Every piece of knowledge must be digested to liberate more fire/spirit from itself.
It is similar to real fire from firewood.
If you put dry wood, it further enhances the fire.
Whereas if you put wet wood, it diminishes it.
Similarly, if knowledge quells the fire, then that knowledge is not serving the fire.
There is no good knowledge or bad knowledge.
However, whether your fire can handle the knowledge or not is the real question,
i.e. whether you have the necessary supports, enzymes, tools etc. to digest it or not,
And that is what needs your discretion.
Knowledge must serve and enhance your spirit,
Like dry firewood enhances and fuels the fire.
If the knowledge being consumed does the reverse,
Then that knowledge is not serving your spirit,
And it would then diminish your life force.
Every answer you get for a question,
When digested fully, will spark 10 other subtler questions.
The purpose of an answer is to act like an enzyme to break the question up into subtler and subtler questions.
In a way, this principle also holds true for physical food.
If you can digest what you eat, the the food serves you and increases your energy.
If the food takes more energy to digest than it provides,
It leaves you with lesser energy than when you started off.
Karma, Samskharas, and the completion process
Karma means ‘action’ (verb).
Samskhara means ‘imprint/engram’ (noun).
In colloquial usage though, karma and samskharas are used interchangeably.
The mind in its clear pure state is like a clear mirror,
Where it simply reflects reality exactly the way it is.
Now, imagine a mirror that holds memory.
Suppose you go on a trip and carry the mirror to various places.
On returning home, you would be seeing colorings/ghosts of the past all over the mirror image, right?
This is the nature of a mind loaded with samskharas (impressions/imprints from the past).
The completion process (samskhara dahana kriya) is about thinning out these imprints, so that you can eventually see clearly through them.
One good visualization to imagine this is:
Imagine you are holding a ‘color checker board’ in front of you.
If the color slots on the checker board are totally opaque, then, you can only see the color and nothing through it.
If the color in the piece is made more and more transparent (decreasing opacity), you would gradually start to see what is behind the color piece more and more.
After reducing the opacity i.e. thinning the color to a certain point, you would be able to easily see through it even if there is a bit of coloring still present, right?
This is what is done in the completion process.
Generally in psychology, when the light of your consciousness shines through the color pieces in the checkerboard, it is known as ‘projection’.
# If the color piece is totally opaque, then there is ‘total projection’.
That is, you are entirely seeing your past imprint and nothing of the actual reality in front of you. Total projection completely obscures reality.
# If the color checker board has no colors and if all the colors are replaced with clear glass pieces, then there is no projection at all, and you are directly seeing what is in front of you with no coloring. There is then 0 projection.
So essentially, the spectrum is like this:
Projection(0% transparency) ——- (50% transparency)——- Reality(100% transparency)
For most of us, there is a wide spectrum of opacity variation for these color pieces.
It is neither 0% nor 100% transparent but somewhere in the middle.
Positive colored pieces make us see life through positive colorings (seeing through rose tinted glasses). This is commonly referred to as good karma.
Negative colored pieces make us see life through negative colorings/lenses (seeing through a hell bent mind). This is commonly referred to as bad karma.
The very process of living exhausts karma (colloquial usage).
The main difference between a regular person and spiritual seeker is that the spiritual seeker exhausts the karma at a much higher intensity.
Exhausting karma here means thinning the colors out.
All samskharas in a way are partially unlived or undigested experiences.
That is why they continue to color our present experience.
To digest all these imprints is therefore the goal of the completion process.
In a way, these positive coloring and negative coloring set of lenses are what you call your identity (that is, the combination of our specific likes-dislikes).
So in the completion process, you are also thinning your identity out and eventually merging with the actual reality.
Consider the experience of eating physical food from a plate.
At first we have a more intense experience of it in our tongue,
And then we experience the more subtle experience of the consumed food getting digested, right?
Then what follows is, the nutrients are extracted and the remaining food is sent out.
Similarly,
Karma is food for the gods/soul.
Digestion of karma (the completion process), enriches the soul with wisdom which are the nutrients in this case.
The knowledge of death completely rewires you
Death is thought of as an event that happens in the far future.
Nobody even thinks about it, unless there is a real reason to.
Seeing death as an event, is from ignorance (maybe purposeful).
Death is not an event that suddenly happens in the far future.
Death as an experience is continually happening.
“Death is not an event, but death IS, just as life IS”
(borrowed from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev).
One never steps in the same river twice.
Life experience is constantly transforming.
Knowledge of death or mortality is really knowledge of impermanence.
It is the truth of the statement: “This too shall pass”.
The nature of life is aliveness and change.
Life = spirit = novelty = miracle = change = aliveness = unknown = mystery.
Death is the knowledge of unbecoming that follows becoming.
Like the outbreath follows the inbreath.
So imagine breathing in more and more without letting out anything.
Eventually at one point, the tension will become so great,
You will just drop and let go of everything.
The nature of life is like the Breath.
We enter this planet, take on a body, project all of our emotions here.
We get deeply involved, and then later leave everything behind, and exit.
The cycle of [incarnation – death] like [inbreath – outbreath].
The knowledge of death is what breaks the spell of ordinary egoic life.
It is the great disillusionment.
It casts its shadow on all desires/dreams/plans.
The thought that comes is:
“What is the use of doing anything? OR becoming anything?
If it is all going to end in dust?
Why should I bother to fight for my survival and thrive?
If I am just going to be cheated and mocked in the end by death?”
This may create an existential crisis/dark night of soul/depression.
When the knowledge of death enters your vision.
If one allows this process to fully pass through,
They emerge on the other side transformed.
It is like how you digest food and get energy later,
The knowledge of death digests “you” and liberates you,
And you emerge as a phoenix from the ashes.
For the phoenix, life is lived in the “now/present”
The past is seen as present only, i.e. the past incarnating in the present.
The future is seen as imagination done in the present.
The phoenix lives with identification grounded in “formless life/aliveness” itself.
All else is seen as the play of life, “as form” and “with form”
Nobody even thinks about it, unless there is a real reason to.
Seeing death as an event, is from ignorance (maybe purposeful).
Death is not an event that suddenly happens in the far future.
Death as an experience is continually happening.
“Death is not an event, but death IS, just as life IS”
(borrowed from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev).
One never steps in the same river twice.
Life experience is constantly transforming.
Knowledge of death or mortality is really knowledge of impermanence.
It is the truth of the statement: “This too shall pass”.
The nature of life is aliveness and change.
Life = spirit = novelty = miracle = change = aliveness = unknown = mystery.
Death is the knowledge of unbecoming that follows becoming.
Like the outbreath follows the inbreath.
So imagine breathing in more and more without letting out anything.
Eventually at one point, the tension will become so great,
You will just drop and let go of everything.
The nature of life is like the Breath.
We enter this planet, take on a body, project all of our emotions here.
We get deeply involved, and then later leave everything behind, and exit.
The cycle of [incarnation – death] like [inbreath – outbreath].
The knowledge of death is what breaks the spell of ordinary egoic life.
It is the great disillusionment.
It casts its shadow on all desires/dreams/plans.
The thought that comes is:
“What is the use of doing anything? OR becoming anything?
If it is all going to end in dust?
Why should I bother to fight for my survival and thrive?
If I am just going to be cheated and mocked in the end by death?”
This may create an existential crisis/dark night of soul/depression.
When the knowledge of death enters your vision.
If one allows this process to fully pass through,
They emerge on the other side transformed.
It is like how you digest food and get energy later,
The knowledge of death digests “you” and liberates you,
And you emerge as a phoenix from the ashes.
For the phoenix, life is lived in the “now/present”
The past is seen as present only, i.e. the past incarnating in the present.
The future is seen as imagination done in the present.
The phoenix lives with identification grounded in “formless life/aliveness” itself.
All else is seen as the play of life, “as form” and “with form”
Journey to the Abstract 