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There is what is known as the exoteric way of thinking and the esoteric way of envisaging things in general. The prosaic way of looking at things, as you are accustomed to do in your daily life - taking things for what they appear to be and artificially adjusting yourself accordingly - is an exoteric performance on your part. But, as you know very well, things do not in themselves exist as they appear to your eyes, to your sensations. To handle things in the manner in which they are to be handled essentially, in the spirit of their own true existence, is the esoteric approach.

Previously I spoke to you on certain intricate psychological issues concerning the functioning of the mind and the necessity to understand this way of mental operation from the point of view of true knowledge. I mentioned this in the context of my explanation of what tantra sadhana actually means. As it was a little difficult for you to understand, hearing about it for the first time in your life, I am continuing this theme, almost repeating the issue that I raised previously - namely, an attempt to know the inner secrets of mental operation.

Spiritual seekers, students of yoga, are well known to have determined to renounce irrelevant things which act as a hindrance on the spiritual path and to pursue what they regard as the spiritual way of living. Previously I highlighted the difficulty in knowing what it is that you are going to renounce and what it is that you are going to make a part of your own being in this spiritual quest.

The consciousness of something - whatever it be - is the connection of consciousness to what is called an object. Spiritual renunciation, or a life of austerity, is connected with non-attachment to things; but what are the things that you are going to renounce? What do you mean by a 'thing', first of all? For the purpose of the analysis of spiritual psychology, we should consider that as an object or a thing which is a content of consciousness. If the consciousness is aware of the existence of something other than itself, that can be regarded as the content of consciousness; that is the object thereof. Objects do not necessarily mean things like mountains and rivers and the like, because the entanglement of consciousness in the process of earthly existence and bondage does not seem to so much be concerned with the existence of mountains and rivers or things in general but with an operation of consciousness itself within itself, dissecting itself into two parts, as it were - the awareness by itself, and that of which the awareness is aware.

There is no such thing as awareness of awareness. Such a thing has never been seen because awareness, or consciousness, is pure subjectivity and it cannot know itself as another or other than itself. That is to say, the seer cannot become the seen. Yet, a peculiar situation gets created in the consciousness itself where it contemplates an 'other' than its own self. That 'other' may be a physical object or it may be merely a conceptual condition.

What are you going to renounce in spiritual life? The bondage is not in the existence of the creation of the world by itself, but in the involvement of consciousness in a particular way to what it considers as a created object. There are more things in creation than you can perceive with your eyes in this world. There are several planes of existence whose nature no one knows. Are you going to renounce those things also, about whose existence you have no knowledge? What are you renouncing? You may renounce known things in terms of sensory perception - objects, as they say - but is objectivity confined only to perceptible things in this world, or does the objectivity range beyond the human ken and rise into different levels of being? Even in brahma-loka, the apex of the operation of consciousness, there is an operation which is involved in a sort of subtle duality.

The persistence of consciousness to separate itself into the seer and the seen is what is to be investigated. Even when you disregard a thing as irrelevant, the consciousness is aware that there is an irrelevant thing. The irrelevance of a particular thing to be rejected in the process of renunciation is itself a content of consciousness because unless you know that something is irrelevant, it cannot become irrelevant. The moment you are aware of the fact of something being irrelevant, it has become a content of your consciousness. So, even that which you reject is a part and parcel of your thinking process itself. You have to free yourself of this tangle. There is no use merely going by the routine practice of abandoning what you consider as an obstacle, not knowing what is actually happening to the mind when you are engaged in this process. The bondage is not in the things, but in the peculiar arrangement of the mind with regard to those things. That modification of the mind - chitta vritti, as it is called - is the bondage; it is also the source of joy for you.

The entire story of the involvement in heaven or hell is taking place within the mind only. You are bound in your consciousness and you are also free in your consciousness. Freedom and bondage are not something existing outside the process of your thinking; they are dramatic performances within the ocean of mental process itself.

Therefore, you should not take for granted that things are very clear to your mind and that you can go ahead, because when you appear to be moving forward, there may be a pull which is retrograde, invisibly operating behind you. You cannot know that something is operating behind you. Every object has a shadow. That shadow pursues the object. However far you run away from the shadow of your own self, you cannot get away from it because it is part and parcel of your own existence.

The negativity-consciousness is a shadow cast by consciousness itself and, in attempting to think that it is moving along the path of positivity, it forgets that it cannot actually become positive unless it has paid its debts to the persisting impression of negativity at the same time. A dual action takes place in the mind when it thinks. Total thinking is not understood. It is not known to anybody how one can include everything in the mind. The rejected thing also is a part and parcel of the process of thinking itself. This is what I mentioned to you last time, in brief.

If this peculiarity of mental operation is not known to you, there can be backward movement even in the so-called advance along the spiritual path. That which you have not understood can still be a part and parcel of your duty or entanglement. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse," is an old saying. You may not be aware of certain operations taking place, but that is not an excuse. You have to know them. Every law operating in the universe must be known; otherwise, the unknown law will act upon you and you will have to pay the price for being unaware of it.

The first and foremost of objects is the body itself. You always imagine that objects are somewhere far away from you and that they are not necessarily near you. But the biggest object is your body. It is as solid an object as anything else in the world. You can see it, you can touch it and you can operate it though the senses in the same way as you operate any other object. Can you disassociate yourself from body-consciousness? If this could be achieved, you have disassociated yourself from object-consciousness also. If your consciousness persists in believing that it is the body, then it will cast a shadow upon other mental operations also, whereby your apparent physical isolation from objects in the act of renunciation may not serve any purpose. This is because the attachment to things in the world arises out of the first and foremost attachment to this body. As long as this attachment continues, the other attachments cannot be visible. So hard is the ego, so strong is the personality- consciousness, but you may say you have renounced the whole world.

The cause of the very awareness of there being such a thing called the world of objects is your body-consciousness. Can you, in your meditational process, disentangle yourself from the feeling that you are a subject, though you are really an object? You have a subjectivity in you and also an objectivity in the form of the body. When you say 'I', you mix up two issues simultaneously - this bodily existence and also that which is conscious of bodily existence.

Some time ago I also mentioned how, in meditation, you can disentangle the mind from its apparent location in this body. I gave you the technique of placing yourself far away, somewhere in mid-space, and sitting there by the power of your imagination and looking back to your own body seated in meditation on earth. It is a very difficult thing to do because you cannot see your own self as an object sitting somewhere. But, this has to be done. The mind is a great trickster. However much you may try to control it, you will find that it is controlling you, rather than the other way around.

I am repeating once again the meditational technique I mentioned to you. Place yourself in an expanse. Intensely, by the power of will, feel that you are away from your body - as far away as possible. You may be sitting in brahma-loka and visualising from there, at that distant point, the existence of your meditating body somewhere on the face of the earth. You are seeing yourself as an object. Normally, seeing yourself as an object is not possible. Here is a psychological technique of isolating the feeling of your existence from the bodily consciousness and, by the power of will, feeling that the body is away from where you are, so that you may look upon your body as you look upon anything else in the world. What do you think of this tree, this mountain, the people and society outside? In that way, look upon this body also.

Generally you do not appreciate this way of thinking because you think that you are the bodily subject, not knowing that the body cannot be a subject. It is necessary to wrench your mind from entanglement in this body as a subjectivity, which it is not. The body cannot be a subject, and yet you say "I am coming", "I am doing", "I am going", and so on. Who is going; who is coming; who is thinking? Answer this question. You are again thinking in terms of the body - though it is not you, because it is a sense object. You can sensorily come in contact with your body, but the attachment of the mind to this particular physical frame due to what may be called the old prarabdha of actions that you performed in the past - this involvement of the mind with the force exerted by the prarabdha karma is so vehement that you, for all time to come, cannot expect a release from this body-consciousness.

You have performed actions in the past. They rebound upon you as a boomerang and come as concrete presentations in spite of the fact that you thought that their reaction is far away. The reaction to an action is not distinct from the action itself. They are organically related. Therefore, when some disturbance is created by way of an action, immediately its brother comes up in the form of the reaction, and this necessity to pass through these experiences compelled by the reaction is what is called the prarabdha karma. It is intense. As long as it persists in this manner, you will go on thinking you are only the body. But, you are a yoga student. You are not an ordinary person in the world. And so, your true subjectivity has to be realised before you handle things in the world by way of renunciation of objects. Unless you have renounced this body as your own property, you cannot renounce any property in the world.