Student: While I at all times know myself as the Self *when I look*, I also remain somewhat caught up in my sense of self as an individual. Put in a different way, when the mind pauses and ponders, the Self "shines" from inside. However, when the mind is active, identity gets pulled into the personality until the mind begins another pause. I can stop writing and rest in the Self...then I can begin writing again and continue as the writer.
- This may help you...it is once again from the TRIPURE RAHASYA. This first part is on dispassion -
As long as thoughts crop up, so long has the turning inward of the mind not been accomplished. As long as the mind is not inward, so long the Self cannot be realised.. Turning inward means absence of desire. How can the mind be fixed within if desires are not given up?
Therefore become dispasssionate and inhere as the Self. Such inherence is spontaneous ( no effort is needed to inhere as the Self). It is realised after thoughts are eliminated and investigation ceases. Recapitulate your state after you break off from it, and then will know all and the significance of its being knowable and unknowable at the same time... Thus realising the unknowable, one abides in immortality for ever and ever....
- Now here is the other part which is the classifications of Jnannis:
"Those are the best who are free from all of the vasanas, and particularly from the least trace of that of action. If free from the fault of mistrust of the teachings of the master, the vasana due to desire, which is not a very serious obstruction to realisation, is destroyed by the practice of contemplation. Dispassion need not be very marked in this case. Such people need not repeatedly engage in the study of Scriptures or the receiving of instructions from the Master, but straightaway pass into meditation and fall into samadhi, the consummation of the highest good. They live evermore as Jivanmuktas (emancipated even while alive.)
Sages with subtle and clear intllect have not considered it worth while to eradicate their desire etc., by forcing other thoughts to take thier place because desires do not obstruct realisation. Therefore their desires continue to manifest even after realisation as before it... Neither are they tainted by such vasanas. They are said to be emancipated and diverse-minded.
- They are also reported to be the best class of jnanis...
Rama he whose mind clings to the ignorance of the necessity of work cannot hope for realization even if Siva offers to instruct him. Similiarly also the person who has the fault of marked indifference to or missunderstanding of the teachings cannot attain. On the other hand, a man only slightly affected by these two vasanas, and much more so by desires or ambitions, will by repeated hearing of the holy truth, in discussion of the same, and contemplation on it will surely reach the goal though only with condiderable difficulty and after a long lapse of time. Such a sage's activities will be small because he is entirely engrossed in his efforts for realisation. Note.,.- His activities will be confined to the indispensable necessities of life.
A sage of this class has by his long practice and rigorous discipline controlled his mind so well that predispositions are totally eradicated and then is as if dead. He belongs to the middle class in the scheme of classification of sages and is said to be a sage without mind....the last class and the least among the sages are those whose practice an discipline are not perfect enough to destroy mental predispositions. Their minds are still active and the sages are said to be associated with their minds. they are barely jnanis and not jivanmuktas as are the other two clesses. They appear to share the pleasures and pains of life like any other man and will continue to do so till the end of their lives. They will be emancipated after death...
Prarabdha (past karma) is totally powerless with the middle class who have destroyed their minds by continued practice...in all these cases, a single mind assumes different shapes to suit the different functions at the same time. Similarily the mind of the best among jnanis is only the Self and yet manifests as all withiout suffering any change in its eternal blissful nature as the Self. They are therefore many-minded...
The prdrabdha of jnanis is still active and sprouts in the mind but only to be burnt up by the steady flame of jnana. Pleasure or pain is due to the dwelling of the mind on occurrences. But if these are scorched at their source, how can there be pleasure or pain?
Jnanis of the highest order, however are seen to be active because they voluntarily bring out the vasanas from the depth of the mind and allow them to run out... Their action is similar to that of a father sporting with his child, moving its dolls, laughing at the imagined success of one doll over another, and appearing to griveve over the injury to another, and so on, or like a man showing sympathy for his neighbour on the occasion of a gain or loss....
The vasanas not inimical to realisation are not weeded out by the best class of jnanis because they cannot seek new ones to crowd out the old...
Therefore the old ones continue until they are exhausted and thus you find among them some highly irritable, some lustful and others pious and dutiful, and so on....
Now the lowest order of Jnanis still under the influence of their minds know that there is no truth in the objective universe.... Their samadhi is not different from that of the rest...
What is Samadhi? Samadhi is being aware of the Self and nothing else.... The wise say that samadhi is the control resulting from the application of the experienced Truth (ie. the awareness of Self) to the practical affairs of life... This samadhi is only possible for jnana yogis...
Love and Blessings
Om Shanti
Guru Swami G
