There are two aspects to thinking - mechanical or technological, and emotional and/or egotistic.
The first is a necessary part of human life, its dharma or ṛta. Its training and application occur both formally and informally.
There are two ways I know of by which the second aspect becomes silent. This training and application is absolutely personal and informal.
Such silencing is by removal of saṁskāras [1] as in a) Sahaj Marg cleaning, or b) through the much more onerous and finicky process of choiceless observation or bhogam without ahaṁkāra.
Per Jiddu Krishnamurti, the energy liberated or made tangible by this silence is Love.
Put differently, from sat-cit-ananda emanates the emotional layer of the mind (among other things). Resolving or silencing or merging that layer back into its source is laya. Thus exposing ānanda or Love.The memory-less aspect of the emotional layer in laya, of ānanda, is not appreciated enough.
Chariji once suggested meeting people every time as if for the first time. With minimal, perhaps zero, bias. This is a cure or a workaround for existing biases, and is another way to look at bhogam and resolution of the emotional layer.
For prevention, per Daaji, one should behave in such a way that biases or saṁskāras don't accumulate at all. Or, re-accumulate, after they have been removed.
Maxims Six, Seven, and Eight of the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg from Babuji directly address the behaviour to adopt to avoid saṁskāras.
Put so baldly, it sounds like a transactional mentality.
Yet the Master of Sahaj Marg is a living example of memory-less loving behaviour. As were the earlier Masters.
NOTES
[1] Daaji's wonderfully evocative phrase is "emotional residue".
Yes, Chariji's comment makes sense and also practicable - to meet people without bias but challenging nonetheless because social conditioning entails a constant alert judgemental capability. It happens from childhood itself where a child looks upon another child as someone they can play with or not. For abhyasis and preceptors especially, it helps if we understand that everyone has their own journey to make. The Maxims help brilliantly.
ReplyDeleteSocial conditioning need not continue forever with Sahaj Marg cleaning. But continuing to behave as if the conditioning still exists recreates those samskāras and then the habit of fearing and judging others persists. Young kids generally pick up their caretakers' biases, as far as I remember from taking mine to parks. Agree with the other points. Thanks for commenting!
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