Who am I? "I am my intuitive mind. I am my inner divine being." The three bodies, the five sheaths and the seven aspects of man work together. Approach the intellect as a tool, make it subservient to the intuitive mind. Thoughts can create forms in the astral world. Understanding comes from the superconscious mind. Balance the ida and pingala for the sushumna to come into power.

Master Course Trilogy, Merging with Siva, Lessons 218, 223.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone. Going to look this morning at today's lesson from Merging with Siva, Lesson 223, The Intuitive Nature, but before we do so i wanted to give a little introduction.

This is drawing from the concept of the seven aspects of man. And just to remind us of how these different approaches fit together. We have the concept of three bodies, the Sanskrit word is sharira. Then we have five sheaths, koshas and then we have seven aspects. So if anyone remembers how they all fit together then they get an A plus on the test.

The simple idea is that they're totally in synch with one another, it's just that they're offering more breakdowns. So, for example, the five sheaths has further divisions of the three bodies and then the seven aspects has further divisions of the five sheaths.

So this is Gurudeva's summary of it:

"The inner study of you can be complicated, for you are a most complex being of many dimensions. As we embark on this week's study of the inner you, it may be helpful to have a list which you can refer to now and then to put together the pieces in the right order. The age-old teachings which are captured in this book boldly claim 'man' to be more than is usually understood, that being a mortal body with an intellect, small or large. Man, as the mystics understand him, is the immortal soul surrounded by seven aspects.

Here follows a summary of the 'seven aspects of man' established around the actinic causal body of the soul, anandamaya kosha, 'sheath of bliss:'. (I know we all remember the first one) 1) the physical body, annamaya kosha, food-made sheath. 2) the vital health body, pranic sheath, pranamaya kosha; 3) the astral body, instinctive aspect of manomaya kosha; 4) the human aura and instinctive mind, prabhamandala and manas chitta; 5) the intellect, odic causal sheath, buddhi chitta; 6) the subtle nerve system, nadis and chakras; 7) the intuitive mind, actinodic causal sheath, vijnanamaya kosha, sheath of cognition."

So, that's our introduction. Then we get to lesson, today's lesson on Intuitive Nature.

"Observe the intellect as it is manifested in the world around you. You can see its limits. You can also see when it becomes a tool for the intuitive mind. When you discover great truths in the books you read, when creative ideas come to you, observe, with affectionate detachment, the people around you, the situations in life through which you pass..."

That's a great concept, very useful. The intellect is a tool for the intuitive mind. I like to compare it to the computer, computer that programs and computer hooked up to the internet. A computer in and of itself isn't a one thing. It depends on how we approach it. So, if we're young and we're very undisciplined it can be a source of great distraction, take us away from our studies in school. If we're slightly older it can take us away from doing well at work; it can be a tremendous source of distraction. However, if we're disciplined it's a great tool. It's a useful tool to do better in school, to do better at work. So we have to approach it in a disciplined way; we have to turn it on and and we turn it off in a disciplined way. It doesn't run all day long. So the intellect is the same. We need to make it a tool, you need to make it subservient, not constantly thinking about life. We need to turn it on and turn it off. If we need it for some process then we turn it on. If we don't need it we leave it off; just enjoy the present moment.

"...As you learned, observations give birth to understanding, and understanding comes from your superconscious mind. Thus, the intellect must be developed to a certain extent and then controlled, through the control of thought..."

One of the ideas in this, what I just read is: Understanding comes from the superconscious mind. In other words, unless something's very simple like 2 and 2 equals 4, sometimes the intellect can just spin, you know, keeps analyzing and analyzing and analyzing. And it doesn't come up with a definitive answer. It just isn't that smart; it's good a certain things, processes, but not necessarily an understanding, a complex situation. So to understand something that's complex, the understanding needs to come from the superconscious. And then it's solid; we don't change our mind an hour later or the next day. It's solid understanding that we can move forward on.

"...Thought forms are manifestations of astral matter, or odic force, and travel through astral space, or odic force fields, from one destination to another. They can build, preserve and destroy. Thought forms can also project, and they can create. Thought forms can also be seen, just as auras can be seen..."

So it's an interesting idea that our thoughts create forms in the astral world. And that people sensitive to those forms can either sense or even see them. For example, if you're going to visit someone and they don't know you're coming, they can pick up your thoughts because you're thinking about going there. Your mind is focused on going to them so you're sending your thoughts their direction so they can figure out that you're coming just by interpreting the thought forms that they're receiving, and they'll know that you're coming.

Likewise, it shows the importance of thought in terms of thought, word and deed, not harming others in thought, word and deed. We know deed, that's obvious, you hit somebody. Words, we know that words hurt someone; we can see it on their face. But, the idea that our thoughts can hurt someone is a pretty subtle idea that, how can our thoughts hurt someone? Because we're sending these forms toward someone and they will feel them. And if they're strongly negative it can upset them so make it difficult to function as well as they could.

"...The intellect is the external ego, but it is only the external ego when it is in control and has cut itself off sufficiently from superconsciousness by becoming opinionated. When the intellect represents the ego, we say a person is unable to change his mind, no matter how much you try to convince or talk with him. He is stubborn, unyielding, even unfriendly if he becomes agitated or disturbed in his effort to hold the intellect together..."

Gurudeva says in the "Cognizantability" something like: The intellect strengthened with opinionated knowledge is the greatest barrier to the superconscious. In other places he says that if you develop too precise an intellectual concept about what you're trying to experience on the within, you can go within and end up experiencing the concept rather than the actual reality.

What does that mean in a practical sense? It means the more mystical something is the less you want to preconceive it in detail with the intellect. Otherwise, you can actually block the experience from happening. It also shows we need the approach of Chellapaswami to deeper things. In other words when it comes to normal tasks, such as you get a new computer, what do you do when you get a new computer, unless it's an Apple computer of course, you read the manual. Apple computer, you just turn it on. It's that simple, not quite, but you know, you read the manual. It's important.

We have a truck. A truck we bought a couple of years ago. And I was there when the salesperson was delivering it to us. And it is complicated, even to know how to turn on the key you have to read the manual. Then when you're in sand you have to engage the four wheel drive a certain way and if you're towing something you do this. And I jokingly said I think pretty soon, you know, cars are going to get so complicated that you have to go to class before you're given permission to drive it. They're getting that sophisticated. So the intellect is needed to understand a new car, a new computer. And we need a manual also.

So when it comes to mystical things Chellapa's advice is 'naam ariyom.' You know, we don't know. We want to take the approach that we don't know really what it is; we want to not think we understand it clearly. Have humility and approach it with a we don't know attitude. So, when it comes to inner things we don't know. When it comes to outer things we can learn through a manual and through talking to others.

"...Should the intellectual nature become disturbed, the astral body then takes over and the instinctive mind or the instinctive qualities are prevalent at that time. This is quite apparent in undisciplined people, because the intellectual nature is undisciplined. When the astral body and the intellect work hand in hand, they create an instinctive-intellectual individual filled with opinionated knowledge, undisciplined instinctive drives, and emotions of hate and fear that have not been transmuted into the realms of reason and controlled through allowing a gridwork of positive memory patterns to build.

"Within man, and functioning at a different rate of vibration than the intellect is found the power or the motivating force of the mind, the chakras, or force centers. There are seven of these basic force centers, which are stimulated into action and unfoldment by the ida, pingala and sushumna currents. The ida and pingala are odic psychic currents interwoven around the spinal cord. Directly through the spinal cord runs the sushumna current, which is actinodic. The ida current is passive odic force; the pingala is aggressive odic force. The sushumna is an actinodic current. These currents govern the sixth aspect of man, the chakras. These currents are like the reins which will guide a horse as we ride in one direction or another..."

So if we're to go deep we need the ida and the pingala, sushumna, functioning in a certain way. The way Gurudeva explains it elsewhere is the ida and pingala need to be balanced for the sushumna to come into power and we can balance them through our system of 24 hatha yoga postures, for example, that's a simple way of balancing them; that's why hatha yoga is encouraged before meditation.

Pranayama, the in-breath and the out-breath making them equal also helps balance the ida and the pingala and then the sushumna comes into power and we're able to go deeper.

"The intuitive nature, man's seventh aspect, is composed of a greater amount of actinic energy than odic. It is formed by the sushumna current that runs between the ida and pingala currents up through the spinal cord. However, it is the state of mind that a yoga student must learn to identify as his own, so to speak. Until this time, he usually identifies with the intuitive mind of his guru..."

So the next sentence, I'm going to skip forward slightly, it's kind of long.

"...When the yoga student learns to control his own odic force field to the point where he no longer identifies with his physical body, his astral body or his intellect, he can then identify his external ego with his intuitive nature, or subsuperconscious mind. This new and humble identity is a sporadic sense in the initial stages on the yoga path, for only when the student is really actinic does he utilize the intuitive mind consciously, perceiving it through the faculties of cognizantability...."

The idea there is to identify with your intuitive mind as the real you. And Gurudeva's pointing out that it's a gradual shift. When you start, just the idea of being the intuitive mind only happens now and then; it's sporadic as Gurudeva says. It's not a constant experience but we're trying to increase it. It's the, one of the results of regular sadhana is we identify with the intuitive mind more and more of the time until finally, we're always identified with the intuitive mind and the other aspects of us are subservient to that. So, at that point if you're asked: "Who am I?" you'd say: "I am my intuitive mind. I am my inner divine being." That's the right answer.

One last thought is:

"...One does not entertain thoughts when in this state of full awareness. In this consciousness, one views and perceives the anahata chakra of direct cognition. The intuitive nature is the most refined aspect of the astral body. Although the intuitive aspect is made primarily of actinic force, there is enough odic force within it to enable man to enter into the realm of creation in the material world. This seventh aspect of man is a plateau, a leveling off of one cycle of evolution and the beginning, at the same time, of another."

In other words, the insights of the intuitive mind can relate to what we're doing. It's not an area of the mind that, you know, it's like a vision of the deity that doesn't have a practical consequence. The intuitive mind can help us with our current projects, our current challenges in a very useful way.

Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.