What does it mean to be imageless? It means to be free from all our past impressions. It means to be ever fresh and ever renewed in the pure State of Being. We get a taste of this freshness in deep meditation and inner quietude.
We need to drop all our images to be happy. We need to leave all our images to be really free from within. It is not enough to memorize a few facts, or study a few books, or attend a few lectures. If we really want to be established in our True Self, we need to be in the state of meditative awareness 24/7 (twenty-four hours a day, seven days week, 365 days a year–and 366 on leap year!).
What is meditative awareness? This is the state of deep, focused receptivity of the mind. Only a clear mind can be focused, and only a mind that is free of mental clutter can be deep. If the mind is filled with emotional debris and mental chit-chat, one can never experience the depth of Being, even though one may be able to concentrate the mind on the things of this gross world. For example, there are people who can excel in their career, but are completely inept at steering their life to reach their ultimate destination. They live their whole life on the surface level and never realize how deep their roots really are.
Our roots are established in the Essence of Being. Our roots are established in Pure Consciousness. From that Pure Consciousness, the wisdom flows. We need to realize that our roots are from above, and all what we call real is not so real after all. In other words, what we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and think is just an outgrowth of something else which we cannot perceive by these means. The mind and senses cannot fathom the depth of Being because we are trying to find the meaning of Life through the false perception of ego. Ego cannot see beyond itself; it is always looking down on others and down on life.
When we are in our ego we try to make ourselves happy through our attachments, possessions, and accomplishments. We fail to look up to the wisdom of the Wise or listen to our own higher consciousness. Instead, we get caught up in our images and expectations and try to figure everything out through the false perception of ego. We become totally wrapped up in ourselves, in our memories, feelings, desires, and hallucinations. We think we are in control of everything and we don’t realize that much of what happens in our life is just the play of Life itself. (In the Gita this is explained with the phrase: “The Gunas are moving among the Gunas.”)
Our Real Self, our Higher Nature, is not caught up in this drama of life. The mind, purified by that Higher Nature, becomes the witness and is no longer moved or motivated by that which is unreal. When this happens, the peace begins to descend from above (where are roots are). We feel connected to that which is real, and that connection gives us real confidence (Atam-Vishwas, soul-confidence) to continue our inward and upward journey.
The deeper we go, and the higher we go, the more we realize our own imageless Essence. When we become completely imageless, we attain the Highest State of Consciousness. We are Free, forever Free. OM