When the mind travels out into the world through the five sense organs, there is a temporary experience. When eyes meet its object form, ears meet sound, tongue meets taste, nose meets smell and skin experiences touch—different experiences are born.
However, when all the five gather together and experience an object, the meeting becomes very intense.
Adi Sankaracharyaji is curing the mind of its favourite haunts and resultant drainage of energy which is needed if one were to sit for an enquiry for as great a subject as the source of creation or the reality of one’s true self.
In the earlier verse of Moha Mudgara—popularly known as Bhaja Govindam—the sickness he was trying to address was a hunt for accumulation of wealth.
In the next verse he attempts to distract the mind from its attachment to the human form—particularly feminine and the resultant desire for experiencing a skin-to-skin contact of human flesh.
How can I wean away the mind from its favourite past-time of revelling in the attraction of flesh, an urge bequeathed to human kind from his animal past? Well, to get attracted to anything, man superimposes three ideas on the object: one is Sukha Adhyasa—a super imposition that the object will give me joy, Shobhana Adhyasa—the object is beautiful and Satyatwa—the object is real. These three ideas are simply that—ideas in our head or illusory perceptions. The author says, do not get deluded seeing the beautiful form of feminine.
Understand that the contours that evoke thoughts of beauty and pleasure in the mind are nothing but a modification of flesh. If flesh appeared the way it does in reality, hanging out like the animal pieces in chicken and mutton stalls, it is not going to have any attraction for satiating the sense of touch.
Since the same flesh is neatly packaged in a healthy, soft and shining skin, it feels very attractive. The means to get over this infatuation is to look within the skin to discover many kilogrammes of flesh and blood slapped around the structure called bones.
Adi Sankaracharyaji urges the seeker of truth to not just think of a beautiful form in this real way for what it actually is, flesh and bones, just once. He asks them to think of it in this manner again and again. One-time contemplation is never enough to dispel the strong thought patterns caused by our illusory perceptions of viewing the world in this and many lifetimes earlier.
Why should the seeker not indulge his time seeking carnal pleasures?
When the attraction is for the flesh, our precious life force ebbs away soon through the five senses leaving us barely enough energy to survive.
The dynamic power that is required for greater pursuits are not available for us.
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