Even though I have disagreements and agreements with sadhguru, I respect him for the fact, that he planted a quest, a curiousity about life, what is life? What the hell is this creation. Now science is using logic to get close to it, but there is an experiencial way.
But at the same time, he has re-ignited a question which grows in me with time. I never payed enough attention to this question which was already there. Question is "What is life, what is death, what is what? And by my experience in Artificial Intelligence which is quite limited, I feel that even though I may understand the patterns logically, the possibility, that I may be able to experience something fantastic goes away"
Even before sadhguru had come in my life, or Paramahamsa Yogananda, or Vivekananda, I had this question in my heart. What is life ? See, if you start believing in any theory or any person, this torment will go away. But the problem is, that you will never know. It is very easy for me to believe in sadhguru or vivekananda, and give lecture to 10 other people, but the difficulty is that I will never know.
believing is inversely proportional to knowing.
But yes, it doesn't mean, in this torment, I have rejected the yoga. Inner Engineering and Hatha Yoga programmes have worked tremendously for me, and thats why I practice it. Especially, It gave me an important perspective into how simple things like sitting properly, standing properly, breathing properly, sleeping properly, eating properly can turn life upside down. Properly does not solely means discipline as such, it is more about awareness. Otherwise gym people would be lone spiritual people.
Disengaging from 5 senses has been pivotial for me. I think we do see in documentaries, how a blind person can allocate his auditory senses for visual cortex. That means they can see sounds. Similarly, if possibly, if we can create calm and control our mind and breath to a point, I am sure, we may experience something which senses don't let us know. Especially when I am deeply meditative, in awareness, I can observe, how my mind is constantly vomiting out judgements, prejudices, (good or bad reward) about every image, every sound, every sensation. In this deeply meditative states, if I succumb to these divisions setup, the intensity drops. It feels something like harry potter last movie, what dumbledore said "It is happening in your mind, but doesn't mean it is not real". It seems at that point that if I can disengage my mind from adding the colors of my personal biases and prejudices to anything that I see, hear, or sense , I will be able to have a clearer and true perspective of things. And whats least distracting that silence and darkness itself ?
I understand sadhana that you learn from any reasonably good place is means to empower your body and mind from disengaging personal biases, in order to have clarity.
Don't ever underestimate these biases. Mind can trick you more than you can even imagine. For Machine learning students, It is like a steady state probabilistiic graphical model constantly running. Even if we remove past in steady state, the present is still carrying information of past transitions , necessery to take future action. It needs to be seperated from the graph in order to get away from the conditional inferences.
But what happens is that, people don't disengage the personal biases, they rather empower it, and then things turn into blind belief and andh bhakti. This is because once you start disengaging, even stupid things start magnifying. Even small bias becomes magnified. Like in movies, even small emotions starts amplifying. So closing eyes is like watching movies, whats on screen is your projection of belief. It becomes magnified. If you don't beat it constantly, it will grow rapidly. If you don't attach importance to these biases, they die down.
See as soon as you become blind believer in any theory or person, you stop being seeker.
You should learn yoga, but with an unprejudiced mind. It is difficult to not believe, it is very convinient to linger on to your assertions, but a true spiritual seeker is not concerned about convinience, he is concerned about truth, and keeping his mind unprejudiced. He/She derives the strength and guts by this storm. If he gives up, and lingers to any belief, he becomes another believer, and storm slowly dies.
But I do sense, that there are some bhaktas who are not andhbhaktas, they are simply mad by emotions. They raise the madness to a point that all the barriers of prejudice goes away. That is another smart way of getting rid of prejudice and see beyond. It is like creating a tornado which destroys the city of mental prejudices in your head.
Once these structures start falling with awareness iand intensity intact (which is not so in sleep, or drugs), there comes time, when we start becoming aware of unconscious, subconscious. But after those structures are also disengaged a bit. If you sit and breath in right way, with eyes closed, the intensity of silence drizzles through you.
It is not some right brain thing (which can be obtained by snoozing left brain), because rightbrain can give you experience of boundlessness, it will create a crack in conscious to go into unconscious, but will not give you experience beyond the the thick sheath of unconscious mind. Left brain needs to be used as a tool to beat down the unconscous of right brain. But left brain alone, or right brain alone , doesn't work. Thats what I sense. I don't believe it totally, but this is just the projections of my thoughts.
It is not some right brain thing (which can be obtained by snoozing left brain), because rightbrain can give you experience of boundlessness, it will create a crack in conscious to go into unconscious, but will not give you experience beyond the the thick sheath of unconscious mind. Left brain needs to be used as a tool to beat down the unconscous of right brain. But left brain alone, or right brain alone , doesn't work. Thats what I sense. I don't believe it totally, but this is just the projections of my thoughts.
It is in this state, buddhist monks can rewire thier brain to feel pain as pleasure, to keep heart rate very low in harsh conditions, if necessary. It is an active experiencial process.
But there is something even more tormenting than this. That something more, where we may experience the most crude elemental form of existance which may be basis for this whole creation , what the striving is for.
The striving is like breaking hydrocarbons untill it becomes carbon. It is like constantly beating the tricks until, the experience becomes elemental from compound forms. It is like knowing experiencally what is source to all creation (real or imaginary who knows? ).
Maybe out and out rationalist can explain me this or write blog like me, but I will never know, Maybe some guru says this out loud, but I will never know. I will know only if become curious and strive to know it. And the way to this cannot start without beating down or atleast not giving to much grass to senses.
You cannot know how this one question has formed lump in my throat to a point of explosion, has zambered in points between my eyes, has made me observe different shades of silence, has made me super intense in silence, in ways that words cannot explain. The only thing I need to do I guess, is constantly beat my prejudices, constantly seek, constantly make an attempt to know, and yes do my sadhana regularly.
I enjoy watching movies like you all, but I don't just enjoy these gutsy heros on screen, I attempt to make honest effort to address this question of "what is life, who am I, what is all this?" by beating down all prejudice and using sadhana as a cruching machine. (A machine which helps crunching the prejudices to smaller chunks than before - atleast for few seconds to be honest) . But experiences in sadhana are big barriers, because you may want to settle for it. But like a true filmy hero, you never settle untill we experience it all. Thats why , people are refrained from giving too much importance to intermediate experiences.
Well I just said what I honestly feel, if you want to linger to some belief and stay comfortable, go ahead and live an IT life or scientist life or artist life. In last few moments of death, these questions will come, for sure. And who knows we may just be food for earthworms and there is no afterlife. Won't you want answers for what is life experiencially? would you settle for logical explainations or would you be wanting to experience? rather than believing in any religion, person, ideology, texts etc, remind yourself of last moments befoe death ? - Then you don't need any blogs, any thing else if you just remind yourself of death. It may sound gloomy, but are you interested in facing the truth or are you interested in dodging yourself?
