Duality of mind & Sufferings

Mind is the gatekeeper of inner subjective world which transact with outer world through sense organs. All the sensory perceptions or experiences are stored in mind. Faculties like thought, imagination, memory, will etc. are responsible for various mental phenomena, like perception, pain-pleasure, belief, desire, intention, and emotion. The transactional mind acts as a smokescreen that prevents us from seeing within ourselves. The pure awareness or consciousness is in fact separated from body-mind. If we compare electricity and electrical instrument, electricity is the pure awareness and mind is electrical instrument. But activities of mind create false ego. This false ego separates us from pure consciousness and bifurcates the inner being. One suffers intensely due to the burns from the bogus bifurcation in the inner being.

The sense organs of the body generate the mind. The sense organs send sensory perceptions in mind and create sensuality i.e., stimulation for desire to enjoy. Thoughts in mind analyse & classify sensations into pleasant and unpleasant and that is the beginning of sensuality. This generates cravings for the repetition of the pleasant and for riddance from unpleasant. So, the root cause of our sorrow and sufferings is the separation of sensations. Mind casts a shadow on the understanding of the eternal reality. Eternal reality can be discovered only when the consciousness is free from illusion.

Human mind remains dormant due to the dominant activity of the separative “I”. chittavrithi separates from Chaitanya. Surrendering of “I” is bliss and silence.

What duality:
The mind dwells in duality or opposites – pleasure or pain, attachment or aversion, fear or fearlessness, cowardice or courage, anger or amicability, victory or defeat etc. The “Intelligence”, the Chaitanya is not corrupted by choices, by likes-dislikes, preference-aversion, justification-condemnation.

In chapter 3 of Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, Shree Krishna says, “the person in material consciousness is convinced by false ego that he is the doer of everything. He does not know that the mechanism of the body is produced by material nature, which works under the supervision of the Pure or Supreme consciousness.”

Quantum physics says that in the subatomic universe of quarks, objects exist in the quantum state of non-separateness. The objects continue to be connected. This connectedness remains unaffected by distance and time! The connecting force does not move through space despite a mysterious movement par excellence. ‘Close’ and ‘far’ are the same in this quantum state where ‘time’ and ‘space’ lose the conventional meaning as they become inseparable! Quantum physics has thus hit the nature of division-less, time-less Divinity!

Bhagavat Gita (vii 24-26) has also said: - Ground Human Awareness is absolutely free from division in time and space.

Mind as cause of Duality:
Mind has five constituents viz. evidence, beliefs, choices, inertness and memory. These constituents are responsible for suffering and non-suffering.

Chief contents of mind are craving, fear, attachment, dependency and greed. Greedy persons are fearful.

1. Craving at any level of one’s being, breeds conflicts and our attempts escape from conflicts, only increase further confusion – both within and without. Understanding of cravings comes only through the constant awareness of the movements of “I”. The understanding of self is the beginning of wisdom and there is no path to wisdom.
2. Fear has various forms – apprehension, aggression, anxiety, antagonism, insecurity, inhibition, stress, tension and so on.
3. Greed also has various forms – ambition, anticipation, expectation, hope and aspiration. Fear is the direct result of demanding, desiring, wanting, craving, hoping, expecting, speculating, becoming and so on.

End of Dualism:
The refusal to be involved with attraction and aversion, is detachment (Vairagya). Detachment comes through having complete attention. This is the result of aloofness from sense objects i.e., sensory perceptions are not converted into sensuality by classification as pleasant or unpleasant.

When the sense organs function in their natural state without inference of thoughts, then sensuality is totally wiped out and equanimity or even mindedness takes place. In the state of equanimity, the person does not feel opposites – pleasure or pain, attachment or aversion, fear or fearlessness, cowardice or courage, anger or amicability, victory or defeat etc. This leads to no-mind state.

When the activities of the mind are dormant, the divinity reveals its dominance. One is released from the dualities of suffering and satisfaction, of the fences and freedom, of grief and gratification, even of the life and life-less-ness.

Three-dimensional attitude to end duality:

1. First dimension – Sat or pure bhava or living without attachment – living in Atithi Bhava i.e., the attitude of a guest.
2. Second dimension – Chit or pure consciousness – living in Sakshi Bhava i.e., the attitude of witness.
3. Third dimension – Anand – pure joy or bliss – living in Samapti Bhava i.e., the attitude ending and not getting trapped in cultivation of opposites.

Kriya Yoga to end duality:
When we are caught in our unnatural state of the “I-ness” (Chittavrithi), we function in the dimension of opposites, constantly struggling to become something other than our being. We desperately seek ‘what should be’, refusing to see “what is”.

Humility means emptiness without a trace of borrowed knowledge or the conditioned reflexes as experience. It is the complete abnegation of all self-centred thought and ideations.

Thinking is wanting. When there is no want, there is no thought and thus just silence.
Seeing all these outward things without condemnation or appreciation, you can ride on the tide of inner awareness in whole-ness generating intense inward silence.
Comparison breeds animosity and subtle hatred, conflict, inner outer, is the ground for violence. 

The enquiry and exploration into this “I-ness”, the “me-ness” the “ego-ness”, - that is called Swadhyaya! That is the beginning of kriya yoga. Lessening the activity of the “I” is emergence of Intelligence. Kriya practices, Tapas is very subtle, but very effective. In due course, when the Tapas works Understanding happens. Its main purpose is to release the body from the stranglehold of the mind.

Kriya practices is meant to work through the body on the mind silencing its activities. They transform the Gunas. They are a great cleansing process that helps to make the body available to the chance of penetration of Intelligence.

Kriya practice helps to maintain this fine balancing act between thought and no-thought. Kriya yoga is the science of inner being. Kriya yoga is a journey towards no-mind. Kriya yoga blasts the duality in the life developed by the ego centre. It liberates the yogi from the possessiveness, accumulative and acquisitive urges. Possessiveness is not only of materialism but also of guru, an ideal, human being etc. But kriya yoga needs deep understanding, tremendous courage and Himalayan patience. Kriya makes person empty drum that gives the right tone, not the packed drum of borrowed ideas which makes a dreadful noise.
 
Do not renounce the world, but just renounce the ‘me’! But it is most difficult to be simple! Dissolution of separative consciousness in the unitary awareness is kriya. 

Kriya yoga is stepping out of the world of time and mind and beginning to live the state of timelessness and eternity. Kriya yoga requires abandoning rituals, psychological registrations, pride, envy, comparison, come to emptiness, to existence, to eternal joy. Kriya yoga is not lure for more. No more running or rat race for power, reputation, delusion, experience, attachment, possessions, ego-gratification and stupid pleasure movement.

By practising Kriya yoga, mind exists like honey, not like water. Honey, if disturbed, quickly returns to immobility; whereas water goes into turmoil by disturbance. Kriya yogi does not resist thoughts, but just remain disinterested in perpetuation of thoughts. In natural state, everything appears and disappears in rhythm. In kriya yoga all desires come to end, even desirelessness ceases to be an object for desire. 

Kriyas are not physical fitness program, rather it is simple practices to release the body from the stranglehold of the mental pollutions and to generate an energy of equanimity. If kriyas are done with patience and understanding without getting into the activity of the “I”, the blasting is not far off. Death of “I” that Kriya brings about, is immortality.
Time is the enemy in the inner dimension of consciousness which prevents fusion of thinker and thought.

Gunas are the natural traits and tendencies of the human mind. They are present at birth and later modified marginally. Kriya process which consists of knowing the activities of “I”, allowing the body to function naturally and blasting into the state of equanimity transforms the gunas.

Spiritual experiences are just conditioned reflexes from the belief – systems, knowledge, ideas, imaginations borrowed from dream-merchants of the spiritual market. All the subtle feelings in the spine, buzzing or tickling of energy at the chakras, sounds and other phenomena must be choicelessly ignored for the blissful revelation of the innocence, intelligence, Chaitanya-Nath!

Freedom is the natural state in meditation wherein the contents of the consciousness such as tradition, anxiety, name, position, and attachment, and voluntarily. Freedom lies beyond the field of separative consciousness which comprises fragmentations only.
Discipline comes from constant watching of ‘what is’ which is the false inner division. All disorders emanate from the endless pursuit of ‘what should be’. Coercive discipline is fake order and thus it is still disorder.

In Kriya Yoga, WATCH is the key –

1. W – words, wishes, will.
2. A – anticipations, apprehensions, agitations, activities, anger, antagonism, arrogance, aggression.
3. T – thoughts, tendencies, tensions, tragedies & travails, trials & turmoils, tricks & traps, tradition & truth.
4. C – conjectures, conclusions, conditioned reflexes, cunningness, connings, confusions, callousness and cruelty.
5. H – habits & hang ups, hypothesis & half-truths, hopes & hypocrisies, heart beats.

​Bhakti to end duality:
Vibhakta means divided. Bhakta means not divided or whole or not fragmented. Bhakti is the virtue of Samarpan (surrender) and Samajh (understanding) and Saha-anubhuti (sharing the divine perception).
 
Reference: Kriya Yoga by Shibendu Lahiri