I still keep having surprises: this last weekend a yoga “practitioner” told me that scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gi̅ta̅ are beliefs for which he has no interest at all, that what he cares for is only “practice”.
This is a very common patter. He wanted to convey he wanted only “experiences”. He wanted to consume more experiences. In spite of all what he had experienced over many decades, he clearly said that he wanted more experiences, new experiences, experiences where he could go consume the ”eternal”, “blissful”, “ecstatic” self.
This sounds to me like an advertisement from BMW or Coca-Cola. But it is a very good example on a very important topic about how self-knowledge is gained.
A mystic experience is not required to know the self.
There is a general assumption that we can know the self only through some kind of mystic experience that requires lots of effort, mind control, even ”supra-consciousness”. The goal for many is to reachg this so called supra-consciousness which is a state that goes beyond the mind as if the mind or the self were really separate and very far from the mind or as it were there another consciousness seating apart from consciousness, apart from oneself. For them, the mind is a real problem, so they want to switch it off so they can “experience” the self. When there is no proper understanding and a lot of demagogy, we need to question the fallacies in this kind of reasoning.
Chopping off your head does not solve the problem.
Suppose a person has a headache and goes to the doctor and the doctor says “Cut off your head, your problem will be solved” Do you think this is reasonable? Obviously not.
This is how they want to solve the problem, by chopping off the head with only mind control. And because there are so many wrong notions about the mind, they believe in mind control, which is a very lucrative business and a good way to control people. Everybody will be agree to control the mind, as if the poor mind was the responsible. This is really sad and leads to numerous problems. The mind is an instrument to know and it must be used. What needs to be eradicate are the wrong notions that are in the mind, but not the mind itself!!! And for this we need to know, to employ a means of knowledge using the mind, not cutting off the mind. Read More