One Pointedness

A visitor wrote some questions in Tamil and presented them to Bhagavan. Bhagavan said, “He wants to know how to turn the mind from sense enjoyments and realise that bliss which is said to be so much above sense enjoyments. There is only one way – making the mind merge in That which is above sense enjoyments. As you concentrate on that, the sense attractions will fall of their own accord. Again he asked, ‘When can I attain that bliss?’ We are daily enjoying that bliss in sleep. We have not to attain bliss. We are bliss itself. Bliss is another name for us. It is our nature. Merging of the mind alone is necessary.

After a pause Bhagavan added, “The story of Indra and Ahalya in Yoga Vasishta clearly illustrates how, by the force of the mind being merged in the one Reality, all other things will cease to affect one.”

AHALYA, THE WIFE of a king, falls in love with a rake called Indra. The matter reaches the king’s ears and attains the magnitude of a great public scandal. The king then orders the couple to be put through various cruel tortures. But neither of them is affected by the tortures. Their faces do not even show a twitch of pain but are blissfully smiling at each other. The king, baffled by all this, asks them what the secret of their strength and resistance is.

They say, “What! Don’t you know? We are looking at each other, and so engrossed are we with each other, that our minds has no room for any other thoughts. So far as we are concerned, we two alone exist, each for the other, and nothing else exists. How then can we be affected by other things?” Such is the power of the merged mind.