Undo the Stitching

Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati

Seeing spirits or other images is not hard for children as their mind is not conditioned by the external environment, cultural or social impositions. Different cultures and religions block certain expressions of human nature.

Clear evidence is seen in the Eastern and Western religious beliefs. In the West people don’t believe in reincarnation due to the religious and cultural background. In the East people believe in reincarnation due to cultural and religious background. Culture and religion play an important part in shaping human nature, character, belief and understanding.

The children who are not conditioned to such beliefs or limitations of mind, are able to experience many things. I have seen spirits in my childhood. I have seen demons in my childhood. I knew that what I was seeing was the spirit, what I was seeing was the demon or the angel. As a child you might have many times seen or experienced something because there is no covering blocking the psychic awareness.

As we grow old and the different social, cultural, religious conditionings set in in our life we become more extrovert, and our perception of internal realizations go to the background. Many times they remain hidden there as other conditions, thoughts, ideas are covering that experience.

Making a shirt

This is an indication of two things: One, that when we are born, the human consciousness is not conditioned and has a far reach in seeing and experiencing other things which are not visible to a grown up, conditioned human being. This is actually a play of consciousness, not of the individual.

When you take a piece of fabric and scissors and cut the fabric into the shape of a shirt, then the original quality of the fabric is gone. It was plain, white, eight foot by four foot long now it has been cut, it has been sewn and it has been given a shape. Although the fabric is there, now it is enclosed, sewn from all sides, whereas in the original condition the fabric was wide open.

That is the state of human consciousness. When we are born our consciousness is like a big sheet, but later on our family, our friends, our society start cutting the sheet and making the sheet into clothes which we begin to wear. That becomes our nature, personality, character; it becomes our life.

Balancing the inner and outer

This is the state of consciousness. Psychic experiences come when all the knots in the consciousness, all the sewing has been cut. When you cut the sewing and again you spread the fabric out it becomes open and wide, then that is the consciousness which is spiritual and not confined and contained.

Everybody has that psychic faculty, we do not lose it; we just forget about it, we become too distracted. When an opportunity comes in our life and we begin some practices like meditation or yoga, the psychic impressions which are there are again brought to the surface.

Many times in meditation you feel, you recognize something that had happened to you in your childhood. A memory comes, ‘I have seen that, I had forgotten about it’. That memory is an indication that awareness is again coming back to the forefront. Then psychological changes happen, the knots of the head are released, the cloth is again spread and you are aware of your own psychic dimension.

It is not something that one loses but it is something that goes to the background due to imposition of the many other ideas, thoughts and traits. In the course of time, with continued practice of meditation and other sadhana, again that psychic awareness is activated.

When the psychic awareness is activated the awareness of the inner world gradually increases while awareness of the external world is gradually reduced. There is a balance between the internal and the outer worlds. Those who are able to maintain this balance between the internal and the outer become the saints, become the sages, become the enlightened beings.

6 November 2016, Ganga Darshan, Munger