Yuvacharya Mahaprajna
The psyche itself is not directly perceptible. Its character is that of conscious activities. 'To know' and 'to perceive' are parts of its performance. The body and the mind are the instruments of its performance. All spiritual disciplines aim at pure conscious performance, i.e. pure knowledge and pure perception. This is also a state of infinite bliss and unadulterated happiness. Delusion, however, perverts our perception and makes our knowledge fragmented and piecemeal. Our perception having been contaminated with the emotions of likes and dislikes cannot be impartial. Equanimity can be achieved by impartial (uncontaminated) perception or we can say that pure perception is equanimity itself.
We hear, see. smell, taste and touch through our respective sense organs and the mind. Our mind is also the instrument of conceptual thinking. Attachment to what we like and aversion to what we dislike is natural. One who is impartial to both likes and dislikes is equanimous. It means that only he is equanimous whose perception is pure and uncontaminated by attachment and/or aversion. Practice in Preksha Dhyana progressively develops equanimity. As we progress, pleasant and unpleasant sensations fail to produce the emotions of likes and dislikes. Consequently, the feelings of attachment and aversion gradually disappear. This, in turn, further develops our capacity for pure perception. The cumulative effect ultimately leads to totally pure knowledge and pure perception.
Our mind functions in many ways. At one time a train of thoughts and at another some conceptual planning may occupy it. All these activities can be perceived impartially during meditational practice. The significance of such perception is that the 'spiritual self is distinguished from 'thought'. The 'Self is the 'spectator', while mental activity is the object of awareness. This is not mere imagination or autosuggestion but a reality. As soon as one commences the perception of thought as an impartial spectator, the train begins to slow down and (if perception continues) ultimately comes to a halt. Regular practice in thought-perception develops the perceptive capacity to a degree where it is able to divulge others' thoughts also.
As stated earlier, the conscious self in its purest state is capable of experiencing the entire universal reality at once. Delusion drastically reduces this innate capacity and our knowledge becomes fragmented. Delusion is nourished by the emotions of attachment and aversion. To develop and ultimately unobfuscate the inherent capacity for omniscience, one has to commence diluting the emotions of likes and dislikes and of pleasure and pain. And for doing so impartial perception is the only available tool. Though obfuscated, our conscious self is always capable of executing its authority, which can be used to further develop equanimity. Thus equanimity begets purity of perception, and the purer the perception, the higher is the level of equanimity The cumulative result of the successive exchanges of cause and effect ultimately brings about the purest possible perception and instant cognition of the entire reality.
