In this Weekly Wisdom, Gurudev shares how our five senses give us only temporary experiences and how a bigger mind can help us go beyond them.
If you look at your five senses, you realize we experience the world only through the senses.
Experiences never remain
How much have these little eyes seen? Do you know? A lot. And how much have these little ears heard? A lot.
How much air have you taken in through this little nose? Every day, 10,000 liters. And this little mouth, what do you take per day, about 2 kilos of food? In one year, about 700-800 kilos. If you're 40 years old, 35 tons of food have gone through this little mouth.
But where are they? Nothing remains.
It's all emptiness
Gone, everything gone. Things we experience through our senses are empty. Nothing remains.
How much can you look at? Your eyes reflect like a mirror. Everything comes and then goes, and the mirror doesn't capture anything.
Our senses just reflect everything. Nothing remains with you.
Knowing that, go deep and rest in your heart because your true heart stays with you.
Beyond the senses
The heart isn’t the physical heart. It's a deep, beautiful, subtle, inner feeling.
Everything is empty, like a peacock feather that exudes depth but has no weight. It's so light.
In the same way, experiences are beautiful but not permanent. Your feelings of compassion and love are permanent.
That's why, in relationships, physical enjoyment alone doesn't satisfy. Unless there's love, a relationship isn't complete. Deep love can only happen through meditation.
You can look outside. You won't get it there because it's all temporary. But love is much deeper, the very nature of your energy.
Beyond the elements
What is this existence? The five elements— earth, water, fire, air, and ether. But it doesn't stop there. If it were only those, the planet would be inert.
But something more brings life to the planet. After these five elements, there's the mind, intellect, memory, ego, and Self.
It's said that the mind is a fraction of an atom. The size of an atom is when you take one hair and split it into 100 hairs. Then take one strand and split it into 100, and repeat.
Then, you split one tip of that into 10. That's the micro size of a particle. Split that 1000 times. That's called an atom.
You again split that into 100. That's the size of the mind. Split that again into 10 for the size of ego.
What’s beyond ego? If the ego is broken, there's an energy called mahat. You've heard of Mahatma Gandhi?
Mahatma is when this ego no longer limits itself to the body and surroundings but includes everybody.
A mother includes her child within the ego. That's the bigger I, a different state of consciousness.
No barrier exists between you and other people. You're a Mahatma.
A complete unknown
Beyond that is Shiva. Shiva's not a person who lived somewhere in the Himalayas 10,000 years ago. Shiva is the field of energy. Shiva means beautiful, benevolent, and soothing.
The intellect wants to understand. What's this soothing, wonderful, bigger energy that encompasses the universe, the intelligence behind the orderliness of creation?
The more you understand, the more you feel, “I don't know.”
Life is a journey from an ugly “I don't know” to a beautiful “I don't know.”
When you're upset, even if you know, what do you say? “I don't know. Don't ask me.” Don't you say it?
A stressed mind produces an ugly “I don't know.” We move from there to a beautiful “I don't know.” Because the more you know, the more you realize you don't.
Loving the unknown is spirituality. Falling in love with something you don't know is spirituality.
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Editor’s note:
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