The Search of Self-Knowledge

They are, according to the Veda, four stages - the waking, dream, deep sleep, and the liberated stage (turiya). In the first stage, one is awake to the objective world and is oriented outward. Since one identifies with the gross body complex at this stage, the experiences are also gross. In the dream the self is in-faced. Reactions, responses, and experiences are all self-contained. They do not belong to the area outside of oneself. Next comes deep sleep (sushupti). This stage is free from even dreams. There is no feeling of either separation or identity, the particular or the universal, experiencer or experience. There is only the Atma, in which one has temporarily merged. In the fourth step (Turiya), the individual is no more so. It has attained the basic truth of life and of creation. Those who have reached this step no longer have concern with the individual self. These are four states one experiences, but they are also stages one has to go through in search of Self-Knowledge.

Baba (thought for the day)

Let’s look at that thought for the day. Here we can remember our meditation time as it is Veda, we recognize the same. It is based on the different states of consciousness we know, waking, dream and deep sleep state and the fourth state was called transcendental or just pure consciousness. 

With meditation we develop the fourth state of consciousness and it was explained to us as unlimited and non-changing, non-conceptual, pure consciousness, it is co-existing together with the three other states, as it is unlimited and never changing, we get aware of it also in the usually states we know in the waking, dream and deep sleep state and it gets transformed into cosmic consciousness, that is the waking state together with the non-changing awareness of pure being, the dream state was explained as God consciousness and the deep sleep state is Samadhi and unity consciousness.

We knew it from meditation as seven states of consciousness, it is Veda and we find it in the Patanjali yoga sutras. Baba is telling us here, first that it is Veda. 

We hear it always again that it is Veda and we should never forget it that it is Veda, otherwise, we could get to a wrong mind conclusion and look for it somewhere else what happens actually all the time, it is not unusual, but it is rather unusual to listen and to take note of it and to not forget it.  

It was explained in a logical manner and I always like that about it and it made sense. It is not that easy for the Western mind to get the concept of it and to know what we are talking about if we don't explain it in a systematic way. 

Thus it was clear that with regular meditation we would develop the awareness of the fourth state turiya and it would grow into the other states of consciousness. After we understood the difference between relative and limited and absolute and unlimited, it was no more difficult to understand. 

It made sense to meditate regularly, it was also a great motivation and based on truth and reality of life and not just asking us to do it. We had to accept truth first and that is about all what is relative and conditioned by the mind and if we want to get to a state of sathva, we have to purify the mind and that is only possible with meditation. 

And that is why we also have to accept right action and that is in this moment regular meditation. 

It was that logically explained that we knew we had to go for it and we had to do it and as it is Veda, Veda is actually including all scriptures, Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishad, Sama Veda, Bhagavatam, Patanjali-Yoga-Sutras etc. All is Veda or Vadanta, the end of Veda.

We also have to note that Baba calls it the ‘liberated state’, the fourth state, Turiya.

What is the difference between the liberated state of life and just the experience of pure being? 

With meditation we learnt that there was a progression, a development of consciousness and self-awareness and it is done in time, not only with practice meditation, but also with time. It is constantly growing and expanding consciousness. 

They are, according to the Veda, four stages - the waking, dream, deep sleep, and the liberated stage (turiya).

That we know from our meditation experience, only Baba does explain it a bit differently and we can learn from seeing it both ways.

In the first stage, one is awake to the objective world and is oriented outward.

That is the image of be cosmic consciousness and it is outward directed in the mind and it leads to the insight on the level of the world of objects, the created world we perceive with the senses, what is called the mind and if that is seen together with the non-changing turiya state of pure being we develop with meditation, we have the non-changing, eternal aspect of it and as it is still directed outward and it is objective world oriented, we can tell, it is all God, the outer world is all God as well, it is the manifestation of God and the body of God.

Since one identifies with the gross body complex at this stage, the experiences are also gross.

We know we are identified with the body and the body complex everything around the body what is the mind, but we probably have to get aware that our experiences are on that level gross and we have to see the subtle experience as well to understand the difference. What is a ‘gross experience’ and what is a subtle experience? 

We have to think it over and distinguish between gross and subtle and we have to see it in our own life to be able to understand it, otherwise, it reminds on a theoretical level. 

But let’s see what Baba is telling us next.

In the dream the self is in-faced. Reactions, responses, and experiences are all self-contained. They do not belong to the area outside of oneself.

Now we are on a more subtle level. How do you understand it right that the self is in-faced? Do you have experiences with that in-faced dream state? 

He is telling us here that reactions, responses and experiences are self-contained. Doesn’t it sound familiar?

Atma that reacts reflects and resounds. But how do we experience it as different from the mind and the outward level of the mind into sense perception and sense-knowledge? 

Baba tell us that he is the man who is in our dream to awake us. That are the subtle experiences and they are that subtle that if the mind is too strong or too bad, we will probably ignore it as dream only and not listen. 

But if we notice it and we listen how do we get the meaning of it. It does make sense that we cannot just interpret it, if we do interpret it we are on the mind level. 

Therefore, we have to actually approach it a different way and as he is the man in our dream to awake us if we listen to him, he is the same man who is in our dream to awake us but now it is reflected in his words. 

The first self-experience I had long time ago in the dream with the higher self is explained like that, because I never really understood why it was in the dream, but he is telling us why, because it is always self-contained. 

Therefore, the higher self was in the dream and I was trying to get an answer for so long and we listen to Baba's words and he tells it and now it makes sense like it would have been always like that. 

He also tells us why it is like that. 

For me it began with watching and first that were only thoughts and after it was on the emotional level and still it really didn't belong to the self, but it was all outside of the self and that is how the watching went on because it had to be a self-experience to be the higher self and it was in the dream what is explained by his words here. 

It was an the insight in the dream as light, beauty and love. 

That was actually a great insight, but I didn’t know Baba at that time, I was only in my twenties and later when I met with Baba one day in mediation there was that ‘I am that’ in the air. I thought that it means he is ‘that’ same self, but I noticed also that it was not enough. I had to get aware of it and as it was outer Darshan, it was standing in the air, it was Darshan and it is subtle, but it had to be in the dream to make sense. 

They do not belong to the area outside of oneself.

It seems here is the biggest confusion going on. The dreams do not belong to the area outside of oneself. If we have a Baba dream, we have to see it as part of our self and we have to see it that way. 

My ex had a Baba dream and Baba said to him in his dream that I had to go and make peace with him. That was strange. The feeling was good, because it was Baba and a Baba call and it was even better, because he listened to it, but the reason why he listened to it was not good, but that I didn't understand in that moment, but I noticed there was something alarmingly wrong. 

The Baba dream was good, because it was a Baba call and the call was such that he had to listen to it what felt even better, but in his mind was not the slightest notion that this area does not belong to the outside of oneself and he projected the meaning of making peace with Baba on the outside and that made it ridiculous, it is not possible on the outside and it had do do with his mind state and he had no notion of understanding peace and that was the reflection of it. 

Baba is telling us that if we want to make the experience of ‘pure love’ we have to first understand peace, second we have to accept truth and if we accept truth, we have to accept right action and only if we have all three things together, truth, right action and peace, we can get to the experience of pure love.

We have to understand peace and he didn't understand it at all. We purify the mind with meditation, that makes only sense if we accept truth and that the mind is not only individual, but also collective and that we are responsible for the impurities in the mind and therefore, if we do Sadhana or meditate, we purify the mind and not only our mind, but also the collective consciousness. If there is too much stress, consciousness is loaded with stress and with meditation we purify consciousness and not only our consciousness, but also collective consciousness. Peace or world peace is only possible from the inside and it is growing with consciousness, therefore, if we meditate and purify our consciousness we also take care of the others and we get rid of stress and strain in consciousness, if there is too much stress it gets into war. 

At that time we had quite a bit of riots  here in the city and they were all assembled at the same place. Once I arrived by train at the main train station and when I went outdoors the place where those people gathered, what we avoided to get into, there was dirt in the air and it was above the place like a dark cloud.

After watching for some time, we began to see moods and that is how it was in the air like a big mood only it was the mood of different people and it was the result of riots and a crowd of people expressing their discomfort.

The dream state together with pure consciousness was actually called God-consciousness.

We can only see it in the light of our own practice and experience, the first state is concentration, it is the focus on the mantra, and it is subjective, the second state is contemplation and the object growing in the light of the higher self and it is about insights and the man who is in our dream to awake us. But to get the meaning of it as we may not speculate about it with our mind which is on another state of consciousness, it is outward directed only, we have to listen to his words and by thinking it over we can absorb the wisdom and by that cognize the wisdom in his words. 

The dream state is about inner view and insights and we also have to find a way to absorb the wisdom and that is done by reflection. We listen to Baba’s words like we do now and think it over and by that it takes form and it begins to make sense and we get the image of it and the details and that is how the second level, the dream state of our awareness develops and expands.   

Next comes deep sleep (sushupti). This stage is free from even dreams. There is no feeling of either separation or identity, the particular or the universal, experiencer or experience. There is only the Atma, in which one has temporarily merged. In the fourth step (Turiya), the individual is no more so. It has attained the basic truth of life and of creation. Those who have reached this step no longer have concern with the individual self.

And we have the third state and that is deep sleep, and there are no dreams, no feeling and no experiencer or experience. And how do we understand it? During our mediation we had a state without thoughts and not time and no space and when we got aware of thoughts again we knew we were back in the mind. 

What is different to the other states? The first is directed outwards and therefore, it was called cosmic consciousness. The second is directed inside into dream and subtle awareness and we have to be directed to God only and listen to him, he reflects that level of consciousness and the mind cannot get there. But we get aware of the light of the Atma, we have to listen to him, he is talking to us on that level and that was called God-consciousness.

And the third state, it is Atma, but there is no feeling of separation or identity. And how do we experience it? By the absence of it.  

We knew it as transcendental awareness, we meditate and our mind is gone, we forget time and space and thoughts and when thoughts come back, we are again back in the mind. That is what we learnt with meditation, we take the mantra effortlessly and if there are thoughts, we allow them to come, only when getting aware that we are in thoughts, we go back to the mantra, and thoughts are part of mediation. That is how we keep the attention on the mantra effortlessly and it was relaxing and good. 

We do it twenty minutes and it doesn’t matter how the meditation was, because it is mostly about purification of the mind, but it matters that we feel good afterwards, relaxed and full of energy.

What we had learnt with mediation is that these states are not developing one after another, but they are co-existing and when we transcend the mind we are in that transcendental awareness, only we have just temporarily merged like in deep sleep.

There is no feeling of either separation or identity, the particular or the universal, experiencer or experience. There is only the Atma, in which one has temporarily merged.

We have no notion of time and space, everything is gone, and it is of no issue if it is particular of universal, we don't think in that state and it is also not important if it is about experience or the experiencer.

There is only the Atma, in which one has temporarily merged.

That is what we called with transcendental awareness, pure being and we learn to put our own experience into words and that is how we are able to talk about it, if we don’t do that, we are not able to talk about it and feel like a baby when it is about wisdom and that is not a great feeling.

We get aware of it what is the same and what we have already experienced and how to look at it in Baba’s words and we need to do that to know what we are doing. If we don’t do it, we just don’t know what we are doing. If we don’t listen to him, we cannot absorb the wisdom and if we don’t see it in our own life, we cannot understand it.  

In the meantime he told us that Atma, the higher self, Brahman and Om are all the same. That is how it is mirrored, even if I had that experience a long time ago, in the moment he reflects on it for me it is inside clear that it is the same and why, it is all present in him telling that it is the same, it is based on Veda, he is the embodiment of Veda. 

After we don't need to search for the self-knowledge anymore, we got the answer in his words. It is reflected in his words and the inner process of our own self it to get aware that his words and our own self-experience match, that it is the same, we have to recognize in his words our own self-experience. 

These are four states one experiences, but they are also stages one has to go through in search of Self-Knowledge.

The last sentence is important and do you know why?

Baba talks about the four states one experiences. We know them as the four states of consciousness and we talked constantly about it during our meditation time and tried to get the meaning of it in putting it into practice, the difference between that and what Baba is telling us now is that we practiced meditation and we didn't meet people who said that did it for whatever reason and they actually never did it. 

It was all based on practice only and getting the experience of those four states of consciousness, we know the difference between being awake and in the mind or listening to the man who comes in our dream to awake us and deep sleep and transcendental awareness, because we have practiced it and we will find that with every person who actually meditated only not with those who tell they do it, but they didn't do it, because for some reason he just wanted to take advantage of it. Actually, he was in my dream as a caveman and that is the best expression for him and he would never begin to meditate no matter what, because his mind is the prison and he is in that cave and nothing gets in and nothing gets out, it is actually a sad state of mind. He also doesn't understand it, for him it is as clear as mud and that is also what Baba showed us before he left the body, we were in the dream in a mud hole, only I didn't know yet the expression that it is as clear as mud or it is all Greek to him. There was no way of understanding, no way of listening, there is just a mud hole and that is the nature of mud, it cannot be understood. 

He tells us also that we have to go through those stages in search of self-knowledge.

Do you have experience with the search of self-knowledge? 

What is the difference in our experience between searching or restlessness in the mind and search of self-knowledge?

These are four states one experiences, but they are also stages one has to go through in search of Self-Knowledge.

What Baba is telling us here it very important. He confirms that we have to go through those different stages in search for self-knowledge. Why it is that important, those three stages are three different levels. The outer we know as we live it day by day in the mind and it expands as we think it is all God and there is an unchangeable and immortal value in it, but it is still outward directed. 

The second is not gross, but subtle and inside directed and it is the man who is in our dream to awake us and we cannot understand it with the mind, because that is the wrong level and it leads to level confusion, we have to direct it inside first and we have to listen to the man who is in our dream to awake us, we have to listen to his words, what we do here in thinking it over, he will tell us all about the second state in the dream state and we get the meaning not by the mind, but by reflection it is like looking in a mirror and it is mirror writing, we cannot get the meaning and in listening to Baba's words we hold in front of that mirror again a mirror and we look in his mirror and now it turns around and we can actually read it. 

That is the search of self-knowledge? It as about self-knowledge and that is the level of the dream state. That is why we are listening to him and that is why we are thinking it over and seeing it in our own life, it is what we are doing here.

Here and Now. 

We listen to Baba’s words, we related it to our own experience, past or present, whatever, it is our experience, we see it in the light of our past meditation and we get aware of it in the light of Baba’s words.

And if we are not aware of it, what happens?

People sing Bhajans and look for it somewhere else, we find something else to find it somewhere else, whatever that is, we don't get answers and we look for it somewhere else. It means we have not yet realized how we get the right answers on the second state, the dream state of consciousness. When we listen to Baba's words as we do here and think it over, it reflects and we remember the dreams and that is how it grows and expands consciousness. 

This is a very important message in that thought for the day. If we listen and think it over we get to the conclusion that we have to go through all those stages of consciousness and it makes us aware that we have to be aware of the difference of awareness on all those three levels. That is the search of self-knowledge.

if we don't know we either don’t search at all or we search on the wrong place or we search in something else or only music and in other activities, but in reality we have not understood how to listen to Baba, because it is on the dream state level, that belongs always to one-self and it is about insights and to read the insights and to know what it means, we have to listen to him. 

If we understand peace right and world peace, we know we have to meditate and purify consciousness and that way we also help the consciousness to grow and expand and we can accept that only if we practice. We have those three things, truth, right action and peace, and we can make the experience of ‘pure love’ and that is the essence of Baba, without pure love there is no devotion. We cannot see ourselves as devotees and have no idea about ‘pure love’ and no interest in pure love and in fact we just go there, because we know people or it arranges us in some way. It is cheap we keep good company and whatever, it said in the insight that he took only advantage of it. 

Even if he goes for five weeks a year in the ashram, it is not with the purpose of pure love, he has not even a second thought about ‘pure love’, he just thinks about ‘think and get rich’. As it seems not to come to his mind that it is about ‘pure love’, even if everybody else goes for that reason only as we would think as Baba is teaching ‘pure love’, for him it means he can probably enjoy it and relax more and take advantage of and that arranges him, it is a mind arrangement, but in the insight it got clear, it is because he is a caveman.

In the dream the self is in-faced. Reactions, responses, and experiences are all self-contained. They do not belong to the area outside of oneself.

What was reflected is that he has no notion of it and for him it is as clear as mud that we have to understand peace first. In the dream experiences as self-contained, it reflected his state of mind and that is clear now, but crystal clear and not as clear as mud. 

He doesn’t understand peace and therefore, if we don't understand peace, we don't know how to accept truth and we don't know how to get into right action. 

He doesn't think about right action and truth, he thinks only about 'think and get rich' and he is not even aware of it that he is that strange that every word he tells seems stupid and he lives like in a cloud, he doesn't get anything what is said, he is a caveman, he lives in his cave and there is nothing coming in and nothing going out. 

It is not the right motivation, it is mud only and it has not changed. 

These are four states one experiences, but they are also stages one has to go through in search of Self-Knowledge.

Baba tells us here that we have to go through those stages in search for Self-Knowledge, we have to know the difference of those stages and that is totally missing in our awareness in the West as much as we can see. 

We only get it if we listen to him and think it over and see it in our own life so that we are able to absorb and after all in the end we could even get there to be able to understand why it feels stupid when we try to see the in-faced level of only self to the outside level of the mind. 

We should discriminate and make a difference between stages in our consciousness and in our search for self-knowledge?