a terrible difference between the two. Whereas in the case of a dream, it is less long-lasting, in the case of an hallucination, it’s more long-lasting and more firmly based. All our prejudices are based on hallucinations.
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“It must be the truth” is not the truth, yes? That’s clear, isn’t it? When you are tempted to use the expression “it must be true”, it is not true. If it is true, it is true. Why should I say it must be true? So what you hear from the religious leaders must become true to you! Then it becomes true. If that is not done in this hallucination grows into a sort of conviction (and) you convict yourself as an ignorant person.  (…)  …  if you examine your lives now, most of our action spring from these prejudices, the superstitious beliefs, these convictions which are unexamined and which according to most people are nonnegotiable. You can think about them. You can consider them. You can’t examine them. They must be left intact.  Actions that arise from the sum total of these prejudices is called mechanical action.
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Visceral action is very different from mechanical action.   (…)  …  if you examine visceral action, you will realize that it is diametrical opposite of prejudice. Visceral action is natural action. As long as your eyes are open, they will see. Whether it is an Indian swami that is sitting in front of you or a Scottish lady that is sitting in front of you. Look, look at me (the Inian Swami), look at her (the Scottish lady). The eyes don’t say I don’t want to look!  But, your eyes will close if something which is glaring is turned up upon either of us.

Now, the return journey: how do we return to a state of awakened intelligence?  How do we wake this intelligence up when it is moved away from its own center, moved into the world which it had created early in the morning, moved so far away from the center that the world seems to be a solid reality, and this intelligence  fast asleep? How do we return to the source?

I must first confess that though the fall and now the return has sort of been mapped out into seven stages, Vasistha, as such, in his own teachings does not recognize any serious step-by-step procedure and technique. If in these two instances, some sort of a technique or step-by-step procedure has been taught, that’s only because he doesn’t stick to any particular doctrine: It is neither/nor!

“Are there any techniques?”  “No!”
“Are there no techinques?  “Oh Yes!”

Both! There are no absolutes except the absolute itself

Those of you who study the Yoga Vasistha might find these steps mentioned in two places, and (notice) the steps are slightly different. I have deliberately left it in a consused state merely to indicate that there are no absolutes!  There are no dogmas here. There is no philosophical system here. If you are interested, go on .. investigate and see if there are seven steps. You can (might find) that you can skip two of them and mike it in five.  Maybe you will need a couple of more steps, or one and half or two and a half. Take them!