DARKNESS IS PRODUCED BECAUSE OF THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT
The conscious mind recognises itself within its own boundaries. The conscious mind feels all the pains and pleasures that surround it, empowered and brought forth from the subconscious, which is the repository of all the experiences that the entity has gained through this further process of evolution. All those experiences manifest through the conscious mind, and, through the association of one’s personal inner experience and environment, the conscious mind interprets them as pain or pleasure. The conscious mind recognizes itself within its own boundaries. The conscious mind feels all the pains and pleasures that surround it, empowered, brought forth from the subconscious, which is the repository of all the experiences that have been gained by that entity through this further process of evolution. All those experiences manifest through the conscious mind, and, through the association of one’s personal inner experience and environment, the conscious mind interprets them as pain or pleasure.
Something could be very painful to one person, while to another it could be pleasurable, and we find this in daily life. If I have a backache, for example, I do not try to analyse where that backache came from. Why should I try to analyse where that backache came from? I accept the backache. It is a backache. So, it is a backache. If it is a headache, it is a headache. If it is another ache, it is another ache. I accept it.
There could be no spiritual forces that could have prevented that backache, and it has nothing to do with karma. It is just a natural physical phenomenon. We blame everything on karma; that is one mistake we always make, and it is not always so. You go downstairs for lunch today, and it might not be as good as the one you had yesterday. Are you going to blame your karma for it? Life’s feast has so many varieties. There are sweet foods, there are sour foods, there are pungent foods, and all kinds of poppadums and condiments. It all constitutes life’s feast, and we do not accept the totality of life’s feast. Why? Is it through ignorance, or is it through the absence of knowledge? These, too, are different things. Is it through ignorance, or is it through the absence of knowledge? You need neither to enjoy life.
What produces darkness? The absence of light. Darkness is there all the time. If a house is locked up for two hundred years and there is no light in there, and then you come along with a little candle, the darkness of two hundred years is not going to tell you that you must wait two hundred years for light to be there. Light is instantaneous, and in that instant, it banishes two hundred years of darkness. With this little realisation, all the karmic values of life assume a oneness. You can call it good, bad, pleasurable, or painful, but there will be instant illumination by lighting the candle that will banish hundreds of years of darkness that existed in this castle. Just that one little understanding to be able to accept all the workings of the mind by the mind. One does that by utilising the finer and subtler levels of the mind.
THE REALM OF KARMA IS ON THE LEVEL OF THE MIND
I know of a story where it was the son’s birthday. So that morning, the father thought, “What is the best deed I can do for my child’s birthday, which will bring blessings upon my child?” So, he got into his car and went around to various organisations. He went to the child welfare society and donated two hundred dollars. He went to the blind society and made a $200 donation there. He went to people with disabilities, people who are deaf or hard of hearing and the deaf institutes. He went to many places and donated $2,000. To bring blessings upon the child whose birthday it was that day was a real sacrifice on his part.
When he reached home, he found that the child had had an accident and had passed away. He just ran out of the front gate, and a car came along and knocked him down. Dead on the spot. Now, this man started wondering, “This very morning I did all this totally unselfishly to bring blessings, because there is nothing greater than charity to bring blessings to a person, because it is a giving, an unselfish giving, and yet, when I came home, my child was dead. What kind of a law is this? What kind of a law has operated here?” He could not understand. But the answer was so simple: that, karmically and by a certain tendency, the child had to expire. So, the donations given for the child, or, according to this man’s thoughts, those things poured for this child of mine, had definitely benefited the child. Who knows that it might not have been a long-suffering death? A long period of illness. Perhaps that was averted? I explained to him that your child had to go. But is it not better to go this way, in a second, than to suffer for months and months and then go? So do not think your charity has been useless; look what great use it would be to you, too, because you have also accrued good karma.
We always have to remember that the realm of karma is on the level of the mind. The mind screws itself up, and it has to unscrew itself. All these flaws are there and will be there. The only way is to reach the finest, subtlest level of the mind. This superconscious state is the primal manifestation of the Manifestor or the primal manifestation of the Unmanifest: the impersonal God that no man can reach while in a body.
ONLY WHEN WE ARE ESTABLISHED IN THE SUPERCONSCIOUS MIND CAN WE REACH THE IMPERSONAL GOD
All this business about transcendence is absolute rubbish. You can never transcend your mind by your mind. We are not talking about other movements. We are talking about all those people in the world who say that you must transcend your mind. You can never do it. Your whole constitution, your whole body, your whole everything is nothing but mind, and what vehicle are you going to use to go beyond the mind? Can you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps? No. No man can ever transcend his mind: neither a Buddha, nor a Christ, nor Ramakrishna, nor anyone. This is a total fallacy, I tell you, and this is the first time I am speaking about this after giving thousands of talks. Yes, you transcend or go beyond the conscious, grosser level of the mind. You go beyond the subconscious level of the mind and reach the finest level of the superconscious area, where things are still qualified and quantified in existence, bliss and knowledge. That is the area of the super-consciousness, but not totality.
It is only when this physical body is dropped that the mind becomes totally refined, and you are established in the superconscious level that you reach the impersonal, the finality, the totality. Until then, all practices of all religions, all systems, all organisations, including ours, lead you to that superconscious level, which we can call the qualified personal God, the area of bliss and joy, which, in turn, having gone there, is brought down through the layers of the subconscious to the conscious.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1980 – 27
