In 1986, I moved to Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, an ashram in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania,
to attend a three-year long course in Vedanta, Sanskrit, and meditation taught by Swami Dayananda.
There, sixty students underwent a life-changing journey of spiritual growth
that was highly challenging and deeply rewarding.
I was led to discover my true nature as being pure consciousness,
the consciousness that reveals all the thoughts, emotions, and sensations in our minds,
the consciousness that illumines or reveals all our experiences without being affected by them,
like the sun is unaffected by whatever it illumines.
I eventually understood that very consciousness - my own true nature -
to be the true source of peace and contentment.
Yet, I didn’t always feel so peaceful and content.
I sometimes found myself feeling angry or hurt or depressed.
There were days when I could remain blissfully focused on the pure consciousness at the core of my being,
and there were other days when painful emotions would forcibly drag me down into mental turmoil.
At those times, my mind seemed to spiral into a state of chaos and confusion
like an enormous hurricane with violent winds that destroy everything nearby.
As you know, at the exact center of a hurricane is an eye where the winds are calm and peaceful.
The eye of a hurricane is like the pure consciousness at the center of your being
which remains unaffected by chaotic storms that sometimes whirl inside your mind.
By deliberately shifting your attention away from your mind’s churning turbulence,
and focusing instead on the consciousness deep within,
you can discover the perfect peace that always abides inside,
a peaceful presence that is never affected by the mind’s disorder.
You can find this peace at the still point at the center of the mental storm.
That can be a great blessing, but unfortunately, those storms can at times grow so powerful
that it’s impossible to constantly maintain your focus on pure consciousness.
And when that focus is lost,
you can be swept away by overwhelming currents of emotion and immersed in mental turmoil once again.
That was my problem.
I would often find myself swept away by storms raging in my mind.
And no matter how hard I tried,
I couldn’t manage to stay focused on the source of peace within me.
I felt more and more distressed by this problem as our three-year course drew near to its conclusion,
so I met with Swami Dayananda privately to seek his guidance.
I felt a sense of urgency when I told him,
“Swamiji, I just can’t keep my mind centered on my true nature.
And when I lose focus, I end up struggling and suffering
just as much as I did before coming here.
What can I do to make my mind constantly abide in the source of peace within?”
Swami Dayananda looked at me tenderly and said, “Why do you take your mind so seriously?”
Those few words stunned me
and seemed to trigger an explosion of insight
that dispelled the anxiety and doubts that had tormented me.
Swami Dayananda simply called my attention to a topic he had taught us thoroughly,
but I had apparently failed to fully understand.
Let me explain.
If a huge truck was recklessly speeding directly towards you,
you’d take that threat very seriously and you’d jump out of the way.
But suppose you saw that truck in a dream,
a special kind of dream in which you knew you were dreaming - a waking dream.
Then, you wouldn’t take the threat so seriously,
because the dream truck is not real, it’s not as real as you are.
A real snake is a genuine threat, but the rope/snake
- that’s so well-known in Vedanta - can’t harm you at all.
So, here’s the question:
is your mind as real as you are?
Are your thoughts, emotions and sensations - the mental activities known as vrittis -
are they as real as you, the conscious being who experiences them?
If your consciousness reveals vrittis like the sun reveals the world,
can those vrittis really affect you?
Or, are they more like the dream truck or rope snake? Are they less real than you are?
To explore this, we first have to define what is real.
In Vedanta, real or satyam is defined as trikala abadhitam,
that which always exists, in past, present, and future.
That means, what is real must be unchanging.
Anything that changes ceases to exist as it was before.
To be real is to exist eternally, without change.
Your thoughts, emotions and sensations are constantly changing,
so, how real can they be?
And if pure consciousness remains unchanged by the vrittis it reveals,
wouldn’t it be satyam - more real than the changing vrittis?
Its important for us to understand the relationship between vrittis and consciousness.
Vedanta describes it as a relationship between form and content,
like the relationship between this form, pot, and its content, clay,
or between the form of a wave in the ocean, and its content - water.
No form can exist without content, without an underlying substance or reality.
Water is the underlying reality because of which waves exist.
And clay is the underlying reality because of which this pot exists.
In the same way, consciousness is the underlying reality because of which your vrittis exist.
Your thoughts, emotions and sensations are forms of consciousness.
They give shape to consciousness like this pot gives shape to clay.
Just as the content of this pot is clay, the content of your vrittis is consciousness.
Also, it’s obvious that forms are subject to change.
This pot can be broken into shards or crushed into dust,
but in either case, clay remains the same.
When waves break as they reach the shore, water doesn’t break.
It remains the same.
So, even though forms are subject to change,
the underlying reality because of which they exist is not subject to change.
In this way, when vrittis come and go in your mind - like waves in the ocean -
consciousness remains unchanged, unaffected.
Consciousness is the unchanging reality because of which your constantly changing vrittis exist.
That unchanging consciousness is satyam, real,
whereas your vrittis are merely fleeting forms that happen to emerge in your consciousness,
where they last for just a few moments before disappearing.
Your vrittis are as ephemeral and insubstantial as bubbles.
Soap bubbles are basically forms of air,
like pots are forms of clay and waves are forms of water.
It’s true that there’s also a very thin film of soap, but for the purpose of our discussion,
we can consider bubbles simply to be made of air.
A bubble emerges into the surrounding air as a little globule of air.
Then it quivers and floats around in the air for a just few seconds before it bursts.
In this way, bubbles can represent your vrittis.
Vrittis emerge in your consciousness like bubbles, as individual limited forms of consciousness,
forms that represent your thoughts, emotions and sensations.
Those bubbles of consciousness constantly undergo change
as they drift through your consciousness while you experience them.
And after just a few moments, those bubbles of consciousness vanish.
It’s important to recall our earlier discussion
where we observed that when forms change, their content remains unaffected.
When bubbles are formed in the air and then they burst, nothing happens to air.
And in the same way, when vrittis are formed in your consciousness and then fade away,
nothing happens to your consciousness.
Your vrittis are indeed as short-lived and inconsequential as soap bubbles.
Three kinds of vrittis emerge in your consciousness.
We can call them bubbles of thought, bubbles of emotion, and bubbles of sensation.
The many things you perceive with your five senses emerge as bubbles of sensation.
Whatever you see, hear, smell, taste or touch arises in your consciousness like a bubble.
Right now, a bubble of sensation in the form of this screen is present in your consciousness.
And if you shut your eyes, that bubble will burst.
In addition to sensations, thoughts also arise in your consciousness as bubbles of cognition.
When you think about your mother, your boss, or what you’d like to eat for dinner tonight,
those thoughts emerge as bubbles of cognition.
And, along with sensations and thoughts,
feelings also emerge in your consciousness as bubbles of emotion.
When a bubble of sadness arises, you feel sad.
When bubbles of happiness, anger or anxiety arise, you feel those emotions.
At night, when you dream, bubbles continue to emerge in your consciousness,
with one major difference:
while dreaming, bubbles of sensation are no longer produced by your five senses;
they arise from your memories instead.
When you drift off into deep dreamless sleep, all these bubbles no longer arise.
Your consciousness remains perfectly still, free from any thoughts, emotions, or sensations,
until ... your mind starts bubbling once again and you have another dream, or you wake up.
Ok. What’s the main point of this elaborate bubble metaphor?
The point is this: your thoughts, emotions, and sensations are not as real as consciousness.
They’re merely forms that emerge like bubbles
and float around in your consciousness for a few moments before bursting.
So, how real can they possibly be?
And, if they’re not as real as you are, how can they harm you?
If you are fundamentally unaffected by your vrittis, then why should you take them so seriously?
Why should you take your mind so seriously?
That’s exactly what Swami Dayananda told me.
His answer applies to everyone.
Since the thoughts, emotions, and sensations in your mind can’t truly affect your consciousness,
then it’s not really necessary
to strenuously withdraw your attention from the swirling currents of vrittis in your mind.
It’s not necessary to constantly maintain your focus on pure consciousness.
After all, nothing in your mind can threaten you.
Swirling currents of vrittis can’t harm you, because they’re not as real as you.
A final observation.
My attempt to maintain a perfectly focused mind
is a clear case of misdirected effort.
It’s not possible to make the mind perfectly focused.
No human mind can reach a state of perfection, any more than a human body can be made perfect.
The goal of Vedanta is not to have a perfect mind.
The goal is to have perfect understanding, to have complete knowledge.
Knowledge can be perfect.
Your knowledge that 2 + 2 = 4 is flawless.
In the same way, you can know your true nature perfectly.
With that understanding,
you can constantly abide in the steadfast knowledge that your true nature is unchanging consciousness
that remains utterly unaffected by any and all mental activities.
The solution to the problem of confusion and chaos in the mind
is not to rigidly focus your attention on the still point at the center of the mental storm.
The solution is to shift your perspective, so that you can see the entire mental storm
to be just a mere bubble, a fleeting, insubstantial collection of vrittis,
harmlessly floating in the vast expanse of consciousness
without affecting you in any way whatsoever.