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Om Gam Ganapataye Namah
Om Gum Gurubhyo Namah

That all things in the world are very strange phenomena, and are really something different from what they appear to be to normal perception, is something that we have noticed in great detail. Also we came to the conclusion that even if there is an inch of distance between the aspiring consciousness and that which the consciousness is longing for, that longing cannot be fulfilled. It is like an electrical connection. Even if there is a little gap, though very minute, in the fixing of the plug for allowing current to pass - even if there is a little distance, there will be no performance. It will be as if nothing is happening.

This is the case with everything. The difficulty before everyone is that we cannot think anything without some distance. Again we are coming to the same old doctrine of spatiality and temporality, which conditions our mind to such an extent that we cannot think anything - even God Himself - except as being somewhere in high heaven, in vast space, and some time before creation. If we feel God existed before creation, we are bringing the time factor into it; and if He is very far in seventh heaven, we bring the spatial aspect. This is a metamorphosis and emphasis in a transcendental manner of a defect in the very thinking process itself.

Patanjali's great point in the exposition of samadhis and samapattis is herein. All achievement is perfect union. Even a little conceptual distance between two things - consciousness and its content - will not permit the implementation or the fulfillment of the achievement. Even if it is God Almighty Himself, if He is half a foot away from you, you can expect nothing from Him because there is a communication gap between the Almighty and yourself as the seeking soul. A mighty thing is before you, but there is no connection of an intelligible manner between that which is before you and yourself. 

This is the reason why many of our longings are not fulfilled. Almost all the desires go frustrated. Everywhere there is defeat of any kind of desire whatsoever. People go defeated completely. They may get nothing out of what they actually expected. There is bereavement always. What comes also goes at the same time. No one has come to stay forever. That which comes also goes. Why should this happen? This is the picture of mortal existence, the picture of the passing of things; and everything is phenomenal, nothing is really existing. Everything is transient and, like a wisp-of-wind, everything blows in whatever direction it wills.

But the seeker of immortality - kaivalya moksha, eternity, where rebirth of any kind is stopped completely - that aspirant aspires for that which is inseparable from the aspiring consciousness. The content of consciousness should not stand outside consciousness. It may be physical, visual or conceptual, but when you think a thing, that thing which you are thinking should not stand outside the thinking process. It should be immersed in the thinking process, so that in thinking a thing, the thinking gets enhanced in its quantum and intensity because of the entry of the thing which appeared to be external to the thinking process. Thinking a thought or an object is no use or of any benefit. The object of thought has to increase the potentiality, content, dimension and intensity of the thought itself so that in thinking a thing the mind becomes filled with a completeness of itself. It becomes a plenum. Instead of a bare thinking abstract process, it becomes a completeness in itself because the thought has become one with that which it thinks. This is samadhi.

It was mentioned when we were dealing with the samadhis - savitarka, nirvitarka, savichara, nirvichara etc. - that the final thing that we have to encounter is space-time. There is no other obstacle except that. Space-time keeps everything away from us. This is the whole difficulty. So, in the higher forms of samapatti, samadhi, the externality imposed upon consciousness by the intervention of space-time is also made an object of meditation itself - the so-called externality that keeps you out from that which you are aspiring for. The devil himself becomes a god, you may say. That devilish nature of things is due to the outsideness of things. If you make that thing your own, you yourself become the so-called devil, and as you cannot be a devil, you become a god immediately.

The condemnation of things that we are accustomed to is due to the keeping of things away from us, as either desirable sections or undesirable section. The most difficult thing in meditation is the identification of space-time itself as the object of meditation. You are uniting yourself not with something, but with space-time itself. Then the question of separation, isolation, distance, temporality will not be there.

How on earth is it possible for the mind to make space and time get included in its thinking process, as it is well known that they condition the thinking process? Here is a transcendental feat that the yogi has to perform, which no philosopher can understand. The feat of yoga is transcendental, super-philosophical, and no argument touches here. When all the great thinkers and philosophers have told you that you cannot think without space and time, how dare you? To overcome this limitation itself you are trying to step over the very condition of your existence. You are trying to go beyond that which has made you. Is it possible?

We are space-time stuff. We are not solid objects. It is a peculiar apparition that seems to be in the form of this physical body - an apparent condensation, indescribable though, of the peculiar structure of space-time itself. You have heard people say, "All matter is puckered space. A dent in space looks like matter." You cannot understand how it is possible. Space is bent where there are large bodies of matter. Experiment has shown that when light passes through large bodies and the solar orb, the light dents little bit, and the straight line is a little bit changed; it looks as if light itself is bending in a semi-curvature form because of the tremendous gravitational force of the large body which is the sun. How can anybody imagine that light can bend into a semi-curvature? Who can imagine that solid earth, like brick and mortar and iron and steel, is only a peculiar adjustment of space-time within itself?

Can thoughts become things? We are sometimes told, "Thoughts are things." It is horrible to hear. I want a thing, I do not want a thought, but thought itself is that thing, because space and time are only peculiar types of thought. They may not be individual thought, but they are some kind of thought. There are three kinds of thinking - individual thinking, interconnected thinking and transcendental thinking.  Those philosophers who tell us that space and time cannot be overcome are thinking in terms of individual thought. When Berkeley, the great thinker, said that all things are ideas, the question arose: "Whose ideas?" These huge mountains and stars - are they concretisations of Mr. So and so's ideas? So he had to modify his doctrine that it is not possible, because large expanses of externality in the form of the world cannot be considered as modifications of an individual's mind. "Understanding makes nature," said Immanuel Kant. Whose understanding makes nature? Is it Kant's mind that is creating the whole Germany and the entire globe of the earth? Then he had to modify his thought in a subsequent edition of his book, wherein he introduced a chapter called Refutation of Idealism. People were surprised that he added another chapter in the second edition of his book - Refutation of Idealism. This was because he had a suspicion that his doctrine almost resembled Berkeley's when he said that understanding makes nature. Whose understanding? His problem was same as Berkeley's, because no understanding of anybody can make nature. Nature was before we were born. We were born later on, nature was existing earlier. How can we say that our understanding makes nature? No. So, we have to make a clear distinction between real understanding, the real idea, the real mind that seems to be concretised into the objects of sense, and the ordinary sense.

As I mentioned, there are three kinds of thought. There is purely individual thinking - as in my thought, your thought, etc. There is interconnected thought.  Interconnected thought means everybody thinks, and every thing which does not appear to be thinking also thinks in a potential prehensive manner, as philosophers call it. There is a distinction that philosophers make between apprehension and prehension. We are apprehending things, but things which do not apprehend through the intellect prehend. The tree knows that we are here. It is not apprehending through the intellect, but a subtle, deeper-than-intellect process is operating though it, and the leaves can know that you are here, talking. Even the sun knows what is happening in the world. The breath of the universe is operating through the breath of every individual.

So there is an interconnected, universal, organic operation taking place, which is the reason why we say that the world is the body of God. It is a living embodiment of interconnected operations, like the operation of our own body. The body, which is our own, as we call it, is an organic integration where everything is subsistent to everything else. Nothing depends on the other. Everything is everywhere. The cause is the effect and the effect is the cause. Where there is a circle of operation, one part is causing another part, we cannot know which is the cause and which is the effect. Anything is the effect and anything is the cause, in a circular form. Every part of the body is organic and aware of itself. There is no dead part in our body; everything is alive everything. Even the toes and the fingers and the nose and the eyes - they are all alive. They contribute their individuality for the purpose of the total organisation of the entire body. In a similar manner is the cosmic setup.

So, apart from this so-called individuality - even a cell of your body has an individuality of its own - your whole personality can be seen in one cell of your body. From birth to death what is taking place in you is inside in a mirror of a cell, which looks like one among the many; but even that one among the many is many only, due to the interconnection that it has got; and this is the interconnected consciousness or mind that we think of. It is very difficult to imagine because imagining it is possible only if you know the world is one whole and not made up of little fractions or parts. This is the interconnected, organised form of thinking of the mind, where apprehension and prehension go together, the material and conscious also get blended, and matter and spirit cannot stand separate. This is another kind of mind; and when people like Kant say that understanding makes nature and mind is projecting the whole world, perhaps Berkeley or Kant are appearing to say, without actually mentioning it in their books, that it is a larger interconnected cosmical operation which can be said to be the cause of this substantial, so-called physical world. We can say this, just as we say our physical body is a form solidly taken by our collection of the karma potencies that we have brought with us from our previous birth. Thoughts make things. Our ideas have concretised into this body, this is what we call prarabdha, and whatever ideas we are entertaining will become our next body. This is what seems to be the implied suggestiveness of these great thinkers who said that ideas are things and understanding makes nature. We have to read between the lines and not take them literally for what they have said.

But there is a transcendental mind, a third kind of mind. It is the mind - if at all we can use that word - of the Absolute. We should hesitate to use such words regarding the Absolute because it will raise the question of whether the Absolute is thinking. Absolute does not think. It is just Being. The Being of the Absolute is the Thought of the Absolute. How we can imagine such a thing? Therefore it is called transcendental; it is beyond human conception. So, that has concretised itself into the whole universe.

I mentioned something about Kant and Berkeley. Now we go to Hegel. He says that ideas become nature. There is only pure idea. Idea externalises itself into the form of this nature. How can we imagine that ideas, which are abstract concepts, as it were, can become solid objects like a tree, a stone, etc. He will not explain how. The author will not tell us how ideas become things, because here again arises the same question as to what idea it is, whose idea? Hegel's idea is not my idea or your idea; it is, again, an idea of the interconnected organismic part of the whole operation, or we may call it the Absolute conceived as if it is thinking. These philosophers are very difficult people. If we take them literally, we will get confused. So we have to go deep into it. Their intention is very good, but the way they express it is so confusing. However, I am repeating once again: The whole world is unsubstantial, we may say. Berkeley says that the vault of heaven, everything, will crumble down as dream objects. What does Shakespeare tell us: "We are made of such stuff as dreams are made of." Don't you see hard substances in dream. You can see rocks, you can see gold, you can see silver, you can see railway trains, you can see everything in dream. You can even hit your head against a wall in dream; the wall is really there, you may bleed, the blood will come out, in dream - but has it really taken place? How a thought can externalise itself into an apparent space and time complex, and create a world of so-called solidity is something that is illustrated in our dream experience. The world is considered as a long deergha svapna. Deergha svapnam idam jaaneem - the Yoga Vasishtha says. You had a short dream, now here is a long dream. If you could manufacture hard things in your dream consciousness, this cosmic mind, interconnected mind, transcendental mind can create this world. If you say that your dream hardness does not really exist, that it is a projection of your thought - the same thing is this world. The world is a nihil, it doesn't exist; it is only an idea complex. All these philosophers have said the correct thing.

Patanjali goes into this subject. Because of this feature of the so-called visible world, space and time are also ideas only. Though it is said that the ideas are controlled and determined by the operations of space and time, when you go further into the transcendental level you will find that space-time cannot control the mind, unless it is an individual mind. If you take it as an interconnected mind, then the space-time is included in that. The world is not contained inside space, as Newton thought; it is a part of the world itself. The world is nothing but space itself, and so space is not a cup inside which the matter is made. Therefore, the idea of space and time should not trouble you in your meditation or samadhi. You must have a little strength of imagination and power of will to feel how the so-called troublesome externality of space and time becomes one with the Absolute form of thinking - total identification of consciousness with its own imagination, samadhi. It is a total identification of your imagination, the products of imagination, with the imagining consciousness itself.