Showing posts with label effort. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 August 2021

We abide as ourself only to the extent to which we attend to ourself alone

A friend wrote to me today:

When I abide in the self an intense nose pressure comes out. On previous paths this has happened with a chest pressure then a nose pressure which have both released. Now this nose pressure is getting stronger and stronger the more I abide in the self. Has Ramana talked about anything like this happening? Any advice?
In reply to this I wrote:

Saturday, 30 January 2021

Is it possible for us to have a ‘glimpse of Self’?

A friend wrote to me asking, ‘Can the practice become constant? Turning attention inward, I remain there (I-AM). Where does effort stop? I had glimpses of Self, how to remain there? Is it at all possible?’, in reply to which I wrote:

Tuesday, 2 June 2020

We can be self-attentive in waking and dream but not in sleep

A friend recently wrote to me:

It seems to that “Self-Attention” as taught by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi is possible only when I am in the Waking State, and not when I am in the Sleeping State and in the Dreaming State. In that case, what do I have to do in the latter two states, according to the teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi? If I cannot do anything in those two states, will that be a problem or should I take it that as long as I am doing “Self-Attention” correctly during the Waking State, that will be enough?

Thursday, 30 May 2019

How can we refine and sharpen our power of attention so that we can discern what we actually are?

In a comment on my previous article, How to practise self-enquiry (ātma-vicāra)?, a friend called Rajat Sancheti wrote:
Desires, fears, etc belong to the ego or to the person? The person is insentient and cannot desire or fear anything, so they must belong to ego, I suppose. But then why do these desires and fears have such a personal nature? For example, the desire for money, lust, status, etc, they are only the body’s desires. Is it that when ego identifies this body as ‘I’, it takes this body’s desires and fears to be its own? Or are desires and fears only the ego’s desires and fears?

Friday, 19 April 2019

Can there be any viable substitute for patient and persistent practice of self-investigation and self-surrender?

As I wrote in the introduction to my previous but one article, Is it possible to have a ‘direct but temporary experience of the self’ or to watch the disappearance of the I-thought?, in which I adapted a reply that I had written to a friend who had asked about a portion from 13.31 to 18.04 of a video that David Godman made about ‘Papaji’ (H W L Poonja), there was another issue raised in that portion that I did not specifically discuss in that article but that I said I would discuss in a later one. That issue is the idea that Poonja could somehow give people an experience that bypassed the need for ‘a rather intense, vigilant practice that took place over a long period of time’, which David acknowledged (at 13.53) was what Bhagavan used to recommend, so this is the issue that I will discuss in this article.

Sunday, 16 April 2017

Why is effort required for us to go deep in our practice of self-investigation?

A friend recently wrote to me asking:
My question about I-Alone is this: in relaxing attention from objects I can be keenly aware of my existence as Sat Chit. That is effortless, but it is not completely and exclusively ‘I’-Self-aware. Other objects are also ‘known’.

But, today I have read from you [in Our aim should be to experience ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else]: “Our real aim should not be just longer durations of self-attentiveness but should be more deep, intense and clear self-attentiveness — that is, attentiveness that is more keenly and exclusively focused on ‘I’ alone, without the least trace of any awareness of anything else.”

First of all, wow! My experience so far is that this is not effortless, but an intense, actively engaged ‘focusing down’, so to speak, on Self.

I just wanted to ask you if that is correct. That intense active focusing is required.
The following is adapted from what I replied to him:

Wednesday, 8 March 2017

Rather than being aware of being aware, we should be aware only of what is aware, namely ourself

This article is my reply to a recent comment on one of my earlier articles, How to attend to ourself?, in which a friend wrote: ‘I have tried being aware of being aware. I find it slightly different than being aware of myself. In being aware of being aware, it is more like getting more awake towards entire gamut of experience. While being aware of myself is more like somewhat withdrawing from other experiences. There is more effort involved in the latter. What is your experience?’

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

The difference between vivarta vāda and ajāta vāda is not just semantic but substantive

I wrote my previous article, As we actually are, we do nothing and are aware of nothing other than ourself, in reply to various comments written by a friend called Ken, and in reply to it he wrote another comment in which he argued:
Thank you for your thorough research on these topics, they are a significant aid in understanding Ramana’s teaching.

[…]

Beyond that, it seems to me that we are getting into an area ruled by semantics.

For example, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character. As such, he “is unreal and never existed”. However, his lack of existence is a semantic one. From our viewpoint, we certainly find a difference between our current world (with at least two different Sherlock Holmes series in production) and an alternative universe where Conan Doyle never invented the character Sherlock Holmes.

In a similar way, we go to sleep and have a dream. When we wake up, we realize that the events in the dream were unreal. “Nothing ever happened”. But we cannot say that our night was the same as a night where we did not dream at all.

And, if we go into the dark garage and mistake the coiled rope for a snake, we can certainly say “the snake is unreal and never existed”. However, there is a difference between going into the garage and immediately recognizing the rope, or else going into the garage and mistakenly seeing the snake. If there were no difference, then Ramana would not have advised, in Ulladu Narpadu 35:

“The subsided mind having subsided, knowing and being the Reality, which is (always) attained, is the (true) attainment (siddhi). [...] (Therefore) know and be (as) you (the Reality) are.”

If there were no difference between seeing the snake and seeing the rope, then he would have said instead:

“The mind is unreal and does not exist, so do not practice self-attention, go home, watch cricket and stop bothering me.”

So, a universe where there was never any appearance of temporary phenomena, never any maya, never any mistaken identification, never any ego... just satchitananda.... is perhaps theologically, metaphysically, and/or philosophically identical to this universe.... but it is not entirely identical, otherwise Ramana would have never answered Pillai’s question of “Who Am I?”.

The Advaita Vedanta standard of “real” and “exists” is very meaningful — it tells us what is important. But if we use it in all contexts, we end up with “Neo-Advaita”, i.e. “Nothing ever happened, the ego never existed, so go home and watch T.V., that will be $50, thanks.”

In Path of Sri Ramana, Sadhu Om is careful to apply absolute metaphysical standards to theology and philosophy, but not otherwise. For example, he stated:

“The sole cause of all miseries is the mistake of veiling ourself by imagining these sheaths to be ourself, even though we are ever this existence-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda).”

This is similar to my statement quoted from 9 September 2016:

“Because there is nothing other than the Self, so there is nothing that can force the Self to do anything. The Self is alone, so it decides to “veil” itself and limit itself as a multitude of ‘individuals’. This is the Lila, the play.”

The Upanishads, Shankara and Ramana all agree that there is nothing other than the Self. So, there cannot be anything that forces the Self to do anything.

Sadhu Om characterizing veiling as a “mistake”, while I characterize it as a “decision”. Well, certainly those two things are compatible. Plenty of decisions are found to be mistakes (such as deciding to drive when you have drunk far too much alcohol).

Before the “veiling”, there was no ego, so Sadhu Om can only be referring to the Self as the one who veils.
Therefore in this article I will try to explain to Ken why these arguments of his do not adequately address the issue I was discussing in my previous article, namely the confusion that arises if we believe that our actual self veils itself and sees itself as numerous phenomena.

Thursday, 24 March 2016

Why is it necessary to make effort to practise self-investigation (ātma-vicāra)?

In two comments on one of my recent articles, Why should we believe what Bhagavan taught us?, a friend who writes under the pseudonym ‘Viveka Vairagya’ quoted extracts from the teachings of HWL Poonja (who is referred to as ‘Papaji’ by his devotees) as recorded on the Satsang with Papaji website, in both of which he expressed ideas that directly contradict the teachings of Bhagavan. In one of these extracts Poonja said regarding sleep, ‘This is a dull state because there is no awareness at all so you may not recognize it. In deep sleep you forget yourself completely’, which contradicts what Bhagavan taught us about sleep, as I explained in the fourteenth and fifteenth sections of my previous article, We are aware of ourself while asleep, so pure self-awareness alone is what we actually are, and in both of these extracts he contradicted in several ways what Bhagavan taught us about the practice of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), as I will explain in this article.

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

Dṛg-dṛśya-vivēka: distinguishing the seer from the seen

In a comment that he wrote on my previous article, ‘Observation without the observer’ and ‘choiceless awareness’: Why the teachings of J. Krishnamurti are diametrically opposed to those of Sri Ramana, a friend called Venkat quoted two passages that record what Bhagavan replied on two occasions, first in response to a question that he was asked about the teachings of J. Krishnamurti and second in response to a comment about them.

Thursday, 7 May 2015

What is unique about the teachings of Sri Ramana?

Last Sunday I talked via Skype with a friend in Argentina about the teachings of Sri Ramana, and at the end of our discussion he asked me to write a summary of the main ideas that I had explained to him, because English is a foreign language to him, so he wanted to be sure that he had correctly understood and grasped all that I had said. This article is the summary that I wrote for him, so some of the ideas that I express in it were what I said in reference to what he had told me. For example, what I say about our inability to meditate on ourself continuously for five hours, or even five minutes, was with reference to what he told about how in the past when he was practising other forms of meditation he was able to meditate continuously for five hours, but that now when he tries to practise self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) he finds that he is unable to do so for even five minutes.

Saturday, 18 April 2015

Do we need to try to ignore all thoughts, and if so how?

A friend recently wrote to me saying:
When you say to experience “I” in total isolation, I try to ignore thoughts, and other perceptions. But the “ignoring act” seems to involve some sort of force. Otherwise its duration will be so short, the thoughts are pounding at the door quite soon. The somewhat forceful rejection of thoughts maybe is the wrong way to do it? To ignore thoughts sounds like a soft and tender way, but I feel it to be a bit harsh. I do not see any other way though.
This article is adapted from the reply I wrote to him.

Friday, 3 April 2015

Any experience we can describe is something other than the experience of pure self-attentiveness

Last month a friend wrote to me describing what he experiences when he tries to practise self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) and asking whether his description indicates that his practice is on the right track. This article is adapted from the reply I wrote to him.

The experience of self-attentiveness or self-awareness cannot be expressed in words, because it is featureless, so any words we use to describe what we experience when we are trying to be self-attentive are only a description of something other than pure self-attentiveness.

Friday, 6 March 2015

Intensity, frequency and duration of self-attentiveness

A friend recently sent me an email in which he wrote, ‘I now clearly see that it is bhakti alone that can make me better and stronger at atma-vicara’, to which I replied:

Yes, Sri Ramana used to say that bhakti (love or devotion) is the mother of jñāna (knowledge or true self-experience), and what he meant by bhakti in this context was only the love to experience nothing other than ourself alone, as he clearly implied in verses 8 and 9 of Upadēśa Undiyār:

Tuesday, 24 February 2015

Just being (summā irukkai) is not an activity but a state of perfect stillness

A friend wrote to me recently asking, ‘Is there any way to ascertain whether the feeling of “I” is being attended to? Is it enough if the mind’s “power of attention” is brought to a standstill?’ He also quoted the following (inaccurate) translation of question 4 and Sri Ramana’s reply in the second chapter of Upadēśa Mañjari (‘A Bouquet of Teachings’, or ‘Spiritual Instructions’ as this English translation in The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi is called), and asked ‘How can remaining still be considered as intense activity? Is being still a state of effort or effortlessness? I am slightly confused’:
4. Is the state of ‘being still’ a state involving effort or effortlessness?

It is not an effortless state of indolence. All mundane activities which are ordinarily called effort are performed with the aid of a portion of the mind and with frequent breaks. But the act of communion with the Self (atma vyavahara) or remaining still inwardly is intense activity which is performed with the entire mind and without break.

Maya (delusion or ignorance) which cannot be destroyed by any other act is completely destroyed by this intense activity which is called ‘silence’ (mauna).
The following is adapted from the reply I wrote to him:

Sunday, 30 November 2014

How to experience the clarity of self-awareness that appears between sleep and waking?

A friend wrote to me recently saying that she had been following various spiritual paths since childhood and that finally last year Sri Ramana had appeared in her life as the ultimate teacher, but that eight years ago she had had an experience while waking from sleep that she later identified with what Sri Ramana said about the clarity of self-awareness that can be experienced immediately after we wake from sleep and before it becomes mixed with awareness of a body and world. She tried her best to describe what she had experienced, but if it was indeed the adjunct-free clarity of self-awareness that Sri Ramana referred to, it would be impossible to describe it in words or even to conceive it by thoughts, because it would have been (and could only ever be) experienced in the complete absence of any thoughts or words, and hence it is beyond their reach.

Therefore from her description of her experience I cannot say for certain that it was that adjunct-free clarity of self-awareness, or if not, exactly what it was, but it may well have been such a clarity. However, whenever we do experience such an intense clarity of self-awareness, we lose it as soon as our mind becomes active, and if we then remember or think about it, whatever we remember or think is something other than what we actually experienced, because what we experienced was ‘I’ without any mental activity such as thinking or remembering. Therefore, though we may think that we can ‘relive’ such an experience by remembering it, we cannot actually relive it except by persistently trying to experience perfect clarity of self-awareness here and now.

Friday, 19 September 2014

How to avoid doing āgāmya and experiencing prārabdha?

In a comment on one of my recent article, The karma theory as taught by Sri Ramana, Sanjay wrote:
Sir, if I my ego subsides completely for some length or duration of time by attending only to ‘I’ alone, obviously my free-will or agamya will become inactive, but during such subsidence, will my destiny of fate (prarabdha) will also remain inactive, or my mind, speech and body will continue to act as per prarabdha? If it continues to act, who experiences these actions and the resulting experiences of my prarabdha, which I was supposed to experience then?

Secondly, I believe, you have said in this article that as long as our ego is intact, we will continue to act as per our prarabdha, and simultaneously our mind, speech and body will also be able to do actions creating agamya, by exercising its free will, if it does not contradict our prarabdha. I remember a recorded conversation with Bhagavan somewhat to the effect:

Devotee: I can understand that all the major events in my life are predestined, like say, my marriage, my job, any major accidents, etc., but suppose if I pick up this hand-fan now, is it also predestined? Bhagavan: Yes, everything is predestined.

If this is accurately recorded, it means that what Bhagavan is saying is that we have no free-will of our bodily actions (and by implication of actions by speech). Do we understand that though our mind has a free-will to desire against or something instead of our predestined prarabdha, but our speech and body are completely pre-programmed, and bound by a pre-existing script, like a cinema show?

What are your views on these two doubts of mine?
So long as our mind, speech and body seem to exist, they will be made to act in whatever way is required for their destiny (prārabdha) to be experienced, irrespective of the extent to which our ego has subsided. However, we will experience those actions and experiences as our actions and experiences only to the extent that we attend to them, so to the extent that we are able to attend only to ‘I’ we will not experience them.

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Self-investigation, effort and sleep

In the final paragraph of a comment that he wrote on my previous article, Since we always experience ‘I’, we do not need to find ‘I’, but only need to experience it as it actually is, Wittgenstein wrote:
From point 4 above [Due to the opposing nature of consciousness and non-consciousness, laya and vichara (self attention) are mutually exclusive], it is clear that one can not be self attentive while in sleep. That being so, there is a statement [believed to be made by Bhagavan] in Mudaliar’s book [DDWB] that if self attention is maintained and one drifts into sleep, it would continue even in sleep, which is difficult to understand. Does this simply mean that one would sooner or later wake up with a reminder to be self attentive? Or is there something else meant [assuming Bhagavan really made this statement]?
As Wittgenstein says, we obviously cannot make any effort to be self-attentive while we are asleep, but if we try to be self-attentive now while we are awake we will eventually be able to experience sleep in this waking state, as Sri Ramana says in verse 16 of Upadēśa Taṉippākkaḷ (in which he summarised what Sri Muruganar recorded him as having said in verses 957-8 of Guru Vācaka Kōvai):

Friday, 18 April 2014

Why is ātma-vicāra necessary?

A friend recently wrote to me saying that he felt that in my article Does the practice of ātma-vicāra work? I did not really answer the question in a direct manner, and he tried to explain why he felt this. The gist of what he wrote was as follows: after many years of practising self-attention, he had arrived at a firm conviction that there is only one self, not one self in search of another self, and that ‘I am the Self’; there is only the Self, so the striving, the searching and the attaining of the Self is only an illusion created by the mind, and Ramana said that the mind doesn’t exist; therefore he is firmly convinced that ‘I am the Self’ and that he only has to abide in the Self; although the illusion of the world is still there, with the mind and thoughts, it doesn’t change the fact that there is only the Self; whether or not the mind is destroyed now, it doesn’t really matter, because it is only an image on the screen and has no reality; so is ‘realisation’ necessary? Won’t jñāna [self-knowledge] occur when the body dies? Therefore he concluded that until the body and mind are destroyed by death, what is important is to have the conviction that ‘There is only the Self and nothing else’, and that ‘I am That’.

In some subsequent emails he also asked about ‘progress’ (with reference to an example that Bhagavan gave of detonating a canon: preparing it for detonation takes time, but once prepared, it is detonated in an instant) and about fear that arises during the practice of ātma-vicāra, and also asked whether certain experiences could be explained in terms of kuṇḍalinī. The following is adapted and compiled from the replies I wrote to him:

Yes, there is only self, and self is what we always experience as ‘I am’. However, so long as we experience ourself as a person (an entity consisting of body and mind), we experience not only ‘I’ but also many other things, and this creates the illusion that ‘I’ is something limited: one thing among many other things.

Friday, 11 April 2014

Ātma-vicāra and nirvikalpa samādhi
(Interview on Celibacy: Part 5)

This is the final of the following five instalments, which are a slightly modified reproduction of an interview in which I answered seven questions asked by the editor of the online Non-Duality Magazine for their current issue entitled The Celibacy Question:

Friday, 21 January 2011

How to avoid creating fresh karma (āgāmya)?

In a reply that I wrote to one of the comments on my previous article, Second and third person objects, I wrote:

Whatever we experience in either waking or dream is determined by our destiny (prārabdha), so we have no power to alter any of it. However, though we cannot change what we are destined to experience, we can desire and make effort to change it, and by doing so we create fresh karma (āgāmya).

Since all such desire and effort to change what we are destined to experience is futile and counterproductive, we should refrain from all such extroverted desire and effort, and should make effort only to subside within by focusing our entire attention upon ourself (the first person, the experiencing subject, ‘I’) and thereby withdrawing it from everything else (every second or third person object).

By making such selfward-directed effort, we will not alter what the mind is destined to experience, but will remove the illusion that we are this experiencing mind. This is what Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 38 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
If we are the ‘doer’ of actions, which are like seeds, we will experience the resulting ‘fruit’. [However] when we know ourself by investigating ‘who is the doer of action?’, ‘doership’ will depart and all the three karmas will slip off. This indeed is the state of liberation, which is eternal.




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.






Saturday, 4 July 2009

Atma-vichara and metta bhavana (‘loving-kindness’ meditation)

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

I’ve got a question concerning atma-vichara in relation to some meditation techniques.

Before I came across Sri Bhagavan's teachings I practised some form of Buddhist meditation which is called ‘metta’ or loving-kindness meditation. In this meditation one develops the feelings of love and care, starting with oneself and expanding the range step by step to include teachers, friends and finally all living beings.

I never regarded myself as a Buddhist but nevertheless I still find this form of meditation very helpful and beneficial. That's why I do a daily loving-kindness meditation for about 45-60 minutes.

I also find that this is a help when I try to practice atma-vichara because self-attention seems to be easier with a mind which is not so noisy and turbulent.

Through reading and reflecting on Sri Bhagavan’s teachings I know that the only practice which leads to final liberation and experience of true self-knowledge is atma-vichara or self-abidance.

I also think that my other practice will naturally drop away when I get more experienced in atma-vichara. But as a beginner I find it difficult to practice self-attention, especially when there are difficult emotions, plenty of thoughts and the stress of day-to-day life.

My question is if this kind of sitting meditation is contradictory to practising self-attention or can even be a hindrance.











In reply to this I wrote as follows:

The only practice that will enable us directly to experience ourself as we really are and thereby destroy our mind is the action-free non-dual practice of ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness. All other practices or forms of meditation are only mental activities, because they each involve our paying attention to something other than ‘I’ (which means that our attention is moving away from ourself towards whatever other thing we are thinking of), and hence they cannot enable us to experience our real action-free (thought-free) self.


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.




Monday, 22 June 2009

Ekatma Panchakam – an explanatory paraphrase

In continuation of my previous three articles, Upadesa Undiyar – an explanatory paraphrase, Ulladu Narpadu – an explanatory paraphrase and Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham – an explanatory paraphrase, the following is the fourth of seven extracts from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai:

ஏகான்ம பஞ்சகம் (Ekanma Panchakam), the ‘Five Verses on the Oneness of Self’, is a poem that Sri Ramana composed in February 1947, first in Telugu, then in Tamil, and later in Malayalam.

The word ஆன்மா (anma) is a Tamil form the Sanskrit word atman, which means ‘self’, and hence in the title ஏகான்ம பஞ்சகம் (Ekanma Panchakam) the compound word ஏகான்ம (ekanma) means ‘the one self’, ‘self, the one’ or (by implication) ‘the oneness of self’, and பஞ்சகம் (panchakam) means a ‘set of five [verses]’. Thus this title implies not only that self is only one (and not many), but also that self is the only one (that is, the only one existing reality), which is the true import of this poem, since in verse 5 Sri Ramana clearly states that self is the only ever-existing and self-shining reality.




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.


Self-attentiveness and time

With reference to a reply that I had written to an earlier comment quoting pages 584-5 of Happiness and the Art of Being, last week the following anonymous comment was posted on one of my recent articles, Making effort to pay attention to our mind is being attentive only to our essential self:

When once one has the intensity, there is no question of doing meditation or vichara in short periods with various intervals or going in for long ardous sessions as time itself is a subsequent factor having no relevance to our essential being of, “I AM”, unless one does some yoga exercise.
Yes, time is a phenomenon that appears to exist only when our mind is active — that is, when it is attending to anything other than itself — so when we are wholly absorbed in self-attentiveness time is truly non-existent. Therefore, all questions and concern about time exist for us only when our love to abide in our natural state of clear thought-free self-conscious being is not yet sufficiently intense for us to remain without ever being distracted from it.

Saturday, 6 December 2008

Making effort to pay attention to our mind is being attentive only to our essential self

Referring to a sentence that I wrote in my recent article Self-attentiveness, effort and grace, “We can free ourself from thoughts, sense-perceptions and body-consciousness only by ignoring them entirely and being attentive only to our essential self, ‘I am’”, an anonymous friend wrote in a comment today:

As I see it, thoughts, sense-perceptions and body-consciousness can’t be ignored nor we can be attentive only to our essential self then. If we are attentive only to our essential self, it is because there is not thought, sense-perception nor body-consciousness to be ignored by us. Otherwise, we have to be attentive to thoughts and so on, because it is only then, through this practice, that attention becomes self-attentive and therefore self-consciousness because then, there is not thought, sense-perception nor body-consciousness as a natural result of the practice, obtained without an act of will nor effort. Effort is in paying attention to mind which is a reflection of true consciousness, but once attention becomes self-attentive the rest just disappears and all happens by itself. Asking at that moment: who am I? it is something that I couldn’t do yet.

Baghavan Sri Ramana talking on being attentive only to our essential self from the beginning, gives us a clue on how far we are from that state. To me, starting from that point is starting from just one more thought, I have to follow a long process before to arrive to the pure feeling of just being, and I don’t always arrive, only in very few occasions. Feeling is so much perfect that then I’m unable of asking “what is this? Who am I?

Baghavan used to talk on weakness of mind as well, I guess he meant exactly this.



I am not sure that I have correctly understood all that Anonymous wrote in this comment, but I hope that he or she may find the following few remarks helpful.

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’.




Friday, 27 June 2008

Cultivating uninterrupted self-attentiveness

In a comment on one of my recent articles, Self-enquiry, personal experiences and daily routine, an anonymous friend wrote:

“...uninterrupted self-attentiveness...”

This is not quite possible in my daily work life. I work as a software developer where I have to constantly think to write programs. I try to do be self-attentive while using elevators, walking the corridors... sometimes even while smoking, and also try to be self-attentive while driving.

So please tell me how to hold on to the “I” while working.



Here the words “... uninterrupted self-attentiveness ...” refer to a sentence that Sri Ramana wrote in the eleventh paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?), which I quoted in that article, namely:
… If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarupa-smarana [self-remembrance] until one attains svarupa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. …
As I explained in a subsequent article, Where to find and how to reach the real presence of our guru?, the adjective that Sri Ramana actually used in this sentence to qualify svarupa-smarana or ‘self-remembrance’ is nirantara, which means ‘uninterrupted’ in the sense of ‘having no interval’, ‘incessant’, ‘constant’, ‘continuous’ or ‘perpetual’. When we read this sentence, many of us wonder like our anonymous friend how it could be possible for us to hold on to self-remembrance or self-attentiveness continuously in the midst of all our usual daily activities, some of which appear to require our undivided attention.

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.)





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?):

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.

Saturday, 18 August 2007

The question ‘who am I?’ as a verbalised thought

In continuation of my previous three posts, Atma-vichara is only the practice of keeping our mind fixed firmly in self, Atma-vichara and the question ‘who am I?’ and Sri Ramana’s figurative use of simple words, the following is what I have newly incorporated on pages 450 to 456 of the forthcoming printed edition of Happiness and the Art of Being:

We cannot ascertain who or what we really are by merely asking ourself the verbalised question ‘who am I?’, but only by keenly attending to ourself. If Sri Ramana were to say to us, "Investigate what is written in this book", we would not imagine that we could discover what is written in it by merely asking ourself the question ‘what is written in this book?’. In order to know what is written in it, we must open it and actually read what is written inside. Similarly, when he says to us, "Investigate ‘who am I?’", we should not imagine that he means that we can truly know who we are by merely asking ourself the question ‘who am I?’. In order to know who or what we really are, we must actually look within ourself to see what this ‘I’ — our essential self-consciousness — really is.

In order to experience ourself as we really are, we must withdraw our attention from everything other than our own real self — our essential self-conscious being, ‘I am’. Since the verbalised question ‘who am I?’ is a thought that can rise only after our mind has risen and is active, it is experienced by us as something other than ourself, and hence we cannot know who we really are so long as we allow our mind to continue dwelling upon it.

Saturday, 28 July 2007

Happiness and the Art of Being – additions to chapter 5

In the forthcoming printed edition of Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, ‘What is True Knowledge?’, I have incorporated eight new portions that are not in the second e-book edition.

On page 304 of the second e-book edition, immediately after the first paragraph following verse 9 of Ulladu Narpadu, I have added two new paragraphs and modified the first sentence of the next paragraph. These three paragraphs, which will be on pages 306 to 307 of the printed book, are as follows:

The unreality both of these ‘triads’, which form the totality of our objective knowledge, and of these ‘pairs’, which are an inherent part of our objective knowledge, being objective phenomena experienced by our knowing mind, is emphasised by the word vinmai, which Sri Ramana added between the previous verse and this verse in the kalivenba version of Ulladu Narpadu. Being placed immediately before the opening words of this verse, irattaigal mupputigal, this word vinmai, which literally means ‘sky-ness’ — that is, the abstract quality or condition of the sky, which in this context implies its blueness — defines the nature of these ‘pairs’ and ‘triads’. That is, these basic constituents of all our objective or dualistic knowledge are unreal appearances, like the blueness of the sky.

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].

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:

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?

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, 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.

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].

Friday, 12 January 2007

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.

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.



Last updated: 7th November 2024