Category: Merging With Siva

Resolving Past Experiences

Suppose when you were young you stole some money from your mother’s purse. “She promised me this once and broke her promise,” you rationalize. “Besides, I really need it,” you add. Then, because you are not particularly pleased with yourself, you pack this experience away in a corner of the subconscious where you will not need to think about it. You suppress it. But the next day, your mother casually mentions the subject of money to you, and you react or emotionally re-enact the experience. You feel guilty. Not wanting to think about it, you suppress it again, deeper in the subconscious. Suppose then later in life your mother has become seriously ill, and in a reflective mood you realize that you have not been close to her for many years. Mixed in with a rush of buried memories you come across the incident of the stolen money.

For the first time you appreciate and realize the sense of guilt that had lingered, influencing your life since that time in a hundred subtle ways. In the light of understanding, the experience suddenly becomes clear to you, and you objectively and unemotionally see yourself as you were at that time. You feel relieved and strangely lifted, not because you were able to analyze why you stole the money, but because in totally facing and accepting yourself in that circumstance you realize that you have expanded beyond it into a new realm.

Intuition travels through a purified subconscious. Before we can utilize the superconscious or intuitive realms of the mind, we must be able to resolve those past experiences which may still vibrate in our subconscious. Realize, however, that you need not seek out mental repressions. Simply face each one honestly as it naturally arises in life. Imagine that you are trying to arrive at an important business or family decision. All the facts you need to know have already been outlined, yet you find yourself frustrated in not being able to arrive at a clear decision. The more you concentrate upon the problem, the more obscure does the answer seem. What your conscious mind isn’t aware of is that the personality problems you are having with your superior at the office, or with your spouse at home, are clouding the issue. Soon after, while relaxing on a family outing, thinking about nothing in particular, a great feeling of compassion, forgiveness and understanding wells up within you, and all at once that “bright idea” needed to solve the problem comes to you unbidden.

The Form of the Subconscious

What is your subconscious mind? Think about this for a minute. Realize that everything that has once passed through your conscious mind in the form of experience is resident right now within your subconscious. Not only that, but imbedded within the cellular structure of your body, in the DNA code—one of the most formidable discoveries of modern science—lie all the experiences of your genetic history. The life, the biological evolution of your forefathers, is all registered in the molecular strands of your subconscious, capable of being recalled into memory.

In our study together we will be concerned with much more than the negative areas of the subconscious. We will discover that the subconscious can be a great help in our daily life—once we learn to impress it properly, and consciously utilize the latent powers within it. Then it ceases to be a deterrent to well-being, and becomes a valuable tool, available at all times and under all circumstances as we progress through the experiences of life.

The subconscious mind, like the conscious mind, has a form of its own. It is given form, shape and momentum by the nature of your experiences in life and the way you react to them. Most people are not happy with the form of their subconscious mind. They are still reacting to early experiences, early environments. Some people go to great expense in trying to change the form of their subconscious through therapy or travel, but because there is no absolution in either, in time they generally manage to recreate their subconscious in the same old form. Childhood experiences do have a profound influence on one’s make-up in this life, but these influences are by no means binding. Any attitude, any personality conflict or block in the subconscious can be demagnetized and resolved.

How do we change the form of the subconscious? We purify it by resolving in understanding those experiences which have created it. How do we resolve those experiences through understanding? We bring them up into the light and face them without reaction. By resolving our reactive experiences in understanding, the subconscious becomes more and more transparent to our own view and, therefore, necessarily undergoes positive change. To be able to objectively observe one’s own experiences without reaction is one of the powers acquired through the performance of sādhana.

The Meaning Of Detachment

You have heard the statement “Being in the world, but not of it.” This is done through detachment. It is an attitude. It is a perspective. It is how we hold ourselves within that really matters. Basically, that is the only difference in the beginning stages between one who is on the spiritual path and one who is not on the path—it is how awareness is held within, the perspective from which the conscious mind is viewed and responded to.

The conscious mind is created and ramified by man himself. It is carried on by its own novelty. It goes on and on and on, and awareness can go on and on and on and on in it. Only in those quiet moments of retrospection does someone who lives in the conscious mind relax, turn inward and understand a little philosophy. This pondering gives release, a new influx of energy. The object in being on the spiritual path is not to have just a little influx of energy, but to be the energy itself—consciously. The object is to have awareness basically attached to the primal life force, and to see that and experience that as the real thing, rather than be attached to a collection of possessions and memories in the material world.

Anyone who is strongly in the conscious mind has a feeling of possession and a feeling of fear. We’re afraid of losing possessions. We own something. We love it! We break it! We cry! Our nerve system hurts when the odic force detaches. It was attached to that which we owned. Emotional involvement is a function of odic force. Holding awareness within the higher states of mind does not mean we cannot own anything. It means we will love it more when we do, but we will not be attached to it to the point that we become emotionally torn when it goes away.

Understanding of the forces comes as we unfold on the path. Someone who is not involved deeply in the conscious mind is not subject to as many instinctive emotions. He is more of a real person, more himself. Most people think of the conscious mind as the entirety of the mind. But actually it is only one-tenth of the mind’s entirety and, therefore, should not frighten us in any way. Nor should we wish to retreat from the conscious mind. The only retreat is simply to detach awareness from that which it is aware of and allow it to go soaring within to that indefinable source from which all energies spring. Dive into the source and lose awareness within it and attain your ultimate goal.

Conscious and Subconscious

Remember, the sum total of the conscious mind only knows what has preceded it, what has gone before it—the past, what it can remember. It will only accept that which seems to be reasonable. So when the process of going inward persists, the sheaths have to be removed, one after another. The senses have to be quieted, the subconscious mind reeducated. This is how the conscious mind and the subconscious mind work hand in hand.

The subconscious mind is like a great computer. It responds to the programming that has been set in motion through all the previous lives. Our reaction and habit patterns of this life form our tendencies of the next life, and the tendencies of our last life make our reactions and habit patterns of this life. Life after life after life, we have been programming the subconscious mind. It has been mainly programmed by awareness caught in the instinctive emotions of the senses of the conscious mind itself.

The conscious mind can become just as vast and wonderful, or as terrible, as we want to make it. It is not to be feared. It is not to be ignored, either. It is to be understood. The conscious mind is a state of mind just like all the others, for there is only one mind. Our individual awareness flows through the various phases of that one mind.

The conscious mind is primarily an odic force structure. Odic force is the emanation of actinic force through the physical body. Hidden tendencies, repressions, suppressions and reactionary habit patterns accumulate in the subconscious mind and give enough ballast of odic force for awareness to be neatly attached to everything of which it is aware. We are then in the conscious mind most of the time, and not inwardly oriented.

When people are caught in the conscious mind and believe it to be absolute, they believe in finite terms such as: “When you’re dead, you’re dead. So live your life and really get as much as you can out of it, because when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s the end of it.” They believe that the external world is absolutely real, and that anything of an inner life is simply imagination. They live a rather shallow life, perpetuated by their emotional habit patterns and reactions. They anger quickly. They are quick to become jealous. They are suspicious, and they become emotionally attached to other people, with whom they later argue or fight. They love to be entertained. They seek entertainment, trying to get more of everything that is possible to get. Their desire nature is never satisfied in their conscious-mind experience. Awareness has been enmeshed in these conscious-mind desire cycles for such a long period of time that to release it and dive deep within, we must first gain mastery of awareness through attention and concentration.

After awareness is wise to the conscious mind and the subconscious has been positively reprogrammed, attention and concentration bring us into subsuperconscious states. We begin to breathe regularly and diaphragmatically. We become aware of only one thing at a time in the physical world, allowing one thing to attract our attention, rather than continuing to ramify. This practice begins to weave awareness into subsuperconscious, perceptive states.

Shrouding the Soul Body

If we were alone in a desert, there would not be much of the conscious mind present. Our emotions would subside. Our perceptions would be keen and uncluttered. Our senses would awaken. Our reality would be mostly an inner reality. We would have to call upon our inner resources to subsist. But as soon as a city grew up around us with hundreds of people in it, we would experience the development of a vast conscious mind, for everyone would contribute just a little bit to it. Problems, projects, confusions and involvements of every kind would assert themselves, absorbing our awareness.

Most of the inner resources we relied upon formerly would be forgotten as we ceased to depend upon our own strength and innate intelligence. We would begin depending upon a rule book. We would rely on what someone else thought, on what was taught in the universities, stored in the libraries, legislated by politicians and promulgated by the news media. We would follow opinion religiously and develop an intellect. And one by one, all of these layers of the conscious mind would cover the soul, making the outer more evident than the inner.

The beautiful, radiant body of the soul would be covered in the very same way that we would take a gorgeous lamp glowing with light and put pieces of fabric over it. First we would put a yellow piece of fabric over it, an intellectual coating. Then we might argue about some intellectual concept. Others would say, “I don’t believe you.” And you say, “I know I’m right.” Then we would put a pink piece of fabric over the lamp. Pink is the color of emotion and self-aggrandizement. Perhaps we would continue trying to help our friend, and he would say, “I don’t want any help. Get out of here!” We might become angry with him and put a red piece of fabric over the lamp. And when we are depressed amid all these mixed emotions, we cover the light with a black piece of fabric. When jealous of our fellow man, we drape a dark green piece of fabric over it. Where is the light of the body of the soul, that crystal-clear light? It’s there, temporarily covered.

The body of the soul actually looks like a plastic body filled with light. You have seen mannequins with arms, legs, torso and head made completely out of transparent, neon-like plastic. If you were to put a light in such a mannequin, it would glow. This is what your soul body, your psyche, looks like. The conscious mind has truly become a reality for those who have layer upon layer covering this body of the soul. They are living with all of those emotions vibrating in them. Greed, hate, resentment, jealousy and anger are all totally alive on the inside. Yet, plastered on the outside of it all are beautiful, superficial emotions.

Like Writing On Water

Spiritual unfoldment leads us along the path into the illumined knowing of where we are in consciousness at any point in time. There are many methods through which this may be accomplished. Carefully choose one path and then stay with it with extreme loyalty. For this a preceptor is needed, a spiritual guide to answer questions, to raise questions for you to find answers to within your meditations. It is an arduous journey. The rewards come only near its end.

To live positively in the conscious mind each day, exercise at least a half hour. Keep the vital energies of the body high and healthy. Eat simply and follow a vegetarian diet, feeding the stomach rather than the mouth. Be considerate of others always and live inconspicuously, almost transparently, by not ruffling your surroundings, by keeping the home neat and clean, by passing through a room or place and leaving it in a nicer condition than before you arrived. Seek fresh air and learn to breathe deeply. Get out in the sun. Move the physical body, walk briskly, dance, keep the energies vibrant and buoyant. Be close to nature. Grow food. Develop an art or craft so the hands are active, creative. Of course, being neat and attractive in personal appearance keeps the thoughts of others toward you positive. This is the way to live in the conscious mind. Try to live life as though you are walking in the rain without getting wet, or carefully writing on water. No ripples, no disturbance, no reactionary residue that has to be faced at some future date.

When we live unconsciously in the conscious mind, we most often look at the physical body as who we are. We say, “I am hungry,” “I am happy,” “I am not feeling well,” “I want to go to America” or “I have just come to Bangalore.” Instead of “I am not feeling well,” we mean our physical body is not feeling well. Instead of “I want to go to America,” we mean we want to take our physical body to America. Our language is a conscious-mind language. The perspective of our language is constructed to make the conscious mind the real thing, the entire reality of the world. From little children we have been taught that the conscious mind is real and that anything other than this real, solid, conscious mind is to be doubted.

The mystic walks in the opposite direction. He goes against the crowd. He learns to swim upstream. It is a little more difficult for him, but oh so worth it. The seeker has to learn that the conscious mind is only a vast dream created by many, many people who are dreaming openly. They are dreaming, and every mystic knows it. They are forming the dream by what they say, by their emotions, by what they think and by that in which they involve themselves. The mystic knows there is no enduring reality to the vast dream made up by people themselves, by their desires, their relationships, their cravings and their insecurities.