Be Fully Aware

We bring you excerpts from SWAMI VENKATESANANDA’s commentary on the conversation between Sage Vasishta and Prince Rama

Cittamindriyasenaya nayalcam -tajjayajjayah/upanadgudhapadasya nanu carmavrtaiva bhuh (6)

Rama: Ignorance doesn’t cease without full control of senses: pray tell me, how does one control the senses?
Vasishta: I shall now describe to you how one gains control over the senses easily by one’s own effort. The Self is indeed pure consciousness only on account of its Self-awareness, it comes to be known as the jiva. Whatever the jiva thinks, it becomes that instantly. Hence, the attempt to gain 

control over the self or the senses should be directed to that Self-awareness. C

 http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-articles/epics/be-fully-aware

Chitta or mind is commander-in-chief and senses are the armed forces. Hence, control of mind is control over senses. If your feet are covered with leather shoes, the entire world is covered with 

leather!
When your awareness is raised to your heart and firmly set in pure consciousness, the mind naturally and effortlessly becomes tranquil. It does not become tranquil by other means like austerities, pilgrimage and rituals. When awareness of Self becomes aware of the experience, then the experience does not leave an impression or memory on consciousness and is immediately ‘forgotten’, as it were. Even an attempt to do this takes you closer to the supreme state of Self-knowledge.

Be firmly rooted in the contented state, in which you know only that to be yours which is obtained in the course of due performance of your own appropriate action. He is a man of Self-conquest who rests in peace and contentment, performing whatever has to be performed and avoiding what should be avoided. His mind is at rest who enjoys observing or watching himself and is disinterested in external events and observations. When one’s awareness is thus firmly held within oneself, the mind abandons its usual restlessness and flows towards wisdom. The wise man attains victory over senses and does not drown in waves of vasanas…and all sorrow comes to an end.

Once you realise pure consciousness…what is bondage and what is liberation? Dehydrated water does not flow; uncaused experience does not create a psychological division. Experience is like space which puts on the different forms of ‘I’ and ‘you’, and which seems to create diversity where none can arise. That which fills this space is pure consciousness, beside which nothing exists.

Jagrat svapnah susuptam ca sarvam turam prabodhinah/Na, vidya vidyate tasya dvayastho pyeva so dvvayah
Vasishta: When there is direct experience of the truth that ‘I am neither the doer nor the action nor the instrument, but I am pure consciousness, and the world is indefinable’, then it is known that thee is self-awareness.

The world appears to be what it is not: hence the self-knowledge that reveals the world is the supreme truth.
In the case of being with several limbs, it is one being with several limbs; even so Brahmn is one being with countless limbs…. The object is but an appearance; consciousness is infinite peace, which exists forever unmodified….

The jiva alternately passes from walking to dreaming and from dreaming to waking states, but is constant, whether awake or asleep. The two states of deep sleep and turiya (the fourth state) are the reality underlying both waking and dream states; the two latter are identical and it is turiya that knows all others. To the enlightened, the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states are only turiya, for in turiya there is no ignorance. Therefore, though there appears to be diversity in it, it is non-dual….

The wise ones do constantly talk about this truth, thus enlightening one another. When they thus contemplate this truth constantly, they gain buddhi-yoga or enlightenment, by which they attain the highest state…and the supreme state is not attained without effort….

Sarvam prapya param bodham vastu svam rupamujjhati/ unastadekavakyatvanna kimcidva param bhavet (164/2)
Vasishta: In infinite consciousness (like the orb of the sun), there are countless particles of light, called jivas.
When one says, “They are in it”, they are considered its parts, but in fact it has no such parts. ‘The many’ abandons its diversity when it attains enlightenment. However, when it (the many) is described as the one, it has not become something other than it was before. It is the same in all conditions and states. It is the content of consciousness or awareness of sage of wisdom. That alone is; nothing else has ever existed. It is with the help of consciousness alone that the ignorant apprehend the object of their own ignorance….

The world is the illusion that appears in consciousness on account of its inherent power. Consciousness alone shines as the water, earth, space and walls. There is nothing in it which can be grasped or held.

Yoga Vasishta