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The Levels of Consciousness and the Nature of Mind

An evening satsang on the levels of consciousness and the nature of the mind.

"Through spiritual sādhanā, spiritual practices, we can purify our unconscious level."

"Never follow your mind. 'Gharipālak man aur.' Every second, every minute, the mind has different decisions."

The lecturer continues teachings on consciousness, explaining the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious levels. He details how impressions from the five senses become stored desires (vāsanās) and how the mind mediates between these levels, using analogies like a basement and a video recording. He cautions against unfulfilled desires and the endless cycle of craving (tṛṣṇā), citing teachings from Kabīr and emphasizing the use of discrimination (viveka).

Tanno vāto mayo buvatto bekajam tata māta pṛthivī tat pitājo tata gravāṇa soma suto mayo buvasta daśvinā śanutam diśnāyāyuvam tami śanam jakatasta stukha spatidhyan jinuam avasehu maye vayam pukhano yathā vedasam sadvradhye vāyu-redabdhā śastaye śastinā indra-uradaśravā śastinā pūkā. Viśva-vedā sastinā sāra-kṣau arishtā nemi sastinā brahaspati-ṛdhātum prekha-daśava-maruta-prasannī-mātara-śubham jāvāno vidateku jagmaya-agni-jīvā-manava-sūra-chakra-sauśveno Deva Avasagamaniha Bhadramparne Bhishanuyam Deva Bhadra Paśemakṣabhirajatra. Istare Raṅgaye Śrutvāguṁ Śāstānu Bīrve Aśhemai Deva Hitam Yadayuṣatam Innu Śarado Antideva Naś Cakra Jarāsam Nām Putraso Yatra Pitaro Bhavanti Manoṁ Rirakṣatāyuraganto Adhitirā Dior Adhitirā Nantrikṣa Adhitirā Māta Cha Pitā Cha Putra Viśveno Deva Avasāga Manīha Avasāga Manīha Oṁ dio śānti ranta rikṣaṁ śānti prathavī śānti rapha śānti rokhadeva śānti, vanaspateva śānti, viśvedeva śānti, brahma śānti, sarvaguṇa śānti, sama śānti redi yatho yathasami hase tato abhyāṁ kuru, chaṁ kuru prajā abhyo, su śāntir bahutu. Śrīman Mahāgaṇa Dīpate Namaḥ, Lakṣmī Nārāyaṇa Namaḥ, Umā Maheśvara Namaḥ, Vāṇī Yena Garbha Namaḥ, Śuci Pūrṇa Namaḥ, Mātṛ Pitṛ Caṇḍa Kāmne Namaḥ, Very good, thank you. You know my heart. You are wet, nervous, moment, moment. What is that? Am I on the webcast? Thank you. Guru śakṣāt param brahma, tasmai śrī guruve namaḥ, dhyāna mūlam guru mūrtim, pūjā mūlam guru padam, mantra mūlam guru vākyam, mokṣa mūlam guru kṛpā, Om Śānti Śānti... Good evening to everybody. Many blessings and good wishes to all bhaktas, aspirants, spiritual seekers, and sādhakas of yoga, practitioners of the divine Śakti, Kuṇḍalinī, and chakras. This morning we spoke about the level of consciousness, the unconsciousness where all impressions or saṃskāras from past lives reside. The saṃskāras, the experiences or impressions from this life, exist in the subconscious and at the conscious level. The present impressions we gain through our jñāna indriyas are called the pañcīs prakṛti. There are twenty-five very important functions in this body we should understand: five Jñānendriyas, five Karmendriyas, five Prāṇa and five Upaprāṇa, Manas, Buddhi, Citta, and Ahaṁkāra. These all have a very big influence on our existence in this world. What is dormant in our unconscious level—meaning from past lives—we do not know. We are sitting in this hall, and downstairs is a basement with a very thick, non-transparent floor. What is stored in the basement, we do not know. Similarly, what is stored in our unconscious level, we do not know. Through spiritual sādhanā, spiritual practices, we can purify our unconscious level. The subconscious is connected now to our intellect, to our present life. This intellect is connected with the five jñānendriyas. These five jñānendriyas mean we get knowledge, information, impressions, or saṃskāras from the outer world. These are the two eyes: vision, color, and objects. Whatever you see has an impression on your conscious level. Something may come and go; you don't care or concentrate, but it is there. Like when you record a video and something comes into the frame you didn't notice, but when you replay it, you see it. Our consciousness is that film which records all impressions. What you see goes to our subconscious as a memory. The other is the ears, sound, to get knowledge from the outer world through hearing. If I telephone you the first time, you will ask, "Who is there?" I will say, "Your master." You reply, "Okay, Swāmījī, Hari Om." Next time I call, you need not ask; you know my voice. That is called the voice of the master. Similarly, I invite you to my room where there is a smell of beautiful, ripe mangoes. You may say, "Swāmījī, that’s the smell of some fruit, but what is it?" because you have never smelled it before. I show you the mango and say, "This is a mango, and this is its smell." Next time, you need not ask what kind of smell it is; you will say, "Oh, Swāmījī, again you have nice mangoes. Will we get mangoes to eat?" Of course, they were bought or prepared for you. You saw and smelled the mango but did not taste it. If I, being selfish, put it away and ask after two days, "Where is my mango?" you might say, "Ah, Swāmījī, so greedy, so selfish, you didn’t give us the mango." If I give you the mango, you will know its taste—śvad indriya, the sense of taste. One yogī says: "Is tan mein indriya hai das. Koī pūray yogī ke vas." A pūraṇ yogī has control. "Do kā nahī̃ itbārā. Hāt kinā jagat sārā." But two indriyas are very, very difficult to control: passion and taste. When you get food according to your taste, you are happy. When your wife doesn’t cook that taste, the husband is out of his nerves. It means we are slaves of our taste, slaves of our vision, slaves of our sound, and so on. The fifth is Tvacā, touch. These are the five Jñāna Indriyas through which we receive knowledge. The brain is like a computer, and the five Jñānendriyas are the five keys to register or record anything in it. There is no sixth. From birth until today, whatever you have learned—in school, college, university, at home, with friends, or in the forest—has been only through these five jñāna indriyas. Whatever the jñānendriyas receive is printed on the screen of your memory. If I ask you now, "Do you know what this fruit is?" you will say, "Yes, this is a mango." How do you know? Because you have seen a mango. If you had never seen one and I asked, you would say, "I don’t know; it doesn’t grow in this country." But you have seen it before. Therefore, as soon as I ask, "What is this?"—pointing to a microphone—you know. If I had asked a hundred years ago, you might have thought it was some mushroom. A Guru with siddhis could hold it and say, "Hello," and the walls would speak, because at that time you did not know what it was. Now we all know it’s a microphone. This is recorded in our memory. All these impressions go from the conscious to the subconscious. There is one tendency, principle, or function which brings these impressions from the conscious to the subconscious and stores them there. What goes to the subconscious, after some time, becomes a vāsanā, or desire. Suppose you plant a seed in the ground; after some hours or days, it will sprout. Similarly, the impression you had—the more intense it was, the sooner it will emerge. That Vāsanā is like smoke from a fire; desires are formless. This vāsanā is brought up again through that same principle which took it in, and that principle is called mind. The mind is the function between conscious and subconscious, bringing impressions from the outer world with the help of the jñānendriyas and the conscious intellect down to the subconscious. When a desire arises, it comes out again. It is the mind that brings desires from the subconscious out and (attempts to) finish them. Therefore, it is said: "Man marā na mamatā marī, mar mar gayā śarīr. Asa tṛṣṇā na marī, kah gaye dās Kabīr." Your mind didn’t die. Why? Because your ambition or mamatā—"my, my"—this attachment didn’t die. "Man marā na mamatā marī" because mamatā didn’t die. Mamatā means "I want more, I want more." It is a beggar: more and more. Holy Gurujī said: "Arey, man kain keun thane bhesh kaun ke paadi? Bin mukh charo chare rata din phir bhi bhūk nahī̃ kāḍī." Without a mouth, O mind, you are eating day and night, yet your hunger is not satisfied. What should I call you, mind? Should I call you a buffalo or the baby of a buffalo? "Man maran, mamta mari, mar mar gaya sharīr." The body died. This attachment, this moha—"my, my"—will not die with the body. It will go with you like a shadow. You might try to leave your body's shadow behind by flying in an airplane, thinking it's gone. But when you land in India, the shadow is there. It didn’t remain in the Czech Republic; it flew with you. Similarly, when the body dies, these vāsanās, desires, will not die. I am not saying this; I am only a messenger, relating what the great saint Kabīr Dās said. "Man marā na mamatā marī, mar mar gayā śarīr. Āśā, tṛṣṇā, na marī." Āśā means hope—a walking stick from cradle to grave. Tṛṣṇā is a burning desire, a longing. A tṛṣṇā that will never be fulfilled is called mṛg-tṛṣṇā. In the Sahara, a thirsty deer sees what looks like a beautiful lake 500 meters away—a reflection of hot air. It runs and runs but can never reach that horizon. It falls down and dies from thirst. O human, do not run behind your tṛṣṇā; you cannot fulfill it in this life. You will never fulfill your tṛṣṇā; give it up. In Kali Yuga especially, there is competition: who will be the richest, which company will be more successful, which country more developed. Do we call this development? Building many roads destroys the earth. Making many buildings, creating chemicals—factories send waste into rivers, and the rivers die. That flows to the ocean, and ocean life dies. This is called development? No. Developed countries are those that live a nice, natural life without these things. In Kali Yuga, Tṛṣṇā Rāṇī—the queen—has power. She has many good friends in this body: Kāma, krodha, mada, lobha, moha, ahaṅkāra. They are the bodyguards of tṛṣṇā, and this Trishnā will kill you. "Asā Trishnā na mithī, kah gaye dasā Kabīr." It is also said: "Man ke māte na chalye, gharipālak man aur." Never follow your mind. "Gharipālak man aur." Every second, every minute, the mind has different decisions. Therefore, when a vāsanā is brought up from the subconscious by the mind (which has no form), it brings the tṛṣṇā. When it comes to the conscious and is not fulfilled, it subsides. The mind says, "My duty is done; I am not guilty." The principle of the mind is called saṅkalpa and vikalpa—to create and to destroy. Make a regulation and dissolve it; bring desires up and let them go. Hari Om. The conscious state has another principle very close to it: buddhi, intellect. The duty of buddhi is to give judgment—to discern what is what. When I asked, "What is this?" the image of the microphone, stored in your subconscious memory, was retrieved. The intellect brought this picture from memory and said, "It is a microphone," and you gave the answer. "Kabhī kabhī buddhi bṛṣṭ ho jātī hai." Sometimes the intellect becomes corrupt or loses its principles. Like when you drink alcohol, you become drunk. You try to run, but your legs don’t coordinate, and you soon fall. When buddhi loses control due to selfishness, it doesn’t give the right answer or warn you, "Don’t do it," because buddhi is involved with the jñāna indriyas, and these, through buddhi, link to the karma indriyas. The cream of your intellect is viveka, discrimination. Viveka will tell you, "If you put your finger in the fire, it will burn." Intellect (buddhi) will only say fire is hot; it is not its duty to say it will burn. Viveka says it will burn your finger. The subconscious is that level of our being in this life. From birth until today, everything received through the jñāna indriyas is stored there. Sometimes, an intense desire emerges. There is a story many know: A man walked with his wife through the market on a hot day. An ice cream shop was there. The man suggested they have ice cream. The wife, caring for his health, reminded him he was an opera singer with a throat problem and the doctor said no ice cream for a month. The husband obeyed—the greatness of a man is to obey his wife in certain things. They went home. The man kept thinking of ice cream; the picture was in his mind. He slept and dreamed—the subconscious at work. In the dream, five months passed; he was healthy, the doctor said he could eat anything, and his wife agreed to get ice cream. In the dream, they went to the shop, bought a bowl full of colorful ice cream. He took a spoonful, brought it three centimeters from his lips—and the alarm clock rang. No shop, no bowl, no spoon. He turned; his wife was snoring. Even in the dream, the desire was unfulfilled. He told his wife in the morning, and she sympathized. As time passed, his unfulfilled desire subtly changed their relationship. He became angry over small things she liked. Their good friendship deteriorated. They each secretly saw a psychologist, both told they had a "psychic problem." At home, over soup, they shared their diagnoses and realized the shared issue. This is how unfulfilled desires, stored in the subconscious, create problems over time. Whenever you face such situations in life—the ice cream is just one example—use your viveka. Tell yourself clearly, "It is not possible." Like seeing cherries in a neighbor's garden: you should not touch them. Then the problem will not entangle you. So, subconscious and conscious are two levels, with our mind between them. "Gharīpā manke māte na chalye gharīpālakman"—do not always follow your mind, for it is always changing. This is the subject of the Svādhiṣṭhāna Chakra. Because of this Saṅkalpa and Vikalpa, which we will discuss more tomorrow and in the next meditation session, we will explore this further. This evening, I wish you all the best and many blessings. We will now have some very nice videos, a journey through India. Bless you all, and I wish you a very pleasant good night.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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