BREAKING THE POT OF MAYA
[Babaji referred to the clay pots the children had made during the summer retreat, representing the 24 Cosmic Principles (see children's retreat article).  Sri Ramakrishna gave the analogy of 24 clay pots full of water, each reflecting the sun above.  Thus, there are 24 reflected suns and one real sun.  The practice of discrimination between the real and the unreal, as well as involution, is indicated by the breaking of the pots: the five elements, the 10 senses, the subtle sense objects, and the fourfold components of the mind.  Ego is the last pot.  What happens when it is broken? How many suns are there? We are tempted to say "the one real sun," but this is not correct.  Why? Because we have just destroyed the last reflector of the sun, called the separate ego self.  Without a reflector, who is there to experience a real sun?  The Self alone remains, objectless].

"But I like experiences," beings will say.  However, samadhi [what happens when the last pot is broken] is not an experience.  You break the last pot and the perceiver of the sun is gone -- experience is gone.  In the sincere aspirant, this comes about naturally, like the fall of a palm frond.  As long as dharma is held to first and foremost, you will move inexorably toward this formless Reality.  With the "hound of heaven" after you, you will get free.

When you are in Sakshi (Witness) mode, the distinction between Seer and seen is very subtle.

Mind creates the worlds, but intelligence is what moves you from place to place in them.  Thus, Intelligence is changing; it engages in sankalpa, creative imagining.  Refined intelligence, however, develops spiritual discrimination, and the fascination (moha) and vain-glory (mada) with conceptualization wanes and falls off.  This is the state in which you see a true luminary like Sri Ramakrishna

By indulging in Sankalpa, you are overlaying finiteness on the Atman.  You should be cutting yourself in the image of God, but instead you are imagining God via your limited thought.  It is the nature of Atman to be pure and blissful, but people cover it up via sankalpic projection.

Kaivalya means freedom from nature.  If we want to be friendly to the idea of becoming one with nature, initially we say, "Man needs to get connected to Nature."  Man has alienated himself from it, and now is suffering from that betrayal.  In truth, nature has come out of man, but then he hates it, or wants to master it, control it, attach to it, etc.  He nevers sees it as his own.  This is, as Swami Vivekananda wrote in a poem, "piling gloom on gloom."

If you lose your discriminatory wisdom, you run afoul of Reality.  You stop being the Witness; you forget it has all come out of you and are thus at the mercy of all your false projections.

You are not the object, but the Subject.  You can even say that you are not the Subject, because it is only the ego/intelligence complex that is telling you that.  So you want beyond the Subject-object duality.  When you break the pot of ego/intellect complex, then no subject/object remains.  Only the Eternal Subject/Seer.  Try to envision this in meditation.  Then actuate it in samadhi.

[Referring to the study of spiritual philosophy] As a kid you resisted learning certain things.  You would say, "I don't wanna do that."   Now you are just a big kid and you say, "I don't wanna learn the 24 Cosmic Principles; it's too much for me."  But when you know the cosmic principles you can break maya's hold!  How exciting this freedom!  Further, when you see that by breaking the "pot" of mind all form goes away, then you understand that God is not a creator; the mind is.

It only makes sense that to go to a subtle inner state that you have to give up gross form.

There are three things to be transcended: matter, energy, and thought.