Showing posts with label consciousness. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 September 2024

Pure intransitive awareness alone is real consciousness and what actually exists

In section 16.1 of A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications Robert Lawrence Kuhn quoted some extracts from personal communication I had with him regarding what Bhagavan taught about consciousness or awareness, so this article is a copy of what I had written to him (with references added in the body of the text instead of in footnotes):

Tuesday, 2 February 2021

In what sense is it true to say ‘everything is one’?

A friend wrote to me recently, ‘I think I got this part wrong: “Everyone is oneself”. You would say I am saying “Many is one”, right? What would you say? There is just one?’, in reply to which I wrote:

Thursday, 31 January 2019

To understand consciousness can we rely upon the observations and theories of neuroscience?

Recently a friend wrote to me saying that he was caring for his mother, who was in the final stages of dying because of a brain tumour, and that for a year he had been watching the effect it had on her: ‘I followed every moment of her conscious disappearance and with all her reports about that till three days ago when she fell into a terminal coma, just breathing. [...] Layer by layer I observed her fading away: abstract reasoning, language, sight, taste, calculation, self-perception, memory, emotions, equilibrium, movement, then faces recognition, space time comprehension, till the sleeping mode during the day, sudden change of mood, personality, then fear, sorrow, and now coma, tomorrow death’.

He also wrote about the connection between the changes that had been taking place in his mother’s perception, behaviour, understanding, character, response to stimuli and so on and the parts of her brain that were progressively affected by cancer cells, and what neuroscience says about such things, including the idea that ‘consciousness is only an emergent property of the brain’. He wrote that therefore ‘I have to surrender to the hard fact of the causal relation between brain and consciousness’, and asked what Bhagavan’s teachings have to say about such matters. The first section of this article is adapted from my reply to this, and the second section is adapted from my reply to what he wrote in response to my first reply.

Saturday, 18 February 2017

What is the difference between pure awareness and the ego, and how are they related?

A friend recently wrote asking me to explain the difference between awareness and consciousness and how consciousness is connected to the ego, so the following is what I wrote in reply to her:

Wednesday, 31 August 2016

What is the ‘self’ we are investigating when we try to be attentively self-aware?

In a comment that he wrote today on my previous article, Is it incorrect to say that ātma-vicāra is the only direct means by which we can eradicate our ego?, a friend called Viveka Vairagya wrote:
You say self-enquiry is nothing but “attentive self-awareness”. I get the “attentive” and “awareness” parts. I don’t get the “self” part coz all I am aware of now is my body and thoughts, including the “I-thought”. So, do you mean I should be attending to the awareness of “I-thought”? That could make sense coz it is kinda attending to the snake (I-thought) and finding lo and behold that it is a rope (self). So, why then don’t you say self-enquiry is “attentive I-thought-awareness”? I hope my doubt makes sense.
The following is my answer to this:

Tuesday, 11 August 2015

What is cidābhāsa, the reflection of self-awareness?

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Can we experience what we actually are by following the path of devotion (bhakti mārga)?, an anonymous friend quoted a translation of verses 8 and 9 from Ātma-Vicāra Patikam (a song of eleven verses composed by Sri Sadhu Om about self-investigation, which is the first appendix in Sādhanai Sāram). What he wrote in verse 9 is:
நானெதென் றாய வஃது நலிவதற் கேதே தென்றால்
நானெனு மக விருத்தி ஞானத்தின் கிரண மாகும்
நானெனுங் கிரணத் தோடே நாட்டமுட் செல்லச் செல்ல
நானெனுங் கிரண நீள நசித்துநான் ஞான மாமே.

nāṉedeṉ ḏṟāya vaḵdu nalivadaṟ kēdē deṉḏṟāl
nāṉeṉu maha virutti ñāṉattiṉ kiraṇa māhum
nāṉeṉuṅ kiraṇat tōḍē nāṭṭamuṭ cellac cella
nāṉeṉuṅ kiraṇa nīḷa naśittunāṉ ñāṉa māmē
.

பதச்சேதம்: நான் எது என்று ஆய அஃது நலிவதற்கு ஏது ஏது என்றால், நான் எனும் அக விருத்தி ஞானத்தின் கிரணம் ஆகும். நான் எனும் கிரணத்தோடே நாட்டம் உள் செல்ல செல்ல, நான் எனும் கிரண நீளம் நசித்து நான் ஞானம் ஆமே.

Padacchēdam (word-separation): nāṉ edu eṉḏṟu āya aḵdu nalivadaṟku ēdu ēdu eṉḏṟāl, nāṉ eṉum aha-virutti ñāṉattiṉ kiraṇam āhum. nāṉ eṉum kiraṇattōḍē nāṭṭam uḷ sella sella, nāṉ eṉum kiraṇa nīḷam naśittu nāṉ ñāṉam āmē.

English translation: If anyone asks what the reason is for it [the ego] being destroyed when one investigates what am I, [it is because] the aham-vṛtti [ego-awareness] called ‘I’ is a [reflected] ray of jñāṉa [pure self-awareness]. When together with the ray called ‘I’ the investigation [attention or scrutinising gaze] goes more and more within, the extent [or length] of the ray called ‘I’ being reduced [and eventually destroyed], [what will then remain as] ‘I’ will indeed be jñāṉa [pure self-awareness].

Monday, 6 April 2015

How we can confidently dismiss the conclusions of materialist metaphysics

In one of my recent articles, All phenomena are just a dream, and the only way to wake up is to investigate who is dreaming, I wrote:
Moreover, since we experience ourself existing in sleep, when we do not experience anything else, the fact that we exist independent of whatever else we may experience in waking or dream is self-evident. Therefore we need not doubt this fact, or suppose that our existence could depend upon the existence of our body or any other thing, as is wrongly supposed by most present-day philosophers and scientists.
Quoting this passage, a friend called Sivanarul wrote a comment in which he said:

Friday, 20 February 2015

Self-investigation and body-consciousness

A friend recently sent me a PDF copy of The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and referring to the sixth chapter of it, ‘The Inner Body’, he wrote:
The chapter that talks on the inner body is quite remarkable, by taking the attention away from thoughts/body/sense perceptions and into the energy field of the body, there is the clear and vibrantly alive feeling “I Am” and nothing else. Going deeper into it, the feeling of inside and out dissolves, subject and object dissolve, and there is this sense of unlimited, unbound (by the limits of the body) and unchanging beingness or I Amness. Can this be likened to self-attention? Or more clearly, is this the same practice? Because in both we are removing attention from everything except the feeling “I Am” and focussing it on the feeling. Could it be that only the description is different? Where you describe it as focussing the attention on the consciousness “I Am” Eckhart describes it as focussing the attention on the aliveness/consciousness that pervades the physical body to the exclusion of all thoughts. He goes on to describe the state of pure being when the attention goes more deep.
This article is adapted from the replies I wrote to this and to two subsequent emails.

Sunday, 18 January 2015

The connection between consciousness and body

A friend wrote to me recently saying that in a German book on Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu called Über das Selbst (‘About the Self’) the author has written that the absolute consciousness is connected through our navel, and asked me to comment on this. The following is adapted from the reply I wrote:

I assume that what is meant here by the term ‘consciousness’ is what is conscious, which is the sense in which it is generally used in the context of the teachings of Sri Ramana or any other form of advaita philosophy. It is important to clarify this, because ‘consciousness’ is used in a variety of different senses, so its exact meaning is generally determined by the context in which it happens to be used.

Friday, 15 August 2014

Establishing that I am and analysing what I am

In my previous article, We must experience what is, not what merely seems to be, I wrote:
‘I’ definitely does exist, because ‘I’ is what experiences both itself and all other things, so even if all other things merely seem to exist, their seeming existence could not be experienced if ‘I’ did not actually exist to experience it. The existence of ‘I’ is therefore necessarily true, whereas the existence of anything else is not necessarily true, because nothing else experiences either its own existence or the existence of anything else, so though things other than ‘I’ do seem to exist, it is possible that they do not exist except in the experience of ‘I’.
Referring to this paragraph, a friend called Sanjay asked in a comment:
You say here: ‘The existence of ‘I’ is therefore necessarily true…’, but you have also said earlier that: ‘…because ‘I’ is what experiences both itself and all other things…’. Therefore if ‘I’ experiences both itself and all other things then it is our mind, our limited or reflected consciousness, then how can ‘I’ be necessarily true, as you have said earlier in this above paragraph. Should we not consider this ‘I’ to be our imagination, though it is our first imagination – that is, our thought-‘I’?
The aim of this paragraph that Sanjay referred to was only to establish the fact that I am, and was not to analyse what I am. It is of course necessary for us to analyse what I am, because we need to distinguish what I actually am from what I merely seem to be, but the arguments that are used to analyse what I am are different to the arguments that are used simply to establish that I am, whatever I may be. That is, the latter arguments simply establish that something that we experience as ‘I’, ourself, does definitely exist, even though this definitely existing ‘I’ may not be whatever it now seems to be.

Thursday, 19 June 2014

Is consciousness a product of the mind?

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Self-investigation, effort and sleep, Venkat wrote:
May I ask for your comments on the following.

Science tells us that our fundamental building blocks (chemicals . . . electrons, protons, neutrons . . . ultimately energy waves) are inter-dependent and non-differentiated. For whatever reasons, the universe has evolved, and from which has evolved body-minds. These body-minds are fundamentally non-separate. Bhagavan's self-enquiry is for the seemingly separate ‘I’ to see this non-differentiated non-separateness and thereby to dissolve.

If you agree that this model is feasible, is consciousness a product of the mind? Nisargadatta talks about consciousness as a product of the food-body-mind, and the Absolute that is aware of this consciousness.
Since the reply I drafted is too long to post as another comment on that article, I am giving it here:

Venkat, what science tells us is a combination of observations and theories that have been developed to explain those observations in terms of other observations and currently accepted theories, and also to predict future observations, but what science cannot tell us is whether what it has observed is real or illusory. Science is based on our generally unquestioned belief that the world is real and exists independent of our experience of it, but our experience does not and cannot support this belief.

Sunday, 15 June 2014

Why do we not experience the existence of any body or world in sleep?

In a comment on my previous article, What do we actually experience in sleep?, Wittgenstein wrote with reference to my ‘gap’ argument that the featureless gap called ‘sleep’ that we experience between some consecutive states of waking and/or dream ‘also characterizes the discontinuity of world-body (they always pair up), space-time, causation and ego (all belonging to non-self, jada). So, in a single attempt we do come to know the continuity of the background self (sat-chit) and the discontinuity of the non-self. Further, such discontinuous entities should be unreal even when they appear’, and then went on to discuss why we do not experience the existence of the world or any other non-self items in sleep. In general I agree with his inferences, but the following are my own reflections on this same subject:

Because our natural predisposition (or rather the natural predisposition of our mind) is to believe (at least while we are experiencing them in the waking state) that this body and world are real and exist independent of our experience of them, we wrongly assume that the reason we do not experience them in sleep is that we were unconscious then. However, if we analyse our actual experience in our three states of waking, dream and sleep, we can understand that (for reasons such as those that I explained in my previous article, What do we actually experience in sleep?) we are in fact conscious in sleep, even though we are not conscious of any body or world then. We therefore have to question our assumption that this body and world exist when we are asleep, and also our underlying assumption that they exist independent of our experience of them.

Thursday, 12 June 2014

What do we actually experience in sleep?

A friend wrote to me recently asking me to further clarify what I had written in Chapter 2 of Happiness and the Art of Being about sleep being a state in which we are still conscious or aware that we exist, and after I replied to him he wrote again saying that though he would like to be convinced that he is aware in sleep, he is still not entirely sure that this is the case. The following is adapted from the replies that I wrote to his two emails.

First reply:

When you say, ‘I fall asleep and I’m not aware of anything’, what exactly do you mean by saying ‘I’m not aware of anything’? Do you mean that you are not aware at all, or that you are aware of nothing? Please do not rush to answer this question to yourself, but think about it carefully.

Consider the difference between the experience of a totally blind person (B) and a normally sighted person (S) when they are both in a completely dark room. B does not see anything because he does not see at all, so he does not know that the room is dark, whereas S sees nothing, so he knows that the room is dark. Is our experience in deep sleep like that of B or S?

Friday, 25 April 2014

Scientific research on consciousness

A few months ago an academic psychologist whose current research is exploring ‘the conscious experience’ wrote to me inviting me to give feedback on some of his research findings based on his theory of ‘Consciousness Quotient’, and he explained: ‘I am trying to describe the conscious experience as accurately as possible, including as many perspectives as possible’. I replied to his invitation, and this led to a series of emails between us in which he tried to answer what I wrote and to explain his viewpoint in more detail. The following is adapted from the six replies I wrote to him.

First reply:

Thank you for this kind invitation, but I am not sure whether I can contribute in any way to your research, because the questions I would ask about consciousness and conscious experience perhaps go beyond the scope of your project.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I would start by questioning the meaning of the word ‘consciousness’, which I believe is ambiguous, because it used differently in different contexts. On the face of it ‘consciousness’ means either the quality or state of being conscious, which immediately raises several questions such as: What is it that is conscious? Is consciousness an inherent or a contingent quality of that thing? In other words, is consciousness a permanent or a temporary state of what is conscious?

Thursday, 29 October 2009

Japa of ‘I am’ as an aid to self-attentiveness

After I wrote my previous article, ‘Holy indifference’ and the love to be self-attentive, a series of interesting comments have been posted on it discussing the use of japa (repetition) as an aid to the practice of self-attentiveness. In the most recent comment in this series Hans wrote:

... To me it is important to understand the connection between japa which is an object and “I am”. As I do experience, the “me” practicing japa vanishes and some silent apperception of being appears which I am unable to describe. I suppose this is still another subtle object, however I can’t proceed any further. May be Michael will clear up this state of affairs. ...
Other than our pure and absolutely non-dual self-consciousness ‘I am’, everything that we experience is ‘still another subtle object’, as Hans rightly calls it.

That is, so long as we experience ourself as an individual (a mind or separate consciousness) who is practising self-attentiveness (trying to know ‘who am I?’), we have not yet experienced ‘I am’ in its absolutely pristine form (because when we do experience it thus our mind will be destroyed forever), so whatever we experience while practising is ‘still another subtle object’ — a subtle thought experienced by a separate thinking consciousness.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009

‘Holy indifference’ and the love to be self-attentive

In reply to a friend who wrote to me asking for some advice concerning the psychological effects of some health problems that he was experiencing, I wrote as follows:

Whatever we experience in our outward life as a body-bound mind or ego, we are destined to experience for a purpose, and the ultimate purpose behind all that we experience is for us to learn the essential lesson of detachment.

Nothing that we experience — other than ‘I am’ — is real or lasting. It is all just a fleeting appearance, as are the body and mind that we mistake to be ourself. But so long as we attend to these fleeting appearances — that is, so long as we allow them to encroach in our consciousness — their seeming reality will be sustained and nourished.

Therefore, if we wish to rest peacefully in and as our essential being, ‘I am’, we must learn to ignore all appearances, and we can ignore them only by being completely indifferent to them (‘holy indifference’, as the Christian mystics call it). That is, only when we are truly indifferent to everything else, knowing it all to be just a fleeting dream, will we have the strength to cling firmly to ‘I am’ alone.

Sunday, 16 August 2009

Thinking, free will and self-attentiveness

The following is a reply that I recently wrote to a friend:

Regarding your final sentence, ‘We are only given the thoughts that we are allowed to have, and we can only act from the thoughts we are given’, who gives us the thoughts that we are allowed to have? Nothing really comes from outside ourself, so whatever we are ‘given’ to think must come from within.

The truth is that all thinking is done only by our mind, the spurious form of consciousness that experiences itself as ‘I am this body, a person called so-and-so’, but there are two forces that impel our mind to think whatever it thinks.

One of these two forces is our destiny or prarabdha, which is the ‘fruit’ or consequences of our past actions that God has selected and ordained for us to experience in this lifetime, because in order to experience our prarabdha it is necessary for us to think certain thoughts and do certain actions. For example, if we are destined to do a certain job, our prarabdha will impel us to think all the thoughts and do all the actions that are necessary to get that job, such as studying for the required qualifications, applying for the job and answering the questions that we are asked at the interview.

Monday, 27 July 2009

Self-attentiveness is nirvikalpa – devoid of all differences or variation

A friend recently wrote to me suggesting:

... Indeed Nan Yar? contains everything we need to know and I would be very grateful if you would do translation for mumukshu, giving roman transliteration of every word according to the dictionary (minimum two words which fit in this context) and indicate why you use such and such a word when we could use other (I mean non-trivial words). I don’t know Tamil, that’s why I say such translation is very good for mumukshu. I like your translation but it’s still arbitrary. Giving transliteration you enable all people with different vasanas to create their own translation.
In the same e-mail he wrote about a ‘really great and powerful master who doesn’t speak much but is teaching through experience’, saying that this master ‘advises atma-cintana and if someone can’t he tells to do svarupa-dhyana or mantra japa etc.’ He also wrote that ‘There’s no difference of experience if we use atma-vicara, pranayama or other techniques’, and that ‘I found that Bhagavan used the name atma-vicara and svarupa dhyana, atma cintana to indicate different stages of practice’.

In reply to this e-mail I wrote as follows:

Sunday, 12 July 2009

‘Tracing the ego back to its source’

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

I am stuck at a point where I feel I need help ... While reading Sri Ramana Maharshi’s work and Talks, there is this constant mention of tracing the ego back to the source. When I try to do it there is an arresting of thoughts and a feeling near my chest and I am not able to proceed further. I will be very grateful if you could suggest something in this regard.
In reply to this I wrote as follows:

What exactly does ‘tracing the ego back to the source’ mean? To answer this question we must first understand how the ego left its source, because as Sri Ramana sometimes used to say, we must ‘go back the way we came’, and before we can do that, we must understand what ‘the way we came’ actually is.

In verse 25 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana explains how the ego rises from its source (our real self), how it remains away from its source, and how it will eventually subside back into its source:

Wednesday, 8 July 2009

Svarupa-dhyana and svarupa-darsana

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

Does svarupa-dhyana, atma-chintana and atma-smarana mean focusing attention on the first thought ‘I am’, consciousness of being? I mean, is it concentration on being, staying without thoughts but still aware of external world? If so, svarupa-darshana is different experience and is the same as kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. Isn’t it?
Here the mention of ‘svarupa-darshana’ and ‘external world’ appears to be a reference to the third paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?), in which Sri Ramana says:
If [our] mind, which is the cause of all [objective] knowledge and of all activity, subsides [completely], [our] perception of the world (jaga-dṛṣṭi) will cease. Just as knowledge of the rope, which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of the snake], will not arise unless knowledge of the imaginary snake ceases, svarūpa-darśana [true knowledge of our essential self], which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of the world], will not arise unless [our] perception of the world, which is an imagination, ceases.
In reply to this friend I wrote as follows:

Yes, terms such as ātma-vichāra, svarūpa-dhyāna, svarūpa-smaraṇa and ātma-chintana (which are various terms that Sri Ramana uses in Nan Yar?) all mean self-attentiveness — the focusing of our entire attention upon ourself, our essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Staying with ‘I am’

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

The path is so subtle ... how to understand this? Ramana Maharshi mentions concentrating on the right side of the chest. Is this for the merest novice? If one takes this path, will one have to unlearn that “anchor” to just stay with the sense ‘I am’.

Nisargadatta mentions staying with the ‘I am’ and looking at it with affection.

To witness the ‘I am’, does that mean just “to be” not “this or that” and watch thoughts go by without getting emotionally involved. Is that staying with the ‘I am’?

Some pointer or direction is needed.





To this I replied as follows:

As you say, the path is very subtle, but it is also very simple, because all it involves is the effort to be clearly self-conscious, which is our natural state.

Sri Ramana never actually asked anyone to concentrate their attention on the right side of the chest. This is a major misunderstanding. On many occasions he clarified that what he meant by the word ‘heart’ (ullam in Tamil or hridayam in Sanskrit) was only self (atman), which is consciousness (chit), and not any organ in the body, which is non-conscious (jada). Therefore when he said, for example, that we should make the mind subside and merge in the heart, he did not mean that we should merge in any part of this body, but only that we should merge and lose our separate identity in self.




Wednesday, 24 June 2009

Anma-Viddai (Atma-Vidya) – an explanatory paraphrase

In continuation of my previous five articles, which were explanatory paraphrases of Upadesa Undiyar, Ulladu Narpadu, Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham, Ekatma Panchakam and Appala Pattu, the following is the sixth of seven extracts from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai:

ஆன்ம வித்தை (Anma-Viddai), the ‘Science of Self’, also known as Atma-Vidya Kirtanam, the ‘Song on the Science of Self’, is a Tamil song that Sri Ramana composed on 24th April 1927 in answer to the request of Sri Muruganar.

That is, Sri Muruganar composed the pallavi and anupallavi (refrain and sub-refrain) of a kirtana (song), in which he said that atma-vidya (the science and art of self-knowledge) is extremely easy, and he then asked Sri Ramana to complete the kirtana by composing the charanas (verses). Sri Ramana accordingly composed the charanas, in which he emphatically confirmed the truth that atma-vidya is extremely easy.




Thursday, 16 April 2009

How to start practising atma-vichara?

A friend wrote to me recently asking:

How to start with atma vichara?? Some says, “look at your thoughts”, some says, “see from where it occurs”, some says “see who does all this” — what in this is to be followed??? doesnt the one sees is also mind???

Even though always the grace of guru is showered, why is that we cannot have atma vichara always???

Please kindly clarify me in the approach of atma vichara because I many times doubt whether the way of vichara that I do is right.



The following is the reply that I wrote:

Ātma-vichāra is not looking at any thought other than our primal thought ‘I’, which thinks all other thoughts.

All other thoughts are anātma (non-self), anya (other than ourself) and jaḍa (non-conscious), and hence we cannot know our real self by looking at them. We are constantly looking at our thoughts throughout our waking and dream states, but we do not thereby know our real self. In fact, our attention to thoughts is the obstacle that obscures our knowledge of ourself, because we can attend to thoughts only when we experience ourself as this thinking mind.




Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Atma-vichara – the practice of 'looking at' or 'seeking' ourself

A friend wrote to me recently asking:

I was wondering if you are familiar with John Sherman and his teaching and if you think what he says is the same as what you are saying self-inquiry is? John constantly says what he is teaching is to simply look at yourself. I asked you once before about “The Most Rapid and Direct Means to Eternal Bliss,” at that time you had indicated that the approach was the same as what you were saying on your blog and in your book.
The following is adapted from the reply that I wrote:

I had not heard of John Sherman until I read your mail, but I just now looked at his website and read part of one transcript, A Worldwide Meeting with John Sherman - November 1, 2008. To be honest I was not very impressed by what I read, because it appears to me that he does not have a truly deep or subtle understanding of Sri Ramana’s teachings.

For example, in one passage in this transcript he says:



Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Self-attentiveness, intensity and continuity

Last week a person called Teck posted two comments on one of my recent articles, Making effort to pay attention to our mind is being attentive only to our essential self, in the first of which he or she wrote:

… My question is, how important is CONTINUITY and INTENSITY of self abidance/attention for our progress (of recognizing our true being)? Recently I started to intuit that these 2 factors are of very critical importance in our progress. …
In his or her second comment, Teck continued:
I think I need to elaborate more about what I mean by intensity and continuity.

By the 1st I mean the degree of “alertness/mindfulness” of our attention to awareness itself, while ignoring others eg feeling, thoughts etc., kind like when a cat trying to catch a mouse, it’s attention is very alert/focused.

Continuity is very obvious, it’s simply the ability to sustain our attention on our consciousness/awareness without interruption.

I suspect that the speed of our realization (progress) depends on these 2 factors more than anything else. Is this true?





Both intensity and continuity are important, but of these two the most important is intensity, because even a moment of absolutely intense — that is, perfectly clear — self-attentiveness will be sufficient to destroy forever the illusion that we are this finite mind, after which the continuity of our self-attentiveness will never be interrupted even for a moment.


Tuesday, 30 December 2008

Our basic thought ‘I’ is the portal through which we can know our real ‘I’

Last week the following anonymous comment was posted on an old article in this blog, The transcendent state of true self-knowledge is the only real state:

Very frequently reference is being made in works purporting to explain the teachings of Bhaghavan that the very fundamental thought, subsequent to which all the other thoughts arise, is the thought, ‘I’. My question is can there be a thought at the level of the pure I. Any thought can be of the form of the modification of the I, attaching it to a phenomenal object with a relative subject being there. So is it not a fact that tracing all thoughts to the basic I thought presupposes the idea of steering clear of thoughts by knowing the unassociated I. Apart from thoughts there can be no I thought. Hence there is no question of tracing everything to the I thought. Bhaghavan has given this method, I feel, out of compassion to direct individuals to the feeling of subject. Otherwise it would delude us into the idea that there is an I thought as a hiatus from which one should proceed further to one’s real being, which may not be correct. Ramana himself says that there are no two ‘I’s one trying to know the other. This also holds good in regard to the further oft repeated idea that only after the arising of the first person, that is the I, the other persons arise, and hence one should remain with the first person. The first person itself is a form of thought, a modification as it were, unless one has reached the feeling of pure, ‘I AM’.
What Anonymous asks in this comment is to a certain extent answered by what I explained about our primal thought ‘I’ in connection with verse 18 of Upadēśa Undiyār and verse 2 of Āṉma-Viddai in my previous article, Self-enquiry, self-attention and self-awareness, and in greater detail in chapter three of Happiness and the Art of Being (particularly on pages 167-83, 192-3, 213-9, 225-7 and 234-6). However the following is a more specific answer to his or her comment:

Thursday, 11 December 2008

The truth of Arunachala and of ‘seeing the light’ (deepa-darsana)

I began to write this article on Thursday of last week, 11th December, which was the day of Kārttikai Deepam, but for various reasons I was unable to complete it till today, 18th December.

Kārttikai Deepam is an annual festival celebrated in the Tamil month of Kārttikai (mid-November to mid-December) on the day on which the moon is in conjunction with the constellation Pleiades (known in Tamil as kārttikai and in Sanskrit as kṛttikā), which always coincides with the full moon or comes one or two days before or after it. On this day a beacon light or dīpam (popularly spelt as deepam) is lit on the summit of the holy mountain Arunachala, at the foot of which lies the temple-town of Tiruvannamalai, where Bhagavan Sri Ramana lived for the last fifty-four years of his bodily life.

On Kārttikai Deepam day in 1931 (called prajōtpatti in Hindu calendars, the fifth year in the 60-year Jupiter cycle), which was 24th November, when answering some questions on the subject Sri Ramana explained the tattva — the truth, reality or inner significance — of Arunachala, and his explanation was immediately recorded by Sri Muruganar in a Tamil verse entitled ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல தத்துவம் (Śrī Aruṇāchala Tattuvam), which is as follows:

புத்தியகங் காரம் புலம்பெய்த வோங்கு
மத்தியித யந்தான் மறையவனு மாலு
நத்தவறி யாது நலங்குலைய வன்னார்
மத்தியொளி ரண்ணா மலையினது மெய்யே.

buddhiyahaṅ kāram pulambeyda vōṅgu
maddhiyida yandāṉ maṟaiyavaṉu mālu
nattavaṟi yādu nalaṅgulaiya vaṉṉār
maddhiyoḷi raṇṇā malaiyiṉadu meyyē


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Thursday, 20 November 2008

Atma-vichara and the ‘practice’ of neti neti

On one of my earlier articles, Repeating 'who am I?' is not self-enquiry, two anonymous comments dated 31 October 2008 and 19 November 2008 have been posted recommending the practice of neti neti as prescribed by Stephen Wolinsky.

I do not know anything about Stephen Wolinsky or the practice that he has prescribed, but what these two comments say about his practice of neti neti makes me suspect that it is very different to the simple practice of atma-vichara (self-investigation or self-enquiry) taught by Sri Ramana, which is the only truly effective means by which we can experience our natural state, in which we remain separate from all the extraneous adjuncts that are not ‘I’.

The term neti neti literally means ‘not thus, not thus’, and denotes the process of intellectual self-analysis by which we discriminate and understand that our body, mind and all other such adjuncts cannot be ‘I’. Having understood this truth intellectually, we should seek to experience what we really are. Since we are not the body, mind or any other such transitory phenomenon, we should withdraw our attention from them and allow it to rest in and as our own essential being, which is always conscious of itself as ‘I am’.




Thursday, 17 July 2008

God as paramarthika satya – the absolute reality

In continuation of three of my earlier articles, God as both nirguna brahman and saguna brahman, Experiencing God as he really is and God as purna – the one infinite whole, the following is the fourth extract from the second chapter, ‘God’, of The Truth of Otherness:

Thus, these three verses of Guru Vachaka Kovai are an emphatic refutation of our separation from God, the one infinite purna, the unlimited and absolute reality, who alone truly exists, and who is perfectly non-dual and therefore completely devoid of parts. In verse 888, Sri Ramana emphasises that the infinite purna alone exists by quoting this Vedic mantra, which says that even “when purna is taken out of purna, purna whole alone remains”, and by adding that purna alone remains not only then but also when purna has united purna. That is, whether anything appears to separate from it or unite with it, the infinite purna in truth always exists alone, because whatever appears to separate from it or unite with it is in truth nothing but that purna itself.

Then in verse 889 he explains that, since nothing other than that real purna exists, there is nothing that could ever either separate from it or unite with it, and that therefore everything that appears to exist as other than it is in truth one with it. However, he does not conclude his explanation of this Vedic mantra by saying merely that everything is one with the infinite reality, but goes one step further by stating clearly in verse 890 that everything except the infinite reality is a mere imagination and is therefore completely unreal.




Monday, 7 July 2008

God as purna – the one infinite whole

In continuation of my earlier two articles, God as both nirguna brahman and saguna brahman and Experiencing God as he really is, the following is the third extract from the second chapter, ‘God’, of The Truth of Otherness:

The reason why we said in the previous chapter [an extract from which is given in the article The world is a creation of our imagination] that this world is not created by God is that in his true nirguna form he is mere being, and therefore never does anything, and that in his imaginary saguna form he and this world are both created simultaneously. That is to say, God as a seemingly separate supreme being comes into existence only when we come into existence as a seemingly separate individual being.

When we rise as this mind, our limited individual consciousness, we perceive the world and all the other objective thoughts in our mind as being separate from and other than ourself, and thus we seemingly create duality and division in our non-dual and undivided real self. When we thus see ourself and this world as separate and finite entities, we transform our infinite real self into a seemingly infinite God, whom we consider to be separate from ourself and this world.




Friday, 20 June 2008

The true nature of consciousness can be known only by self-enquiry

The anonymous friend whose comment I replied to in my previous article, Self-enquiry: the underlying philosophy can be clearly understood only by putting it into practice, has replied to that article in another comment on the earlier article I think because I am, but I am even when I do not think. In this latest comment Anonymous writes:

First of all, your reply in the form of a separate article is greatly appreciated. It makes me imagine the level of clarity you have on the subject. I confess that I was not very serious when I wrote my earlier comments, though I believe whatever I wrote was true/correct to me. I’m not sure whether I should be writing this reply now or perhaps after thoroughly reading and thinking about it... but I’m writing this as I keep reading your article and getting questions/doubts in between:

‘... sleep is not absolute unconsciousness …’. It would be good if you further clarify what is meant by ‘relative unconsciousness’. Does it mean some part of consciousness still remains?

This question from your reply: “... if we really did not know anything in sleep...would we not just have to say ‘... I do not know whether or not I knew anything in sleep’?” is a good one. It made me for a moment think how could we ascertain that we do not know anything in sleep. (I explained whatever I think as the answer towards the end of this reply — last but one paragraph.)





Sunday, 15 June 2008

Where to find and how to reach the real presence of our guru?

In reply to my recent article, Which sat-sanga will free us from our ego?, Anonymous wrote a comment in which he or she said:

Thanks for your reply to my (anonymous) concerns. “Merely being in the physical presence of a true guru is not the most efficacious form of sat-sanga” — yes I accept that, but I’ve heard so many stories of people experiencing the Self effortlessly in the presence of a true guru after many years of failure through their own attempts to experience the Self and that’s why I was tempted to ask that question. ...
If we truly have faith in the grace and guidance of our sadguru, Sri Ramana, we will have no doubt about the simple truth that he can and does provide us with all the help — both inward and outward — that we need to enable us to scrutinise and know our real self.

If we would really be helped by being in the physical presence of a true guru, would he not place us in such a presence? And if he has not placed us in such a presence, should we not understand that we do not actually need such help now?



Thursday, 12 June 2008

Self-enquiry, personal experiences and daily routine

In another comment on an earlier article, Happiness and the Art of Being is now available on Amazon and other sites, Anonymous wrote:

How do you find hope when you’ve made earnest attempts at Self-enquiry, not made any tangible progress (because there is no glimpse of the ‘I-I’ state), don’t have the Self in a human garb to say a few kind/harsh words to help you in your enquiry and have to remain in the mundane madness of the everyday world and deal with many egos including your own? I was also wondering if you could kindly post your personal (if there is one left;) experiences of attempting to go beyond the surface thoughts and deep into ‘I am’. What kind of daily routine proved to be the most effective for you?
The first of these questions is answered at least partially by some of the points that I explained in my previous post, Which sat-sanga will free us from our ego?. In this present context, the most important of those points is that tenacious perseverance is absolutely essential in order for us to make real progress in our practice of self-enquiry or self-attentiveness.

However, we should not despair because of our seeming lack of progress, because as Sri Ramana said, perseverance is itself the only true sign of progress. The importance of such tenacious perseverance is strongly emphasised by him in paragraphs six, ten and eleven of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):


Thursday, 5 June 2008

Experiencing God as he really is

In continuation of my previous post, God as both nirguna brahman and saguna brahman, the following is the second extract from the second chapter, ‘God’, of The Truth of Otherness:

In order to experience the nirguna form of God — that is, God as he really is — we must experience ourself as we really are. In our essential nature we are just the one absolutely non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’, which is devoid of all gunas. Therefore only when we remain steadfastly as our infinitely clear self-conscious being, ‘I am’, thereby refraining from rising as this imaginary object-knowing consciousness that we call our ‘mind’, will we be able to experience God as he really is — as our own true self, which is the one infinite nirguna reality.

This truth is clearly expressed by Sri Ramana in verses 24, 25 and 26 of Upadesa Undiyar:

By [their] irukkum iyarkai [their ‘nature which is’ or ‘being nature’] God and souls are only one porul [substance, essence or reality]. Only [the soul’s] upadhi-unarvu [adjunct-consciousness] is [what makes them appear to be] different.

Knowing [our real] self, having relinquished [all our own] upadhis [adjuncts or gunas], itself is knowing God, because [he] shines as [our real] self.

Being [our real] self is indeed knowing [our real] self, because [our real] self is devoid of two. This is tanmaya-nishtha [the state of being firmly established as tat or ‘it’, the one absolute nirguna reality called ‘God’ or brahman].




Thursday, 29 May 2008

God as both nirguna brahman and saguna brahman

In continuation of my previous two articles containing extracts from the currently incomplete draft of The Truth of Otherness, the following is the first of several extracts from the second chapter, which is entitled ‘God’:

The ultimate truth about God is that he is our own real self, our fundamental and essential self-conscious being, which we always experience as ‘I am’. That is, he is both our being and our consciousness of our being — our perfectly non-dual being-consciousness or sat-chit.

He is our own essential being, and the essential being of everything that is or appears to be. He is the infinite fullness of being, which is the ultimate reality and essence of all things. He is the source, substratum and support of everything.

He is the absolute reality, which shines in the heart or innermost core of every sentient being as the knowledge ‘I am’. He is the ancient and eternal ‘I am’, the timeless ‘I am’, the omnipresent and all-pervading ‘I am’, the infinite ‘I am’, the absolute ‘I am’, the immutable and indivisible ‘I am’, the non-dual ‘I am’, the one and only truly existing ‘I am’, the all-transcending ‘I am’, the essential ‘I am’ other than which nothing is.

Friday, 23 May 2008

The world is a creation of our imagination

In continuation of my previous post, Introduction to The Truth of Otherness, the following brief extract from The Truth of Otherness is all that I have so far drafted for the first chapter, ‘The World’. Needless to say, if I ever happen to complete writing this book, I would include in this chapter a detailed discussion of many other important truths that Sri Ramana has revealed to us about the nature of this world, particularly about how we experience it only due our pramada or slackness in self-attentiveness — that is, our failure to abide firmly in our natural state of absolutely non-dual self-conscious being.

God is not some being outside ourself who one day decided to create this universe. He is our own real self, which in truth just is, and never does anything. Therefore, this universe is truly created not by God, but only by our own kalpana-sakti or power of imagination. However, if we wish for any reason to attribute the creation of this vast and wonderful universe to God rather than to our own imagination, we should at least understand that he has created it only through the channel of our own mind or power of imagination.

If we wish to maintain that God created this world, we are in effect maintaining that he is not real in the absolute sense of the term, because the absolute reality is mere being, which never does anything. All doing or action involves change, and is therefore transient and unreal. Since action is unreal, whoever performs action is equally unreal. Something that is real cannot do something that is unreal.

Monday, 20 August 2007

The crest-jewel of Sri Ramana's teachings

On page 529 of the second e-book edition (page 555 of the forthcoming printed edition) of Happiness and the Art of Being I give the following translation of the first maṅgalam verse of Ulladu Narpadu:

Other than ulladu [‘that which is’ or being], is there consciousness of being? Since [this] being-essence [this existing substance or reality which is] is in [our] heart devoid of [all] thought, how to [or who can] think of [or meditate upon this] being-essence, which is called ‘heart’? Being in [our] heart as [we truly] are [that is, as our thought-free non-dual consciousness of being, ‘I am’] alone is meditating [upon our being]. Know [this truth by experiencing it].
On pages 529 to 538 of the second e-book edition (pages 555 to 565 of the printed edition) I have given a detailed explanation of the meaning of this important verse, after which on pages 565 to 569 of the printed edition I have added the following conclusion to my explanation:

In the first of the two verses of his payiram or preface to Ulladu Narpadu, Sri Muruganar writes that Sri Ramana joyfully composed this clear and authoritative text in response to his request, "So that we may be saved, [graciously] reveal to us the nature of reality and the means to attain [join, reach, experience or be united with] it". Accordingly, in this first mangalam verse Sri Ramana reveals to us both the essential nature of reality and the means by which we can experience it, which is possible only by our being one with it.

Sunday, 19 August 2007

The practice of self-investigation is our natural state of self-conscious being

In my previous four posts, Atma-vichara is only the practice of keeping our mind fixed firmly in self, Atma-vichara and the question ‘who am I?’, Sri Ramana’s figurative use of simple words and The question ‘who am I?’ as a verbalised thought, I serialised the newly written material that I have incorporated on pages 439 to 456 of the forthcoming printed edition of Happiness and the Art of Being. In continuation, the following is the expansion of what I had written on pages 431 to 432 of the second e-book edition, which will come on pages 456 to 459 of the printed edition:

Besides using the Sanskrit word vichara, Sri Ramana used many other Tamil and Sanskrit words to describe the practice of self-investigation. One word that he frequently used both in his original writings such as Ulladu Narpadu and in his oral teachings was the Tamil verb nadutal, which can mean seeking, pursuing, examining, investigating, knowing, thinking or desiring, but which with reference to ourself clearly does not mean literally either seeking or pursuing, but only examining, investigating or knowing.

He also often used the word nattam, which is a noun derived from this verb nadutal, and which has various closely related meanings such as ‘investigation’, ‘examination’, ‘scrutiny’, ‘sight’, ‘look’, ‘aim’, ‘intention’, ‘pursuit’ or ‘quest’. In the sense of ‘scrutiny’, ‘look’ or ‘sight’, nattam means the state of ‘looking’, ‘seeing’ or ‘watching’, and hence it can also be translated as ‘inspection’, ‘observation’ or ‘attention’. Thus it is a word that Sri Ramana used in Tamil to convey the same sense as the English word ‘attention’.

Monday, 30 July 2007

Happiness and the Art of Being – additions to chapter 7

In the forthcoming printed edition of Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 7, ‘The Illusion of Time and Space’, I have incorporated three new portions that are not in the second e-book edition.

After the first paragraph on page 389 of the second e-book edition, regarding verse 15 of Ulladu Narpadu I have added the following new paragraph, which will be on page 395 of the printed book:

In the kalivenba version of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana added two extra words before the initial word of this verse, nihazhvinai or ‘the present’, namely nitamum mannum, which mean ‘which always endures’. Thus he further emphasised the fact that the present moment is ever present, that all times are the present while they occur, and that the present is therefore the only time that actually exists — the only time that we ever experience directly and actually. All other times, both past and future, are just thoughts that occur in this present moment.
On page 395 of the second e-book edition, immediately after verse 14 of Ulladu Narpadu, I have added two new paragraphs, and modified and expanded the next paragraph. These three paragraphs, which will be on page 402 of the printed book, are as follows:

Friday, 27 July 2007

Happiness and the Art of Being – additions to chapter 2

As I wrote in my last post, Happiness and the Art of Being will soon be available in print, I have written various new explanations, which will be incorporated in the printed version of Happiness and the Art of Being. Most of these new additions are quite brief, often just one or two paragraphs, but four of them run to more than three pages, one in chapter 4, one in chapter 9 and two in chapter 10.

In chapter 2, ‘Who am I?’, I have incorporated just two single-paragraph additions. On page 128, immediately after verse 3 of Ekatma Panchakam, I have added the following paragraph:

In the kalivenba version of Ekatma Panchakam Sri Ramana added the compound word sat-chit-ananda, which means ‘being-consciousness-bliss’, before the initial word of this verse, tannul or ‘within [our] self’, thereby reminding us that what we are in essence is only the perfectly peaceful consciousness of being, ‘I am’. Other than our basic consciousness of our own being, everything that we know appears within the distorted object-knowing form of our consciousness that we call our mind, which arises within us during waking and dream, and subsides back into ourself during sleep. Our true consciousness of being — our essential self-consciousness ‘I am’ — is therefore like the screen on which a cinema picture is projected, because it is the one fundamental adhara or underlying base that supports the appearance and disappearance of our mind and everything that is known by it.

Monday, 19 March 2007

The 'unconsciousness' that we seem to experience in sleep

On pages 329-330 of the present e-book version of Happiness and the Art of Being there are two paragraphs in which I write:

Though in our present waking state we mistake the seeming 'unconsciousness' of sleep to be merely an unconsciousness of our body and the world, in sleep we do not think 'I am unconscious of my body and the world'. Only in the waking state do we think 'In sleep I was unconscious of my body and the world'. That which thinks thus is our mind, but since our mind was not present in sleep, it cannot accurately tell us what our experience in sleep actually was.

All we can now say about sleep is that, though we knew 'I am' in that state, it was nevertheless a state of seeming darkness, ignorance or lack of clarity. That seeming lack of clarity is the 'unconsciousness' that we experience in sleep. But what actually is that seeming lack of clarity? About what is it that we lack clarity in sleep? Only about our real self, the real nature of our essential consciousness 'I am'. In sleep we know that we are, yet we lack clarity about what we are. Therefore the seeming 'unconsciousness' of sleep is actually only our lack of clarity of true self-knowledge, our so-called 'forgetfulness' of our real self. If our real self, our essential consciousness 'I am', were not obscured by the veil of our self-forgetfulness, sleep would be a state of perfectly clear self-knowledge.

Sunday, 18 March 2007

The consciousness that we experience in sleep

On page 119 of the present e-book version of Happiness and the Art of Being there is a paragraph in which I write:

Generally we think of deep sleep as a state of 'unconsciousness'. But what we were unconscious of in sleep was only things other than 'I', such as any body or world. We were not, however, unconscious of our own existence. We need other people to tell us that our body and the world existed while we were asleep, but we need no one to tell us that we existed at that time. Without the help or testimony of any other person or thing, we know 'I slept'. In sleep we may not have known exactly what we were, but we did know very clearly that we were. The knowledge that we clearly possess about our experience in sleep, and that we express when we say 'I slept peacefully, and knew nothing at that time', would not be possible if in sleep we had not been conscious that we were having that experience. If we did not know 'I am' while asleep, we could not know so clearly 'I slept' after we wake up. Since in the waking state we know clearly not only that we slept, but also that in sleep we did not know anything, is it not clear that sleep was a state that we actually experienced? The 'unconsciousness' of sleep – the absence at that time of any knowledge about anything other than 'I am' – was our own experience, something that we ourself experienced or knew at that time.
Today I have been checking all the changes that I have made while revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, and while doing so I decided to expand the explanation given in this paragraph as follows:

Friday, 16 March 2007

Knowing our source by a 'sharp intellect' or kurnda mati

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, in chapter 10, 'The Practice of the Art of Being', I have modified my translation of verse 28 of Ulladu Narpadu (on page 457 of the present e-book version) and I have expanded the explanation of it that I give in the subsequent paragraphs as follows:

Sri Ramana often used this analogy of diving or sinking into water to illustrate how deeply and intensely our attention should penetrate into the innermost core or essence of our being. For example, in verse 28 of Ulladu Narpadu he says:

Like sinking [immersing or diving] in order to find an object that has fallen into water, diving [sinking, immersing, piercing or penetrating] within [ourself] restraining [our] speech and breath by [means of a] sharp intellect [a keen, intense, acute and penetrating power of discernment or attention] we should know the place [or source] where [our] rising ego rises. Know [this].

Thursday, 15 March 2007

Taking refuge at the 'feet' of God

In my previous post, Overcoming our spiritual complacency, I gave the first instalment of the additional material that I have written for inclusion in chapter 9 of Happiness and the Art of Being (after the first paragraph on page 422 of the present e-book version). The following is the second of these three instalments:

In the first sentence of this second mangalam verse of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana says:

Those mature people who have intense fear of death will take refuge at the feet of mahesan [the 'great lord'], who is devoid of death and birth, [depending upon him] as [their protective] fortress. …
This is a poetic way of describing his own experience of self-investigation and self-surrender. Though the word mahesan, which literally means the 'great lord', is a name that usually denotes Lord Siva, the form in which many Hindus worship God, Sri Ramana did not use it in this context to denote any particular form of God, but only as an allegorical description of the birthless and deathless spirit, which always exists in each one of us as our own essential self-conscious being, 'I am'.

Monday, 12 March 2007

The true science of consciousness and drik drisya viveka

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 8, 'The Science of Consciousness', on pages 386 to 390 of the present e-book version I discuss the modern field of study that is known as 'consciousness studies' or the 'science of consciousness', and I explain that any true science of consciousness must clearly distinguish consciousness from any object or phenomenon known by consciousness, a process that in the philosophy of advaita vedanta is known as drik drisya viveka or 'discrimination between the seer and the seen'. In this context I write on pages 388 to 389 of the present e-book version:

... Until we understand this basic distinction between consciousness and even the subtlest object known by it, we will not be able to focus our attention solely and exclusively upon our essential consciousness, and thus we will not be able to experience it as it really is — that is, as our pure and unadulterated consciousness of our own being, which is devoid of even the slightest trace of duality or otherness.

Unless modern scientists are willing to accept this fundamental but very simple principle, all their efforts to understand consciousness will be misdirected. Any scientist who imagines that they can understand consciousness by studying our physical brain, its electrochemical activity or its cognitive function, has failed to understand that all these things are merely objects that are known by consciousness as other than itself.
While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print I have modified and expanded the next paragraph and added a new paragraph, so the next four paragraphs will read as follows:

Saturday, 10 March 2007

The transcendent state of true self-knowledge is the only real state

In chapter 6 of Happiness and the Art of Being I explain on page 342 of the present e-book version that our fundamental state of true self-knowledge is sometimes described in advaita vedanta as the state of 'wakeful sleep' or 'waking sleep' (jagrat-sushupti in Sanskrit, or nanavu-tuyil in Tamil) because, since it is a state in which we experience no duality, it is a thought-free state like sleep, but since it is at the same time a state in which we experience absolute clarity of self-knowledge, it is also a state of perfect wakefulness. I then write:

Since this state of 'wakeful sleep' is beyond our three ordinary states of waking, dream and deep sleep, in advaita vedanta it is also sometimes referred to as the 'fourth state' or turiya avastha. Somewhat confusingly, however, in some texts another term is used to describe it, namely the 'fourth-transcending' or turiyatita, which has given rise to the wrong notion that beyond this 'fourth state' there is some further 'fifth state'. In truth, however, the non-dual state of true self-knowledge is the ultimate and absolute state, beyond which no other state can exist.
On pages 343 to 344 of the present e-book version I then quote and explain verse 32 of Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham and verses 937 to 939 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, but while revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for print I decided that I could improve my translations and explanation of these verses. I have therefore revised my translations and expanded my explanation as follows:

Thursday, 8 March 2007

I think because I am, but I am even when I do not think

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 6, 'True Knowledge and False Knowledge', on pages 322 to 323 of the present e-book version I have written:

... though our basic knowledge or consciousness 'I am' alone is real, and though all the other things that appear to be real borrow their seeming reality only from this consciousness, which is their underlying base and support, we are so accustomed to overlooking this consciousness and attending only to the objects or thoughts that we form in our mind by our power of imagination, that those objects and our act of knowing them appear in the distorted perspective of our mind to be more real than the fundamental consciousness that underlies them.

The only reason why we suffer from this distorted perspective is that we are so enthralled by our experience of duality or otherness, believing that we can obtain real happiness only from things other than ourself, that throughout our states of mental activity, which we call waking and dream, we spend all our time attending only to such other things, and we consequently ignore or overlook our underlying consciousness 'I am'.

Wednesday, 7 March 2007

What is True Knowledge? - additions to chapter 5 of Happiness and the Art of Being

I have posted the five largest additions that I will be incorporating in chapter 5 of Happiness and the Art of Being in my five most recent posts, namely:

I will also incorporate the following three smaller additions in this chapter, 'What is True Knowledge?'

In my discussion about the meaning of verse 22 of Ulladu Narpadu I have split the paragraph that begins on the bottom of page 291 and ends on the top of page 292 of the present e-book version, and have added a new sentence, so the two resulting paragraphs will read as follows:

The true import of the word 'I'

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', on pages 309 and 311-312 of the present e-book version I quote verses 20 and 21 of Upadesa Undiyar, in which Sri Ramana says:

In the place [the core of our being] where 'I' [our mind or individual self] merges [or becomes one], the one [true knowledge] appears [or shines forth] spontaneously [or as ourself] as 'I [am] I'. That itself [or that, which is ourself] is the whole [the infinite totality or fullness of being, consciousness and happiness].

That [one infinite whole that shines thus as 'I am I'] is at all times [in the past, present and future, and in all eternity] the [true] import of the word 'I', because of the absence of our non-existence even in sleep, which is devoid of [any separate or finite sense of] 'I'.
On pages 312 to 314 of the present e-book version I discuss the meaning of verse 21, and I conclude my explanation with the following paragraph:

Tuesday, 6 March 2007

'I am' is the most appropriate name of God

In a recent post, Contemplating 'I', which is the original name of God, I quoted verse 716 of Guru Vachaka Kovai and while explaining it I referred to verses 712 to 715, saying that I would translate and explain them in a later post.

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, I have incorporated my translation and explanation of these four verses in chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?'. That is, on pages 304 to 305 of the present e-book version there are two paragraphs in which I write that Sri Ramana often said that the words that express the true nature of the absolute reality most accurately are 'I' and 'am', and I have now enlarged upon those two paragraphs as follows:

Though the absolute reality is given many names and descriptions such as God, allah, brahman, the absolute, the eternal, the infinite, the fullness of being, purna or the whole, pure knowledge, sat-chit-ananda or being-consciousness-bliss, tat or 'it', nirvana, the kingdom of God and so on, Sri Ramana often said that the words that express its real nature most perfectly and accurately are 'I' and 'am', or their combined form 'I am'.

Monday, 5 March 2007

Everything is just an expansion of our own mind or ego

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', there is a paragraph on page 279 of the present e-book version in which I have written as follows:

Though our true, absolute and non-dual knowledge 'I am' is the ultimate support or substratum that underlies all forms of duality or relativity, it is not their immediate support or base. The immediate base upon which all duality depends, and without which it ceases to exist, is only our wrong knowledge 'I am this body', which is our individualised sense of selfhood, our ego or mind. ...
In the present e-book version I then quote what Sri Ramana says in verse 26 of Ulladu Narpadu, but for the forthcoming publication of Happiness and the Art of Being as a printed book I have written an explantion of verse 23, which I will incorporate at this point before verse 26, and immediately after verse 26 I will also incorporate another new paragraph of explanation. This entire portion will then read as follows:

[...] Therefore in verse 23 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana says:
This body does not say 'I' [that is, it does not know 'I am', because it is just inconscient matter]. No one says 'in sleep I do not exist' [even though in sleep this body does not exist]. After an 'I' has risen [imagining 'I am this body'], everything rises. [Therefore] by a subtle intellect scrutinise where this 'I' rises.

Sunday, 4 March 2007

Non-duality is the truth even when duality appears to exist

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, I have written some fresh material to incorporate in chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', after the paragraph (on page 278 of the present e-book version) that ends, "... in that state we will clearly know that we have always been only the pure consciousness of being, 'I am', and that ignorance — the wrong knowledge 'I am this body' — never really existed, just as when we finally see the rope as it really is, we will understand that we were always seeing only that rope, and that the snake we imagined we saw never really existed", and I have amended and expanded the next paragraph. This new material, the amended portion and the final paragraph of this passage will read as follows:

Even when we imagine that we do not know our real self and therefore try to attend to ourself in order to know what we really are, we are in fact nothing other than our real self, which always knows itself as it really is. Our seeming ignorance of the true non-dual nature of our real self is only an imagination, and the sole purpose of our effort to know ourself is only to remove this imagination. This truth is stated emphatically by Sri Ramana in verse 37 of Ulladu Narpadu:

Even the argument that says, 'Duality [is real] in [the state of] spiritual practice, [whereas] non-duality [is real] in [the state of] attainment [of self-knowledge]', is not true. Both when we are lovingly [earnestly or desperately] searching [for ourself], and when [we] have attained ourself, who indeed are we other than the tenth man?

Objective knowledge will disappear along with our mind when we know ourself as we really are

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', after the paragraph (on page 277 of the present e-book version) that ends, "Is it not clear, therefore, that the only true knowledge that we can attain is the clear knowledge of ourself as we really are, devoid of any superimposed adjuncts — that is, knowledge of ourself as our unadulterated and essential self-consciousness, 'I am', which is the absolute non-dual consciousness that knows only itself?" I will incorporate the following addition:

All objective knowledge involves a basic distinction between the subject, who is knowing, and the object, which is known. It also involves a third factor, the subject's act of knowing the object.

Because our knowledge of ourself involves only the inherently self-conscious subject, and no object, we know ourself just by being ourself, and we do so without the aid of any other thing. Because we are naturally self-conscious, we do not need to do anything in order to know ourself. Therefore unlike all our objective knowledge, our knowledge of ourself involves neither an object nor any act of knowing, and hence it is a perfectly non-dual knowledge.

Saturday, 3 March 2007

The Nature of Reality - additions to chapter 4 of Happiness and the Art of Being

Yesterday I posted the last two of the four major additions that I will be incorporating in chapter 3, 'The Nature of Our Mind', of Happiness and the Art of Being, namely:

In chapter 4, 'The Nature of Reality', I do not expect to incorporate any large additions, but I will incorporate the following four small additions.

On page 219 of the present e-book version, I have added two sentences in the middle of the first paragraph, and after these sentences I have split the paragraph into two as follows:

Friday, 2 March 2007

By self-attentiveness we can experience our true self-consciousness unadulterated by our mind

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, in chapter 3 (on page 206 of the present e-book version) after the paragraph that ends, "... Therefore our states of waking and dream are a macrocosm of which the formation and dissolution of each one of our individual thoughts is the microcosm", I have added the following three paragraphs:

Therefore if we gradually refine our power of attention or cognition by our persistent practice of self-attentiveness, we will eventually be able to cognise the underlying reality that remains between each successive subsidence and subsequent rising of our mind or root thought 'I'. That underlying reality is our essential self-consciousness, which we always experience as 'I am'.

Contemplating 'I', which is the original name of God

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 3, 'The Nature of Our Mind', there is a paragraph (on page 190 of the present e-book version) in which I write:

In whatever way he may describe this process of self-investigation or self-scrutiny, the sole aim of Sri Ramana is to provide us with clues that will help us to divert our attention away from our thoughts, our body and all other things, and to focus it wholly and exclusively upon our fundamental and essential consciousness of being, which we always experience as 'I am'. In his writings and sayings there are many examples of how he does this. In this fifth paragraph of Nan Yar? for instance, after first suggesting that we should investigate in what place the thought 'I' rises in our body, he goes on to give us a still simpler means by which we can consciously return to the source from which we have risen, saying, "Even if [we] remain thinking 'I, I', it will take [us] and leave [us] in that place".
While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, after this paragraph I have added several new paragraphs, and have also amended the paragraph that currently comes immediately after it, as follows:

Thursday, 1 March 2007

Everything is only our own consciousness

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, in chapter 3 (on page 182 of the present e-book version) after the paragraph that ends, "... Whenever we perceive a world, we always do so from within the confines of a particular body, which we feel to be ourself", and before the next paragraph, which now begins, "Our primal imagination that we are a physical body is the foundation upon which our mind is built. Whenever it rises, whether in a dream or in a so-called waking state, our mind always imagines itself to be a body...", I have added the following:

Hence our perception of any world is dependent upon our imagining ourself to be a body in that world, which in turn is dependent upon our mind, the finite consciousness that imagines itself to be that body. Therefore in verses 5, 6 and 7 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana says:

[Our] body [is] a form [composed] of five sheaths [the pancha kosas or five adjuncts that seemingly cover and obscure our consciousness of our real self when we imagine any of them to be ourself]. Therefore all five [of these 'sheaths' or adjuncts] are included in the term 'body'. Without [some kind of] body, is there [any such thing as a] world? Say, having left [all kinds of] body, is there [any] person who has seen [this or any other] world?

Wednesday, 28 February 2007

Our real 'I' is formless and therefore unlimited

In preparation for the forthcoming publication of Happiness and the Art of Being as a printed book, I have today made one further addition to chapter 2, 'Who am I?' That is, on page 137 of the present e-book version, after the paragraph that ends, "... what each and every one of us experiences as 'I am' is the one eternal, undivided, non-dual and infinite being", I have added the following:

The fundamental difference between the experience of sages such as Sri Ramana, who know themself to be the one infinite and undivided self-conscious being, and the experience of those of us who imagine ourself to be anything other than this one infinite and undivided self-conscious being, which is our true and essential self, lies only in the limitations that we imaginarily superimpose upon our truly infinite being. This fundamental difference is expressed by Sri Ramana in verses 17 and 18 of Ulladu Narpadu:

[Both] to those who do not know themself [and] to those who have known themself, this body [is] only 'I'. [However] to those who do not know themself 'I' [is limited to] only the extent of the body, [whereas] to those who have known themself within the body 'I' itself shines devoid of limit [boundary or extent]. Understand that this indeed is the difference between them.

Tuesday, 27 February 2007

The foundation of all our thoughts is our primal imagination that we are a body

In chapter 3 of Happiness and the Art of Being (on pages 153-154 of the present e-book version) I have translated verse 2 of Anma-Viddai as follows:

Since the thought 'this body composed of flesh is I' is the one string on which [all our] various thoughts are attached, if [we] go within [ourself scrutinising] 'Who am I? What is the place [the source from which this fundamental thought 'I am this body' rises]?' [all] thoughts will disappear, and within the cave [the core of our being] self-knowledge will shine spontaneously as ‘I [am] I’. This alone is silence [the silent or motionless state of mere being], the one [non-dual] space [of infinite consciousness], the sole abode of [true unlimited] happiness.
In preparation for the forthcoming publication of Happiness and the Art of Being as a printed book, I have expanded the two paragraphs that follow this verse (on page 154 of the present e-book version) as follows:

Monday, 26 February 2007

Our body, mind and other adjuncts are not 'I'

In preparation for the forthcoming publication of Happiness and the Art of Being as a printed book, I have expanded the final three paragraphs of chapter 2, 'Who am I?', (which are on pages 145-146 of the present e-book version) as follows:

Since none of these other tattvas [that is, none of the so-called tattvas or ontological principles other than our own essential self-conscious being] are real, neither they nor anything composed of them can be our true self, and therefore we should not waste our time and energy thinking about them, enumerating them, classifying them or examining their properties, but should ignore them entirely and instead attend only to our real 'I' — our fundamental and essential consciousness of our own true being. The only need we have to consider our body, our mind and all our other adjuncts is to understand the fact that they are unreal, and are therefore not 'I'.

Hence in verse 22 of Upadesa Undiyar Sri Ramana briefly states the essential conclusion that we should arrive at by means of the rational process of self-analysis, which in the ancients texts of advaita vedanta is called neti neti or 'not thus, not thus':

Since [our] body, mind, intellect, life and darkness [the seeming absence of knowledge that we experience in sleep] are all jada [inconscient] and asat [unreal or non-existent], [they are] not 'I', which is [chit or consciousness and] sat [being or reality].

Sunday, 18 February 2007

Our self-consciousness is the absolute reality

In continuation of my earlier posts Our imaginary sleep of self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance, Are we in this world, or is this world in us?, Our waking life is just another dream and Only the absolute clarity of true self-knowledge will put an end to all our dreams, the following is the fifth and final instalment of the additional matter that I plan to incorporate after the paragraph that ends on the first line of page 127 of my book, Happiness and the Art of Being:

In our present experience, the only thing that is real is our own self-consciousness, 'I am'. If we did not exist, we could not know our own existence, nor could we imagine the existence of anything else.

The one real basis of all our knowledge and all our experience is our own consciousness. When we say 'I know' or 'I experience', we imply 'I am conscious'. However, though we sometimes appear to be conscious of things other than ourself, our consciousness of those other things appears and disappears. Being impermanent, it is only relatively real.

Saturday, 17 February 2007

Only the absolute clarity of true self-knowledge will put an end to all our dreams

In continuation of my earlier posts Our imaginary sleep of self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance, Are we in this world, or is this world in us? and Our waking life is just another dream, the following is the fourth instalment of the additional matter that I plan to incorporate after the paragraph that ends on the first line of page 127 of my book, Happiness and the Art of Being:

In verse 1 of Ekatma Panchakam, after the first two clauses, "Having forgotten ourself" and "having thought '[this] body indeed is myself'", Sri Ramana adds a third clause, "having [thereby] taken innumerable births". What exactly does he mean by this? How actually do we "take innumerable births"?

As we have discussed earlier, our present waking life is actually just a dream that is occurring in our imaginary sleep of self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance. When we imaginarily ignore or forget our real self, which is infinite being, consciousness and happiness, we seemingly separate ourself from the perfect happiness that is our own self. Therefore until we reunite with our own reality, which is absolute happiness, we cannot rest, except during the brief but necessary interludes that we experience in sleep, death and other such states, in which our mind subsides in a state of temporary abeyance or inactivity.

Wednesday, 14 February 2007

Are we in this world, or is this world in us?

In continuation of my earlier post Our imaginary sleep of self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance, the following is more of the additional matter that I plan to incorporate after the paragraph that ends on the first line of page 127 of my book, Happiness and the Art of Being:

After saying [in verse 1 of Ekatma Panchakam], "Having forgotten ourself", Sri Ramana says, "having thought '[this] body indeed is myself'", because our present imagination that we are this body arises as a result of our self-forgetfulness. If we clearly knew what we really are, we could not imagine ourself to be anything that we are not. Therefore we could not imagine ourself to be this body if we did not first imagine our seeming self-forgetfulness or lack of clarity of self-consciousness.

Whenever our mind becomes active, whether in waking or in dream, it first imagines itself to be a body, and then through the five senses of that imaginary body it perceives an imaginary world. Our mind cannot function without first limiting itself within the confines of an imaginary body, which it mistakes to be 'I'. Hence our mind is an intrinsically limited and therefore distorted form of consciousness.

Tuesday, 6 February 2007

Our imaginary sleep of self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance

Since many people have expressed a desire to have a printed copy of my book, Happiness and the Art of Being, I have recently been revising it carefully in preparation for its publication as a printed book. While doing so, I expect to add several new portions, discussing certain aspects of Sri Ramana's teachings in greater depth and detail.

As and when I write any such new additions, I plan to post them on this discussion forum.

The first significant addition that I am in the process of writing will be incorporated after the paragraph that ends on the first line of page 127 in the present e-book version, which is currently available for free download on the page Happiness and the Art of Being in my main website, www.happinessofbeing.com. Though I have so far completed only the first part of this first addition, I have decided to post it now, and to post the rest of the first addition later.

The following is this first part of the first addition:

Thursday, 25 January 2007

Repeating 'who am I?' is not self-enquiry

One confusion about self-enquiry that exists in the minds of many spiritual aspirants is that the practice of self-enquiry involves asking ourself or repeating to ourself the question 'who am I?' Therefore I often receive questions from aspirants that reflect this common misunderstanding.

For example, a new friend recently wrote to me as follows:

I am still trying to obtain a copy of The Path of Sri Ramana (Part One) translated by you. According to product description from Amazon.com product page of this book [at http://astore.amazon.com/powerfulspiri-20/detail/B000KMKFX0/103-0369146-2237457]:
... Sri Sadhu Om makes it clear that the point of Self-inquiry is not repeating "Who am I?" and the point of Self inquiry is not repeating "To whom do these thoughts arise?". The purpose of Self-inquiry is Self-Awareness or Self-attention ...
Is this correct observation? But from what I read from Sri Ramana Maharshi's books, basically Maharshi was saying "repeating 'Who am I?' or 'To whom do these thoughts arise?'" when doing self-inquiry? Is this conflicting? Actually, I feel "repeating 'Who am I?' or 'To whom do these thoughts arise?'" is quite awkward.
In my reply I wrote as follows:

Tuesday, 23 January 2007

Self-enquiry and body-awareness

A new friend wrote to me recently saying that he was chronically ill, and he asked:

The body continuously distracts me with pain, breathing problems, foggy-headedness, etc. I was wondering if you had any advice that might be helpful for someone trying to practice self-enquiry with physical issues going on?
In my reply I wrote as follows:

I know from experience how the condition of our physical body can affect our mind and can (at least to some extent) impede our ability to concentrate and be focussed. However, such impediments caused by our physical condition are only relative, and it is possible for us to rise above them, if we have a true and sincere love to do so.

Sunday, 21 January 2007

The aim of self-enquiry is to experience a perfect clarity of self-consciousness

A friend wrote to me recently asking:

Every time that I bring my awareness to I AM, to BEING. Every time, I have this relaxing sensation in my body and a slight drowsiness. I just feel like closing my eyes, not talk, and feel an inner peace. I presume that with time I will be able to abide in this continuously ... Is that also your experience? Are there other "symptoms" that will appear? If I understood, in persevering, ultimately this will destroy the mind, and I will realize Self.
The following is adapted from my reply:

There are no objective 'symptoms' or indicators of self-enquiry. In fact, any objective indicators only indicate that our self-scrutiny, self-attentiveness or self-consciousness is lacking in clarity and precision, because the state of true non-dual self-attentiveness, which is the correct practice of self-enquiry, is an absolutely non-objective experience.

Monday, 15 January 2007

The truth that underlies cognition

With reference to my recent post The cognition of duality, the friend whose e-mail prompted me to write it replied as follows:

Thank you for your clarification. It is very nice. What I wanted to share is if one tries to understand how cognition takes place, it almost reveals the Truth. We generally take it for granted.
In my reply I wrote as follows:

You are right. If we understand correctly how cognition takes place, our understanding will lead us back to the only reality in this whole process of cognition, which is our own consciousness. And when we carefully consider our own consciousness, we will understand that the cognising (object-knowing) aspect of it is transient and therefore not absolutely real. The only aspect of it that is permanent and therefore absolutely real is our fundamental consciousness of our own being, 'I am'.

Sunday, 14 January 2007

Let us not be distracted from following the real teachings of Sri Ramana

The question of whether we really need the physical presence of a jnani, someone who has attained true self-knowledge, in order for us to attain the experience of such true self-knowledge ourself, appears to trouble the minds of many spiritual aspirants. Since last weekend when I wrote the post Is a 'human guru' really necessary?, I have received e-mails from many people asking for further clarification on this subject. In one such e-mail a friend wrote:

Concerning the example of Lakshmana Swami and Saradamma: they maintain that the final surrender of the ego needs the help of the physical presence of a jnani. To mature to that threshold the personal sadhana is very necessary, they say. If this is so or not we have to await, haven't we? I could give many examples of very mature seekers in many traditions that can underline this; Bhagavan himself is an exception; he is unique in every regard.
In my reply I wrote as follows:

Personally I feel dubious about the idea that the final surrender of the ego needs the help of the physical presence of a jnani. I have never heard that Sri Ramana or any other true sage has said so. It appears to me that this idea is based upon the wrong belief that a jnani is really the physical body that he or she appears to us to be. Please read what I have written in this regard in my recent posts, Where can we find the clarity of true self-knowledge? and 'Giving satsanga'.

Saturday, 13 January 2007

Exposing the unreality of our ego

With reference to my earlier post 'Awareness watching awareness', a friend wrote to me an e-mail which he concluded with the statement:

If the tricks of the ego are not dealt with and exposed in detail, all spiritual teachings end up serving the ego.
The following is adapted from my reply to that e-mail:

I believe that this statement is very true. Our mind or ego is our only real enemy, and it plays so many tricks to continue its illusory existence. The sole purpose of all spiritual teachings is to expose the unreality of this impostor and all its progeny, our thoughts and this entire world of duality, all of which depend upon its dubious reality for their seeming existence.

Sri Ramana has taught us that the only way to expose the unreality of our mind or ego is to know our true self by scrutinising ourself. As he says in verse 17 of Upadesa Undiyar:
When [we] scrutinise the form of [our] mind without forgetfulness [interruption caused either by sleep or by thinking], [we will discover that] there is no such thing as 'mind' [separate from or other than our real self]. For everyone, this is the direct path [to true self-knowledge].

The cognition of duality

With reference to my article 'The Nature of Our Mind', which appeared in the latest issue of The Mountain Path and which is an extract from the third chapter of my book, Happiness and the Art of Being, a friend wrote expressing his difficulty in understanding how 'seeing' actually takes place in our mind, since 'seeing' depends upon our eyes, which are a part of our body, which is itself a part of the world that we see. In my reply I wrote as follows:

The simple truth is that everything other than our own real self, our non-dual consciousness of our own being, 'I am', is merely a product of our own imagination. Other than our real self, nothing truly exists. However, by our power of maya or self-delusion we imagine that we do not know our non-dual reality, and as a result of this seeming self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance we imagine this entire world of duality, multiplicity and relativity.

Our body, our eyes, the world that we see through our eyes, our act of seeing, and everything else — all these are imagined by us. That is, they are images or thoughts that we form in our mind by our power of imagination. When our mind subsides in sleep, they cease to appear, because they exist and are known only in our own mind. There is truly nothing outside our mind. Everything that we know, or ever can know, is a thought or mental image that we have formed in our own mind.

Friday, 12 January 2007

Can sexual energy really be liberated?

A friend wrote to me about an account of a certain person and his "inner unfoldment", saying that it was "concerning sexual energy and its liberation". In my reply I wrote as follows:

Regarding the liberation of sexual energy, I am not sure what is meant by 'liberation' in this context. Sexual energy will appear to be real so long as we mistake ourself to be this physical body, for which the sexual urge is natural. However, though it is natural for our body, the sexual urge is not natural for our real self, our true non-dual consciousness of being, 'I am', because in our natural state of non-dual consciousness there can be no other thing towards which we could be attracted.

Sexual energy can never be truly liberated, because by its very nature it is always bound to our false sense of identification with our physical body. When we cease to imagine that we are this or any other body, as in sleep, we do not experience any sexual urge or energy. Therefore what can be liberated is not sexual energy, but only ourself.

Where can we find the clarity of true self-knowledge?

In answer to the question at the end of the comment that Erwin appended to my earlier post, Is a 'human guru' really necessary?, I would say that whatever external help we may need will be provided to us by Sri Ramana, so if the physical presence of a true sage or jnani may help us, he will arrange our outward life accordingly. If, on the other had, such help is not necessary for us, he will arrange our outward life otherwise.

Either way, we need not actively seek any such outward help, because that may not be necessary and would anyway distract us from our real aim, which is to seek the truth within ourself. If we truly wish to know what we really are, there is only one way to do so, and that is to turn our entire attention inwards, focussing it wholly and exclusively upon our natural consciousness of our own essential being, 'I am'.

It is true that our mind is weakened and impeded by the strength of its desires, which constantly impel it to turn outwards, towards things that it imagines to be other than itself, so it is natural for us to feel that we need help in our efforts to turn inwards. If we think that we need help from outside, the best external help is available to us in the form of the teachings of Sri Ramana. By reading and reflecting upon his teachings, which constantly emphasise the need for us to turn within, we will keep this need fresh in our mind, and our love to turn inwards will be sustained and increased.

Wednesday, 10 January 2007

Self-consciousness alone is true knowledge

With reference to my recent post, The true import of 'I am', a friend asked:

Is the self aware of itself without manifestation?
I replied as follows:

The simple answer is yes, it is, as is clearly illustrated by our experience in sleep.

Who knows any manifestation? To whom does it manifest? It is known only by us, because it manifests only in our own mind. Nothing that is known by us is known outside our mind, except our fundamental consciousness of our own essential being, which we always experience as 'I am', whether our mind and its contents are manifest, as in waking and dream, or remain unmanifest, as in sleep.

Tuesday, 9 January 2007

The true import of 'I am'

In reply to a friend who wrote, "The 'I am' is the beginning of the dream", I wrote as follows:

The 'I am' just is. It is the permanent abiding reality, our true and essential self-conscious being. The beginning of this dream of our three states, waking, dream and sleep, is our primal imagination, 'I am this body, I am a person, I am so-and-so', which arises when we seemingly ignore our natural clarity of perfect self-consciousness.

Because we wrongly imagine ourself to be this body and mind, we mistake the words 'I am' to denote this body-mind complex. But Sri Ramana taught us that that which is truly denoted by the term 'I am' is only our true being, which is non-dual self-consciousness. This is clearly stated by him in verse 21 of Upadesa Undiyar:

That [one infinite whole that shines thus as 'I am I'] is at all times [in the past, present and future, and in all eternity] the import of the word 'I', because of the absence of our non-existence even in sleep, which is devoid of [any separate or finite sense of] 'I'.

Saturday, 6 January 2007

Is a 'human guru' really necessary?

In a comment on the post Your comments and questions are welcome (1), Anonymous wrote:

Lakshmana Swamy says that one should have a human guru, which seems to be suicidal to the teachings of Bhagavan. Why does a senior Swamy like him subscribe to this idea? It looks as though Ramana were not existing as the eternal being.
If Lakshmana Swami has said that we need a 'human guru', I do not know what he means by this term. If he means a manifestation of the one eternal guru in human form, then yes, for most of us such a 'human guru' is necessary, but that 'human guru' need not now be living in his human form.

Sri Ramana is such a 'human guru', and the fact that he cast off his human guise more than 56 years ago makes absolutely no difference to his ability to help us in our struggle to return to our original source, which is our consciousness of our own essential being, 'I am', and which is the true form of the guru. His grace and guidance are as real and as powerful now as they were when he appeared in his human guise, and they will always be so.

Sunday, 31 December 2006

Consciousness and time

With reference to the coming new year, someone remarked that like consciousness time has no divisions to mark its passage, meaning that all divisions of time, such as weeks, months, years and centuries, are entirely arbitrary and mind-made. However, though the implied meaning of this remark is true in general, the specific comparison of time with consciousness is not so apt.

The one crucial division or dividing point in time is the present moment, which is experienced by us as present due to the presence of our own consciousness. We always experience consciousness as being here and now, so our consciousness is what defines both the present place and the present moment.

So long as we experience ourself as being the object-knowing consciousness that we call 'mind', our consciousness does appear to be divided or interrupted by sleep and by the separation between waking and dream. However, underlying this transitory object-knowing consciousness, which appears in waking and dream and disappears in sleep, we also experience a more subtle form of consciousness, namely our consciousness of our own being, 'I am', which is permanent, undivided and non-dual.



Last updated: 7th November 2024