Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Jīvas, what do they think?
Classic Bengali expression, means ‘crack-brained’.
[Mind—Crazy Driver]
Once, some fellow, he bowed down
to give Gurudev dandavat— this was a long time ago.
While he was down, Gurudev went:
you know,
it means ‘cracked’; his brain is cracked, like a coconut.
When you’re under the clutches of Māyā,
the witch, haunted by the witch of Māyā,
it’s said you speak all kinds of nonsense,
like a ghostly, haunted person.
There’s schizophrenia in the clinical sense,
but this sort of dual personality …
it’s like being crazy within the crazy world.
Because we’re all, in varying degrees, insane, deluded,
struggling with the senses;
manaḥ-ṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi prakṛti-sthāni karṣati (Bg: 15.7);
struggling with the senses, of which …
Remember, we have six senses:
the five obvious ones, and the mind,
and the mind is the sense that we have the most problem with.
Friend or enemy?
There’s a cartoon strip,
comic strip in the 1960s, where …
because it’s during the time of the Vietnam war,
so there’s all use of the word “enemy”—
“who’s the enemy”, and that kind of thing.
And what was in the comic strip was one famous line
where one of the characters says to another one,
“We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us”,
which is the actual truth.
We are the enemy, the minds, that we think is our friend.
The body’s like a chariot,
the senses are five horses,
and the soul’s like the passenger,
and the mind is like you have an insane driver,
crazy driver,
taking you for a ride.
So, Guru Mahārāj often uses the example of mental illness:
deluded into thinking you’re someone you’re not.
So, without getting sambandha-jñān,
a basic understanding of who I am
and what my potential is, how can I proceed
in a way that’s actually beneficial
for my self-discovery, self-realisation,
even ultimate autonomy?
It’s only one who’s free from the influence
of the mind and senses who’s truly autonomous,
otherwise, we’re under the influence
of the senses, the mind.
So, have to come in connection with a proper agent
who knows your identity, your reality potential,
and under their guidance you can engage in self-discovery,
self-realisation, self-actualisation.
Like the psychiatrist, they just have to bring the patient around
to seeing things from that perspective—
give up the false ego, the false identity,
like Guru Mahārāj called “acquired prejudice”.
To become free from saṁskāra
is to become free from acquired prejudice.
Then, āścarya-vat paśyati kaścid enam (Bg: 2.29):
to have a glimpse of our soul, our self,
our reality potential, will be astonishing, fill us with wonder,
and fuel practice and participation and hope.