SOME THOUGHTS ON ATMA-91

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Loving Sai Rams,

In the concluding sentence of posting no.90, we said that If one were to gain positive Spiritual growth due to his Sadhana, he must have elderly men of merit and Tapas around him. After acquiring the right type of head and heart, when ardent devotees of the Lord, protected and guided by men of wisdom, sit in quiet river-banks or parks, they must contemplate upon the glory of the Changeless Consciousness. Neither the sense organs, nor the mind, nor the intellect can apprehend the Atma as an object as brought out in mantra 3 of chapter 1 of Kenopanishad. A question can be asked in this context as to what exactly constitutes contemplation; what should be our theme of reflection, the field of reasoning, the topic of deligent and continuous contemplation?

 

One of the most important items of practise in the final stage of Vedantic Sadhana is called Vichar(contemplation). It is the subjective dissection of the various personality-layers

(kosas) constituting our personality and individuality, until we ultimately get at the governing Principle of Light and Wisdom, the Self. The gross, the subtle and the causal bodies---constituted of the anatomy and the physiology(gross body), the mental and intellectual(subtle-body) and the tendencies

(Vasanas) left over in us due to the past thinking and actions(causal body)--are the three main divisions in the personality-structure of man. All of them are products of matter; and matter is essentially inert. One may raise a question here that since his body perceives, the mind feels and the intellect thinks, are we correct in saying that they are inert? The inert matter expresses sentiency and movement because it is propelled by something other than itself. That power is the Atma, the Self, the Absolute Consciousness, the Infinite Knowledge which, when it expresses thus through the vehicles of the three bodies is the manifested " individuality " in each one of us. Through right analysis and thinking when the equipments and their functions are separated from the Atma, the individuality dissolves and the Transcendal experience dawns. This is the culmination of

Vichar (contemplation).

 

When thus discriminated, and thereby the Reality is distilled away from our delusory wrong perceptions and ignorance-born superimpositions, the Self is experienced as ever unconditioned by matter. This Pure Witnessing Consciousness playing behind the storms of change and sorrow in matter, ever Unattached with the imperfections and miseries of the perishable, is the Fourth Plane of Consciousness. Now ,what are the first three planes of consciouness? They are the waking, the dream and the deep-sleep conditions or realms of experience known to us, and they in their aggregate provide for us our total experience of the imperfect world

(jagat). Normally, we live in one or the other of these planes of experience. On realizing the Self, we transcend the three and come to live the dynamic experience of the Fourth Pane (Turiya), wherein all the other three planes of experience are totally negated. This state of perfection can not be gained through some brutal onslaught, nor by any amount of courageous and consistentself-effort. One has to be the beneficiary of some element of grace--the grace of the Self, the Supreme Lord.

 

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian