Short Essays On Awakening

Use of Attention

Use of Attention

Just as we have five outer senses, we have an inner sense. Or, we can say, we have five sense organs but one inner sense.

It is this inner sense that works through the organs—through the ear it hears and through the eyes it sees. But if properly trained, it can both see and hear inside.

The sense organs work through the paying of attention. Just as we have an outer sense and an inner sense, we have external attention which flows through the sense organs to give us the experience of the world outside. And we have inner attention, which we hardly use at all.

By working on the inner sense and training it to focus attention in our psychological spaces, we commence what is called self-observation.

Now we have let in a ray of light into our dark psychic nature. The first step in any spiritual journey is to bring that which lies in darkness into light. That is our thoughts, emotions, sensations and movements.

Before going further we must explain that seeing is not observing. When I drive to work, I see so many buildings on the way. I may have been passing by the same buildings for so many years. But if someone were to ask me to describe them, I would hardly be able to do so. I have seen them but not observed them.

Observation is active, seeing is passive. In observation, I take in an impression, in seeing I do not take in an impression.

An impression is a kind of food that has definite effects on my psychic structure.

All meditation techniques are for training inner attention. So when we talk about self-observation, we’re saying we have to make an active effort to see what is going on. Not just seeing and saying yes, I know that I get angry. I make an impression out of the anger and this allows me to study it and be free of it.

There are four types of attention. The first is zero attention—that is my attention level is very low. I am in a state of daydreaming or brooding. This does not mean I am doing nothing. I may be driving a car and daydreaming at the same time. I read a page of a book but after I finish the page, I realize that I do not remember anything. I was reading with zero attention.

The next state of attention is the attracted state of attention, when I am engrossed in a movie or some music, or in a thriller novel. My attention is held by what I am doing. There is no inner effort to hold attention. That is, I do not have to use will to hold attention. This is a state of hypnosis. We can call this the state of identifying with what I am doing. All the events of life hypnotise us and we relate to them through attracted attention.

The next state of attention is Directed attention. When we study for an exam we have to pay attention to what we are doing. To pay attention is a very good way to put it. Attention is a form of spiritual currency and if we want to grow spiritually, we must learn to hold our attention i.e. pay with attention.

Deeper understanding of anything in life can only come with Directed attention. Man dos not like to make the effort to hold attention. For that he has to use his will. So even if he is studying something where he has to pay attention, he likes to fall back to watching TV or daydreaming. He finds it difficult to make the effort to hold attention.

To stay for longer periods in a state of directed attention helps us grow our will. We pay by attention and receive by the power of will.

The highest state of attention is double arrowed attention. In this state, we divide our attention into two parts. We throw one arrow of attention on the events of life outside and the other arrow gives us an awareness of our thoughts and feelings.

All spiritual journeys start with divided or double-arrowed attention. We will talk of this form of attention later.

In the epic book, the Bhagwad Gita, Arjuna asks Krishna to take his chariot between the two armies, so that he can simultaneously observe both sides. This is divided attention.

Possessiveness

Possessiveness

One of the things we learn to work on in ourselves is the observation of possessiveness.

Possessiveness is a form of deep identification and keeps us buried in the sleep and identification of life. Its external manifestation is seen whenever we use the word ‘my’. I have seen professionals, artists or artisans getting offended if someone touches their tools or instruments.

Modern capitalism and the advent of private property protected by law has ingrained in us a deep attitude of ‘this mine’ and ‘these are my rights’. Among old African tribes, there has never been a concept of ‘private property’. Everything belongs to the tribe and they take what they need. However, modern society cannot fathom this inbuilt attitude and labels such tribespeople as thieves.

We say ‘my’ to not only our physical possessions (‘my breakfast, ‘my tea’), but also ‘my memory’, ‘my experience’, ‘my right’.

We feel a right to not only things, but feelings as well. When things don’t go our way, we say ‘I have a right to be angry’. ‘I have a right to act in this very mean way.’

But spirituality says I have a right only to not be angry.

When we study Essence and Personality, we discover that everything personal is personality. Our aim is to be free of the personality.

One of the exercises Mr. Tavaria gave me was to not take anything personally for one year. If someone asks, ‘Can I borrow your car’, do not take it personally. ‘Whose car?’

If my son were to get a fever… ‘Whose son?’ That does not mean I become rigid and do not get him treated. Rigidity is the other extreme.

As we practice this exercise, our consciousness starts expanding. We see that at the moment that I’m saying my son is not well, thousands of people are saying the same thing.

An event is not personal. It is neutral. It is our choice to take it personally or not. If we take it personally, we only reinforce the hold of personality or fall deeper into identification. But if we say, ‘It is an event and I have been caught up in it because I’m under the influence of a law’, then we try to understand the law and through this, experience freedom.

Through this exercise of not taking anything personally, we will observe possessiveness. When someone insults us, treats us badly, we will say ‘Whom have they insulted? There is nothing personal.”

If we can practice this over some time, we will see so many changes in our lives.

The whole aim of the spiritual journey is freedom from the Ego. When there is nothing personal, where is the Ego? This is moksha, freedom. We have arrived at the highest pedestal in life.

As we start becoming free from the personal, a new intelligence is born within us. The word intelligence comes from the Latin intellectus which is a noun that comes from the verb intelligere — to perceive, to comprehend. This new intelligence can perceive the truth of life — it is free of the personal.

As long as we are bound by the personal, our intelligence is bound by habits, attitudes and fixed ideas. We see life through a set of conditionings. It is a rigid intelligence and only perceives what it wants to see.

However, this new intelligence is not bound by anything, it is adaptable and every moment in life, finds the right way. Lao Tzu calls it ‘the watercourse way’. A small mountain stream does not shift a boulder in its path but goes around.

Similarly, in every situation in life, this intelligence finds a way out without any conflict or violence or aggressiveness. This is truly the spiritual man.

Work on Will

Work on Will

One of the things we must observe in ourselves is how we resolve to do something one moment and the very next moment, we get carried away. Say I make a decision from my Intellectual Center to sit at my table to write some notes. The moment I sit, my Instinctive Center intervenes. It says it would be nice to have a cup of tea while writing the notes. And so, after just writing one line, I get up to make a cup of tea.

As I put the kettle on, I suddenly remember from my Emotional Center (my interests) that I didn’t watch the end of the match last night as I went to sleep early. This triggers the curiosity of the Intellectual Center, making me wonder who won the match. As I wait for the water to boil, I switch on the TV to find out the results of the match.

While carrying my tea to the table, I find a movie playing on TV that I’ve been waiting a long time to see. So instead of going back to my table to write my important notes, I sit with my cup of tea to watch the movie. Of course, the Instinctive Center comes in again and says, you cannot watch a movie with just a cup of tea, a pack of wafers would be nice. And so I get the wafers and sit back comfortably to watch the movie.

Here, I must say that in the above example, I’ve spoken about a new movie that’s yet to be seen. But many times, we’ll forgo the task at hand to watch a movie or TV show we’ve already seen before.

Every student of spirituality works to create Will, which frees him from slavery to the tiniest of whims of the four centers which can dictate his life.

Let’s start with the Emotional Center. Say we’re in a situation where we have to decide to do one of two things. One we like to do and the other we do not. Normally, we would choose doing what we like first and postpone what we do not like for later. But to create Will in the Emotional Center, struggle is needed. If we choose what we do not like, then in that struggle and friction to do it, we have created Will.

Next, take the Instinctive Center. We’re feeling very hungry. If we immediately run to the fridge, then we’re a slave to its whims. But if we say ok, I’ll wait 30 minutes and then eat, we’re creating Will in the Instinctive Center by fasting for half an hour. Here we can also bring the Emotional Center into play by first eating something which may not satisfy our tastebuds.

The Moving Center, that is our organs of movement, stands on the structure of the muscles of our body. We may have been standing a long time and suddenly feel the need to relax in a chair. Here we can create a pause, struggle with the desire to relax and keep standing for a longer time, thus creating Will in the Moving Center. As we keep standing, if we can consciously roll our attention across our muscles and relax them, we’re really doing good work on our Moving Center.

Now the most idiotic part of our Intellectual Center is our chattering mind, the monkey which chatters all the time. We must catch this monkey in awkward situations and then work upon it to create Will in the Intellectual Center. Say we’re stuck in traffic, it’s very hot and our irritation is rising. Our inner monkey chatter is in overdrive. This is the time to order it to shut up. Say to it that if it does not listen, you will punish it by allowing all the other cars to overtake you when the signal turns green. Working in such situations is more powerful than any meditation.

We can be inventive and find ways to increase our Will in so many situations in life. In this way, we can one day be free from being slaves to the small whims of our centers.

Distinguishing Influences

Distinguishing Influences

Let's take a typical situation where we dislike something. Say, we're invited to a friend’s home and there we feel we have not been treated properly. One, then, feels dislike and resentment rising within as pressure or force.

What one is unaware of and does not see at that moment is that one's Being is totally under the control of that inner dislike or resentment. That is, we're under a very negative influence. This can lead to violence and hardening of a totally negative attitude.

To begin to look inside, at our psychology, is to be able to see and discriminate each moment what influence we are under. If we were to keep noting every hour, we would see that we spend a great deal of time under negative influences.

Irritation, anger, excitement, self-love, dislike, wrong and negative talking, a feeling of how good and noble one is - all these feelings are influences and when we are under a negative influence, we can only sow negative seeds in life. These negative seeds can only invite events which bring us pain and suffering.

The beginning of self-observation is to look within, to see the state we are in. We start making an effort to shift from a negative state to a more positive one.

At any moment of time, we are under some influence or the other. The student of spirituality learns to distinguish between higher and lower influences. He realizes that at any moment he is always under some influence and he learns the art of moving from a lower influence to a higher one. Over a period of time, he realizes which influences lead him deeper into the identification of life or, in other words, which influences increase his reactive tendency i.e. reacting mechanically to life every moment. He also learns which influences lead him to a higher state of consciousness and he frees himself from this deeply embedded pattern or sanskar, to react to every moment of life.

The starting point is when the student starts to look within. That is, he is in a state of self-observation. He notices that a negative build-up of force is happening within him which is on the verge of leading him into a negative state of reaction, either in anger, irritation, jealousy etc. That is, he is on the verge of being overpowered by a negative influence leading to a burst of a mechanical reaction. At this point, he immediately puts himself under a higher influence.

This can be done in two ways. The first is by consciously relaxing the muscles. Relaxation is an Art and the practice of tensing and relaxing the muscles is one of the best practices we can do. The moment the muscles relax, the intensity of the negative state decreases dramatically. For an outburst to happen, there must be a build up of tension in the muscles.

The next is right thinking i.e. we bring in our intellectual center. We try to understand that when one feels pain because one was treated badly, it was only the ego, the false, that felt pain. The Real is always free of pain and our search is from the false to the Real.

Next, if someone has treated me in such a way, he must be holding on to some knot, some wound which is hypnotizing him into this negative state. And then, instead of having a reaction to the way he treated me, I feel a build-up of compassion about his state, how he is holding an open wound, how it is poisoning his psychological state and making him react to me in this negative mechanical way. That is, one shifts from being under the influence of resentment and anger to a higher and conscious influence of compassion. One has risen on the ladder of consciousness and taken one more step towards a higher destiny in life.

Another aspect of this is we gain force. Whenever we’re in a negative state, we feel a rush of inner force. If someone tells us that so-and-so person was talking about us, we feel a rush of force. If we see that someone has something better than us, we feel jealous. That jealousy is a surge of force. When someone insults us, even if we have been sitting tired and without energy, we feel a sudden rush of force. Most negative states give us force free of charge. We waste this force in inner chattering, an outburst on that person or worrying.

The minute we shift from a lower influence to a higher one, not only do we rise in consciousness but are able to save the force which the negative state was instrumental in bringing.

The Power of Endurance

The Power of Endurance

All of us, especially in this modern world, are quick to react at the slightest provocation – whether it’s someone arriving late or the food not meeting our expectations or someone being critical of us in some way. We have a deeply embedded attitude of pointing out the faults of others, which makes us believe that it is they who must change.

If we are to make any progress on the spiritual path, we must become free of this convenient, automatic attitude of pointing out another person’s faults . And to be able to work towards this freedom, we must first increase our power of enduring other people’s negative manifestations. Only then will we stop reacting and not give in to the mechanical attitude of finding fault elsewhere. By starving this attitude of its food, one day we can be free of it. This is a type of moksha or freedom.

One of the tasks of the teacher is to constantly challenge his students so that they may build their power of endurance. Indeed, one of the signs that we are progressing on the spiritual path is when we can bear the unpleasant manifestations of others without even the slightest expression of irritation – externally and internally.

I spent seven years under the guidance of Swami Ramdulare Bapu. Though extremely loving as a Master, as a guru he was not only strict but also a hard taskmaster. He had this art of creating immense tension out of nowhere. This was no ordinary tension. He would build it up to a point where we, his students, would be convinced that any more would drive us over the edge!

And when he would see that we had reached the limits of our endurance, he would quietly walk away and leave us in that state of extreme anger, irritation and on the verge of hysterics.

I remember I once drove Bapu to many places during an extended road trip over several days. I was very happy that I had driven him well and looked after him too. Now this feeling of ‘I have done something good’ is a feeling of meritoriousness. It’s the nursery school child within us that says ‘What a good boy am I’. The teacher aims to destroy this feeling completely.

After having driven him for over 3000 miles, Bapu casually invited a young boy who had only just learned how to drive a car to teach me, saying, “Rajen, you do not know how to change gears properly. Why don’t you learn from him?”

I remember another incident at the railway station in Puri, where we had made reservations for a train headed to Kolkata. When the train arrived, Bapu had vanished. We were on tenterhooks, searching for him everywhere. Once the train had departed, he suddenly appeared carrying a large packet of pani puri. We had to spend seven hours at the station waiting for the local night train. It was completely packed with people and Bapu pushed us all in, one by one. After rearranging the luggage and people’s shoes under a wooden bench to make a little space, he instructed me to crawl in and go to sleep.

It also wasn’t unusual for Bapu to wake us up at 2am, place a digging iron in our hands and say, “Let us dig holes to plant trees for the ashram.”

Yes, the teacher prepares the disciple to bear negativity and unpleasant situations in life without any outer or inner reaction. After all, the aim is to be free of reaction.