Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Vimala Thakar - Mutation of Mind




The conscious mind, realizing its own limitations, becoming aware that it hasn't got any other channel or groove to function in, can become spontaneously quiet.

When all this investigation creates a humility in the conscious mind, and an awareness of its own limitations, awareness of the fortress in which it is imprisoned and which it cannot transcend, then that humility does create a silence in the mind.  This is not the silence of suppression or repression, compulsion or paralysis.  It is not an induced silence, whether that inducement comes through ideas, ideals, emotions or chemicals.

The immensity of the contents of the unconscious brings about a sense of humility in the conscious mind.  And a silence of the conscious mind flows out of that humility.  The next step is not going to be taken by the conscious mind at all.

We are saying that the very awareness of its own limitations can bring about a state of silence.

Then a direct communion with reality becomes possible.  In fact, that state defies verbalization.  The realm of the unknown defies verbalization.  Self-knowing is the essence.  Self-knowing is the maturity which one has to attain.  So we have been struggling with the limitations of the mind, but for the struggle we employ the mind.  Struggling against the limitations of the mind by employing the mind and exercising the will, is not the right way perhaps.

When you realize that the mind is not equal to the task of communing with reality, the mind relaxes in silence.

It needs alertness, it needs intensity, which we lack.  Our energy is so much scattered, that this inquiry of truth becomes one of the many desires.  When one starts living every moment in the light of that inquiry, then the illumination dawns upon the heart. This creative understanding dawns upon the human heart, when the inquiry of truth becomes the top priority; when it becomes the all-consuming flame, in the light of which one lives.  It is not a pastime, a hobby, an amusement.  (The challenge needs to be formulated, then realised, then begun.)

The problem is how to break away completely from the conditioning in which the mind has been cultivated.

Truth (requires) the right approach, start, foundation.  We must become free from the urge for security; acquisition, accumulation, preservation is a hindrance to this transformation.  Emotions, feelings, thoughts and memories are mechanical actions, inevitable reflex actions according to conditioning.  The mind names, identifies, compares, judges on the basis of memory.

Mind becomes silent, temporarily, only when it is confronted with something which it cannot interpret, something unprecedented.  Realizing its own limitations, understanding that truth and reality are something very vast, immeasurable by the human mind and that the mystery of life cannot be discovered by ideas and concepts, the mind becomes silent.

The mind could understand its own nature, find out the conflicts between the conscious and the unconscious; find out the impossibility of a total action on the mental plane; realize the limitations and become quiet.

Whether you try to influence the mind through ideas and concepts, or through discipline and vows, or through drugs, you are trying to stimulate artificially a state of silence.  Perhaps if we are friendly with the mind, if we watch the mind, if we understand the mind, if we let it wander, let it roam about wherever it wants, let it exhaust its momentum by wandering, without scolding, without praising, without condemning it might exhaust its momentum and arrive at the simple innocent silence.

The subconscious and the unconscious contain the known.  The implication of the words total silence is silence of the subconscious and the unconscious and the conscious.  We will have to allot some time in the beginning to sit by ourselves and find out if the mind can be silent.

All our emotions and thoughts are conditioned reflexes, reactions.

This non-identification with ones reactions ... brings about a sudden change in the level of consciousness.  This non-identification with the subconscious world, non-identification with the momentum of the whole subconscious and unconscious results in creative silence.  The creative alternative is to refuse to identify oneself with the mind.  This cannot blossom in a day, if we do not know what mind is.

One has to begin with being introduced to one's own mind.  To watch how the mind works, to watch how we live second-hand through emotions, feelings and sentiments.  How we call them our own and identify ourselves with them. To watch all this, will be the beginning of meditation.



 The following is extracted from the book Mutation of Mind.

On An Eternal Voyage by Vimala-Thakar  PDF


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