Working with saṁskāras

(Axiom - Human birth is for mental machinery to learn about itself, especially its natural limits - vast but not infinite, and work efficiently within them.)

Currently, our mental machinery is clogged by saṁskāras.

Saṁskāras are emotional residues of events. ~Daaji

Getting through events without such residues can be done in different ways, natural or forced.

Forced way - prevent or block heart feelings altogether, be like a stone.

Feelings + thoughts = emotions

Heart feelings+ "I" thoughts = mental emotions

~Sahaj Marg definition from Babuji and Daaji, and most likely why Babuji always emphasized feelings over emotions.

"I" thoughts both cause, and are caused by, saṁskāras.

Forced way implies forcibly detached, and a closed heart (cakra).

Natural way - have feelings as usual, but with zero/minimal "I" thoughts, separative thoughts, me-you-he-she-they thoughts. Tough when "I" thoughts occur so often and are encouraged and enforced from babyhood. Their reduction becomes an interim goal and zeroing the final.

Mechanical/technological/practical/objective thoughts are fine, though. They are necessary for the mental instruments to work properly. Or, such thoughts show mental instruments are working properly.

Feelings work at different levels, but are essentially non-verbal. They are experiential but instantaneous, not memory-driven. They affect both physical and mental instruments continually.

The conundrum is simple - how to be natural and continue to wish for naturalness, always. Even when naturalness is construed (incorrectly) as being arbitrary or random, and often nasty, if not evil.

The solution is equally simple. Consider that anything separative, especially thinking or acting against others, is "I" behaviour. As and when this becomes your own understanding, self-repair of your mental machinery will kick in.

Self-repair can take a long time. Lifetimes, even. And so must be unremitting.

Support from fellow travellers along your path (or even a part thereof), or of guides who have traversed your path multiple times, helps speed up the process.

Self-driven effort is subject to barzakh or curvature, essentially a push-back to be overcome by effort at a subtler level, if possible or if understood. Experienced travellers feel such efforts may reinforce the "I" thoughts, if done carelessly.

Saṁskāras are the simplest part of a complex and cyclical feedback mechanism. Yet, by focusing only on removing them, everything else clogging the inner instruments seems to unravel nicely.

As in sickness, there are two parts to removal of saṁskāras: cure and prevention.

Cure is also of two types - bhogam (complex and difficult) and cleaning (simple but needs daily practice).

Bhogam is unravelling saṁskāras through normal life events by witnessing. 

Witnessing is much easier said than done. The "I" as actor must be replaced by God. Or each and every act, including thinking, is offered as worship to God. Essentially, the responsibility is God's. I am only a witness to His actions through me. Everything is His - thoughts, emotions, feelings, words, physical actions. Good, bad, neutral. Everything, every situation, comes from Him too.

Witnessing is not easy to understand or practise. Unwinding takes a long time and witnessing or offering actions as worship can be derailed very easily. False yet plausible rationalisations are common. C.f. the story of the confrontation between the Brahmin who killed a cow and Indra, God of the motor organs. [1]

Cleaning in Heartfulness is called rejuvenation.

Reportedly Ramana Maharshi liberated, or in the first case, tried to liberate, a few dying devotees. He placed one hand on the head and the other on the heart and unwound all of the devotee's saṁskāras at warp speed. It still took hours the first time it worked, on his mother. [2]

A similar process occurs in the daily Sahaj Marg cleaning, which is, of necessity, gentler, self-driven [3] and done daily over years, yet, hopefully takes less than a lifetime to remove years and lifetimes of samskaras.

Babuji writes that, done correctly, seven months is enough. But Daaji says that reaching the Mind Region is a prerequisite, which entails going beyond dualities.

As sattva increases through meditative practices and going inward to more and more subtler levels, the ability to clean quickly and easily increases, i.e., more and more efficiently with less and less energy.

Prevention of saṁskāras is tougher because the changes in mental processing needed are even more drastic. The technique is essentially witnessing, at a greater subtlety. In Sahaj Marg it is called Constant Remembrance, of the Guru, as actor and source.

Generally, a positive and less-egoistic, aka sattvic, interaction creates lighter and/or fewer saṁskāras. The reverse for rajasic or tamasic ones. Heavier and more saṁskāras are obviously tougher to remove, but not so the lighter ones.

A simple analogy. A light amount of bland food is easier and faster to digest, allowing more time and focused energy for other things. Hence sattvic food in an ashram where going inward, and observing and changing inside are more important. Staying healthy is also necessary to do so. Thus, ingredients to boost immunity and help gut bacteria to thrive. Nothing icky, just pepper, turmeric, and other spices, buttermilk or yogurt, fruit and vegetables - fresh and seasonal.

Similarly, minimal creation of saṁskāras help in going more and more inward.

There are three main factors in saṁskāra creation - I (abhiniveśa) and obsessive desiring: positive (rāga) or negative (dveṣa).

Losing the first factor is the best. Minimal to zero "I" thoughts result in minimal to zero fresh saṁskāras.

Then, progressively milder likes or dislikes leading to detachment is the next best option. But this can easily be a source of prideful askesis and increase one's "I" thoughts.

I don't care what I eat. Do you?

OR

I don't care about ... But you do! (Or others do!)

Eating and diet, and all other activities, are not the issue. The related "me" thoughts are the problem.

Positivity towards others, e.g., at the levels of thinking, speaking, and physical acting, is mentally lighter than negativity, though habitual negativity - reactions - may occur faster. Positivity is definitely more expansive as well. Logically then, positive and lighter saṁskāras.

Minimal to zero storage of all saṁskāras is the crux of the issue.

Then one's responses and actions can and must change - from habitual to natural.

Habitual implies past actions, and past implies memory. Thus storage.

 

Natural implies immediate response or actions without colouration from past events. Inspired by our heart which has no memory. And the source of our life within the heart.

Yet when it is not easy to trust oneself, how does one trust God or Guru to inspire or drive our natural behaviour?

In little steps.

Bolstered by a light, free practice that shows daily results.

And by little, even unnoticed, changes adding up over time.

Enforced changes increase the "I". Those done of one's own free will leave lighter stains, easier to clean away. Positive, even enthusiastic, cooperation with commonsensical enjoined instructions is key to effectiveness.

And after all this weight-loss and now seemingly riding a bike without memory, brakes or a reverse gear, what do we do with our pure, simple, and light inner instruments?

A beautiful excerpt from a Babuji Whisper gives an answer:

Arriving at this destination is quite an achievement.

Thereafter, another trajectory will be proposed to each of you.

And if you want to, you will be able to embark on this new trajectory with full knowledge.

And from a recent powerful video of Daaji: [4]

We are all connected - intellectually, morally, and spiritually - through the invisible connection of our hearts, [which is] weaving us all into a common grand destiny.

The road to that destiny is paved by pioneers, hidden in plain sight, even from their own discerning minds.

The pioneers are catalysts of change.

Their silent acts of self-transformation will bring about a tipping point of consciousness that will change the future of humanity.

Together, their hearts beating as one will advance the way of love; that will elevate the human condition from belligerent rhetoric, growing intolerance, and rising inequity.

These pioneers represent the tip of the arrow in the silent revolution of consciousness.

And today, I introduce you to one of them: You

Mike drop.

NOTES

[1] The Brahmin claimed that Indra had killed the cow using his hands. Yet he refused to give Indra credit for the beautiful garden which he had created with the same hands! (IIRC, a Puranic story retold by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa)

[2] Subsection - Mother's Death

On the day of her death, May 19, 1922, at about 8 a.m., Sri Ramana sat beside her. It is reported that throughout the day, he had his right hand on her heart, on the right side of the chest, and his left hand on her head, until her death around 8:00 p.m., when Sri Ramana pronounced her liberated, literally, ‘Adangi Vittadu, Addakam’ (‘absorbed’). Later Sri Ramana said of this: "You see, birth experiences are mental. Thinking is also like that, depending on saṁskāras (tendencies). Mother was made to undergo all her future births in a comparatively short time." [28]

Also, from Path of Self-Knowledge (Arthur Osborne)

The end came in 1922 on the festival of Bahula Navami, which fell that year on May 19th. Sri Bhagavan and a few others waited on her the whole day without eating. About sunset a meal was prepared and Sri Bhagavan asked the others to go and eat, but he himself did not. In the evening a group of devotees sat chanting the beside her while others invoked the name of Ram. For more than two hours she lay there, her chest heaving and her breath coming in loud gasps, and all this while Sri Bhagavan sat beside her, his right hand on her heart and his left on her head. This time there was no question of prolonging life but only of quieting the mind so that death could be Mahasamadhi, absorption in the Self.

At eight o'clock in the evening she was finally released from the body. Sri Bhagavan immediately rose, quite cheerful. "Now we can eat," he said; "come along, there is no pollution."

There was deep meaning in this. A Hindu death entails ritualistic pollution calling for purificatory rites, but this had not been a death but a reabsorption. There was no disembodied soul but perfect Union with the Self and therefore no purificatory rites were needed. Some days later Sri Bhagavan confirmed this: when someone referred to the passing away of the mother he corrected him curtly, "She did not pass away, she was absorbed."

Describing the process afterwards, he said: "Innate tendencies and the subtle memory of past experiences leading to future possibilities became very active. Scene after scene rolled before her in the subtle consciousness, the outer senses having already gone. The soul was passing through a series of experiences, thus avoiding the need for rebirth and making possible Union with the Spirit. The soul was at last disrobed of the subtle sheaths before it reached the final Destination, the Supreme Peace of Liberation from which there is no return to ignorance."

[3] Sittings with the Heartfulness Guide or a trainer, group meditations or satsanghs are even more effective.

[4] The video is a promo for, and has quotes from, Daaji's Spiritual Anatomy book. The few sentences immediately before the quoted lines increased their power dramatically - for me - by giving more context:

The journey commences from the heart, the pulsing center that unlocks the portals of growth and enlightenment. The heart is the inner guide, the real guru, on the journey to the Absolute.