In continuation of my previous article, Āṉma-Viddai: Tamil text, transliteration and translation, in this article I will explain and discuss the meaning and implications of the first verse of this text, and in subsequent articles I will do likewise for each of the other four verses:
A friend wrote to me recently:
I came across the following quote supposedly by Bhagavan:
Question: How is the ego to be destroyed?
Maharshi: Hold the ego first and then ask how it is to be destroyed. Who asks this question? It is the ego. Can the ego ever agree to kill itself? This question is a sure way to cherish the ego and not to kill it. If you seek the ego you will find it does not exist. That is the way to destroy it.
Before I came to India I had read of such people as Edward Carpenter, Tennyson and many more who had had flashes of what they called “Cosmic Consciousness.” I asked Bhagavan about this. Was it possible that once having gained Self-realization to lose it again? Certainly it was. To support this view Bhagavan took up a copy of Kaivalya Navanita and told the interpreter to read a page of it to me. In the early stages of Sadhana this was quite possible and even probable. So long as the least desire or tie was left, a person would be pulled back again into the phenomenal world, he explained. After all it is only our Vasanas that prevent us from always being in our natural state, and Vasanas were not got rid of all of a sudden or by a flash of Cosmic Consciousness. One may have worked them out in a previous existence leaving a little to be done in the present life, but in any case they must first be destroyed.Referring to this, a friend wrote to me: ‘Having once attained is there a chance of unattaining again? This question has confused me for many weeks. I was under the impression that once the ego had been completed annihilated it will never rise again. Yet discussions with fellow devotees on the Ramana Maharshi Foundation page seem to indicate that even once attained it is possible to be lost again if all vasanas [are] not destroyed. What was Bhagavan’s view on this? It disturbs me immensely that having attained one can fall again into the illusion, it also seems to render our practise quite meaningless if that is the case’. The following is my reply to her.
May I give a short description what happens in my poor experience of practising self-investigation in the following passage: The attentiveness with which one investigates what one is has to be accomplished by the ego. The ego is a bundle of thoughts. So attentiveness is also a thought. The attentive thought ‘who am I’ is entrusted to try to extinguish/erase other rising thoughts and simultaneously or after that to investigate to whom they have occurred. It is clear that it is to me. By further investigation ‘who am I’, I do not clearly recognize if the mind subsided or returned to its birthplace, that is myself. Because the same (my) attentiveness has to manage to refuse the spreading/developing of other thoughts (without giving room [place/field] to other thoughts) and rather eliminate them, other thoughts are on my mind well waiting for refusal of their completion. Thus I am far away from grabbing the opportunity that the thought ‘who am I’ itself is destroyed in the end (like the fire-stir-stick). What is wrong in my strategy or where I am on the wrong track?The following is my reply to this:
I have a question if attention has to be drawn (intentionally) to the self, or is it enough if I just remain as I am, surrendering the filthy ego to God? No “fixing the mind into self”, nor “looking for the source” or “I-thought”, but just remaining?I wrote a brief reply, and he replied asking some further questions, so this article is adapted from the two replies I wrote to him.
Michael, sometimes it is said that the source of the ego (all thoughts, ‘I’-thought) is the heart. And the same heart is said to be the source of the breath. Therefore thoughts and breath have the same source. So if one holds one’s breath no thoughts would rise.In reply to this I wrote a comment in which I explained:
I cannot confirm that and I did not learn it in my experience of meditation. Please could you comment on this or clarify.
I have tried the technique of diving into the heart exhaling your breath, explained in the small book The Technique of Maha Yoga published by Ramanashramam, [...] but this does not seem to work in my case.The following is adapted from the reply I wrote to him:
Someone wrote to me recently saying that he thinks the use of the word ‘destruction’ in ‘destruction of mind’ (manōnāśa) is just ‘Indian hyperbole’ and should not be taken literally, because of it is obvious that Bhagavan and other jñānis think, since without thinking they could not walk or talk. I hope there are not many other people who have misunderstood Bhagavan’s teachings about manōnāśa in such a way, but since manōnāśa is the goal that he has taught us that we should aim to attain, I believe that the following adaptation of my reply to this person may be helpful to other devotees.
In order to understand what Bhagavan means by manōnāśa (the destruction, annihilation, elimination, ruin, disappearance or death of the mind), we should first consider what he means by ‘mind’ or manas. In verse 18 of Upadēśa Undiyār (the original Tamil version of Upadēśa Sāram) he says:
Mind is only thoughts. Of all thoughts, the thought called ‘I’ is the root. [Therefore] what is called ‘mind’ is [in essence just this root thought] ‘I’.In verse 2 of Āṉma Viddai he indicates that what he means here by ‘the thought called I’ is the thought ‘I am this body’ (the illusion that the physical body is ‘I’):
Since the thought ‘this body composed of flesh is I’ alone is the one thread on which [all] the various thoughts are strung, if [one] goes within [investigating] ‘Who am I? What is [its] place [the source from which this ‘I’ has risen, and the ground on which it stands]?’ thoughts will cease, and in the cave [of one’s heart] ātma-jñāna [self-knowledge] will shine spontaneously as ‘I [am only] I’. This is silence, the one [empty] space [of consciousness], the abode of bliss.
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.
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:
A friend recently wrote to me asking:
I’ve got a question concerning atma-vichara in relation to some meditation techniques.In reply to this I wrote as follows:
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.
As I mentioned in my previous article, Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam – an overview, I am currently preparing to upload four new e-books to the Books section of my website, namely Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam, Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai, Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana and Sadhanai Saram, and I am drafting introductory pages for each of these.
The second of these four new e-books, Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai (ஸ்ரீ ரமணோபதேச நூன்மாலை), is an English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and me of உபதேச நூன்மாலை (Upadesa Nunmalai), the ‘Garland of Texts of Spiritual Teachings’, which is the second section of ஸ்ரீ ரமண நூற்றிரட்டு (Sri Ramana Nultirattu), the Tamil ‘Collected Works of Sri Ramana’, and which is a collection of the six principal philosophical poems that Sri Ramana composed, namely உபதேச வுந்தியார் (Upadesa Undiyar), உள்ளது நாற்பது (Ulladu Narpadu), உள்ளது நாற்பது – அனுபந்தம் (Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham), ஏகான்ம பஞ்சகம் (Ekanma Panchakam), அப்பளப் பாட்டு (Appala Pattu) and ஆன்ம வித்தை (Anma-Viddai).
The following is the first of seven extracts from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai that I will be posting here during the next few weeks:
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.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.
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?
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.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.
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.
In a comment on my recent article Self-enquiry: the underlying philosophy can be clearly understood only by putting it into practice, Kirk Crist asked, “in death of the body what are the differences in the experiencing or knowing in the janni and the ajanni”. Though the answer to this question is quite simple, when I started to write it one idea led to another, as a result of which I ended up writing the following:
The death of the physical body makes absolutely no difference to a jnani, because jnana or true self-knowledge is the absolutely non-dual, undivided and therefore difference-free experience in which only ‘I am’ — our real self or essential adjunct-free self-conscious being — exists and is known by itself alone.
In other words, in the experience of a jnani, who is jnana itself, there is no such thing as a body or world, and therefore no such thing as birth or death. As Sri Ramana says in verse 21 of Upadesa Tanippakkal (verse B-24 of Guru Vachaka Kovai):
The body is impermanent [and therefore unreal]. Just as a person blinded with the intoxication of toddy [a drink of fermented palm sap] [is not aware whether] the fine cloth with which he was adorned [is still on his body or has fallen off], the siddha [that is, the jnani] who has known self does not know the body, whether [due to prarabdha karma or destiny] it rests or is active, and whether due to [that same prarabdha] karma it is joined or has separated [that is, whether it lives or has died].
In my previous two posts, Overcoming our spiritual complacency and Taking refuge at the 'feet' of God, I gave the first two instalments 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 third and last instalment:
In the second sentence of this verse [the second mangalam verse of Ulladu Narpadu] Sri Ramana says, "By their surrender, they experience death". The death that they previously feared was the death of their body, but when the fear of that death impels them to take refuge at the 'feet of God', they experience death of an entirely different kind. That is, when they take refuge at the 'feet of God' by subsiding into the innermost depth of their own being, they will experience the absolute clarity of unadulterated self-consciousness, which will swallow their mind just as light swallows darkness.
Our mind or finite individual self is an imagination — a false form of consciousness that experiences itself as a body, which is one of its own imaginary creations. We imagine ourself to be this mind only because we ignore or fail to attend to our own true and essential being. If we knew what we really are, we could not mistake ourself to be any other thing. Hence, since our mind has come into existence because of our imaginary self-ignorance, it will be destroyed by the experience of true self-knowledge.
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:
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'.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Last updated: 7th November 2024
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