Question: In Baba’s tape recorder analogy*, with relation to the brain and mind, do all the impressions in the mind need to be run through the brain and watched in order to be erased?
*The brain functions as a tape recorder with the mind as the “tape”. Countless impressions and experiences of a life are recorded in the mind, until they can be released and purified by means of sadhana, especially the sadhana of meditation. During meditation, the mind “gets applied on the brain, and the brain decodifies the acquired habits recorded in the mind”. In this subtle purification process, thoughts and images, “sights and sounds”, are shown to the meditator, which if watched with alert attention as a witness, but without attachment or analysis, can be erased and evaporated from the mind. Otherwise, if the meditator attaches to these thoughts, sights or sounds, judges or analyzes them, these same impressions or “imaginations” are reabsorbed by the brain and again recorded in the mind.
Babaji:
Yes! All the acquired habits of the mind would get erased by going through this process of the brain creating visions and thoughts. It's a tricky situation where you cannot conclude, but still this is what happens when one is able to observe closely. This continues up to a stage, as long as the mind does not get delinked totally from the brain, to go to samadhi. Visions and thoughts, 'sight and sound' is what I would like to call these, in different potencies will continue, first like imaginations and then, when the mind's concentration increases in advanced meditation, mental projection happens.
Finally, at the height of tapas, when the mind would have achieved total concentration, but still some residue of resolutions remains, manifestations, including the form of God coming in front of the sadhak, and so on, happen. After this manifestation (of the form of God), a peculiar vision happens. It appears as if that deity, that form of God, will be merging in you, where as actually, it is the mind which merges with the Self. That is when the nirvikalpa samadhi occurs, I suppose, when only an awareness of Existence remains and Supreme Peace is there. It is not necessary that every sadhak getting realized will undergo these type of mental projections and manifestations. It would totally depend on the acquired habits of the mind of such a person who is going into tapas. Many may not simply observe these things happening. All the manifestations or projections may go unnoticed or ignored. By a peculiar illusion, the mind and brain have come together and exist because of the other. Mind is the main petrol for the brain and the brain is the main illusion petrol for the existence of the mind. A sadhak has to skilfully try to delink the mind, without trying to affect the health of the brain.
