Awaken yukti: listen, contemplate, radiate!
When intelligence is focused on transforming your dreams into reality, it is shakti, the power of visualization.
When the same intelligence is used to understand that reality itself is a dream, it is yukti, the power of discrimination.
When yukti happens in us, we have taken a quantum leap from the plane of shakti and buddhi. As long as we are playing with shakti and buddhi, we are working on the assumption that whatever we see around us is real. Whether we try to transform or try to accept, we have not understood that the stuff we are working with is itself an illusion!
Yukti always happens only when we are tired of playing with shakti and buddhi. This can happen in two ways.
The first is what I call the depression of failure.
Usually, it is only when the limits of our shakti and buddhi are tested again and again, that we get ready to drop both. When we realize that we are neither able to fulfil all our dreams nor accept the reality, suddenly a new intelligence is awakened in us.
We get out of the game.
In some rare cases, when all your dreams become reality, suddenly the realization comes, that what you think of as reality is nothing but your dream! When there is nothing left to aim at, suddenly we see the futility of the whole process.
This is the depression of success!
Even in your normal life, if all your dreams are constantly fulfilled, if you don't have to struggle to achieve any of your desires, suddenly you will feel empty! You find that whatever you wanted has been achieved, but that sense of fulfillment for which you did everything is still not there.
A small story:
A man dies in a car accident.
When he wakes up, he finds himself in a beautiful place. Many celestial beings are standing around him and asking him, 'What do you want? You only have to ask!'
The man orders food and drink, all kinds of things. Everything is immediately delivered, and he enjoys himself immensely.
The next day he asks for expensive clothes, a palace, beautiful women. The instant he asks, everything is given.
The third day, he is busy searching for things to ask! Somehow he asks for this and that, and everything is instantly delivered. Whatever he asks for is given.
How many days can you live like this? You will die out of sheer boredom, because whatever you can think of is there.
After a week, he tells one of the celestial beings, 'I am getting a bit bored of being in heaven! Just for a change, can I go to hell and see how it feels?'
The being asks him, 'Where do you think you are right now?'
Be very clear, if all your desires are fulfilled, you are in hell, because there is nothing left to hope for!
When you realize that even if all your desires are fulfilled, it cannot bring lasting inner fulfillment, you take the first step on the spiritual path.
This is the expression of yukti.
Traditionally, this path is known as jnana-marga (the path of wisdom) or viveka-marga (the path of discrimination).
In the scriptures it is said: vidyaayaamrutam ashnutey (through wisdom, we can taste immortality). Right knowledge can take you directly into the space of consciousness.
In the tradition of Vedanta, the process of discrimination is said to happen in three stages: shravana, manana and nidhidhyaasana. Shravana means intensely listening to the Truth; manana means contemplating on it and internalizing it; nidhidhyaasana means living it, radiating it in one's life.
It is not necessary that every seeker will need to go through all the three processes to take the leap into consciousness. For a really ripe seeker, just the very process of listening to the Truth from his Guru, or from the holy scriptures, is enough! Just by hearing the Truth, he can experience it, he can enter that space. That is why so much importance is given to shravana, right listening. Just hearing the truth can bring tremendous inner healing.