Religion is a Seareditation1 August 1970 pm in CCI Chambers, Bombay, India
Question 1
BEFORE DISCUSSING THE PROCESS OF ENTERIH SCIOUSLY, I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU: WHAT IS THE DIFFEREWEEATE OF UNSCIOUSNESS AND THE STATE OF AWARENESS? WHAT STATE OF MIND IS CALLED THE UNSCIOUS STATE? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT IS THE INDIVIDUAL SOULS SCIOUSNESS LIKE IN ITS SCIOUS AND UNSCIOUS STATES?
In order to uand the states of sciousness and unsciousness, the first thing that o be uood is that they are not opposite states, although normally they are seen as opposites.
Actually, we are used to seeing life in terms of duality.
First we create a divisioween darkness and light and then think they are two separate things.
As soon as we take darkness and light to be two different things we it a fual mistake.
Any thought that follows this mistake is bound to be wrong; it ever be right.
Darkness and light are variations of the same thing.
They are different aspects, different stages of the same thing.
It would be appropriate to call darkness a deficy of light.
Light which our eyes ot catch, light which our eyes ot detect, looks like darkness.
Similarly, we should call light a she of darkness -- darkness which our eyes catch.
So darkness and light are not two separate things, they are varying degrees of the same phenomenon.
What is true of darkness and light is true of all other dualities of life.
The same thing is true regarding the unscious and the scious states.
You may sider unsciousness as darkness, and sciousness as light.
In fact, even the most unscious of all objects is not pletely unscious.
A rock is not all unscious -- it exists in a state of sciousoo, but the sciousness is so small it is hard to grasp.
A man is asleep, a man is awake.
Sleep and wakefulness are not two different things.
The same man is floatiween sleep and wakefulness.
What we call being asleep is also not really being asleep.
For example, five hundred people are asleep in a room and you call the name "Rama" aloud.
Only the person named Rama opens his eyes to find out who is disturbing his sleep, who has called him.
The remaining four hundred and y-nine people stay asleep.
Had this man been really asleep, he could not have heard anyone calling him; he could not have reized that his name was Rama.
His sleep was actually one of the lesser states of wakefulness, or his state of wakefulness had bee a little hazy, a little fuzzy.
You see a man running oreet.
He has heard that his house is on fire.
You greet him.
He sees you a he does not see you.
He hears you a he does not hear you.
You ask him the day why he didurn yreeting and he replies, "My house was on fire.
At that time I couldnt see anything except my house, I couldnt hear anything except the he sound around the house, people shouting The house is on fire! I am sure you must have seen me, greeted me, but I couldnt see you, I couldnt hear you.
" Now, was this man awake or asleep? In every sense he was awake, of course, a, as far as the man who met him oreet was ed, he was almost asleep.
He was more asleep thaher man, the one who heard "Rama" being called in his sleep.
So what is being asleep and being awake? The first thing I would like to say is: they are not two opposite things.
Matter and God are not two opp