Interaction
picking up exactly the same product!
Do you know, in marketing terminology, there is a phrase called creating a need. Imagine! Their job is to first create a need that you don't feel right now, and then plug in their product to fill that need! This is the cerebral layer at work.
Of course, it is not as if the cerebral layer has not created anything positive. It is entirely responsible for scientific knowledge, for modern technology, for all the comforts we have in our daily lives. These things are useful within limits – as long as you're in control of them, not the other way around! TV is neither good nor bad. The solution is not breaking the TV. It is simply having the sense to know when to switch it off.
Not just the external TV, but the internal TV too, the TV that is constantly playing in your mind. When you learn to put off the TV inside, your body intelligence will automatically start functioning.
So when our Zen monk says When I eat, I eat. When I sleep, I sleep., this is what he means. Whatever you do, do with totality.
(from audience) You mean, single-mindedness? Ahh! No, I would say, no-mindedness! When your thoughts disappear, your intelligence is awakened.
A beautiful mantra, the Gayathri, says: (THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM chants)
Om bhūrbhuvaḥ svaḥ Tat saviturvareṇyaḿ Bhargo devasya dhīmahi Dhiyo yo naḥ prachodayāt
The running translation of this mantra: May we meditate upon the Consciousness, the Energy which awakens the buddhi, the Intelligence. May that very Energy help us in contemplating upon it! When your mind is switched off, your Intelligence starts working.
(from audience) You mean, a silence in the mind…
Yes, that's the apt word. It can be described by the Sanskrit word, mauna. Mauna is not silence as we use it today; it means a positive silence.
When you know how to be silent, there will no longer be any need for me! You will start healing yourself… in fact, you will find that diseases themselves don't appear anymore.
Just observe your body. When any deep desire is awakened in you, you automatically start feeling uneasy with your body. Have you observed this? Whenever you experience kama, krodha, lobha (lust, anger, greed), you start feeling restless. When you're not at ease with yourself, you are dis-eased. Naturally disease descends on you.
No disease is an uninvited guest. You have brought them upon yourself with the greatest care! With immoderate eating and sleeping habits, neglect of physical health, too many expectations, we all practically force diseases to visit our bodies. But when the guest finally arrives, you say, What have I done to deserve this fate?
(from audience) But we don't realize that we are doing this..! Exactly. We don't invite them consciously. But we are so unaware, that we don't even realize that we are doing our best to get these diseases.
A beautiful stotra in Tamil sung by Ramana Maharishi:
Aimbula kalvar agattinil poogumbodu Agattil nee illayo Arunachala? (When the thieves of the five senses entered my mind O Arunachala! O Shiva! Were you not within?) In the same way, when these outer desires enter our Buddhi,they can do it only when we are sleeping, when we are unconscious.
But Swamiji, how do very young children also get diseases? In children, only the conscious mind is not fully functioning. Unconscious instincts are at work from the moment of birth. These unconscious instincts can also invite disease.
What about hereditary diseases? How can we be responsible for that?
If I tell you that you yourself choose your parents when you enter the body, can you believe it? These are all deep truths, 'mystical science', you could call it! The truth is, you choose your parents – and so in a way, you are inviting their diseases upon yourself.
So now let us see, how not to invite these diseases.
First, what is this cerebral layer?
(from audience) The subconscious? Yes, that is right. What is meant by the subconscious?
(from audience) What we are not conscious about! Meaning…?