68. Intellect Cafe

This is a compilation of short Facebook posts written over the last few years.

We have to come to terms with the fact that thought is just another aspect of our being. Only certain spiritual paths deal with thoughts and achieving intellectual clarity. But spirituality by itself does not mean intellectual clarity. I may be a simpleton and still be spiritual, and a wonderful human being. Lack of intellectual clarity does not necessarily make me non-spiritual or make me any less. Nor does intellectual proficiency guarantee any spiritual insights. Therefore there is no need to assert oneself when intellect is not sharp enough. Otherwise things will get twisted out so bad, that it may be quite troublesome to straighten them up!
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Jnana yoga is not about finding answers as such. It is about channelizing all the erratic questioning into one fundamental question, directing the scattered energy into one intense '?'. Answers given by the teachers, if any, on a variety of things, are only to plug the holes in your intellect through which energy is dissipating, through which you are slipping away.
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When water is heated in a vessel, if the vessel is not big enough, water may spill over and douse the very fire that heated it up, instead of the fire evaporating the water in the vessel. Just so, when one enquires into the fundamental questions of life, if the intellect is not robust enough, the content of your mind (read and heard) will spill over haphazardly, and douse the fire of enquiry ("Ah I know, I am the Self!"), instead of the fire of enquiry evaporating the mind leading to the direct revelation of the Truth.
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When probing into fundamental questions of life, logic eventually hits a dead-end, or becomes circular, or goes into an infinite regression. Most people coolly declare "Logic is limited" and carry on with their life. The prisoner comes to the prison walls, and casually walks away. How many refuse to ignore the wall? How many find the walls daunting and suffocating?
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Intellectual clarity includes the intimate and painful knowing of intellect's limits, and therefore an encounter with what is beyond. Without it clarity is still pending.
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"Intellect is limited" – if one is to make this statement, the limitation must be a living reality to him. Otherwise it is a case of fox and the sour grapes... or of deception where one tries to look wise by repeating someone else's words as their own... or of a messed up intellect trying to find an exit from a discussion to save itself from humiliation.
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"Jnana yogi learns to use the intellect the way a drunkard uses a lamp post – for support rather than illumination. He does not seek a PhD to validate the knowledge he has amassed. Instead, he understands that the intellect is an instrument of analysis, not perception. To perceive, another faculty is required" (Sadhguru)
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"Me and the world" continues because our attention and energies are always split. Jnana marga is to pay absolute attention to the 'I' through '?'. Bhakti marga is to pay absolute attention to That through ❤. Either way the drama ends.

67. Gradualness - The Bane of Spiritual Seekers

This is a very common thing that I have seen happen with spiritual teachers, and have also faced it personally. When a spiritual teacher tries to bring about a sense of urgency in the students, the students come up with all kinds of theories (and stories of other people who are supposed to have realized) to argue that it is a 'gradual' thing, and should not be sudden. But what is your idea of being gradual? Never allow any sense of urgency? Always push back whenever someone speaks of it? That is just ridiculous.

Always trying to dwell in the sense of urgency and desperation is the gradual thing to do. Gradualness is not something that you argue for. Your argument should always be for having a sense of urgency. Because, the more you talk of 'gradual', the more you will sleep off. It is just a justification to remain placid. It is an escape, an escape that you try to authorize by using all great names and philosophies. And what is that foolish argument anyway? Should no one ever talk of sense of urgency to us? Then how will it come about even gradually?

If one sees that they do not have the sense of urgency, and do not justify it in anyway, the sense of urgency will come about. But the moment we justify, we snub that possibility also - "Oh I do not have the sense of urgency. But it is ok. It is a gradual thing [sleep off]"

If we just wanted to sleep off in gradualness, and do not want anyone talking about urgency, why did we approach a teacher at all? To find company to sleep with?

Whenever we retort to a teacher that things should be gradual, we have insulted the teacher's time and energy. The teacher is not merely sharing with us some information; he is spilling his energy to bring about a sense of urgency in us. I have seen some teachers trying to fire up the listeners for an hour, and in the end someone very casually says "But it is gradual"! That itself diffuses to some extent the intensity that had built up in the gathering.

The spiritual 'path' is not one of distance or time, it is one of intensity of being. One may muster it in a moment, or not even in a lifetime. One may muster it right here, or not even by going to the Himalayas. And arguing for gradualness is a sure shot way to diffuse intensity.

Therefore following a 'path' is not an endorsement for being gradual. No matter what path one is following, this should ever be kept in mind:

P.S.: Sometimes some teachers talk of things that bring about a sense of impossibility rather than a sense of urgency. It is important to distinguish the two.

66. My Childhood Angst

On the occasion of Guru Purnima, I would like to share something personal, but relevant.

Since early childhood, a deep sense of grief would engulf me every now and then, the trigger for which would be people having fun (e.g. playing games or chitchatting) or enjoying themselves in some kind of gathering (e.g. marriage functions). I would experience untold sorrow and cry profusely, as if some great tragedy has struck. For e.g. I remember as a 5 year old boy, standing in a corner with wet cheeks looking at all the elder children of our neighbourhood happily immersed in playing cricket. The same sense of hopelessness recurred several times, especially while attending family functions. The child could not articulate the reason in words (even mentally), it was just some unknown pain, but as the brain developed it got articulated. For e.g. I vividly remember going through this when I was in 12th, and was attending a marriage function.

Here I am crying for something else.
Probably saying "Let us go home"
I don't have a photo where I am crying
in actual angst. :-)

I could not digest how we can settle for such titbits of life and not seek any further. How can we be content with such things, as if that is the whole of the world and there is nothing more to life? When wounds are festering within, when suffering is inevitable sooner or later, how can we satisfy ourselves with some decorative paintjob and pretense? I am saying 'we' because apart from those episodes of grief (which occurred once in a few months), rest of the times I was also just the same — engrossed in some silly thing. Thus, desperation and frustration would accumulate over time, and erupt periodically in such episodes, stimulated by some trigger or sometimes without any trigger. I was crying for everyone, myself included. For I did not know what to do either. I only knew this cannot be it, but did not know what more it should be. It was like getting pressed into a corner, a dead end; it was suffocation.

After getting crushed in this "I do not know what to do" for several years, it has now become evident that this is what one should fundamentally do — to hold on to "I do not know" no matter what happens, and do not compromise for anything — mystical experiences, God talking to you, elegant insights, great theories from others, whatever. This is the most fundamental aspect. Everything else that we do in the name of spirituality is auxiliary. If one has not come to painfully realize the limit of psychology, if one does not realize he is in a prison, there is no getting out. There will be just more and more illusions, even in the name of spirituality. One will compromise with and settle for something or the other within the ambit of the mind, including the illusion of spirituality, and call it soul, heart, Atman, God and whatever. Without a sense of urgency, spirituality turns into the same-old social drama, into one more layer of cosmetics, another titbit to find contentment in. It is the pain of ignorance alone that will conjure enough intensity without any direction to blast off from the atmosphere of the mind. Without intensity there is anyway no going anywhere, and setting a direction means remaining within the psychology.

It is very popularly said that Guru is that which dispels darkness. But there is something worse than darkness — illusion of light (just as pretense of humility is worse than boastfulness, and so on). If I am under the spell of the mind, imagining that there is already light, where is the question of dispelling darkness at all? I will be quite content within the limits of the psychology, imagining all kinds of great things. A Guru is possible only after one begins to intensely realize the daunting darkness. 'Ru' (dispelling) is possible only after one stops denying that he is in utter 'Gu' (darkness).

Happy Guru Purnima!

65. Romantic Love and Bhakti - How are they Different?

Why so much hype is given to romance, and why whole film industries are running on it is that when in the arms of the lover, one melts away and tastes dissolution. In those few moments of emotional orgasm the shields of individuality go down, and the constant buzz of inner resistance is dropped. The individual momentarily ceases, and there is a glimpse of liberation. We can see that the language of love is that of self-annihilation — "I fell for him", "When she looked into my eyes, I died". "She pierced my heart" etc., and the symbolism of love is also that of a heart pierced by an arrow (basically a dying heart). Notice that no one finds all this talk of self-annihilation negative, for they unconsciously know that it is a sublime state. But unfortunately, like with everything else, it is short-lived and the individual springs up with as much force as before. And then arises the struggle to somehow reproduce it.

So, what one is fundamentally looking for is dissolution, not romance (or any other stimulant for that matter). But in unawareness these two get equated, and one pursues the stimulant rather than the core phenomenon. Romance is perhaps the strongest stimulant known to mankind towards prompting this state of dissolution, and that is why it attracts a tremendous amount of attention. People go up to the extent of painting it as the ultimate aim of life, calling their lover as God etc. All this is a result of a mixing up the stimulant to be the core phenomenon.

When we use a specific person at a specific time to withdraw our shields, the flipside is that with other people, or even with the same person at some other time, the shields will go up. Now we become a puppet that gets played around by the outside. We will then wrestle with the outside, try to retain it the same way, demand the other person to remain the same way. Once we define the unlock combination to our own fortress as "I will dissolve only if this happens on the outside" it becomes a chase. And it is very difficult to get back the same unlock combination, the same stimulant, once again. As a result drudgery and misery follow.

When one becomes aware of this he will go after the core phenomenon itself. He has nothing against the stimulant, but it is no more a dependency and a deciding factor. When the shields are mine, when the resistance is mine, why cannot I simply sit by myself and drop it absolutely? Why do I need anyone in front of me for it to happen? Why imagine a complex unlock combination, and then desperately seek it to be fulfilled from the outside?

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
in Devotional rapture

This is indeed the intelligence of a Bhakta. He has a Beloved. But absolutely nothing is expected of the Beloved. He is just ecstatic that he has one. There is no unlocking combination defined. He drops himself just at the utterance of the Name. He melts away by himself into a timeless orgasm.

The mundane merely fall in love, only to get to their feet in no time; but a devotee collapses into nothingness in his ultimate love for the Supreme, where he is absent and That alone is.