The Traps of the Mind
Excerpt from The Fire of Freedom
Satsang with Papaji
Edited by David Godman
I was speaking earlier of traps, of traps of the mind. Happiness is not to be found in any of these traps of the mind. It is to be found when the mind is absent, and one day you will all know it. Everyone gets a taste of this, an experience of it, when he goes to sleep. When sleep comes everything vanishes, but you remain, alone and at peace. When you wake up you say, ‘Oh, I had a very good sleep. I was very happy and content. I didn’t even dream.’
This sleep state is just one of the three dull alternating states. It is not the final state of freedom or liberation, but it is a state in which the mind activity and objects have vanished. The sleep experience should teach you that when the mind stops transacting its business, peace prevails. When the mind stops jumping outwards to objects and desires in the waking state, you have peace and freedom with full awareness. This is the highest, transcendent state.
How can it be attained? Some people have done it. Many people have tried to attain it through yoga, samadhi, meditation and so on, but who gets permanent results?
It can be done, though. The means is not important, what is important is the result. It can be done.
Question:You have said that samadhi is the trap for the yogi, and that the rosary is the trap for the bhakta. What other traps are there for the devotee? I have heard you talk about devotees not being ‘unsmelled flowers’, and that this prevents them from reaching the goal. Is this another trap?
Papaji:The ‘unsmelled flower’ is not a trap. It is a different analogy. The unsmelled flower means a mind that doesn’t have a single thought. That state will work for you. It is complete in itself. It is enlightenment, and you don’t need anything else.
‘How to tackle the mind?’ This has been the topic of this morning. Mind in its thought-free purity is the unsmelled flower. Only the unsmelled flower can be offered to God and be accepted by him. When you bring in thoughts and concepts, your mind is no longer ‘unsmelled’. It is no longer a pure offering for God.
A devotee who wants to see God starts counting the beads on his rosary. The hands are moving the beads while the mind is moving around through all the sense-objects that it is encountering. The mind is somewhere else while this is going on. It is not quiet and it is not controlled. The problem of the mind has not been tackled and solved.
The thought comes, ‘I have to meditate’. When this thought, this intention, comes, the flower of the mind gets smelled. When you think ‘I have to meditate’, you enter a routine, something that you may continue with for your whole life, and while you are following this routine you forget the original purpose of finding freedom. You forget it altogether. I have seen many people who are like this. They engage in meditation, prayer and various rituals, but they forget the ultimate purpose of these rituals.
I say, ‘If there is no thought in the mind, who are you in that moment?’ If you don’t give rise to a thought, if you don’t stir a single thought from the ground itself, from the source itself, who are you in that instant? Don’t let a single thought stir and see who you are. Don’t think, ‘I have to meditate’, or ‘I have to perform this ritual’. If a thought does arise, investigate it. Find out where it has come from. If you do this intently, this thought will vanish.If you do this properly, when this thought vanishes, all will be over. When this thought vanishes, all ideas such as ‘I have to meditate’ and ‘I have to perform this ritual’ will vanish along with it. You are in the source. You are the source. This investigation will take you to the source where the thought will disappear. Any other thought, any other practice, will take you away from the source, to somewhere else. You will hold it, and continue to hold it forever. You will get attached to this thought, this method, and you will hold onto it forever. This is what is happening in all the monasteries. It is what is happening every day with all the people who are attached to practices. These attachments don’t produce results. There is just an attachment to the method while the purpose – freedom – is lost sight of.
Our true purpose is realisation of the Self, enlightenment, the freedom of being the Self. If you start off by thinking ‘I must attain Self-realisation because I am not realised right now, and I want to be’, then you are immediately imposing on yourself the thought of bondage. Your quest for freedom has already been caught up in this idea that it is something you don’t already have. You accept this thought, ‘I am in bondage’, and then you go looking for a method or a book or a teacher who can help you to remove this idea of bondage that you have just imposed on yourself.
No book will get rid of this idea for you. First of all, ask yourself, ‘Who told me that I am in bondage?’ Where is the bondage? Question the bondage itself. Question the bondage by investigating who it is who appears to be in bondage. ‘Who is bound?’ Ask this question of yourself and it will take you to the place where the concept of bondage came into existence. It will take you to a place that no book and no teacher can tell you about.
All you have to do is remove this impediment, this idea that there is someone who is bound and who needs to work hard to transcend this bondage. Instead of working hard to find light or wisdom, find out what this impediment is, this idea ‘I am bound’ that puts you on the spiritual path in the first place.
‘I am bound’ is the mental substratum on which are built all your ideas about enlightenment and spiritual practice. You take your stand on this substratum and from there you develop and follow all your methods and practices. If you don’t remove this initial impediment, the idea ‘I am bound,’ your practices will continue forever.
Spend some time on investigating this idea ‘I am bound’. Work on this.