Purifying the mind-field

Think of ice. Not made from pure water - not just molecules of H2O. With soil, minerals, metals, microorganisms, and so on. With impurities. Also imagine this ice was made from moving water, not still water. The ice crystals made are thus not clear or transparent. Light going in gets reflected in odd directions due to the complexities within.

When ice melts (in sunlight or mild heat), the impurities stay solid, and can be mechanically filtered out, say with a sieve. Not all of them, though. Sieves with such fine screens are difficult to find and work very slowly. They get clogged quickly. Flimsy and soggy filters are slower than stiff metallic ones.

The complexities in ice, though, disappear when it turns back into water.

When water is further heated, it turns into vapour and naturally leaves all its impurities behind. Directing this vapour away to another container is enough to get pure water by condensation. And, if the surrounding temperature is low enough, to get pure ice with simple crystals.

Now imagine your mind-field moves between a similar set of grosser and subtler states. In a grosser state, it contains more impurities and complexities. In a subtler state, they are left behind, obvious or tangible, and so can be cleaned away more easily. But note the two parts carefully - subtilization and filtering. Or subtilization and moving away. For the mind-field, though, moving the attention away to something much or infinitely subtler may itself cause subtilization of the mind-field.

The effect of this cleaning is a matter of daily experience with the Heartfulness Rejuvenation/Sahaj Marg cleaning practice. Exactly how it works is a matter of one's own research and one's own ideas. But it explains why one is able to meditate better after cleaning. That is, one is better able to rest one's attention effortlessly on something for longer, and without internal disturbances. After all, we specifically remove impurities and complexities by the rejuvenation/cleaning.

In a very limited sense, the three gunas - sattva, rajas, and tamas - can be considered as vapour, water, and ice, respectively. Tamas and rajas have more mechanical aspects and correspond better. Sattva is the most psychological and closest to consciousness or awareness. A physical analogy for it is much less exact. Still, taken only in the sense of lightness and expansiveness, ice->water->vapour sequence corresponds to tamas->rajas->sattva.

NOTES

[1] Ice also has a surprising property - water in solid state is lighter than water in liquid state. It floats. Thus it forms a barrier between the cold air above and the water beneath. And this stops an entire body of water from turning into solid ice. Thus allowing fish and other underwater residents to move about and not freeze as well.