Commentary on the text “Yoga Vasistha. Chapter 6”
Shiva continued: “All these mountains, the whole world, individual consciousness, and all the elements that make up the world are nothing but pure consciousness. Before the so-called creation, when there was only pure consciousness, where was all this? Space, creation, consciousness—these are only words. As synonyms, they point to one and the same truth. Just as the duality experienced in a dream is illusory, so too the duality implied in the creation of this world is also illusory. Just as objects seem to exist and function in the inner world of consciousness during a dream, so too objects seem to exist and act in the outer world of consciousness during waking. In reality, nothing happens in either state. Just as consciousness is the reality in the dream state, so too consciousness is the only reality during waking. This is God, the Supreme Truth, that which you are, that which I am, and that which everything is.”
Two Ways of Perceiving the World
Shiva gives instructions to Vasistha, who has turned to him with a question about the nature of reality and the nature of God.
We have two ways of perceiving the world. The first way is to perceive it through the mind, through ordinary, logical conceptual thinking, and through the ego. The second way is to perceive it in accordance with the instructions of the sacred scriptures. When we perceive the world through the mind, the ego, we are in one dimension of reality; when we perceive or try to perceive through the contemplation of nonduality in accordance with the sacred scriptures and instructions, we are in another dimension of reality.
At first these realities seem indistinguishable; at first they do not differ very much. But the further we train in practice, the greater the depth we discover in a new vision of reality, the more our eyes open to the nature of reality. Sometimes they open very deeply, so that our entire past life, our worldly life, conditioned as it was (when we looked at the world through the prism of the ego, the mind, our desires and personality), is seen as an illusion, as a dream, as a delusion.
In examples from various traditions, there have been cases when, after attaining enlightenment, a monk would begin to dance and hit himself on the head with a slipper, saying: “How mistaken I was!” This is so because, in the dualistic state of perceiving the world as an ego, as a personality derived from the mind, we are all greatly mistaken.
When a state of awareness arises in us, we reassess all our meanings, values, and goals and see: “Yes, I was mistaken.” And we acknowledge this, but not with regret—with joy. Because if you can understand that you were mistaken, it means that now your vision is deeper and free from error, it is clearer. Therefore these monks rejoiced greatly, because it became possible to leave the mistaken state of samsara, to leave ignorance behind.
It can be said that whenever we look at the world through the prism of dualistic perception, unconsciously, through the prism of the mind, the ego, the personality, we are always mistaken, just as a person is mistaken when he takes everything he sees in a dream to be reality. Shiva tells Vasistha that both in a dream and in reality, all this is a manifestation of one pure consciousness, and God is this pure consciousness.
The Tasks of a Sadhu in Working with Pure Consciousness
How can one penetrate into this pure consciousness? How can one understand whether it is this pure consciousness or not? To what extent can one trust the subjective experience of pure consciousness? And having penetrated into it even once, how can one remain in it and not fall back into identification again? How can one unite it with life? And how can one allow this pure consciousness, the God within, to purify us of ignorance and take guidance of our life? This is the task of every sadhu.
Within us there is great purity, great holiness. We are all holy souls. But this holiness and purity are, as it were, hidden and not very manifest, and in our life they are not dominant (in the foreground). They do not yet strongly guide our life if we are beginning sadhus. But when we purify ourselves, this purity and this holiness come to the forefront. They gradually take guidance over our life. We begin to trust them more and more. And sooner or later such trust grows into faith.
At first this faith is weak; we do not know whether to trust this purity or to trust, as before, the mind, logic, and the external world. But if we practice correctly, have instructions, and contemplate correctly, gradually this opens within us as a source, as unsupported consciousness, niralambha-tattva, amanaska, as a state beyond the mind. And we can gradually recognize that God within us is revealing Himself; we begin to trust more and more this God within, this Satguru within, while at the same time remaining in a very sober, clear, slightly critical state, because trust in inner reality, trust in subjective experience, must be accompanied by a high degree of sobriety and critical discernment.
The Role of Experience in Spiritual Life
On the one hand, without trusting inner experience, it is simply impossible to follow the spiritual path, because spiritual life, after all, is experience; it is mystical experience. And one may read thousands of books, write numerous monographs, be a great scholar, yet some grandmother from a village who has experience of the subtle body leaving the physical body will still be wiser, because she has experience. And she will easily teach all the academicians what the subtle world and the subtle body are.
Experience is experience. Nothing can override experience. Neither erudition, nor title, nor position, nor status, nor wealth, nor fame can override experience in any way, because in any religious tradition God is known only through mystical experience. And here the principle is always this: there is experience/there is no experience, the experience is deep/the experience is not deep. Everything else proceeds from this. The problem in spiritual life arises when this experience is insufficient. When there is enough experience, it is called enlightenment, wisdom, holiness. Experience frees us from illusion, experience makes us wise, experience makes us free.
Distinguishing True and False Experience
The question immediately arises: how does one obtain this experience? And how can one be wise in undergoing experience? How can one avoid confusing false experience with true experience? Because, once you begin to trust experience, you are, as it were, stepping onto a very slippery path, since besides great experiences there are various small experiences, medium experiences, experiences of the soul, experiences of the ego, and it is very easy to enter the path of illusion by trusting the wrong experience, or, without having understood it, to overestimate your experience. This also happens all the time.
For example, in the state of California, people are fond of using various herbs. This also gives experience. There is an herb that greatly inspires them, called “ayahuasca.” And this herb also gives some kind of experience, some kind of переживание. And many people there and in San Francisco (I have met different people) live as wanderers; they are called “homeless” (a person without a home). A person receives experiences, and it seems as though he needs nothing. How holy he has become, how wise he has become, how much closer he has come to God — that is a big question.
Not every experience should be trusted. But experiences can also come without any herbs at all, if you meditate and engage in practice. If you do this diligently in everyday life, and your contemplation is not separated from life, experiences will come. But the point is that not every experience can be trusted, not every experience should be made the support of your soul. On the contrary, for the first 25 years I would advise students to take a critical stance toward any experience according to the principle “trust, but verify.”
The principle here is this: one should not so much rely on experience as detach from it, separate from it, discard it. Because in the process of opening the soul, of exposing its various sides, one encounters a great many experiences. These experiences can make a very strong impression. They can completely change your ideas about the world, which before may have come from the mind, from memory. But at the same time they can impose some new notions of their own upon you. These notions may come not from the divine plane, but from the subtle body, from the mind, from various illusions. All this is called “traditional traps,” which catch one with bliss, clarity, emptiness. Here it is necessary to have a very critical view in order to pass the trial by experiences.
Only when we pass the trial by the experiences of the soul, cultivate vichara (inquiry), viveka (discernment), and vairagya (detachment) within ourselves — detachment not only from the outer world, but also from the inner world — do we receive the right to a pass into the world of God. We truly receive a pass into the divine world in the state of Advaita.
The View of Advaita and the Principle of “Neti, Neti”
The view of Advaita should cultivate two things in us: on the one hand, the tendency to perceive God as experience, the tendency and ability to perceive truth as experience, because Advaita, as it were, leaves us no chance. It says: “You are the divine.” And if you are the divine, you experience the divine within yourself, you live by God, and you will have to perceive God as experience.
But on the other hand, Advaita arms us with the formula “neti, neti (not this, not this).” It says: “Do not lightly accept any experience; do not accept experience that has no value; do not cling to experience that may lead into illusion.” For example, there is the experience of the external world. All worldly people receive external experience. There is the experience of the energy body, there is the experience of the subtle body, there is the experience of the causal body (the subtlest), there is the experience of non-duality, the experience of the Absolute, the experience of divinity.
Our task is to reject lower experiences for the sake of the higher experience, to reject the experience of the subtle body, the experience of the energy body (reject—not in the sense of discarding or judging negatively, but simply separating ourselves from it, not considering it the main thing), in order to obtain the experience of the transcendent, the experience of the infinite, the experience of the absolute.
It is like if you decided to climb Kailash, and on the way to Kailash you were told: “Turn in here, there is such a souvenir shop... There are very beautiful souvenirs there.” You say: “No, I need only Kailash; first I will go to Kailash, and on the way back we will see what souvenirs you have.” You do not stop; you go toward your goal. And you go on to Kailash again, and again they offer you: “Turn in here, the food here is so delicious”...
We found a town in America called Oatman. There are amazingly wonderful landscapes there, mountains, desert terrain. We were told that this town was abandoned, and we thought: “Here is a place, perhaps, for Divya Loka; let’s drive through now.” When we drove in, people were living there, and they lived approximately in the culture of 19th-century Wild West America. Donkeys walked along the street, people wore hats and cowboy clothes, revolvers were sold in the store, in the shop. But all of this may be a rather good tourist business; everything is very interesting and so unusual—you certainly would not see anything like it in Russia. The only problem: we were looking for an abandoned settlement for a new Divya Loka... everything is interesting, but it is simply not it. Our hopes were not fulfilled; we expected something different. And it is the same with experiences. Everything is so interesting, but it is not it.
We must have a very sober mind, deep discernment, so as not to follow the interesting experiences of the subtle world, the clarity, the subtle body that come. We must say: “This is, of course, interesting, but it is not it. I will first go to the summit, and then, perhaps, on the way back I will look.” The ability to distinguish higher experiences from intermediate and lower ones is the sign of a wise person, a sadhu, the sign of a jnani, a sage.
Siddhis, supernatural powers, can also be classified as experiences: controlling reality by the power of thought, the materialization of intention, the subtle world, the experience of prana, the vision of divine beings and spirits—all these are diverse experiences that make up the lower and intermediate levels.
The Experience of the Highest Level
And what, then, is the experience of the highest level, the one that truly gives freedom, wisdom, holiness, and liberates? This experience is absolutely abstract. It is not the experience of the soul; it is the experience of God. It is not an experience at all, because experience always presupposes someone who experiences the experience. It experiences you. There is always you, and you experience the experience. Precisely because there is you, this experience is incorrect.
If it is a true experience, you as a personality will not be there, but you as consciousness will be. But you as a personality, as an individuality, will not be there in such a way that you could say: “I experienced an experience.” There will be divinity, there will be awareness, but there will be no desire to appropriate, to evaluate, to enter into dual subject-object relations and place this experience in a collection. Therefore, in a certain sense, this cannot be told to anyone. No one can say: “I experienced enlightenment.” Because enlightenment itself eliminates the illusion of “I,” because enlightenment is precisely the understanding that the “I” itself is an illusion, is a convention. The “I” itself is the “state of forgetfulness of God.” Therefore one can say: “Enlightenment happened, but I was not there.”
This does not mean that you cannot use the soul, the personality, as a function. They can be used perfectly well. This will already have a subordinate character. Thus, the ultimate mystical experience is the experience of infinity. It is not the experience of a name, not the experience of a form; it is the experience of infinity, boundlessness, formlessness, absoluteness.
Divine Organs of Perception
When we see beautiful images of gods, saints, rishis, Dattatreya, we must understand these images as manifestations of infinity. Infinity is knocking on our door, trying to break through to us through our conditioned minds, and it takes on such beautiful, pure forms. This is infinity; that is, Bhagavan Dattatreya is infinity knocking at our soul. But because of our limitation, we can perceive him through such a form, because our mind is not yet ready to perceive Dattatreya in the aspect of infinity (beyond name, beyond form, beyond qualities, beyond definitions).
Our spiritual eyes are not yet sufficient to perceive Dattatreya in such an aspect; we must purify ourselves, and then new indriyas (organs of perception) will appear within us. It is believed that it is the indriyas that create karmic vision, an entire loka. But in order to perceive the world of the gods, the world of the saints, or Dattatreya, we must cultivate and grow within ourselves these new spiritual indriyas (divine eyes, divine ears, divine perception). They have not yet grown within us.
And when we perform tapas, purification, we cultivate within ourselves the divine sense organs, jnana-indriyas, and karma-indriyas — the divine organs of action. Karma-indriyas are siddhis. As you know, we have ordinary human sense organs and organs of action. The organs of action are the hands, legs, genitals, and so on. And the sense organs are the eyes, ears, mouth, nose, skin, touch, and so on. But in the divine sense, for comprehending divine realities, we need both sense organs and organs of action (jnana and karma-indriyas of another plane).
The spiritual path, tapasya, is the cultivation within oneself of such new organs of perception in order to perceive divine worlds, divine lokas, to converse in the soul with God, to communicate with saints and divine beings. These sense organs exist within us as embryos, but they must be purified, they must be opened, they must be nurtured, and for this one needs the pacification of the mind, the emptiness of the heart, awareness, patience, and tapasya.
Obstacles on the Path
What prevents us from opening these divine organs of perception? The holy sages say this: there are three things that hinder us. These are mala, vikshepa, and avarana. Mala is impurity, avarana is a veil, and vikshepa is like rippling, fluctuation. And when we overcome these three things within ourselves, the divine organs of perception will begin to open, and we will be able to perceive and receive personal experience of a mystical order, experience of the divine highest level.
“In reality, nothing happens in either state. Just as consciousness is the reality in the state of sleep, so consciousness is the only reality during wakefulness. This is God, the Supreme Truth, what you are, what I am, and what everything is.”
When you experience lower-order experiences, these experiences are always unfolded in time; within them there is always you as the subject of action, the subject of perception. They contain causes and effects, and something is constantly being experienced, becoming, happening. Experiences of the Absolute, experiences of the highest order, of Advaita, are beyond subject and object. These are experiences where nothing ever becomes anything, where a cause does not produce an effect, and where there are no causes at all; where there is no past that would flow into the present and the future; where there is no subject who could say: “I act, I do.” This is not a play of different qualities and not a modification.
Experiences of the highest order, abiding in non-duality, are such a point of consciousness where nothing ever happens; it is when you can relax, let go of your mind, let go of the ego, enter a state beyond the mind, beyond thoughts, and say: “I do nothing; I have already done everything.” Try to be aware, to listen to the inner reality in this awareness, and to seek this point of consciousness beyond name, form, and the subject that acts. You can slightly experience this taste, this experience of rasa (the taste of non-dual consciousness).
Integrating Spiritual Experience into Everyday Life
We strive to experience this again and again until we become established in right understanding. It is not enough to strive to experience this — one must learn to be alive within it, to act from the state of non-action, to unite it with everyday life, to apply it to our karma. Because even if a deep experience has been undergone, if it is not applied to our circumstances, to our limitations, it may not help us. We will have a memory of it as something great, distant, but useless; we will remain together with our limitations and attachments, and we will have only such a poignant longing: “There was an experience, such a great experience. And where is it? And what is its benefit, what is its value?”
Many people live their lives this way, remembering the ultimate peak of their experiences throughout their entire lives. They feel that they have somehow spiritually betrayed themselves, that they missed something, that there was such a great opportunity — the “bird of happiness” — but then somehow the mind went astray, and they forgot it. But I would not call this true practice. True practice is not to experience something and then leave it; true practice is to experience something and live in it, without leaving it, to bring it into everyday life, to ensure that experience and life are never separated. True practice is continuous life in the experience of God, continuous life in the divine.
A Mistaken Approach to Retreats
Then we will feel that living continuously in the divine is extraordinarily difficult, and at best it is possible when we are sitting in meditation and no one is disturbing us, when we are not speaking, not thinking, and not seeing anything. And from this arise such long-nurtured plans, secret plans for lengthy retreats — “retreat dreamers.” They think: “Time will pass, I will accumulate merit, receive a blessing, and go into retreat. Ah, there I will be in God.” And for years they nurture such secret plans for long retreats, create such dreams for themselves, begin looking for a place for a cell, for a three-year retreat, secure blessings, and form a strategy.
In itself this is not bad; it is very good, but the approach is fundamentally false. Why is it false? Because postponing one’s practice to the future, even to a retreat, while ignoring the present, is amateurism, thinking: “There I will be in the experience of God, in such ideal conditions, there no one will interfere with me for sure. But here I am only an accumulator of merit, only seva (a servant), or someone undergoing intellectual training.” Such an approach is fundamentally incorrect. Because, having not learned to be in the divine experience and to act from it in everyday life, such a person goes into retreat and suddenly encounters their inability to live in the divine (including in retreat). They encounter their mind, and this mind makes the same claims as when they are active. Because from the very beginning the intention to be in the divine in everyday life was not established, the intention to do spiritual work was not expressed; instead there were distractions, and they were accepted as the norm.
But correct practice consists in learning to act in the divine in everyday life, from the emptiness of the heart, from non-attachment, from humility, from self-surrender, from continuous awareness. This requires great attentiveness, constant observation of oneself, or constant recitation of a mantra. Antar-tapasya is difficult. But if we learn to do this, we will obtain abiding in the divine that does not depend on any things. And then retreat will be fruitful; it will only deepen the experiences that have been developed, you will create a great foundation, a very good platform, and in retreat you will take off from this foundation like a rocket. But if this foundation is absent, if we postpone our spiritual life, our abiding in the divine, merely nurturing plans while ignoring the “right now,” the “right here” present, it will be like a foundation built of cardboard; it will collapse in retreat.
The Art of Action from Non-Action
Therefore the question comes to the forefront: “How, then, can one be in the divine experience in everyday life?” How can one act from the state of non-action, how can one speak, eat, communicate, walk, look at the world, where should one keep the mind, how should one read, think, solve current tasks? And all of this is called kriya (behavior) — how to act with body, speech, and mind. This is the kind of art we must learn. This art is the Teaching — how not to be distracted and at the same time not fall into various errors.
When we turn to the Teaching, the Teaching will tell us this: “Become like a leaf carried by the wind, become like a bundle of straw on the road, become like hollow bamboo.” Good advice. But how exactly does one become like that? Or the Teaching will tell us: “Abide in Brahman. You are already Brahman.” And when we hear such instructions, this is the view; this is what we orient ourselves toward. This is our guiding star. But when we ask the question, “How exactly is this to be done?” — this is already awareness, meditation. Here upadeshas are needed, specific instructions on how to work with contemplation, with awareness, at what point to keep the mind, and how to apply this awareness in everyday life. Here a method (upaya) is needed.
The Search for the Point of God
We must learn to work with sankalpa, to open the mind wide, to abide in the natural state. We must learn this art again and again, cutting off all incorrect states until we are convinced that we have taken the right position. That is, everything depends on our inner position. We must form this inner position as sadhus, as spiritual people. And in order to form it, we simply need to turn inward, to establish certain settings of consciousness, to determine at what point to hold the mind. Where is this point of God? How can it be found? How can one avoid falling out of it?
All spiritual work during the first 12 years consists in our trying again and again to enter the beyond-mind, the point of God. No-mind is such a point from which God can be seen. Let us say, amanaska, of which Baba Gorakhnath speaks. The mind is a point from which God is not seen. The body, emotions, energy, the external world — these are all points from which the divine is not visible. And amanaska is the state of no-mind, supported by faith, devotion, pure vision, the spirit of samaya, and self-surrender. This is such a point where we begin to see God.
And, on the one hand, we need to practice meditation (dhyana), concentration, in order to discover this point (in a seated, static state). On the other hand, we need to practice walking, movement, in order not to lose this point in motion, in everyday life. From a third perspective, we need to cultivate faith, devotion, and self-surrender within ourselves. Because contemplative practice alone, without all this, will be very weak.
Shiva continued: “Worship of this God is true worship. Through such worship, everything can be attained. He is whole and indivisible, non-dual, and not created as a result of activity. He cannot be attained through external efforts. Worship of Him is a source of joy and bliss.”
When you find this point from which God can be seen, the first thing you begin to experience is joy and bliss, because all these veils begin to fall away and you see divinity directly: there is no vikshepa (fluctuation of the mind), the veil of mental fluctuation has gone, there is no avarana (obscuration) by various kleshas that covered it. All of this has been purified. You look at reality through the eyes of past experience, through the eyes of a restless mind, and there is no mala (impurity) caused by such notions as “I act,” “I am the doer,” “the fruits and results of my actions belong to me (karma-mala).” There is no feeling of “I am a small personality, I am a limited person (anava-mala),” no feeling of “this is this, and that is that; this multiplicity really exists (maya-mala).”
None of these three malas exists when you purify the mind. And when there are no fluctuations of the mind (vikshepas), when there are no veils of obscuration (avarana), when these three impurities do not exist, you can perceive the world beyond the mind, beyond the personality, through inner emptiness, through non-duality, through non-conceptual awareness. Joy arises in you, the joy of awakening, joy and bliss, signs that you are moving on the right path.
Protection from the Egoistic Appropriation of Experience
God is Sat-chit-ananda. And when you discover within yourself divine bliss (ananda), chit (boundless wisdom), and rootedness in Being, which is beyond time, beyond space, even when you comprehend it a little, it makes you free. Your ego immediately seeks to use this small realization. It immediately lays claim to it, it immediately wants to exploit it and gain some benefit, saying: “It is I who am experiencing this; I am so intelligent, so accomplished.” Out of habit, it will immediately want to exploit it.
And here you must take a very firm position; you must say: “Ego, you will get nothing here; this is not yours. You have no right to appropriate this experience; you have no right to put it into your service; you must serve it. This is your Lord; this is not something you have the right to use. We cannot use this.”
I had an acquaintance who said to me: “Well, the prayer worked.” I told him: “How can you work with prayer? It is prayer that can work with you; you cannot work with prayer.” If we try to conduct our spiritual life in a state of ego, that very state deprives us of true spiritual experiences. And we must be very vigilant toward our ego so that the ego does not make use of them. We must forbid it from using spiritual experiences, from laying claim to them. We must tell it: “Ego, you have the right to serve, but you have no right to lay claim to these spiritual experiences.” Then these spiritual experiences will grow; the blessing, the descent of grace, will become deeper, deeper, and deeper.
It often happens that a person, having received a spiritual experience, in their immaturity—because they have lost it (egoistic tendencies have prevailed again)—tries to convert it into wealth, fame, honor, and recognition. Only the most foolish people try to do this. Those who are smarter try to convert it into siddhis: to control, to gain power, to possess secret knowledge, to manipulate, to manifest might, to become extraordinary, a great magician. But these too are subtle games of the ego that we must notice. We will say: “Ego, do not try to convert divine experience into any kind of currency. God is valuable in Himself. Simply learn to serve and surrender.”
When we educate our ego in this way, we will truly begin to receive the greatest blessing and will see that what we tried to convert this experience into was worth nothing. Ramana Maharshi spoke about this as follows: “One who has the opportunity to receive divine blessing and wisdom (jnana) but strives for something else is like a foolish person who begs a billionaire for a bowl of sour soup. And that billionaire could have given everything.”
