(continued from Volume 13 Numbers 3-4 Page 75)

The limited ‘I’ (or separative ego) of ordinary human consciousness is a complex structure with intellect and feeling as important constituents. Its impressional or sanskaric dispositions get involved with each other in numberless ways.

None of them, by itself, nor their natural and haphazard combinations, can yield any permanent glimpse into the meaning of life. On the contrary, the infinite impressionary tangle covers up the Truth, obscuring it and making it impossible to get at. To cut the tangled thread at loops and knots is to lose the whole game. And the straightening of the tangled impressionary thread can not be a mechanical process or an achievement through blunt application of unintelligent or loveless force. The process of straightening up the impressions must, in its very nature, be both delicate and difficult, requiring the discriminative wisdom and infinite care, which the Master alone can bring for the task.

Bits of relative meaning, locked up in each type of impressionary experience, have to be carefully gleaned. These have to be carefully pooled, correlated and absorbed in the meaning of other types of impressional experiences, to which consciousness has been subjected. The meaning has to be gleaned and retained before the impressional tangle can be straightened. But this is far from being simple or easy. Very often the aspirant is unable to do this himself. The working of the Master often infuses into his impressional dispositions their appropriate meaning and enables him to straighten them and annul their restrictive functioning.

The process of annulling the restrictive effects of the impressions may be made clear by means of the analogy of the toy balloon made of rubber. When there is no gas or air in the toy balloon, it shrinks into small size. And its entire surface is covered up with creases and wrinkles. If any one tries to take away these creases or wrinkles on the surface of the toy balloon, by external pressure or adjustment, he is bound to fail. For one wrinkle, which may be straightened up, there would be another one in its proximity. Or perhaps, for one previously existent wrinkle there would be in its place a number of new wrinkles on its surface, either in the same portion or in some adjacent portion.

The wrinkles have no chance of disappearing as long as there is merely external manipulation of the wrinkled surface. The existing pattern of the wrinkles can, no doubt, be disturbed and radically changed by external manipulation; but the wrinkles cannot be effaced or annulled completely by this method. In the same way, the binding action of mental impressions can not be annulled by the process of mere external or mechanical adjustments.

But if, in the above analogy the toy balloon of rubber is infused with gas or air, all the wrinkles will automatically get rounded up and annulled. There will be no creases distorting the surface of the balloon if it is blown up to its full capacity. In the same way, if the mind-heart is infused with the meaning of life, all the 'wrinkles' of impressional dispositions get effaced. And being free from all distortions, the mind-heart becomes sound. But the binding action of impressions becomes defunct only after they are made to yield their inner meaning. Their becoming defunct, as ignorant resistance to Truth, releases the free functioning of consciousness.

To put the matter paradoxically, in the Truth-experience of unlimited consciousness, what has been rendered defunct is not the impressions but