Letter 10: Various
17/04/07
Everyone,
Hello. Let us discuss these things.
Why should we have our minds on Bhagavan?
One of the Pandavas, the five sons of Pandu, who won the Mahabharata War with the help of Krishna, was Yudhishthira. In the Battle of Kurukshetra, just after when Krishna sang the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna, another of Pandu’s sons, the Pandavas defeated the Kauravas, their materialistic cousins. As the Pandavas always associated with Krishna, they realised themselves.
Many years later, almost everyone from that time had died, including Krishna. One day, Yudhishthira also died. He reached the heaven where all the realised souls lived, and was overjoyed on seeing Krishna, his brothers and old war-comrades. However, he was extremely surprised to see Duryodhana, Dushasana and other Kauravas who had behaved so badly on the earth. Yudhishthira, amazed, asked Krishna, “why are they here?”
Krishna replied, “they, too, have realised themselves”.
“But they behaved so badly. How is it possible?”
“Because they always had their minds on me.”
Krishna was Bhagavan, all the power in universe inside a single person. If someone was connected with him, results came. They became connected with him simply by having their minds concentrated on him. Love is like a lubricating element for the passage of spiritual power, however the mind must be concentrated on Krishna. Therefore, Krishna said, “Keep your minds on me. If you love me, perfect, if you hate me, okay, but think of me!” It is recounted in the Bhagavatam that the gopis entered nirvikalpa samadhi in meditation through having their minds so firmly attached to Krishna.
For this reason, Bhagavan too wants his devotees to have their minds on him. Bhagavan teaches that devotees enter nirvikalpa samadhi through devotion for him.
Where is God?
After the death of Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda went looking for God. He had read that many people had found him in the jungle. Therefore, he went off to the jungle and meditated there for a long time. God did not appear, and Swamiji lost faith. He remembered that he had heard many stories of rishis who had found God in caves in the mountains, so he went to the Himalayas to find him. After a lot of meditation, he still had not found him. He lost faith and began to think about the innumerable sages of Benares, the City of Shiva, so he went there. However, God was not there either. Nevertheless, much later he found him in his own heart, and understood that it was only his own restless mind lacking in faith that had forced him to go to those places outside. Ramakrishna was God and had put his spirit into Swamiji, as Bhagavan has put his into us. God is within us and in no other place.
The opening up of my mind
When I had been with IVS some time already, the condition of my mind seemed good to me. Thoughts did not come to me when I meditated, and I did not have materialistic thoughts when I was not meditating. I visited Bhagavan again, but a few days after leaving him once more, I noticed that my mind was full of rubbish. There was a great quantity of materialistic thoughts in my mind. It seemed that that visit had been very bad.
What had happened was that my mind had been opened a lot during that visit. One part of the mind is manifest. You can see what is in this part. This is where the thoughts we see are. The other part of the mind is hidden, and almost shut. We do not see much that comes from there very clearly. Some deep fears and other deep things are there. They appear sometimes when we dream, meditate, even in the waking state at times.
Penetrating the unmanifest mind
If we want to enter samadhi, we need to penetrate all of the mind, not just the manifest mind. If we are in samadhi, we have removed all the vibrations from the mind, evaporated all the mind. Many people have experienced a thoughtless state when meditating, however, few have entered samadhi. This shows that there were still vibrations in the mind, things to clean up in the mind, and they simply could not see them, as they were in the hidden mind. If they reached this state when there is no longer anything left to clean up in the hidden mind, they would enter samadhi.
In mediatation, we clean up the open part of the mind, and a little below this. If we meditate a lot, we may clean up the open part of the mind, and the hidden part opens up a little more, so that we can see and clean that up, too. However, this requires a very, very long time if we want to achieve samadhi.
When I visited Bhagavan that time, the appearance of so much rubbish implied the opening up of a quantity of the hidden mind that would have required perhaps decades to achieve alone in a mountain cave in the mountains. The rubbish that appeared did not come from outside. It was always in my mind, but I was unaware of it. As I could now see it, I had the opportunity to clean it well in meditation. The next time I met Bhagavan, I had sorted my mind out well, and that visit I entered samadhi.
We need to go where the spiritual power is; in Bhagavan, in the atmosphere where his devotees gather, in his mantra, and in this way, the hidden mind will open up more quickly, giving us the opportunity to clean it up quickly and consciously when we meditate.
...
Lots of love,
Hare Krishna,
Koji