That split-second moment

People have favourite times of the day. They could be breakfast time, lunchtime, shower time, or the time that one spends with friends or with a lover and so on. But there is one such amazing moment that we experience every night and yet don’t remember. I mean that exact moment when we actually fall asleep. That is the moment when I hand over all the natural life-supporting and functional systems in my body to my subconscious mind. What an important split-second moment it is! I actually hand over myself to an automatic system that keeps me alive while the ‘I’ in me sleeps! This system governs my heartbeat, my breathing or rather my oxygen intake, my digestive system, my brain, everything. This means that I totally trust my subconscious. Well, there is someone who I do trust completely and blindly and that’s me!  The power of my own mind is so amazing that it not only keeps me alive while I sleep, but also works hard on forming patterns in my life that can eventually lead me to achieve all my goals.  My subconscious mind treats me well and respects me.

Throughout the day, whether I am at work or when I am doing nothing, I  silently keep communicating with my subconscious mind. Silently, because I don’t need to use my vocal cords to talk to it. I just have to think and it understands.  The best part of my subconscious is that I can be absolutely frank and honest with it, and I don’t have to worry about looking silly or stupid before it. That is the kind of wonderful and confidential relationship I have with my subconscious mind. This silent communication with one’s subconscious is also known as daydreaming. It has been the dreams of people that have led to great inventions and to all the technological advancements that we have today. People who dare to dream and believe in their dreams most certainly succeed in realising them. It is the absolute clarity in dreaming that matters.

That moment when we fall asleep is almost like dying, except for the fact that the vital functions in the body are still active while we sleep. That split-second moment is so important that that is when I actually connect with my subconscious mind and there is a kind of direct interaction between my subconscious mind and the ‘Self’ in me. During the rest of the day, when I am awake, it is only me communicating with my subconscious mind. Every night when I lay down on the bed, I prepare myself very well with my specific requests that I would place before my subconscious mind so that it knows what work it has to do while ‘I’ sleep. I place before it the problems that I need to solve and the goals that I want to achieve. Being precise truly matters here, because a split-second moment of time is not long enough for beating about the bush with vague thoughts. With these precise thoughts in my mind in the form of mental images, I close my eyes and my subconscious takes over and works on my desires while I sleep. Invariably, during the following day, a new idea suddenly flashes in my mind, or I receive a phone call or an email from someone and I get an answer to the question that I ‘asked’ my subconscious mind the previous night. Of course, this does not happen every day, and it could probably depend on how hard I pushed my subconscious mind by actually meaning what I asked for.

The peculiar quality of my subconscious mind is that it does not follow any logic, and it feels that it has no right to differentiate between my positive and my negative thoughts. This could probably be so because it considers it ‘disrespectful’ to question me! I usually make it a point to stay away from anyone that has a pessimistic attitude, and also from allowing any kind of negative thoughts to creep into my mind. When in trouble, it is quite natural for people to be afraid of something that could probably happen to them. It is not that I don’t think of negative things at all. When I encounter a problem, in my thoughts, I do go as far as possible on the negative side of the fence in my mind which separates my positive and my negative thoughts. This is only in order to see what the worst-case scenario could be, and I quickly rush back to the positive side of the fence. Staying there for too long could be risky, as it might give sufficient time to the negative things I ‘saw’ to form clear images in my mind, which then have the possibility of becoming real. Once I have seen the end of the other side of the fence, I start concentrating ONLY on the positive side of it.

When I was born, the ‘Self’ in me was given the body that I have today. This body is mine and only mine until it dies. The ‘Self’ in me doesn’t die, but the body does.  My real ‘Self’ is my soul, and it is permanent – the absolute reality.
Bhagavad Gita :
SBG 2:22 vaasaamsi jeerNaani yathaa vihaaya navaani gruhNaathi naroparaaNi
tathaa shareeraani vihaaya jeerNaani, anyaani samyaati navaani dehi.
Just as a man discards his old and worn our garments and accepts new clothes, the embodied soul gives up its old and worn-out bodies and accepts new ones.

SBG 2:23 nainam chindanti shastraaNi, nainam dahati paavakaha, nachainam kledayan-tyaapo na shoshayati maarutaha.
Weapons cannot harm the soul nor can fire burn it.  Neither can water wet it nor can the wind dry it up.

‘Aham Brahmasmi’ means ‘ I or the ‘Self’ (the soul in me), is the absolute reality and the soul is God. Refer Ishavasya Upanishad.

Someone recently wrote to me expressing her fear about a terrible time that was ‘predicted’ to her by some astrologer. All I wrote to her was that even allowing such negative thoughts to enter her mind was potent enough to make those terrible things really happen to her. The subconsciousness does not differentiate between positive and negative, or good or bad. All it does is convert mental images into reality.

Every night before I go to sleep, I look forward to that very important momentary actual face-to-face meeting with my subconscious mind when I hand over the baton of command to it and fall asleep, for until I wake up, it is my subconscious mind, that takes over the controls of the very systems in my body that keep me alive. This ensures that I wake up the following morning and open two precious gifts, which are my eyes.

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