Freedom
from Experiences
As human beings, and especially as seekers, each day we go through a
great variety of experiences. If nothing else we go through the experience of waking,
dreaming and deep sleep. We know hunger, we know weariness, we know desires,
and hopefully there is some contentment, perhaps exaltation. All these we can
experience during the course of a day. But who is it that experiences all these
things? It is "I". "I" am the experiencer.
When we realize that "I" is the experiencer, then we have a
certain distance from the experience, freedom from the experience. We are not
so concerned about the quality of the experience, whether it is pleasant or
unpleasant. But if we identify with the experience, then naturally we want the
experiences to be pleasant. Indeed, we will try to manipulate our life and the
lives of others so that we get more pleasant experiences. We will try to
manipulate our life and the lives of others to avoid unpleasant experiences. We
become convinced that the experiences are who we are. If we have unpleasant
experiences, we feel depressed. If we have pleasant experiences, we feel
exalted. In other words, we are controlled by our experience. And that is
bondage.
Freedom is to know that we are the witness of all experience, pleasant
and unpleasant. Sadhana is the practice of freeing ourselves from experience.
It is not that the experience disappears, but we no longer identify with it in
the same way—because we recognize that no matter how the experience may change,
we are always that which is aware of the experience, that which never changes.
This then is the essence of all our spiritual practices—a detachment
from experience and attachment to that which knows the experience.
"Detach, attach," Gurudev said. Lord Krishna said that the solution
to the control of the mind is dispassion and practice—dispassion for all our
experience, pleasant or unpleasant, and the practice of being that which is aware
of all experience. Japa too puts our mind on God; when we are repeating God’s
name, we get a sense of space and detachment from our normal experience.
Worship, study, enquiry all serve the same purpose—to give us a sense of the
reality of that which we can never grasp with the mind and a dispassion for the
contents of our mind.
We can never solve our problems within the mind. It is dispassion for
the mind and its experiences, be they pleasant or unpleasant, that is the key.
They say, "Let go. Let God. Surrender and trust." And Gurudev put it
so well, "Surrender everything to the Lord. Place your ego at His feet and
be at ease."
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