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Churning of thе Mind: Lеarning through Anciеnt Scripturеs
> Guest contributors > Relevance of ancient Indian scriptures: The beginning of learning

Relevance of ancient Indian scriptures: The beginning of learning

"When the mind is shaken up, or when the mind is churned, what happens?" Sri M explains.

In Sanskrit, the other word for churning-up is ‘manthan’. It’s only when the mind is churned-up that it can explore fresh horizons; otherwise, it becomes a fossilised mind that is of no use to anyone, including its owner. So, when the mind is churned-up, it quite often happens on the psychological side. I am talking now about the experiential side, which has to do with meditation.

When the mind is shaken up, or when the mind is churned, what happens? According to the great myth of the churning of the oceans in ancient times by the gods—by the Devas and the Asuras—what happened? The Devas and the Asuras churned the ocean of milk. What was flung out first was poison, that too the most dangerous kind called ‘hala hala visha’—which could have annihilated the entire creation. The story is that the great god, Shiva, the lord of destruction, and also the symbol of the one with the third eye or the eye of intuition, the eye of understanding, lapped up the poison and saved the world.

It indicates the level between the teacher and the taught. It means the one who is receiving and the one who is giving.

So, it’s quite possible that when the mind is churned, so many poisons from its innermost depths come to the surface. They come to the surface and vanish. And, there is no other way they can be taken out. From the point of view of yoga psychology, bottling up is not the answer. Taking them out—that’s where tantra comes into the picture, where one’s emotions, one’s fears, one’s anxieties, one’s desires are all brought to the surface before they evaporate; they vanish once for all.

So, ‘shad’ also means shaking up—breaking down the foundations to build the new. This is ‘Upa-ni-shad’. Then, there is a little syllable ‘ni’, in between, which connects ‘upa’ and ‘shad’. It indicates the level between the teacher and the taught. It means the one who is receiving and the one who is giving. The one who is receiving has to be empty.

The student or the listener has to realise there are things to be learnt, things of which he knows little and, therefore, says ‘let me listen to somebody who seems to know’. In, some way, this curtails the egotistic feeling that comes in between when we listen. Often, when we go to listen to a talk, we go with the notion: ‘I know that I know what he is saying, I know everything, I am sure this is what he is going to say’. So, this ‘ni’, the word ‘ni’ indicates the humility required to listen and to understand.

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