Sanskaras

Baba uses various analogies to explain sanskaras. In The Discourses he gives the analogy of a stain left behind on some garment. Even after many washings, the stain or impression of the past incident (such as a spill) remains in the cloth, even if only very faint. He also gives the analogy of a ball of string that is wound further and further around the mind and must be unwound or cut by a perfect master to free the person from his impressions so he can see things clearly.But here I want to talk about Baba's analogy of sanskaras as tinted glasses you look through which affect how you see things. If you look through a set of red tinted glasses you see the world as shaded red; if you look through a set of blue tinted glasses the world is seen as having a slight blue cast. What has changed is not the world, but the lens through which you experience it - the conditioned mind. One person, seeing through mind that is conditioned by a particular set of sanskaras, sees the world one way, while another person who's mind is conditioned by a different set of sanskaras sees the world in a different way, consistent with those impressions. All of these ways of seeing reality are, of course, false. Only the unconditioned mind cleared of all sanskaras sees reality as it really is.Also note again through this analogy the relation between sanskaras and karma (physical and mental actions). Consider the sense in which how you see things predetermines how you respond to them. If tigers raised you and you saw a tiger you might react in a very different way from a person who's parents were eaten by tigers. And so forth. How you see is really where the sanskara most precisely has its life. The action (karma) is merely the consequence.

See also how it affects judgments. If you look at an object or witness an occurrence you can say quite a bit about it. You can say if it is good or bad, just or unjust, sexy or dull, a lot or a little, desirable or detestable. But from Baba's point of view all such judgments are due to how you are looking at it, the impressional lenses (sanskaras) you are looking at it through.

But Baba wants always to remind us that the seeing, the witness, is really always one and the same, and remains in and with and one with Paramatma (God).

Suppose twenty-five thousand people are sitting here and all have the same sight and the same object to look at - a ball. Now take the sight to be God's, which means that the Seer through twenty-five thousand pairs of eyes is one. Put before every pair of eyes different colored glasses, and in front of all these glasses put a ball. The sight out of every eye is one, and the ball that all see is also one. But those with red-colored glasses see the ball as red; those with yellow glasses see it as yellow; those with white glasses see it as white. And in this way, everyone sees a different colored ball. The sight is one and the ball is one, but to twenty-five thousand people the ball has a variety of colors. This varying experience is because of the different glasses. All these different colors are different minds and the different glasses are different bodies. Through the medium of various colors and glasses, the Seer sees the ball. Thus there is the Seer (God), the color (mind) and the glasses (bodies). (LM p. 743)

I think now I have made it basically clear what Baba means by sanskaras - ways of seeing determined by often forgotten past experiences in this or previous lives. We also see what sanskaras are not. They are not things. They are what cause the appearance of things. But now I want to take this discussion to a whole other level.

The original sanskara

As already explained, past experiences cause sanskaras. And sanskaras subsequently cause desires. Desires then lead to actions (mental and physical). But the very first desire that God had in the beginningless beginning was necessarily not caused by a sanskara, because God had never had any experiences.

The first desire, therefore, was not caused by a sanskara. Rather it was a whim, which Baba tells us in God Speaks has by definition, in being a whim, no cause. This first desire that was a whim and had no sanskaric cause is called by Baba "The Original Whim" and in philosophical parlance it can be called the "first cause." It is the cause that caused all subsequent causes.

Now this original whim, as already said, was a desire. What was it a desire for? It was a desire to know. Now what could God, being all but not yet realizing it, possibly want to know? Well of course this is absurd. There was nothing but himself, being all, to know. But how was poor God to know this? So God simply wanted to know -- know anything. In Christian mysticism this desire for knowledge in the beginningless beginning that created creation is represented by the eating of the forbidden fruit of knowledge by Eve and then Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Now remember that desires cause actions. So this first desire (which had no prior cause) caused the first action (which was a mental action). And this set up a domino effect, a chain of events that led to all this Creation that we find ourself illusorily in. But the mechanism after the initial Urge remained one and the same and extremely simple. It was the mechanism of desires leading to actions which cause experiences, and these new experiences causing new sanskaras, and sanskaras causing new and more elaborate desires, leading to more actions which in turn create new experiences, which leave further sanskaras, and so forth ad infinitum.¹

Sanskaras are God's problem

So sanskaras are not just our problem. They're God's problem. The first desire which caused the first experience occurred in the universal mind. In turn and in the course of this domino effect of responding to sanskaras and in turn building new sanskaras, things got more and more complicated (even as the mechanism remained simple). At some point in this process, the appearance of separation gradually occurs and the sense of separate individuality arises out of it all. In truth nothing ever separated from anything, except in appearance. And in fact there really is only one soul, that being God. But this sense of separate identity gives to God the impression of separation that is so vivid that we call this an individual atma. But in truth, there is no way for God to divide himself except in his own vivid imagination. Thus it is said that atma (individual soul) in fact always was, is, and remains one and identical with Paramatma (the Over-soul).

I have never heard this notion described so eloquently as in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson from his essay "The Over-Soul" published in 1841.

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. (Emerson, Essays: First Series, 1841)

How God's sanskaras build first His experience and then ours

A sanskara is most basically a way of seeing. Actions (karma) are simply the consequence of sanskaras.

I will say this again; a sanskara is most basically a way of seeing. Most exactly, even to say that a sanskara is a way of seeing "something" is not quite right. The sanskaras, taken together, are actually what produce the thing seen.

How can this be?

There are two analogies that Baba uses that help us understand this process by which we create what we see in the act of seeing it. I want to touch on these briefly and then expand on them later. The first is with an analogy of light -- light representing spirit.

Light analogy

Imagine a lit light bulb in an inky-black empty universe. It casts its light in all directions and it disperses in all directions, hitting upon nothing as there is nothing in this universe save this light bulb. Now imagine being this light bulb. Turning around in all directions, what would you see? Nothing. For there is nothing in the Universe for your light, which emanates from you, to reflect back to you on.

Next, imagine a movie theater. Imagine further there is a light bulb shining in the projector in the projection booth. It casts its light in all directions in the booth and the light disperses or is absorbed by the black housing of the projector. But now put a lens in front of that light and what happens? Light now shines out in the direction of the lens focused on the screen in the movie theater. Imagine you are this light bulb again. What do you see in the direction of the movie theater screen? You see white light.Now place a colored strip of film, a piece of colored celluloid in front of the bulb. What now appears on the movie theater screen? Colors dancing about in all shapes and forms.In this analogy the light is God. The lens is the mind, the filmstrip the sanskaras, and the show on the screen the Creation.Consider this analogy given by Meher Baba of the cinema operator.

A cinema operator who is cranking the projector with his own hand and is at the same time deeply absorbed in watching the images on the screen. He becomes so deeply absorbed, that he forgets that it is his own hand which is cranking the machine, and out of which is being projected all of this which he sees on the screen. He laughs and weeps according to the scenes presented on the screen. In the process he forgets the unreality and non existing state of the scenes on the screen. (Meher Baba, II)

This analogy of light is very ancient. It can be found in Plato's analogy of the cave, in Neoplatonism, Emanationism, and in Sufi philosophies such as Illuminationism. Baba has merely modernized it with the addition of the movie projector analogue.

Seeing analogy

We first talked of spirit using the analogy of light as it forms an image on a screen. Now we will talk about spirit more as it truly is, as seeing.

Imagine again the same inky empty sea of space as before. But this time imagine in this inky empty sea of space an eye. It is all that is. What does this eye see if it stares into the inky blackness? Nothing of course. It cannot even recognize its own existence, for there is nothing to see and thereby say "I am not that; I must be its witness." This eye, let us imagine, now imagines ways of seeing (sanskaras - lenses) that it looks through. But what is it really looking at? Nothing, for there is nothing but itself. Thus truly this Divine seeing sees only its own seeing - itself. But it sees itself falsely through imagined lenses. This trouble in imagining seeing seeing seeing is why the analogy of light is given by all mystics. If we combine these analogies we can compare this spirit of seeing to a self-luminous seeing, that sees its own light (first falsely through impressions, then truly without impressions). The seeing is the light that it sees. The light that it sees is seeing. The new intuition is reliant on combining two analogues as one. But mystics generally give them separately.

But though experiences, thoughts, minds, jivs, bodies, are all different, the resider in all minds, the dweller in all bodies, the taker of all experiences - God - the faculty of sight, which is the seer, is neither the eye-glasses, nor the colour, nor the lenses, but the seer of the one ball through the colours and lenses of the eye-glasses. (Meher Baba, II)

Creating a model

Now to grasp how nothing but this seeing (God) and ways of seeing (imagination - sanskaras) give rise to all that we look about and see, all that we could find if we went looking but do not ourselves see, to the entire universe, we must have a very simple model.

While this model is not given by Meher Baba, it is not inconsistent with what he has taught. Rather than looking at it as a separate theory, merely look at it as a conceptual tool for getting some intuition of what Baba and all mysticisms are trying to tell us.

When God had the impulse of the original whim, he wanted to know himself. There was nothing but himself to know but he did not in the beginning know this. And so he strained to see what he might be. And in this very act of attempting to see 'something' 'anything' that might be there to be, in the very instance of thinking in ignorance he was somehow 'out there' this in itself formed a division. For in the very moment of straining to experience, there was the 'moment' before he did so. And this caused the first sanskara (or impression left by action) that we know as time. And also, in that same instant, in his staring out from himself into his imagination as if anything in that imagination was 'out there' beyond himself, he formed the sanskara (way of seeing) of space.

It was then in terms of time and space that God could make divisions, and by divisions he might multiply divisions by divisions, separate imagined separateness, and these experiments that God performed in his infinite intelligence thinking falsely through imagined time and space we now call natural laws.

And among these natural laws are the laws by which things form. And out of these laws of formation emerged these bodies. And through these bodies there emerged in imagination color, sound, smell, and taste as we know them.

And staring into these imagined qualities, through bodies born of natural laws, born out of space, born out of time, born out of God's desire to see and know himself due to his whim to know, God found himself against the backdrop of his imagined world as a fully self-aware conscious human being - one apparently amongst many. And all that he saw around himself were really nothing but the relics of his own imagined evolution.

Getting rid of sanskaras

Baba tells us that sanskaras serve a vital purpose. It is through the formation of sanskaras that we form in imagination the world and find ourselves in the world. It is against the backdrop of this illusory world, this 'other', that we demarcate ourselves and say at last as human beings, "I am" "I must be."

But this is not the end of the game (called the lila in Vedanta - which translates as 'divine sport'), for we find ourselves in the world with a bad case of mistaken self-identity.