The I-DEA of “I”:- मैं

Virtue and order in one’s life harmonizes what is initially called the daily secular life and what is practiced as yoga योग or meditation. This division of life is also the work of the ego.

Common sense tells that east and west, above and below, right and left, meet in me. When you stand on the ground all that lies in the facing direction is the east and all that lies in the other direction is the west. If you move a mile in the easterly direction, what you previously considered east has joined the west. Is it difficult than to see that you are not only the meeting point but also the dividing factor?

Caught in this trap of I am this मैं ये हूँ or I am that मैं वो हूँ we are not aware that there is a state of peace of mind, and existence that is unconditioned. Every time we want to get out of one trap, we walk into another trap. This is so because we have no idea whatever that a state beyond all this exists.

In yoga योग , at the beginning of our practice, it has to be taken for granted that there is a state of consciousness, accessible to all of us. Provided we are willing to take the necessary steps, in which there is no confusion, conflict, distress or disharmony a state of bless, joy and peace which is reached through yoga योग , through meditation, through the understanding of the mind and its modification. Chitta चित and Vritti वृत्ति When you are not in that state of yoga, योग then the state of your mind, the thought and the feelings that prevails in it, determine the world around you. An object does not exist except as the sum total of all the thoughts of all the observers, when all these thoughts and viewpoints, opinions and descriptions are dropped the object is what it is? Not as an object any more.

These are the words. It is when you become like little children, as the Bhagavatham declares that the greatest sages are like little children. If you wish to learn to meditate the only person to teach you is a baby less then six weeks old. When you look into its eyes, you will know what yoga योग means. There it is in all its absolute purity gazing at you without projecting a single thought of what you are?

Patanjali पातंजली gives us a three-word phrase about Yoga योग in his Yoga Sutras योग सूत्र . Yoga योग is Chitta चित , Vritti वृत्ति , and Nirodha निरोध . These words cannot easily be translated into English.

Problem is bound to confront us but they can be faced and surmounted by ensuring that “God” resides within us permanently. To keep God as “captive” the only requirement is that we should dedicate all our acts and the results there of, at His feet. Whenever we undertake a task, whether simple or complicated, we should remember the Almighty and seek his direction. Such an attitude provides us the base to launch our attacks to counter the impediments.

This will mean that we should totally shed “ego” and firmly believe that our achievements. If any are only due to the guidance given by God. If the sense of Varity that “I have done it or that I am chiefly responsible for its success.” Is dropped all form of obstacles will vanish, what is necessary is to cultivate the feeling that our wisdom, if any, poles into insignificance before the supreme power of God. When God “occupies” a place in our hearts. He can act as a bright source of power with which we can light thousands of lamps. “I am nothing” but God “You are everything” should be our guiding factor.

We should try to acquire certain qualities, the most vital being “Fearlessness. “We should not be afraid of anyone, excepting God. Fear may prevent us from realizing God and developing devotion. The battle of life should be fought relentlessly. Without succumbing or yielding to fear “Strength is life and weakness is death. We should not attach too much importance to our personality. On the other hand God’s mercy and His gracious acts in saving devotees should be praised.

The body of everyone is made of the same substance. For all of us food comes from the same source, the earth, Prana the life force is cosmic. We are all breathing the same air. We all have the same intelligence within us. It cannot be divided. Yet when someone calls you a fool, you become angry. But when you say. “My hand is dirty” the hand does not strike the tongue for this remark. Yet this is what we do one another. Somebody insults you and at once you want to retaliate. We eat the same food, but each one wants to destroy the other because “I feel that I am different from him”.

The self is the self. Its identity is intrinsic: “I am who I am, मैं हूँ , कौन मैं हूँ ” “I am that I am मैं हूँ, वो मैं हूँ ” The self has no identity। It is pure identity, being it is pure identity, being itself। In the self we are all that we see, and to see is to be। This is the ultimate equation, the solution to all questions, in which all things become one. The true self can never be a thing. To think that I am this or I and that is to lose identity as the pure I am. To think I need this or I need that is to become caught in a stream of dependency because the external can never be intrinsic or independent.

To have an image of one’s self is to lose the self, to make it into a commodity. To become something is to lose one’s identity as the pure subject and become an object among objects in an uncertain would. We suffer because we do not have a self. Our identity is dependent upon something or person that we are connected with. Identity that is dependent that is given by another idea a name or a title is a fiction. It is a superimposition of thought, and though it may distract us for a time, it cannot afford us peace. We suffer because we keep the self in the not self, the subject in the object. We try to find happiness by achievement and acquisition in the external world. But achievement is becoming a bigger or better object.

Acquisition is the accumulation of objects around our assumed objectivity or materiality. But to be an object is to be heavy, dependent and transient. Objectivity is not a state of happiness or fulfilment. Happiness is only possible in eternal existence. This is only possible in the pure subject. As long as we think we need something to be ourselves, we will always be dependent on another. We will always be somebody else or trying to please someone else.

We will never be ourselves but will be trapped in the conditioned response around us. We will be victims of other people’s thoughts. The true self is not the ego. It is not the ‘I want that’. It is devoid of any self-mage. Misleading because it being belongs to it. Yet it is who we naturally are. It is the state of pure seeing devoid of any objectification of self or other.

How does this happen? We have forgotten that we are all one. And when this is forgotten there is a peculiar polarization the other and I. Neither cosmic intelligence nor cosmic ignorance creates the concept, the idea of you and me. It is in the shadow of that the I arise and this I create You and the Other”.

Perhaps the first person I is nothing but the abbreviation of the full word idea. I may itself be nothing more than an idea. However, as soon as the Idea arises, it creates you, the other person, then he, she and its.

The problem of our world is that the human being, the individual each I become the centre of the Universe as soon as the ego-sense arises. Why do two individual fights? Because each one assumes that he is the centre and that everything must somehow be related to his pleasure to his will. This self-limited cosmic being, which is the individual personality that goes on building relationship, It is all ignorance. The child and the grandchild of ignorance can only be ignorance just as all off spring of man can only be human. So everything which manifests within this cosmic being or cosmic consciousness is borne of ignorance. The self-limited infinite, which is called the individual, looks around, feels registers and reacts. Fear, contempt, like, dislike, attraction, repulsion, approval, disapproval all these spring form the ignorant self-limitation that is called ego.

Once the Idea of I मैं is there it becomes the centre of the entire Universe. Who determines what is East and what is West? The deciding factor is where you stand at the moment. You lay down the law as a Nation or as a culture. It depends on where you stand physically, psychological, morally or spiritually. “We” declare this to be good and that to be bad, that is pleasant and this is not pleasant. The centre of creation is always I and collectively “We.”

From this I come raga राग (attraction, approval or liking) and dvesa द्वेष (repulsion, rejection or dislike). Raga राग is better translated as approval and dvesa द्वेष as disapproval. If someone gently scratches your back you approve him, but if he twists your arm, you disapprove him. This is so because you see yourself as the centre of the Universe.

How can one restrain all these innumerable thought-wave or idea or notions with which one identifies oneself, because of one’s original identification with one idea, the Idea? How does one return to the source, the truth the reality of one indivisible consciousness?

The teaching of Patanjali पातंजलि points out that there is this cosmic being, cosmic oneness, cosmic harmony, and cosmic consciousness, which have been mysteriously rapture, fractured by ego-sense. The ego-sense says, “This is I” यह मैं हूँ therefore “That is you”. From this division flows an interminable stream of worry, anxiety, fear and hate. How does one put an end to this? By realizing that you are the stream. The moment you realize that, the menace has ceased. The “I” am anxious “Duality creates a distinction between ‘I’ and anxiety, anxiety no longer haunts you. You are it, and there are no more struggles. The anxiety as anxiety falls away.

A very holy man pointed out “Fear is the first product of Duality. The realization of non-duality is Yoga योग . But you cannot create harmony, bring about unity, or non-duality, there is no need, no possibility of this. It is already there. But what you can and must do is observe how and where this oneness has been disrupted. If one sincerely and seriously carries out this observation, then it does not take a split second to realize that the break happens the moment the ‘I thought arises. The moment the feeling ‘I’ am ‘This’ comes up, that thought, the Vritti वृत्ति , mental modification creates the “you” and there is conflict.

What yoga योग philosophy suggests, if one studies it without preconceived notions and prejudices, is this. When you observe the ego, it is possible that you discover that the ego is not an entity like a table or a tape recorder.

The ego is more like an assembly in the sense that Buddha बुद्ध used the word. What you call consciousness, the self, is nothing but an assembly of past impression and experience. Buddha बुद्ध did not deny the existence of the world and its objects.

A great Buddhist बौद्ध used the example of the Bullock-Cart. He asked his disciple.

“What do you see there?” (As a cart drawn by Bullocks passed),

“A Bullock-Cart.”

“What are those two circular things?”

“Wheels.”
“Burn them.”

“Now what is sticking out there?”

“The axle.”

“Throw it away” then the body was discarded, than the yoke.

“Where is the cart now?”

If all the different parts that have their name and individuality have been dismantled where and what exactly is the cart? The cart is an idea- even before the assembly of the parts the idea of the cart was there and it persists.

The ego and “I” is nothing but an idea, a vritti वृत्ति. As an idea “I” exists, but not as an independent entity capable of producing its own idea. One must observe all this. As you observe for instance, seeing, you note that seeing take place. Who sees? The eyes see, while seeing happens from somewhere, for no apparent reason, the idea arises” I am seeing.”

Patanjali पातंजलि gives us a very beautiful sutra in which there is a description of what is the ultimate in yoga योग . Translated literally it reads” Then the seer rests in himself.

“What does the seer signify?”

“What one calls the seer is only seeing?”

“Why must you invent a thing known as “I” which sees?”

“When the eyes are open, they see.”

You have a beautiful expression in English viz., “Sight seeing Tours.”

“The sight is what sees?”

“Who sees the scenery?”

“Sight sees.”

What you call the sees is nothing but the action, the event of seeing. All our yoga practices lead us to this realization that seeing is not the doing of “I” but a happening.

In exactly the same way, all of life can be lived. Sight sees, action takes place, everything in this world happens. Somehow, somewhere we have been conditioned by the idea that without this vritti, this ego, without a goal to reach and hold on to, we shall not progress but our lives would be a failure. There is only one failure, the failure to do not the failure to achieve. Success is always there. To succeed is “to come after.” When one does anything, success follows. It is when you don’t do what should be done there is failure.

Once you see the whole picture, action is spontaneous. The finite thing (I, You, and he) does not exist in reality. It is only when you are not really spiritually awake that there is this division and confusion. Once the awakening has taken place, it stays at least until you discover the reality, and it swallows the “I.”

As we have been, chitta is indivisible cosmic consciousness or intelligence, and the vritti’s वृत्ति are idea, which may be knowledge, wrong understanding, imagination, memory, or sleep. There are all -universal. Wherever there is ocean there are waves. Wherever there is a chitta चित there are vrittis वृत्ति. It seems to be clear, but when you view the ocean as one indivisible entity, there are no waves apart from it. The whole thing, with all the waves, is the ocean.

Similarly, in the physical body there are millions of cells sparking of, all sorts of streams following from the heart to the part of the body and back again, there is tremendous activity, yet because the organism is the activity, and there is no division, it is unaware of it. A body approaching fire is burned, but if you are the burning fire you will not be burned at all. You are the burner, not the burned. Somehow this fact that “I am that” has been forgotten.

“We ask,” Why should that cosmic intelligence forget that it is cosmic and create a diversity, change or a becoming?” “ Why should this great universal being become anything”? “No one can answer, one can only bluntly, frankly honestly say.” “Sorry I don’t know.”

Somehow, mysteriously there is what philosophers call MAYA माया or AVIDYA अविद्या (translated as ignorance), which merely means “I have no Idea.” But the question still remains as to how there can be ignorance in cosmic intelligence. This question is unanswerable. The same question comes round in countless different ways for us.

Abhyasa अभ्यास has to be combined with Vairagya वैराग्या , what is called Vairagya वैराग्या is extremely difficult to define, because all the definitions pre-suppose the opposite. Detachment implies having been attached. Vairagya वैराग्य is not that. At is not dislike, or indifference. It is not aversion, or infatuation. If during yoga practice, there is a soft towel under you, the back of the neck’ likes it. If there is rough mat, the neck does not like it. This approval or disapproval belongs not to ‘me’ but to the body. The skin responds positively to a pleasant sea breeze and negatively to ice cold wind or desert heat. That is understandable, natural. But you say “I love him” or “I hate him” that is not natural. It does not exist in nature, but is a perversion of nature.

When you begin to see this, then your heart mind or consciousness does not register the causative factors of Raga-Dvesa राग- द्वेष. whatever caused the attraction or aversion. That state on which your consciousness does not register these causes at all is Vairagya वैराग्य. There is no more registration of experience. Let life flow on. The sensations, the body, the life–force, approve of certain things and disapprove of others. Let your finger and the eye belong to the same organism. There is no aversion no hatred against the finger. When the hand drives away a mosquito sitting on the cheek, there is no special love relation between the hand and the cheek as a result. These things go on naturally. The inner consciousness is not modified at all by these experiences. There is no judging no condemnation and therefore, no need to forgive and forget.

Meditation is the direct observation of the arising of the ‘I’ the ego, without a mediator. A mediator is merely another distraction. Even words, description of meditation may be disastrous, meditation is observation without description of any type that will give you an image of what it “should be” what you practice while you are seated in a meditation posture is meant as help. But even while talking; eating, looking at or doing anything, one should watch the arising of the ‘I’. This questioning is to be done continuously, not only in the morning and evening. If we continuously observe the arising of the ego- sense during our walking hours, whatever we are doing, then even while dreaming there is the inquiry. ” Who is dreaming to whom the dream is occurring?” so eventually even while one sleeps, there is this continuous awareness which runs through all states of consciousness is called Samadhi, The fourth state of Consciousness,

But all these words are useless for us. So we are given exercise to lead us on to the discovery of the ego. When one is able to see where the ‘I’ though comes from, one immediately realizes, “this entire mischief maker.” This is the villain. That has brought about a division, disrupted the harmony that infect exist all the time “. You observe where this fracture has occurred. You see that it is the ‘I’ that creates this disruption of harmony, and as soon as the ‘I’ consciousness yield its place and reveals that it is merely shadow, there is realization of oneness.