The Mind

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The opposites have been used for two reasons. One is to drive home the need to look at a core aspect of one"s life. Another is because the functioning of the mind in the present state can be only in a dualistic mode: knowledge-ignorance, rich-poor, high-low, literate-illiterate and so on. We define and understand anything only in terms of the opposites.

The question arises as to what are the contrasts referred to in the title of these articles. At noon, the sun is at its powerful shining fullness. How can there be darkness at that time? Let"s suppose you are not out in the sunshine but are inside an office, working in a centrally air-conditioned room with curtains covering the windows. Then there is certainly light. But can its brightness be considered to be equivalent to the midday sun outside? Similarly, the mind is now cut into pieces because its power of attention is now dissipated, well and truly dissipated by constantly thinking about a thousand and one thoughts and has therefore lost its natural resplendence. The question would boil down to how can one make this scattered mind uni-focussed so that it can shine like the midday sun in all its fullness. For such is the natural brightness of the fullness of consciousness, which is also the full potential of the mind.

The mind roams in search of fresh pleasures. There seems to be really no need for it. As Ramana Maharshi says, “When a cow is being gently caressed and fed with fodder and luscious grass in its own shed, why should it wander around grazing on other pastures and getting beaten with sticks?"

Subject-Object:

One wonders whether the question of the relationship between the subject and the object has ever been enquired into in focused manner. Knowledge about the subject is at present outside our field of knowledge, however vast it may be. Why? It seems as if one has to refer to the dictionary for the meaning of words like 'consciousness" and 'unitary". One lives in a mental world in which there is a single subject, the perceiver, the one who sees, the thinker and so on. However, the objects are innumerable. Due to lack of attention one does not realize that the entire objective world is in the subject. Our expectations, joys are linked to objects, are they not? Can there be an object without the subject to whom it relates? Due to lack of vigilance, lack of spirit of enquiry, this question remains unasked.

About the author

A.R.Natarajan in this excerpt from “Darkness at Noon" talks about the mind and the relation between the subject and object as per the teachings of Ramana Maharshi .