BMI - The Genius of the Chart

He never tired of explaining it, though he must have done so more times than I can count:

The chart shows the relationship between the Real and the relative reality.

At that first lecture as I was listening to him, I thought, "Oh, oh, here is another term I don't understand. I wonder what he means by ‘relative reality'? Reality is reality!" As though reading my mind, he proceeded to answer my question. (This happened quite often at his lectures: He started to answer my silent question seconds after I had entertained that thought in my mind. Later I learned that many other people had experienced similar moments of synchronicity.)

Do you see the Om at the top? Om stands for the Real. We only One, lt is Timeless and does not change. This changeless factor, which illumines all changes, is the Consciousness by which we experience this World of ever-changing phenomena.

What we call relative reality is everything other than Om, and it is this everything else which is bound by time and is subject to constant change.

GURUDEV THEN EXPLAINED ALL PARTS OF THE BMI CHART IN SUMMARY FORM:

OM 

(symbolized at the top of the chart) 

The sound symbol stands for what Religion calls God, but what philosophy declares as Truth or as Reality.

V 

Vāsanās, the channel of thoughts created by our past actions and thoughts, which determines the contours of our present inner personality of thought and our outer behavior. These are our innate urges, our desires in seed form. 

B-M-I 

The Body, Mind, and Intellect. These are the three types of equipment through which Life expresses itself in the universe. 

P-F-T 

Perceiver, Feeler, Thinker. This is the sense of individuality in each one of us: I, the ego. It is the sole “experiencer” in me. 

O-E-T 

The world of Objects, the field of Emotions, and the realm of Thoughts. It constitutes the world of things and beings, which in totality provides our field of experience. 

I am giving you only a brief description now, because I want to cover the entire chart with you. Later on, I will tell you more about vasanas and how you can exhaust them. They are desires in seed form which are unfulfilled from your previous actions and experiences in this lifetime, as well as from previous lifetimes. In any case, these leftover desires need instruments through which they can manifest, and these instruments are the Body, Mind, and Intellect. It is through these instruments that Life expresses itself in the entire world.

Minerals have a body, which is just a shape, a form. Plants have a body and the beginning of a mind, for they are able to respond to light, water, and music. Animals have a body and a fully developed mind, functioning by instinct and mind impulses. Human beings have a body, mind, and intellect, and therefore have the ability to think rationally and creatively.

This ability to choose what to do and what not to do shows that humans are the most advanced on the evolutionary scale. To be born as a human being is the greatest opportunity given to each of us for the sole purpose of ending the cycle of birth and death. For it is only in the human body that we can purify the mind and the intellect. Not to use it then for the purpose for which it was given would be such a wasted opportunity. To rediscover our "birthless and deathless" nature is the ultimate goal of human life. lt is our birthright!

To drive the point home, Gurudev said: 

Not to know the Self is, indeed, the greatest of tragedies, it is to lay waste our powers and miss a chance that has been given to us, so rare, so sacred, so divine. 

Gurudev then explained how all these "equipments" [he always made the word plural, often admitting that no such plural exists, but he would use it anyway] are inert and insentient, and by themselves cannot operate. They need something to make them come to life. That something is other than matter, he said, and is called the divine Principle, God, Essence, Spirit, whatever we want to call it. In his chart, he called it OM. Then Gurudev gave one of his many examples: The filament in an electric light bulb cannot light itself; it needs electricity running through it. Only then will it begin to glow and bathe everything around it in its light. So too, our body, mind, and intellect need the divine Spirit to enable us to glow with Life. He continued:

This spiritual Presence, the spark of Consciousness, the Subject in us, enlivens all. To know the Subject within has been the quest of all sages and saints. 

Gurudev reminded us that the ancient Greek philosophers also declared, “Know Thyself,” and then he explained how this search had begun with the ancient Rishis of India:

To inquire "who am I?" is a search for the Subject [the Cause]. The Ṛṣis of the Vaidika period declared that the objective world has validity because of "Me," the Subject. They turned their attention to a Search for the Self, while the West concentrated on learning more about the world of observable phenomena.

The science that explains and expounds the subjective world became known as spirituality, a distinct contrast to the objective sciences of modern times. Without knowing who we are, we cannot have right relationships with the things and beings of the world. So we go through life running after false hopes, mad ambitions, and futile uncreative ideas. Stop! Seek and know who you are.

After listening intently to Gurudev's explanation of the BMI chart, I realized that this was a uniquely simple, yet comprehensive, way to explain all that is, both Real and relative. I had attended a good many lectures before I realized the genius behind the chart. Just like Einstein had his theory of relativity, which will always be associated with his name, the BMI chart is an invention for which Gurudev will forever be known. And at each successive lecture, Gurudev gave us new insights into how his BMI chart could be applied to our lives:

The world of objects, emotions, and thoughts is the only world from which we can harvest our experiences, collect our experiences. All through life, from birth to death, every moment, we are having experiences. The experience is you. You go to another person and say, "I am experiencing unhappiness. You have identified with your happy and unhappy emotions. "I don't understand what you are talking about, Swamiji Or: "I am smart in misunderstanding, Swamiji"; that is, you have identified yourself with your intellect. "1 am healthy or unhealthy." Or: I have no home, I have no wife — these are at the physical level. Thus, the physical, the psychological, and the intellectual personality in you, all put together, constitute what is called Mr. Ego, the hero of your autobiography. If you write your autobiography, who is the hero? 1. Who is this I? "Swamiji, it is l.

Now, having thus discovered it, having understood the mechanism of life, when the great Rsis looked out through the window, they found that all PFTs, all through their lives, in every experience, are trying to discover total happiness, complete satisfaction, and total contentment from OET through BMI. This is your autobiography, everyone's autobiography, irrespective of whether you are a congenital idiot or a great genius, whether you are spiritual or materialistic, whether you are a have or a have-not. Every individual — nay, not only man, unconsciously the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom alsol — is searching for and seeking happiness. What each wants is permanent happiness.

Now it was becoming clear to me why I could not find lasting happiness with my BMI through OET. Whatever glimpses of happiness I had experienced through the various kinds of equipment, all those bits of joy had a beginning and an end. So if I want lasting happiness, I must go beyond change, beyond time, beyond BMI. I realized what a slave I had been to my BMI, wanting to satisfy it with the best food, designer clothes, the latest makeup, and the most engrossing entertainment. I kept trying to find permanent happiness through impermanent things. But why was I so preoccupied with the Body-Mind-Intellect? And what gives the BMI so much power? That was my next question for Gurudev when once again we were in satsaṅga. I did not know it then, but what I was really asking him was to explain vāsanās. Before going into his explanation, he gave us something to think about:

Random, irrelevant thoughts carom through our minds all day long. So when we look, we don't really see; when we hear, we don’t listen. What really comes through is the rustle of our own thoughts, not the rhythms and melodies of life. 

Reference: FROM THE MANANAM SERIES: Chinmaya Birth Centenary Celebration Series Published in Chinmaya-Tej July/August 2015