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These are the latent impressions or subconscious mental footprints left by past experiences, thoughts, and actions. They are the deepest layer of pre-disposition. They drive a person's immediate reactions, desires, and habitual behaviour, creating a cyclical pattern of action and experience. Overcoming these Vasana is essential for liberation.
Pre-dispositions acquired by Past Karma - The pre-dispositions are roughly classified into three groups – Aparadha (Fault), Karma (Action) and Kama (Desire). The first group is diffidence towards the teachings of the Guru and the holy books. Persons of such group have illusion; for how can knowledge make a person help his emancipations? They have many doubts and wrong notions. The second group – victims of past actions, unable to enter the stage of contemplation necessary for annihilating the vasanas. Their minds are too much cramped with the predispositions to be susceptible to subtle truths. The third group is the most common, consisting of the victims of desire who are obsessed with the sense of duty (i.e. the desire to work for some ends). Desires are too numerous to count, since they rise up endlessly like waves in the ocean. Each desire is too vast to be satisfied, because it is insatiable; too strong to be resisted; and too subtle to be eluded. That person who is shielded by desirelessness (dispassion) and safe from the wiles of the monster of desire, can alone rise to happiness. A person affected by one or more of the aforesaid three dispositions cannot get at the truth although it is self-evident. The first of them (i.e. fault) comes to an end on respectfully placing one’s faith in holy books and the Master. The second (i.e. action) may be ended only by divine grace, which may descend on the person in this birth or in any later incarnation. There is no other hope for it. The third must be gradually dealt with by dispassion, discrimination, worship of God, study of holy scriptures, learning from the wise, investigation into the Self and so on. Those are best who are free from all of the vasanas, and particularly from the least trace of that of action. If free from the fault of mistrust of the teachings of the Master, the Vasana due to desire, which is not a very serious obstruction to realisation, is destroyed by the practice of contemplation. Disposition need not be very marked in this case. Such people need not repeatedly engage in the study of the scriptures or the receiving of instructions from the Master, but straightaway pass into meditation and fall into Samadhi, the consummation of highest good. They live evermore as Jivanmuktas (emancipated even while alive). Sages with subtle and clear intellect have not considered it worthwhile to eradicate their desire, etc. by forcing other thoughts to take place, because desires do not obstruct realisations. A man only slightly affected by the two vasanas – mind clings to the ignorance of the necessity of work and person who has the fault of marked indifference to or misunderstanding of the teachings, and much more so by desires or ambitions, will by repeated hearing of the holy truth, discussion of the same, and contemplation on it, surely reach the goal, though only with considerable difficulty and after a long lapse of time. The last class and the least among Sages are those whose practice and discipline are not perfect enough to destroy mental predispositions. Their minds are still active and the Sages are said to be associated with their minds. They are barely Jnanis and not Jivanmuktas as are the other two classes. They appear to share the pleasures and pains of life like any other man and will continue to do so till the end of their lives. They will be emancipated after death. Desire for Emancipation – The most important of the qualifications is the desire for emancipation. The desire must be strong and abiding, in order that it may bear fruit. Aspirant must run after emancipation to the exclusion of all other pursuits. Such an effort is fruitful and is preceded by indifference to all other attainments. Association with the wise, divine grace and dispassion are the prime factors for attaining the highest aim of life. The aspirant’s accumulated merits, reinforced by association with the wise and by divine grace, make him persist in the course, and gradually take him step by step to the highest pinnacle of happiness. Steps to attain Emancipation – Proportionately slight effort is enough for erasing slight vasanas. He whose mind has been made pure by good deeds in successive past incarnations, gain supreme results quite out of proportion to the little effort he may make (as with Janaka). Person with dense vasanas accumulated in past incarnations, does not suffice to override one’s deep-rooted ignorance. Such a one is obliged to practice nidhidhyasana or control of mind and contemplation in successive births for effective and final realisation. Differences in quality of mind – The mind is the soil in which the seed, namely Parabdha, sprouts into pleasures and pains of life.
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The world is changing every moment and its appearance is new every moment and its appearance is new every moment and so it is born every moment. The universe is the aggregate of the matter – mobile and immobile. The atomists maintain that the universe is made up of five elements – earth, air, fire, water and ether which are permanent and of things like a pot, a cloth etc. are transient. It is absurd to say that the insentient atoms of the matter began creation when the equilibrium of the three forces Sattva, Rajas and Tamas was disturbed. But change is not possible without an intelligent cause. Hence none of the systems can satisfactorily account for creation. The universe must have a creator, and He must be an intelligent principle. Creation of the Universe & Consciousness The Lord play with the universe. Lord is unbounded consciousness. There is no place beyond consciousness. consciousness is the only existence, covering the whole universe. Universe cannot be conceived without consciousness. the supreme being is eternally existing even before the birth of the universe. His creation has been without any material aids. Therefore, God is supreme, perfect, pure and self-contained. The creation of universe is not an object apart, but has originated only as an image on the surface of the mirror of the Supreme Being. Mental creations of daydreamers are full of people, life and work, similar to this. Note how daydreams and hallucinations are clearly pictured in the mind even in the absence of any reality behind them. The place of the objects is taken by the peculiar imaginative quality of the mind. When such imagination is deep, it takes shape as creation; consciousness is pure and unblemished in the absence of imagination. Vishvamitra a great rishi, is reputed to have created a duplicate universe similar to the existing universe. Time and space are projected from consciousness. Time and space are the factors of division in the world. Truth can never change its nature, whereas untruth is always changing. So, world has changeful nature. The gross body is being mistaken for crystal clear consciousness by mere force of habit. The remedy lies in change of outlook. The Core Assertion Everything that exists is a direct expression of the Supreme Consciousness. consciousness is pure and self-contained; it does not require an external object to create the image. The world has no substance in them outside of the cognising factor, viz. Intelligence or consciousness. · Intelligence as the Substratum: The visible, phenomenal world (the Cosmos) is like a reflection or a moving image that appears on the surface of the perfectly pure, self-luminous mirror of Abstract Intelligence. · The Analogy of Reflection: Just as a reflection is inseparable from the mirror it appears in, the Cosmos is inseparable from the Intelligence that is its foundation. It does not require a separate material cause, as the Intelligence itself transforms, projects, and withdraws the universe. Eliminating Dualism The chapter systematically refutes the idea that the universe could be an inert, external creation: · The Causal Principle: Since any action must originate from an intelligent principle (a cause must be intelligent to produce a meaningful effect), the vast, organized universe cannot have an unintelligent, dead substance as its primal cause. · Consciousness is All: The text affirms that the Supreme Reality is a pure, eternal, and unlimited state of Self-luminous Intelligence. This Reality alone exists. The perceived variety is merely the dynamic aspect of this Intelligence (called Shakti or) unfolding itself. The Path of Realization The ultimate teaching derived from this chapter is that Self-realization is simple because the Reality is not distant or hidden.
The core teaching in the Tripura Rahasya to "kill the thoughts" is not about a forceful suppression, but about shifting your focus to the Source of the thoughts and realizing the non-reality of the mind itself. This is primarily done through Self-Enquiry (Vichara), a method highly valued in this text (and by Ramana Maharshi).
The text emphasizes that restraining the thoughts is the best way to achieve the highest state. This is accomplished not through battle, but through realization. The key instructions to the mind are:
The truth is that there is one reality which is consciousness in the abstract and also transcendental, irradiating the whole universe in all its diversity from its own being, by virtue of its self-sufficiency, which we call Maya or Shakti or Energy. Ignorance lies in the feeling of differentiation of the creatures from the creator. The individuals are only details in the same reality. Sleep is said to be the state of ignorance.
Absolute Consciousness is dense and impenetrable but illumines the waking and dream states just as the mirror remains unaffected by the passage of different images. The consciousness displays externally as ego which manifests as Avidya (ignorance). Pure intelligence contaminated with inanimate excrescences is called Jiva or the individual, whose faculty for discrimination is consistent with its self-imposed limitations and is called mind. In the transition from the Absolute to the individual, space is the first veil cast off. The clear, concentrated Self becomes pure, tenuous, susceptible space in which hard, dense, crowded, or slender things are conceived. They manifest as the five elements of which the body is composed. The individual then encases himself in the body like a silkworm in its cocoon. Thus, the Absolute shines as awareness in the body (namely, I am the body’). Just as the light of the lamp spreads out through holes made in the cover, so also the light of intelligence extends from within, through the senses, to the external world. The rays of light are imperceptible in ether, but when they impinge on matter the objects become visible by the reflection of the light rays on their surface. Similarly, consciousness appears to disclose the presence of objects in space by unveiling them from the ignorance surrounding them. Realisation of the Self subdues the restless mind which is the dynamic aspect of consciousness. The sense of duality persists because there is the conviction of the purposefulness of the objective world. But such purposefulness and even durability is experienced in dreams. Insentient Part of Consciousness - Consciousness, the sentient is the unchanging subject/Witness/screen of all experience, while the Ego is a particular, changing, and limiting thought (the "I-thought") that operates within and is illuminated by that Consciousness. I-thought is Shakti Tattva and the consciousness is Shiva Tattva. After the differentiation is made manifest by “will force” the insentient parts (body, mind and objects) predominate. The insentient predominance is called Maya Shakti. Ego “I” is of two kinds - qualified and unqualified. Qualified means limitations. The insentient phase, Prakriti is tripartite according to its functions – ego, intellect and mind. It is influenced by the three qualities – Sattva (brightness), Rajas (activity) and Tamas (darkness). Sattva becomes five senses of perception; Rajas becomes five senses of actions and Tamas becomes earth, air, fire, water and ether. Realisation of Consciousness –
Consciousness - Self is ever-shining, unparticularized, unblemished, ordinary existence – self aware and self-sufficient. Self displays diversities of phenomena as a mirror its reflections. Self is alone and single and there is nothing beyond. Abstract Intelligence contracts at the stimuli to modification and becomes limited. Otherwise, it is infinite and unbroken. Being within, the universe cannot be different from consciousness. Abstract Intelligence, being only one, yet manifests as the diverse objects of creation. The two entities, the cogniser and cognised object, are distinct and separate. Of these, the cogniser, namely consciousness, may be self-luminous, illumining the objects. Mind divested of thoughts becomes pure and is identical with the Self and further, that alone destroys ignorance. Liberation and bondage are only attitudes of the mind, according as it is unmodified or modified, respectively. Note how the mind unmodified in sleep, remaining single and blank, is later modified by dream and manifests as the dream world. Consciousness is one and non-dual, but shines as if diversified like the clean surface of a mirror reflecting variegated colours. There can be no images in the absence of a mirror, for the images are not apart from the mirror. Just as the cogniser, cognition and the cognised are identical with the mind in dream, so also the seer, the sight and the phenomena are identical with the mind in the wakeful state. |
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