Speaker: Mind has stored so much that it does not even know that how much it has stored. There are two portions of its storage. One part is where you know that I have stored something. The other part is where you have stored it but you have forgotten that it has been stored. Now what is happening? This is like a place where you keep all your stuff. You brought some vegetables, brought lots of vegetables, you are like the mind, accumulative, always in a hurry to accumulate, afraid that there might be a famine, there might be a curfew. ‘I will not get vegetables’. That is what the mind is always thinking: hold, store. So you keep on bringing vegetables even then when there no vegetables are needed. Your house is full of vegetables and because the refrigerator and other places can hold only as much of vegetables as there is space, you keep your vegetables at very unseemly places, under the bed. Wherever you find space, you put some vegetables.
You are always storing vegetables. So much is there that some of it is remembered and some of which is forgotten. What will happen to that which is forgotten? It starts rotting. Now the house is stinking but you don’t even know that why it is stinking. That is subconscious. It is stinking because you kept something in it and forgot and that may not have happened just over the last thirty years of existence, your parents may have kept it somewhere and now it has been given to you through your genes. May be it happened one thousand years back and just the flow of DNA has brought it to you, but surely somebody forgot. And because the mind of the mankind is one, and because the mind of the universe is one, and because there can be only one mind, it has come to you just as it comes to everybody else. And your life is stinking and you don’t even know why. That is the subconscious. Now how do you find out that why is your house smelling so bad? What is the house?
Listeners(everyone): This mind.
Speaker: How do you find out that why is it smelling? I have not done anything, yet it is smelling. When it stinks you don’t run away from the house. You don’t just take up an artificial deodorant, spray it around and think that now the smell is gone for some time. You don’t just start making an argument that it is not a stink and that it is a rose flower smell. Basic honesty is needed. ‘Yes! it is stinking and let me go close to it. I will not run away from it’. When you go close to the stink, where do you reach? The source of the stink. And when you come close to the source, what you can do? Then you can clean it. That is the unconscious.
The unconscious can never be seen directly but it’s effects can be experienced in life. You cannot see so it’s quite puzzling. You cannot see but the effects are there. You are unnecessarily afraid and you ask yourself that why am I afraid. You don’t find any reason. People are afraid of lizards. Now lizards have done nothing to you. You are 35 years old and you can’t remember whether any lizard harmed you, yet you are afraid of lizards. There is a reason. Lizards represent reptiles. When you were a monkey sitting upon a tree, there was this large python who also was upon that tree and it attacked the monkey. Or, you were a bird once and a snake came and ate away your eggs. And now you are afraid of lizards since that time. It is not only today that reptiles are scaring you. You would always be scared of reptiles. Are you getting it? You would always be because it is all coming from there, it is coming from the genetic material itself. So, you have to go close to it and see that you are no more laying eggs and you are no more a python. Put the lizard in front of you on a table and talk to it. ‘Look at yourself and look at me. Is it befitting that I am afraid of you. You should be afraid of me.’ You should talk to the lizard. Slowly you will find that the fear will be gone. You are no more a pigeon and she is no more a python. So why should you be afraid?
Listener 1: So confronting the situation is one way to let the fear go off. But we are so fearful that we don’t want to confront it.
Speaker: There you need faith.There you need faith that even if I confront it, nothing can go wrong. Let me confront, nothing can go wrong.
Listener 2: This is called desensitization.
Speaker: This is called Faith. Simple or nothing. You have trust on something and faith on nothing. Trust always has an object to trust. Faith has no object. That is why trust can be broken and faith cannot be broken. That object of trust can deceive you, faith has no object so you cannot be deceived. So difficult! Right? Like hanging without a rope. No object to hang to it, still hanging. You see if you are hanging by a rope the rope can be broken. If you are hanging without a rope there is no fear. Nothing can be broken. That is faith.
I don’t have faith on anybody. I am just faithful. Faith finds its expression. It is like individuality, it finds an expression. It ceases the moment and expresses itself. Faith is again like individuality, that there is nothing you can arouse in them. Faith, like individuality and like core, is there. I am asking you that are you the agents who can calm their minds down, and let faith be expressed? I am not asking you to become centres of faith. I am not saying that students should have faith upon you. Don’t get me wrong. I am asking you that is your presence of the quality that it will bring their minds to faith? Does your presence have that quality? That is what I am asking.
-Excerpts from a Clarity session held at Advait office.
