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Mr. Sagarmull, a Marwari gentleman, a cotton merchant from Bombay, seems learned in Srimad Bhagavad Gita. He asked:

Srimad Bhagavad Gita says: mattah parataram nanyat kinchit and later on sutre
manigana iva – “there is nothing different from Me” and later on “like beads
strung on a thread.” If there is nothing but Sri Krishna, how can the world be
said to be like “beads on a string?”

M.: It means that the sutra (string) and the mani (jewel beads) are not apart
from ME. There are no maniganah (row of beads) apart from the string (sutra) and
no string apart from Me. The sloka emphasises unity and not multiplicity which
is only on the surface.

D.: Unity can only be after merging into Bhagavan. True – but till then there
must be diversity. That is samsara.

M.: Where are we now? Are we apart from Bhagavan? The samsara and we are all in
Bhagavan.

D.: But that is the experience of the jnanis. Differentiation persists until
jnana dawns. So there is samsara for me.

M.: Samskara (predisposition) is samsara (cycle of births and deaths).

D.: Right. “All this is Vasudeva” – this truth has been forgotten by us. So we
cannot identify ourselves with God.

M.: Where is forgetfulness?

D.: Like svapna.
M.: Whose svapna?
D.: Jiva’s.
M.: Who is jiva?
D.: It is Paramatma’s.
M.: Let Paramatma ask then.

D.: I shall make my doubt clear by means of an illustration.

M.: Whoever wants the doubt to be illustrated and made clear? Direct experience
– pratyaksha – does not require examples for elucidation.

D.: There is pratyaksha and also forgetfulness.
M.: What is forgotten and by whom?

D.: Listen. One dreams; the dream-world disappears on waking.

M.: Wake up similarly from the present dream.

D.: Prakrti (nature) is too powerful.

M.: See the Purusha (lord) also. What can prakrti do then?

D.: There is a granthi (knot) between them.

M.: Whose is that knot? Is it of the Lord or of Nature? or of both?

D.: Due to Brahman.

M.: Then Brahman must ask or must be asked. To whom is svapna? or the knot? You are always saying “I ask.” Who is that ‘I’?

D.: I do not perceive.
M.: ‘I’ is eternal. It would vanish if it were anything particular. It is Perfection. So it is not found as an object.

D.: But I am imperfect.

M.: Why bring in imperfection? Why are you not perfect? Did you feel imperfection in your sleep? Why do you not remain so even now? Bring sleep into the waking state (jagrat sushupti) and you will be all right. Ya nisa sarva bhootanam … pasyato muneh … (That which is night for the ignorant is day for the wise).

D.: Yes, if he is a muni (sage).
M.: Who is a muni? Is he not a man?

D.: Do you not feel a slap if given to you? Is there no differentiation? Is it jnana?

M.: A man under chloroform or under the influence of drink does not feel it. Is he a Jnani? Is jnana inconsistent with that feeling?

D.: There is seer, seen and sight. They are not characteristic of jnana.

M.: In sleep, in trance, in absent-mindedness, there is no differentiation. Do you call it jnana? What has happened in these states? Is that which then was, absent now?

That which is exists for ever. The difference is due to the mind. The mind is sometimes present at other times absent. There is no change in the Reality. Reality is always Bliss – Ananda.

D.: Bliss is the outcome of practice. What is that practice?

M.: Sadhana is the enquiry to find out to whom all these doubts
arise.

D.: It is for the ego (ahamkara).
M.: Wherefrom does ahamkara arise?

D.: Guidance is necessary to show me the way.
M.: Go within and find the route. You cannot find it from without; nor should you seek it externally.

D.: I am unable to find the ego by search. I stop there.
M.: How can you get it? It is not apart from you. Leave alone not
finding it. Where are you now? Do you mean to say “I am not”?

D.: What or how am I?
M.: Do not trouble yourself about it. Let it be as it is. Why do you care? Did you care for the whole or part (samashti, vyashti) in your sleep? The same person is present now too. You are the same in sleep and in waking.

D.: Sleep and waking are different states having different effects
…. M.: How does it matter to you? The Self is the same, all through.

D.: The mind is not steady in meditation.
M.: Whenever it wanders, turn it inward again and again.

D.: When duhka (misery) overpowers me, enquiry is impossible.
M.: Because the mind is too weak. Make it strong.

D.: By what means?
M.: Sat-sanga, Isvara Aradhana, Pranayama – (association with the wise, worship of God, breath control).

D.: What happens?
M.: Misery is removed; our aim is removal of misery. You do not acquire happiness. Your very nature is happiness. Bliss is not newly earned. All that is done is to remove unhappiness. These methods do it.

D.: Association with the wise may strengthen the mind. There must also be practice. What practice should be made?
M.: Yes. Practice is necessary too. Practice means removal of predispositions. Practice is not for any fresh gain; it is to kill the predispositions.

D.: Abhyasa (practice) should give me that power.
M.: Practice is power. If thoughts are reduced to a single thought the mind is said to have grown strong. When practice remains unshaken it becomes sahaja (natural).

D.: What is such practice?
M.: Enquiring into the Self. That is all. Atmanyeva vasam nayet …..
Fix the mind on the SELF.

D.: What is the aim to be kept in view? Practice requires an aim.
M.: Atman is the aim. What else can there be? All other aims are for those who are incapable of atmalakshya (having the Self for the aim). They lead you ultimately to atma-vichara (enquiry into the Self). One- pointedness is the fruit of all kinds of practice. One may get it quickly; another after a long time. Everything depends on the practice.

D.: Peace is extolled more than anything else. How shall we gain it?
M.: It is your very nature. Forgetfulness never overtakes the Self. The Self is now confounded with non-self and that makes you speak of forgetfulness of the Self, Peace, etc. Oblivion will never rear up its head if this confusion is put an end to.

D.: How is that done?
M.: Enquiry into the Self. One-pointedness means cessation of mental activities. Forgetfulness must be for the self – well, of what? Of the Self? Are there then two selves? Practice removes the samskaras.

D.: But samskaras are infinite and eternal – from beginningless time. M.: This itself is a samskara. Give up that idea and all samskaras will disappear at once. That is visranti (repose), santi (peace). Peace is ever present. But you hold it down and rise over it and thus disturb it. Then you say, “I want Peace”.

D.: Will Peace be gradual?
M.: Yes. Make the mind gradually still (Sanaissanaih uparamet) says
the Bhagavad Gita.

Link: Sri Ramana Maharshi

Arsha Vidya Gurukulam

Indian based in States and India. From lineage of traditional Vedic scholars (Swami Chinmayananda). “Neither preacher nor missionary nor mystic . . . Helps every student to see the truth revealed by the Upanishads as a verifiable fact.” Multifaceted AND methodological approach includes prayer, chanting, lots of study. Said to be sincere, competent and compassionate. See also WIE interview.

Wild man brought Buddha’s teachings to China, where they crossbred with Taoism and then traveled to Japan to become Zen (Dhyan –> Ch’an –> Zen). Unbroken succession of masters from Buddha to today – many mutually tolerant lines, also in Korea and Vietnam and some still in China – create devices to shatter conditioning and limitations. No beliefs or deities. Has spread to the west now, with many teachers.

Indian disciple of Nisargadatta, guru of Wayne Liquorman. Ret’d banker met guru, began translating for him, soon experienced the “Ultimate Understanding.” Many books, articulate exponent of fatalist, “no-doer” position. Clear and authoritative. Rumours (and waffling) about sex and money undermining appeal in some markets, “discussion” a series of GRF posts. No-doer shtick not for everyone. First “anti” page gone, replaced by authoritative compilation by Timothy Conway.

“Met his gurus at age 11, enlightenment at 12, physical immortality at the age of 16. Has remained in the same body near the Himalayan temple of Badrinath ever since. Disciples include Adi Shankara, the 9th century reformer of Hinduism, Kabir in the 16th century . . . Yogi S.A.A. Ramaiah . . . Paramahansa Yogananda, etc.” Kriya Yoga. Unbeatable story, limited availability and methods.

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The spontaneous enlightenment experience, which strikes like a bolt
of lightening out of the blue, that one hears so much about, is generally, I think, taken by western seekers these days to be the norm.

I know I thought this was the norm for a very long time.

One thing which I feel is missing from your post, and it is something which I didn’t understand for a long time, is that there may be many ‘enlightened’ people around who don’t blow a horn or tell a story about it.

Why is that? Well, perhaps they don’t know that there is a horn to blow about it. Perhaps because implicit in the way they came to recognize the nature of reality was the understanding that they would come to know it anyway. In other words, it was kind of par for the course in the environment they were in.

In the tradition in which I study it’s just kind of assumed that the student will gain self-knowledge at some point. And when that happens, it’s more of a ‘Duh’ or perhaps a quiet ‘Aha,’ rather than a lightening strike. Maybe this is because the student’s mind is prepared for it, I don’t know, but that would be my assumption.

I’ve met many such people within the community in which I study. Sweet, kind, loving, gentle, ordinary, unspectacular people, who happen to have recognized the nature of reality. Most of these people were never involved in any other type of spiritual discipline except perhaps for a few things in the late 60’s or early 70’s.

Thus this whole enlightenment craze and the literature touting the spontaneous enlightenment bolt out of the blue experience is not on their radar screen at all.

So where are these people now? One drives a taxi. One tutors high school students. One is a cabinet maker. One teaches in an art college. One writes soft-ware. One has a business. Some work in the IT industry. They do lots of different things. In India many are swamis and are teaching.

Perhaps we hear about the big bolt of lightening out of the blue experiences because the people having them are not really prepared for them, and then it is a very radical shift for those people. One minute they were just ordinary folks or even messed up folks, and the next minute, Hey presto, enlightened.

So perhaps that’s why their experiences get so much press, I don’t know.

When I first encountered Vedanta, coming as I did from the school where the bolt of lightening experience was taken as the norm, I used to kind of inquire of others in a hushed voice if they knew of any who had become ‘enlightened.’ This question was often met with a puzzled quizzical look. Later I realized that some of those I was asking this question of were themselves ‘enlightened.’

Out in the wild and woolly world where spontaneous enlightenment experiences are taken to be the norm, the descriptions we read, or the experiences we hear of someone like Byron Katie and others, may lead us to think this is the way the enlightenment happens, and this is the only way it happens,
and this is the way it’s got to be.

And yet, from my experience, from meeting the people I have met and spoken with within the community of Vedanta, these types of extreme sorts of examples actually are not the norm at all.

If you’re sitting in a room listening to a teaching, and several of the people you are with have recognized the truth, then when you yourself recognize the truth are you going to stand up and announce it, or shout about it? Why on earth would you do something like that?

It would be like standing up and shouting in a room full of scientists, “You know what, the sky looks blue, but that’s an illusion,” or “The sun looks like it’s rising and setting and going around the earth,
but it isn’t!” That would be a bit out of place in such an environment, don’t you think?

I remember a long time ago hearing Goenakaji (a Theravadan Buddhist teacher) say, “India is a wonderful place. There are many enlightened people there, as enlightened as the Buddha.”

Once I heard Robert Thurman, the well-known Tibetan Buddhist scholar, say that there were hundreds of enlightened monks living in the monasteries in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion.

At the time I heard these statements, I discounted them, being conditioned as I was then by the bolt of lightening out of the blue way of thinking, but now I think they were probably accurate.

So just as a suggestion, one might consider that the types of ‘radical’ experiences that one reads or hears about may not actually be the norm at all. Rather I think it’s more of an outcome of the people having these realizations who weren’t prepared for them in the first place.

Ramana stayed in samadhi in a cave for a very long time, perhaps because at first he didn’t know he could walk, talk, and function normally, and that would not change what he had recognized to be the true.

When someone came and read some of the words of the Upanishads to him, he recognized that what was being described was his own experience. He also came to understand that the self is ‘sahaja,’ natural, that one didn’t have to be constantly adsorbed in samadhi to know that. And then he resumed functioning the way that we all do, whether we have self-knowledge or not.

So one might consider when asking the question, why does a lineage continue? Perhaps the answer is it continues because it’s effective.

Author: Durgaji ]]> http://www.numii.net/word_press/share/articles/a-reply-to-tbonis-article-on-spiritual-awakening/feed 1 http://www.numii.net/word_press/share/articles/on-spiritual-awakening-or-how-did-it-all-begin-anyway http://www.numii.net/word_press/share/articles/on-spiritual-awakening-or-how-did-it-all-begin-anyway#respond Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:34:32 +0000 http://www.numii.net/word_press/?p=2706

An Ontogeny! It must have all started with Someone. The Upanishads surely did not arise out of thin air’. It seems to me that the phenomenon of spontaneous awakening/ realisation enlightenment has always been with us. Ramana Maharshi, Byron Katie, UG, Stephen Jourdaine and other recent folk who were never a part of any formal lineage are examples of this phenomenon.

Of course there may be gross disagreements by sophisticated learned observers as the extent, quality, and depth of these individuals awakening, but the facts
remain.

By realisation I would refer here to a sudden (or perhaps more gradual)
realisation that all that the person had hitherto espoused about themselves and
the world of their daily life as being real, was illusory, full of suffering,
dreamlike and that to them, others appeared as if living their lives totally
embedded in this dream.

I do not wish to specify the content of any realisation but instead to outline
the rough boundaries of what such experiences entail.

How might this be recognised?

1 By themselves?

To the person themselves it might be as outlined above. It is likely to be seen
as great shake-up in their former world-view.

2 By others?

It is likely that after such an experience they would be seen as speaking and
acting with a great understanding of the lives of many around them, and
furthermore they would behave in such ways that others recognised their
experience as being a superlative or wise understanding of what troubled them.
It is also likely that they would be seen as being wise and would invariably
attract others as potential students whether or not they wanted to do so or not.

Plagued by such questions the individual would have no recourse but to recount
their own experiences of what had happened to them, in the context in which it
happened when they had had their particular experiences.

As a consequence they would be seen as being a teacher or enlightened master.

If they had been meditating, contemplating a sunset, taking drugs, singing
dancing then it would seem as if it was these particular doings were in some way
responsible for their realisations.

Such activities might be seen to have something at least in common to do with
the gravity of their realisations.

Potential students, wishing to have such realisations themselves would either be
faced with either attempting to duplicate what the master did, or attempting to
understand what the master said in order to become awakened or realised
themselves.

Duplicating what the master did might entail meditating for long periods at a
stretch, becoming celibate, dancing, singing, praying or worshipping, doing good
works or whatever the originator held to account for his or her own
enlightenment.

This could be likened to attempting to invent the wheel for the first time twice
over.

Understanding the teachings of the Master could be likened to attempting to
savour a delicious meal by understanding the menu.

In other words such attempts would seemed to be invariably be doomed to failure
simply because the realisation was spontaneous to begin with.

It is very easy to see how such failures could invariably be accounted for by
claiming that the pupil’s attempts lacked a genuine property of commitment,
dedication, grace or purity, of the original teacher and that more teaching was
required in order to produce results.

This failure would guarantee a persistent (probably growing body) of
unsuccessful students around the teacher or enlightened one, over time and a
lineage would begin to be established. (unsuccessful because if say all who
were taught immediately became enlightened or realised, they would ignite the
realisation of their neighbours and the notion of there being an enlightened
master from whom one might receive the message would become superfluous as
everyone got the message. )

Yet if no one became enlightened in the student body then the lineage would
eventually collapse when they all died of old age along with their teacher.

Many of the spontaneous experiences recounted by folk who have awakened have
virtually nothing in common, let alone being related to the receiving any
teaching or instruction. For example some folk have had enlightening experiences
when hearing the name of a mountain one had never seen or heard of spoken by
one’s Uncle, being in a Mental Health Halfway House and having a cockroach crawl
over one’s leg, reading Descartes in depth when an adolescent, trying to catch a
bus in Paris, or being unwillingly given a huge dose of opiates in a foreign
country.

How therefore, is one to account for the persistence of lineages over hundreds
of years?

It is almost certain that, among the student body of an established early
lineage, spontaneous realisation will occur. And, furthermore it is very likely
that this will invariably be seen as a validation of the teachings of the master
who, if he or she accepts it, may hand on his or her robe and bowl.

Yet at the same time there are many accounts of folk who have had such
awakenings within a lineage who subsequently disown all such teachings as having
any bearing whatsoever in their own awakening. Some have actually claimed that
such teachings were actually a hindrance to their own realisation.

In such cases if the established teacher does not either recognise the
legitimacy of the students experience as being genuine, or takes exception to
what could be seen as a challenge to his or her leadership he or she is likely
to undermine it as being mistaken, inconsequential, or partial, thereby
maintaining his or her power, and at the same time preserving the integrity of
the teachings on which the viability of the rest of the community depends.

Accordingly, it seems to me that whilst the spiritual experience as a
spontaneous awakening or realisation in the first person singular cannot be
denied, there are many unanswered questions about whether such teachings can
hand on realisation in the third person plural.

There seems to be considerable doubt about whether such teachings are
legitimate or whether or not, however revered, they amount to empty rhetoric.

A hundred years teaching science has resulted in an ever changing technology to
which we are all privy simply by picking up a book and or watching TV, or
posting to this list.

The same cannot necessarily be said about religion and spirituality it seems to
me.

Just a few thoughts to pass the time.

Author: Tboni ]]> http://www.numii.net/word_press/share/articles/on-spiritual-awakening-or-how-did-it-all-begin-anyway/feed 0