Isha Upanishad - Super school - Auroville - Isha Upanishad 905

You know all the plots but you're acting as if the plot is now being worked out for the first time. You have to put off your knowledge as if it were at the back, concentrate upon the moment, be identified completely with it. This is the power of knowledge. Knowledge can be so knowledgeable, it can be so luminous, it can concentrate so much on a particular point, it can put off its knowledge at the back. This is the speciality of the nature of knowledge and ignorance. And sometimes when you have acted it takes time for you to come back. If you really acted, you will find very often the experience that you have already gone into that character, so much concentrated that afterwards for you to come back to your own original condition is so difficult. You still continue to act in the same mould in which you are acting, it continues.

We are all ignorant in the same way. All of us are ignorant in that sense, this is what, if you analyse the whole nature of knowledge and ignorance: you will find this is what is happening. We have before us a small field and I approached that small field. I was aware of everything behind, now I approach the small field, as I do it, I ignore all the rest and concentrate only on this so much that I see only this much and nothing else. Nothing else exists; I become completely ignorant of all the rest. Like Arjuna saying to his teacher, when the bird was to be shot, and the teacher said, you concentrate on the bird.  There were many other pupils and all the pupils were asked by the teacher, what they saw. Some of them said, I see the bird and its wings and there are flowers around. But the teacher said this is no good, until Arjuna came and said I only see the eye of the bird and nothing else. The concentration was so exclusive at that moment, he saw nothing else. He was ignorant of everything else, it is a deliberate ignorance but at that moment he was ignorant of everything else. He saw nothing, except the eye of the bird. The teacher said now shoot it, and he shot at the target, − bull's-eye.

This is the experience to be analysed now it so happens sometimes that having concentrated so much on that particular point, to come back again to all your awareness takes some time. Sometimes, you see a dream, in the dream you're talking to somebody and the dream ceases and you're awake and still you're talking to somebody, we are still in the same condition, you continue. These are small examples that they can be done on a large scale. You might say that each one of us is actually the Brahman, full consciousness of everything, fully luminous but we are concentrated upon a little thing, simply my body, my immediate surroundings, so much concentrated that I know only this and nothing else.

Yoga is a method of recovery of what you have left behind, you are concentrated upon only a small little field and you walk about and think about only that small little field, all the rest exists but you're ignoring. Why, because your concentrated upon this, exclusive concentration of consciousness produces in you ignorance of all the rest. I don't know for example, what is happening at the back of me. The Mother had said once, you must remember that I have eyes behind. You can develop that consciousness, so that even while you're walking, you can see what is happening at the back, or all around, or all over the world. For example, the Mother used to talk to somebody; suddenly she would go in a trance over some work, somewhere else far off in New York. And she would reach there and do the work and come back to you in a few minutes this was Mother's consciousness, is this is a fact. This is only a question of consciousness, you are now concentrated here, but you can withdraw and go back, this is all Yoga. This means you are too much externalised that is to say, my consciousness is on this field, which is before my eyes. You withdraw, you go inwards. Inward means what, what you have left behind, return your consciousness inwards on and on and on, until you recover all that was put behind to become the Brahman.

Question: can we have the consciousness of all that is left behind?

Answer: Yes, you can. A perfect Yogi is one, who is aware of all. There are many ways of awareness of all. This is what Mother was doing, awareness of all and yet everything, minutest detail, like I was reading one day a letter to her, in which the student had written to the mother. I was reading quite fast. Se mo trace mane, so she stopped me immediately when I read this. Mother said this is a mistake, it should be Se ma trace man. And she spent five minutes with me, first to explain to me, why it should be so and then she said I explain this to that girl, when you go back to her. She said anne is feminine, so normally it should be ma anne. If it is simply mon anne for the sake of pronunciation, otherwise grammatically anne should be preceded by ma not mo, but this is an exception because mon anne would be more convenient to speak. Therefore, in French language grammatically, it is accepted but when there is another word between anne and another word, in which the pronunciation doesn't matter there is no liason, then you should come to original position. Namely, anne being feminine, it should be preceded by ma. So, mother said mo trace mane is wrong, ma trace mane is correct. She must be aware of the whole world at that time but she was concentrating absolutely at that point.  She took time to explain to me in detail and I tell you that at that time there were hundred people outside, waiting for her. It's a fact. So imagine the pressure on the mind to meet hundred people soon after, and while I'm reading the paper.