The Mind and Consciousness: Understanding Your True Self

Agastya
So Baba, you’ve said, you and the mind are not different, could elaborate on that. The distinction between mind and what appears in the mind. A lot of us think, my mind is whatever I’m thinking, whatever ideas or imaginations are in my mind. But, I think you are saying that’s not the mind. Those are the projections that the mind is creating. The mind is not thoughts or imaginations.

Baba
Yeah, so some of the points I’ll tell pay attention. Thoughts are in the mind. Mind itself is not a thought. Simply, you have not seen the mind as it is in through your naked eyes, and that’s why you don’t know its location, its color, it. Shape, or anything simply with the thoughts and visions. You recognize that you have these thoughts in your mind. Your mind wants to do this. I want to do this like this. You keep on talking whenever you talk. So now you see if it is a physical body, you can show some part of the body. This is my hand, and this is my legs. This is my face. These are my eyes. But whereas the mind is infinite, it is beyond form and formlessness, it has no form at all. So as you yourself, has not seen in the naked eyes, how can you show this is my mind. But one clue is that there you feel in the mind about yourself also that is coming from the mind. The source of the feeling of yourself is in your mind. Only that means that mind itself is you yourself, but just now you are not aware because of your preoccupation with your own imaginations. I have always told that amongst millions of thoughts that you might have in your mind, one thing is the consciousness of your own existence, which is not a thought, it is a reality. If it was a thought that we could have told it is simply an imagination of yourself, that you exist. You really don’t exist. But truth is not like that you do exist, and you feel that always, you have this consciousness of existence. That is what is beyond thought. That means that mind is nothing but you. That’s what I keep telling eventually you will realize when you practice meditation, when thoughts and visions disappear, when your mind becomes quiet. That means you will realize it was you who was imagining, and now you who have become quiet. Now you who is in peace, and you who has the enjoyment, who has the happiness.

Agastya
So Baba, with meditation you can quiet the mind. And then when the mind becomes quiet, it becomes conscious of its own existence.

Baba
Yes exactly, that’s what you will thoroughly experience when you are able to make all thoughts and visions disappear from your mind just by watching. Where as you cannot make yourself disappear, you will always feel that consciousness of existence, even in deeper Samadhi. When you are able to stop all your thoughts and visions, then you will see that Consciousness of Existence is always there. It does not disappear. So that’s why we insist your brain needs to be alert and it must not go to sleep. If it goes to sleep, then you also become unconscious of surroundings and your own existence. If the brain is alert, then you will be conscious of your own existence. So that is the clue that you are nothing but the mind and mind is nothing but you. You as the soul.

Agastya
So that’s when you realize that you’re not a body, a thought, an idea or an ego.

Baba
Yeah, you’re not simply an idea or a ego or a thought or any such imagination. That’s why I keep telling you are much beyond the birth and the death of your own physical body. You need to know yourself.

Agastya
So, Baba, there are two things, two words their, consciousness of existence. So is this existence equated to the Para Brahman, to the absolute and consciousness equated to knowing. That would translate to knowingness of eternal existence.

Baba
Eventually, yes. In the beginning, for sake of understanding we try to use the terminology – you becoming conscious of your Self. You can become conscious of your thoughts, but actually, when you reach your real Self, you are much beyond the consciousness or any such thing, everything disappears. With that the “I” also disappears. As long as the “I”is there, the ego, then you want to know about yourself. You want to become aware of yourself, then this consciousness is the clue. You have to become conscious of yourself. Means you become aware of your own existence. “Oh, this is how I exist”. This much you can come to know, but you cannot explain it to anybody. It is something like that old dialog, you will come to know about it, but you cannot make others know about it. So it’s something like that, you will know, but you cannot make others know.