FROM GROSS TO SUBTLE MIND
“Our notions about ourselves are a mixture of truth and untruth or error.” So say the sages.
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Initially, each one of us feels positive that we know ourselves. It does not go home even if a great sage points it out. Only when our gross mind is turned into a subtle one, can we perceive and acknowledge that we do not know ourselves as we truly are.
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The following passage quoted from Maha Yoga, gives a picturesque demonstration of the gross mind’s situation and how the great sage of Arunachala subdues it, thus turning the questioner’s gross mind into a subtle one.
“Once a few followers of a faith which vehemently condemns the use of idols, came to the sage and started questioning him. Their aim was to obtain from him, an admission that it is wrong to worship God in an idol. Their spokesman asked the sage, “Has God any form?” Bhagavan replied, “Who says God has form?” The questioner then said, “If God is formless, then is it not wrong to worship Him in an idol?’ The sage said, “Let God alone. Tell me if you have a form or not?” The questioner promptly answered, ‘Yes, I have a form, as you see.’ The sage said, ‘What? Are you the body, which is about three and a half cubits in height, dark in colour and mustachioed and bearded’? ‘Yes’, came the answer. ‘Are you this in dreamless sleep also?’ ‘Of course! For on waking, I find myself to be the same.’ ‘Also when the body dies?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘If so, why does not the body say to the people when they are preparing to take it away for burial, “No, you must not take me away. This house is mine and I want to remain here”?’ Then the disputant realised his error and said, ‘I was wrong; I am not the body, I am the life that dwells in it.’
“Then the sage explained, ‘Look here, until now you quite seriously believed that this body is yourself; but now you see that you were wrong in this; understand that this is the initial ignorance, out of which grows inevitably all the ignorance that enslaves men. So long as this primal ignorance remains, it does not matter much whether you regard God as formless or having form. But, when this primal ignorance goes, then, with it will go all the rest’.”
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Bhagavan diagnoses this disease – our bondage to desire and fear – as stemming from the root ignorance that the body is the self. This is confirmed by the observation that desire and fear arise because of the body. The assumption that we are the body is untrue. Being is the Self. You are That. This is the Truth.
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