citir eva cetana-padad avarudha cetya-samkocini cittam
The fifth sutra of the Pratyabhijna-hrdayam (The Splendor of Recognition) is: "Consciousness herself, having descended from the expanded state, becomes the mind, contracted by the objects of perception." I paused right after reading this sutra, and took a moment to take in the implication that Consciousness is the mind itself. Pretty radical. The mind which has been such a war zone for so many people, something to be controlled, subjugated, in this sutra Kshemaraja is saying that the mind is God, and that it has become contracted by our senses. So everything we see, everything we feel, we smell, we taste, we touch, is in some way contracted. There is always more!
I love to read about animals that can perceive things we can't, or hear things we can't. Swami Shantananda reminds us on this text that dog's ability of smell helps them find food, find someone to mate, to fight and even where to rest. We however do not have the olfactory receptors to do that! Honeybees find their pollen by seeing ultraviolet patterns over flowers; a pattern that's invisible to us. In his incredible book Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, the great modern day scholar Georg Feuerstein talks about how we do not hear the full range of shrieks that bats create; or the echolocation of dolphins; the calls of elephants; nor can we see like the eagle. Our ability to perceive and appreciate the world is miniscule compared to other animals! So because the objects of perception are limited, there must be other ways to perceive this universe, namely through intuition, wisdom, mediation...
Baba Muktananda tells us in his commentary on this book that this sutra is "the very lifeblood of sadhana. It is priceless. If a seeker could understand [it] and believe in its truth, meditation would come to him by itself, and so would knowledge." The mind is God; a form of God. Everything: your thoughts about what you are having for lunch; what you are doing with your life; your deepest fears and longings; from the trivial to the sublime; anything, everything that passes through this field is God. To be able to see that, to understand that, to even offer your thoughts back to the highest and let them come and go in the field of our mind.
Consciousness is everything, it is all that exists. So when we meditate we can as an exercise let the mind roam free, like a dog without a leash, let it do what it does. And after a while, I've noticed, it will take the posture of turning within itself, abiding in its own nature, and for a moment or so, there's peace.
To finish, here is a quote from Baba Muktananda:
These feelings just arise, but you are not necessarily undergoing them. They are the creation of the mind. You should just understand them. Saivism explains it very beautifully, saying that all these feelings are the creation of limited knowledge. Infinite thoughts arise and subside; infinite creations arise and dissolve, arise and dissolve in the mind.
Sometimes the mind marries somebody, sometimes the mind kills somebody. Should you laugh? Should you cry? A wise person understands that everything is a creation of the mind, and he keeps quiet. Why do you carry somebody else's burden? Why do you carry these feelings on your head? Let them fly away.
Beautifully researched and written, dear MariaCristinaYogi.
I also suggest that the "objects of perception" Kshemaraja is pointing towards, which contribute to limitations of Consciousness and mind (and thus mis-perception), include the very things we perceive as outside of/separated from us, and not (just) our senses themselves.
The senses are tools towards perception -- but not actual perception. Clarity of perception, you so wisely point out, requires wisdom, intuition, meditation and other, less concrete modes of Authentically Connecting (my expression for Yoga) with Reality, which ironically includes all of those "objects" we perceive as being outside of ourselves!
Please take a look at my website and blog for more musings on similar topics. Much love to you!
I also offer heartfelt congratulations on receiving your certification from Anusara.
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