3. DR. K. Madhava

Rev Master in his article in SDG titled Clue to Reality gave the above suggestion.

If we reflect on His suggestion it will have far reaching influence in our abhyas. It will take away the tiresomeness and burdensome feeling in our quest for Divinity, because most of the time mind puts insurmountable obstacles on the path due to our ignorance.

Let us examine the facts more clearly. Here mind means intellectuality and he has already referred in the same article that Intellectuality works in its own narrow field. Intellectuality or mind is a subsequent development or a structure that comes out of Prana or Tam or the Original Power, where as the Feeling faculty is more closely related with Divinity. It is also a very well known truth that Feeling is the language of God. So the Feeling faculty which is a reflection of Divinity alone can help us know Divinity.

Mind or intellectuality is a woefully inadequate instrument. For example let me take you through some common phenomenon which we face everyday. For example if you look at a Red cricket ball, rays of light are falling on the object and after reflection pass through the cornea and lens of the eyeball and falls on the retina where it forms an inverted image and from where nerve impulses travel and reach the visual cortex. Some changes in the flux of some sodium, potassium and calcium ions in that jelly like substance in a particular area of the brain cause you to feel the presence of round object which is Red in color. So is the red ball present in the phenomenological space in your head or present out there in the space in front of you. Various scientists argue that it is present in the head and some vehemently argue that is it is present out in front of you in the space. But how some flux of ions is causing the uniquely subjective feeling of the red cricket ball in our phenomenological space is a big mystery and modern scientists are terribly frustrated in trying to explain how this phenomenon occurs.

Suppose the red ball is thrown up and you were to catch the ball, which all of us do it as a matter of fact, some astounding and astronomical scale of computational work has to go in the brain and several messages from eye, hand muscles, joint sense, positional sense organs have to be coordinated and integrated to bring about an unity of experience of catching the ball. The more you probe into the phenomenon intellectually and try to trace the sequence of nerve currents unleashed to bring about the act and the fast and dynamic changes in the trajectory of the ball and the influence of gravitational forces in the falling of the ball and the corresponding instructions issued by the brain to the cause the precise cupping of the hand muscles is a mind boggling complex act achieved effortlessly.

Similarly some visual phenomenon and some auditory sensations, odors, and the awareness of body in space and time and other environmental influences together with our imaginations and past memories, which keep intruding into our consciousness, appear like a unified experience and not like disjointed fragmentary sequences of events.

Who and what is achieving that unity of experience is big mystery and so far intellect is unable to bridge the gap... Some neuroscientists and psychologists have threw up their hands in trying to solve this mystery and have come to the conclusion that human intellect now or in future is ill equipped to pierce this mystery. They said can you visualize a pet dog sitting in a sofa and reading a paper and trying to comprehend its content and our intellect is like that dog ill equipped to know about the subjective phenomenon. Where as in the fields of physics and chemistry most of the problems are well understood because they are dealing mostly with matter and here intellect made tremendous progress so much so man feels he can control nature. Success in the understanding of material forces makes him feel that he can understand about divinity or God using his intellect.

As is shown above when it comes to the question of life and happiness intellect faces insurmountable obstacles in its understanding, because it is ill equipped.

Besides intellect is hugely influenced by the culture into which you are born, influenced by religion and its interpretations, influenced by the language and its normative correlations, influenced by the environment, influenced by the majority view and is very fallible. It more often ends up on the wrong side of reality. It is fond of imagining, constructing, deducing, inducting, speculating, dreaming all of which need not be in tune with reality. It is subject to the powerful influence of the ego, a shadowy and illusive structure which keeps the sense of separation alive. Whereas feeling if allowed to develop tends to swell or enlarge or grow and starts transcending the narrow confines.

All of us have the lucky privilege of feeling the silent void during our PAM sessions where we are not aware of the time or the body. That is the Sun which is always there in the heart but whose radiation is prevented by the over cloudiness of the mind and its impurities. Unless the entire thought content is purged out we can never feel the full luster of the Sun. Sir in one of his articles has mentioned that he has wasted 10 years of his sadhana in trying to know intellectually. It is a lesson which is painfully long. Why not we with wisdom simply follow what Master says rather than trying to reinvent the wheel (about the usefulness of intellect in spiritual science) which finally proves to be useless after all.

I will quote another passage from path to perfection which shows how much our mind serves as an obstacle to our spiritual growth. “People have entirely wrong notions about courage. People consider and call the incitement of mind ‘courage.’ If the mind is eliminated to such an extent that one begins to feel depression in oneself and then this prayer or courage is endowed with the function of a command or order. You would have noticed that somebody suffers great harm at the hands of somebody else, and having no courage or heart to take revenge, feels perfectly poor and helpless and sits quietly in the state of helplessness. With such condition of depression, whatever thought takes hold of such a helpless person’s mind, is bound to take shape in concrete Reality. In case of courage (of ordinary conception) there remains the flavor of equality of status and position, which is opposed to humility of serving and belonging to Him. As soon as excitation boils up in the mind, self-importance gets involved. But you should never be oriented to harm or malign anybody. For common people, I am giving one more technique. They should refrain from involving the mind. For them this it self is courage. I mean they should give up the idea of affirmation or denial. This subject is not for every body’s understanding as well, and nobody will like it”.

Master has also written “proceed towards the unknown”. He has also written that reality is a state where complete ignorance prevails and also stated that it is beyond vidya and avidya. These thoughts give enough clue that our mind should become our servant and instrument rather than a means to know Divinity.

Practicing all the Ten Commandments ensures that the mind develops humility and allows the heart to enjoy the blissful company of the Divine.