Sunday 28 December 2014

Our aim should be to experience ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else

A few months ago a friend wrote to me asking about the practice of ātma-vicāra (self-investigation or self-enquiry) and whether his description of his practice indicated that he was practising it correctly, and he ended his email saying:
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:

Firstly The Technique of Maha Yoga [which was not written by K. Lakshmana Sarma, the author of Maha Yoga, but by another devotee called N.R. Narayana Aiyar] is a very misleading book, because the explanation that it gives about the practice of ātma-vicāra is completely wrong, so it is good that you found that it does not seem to work.

Secondly, ‘the heart’ is a term that Sri Ramana used metaphorically to denote what we really are, because it is the core, centre or essence of all that we now seem to be, and ‘diving into the heart’ is a metaphorical description of the mind subsiding or sinking deep within ourself as a result of self-attentiveness, so it should not be interpreted literally (as some devotees seem to do), and it should not be mistaken to be a technique that entails anything other than simple self-attentiveness.

Since you have asked for my comments on your description of your practice, I will quote each of your points as a bullet point and then comment on it:
  • I begin by observing the movement of my breath, breathing in and breathing out at normal pace.
Some people say that they find observing the movement of their breath to be an effective means to calm the mind down before practising self-investigation, but this is not necessary, and it can actually be detrimental in the long run. The most effective way to calm the mind down is simply to try directly to be self-attentive, and in the long run this will yield the greatest benefit.

Suppose that you have to bicycle today from London to Brighton [which is south of London], and you have never ridden a bicycle before. Therefore you have to start practising, and since your aim is to reach Brighton, it is obviously best to start practising on the road to Brighton, because while practising you will be getting nearer to your destination. If instead you were to start practising on the road to York [which is north of London], that would be foolish, because it would take you further away from your destination.

On the path of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) our destination is only ourself, ‘I’, and the only way to reach that destination is to attend to ourself alone. Therefore to reach our destination as quickly as possible, from the very outset we should not practise anything other than self-attentiveness. If we practise only self-attentiveness from the very beginning, that would be like practising to cycle on the road to Brighton.

If we practise attending to our breathing or to anything else other than ‘I’ alone, that would be taking us away from ourself, which is our destination, so it would be like practising to cycle on the road to York. Is it not foolish to start by going in a direction that is opposite to our destination? Would it not be wiser to proceed towards our destination from the start?

If we cultivate the habit of observing our breathing or attending to anything else other than ‘I’, that habit will be just another obstacle that will distract us when we try to attend only to ‘I’. Therefore it is best to cultivate the habit of observing only ‘I’ from the very outset, and to avoid all other practices.

It is wrong to think that our mind must be calm before we can begin attending to ‘I’. Though it may be easier for us to attend to ‘I’ when our mind is calm, calmness of mind is not a necessary prerequisite, because whether our mind is calm or agitated, we are always there experiencing it, so whatever we may be experiencing we can always turn our attention back towards ourself, the ‘I’ who is experiencing it.

Therefore it is best to avoid all other practices and to begin investigating ourself alone from the very outset.
  • After a few minutes, I ask myself who am I and focus my attention on the I.
Asking ourself ‘who am I?’ may help to turn our attention back towards ‘I’, ourself, but it is not necessary to ask this question every time. By persistent practice of self-attentiveness, we can cultivate the habit of turning our attention back towards ‘I’ whenever we notice that it has strayed away towards anything else, and the stronger this habit becomes, the less we will find it necessary to ask any question in order to turn our attention back towards ‘I’.

Moreover, we should clearly understand that asking any question to help to turn our attention back towards ourself is only an aid to ātma-vicāra, but is not ātma-vicāra itself. Ātma-vicāra is self-investigation, so it really begins only when we are actually attending to and thereby trying to experience ourself alone.
  • Initially, I cannot hold on to the I for a long period.
It is not necessary to attend to ‘I’ for prolonged periods of time. Just one moment of perfect self-attentiveness is all that is required for us to experience ourself as we really are, and when we once experience ourself thus, the illusion that we are anything other than what we actually are will be destroyed forever.

Therefore what we should aim for is intensity and clarity of self-attentiveness rather than just a prolonged duration of less intense or clear self-attentiveness. What I mean here by ‘intensity and clarity of self-attentiveness’ (and by ‘perfect self-attentiveness’ in the previous paragraph) is being aware of ourself alone, without any mixture of any awareness of anything else. That is, our attention should be so keenly focused on ‘I’ (ourself) alone that we are not in the least aware of anything other than ourself.

Even time is something that we experience as other than ourself, so the idea that I must be self-attentive for a prolonged period of time is just another distraction that will prevent us from experiencing ‘I’ alone, in complete isolation from everything else, including time.

Moreover, our mind naturally has a strong urge to attend to and experience things other than ‘I’, so it is usually not possible for us to be exclusively self-attentive for a long time. If we try to oppose this natural urge of our mind for a prolonged period of time, we will end up creating an internal conflict, which will be counter-productive, so generally many short attempts at being self-attentive are more effective than one long attempt.
  • As I continue my practice, I notice that the period of my focus on the I increases.
If we are able to focus our attention on ‘I’ alone for longer periods without creating any internal conflict, that is good, but we should remember that 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.
  • I call it the gap between two thoughts.
Since any awareness that we may have of anything other than ‘I’ (ourself) is a thought, the gap between two thoughts is the state in which we are aware of absolutely nothing other than ourself alone. This is the state that we should be aiming to experience, but if we once experience it perfectly, we will clearly experience ourself as we really are, which is the state of ātma-jñāna (self-knowledge or perfectly clear self-awareness), so it will destroy our mind forever.

Therefore so long as we experience ourself as this mind, we should not imagine that we have yet experienced perfectly the gap between two thoughts. What exists in that gap is only what we really are, so experiencing that is our goal.
  • After some time I notice that I do not have to focus attention on I.
Until we experience absolutely clear self-attentiveness as natural and unavoidable, we need to continue trying to focus our entire attention upon ‘I’ alone. Therefore if you think that you do not need to focus your attention on ‘I’, you are mistaken.

Self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) is just the attempt we make to focus our entire attention upon ‘I’ alone and thereby to experience ourself as we really are, in complete isolation from everything else. Therefore if we imagine that we do not need to focus our attention on ‘I’ alone, we are imagining that ātma-vicāra is not necessary, which is wrong. As Sri Ramana says in the eleventh paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?):
மனத்தின்கண் எதுவரையில் விஷயவாசனைக ளிருக்கின்றனவோ, அதுவரையில் நானா ரென்னும் விசாரணையும் வேண்டும். நினைவுகள் தோன்றத் தோன்ற அப்போதைக்கப்போதே அவைகளையெல்லாம் உற்பத்திஸ்தானத்திலேயே விசாரணையால் நசிப்பிக்க வேண்டும். […]

maṉattiṉgaṇ edu-varaiyil viṣaya-vāsaṉaigaḷ irukkiṉḏṟaṉavō, adu-varaiyil nāṉ-ār eṉṉum vicāraṇai-y-um vēṇḍum. niṉaivugaḷ tōṉḏṟa-t tōṉḏṟa appōdaikkappōdē avaigaḷai-y-ellām uṯpatti-sthāṉattilēyē vicāraṇaiyāl naśippikka vēṇḍum. […]

As long as viṣaya-vāsanās [inclinations or desires to experience anything other than ourself] exist in [our] mind, so long the investigation who am I [that is, attentively investigating ourself] is necessary. As and when thoughts arise, then and there it is necessary to annihilate them all by vicāraṇā [investigation or vigilant self-attentiveness] in the very place from which they arise. […]
Experiencing ourself alone is our goal, and the only way to experience ourself alone is to attend to ourself alone, so self-attentiveness or self-awareness is both our path and our goal. So long as we mistake ourself to be anything other than what we actually are, it seems to require effort for us to be self-attentive, but when we experience ourself as we really are, we will find that self-attentiveness is our very nature, because we are always self-aware, and there is actually nothing other than ourself that we could be aware of. Therefore there is never a time when self-attentiveness is not necessary.
  • I remain without any thought, including the I thought.
What we really are (that is, our real self) would not say ‘I remain without any thought’, because in its view no thoughts ever exist. Therefore when you say ‘I remain without any thought’, the ‘I’ that says so is your mind or ego, which is your primal thought called ‘I’.

We can remain without any thought, including this primal thought ‘I’, only in states of manōlaya (temporary subsidence of mind, such as sleep) or in the state of manōnāśa (complete destruction or annihilation of mind). Manōnāśa is the state in which we are eternally aware of ourself alone, so it can be achieved only by keenly attentive self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), and once it is achieved we can never return to a state in which we experience anything other than ‘I’ (ourself). Therefore manōnāśa is the state in which neither the primal thought called ‘I’ nor any other thought has ever existed or could ever exist.

Manōlaya, on the other hand, is a temporary state in which the primal thought called ‘I’ and all other thoughts have subsided without clear self-awareness, and since our mind or ego (the primal thought called ‘I’) is therefore absent in that state, there is no one there to make any effort to attend to ‘I’. Therefore manōlaya cannot help us to achieve our goal, which is manōnāśa.

Hence, whenever we are not in manōlaya or manōnāśa we are experiencing ourself as the ego, which is the primal thought called ‘I’, and so long as this thought is present, at least some trace of some other thought will also be present, because the primal thought called ‘I’ cannot stand on its own without some other thought to cling to. As Sri Ramana says in the fourth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?:
[…] மனம் எப்போதும் ஒரு ஸ்தூலத்தை யனுசரித்தே நிற்கும்; தனியாய் நில்லாது. […]

[…] maṉam eppōdum oru sthūlattai y-aṉusarittē niṯkum; taṉiyāy nillādu. […]

[…] The mind [the primal thought called ‘I’] stands only by always going after [attending and thereby attaching itself to] something gross [some thought other than ‘I’]; solitarily it does not stand. […]
Anything that we experience other than ‘I’ alone is a thought, and what experiences any thought is just our primal thought called ‘I’ (the ego), which is our pure ‘I’ mixed with adjuncts. If we are able to clearly experience ‘I’ alone without experiencing the slightest trace of anything else, that is the state of manōnāśa, so until we attain that state the primal thought called ‘I’ and at least some trace of some other thought will be present (unless of course we have subsided in sleep or some other such state of manōlaya).
  • It is a pleasant state and I can remain in this state for quite some time. At this time, I experience a feeling of surging of energy and heat in my body. A kind of soft golden light spreads in the body and in the surroundings. I do not know whether all this is my wishful imagination or these sensations actually arise. I feel reluctant to come out of this state.
From the description you give of this state, it is clear that though you imagine that you are then remaining ‘without any thought, including the I thought’, you are actually experiencing many thoughts, because everything that you describe is just a thought. The ‘I’ that had this experience is a thought (the primal thought called ‘I’); the state it was then in is a thought; the time you spent in that state is a thought; the pleasantness you experienced in it is a thought; the body is a thought; the ‘feeling of surging of energy’ is a thought; the heat is a thought; the ‘soft golden light’ is a thought; the surroundings are a collection of thoughts; and the reluctance you felt to come out of this state is a thought. None of these things are what you really are, so they are all thoughts, and they originate only from your primal thought called ‘I’, which creates and experiences them.
  • I then ask who is experiencing these pleasant sensations. The sensations then become weaker but I continue to remain without any thought.
Yes, whatever we may experience, we should investigate the ‘I’ who is experiencing it. It is not sufficient just to ask who is experiencing it, because asking is just another thought process. We need to actually investigate who is experiencing it by trying to focus our entire attention on ‘I’ alone. When we focus our attention on ourself alone, the sensations or whatever else we may have been experiencing will disappear or at least recede from our awareness, because we can experience them only when we attend to them, and hence when we try to attend only to ‘I’ we will be depriving everything else of our attention.
  • I am, however, aware of myself all the time, and do not lose my identity.
We are always aware of ourself, but usually our awareness of ourself is mixed with awareness of other things, so we do not experience ourself as we really are. Therefore our aim is not just to be aware of ourself, but is to be aware of ourself alone, in complete isolation from all other things.

What do you mean when you say, ‘I [...] do not lose my identity’? We can never lose ‘I’, our real identity (that is, what we really are), so the only identity we can lose is our false identity, which is the ego or mind, and we can lose this false identity permanently only be experiencing ourself as we really are. When we practise ātma-vicāra we are trying to experience ourself as we really are, so when we succeed we will lose our false identity (the feeling ‘I am Gurudas’ or ‘I am Michael’). Until then, we will not and cannot get rid of this identity (except by bodily death, but at that time we will just replace one false identity with another).
  • During this period, I also experience slight heaviness on the right side of my chest.
Whatever we may experience should be of no concern to us, because our only concern should be to experience ourself alone. Therefore, whether you experience slight heaviness on the right side of your chest or anything else other than ‘I’, you should try to investigate yourself alone by turning your attention back towards the ‘I’ that is experiencing it.
  • Am I on the right path or am I being deluded by my mind to believe that I am practising self-enquiry in the correct manner?
We are on the right path — the path of ātma-vicāra or self-investigation — only when we are trying to experience nothing other than ‘I’ alone. So long as this is what you are trying to do, you are practising self-enquiry in the correct manner, but you should remember that whatever else you may experience, you should turn you attention back towards yourself, who are experiencing it, in order to experience yourself alone.
  • I am also wondering whether self-enquiry or nan yar [who am I] naturally and automatically leads to silence, summa iru [just be].
Yes, it does. So long as we experience anything other than ‘I’, our attention is moving away from ourself towards that other thing, and such movement of our attention is thought or mental activity, which is the very antithesis of silence. Therefore when we practise self-investigation or self-enquiry we are trying to experience nothing other than ‘I’ alone, and when we succeed in this attempt, our attention is not moving away from ourself but is resting calmly in its source (namely ourself), so this is the subsidence of all mental activity, and hence it is the state of perfect silence, which is also described as the state of ‘just being’ (summā iruppadu).

44 comments:

Noob said...

what keeps me waking up every morning? I have dreams when I sleep, but the dreams that I have during my sleep I have no control of, but from them the daily experience arise. Sometimes the moment is discernible, but not always.

R Viswanathan said...

I took these from Michael James' old blogs:

http://happinessofbeing.blogspot.in/2007/02/our-imaginary-sleep-of-self.html

"Though our mind disappears in sleep every day, it reappears from sleep as soon as it has thereby recuperated sufficient energy to engage in another period of activity. It appears, therefore, that in sleep our mind somehow continues to exist in a seed form — a dormant and unmanifest form, which will again become manifest as soon as the conditions become favourable, the favourable conditions in this case being a sufficient internal store of energy to become active once again."

http://happinessofbeing.blogspot.in/2008/06/experiencing-our-natural-state-of-true.html

"That is, so long as we remain in our present state of ajnana or self-ignorance, the difference that we will experience when our present body dies will be similar to the difference that we experience when we fall asleep or move from one dream to another dream. In other words, what we call ‘death’ is just the ending of a dream, because our present body is merely a figment of our imagination, and our life in it is therefore a mere dream. Hence, so long as we continue to sleep in self-ignorance, after each such dream has ended in ‘death’ it will be followed by a continuing series of similar dreams.

The sleep that underlies this dream is our present state of ajnana — self-ignorance or self-forgetfulness — in which each bodily lifetime is just another dream. This ajnana or self-forgetfulness is our lack of clarity of true self-knowledge, and though it is only imaginary, it is the sleep in which the entire series of our alternating states of waking, dream and sleep occurs.

Therefore so long as we remain in this sleep of self-forgetfulness, we will continue dreaming one dream after another, and within these dreams we will have other dreams. That is, we will incessantly move between alternating states of consciousness — waking, dream and sleep — in which each so-called state of waking is just another dream, and in which each such dream seems to begin and end in birth and death respectively."

Michael James said...

Noob, what keeps us waking up every morning is our viṣaya-vāsanās — our inclinations or desires to experience things other than ourself. We desire to experience things other than ourself because we experience ourself as an ego, and experiencing things other than ourself is the food that nourishes and sustains the illusion that we are this ego. As the ego we desire to survive, so we crave the experience of things other than ourself, and hence we create dreams, in which we experience such things.

The ego is not what we really are, so we can experience ourself as an ego only when we do not experience ourself as we really are, and hence self-ignorance is the very nature of the ego. Therefore in order to destroy the illusion that we are this ego, we need to destroy our self-ignorance by experiencing ourself as we really are.

There is no essential difference between waking and dream, so what we call the waking state is actually just another dream. All our dreams — both the one we now call ‘waking’ and all the other ones — occur in our sleep of self-ignorance and are created by our ego in order to sustain itself. In each dream we experience ourself as a person consisting of a mind and body, and this confused experience of ourself arises because of our self-ignorance. If we now experienced ourself as we really are, we would not experience ourself as a person, and hence we would not experience any dream.

Whatever we experience in any dream (including this dream of ‘waking’) arises from our self-ignorance, and is sustained and perpetuated by our self-ignorance. Therefore if we want to be free from all dreams, we must experience ourself as we really are, and in order to experience ourself as we really are we must investigate what or who we are by trying to scrutinise, observe or attend to ourself alone.

Anonymous said...

Dear Michael,

What do you mean when you say "internal conflict"? Every time I try to hold on to the 'I' or abide with it with intensity my head starts to pulsate and becomes heavy throughout the day. I understand this is only a thought, but is this suppose to happen?

Noob said...

The ego knows that it is destined to die one way or another. Is it the ego that destroyes itself or is it rather the Self that embraces it in due course.

Sundar said...

One of the things I have observed is that there is always a certain amount of stress while doing self inquiry if my attention is not wholly on the "I am" feeling. So, whenever I am feeling some stress I assume that while I am tying to focus on the "I am", half my attention is on some other thought and the whole trick or difficulty is in dropping this other thought and bringing the whole focus on "I am". Thats one of the reasons I find it difficult to pursue self inquiry at a moment when i'm angry or have a desire etc, because on the one hand I feel the "I am" (with adjuncts) strongly at that moment wanting to focus on it while on the other hand I am not able to let go of the other thought or flow of thoughts which made me emotional in the first place. I feel it will be easier if one can master this art of letting go of the other thought the moment one feels emotional and switching it to the "I am" feeling and maybe here one can use whatever technique thats helpful to get the attention away from the other thought like watching the breath, autosuggestion to drop the other thought etc or whatever works. If one can detach oneself from the other thought and get back to the "I am" feeling as smoothly as is possible and by whatever means it will be good because trying to bring back the attention from the other thought is what creates stress for me subjectively speaking. Many a times trying to bring back the attention at that point by trying to intensify the focus on the "I am" feeling creates more stress for me, so I have been trying different ways to achieve this. Its almost like one, while being able to focus on the "I am" also has to master the art of letting go of the other thought by some means or the other and for me trying more harder to focus on the "I am" to achieve this many a times creates more stress or inner conflict.

Here is Swami Vivekananda on the topic
/**
Now the question is: Can this concentration be developed, and can we become masters of it? The Yogis say, yes. The Yogis say that we can get perfect control of the mind. On the ethical side there is danger in the development of the power of concentration—the danger of concentrating the mind upon an object and then being unable to detach it at will. This state causes great suffering. Almost all our suffering is caused by our not having the power of detachment. So along with the development of concentration we must develop the power of detachment. We must learn not only to attach the mind to one thing exclusively, but also to detach it at a moment's notice and place it upon something else. These two should be developed together to make it safe.
**/

Michael James said...

In answer to the anonymous comment asking about ‘internal conflict’, what I meant is that when we are impelled by a strong urge to attend to and experience anything other than ourself, if we persist in trying to attend only to ourself, our urge to experience other things will conflict with our liking to be self-attentive. Too much inner struggle can be counter-productive, because if we are fighting against a strong inner urge to experience other things we will not actually be attending to ourself.

Bhagavan used to say that other forms of yōga or meditation in which one tries to control the mind forcibly are like chasing a runaway cow with a stick in order to drive it back into its stall, whereas ātma-vicāra is a gentle method, like tempting the cow with a handful of lush green grass and thereby leading it calmly back to its stall. This is a very useful and practical clue, because it indicates that we should not struggle to be self-attentive, but should just be calmly and patiently persistent in our attempts to be self-attentive.

When we are trying to tempt the cow back to its shed (our mind back to ourself), we have to be careful not to frighten it. If we come too close too quickly, we may frighten it, so if we see it becoming nervous, we need to wait patiently until it picks up the confidence to come towards us. In a similar way, we need to be patient and watch carefully to find the most effective way and the optimum speed to lead our mind back to ourself.

Sometimes when we find ourself struggling, just relaxing for a while (perhaps reading or thinking about Bhagavan’s teachings) can help, because after relaxing we can then gently and without conflict resume our attempt to be self-attentive. Our aim is not to fight with our outward-going tendencies, but only to wean ourself gently away from them.

If you experience symptoms such as the ones you describe (your head starting to pulsate or become heavy), that is a sign that your attention has been diverted away from yourself. If you can bring it back to yourself alone, you will cease to be aware of any such symptom, but if you are unable to do so it may be best to relax for a while and then resume your attempts when you are feeling calmer and more relaxed.

Our attempts need to be persistent but gentle, and we should not try to drive ourself too hard, because we cannot force ourself to be self-attentive when we do not want to be. Therefore by gentle and persistent practice we need to patiently cultivate love to be self-attentive.

If we plant a tree, we have to wait many years for it to grow tall and strong. We cannot force it to grow quicker, but can only take care of it, water it and wait patiently for it to grow steadily at its own natural pace. Likewise, we have cultivate self-attentiveness by patient and persistent practice, because we cannot force it to develop faster than our nature allows.

Michael James said...

Sundar, in verse 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Bhagavan says, ‘ஆதலால், யாது இது என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும்’ (ādalāl, yādu idu eṉḏṟu nādal-ē ōvudal yāvum), which means, ‘Therefore, investigating what this [ego] is alone is giving up everything’. From this we should understand that investigating ourself and giving up everything else are not two separate processes. The only effective way to give up everything is being exclusively self-attentive, because when we attend to and experience ourself alone we are automatically giving up attending to or experiencing anything else.

As he says in the eleventh paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?: ‘அன்னியத்தை நாடாதிருத்தல் வைராக்கியம் அல்லது நிராசை; தன்னை விடாதிருத்தல் ஞானம். உண்மையி லிரண்டு மொன்றே’ (aṉṉiyattai nāḍādiruttal vairāggiyam alladu nirāśai; taṉṉai viḍādiruttal jñāṉam. uṇmaiyil iraṇḍum oṉḏṟē), which means, ‘Not attending to [anything] other [than oneself] is vairāgya [dispassion] or nirāśā [desirelessness]; not leaving [separating from or letting go of] oneself is jñāna [true knowledge]. In truth [these] two [desirelessness and true knowledge] are only one’. In other words, attending only to oneself is itself not attending to anything else.

We do not need to first give up attending to other things and then only attend to ourself, and in practice we could not do so, because the only way to avoid attending to or experiencing anything else is to attend only to ourself. If we develop love to experience ourself alone, that love (bhakti) is itself vairāgya (non-desire to experience anything else).

Leaving or letting go of other thoughts or experiences seems to be difficult only because we do not yet have sufficient love to experience ourself alone. Therefore we should focus all our interest, effort and attention only on trying to experience ourself alone, because if we do so we will automatically lose any desire to experience anything else.

Anonymous said...

Dear Michael,

Thank you for the reply to my last question on internal conflict.

When you say that we should should be gentle, I have read somewhere on your blog that we should also pay no mind to the thoughts and only remain in Self therefore not to bother about our conditions or what we are going through i.e' what I have just previously comment earlier. I find truths to both of what you said but I also find it a little contradictory not saying that what you said are, but perchance a little misunderstanding on my part, so it would be great if you could clarify that for me.

Also when you talked about intensity, do you mean the intense power to 'concentrate' on the Self? And how do you develop love for our practice? Are we suppose to try to have loving feeling when we do our practice?

Namaskar

R Viswanathan said...

Noob said...
"The ego knows that it is destined to die one way or another. Is it the ego that destroyes itself or is it rather the Self that embraces it in due course."

The above comment prompts me to cite the response of Michael James for a somewhat similar comment, just very recently:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7345918888953765241&postID=8635486193529423739

Michael James said...
Dikpalaka, we cannot kill something that does not actually exist, so when we talk about killing, destroying or annihilating the ego or mind, the verbs ‘killing’, ‘destroying’ and ‘annihilating’ are used metaphorically.

What is the ego? It is whatever we mistake to be ourself, so though it now seems to exist, it does not actually exist, and when we experience ourself as we really are, it will no longer seem to exist. Because its seeming existence ceases as soon as we experience what we really are, this is described metaphorically as ‘killing’, ‘destroying’ or ‘annihilating’ it.

Though the illusory snake seems to exist, it does not actually exist, because what it actually is is just a rope. Therefore when we look at it carefully we will see what it actually is, and then it will no longer seem to be a snake. We cannot literally ‘kill’ the snake, because no snake actually exists there, but if we look at it carefully and see that it is only a rope, metaphorically speaking we will have ‘killed’ the snake — that is, we will have destroyed the illusion that it is a snake.

Likewise, if we look carefully at this ego to see what it really is, we will see that it is not actually what it seemed to be but is only our infinite, indivisible and immutable self, so metaphorically speaking we will have ‘killed’ the ego — that is, we will have destroyed the illusion that we are an ego.

17 December 2014 at 09:57

Dzgochen said...

If you want to realize what this blog is about move to Dzogchen teachings.

They are true essence of what Ramana tought with certain methods of realizing it.

What author proclaim here is just intellectual approach which will never get you any closer because there is nothing to do with it and nothing to grasp and nothing to realize truly. If you realize it you will realize all teachings of Ramana.

Michael James said...

Noob, in answer to your latest comment, we should not think of ‘the ego’ and ‘the Self’ as two entirely separate entities. What actually exists is only what we really are, which is what people often refer to as ‘the Self’ but which can be more accurately described as ‘ourself’ or ‘our real self’. What is called ‘the ego’ is only ourself when we mistake ourself to be anything other than what we actually are. In other words, the ego is ourself mixed and confused with extraneous adjuncts — things that are other than ourself, but which now seem to be ourself, such as our body and mind.

Since the ego is a false and illusory experience of ourself, it does not actually exist, but only seems to exist. It seems to exist because we mistake ourself to be it, so if we experience ourself as we really are, it will no longer seem to exist. This is what is called the death or destruction of the ego, but it is not a real death or destruction, because the ego does not really exist. It is therefore just the cessation or dissolution of an illusion.

Therefore asking whether it is the ego that destroys itself or whether it is the Self that embraces it, as you asked, is like asking whether an illusory snake destroys itself or whether a rope embraces it. In this analogy, what actually exists is only a rope, but we mistake it to be a snake until we look at it carefully, whereupon we will recognise it to be just a rope. The snake has not thereby destroyed itself, and the rope has not embraced it, but our ignorant idea that it was a snake has been dissolved by our clear recognition that it is a rope.

Likewise, what actually exists is only ourself, but we mistake ourself to be an ego until we look at ourself carefully, whereupon we will recognise what we actually are. The ego has not thereby destroyed itself, and what we actually are has not embraced it, but our ignorant idea that we were an ego has been dissolved by our clear recognition of ourself as we actually are.

Michael James said...

Noob, in continuation to my previous reply, I should also add that in a certain sense it is the ego that destroys itself, because in order to subside and merge in what we really are, we as the ego must surrender ourself — that is, we must let go of all that we now mistake to be ourself. The only way we can let go of everything that we now mistake to be ourself is by trying to experience ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else.

The ego cannot actually experience itself alone, but when it tries to do so it will subside and merge in its source (ourself), and what will then remain is only what we really are, which always experiences itself alone. In other words, it is we as the ego who must try to experience ourself alone, but when we succeed in experiencing ourself alone, we will no longer experience ourself as the ego but only as what we actually are.

Therefore the ego does have its part to play in ending the illusion that is itself, but its part is only to let go of all that it seems to be in order to experience what it really is, and when it experiences what it really is (in other words, when we experience what we really are), it (we) will no longer seem to be the ego.

Bilva leaf said...

Regarding the last comment of Michael James :
Some thoughts arise:
Hey you mistaking ego,
why did you not carefully look at the moment of your birth or the birth of the ignorant idea that we were a separate ego ?
Hey you clear recognition, why have you been absent or why did you cease operations at that moment ?
Hey mistaking ego, you seem to have been very unclear at that moment.
Hey seeming ego, you are not really existent.
But why have you been at least clearer and stronger than that what people call "clear recognition of ourself as we actually are " ?
So what will be the result when we take refuge to such "clear recognition" ? We will be lost for ever and ever.

Surely we will know the answer to that questions only when that ignorant idea itself (= ego) is dissolved.
Only that knowledge should be called knowledge of truth.

Noob said...

I am here for the only reason: I am curious to know who I really am but yet struggling to find it out or not 100% sure, otherwise I would not be here. That is the ego is impatient. But since everything in my life is to guide me ... this is the forum that is because of that. Ego's volition probably is not playing a greater part but rather a sort of support for what has been already determined.

Noob said...

That is , is there a volition of a thing that does not exist? Of course there is not, so I have to watch all this scenery until I know exactly what I am.

Dzogchen Way said...

@Noob

There is no time when you have experienced anything outside of your consciousness. All experience only occurs in consciousness.
Closing your eyes for a moment, just experience the conscious content of consciousness. Is there anything in your consciousness that is made of a substance other than consciousness itself? If you perceive a tree for instance, all you experience regarding the tree occurs in consciousness. No wood, no leaves, no bark appear in consciousness; only perceptual images do. This is true also of all experience.
It's true for people too. We only ever experience mental images and the sensory stimulations caused by people but never more than that. The world we experience only exists in our minds or consciousness. In other words our experiences are always only representative of something we never know directly or outside of our own consciousness.
Seeing this clearly we can notice two facts about experience:
All phenomena appearing in the mind or consciousness have no substance other than consciousness and consciousness has no solidity or substance. We could say the appearances in consciousness are empty of substantive or inherent existence. Or we could say the appearances occurring in mind are just "empty". They have no endurance; not even for a second, yet they appear; like daydreams.
All of our suffering, anxiety, sense of self and frustration also only exist in consciousness, yet without any substance other than consciousness itself. Seeing the empty nature of consciousness itself, it only follows that we notice its contents to be equally empty; like empty daydreams.
When the mind realizes all phenomena only ever exist in consciousness and that both consciousness and its contents are all equally empty; we can say that the mind "has realized the empty nature of all experience". Nothing is left out of this all inclusive wisdom or prajna insight.
Seeing there is nothing of substance to grasp, grasping ceases. Seeing there is no one to grasp anything, grasping never arises. The same for avoidance and resistance. Hence hope and fear have lost their footing. Only peace and deep relaxation endure in such an undefined openness.
This is the liberation the Buddha and Nagarjuna spoke about.

Michael James said...

Anonymous, in answer to your second comment, I am not quite sure where you see a contradiction. Yes, we do need to ignore all thoughts about anything other than ourself, but the only way to ignore them all is to attend only to ourself.

However, when we try to attend only to ourself, our mind tends to resist, so we have to gently cajole it, as it were, to be self-attentive as frequently and as much as possible. If we try to force it to be self-attentive, it will rebel more strongly, so as it is said in the Bhagavad Gītā 6.25 (which Bhagavan has translated as verse 27 of Bhagavad Gītā Sāram) we must gently and gradually withdraw our mind from all activity and make it stand firm in ourself, not thinking even a little of anything else. In Sanskrit this verse begins with the words शनैस् शनैस् (śanais śanais), which is a repetition of a word that means slowly, gently, quietly, gradually or little by little, and in his Tamil version Bhagavan translated this as மெல்ல மெல்ல (mella mella), which also means softly, slowly, gently or quietly.

When I sometimes talk of ‘intensity’ of self-attentiveness, I do not mean forced concentration, but am only referring to the keenness, sharpness or focus of self-attentiveness that we should aim for. As Bhagavan says in the last two lines of verse 27 of Bhagavad Gītā Sāram, ‘சித்தத்தை ஆன்மாவில் சேர்த்திடுக; மற்று எதுவும் இத்தனையும் எண்ணிடாதே’ (cittattai āṉmāvil sērttiḍuga; maṯṟu eduvum ittaṉaiyum eṇṇiḍādē), which means, ‘Fix the mind [your power of attention] in yourself (ātman); do not think even in the least of anything else whatsoever’. Whereas the first two lines of this verse describe the gentleness with which we should do this practice, these last two lines describe the intensity (or keen focus) of self-attentiveness that we should aim to achieve. We cannot achieve this intensity by force, but only by gentle and persistent practice, drawing our mind back to ourself whenever it strays away towards anything else, or allowing it to stray not too far away whenever it becomes too rebellious.

We cannot develop love for self-attentiveness merely by imagining a ‘loving feeling’ when trying to be self-attentive, because such a ‘loving feeling’ would be something other than ourself and would therefore distract our attention away from ourself. Only by gently, patiently and persistently practising self-attentiveness can we cultivate love for it.

Michael James said...

Noob, regarding your latest two comments, though the ego does not actually exist, it seems to exist, and its seeming existence is the cause of all our problems, so we need to destroy the illusion that it exists. Since it is a mistaken experience of ourself, it can be destroyed only by our experiencing ourself as we actually are, so we need to investigate ourself in order to experience what we actually are.

We cannot know who or what we really are merely by intellectual analysis, but only by direct experience — that is, by perfectly clear self-awareness. So long as we are aware of anything other than ourself, we are experiencing ourself as the ego, because other things seem to exist only in the confused experience of the ego. Therefore to experience ourself as we actually are, we must be aware of ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else.

So long as the ego seems to exist, its volition will also seem to exist, and it will be driven by its volition. Therefore so long as we (this ego) want to experience anything other than ourself, we will continue to do so, and only when we want to experience nothing other than ourself alone will we be able to experience ourself as we really are. Therefore volition is the key to both self-ignorance and self-knowledge. If we direct our volition towards anything other than ourself, we will remain in ignorance, whereas if we direct it only towards ourself, we will know what we really are.

In other words, to experience ourself as we actually are, we must cultivate love to experience ourself alone, and we can cultivate such love only by patient and persistent practice of self-investigation or self-attentiveness.

You end the second of your two latest comments by saying, ‘so I have to watch all this scenery until I know exactly what I am’. However, since ‘all this scenery’ is constantly changing, it cannot be what you really are, so you cannot know exactly what you are by watching it. In order to know exactly what you, you must try to watch yourself alone — that is, you must watch only the watcher (or observe only the observer) and not anything else.

Michael James said...

Dzgochen, regarding your first comment, an ‘intellectual approach’, as you call it, is necessary only to enable us to understand clearly where we should direct our interest, effort and attention. We obviously cannot experience ourself as we really are merely by intellectual analysis or reasoning, but if done properly such analysis and reasoning will enable us to understand that the only thing we know for certain is that I am, but that at present our experience of what I am is confused and mistaken, so we need to investigate ourself alone in order to experience what we actually are.

You recommend that we should ‘move to Dzogchen teachings’ and you claim that such teachings are the ‘true essence of what Ramana taught’ and that they have ‘certain methods of realizing it’. The only ‘method’ by which we can ‘realise’ or experience ourself as we really are is self-investigation, because so long as we attend to anything other than ourself we are perpetuating the illusion that we are the ego, in whose view alone everything else seems to exist. Therefore any ‘methods’ other than self-investigation (that is, any ‘methods’ that entail attention to anything other than ourself) cannot be a direct means by which we can experience what we actually are.

If the practice of Dzogchen entails only self-attentiveness, it is the same as self-investigation (ātma-vicāra), which is the practice taught by Sri Ramana, but if it entails paying attention to anything other than ourself, it is a different path and is going in a different direction. Therefore before we decide what ‘method’ to practise, we should first decide what goal or destination we are trying to reach. If our goal is only to experience ourself as we really are, the only means by which we can reach it is self-investigation (that is, simple self-attentiveness), but if our goal is to experience anything else, then other methods may be appropriate, in which case it should not be confused with the teachings of Sri Ramana.

Michael James said...

Dzogchen Way, in your second comment you repeatedly use the word ‘empty’ and claim that the ‘nature of consciousness itself’ and the ‘nature of all experience’ is ‘empty’, but emptiness entails the existence of something that is empty. In other words, emptiness is relative to the existence of whatever is empty, so there is no such thing as absolute emptiness. Therefore what we should be concerned with is not emptiness itself but whatever is empty.

Whether something is empty or not, what we need to consider is whether or not it actually exists. If something does not actually exist, its emptiness also does not exist, and hence we need not be concerned with either it or its emptiness. What we should be concerned with is only what actually exists.

Is there anything that we know for certain actually exists? Other than ourself, anything that we experience, conceive, infer, postulate or believe may be an illusion, so though it may seem to exist, we do not know for certain that it actually exists. However we do know for certain that we ourself actually exist, because if we did not actually exist, we could not experience anything, either ourself or any other thing, whether real or illusory. We may not be what we now seem to be, but whatever we are, we do certainly exist.

Since we ourself are the only thing that we know certainly exists, we should not investigate anything else (since everything else could be an illusion and therefore may not actually exist) but should only investigate ourself in order to experience ourself as we really are.

I have not studied any form of Buddhist philosophy in any depth, but I suspect that what Nagarjuna and others meant when they said that everything is ‘empty’ or ‘void’ was not that it exists but is empty, but only that it does not actually exist, because though the primary meaning of the Sanskrit word śūnya is empty or void, it also means non-existent. For example, one meaning of śūnya is zero, both because zero is empty or devoid of value, and because zero is nothing and hence it does not exist except as a concept.

Therefore if we take śūnya to mean ‘non-existent’ and śūnyatā to mean ‘non-existence’, it is perhaps true to say everything other than ourself is śūnya, because though other things seem to exist, they may not actually exist. However, whether or not anything else actually exists, we know that we ourself actually exist, so even if everything else is śūnya, we ourself are not śūnya. Therefore rather than concerning ourself with the existence or non-existence of anything else, we should be concerned only with trying to experience what we actually are.

Regarding your claim, ‘Seeing there is nothing of substance to grasp, grasping ceases’, so long as we experience ourself as an ego or person, it will seem to us that other things exist and that we can therefore grasp them. Hence grasping will cease only when the seeming existence of the grasping ego ceases, and its seeming existence will cease only when we cease to experience ourself as it. Therefore to put an end to all grasping we must experience ourself as we really are, and to experience ourself thus we must grasp nothing other than ourself — that is, we must try to be aware of ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else.

R Viswanathan said...

"For example, one meaning of śūnya is zero, both because zero is empty or devoid of value, and because zero is nothing and hence it does not exist except as a concept."

I remember Sri Nochur Venkataraman saying that zero (Pujyam in sanskrit) represents or means not just worshipful, but also, as a number, it is whole or purnam. The reason he attributes is that any other number like 1,2,3,4...9 can be extended infinitely (at one or both ends) where as 0 cannot be extended since it is complete or whole. That is the special nature of 0, pujyam, worshipful.

He further would state that there is yet another number which is complete, 8, but, it represents Maya. The reason he attributes is that 8 is like a strangulated 0 (like when a round rubber gasket is strangulated), and hence once the strangulation gets removed, it becomes 0, the whole or respectful.

Thus oneself or ourself, even if one wants to treat it as 0, it is only whole, complete, and encompasses everything.

Anonymous said...

The one area of the wonderful explanation by Michael James that may leave people slightly ajar is the idea of a goal, which implies time. Is time not the essential ingredient of the illusory ego? Should 'practice' be performed wholly and totally in the present moment, which is the only moment we can experience? Then we are left with ourselves as we truly are.

Michael James said...

Anonymous, in reply to your latest comment, a goal or aim obviously exists only for the ego. Since every problem or trouble that we experience is caused by our experiencing ourself as if we were an ego, in order to free ourself from all problems and troubles we must free ourself from the illusion that we are this ego. Therefore so long as we experience ourself as this ego, our aim or goal should be to experience ourself as we really are.

Time is an illusion that seems to exist only in the view of the ego, so as long as we experience ourself as this ego we tend to think of any aim or goal we may have in terms of time. However, if our aim is only to experience ourself as we really are and thereby to free ourself from the fundamental illusion that we are this ego, we should not think of this aim in terms of extended time, because we should aim to experience ourself as we really are here and now, in this precise present moment. So long as we think of experiencing ourself as we really are as something that will happen in future, we are creating an illusory gap between ourself and what we actually are.

We are what we actually are even now, so we can experience ourself as we actually are only in this precise present moment. Since any time other than this precise present moment exists only in the view of the ego, so long as we think of time as an extended duration we are sustaining the illusion that we are this ego, so we can free ourself from this illusion only now and not at any imaginary point in future.

Therefore, as you say, our practice of ātma-vicāra — that is, our attempt to experience ourself as we really are — must be wholly and totally in the present moment. In other words, our aim or goal should be to experience ourself alone at this very moment.

Michael James said...

Viswanathan, we should be careful not to allow ourself to get too caught up in jugglery of words or ideas, as you seem to be doing in your latest comment. It may be entertaining to think of conceptual paradoxes such as the infinity of zero (the limitlessness of nothing), but such intellectual entertainment should not distract us from the more serious business of trying to experience what we really are.

If we allow our intellect free rein, it will happily soar to great heights, like Brahma flying high to find the top of the column of light that appeared between him and Vishnu, but that will not help us to experience what we really are. Therefore we should keep our intellect in check, and use it primarily to understand the essential teachings of Bhagavan — that is, why and how we should attempt to experience only who or what we actually are.

R Viswanathan said...

I certainly did not mean to do any jugglery of words. Sri Nochur did speak about the worshipful nature of Pujyam, which normally one associates with nothingness. Since there was some discussion on zero, I brought this up. There absolutely was no attempt to distract anyone or get distracted from Bhagavan's teachings.

Noob said...

Michael,
In paragraph 5 of Nan Yar, Bhagavan says that "Even if [one] remains thinking ‘I, I’, it will take and leave [one] in that place."
Sri Sadhu Om also mentions that "For those who follow the path of Self-inquiry, or jnana japa (seeking the true import of the word "I" while mentally repeating "I-I", renders all the help required to attain Self-knowledge".
Have you had a chance to discuss this clue with Sri Sadhu Om?

Michael James said...

Viswanathan, I did not think that you intended to get caught up in jugglery of words or ideas, but it is a trap that is easy to fall into, which is why I warned you against it. Countless ideas are expressed in countless different contexts, but whatever idea we may come across, we have consider whether it helps us to turn our attention back towards ourself. That is why in a recent article I wrote about the need for us to use vivēka. Nochur may have expressed that idea about zero light-heartedly in some context, but in the context in which you repeated it it did not seem to have much relevance to the subject we were discussing, namely the need for us to experience what we really are.

The reason I mentioned zero in one of my earlier comments was because I was explaining that though according to some interpretations the Sanskrit word śūnya means ‘empty’, in the metaphysical context in which it is used in Buddhist philosophy it is more meaningful to interpret it as meaning ‘non-existent’ (and in that context I incidentally mentioned zero as an example of one of the meanings of śūnya that imply not only emptiness but also non-existence). My aim in writing that was to emphasise the fact that rather than dwelling on the idea that everything is śūnya (non-existent) we should investigate the only thing that certainly exists, namely ourself. The person I was replying to was writing from the perspective of a school of Buddhist philosophy in which śūnya or śūnyatā (non-existence) is a central concept, so I was pointing out that even if everything else is śūnya, we ourself are not śūnya, because we certainly exist, so rather than investigating anything that is or may be śūnya, we should investigate only ourself.

Beshwar said...

Hello Friends,

Did Sri Bhagavan ever talked about our life being preordain? I was reading Robert Adams, a devotee of Sri Bhagavan and he was talking about that our body has already been preordained and it will carry on doing whatever it came here to do. If we were going to be homeless, rich, etc was already preordained. Basically he said we just have to take care of our Self and the body will handle its own.

Though I do somewhat believe this and want to, I just don't have a strong conviction.

R Viswanathan said...

Beshwar may please read this:

http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.in/2008/04/god-scriptwriter.html

Michael James said...

Yes, Beshwar, Bhagavan did teach us that all the outward experiences that our body and mind are to undergo is predetermined according to our prārabdha (destiny or fate), which is the fruit of our past volitional actions (āgāmya karmas). The clearest statement he made in this regard is the note that he wrote for his mother in December 1898 when she pleaded with him to return home with her to Madurai:

“அவரவர் பிராரப்தப் பிரகாரம் அதற்கானவன் ஆங்காங்கிருந் தாட்டுவிப்பன். என்றும் நடவாதது என் முயற்சிக்கினும் நடவாது; நடப்ப தென்றடை செய்யினும் நில்லாது. இதுவே திண்ணம். ஆகலின் மௌனமா யிருக்கை நன்று.”

avar avar prārabdha-p prakāram adaṯkāṉavaṉ āṅgāṅgu irundu āṭṭuvippaṉ. eṉḏṟum naḍavādadu eṉ muyaṯcikkiṉum naḍavādu; naḍappadu eṉ taḍai seyyiṉum nillādu. idu-v-ē tiṇṇam. āhaliṉ mauṉamāy irukkai naṉḏṟu.”

“According to the prārabdha [destiny] of each person, God being there there [in the heart of each of them] will make [him or her] act. What is never to happen will not happen whatever effort [one] makes [to make it happen]; what is to happen will not stop whatever obstruction [or resistance] [one] does [to prevent it happening]. This indeed is certain. Therefore silently being [or being silent] is good.”

In this connection you may be interested to read two of my recent articles, The karma theory as taught by Sri Ramana and Why did Sri Ramana teach a karma theory?, in which I discuss this note that he wrote for his mother in more detail and in the context of other aspects of the karma theory as taught by him.

(I will continue this reply in my next comment.)

Michael James said...

In continuation of my reply to Beshwar in my previous comment:

As you imply when you write, ‘Basically he said we just have to take care of our Self and the body will handle its own’, what we should infer from his note to his mother and other related teachings of his is that we need not concern ourself with our body, since our prārabdha will make us do whatever is necessary in order for us to experience whatever we are destined to experience outwardly, so our only concern should be to try to turn our mind inwards in order to experience ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else.

Though our prārabdha determines all that we are to experience outwardly, and though it will provide us with the conditions that are most favourable to motivate us to try to turn our attention within towards ourself alone, it is entirely up to us to make the effort to be self-attentive as much as possible. Prārabdha is one of the three karmas, so it influences only our actions and what we experience whenever we allow our mind to go outwards, away from ourself, and hence it cannot either cause or obstruct our effort to be self-attentive, because self-attentiveness is not an action (karma) but our natural state of just being.

Therefore, when he concluded his note to his mother by saying, ‘ஆகலின் மௌனமா யிருக்கை நன்று’ (āhaliṉ mauṉamāy irukkai naṉḏṟu), which means, ‘Therefore silently being is good’, he was implying that the only useful effort we can make by our own free will is to try silently to be self-attentive. Any other effort that we may make by our own free will will not change whatever we are destined to experience, but will only create fresh karma (āgāmya), the fruit of which will not be experienced in the lifetime of our present body but will be stored in our sañcita (our store of past karmas that are yet to bear fruit) until it is selected by God for us to experience in some future lifetime.

By making effort to be self-attentive, we will not change whatever our body and mind are destined to undergo according to our prārabdha, but we will separate ourself from this body and mind, and when our self-attentiveness becomes perfect we will thereby entirely break all connection that we now seem to have with them.

Regarding your final statement, ‘Though I do somewhat believe this and want to, I just don’t have a strong conviction’, we all tend to lack sufficient conviction to believe this entirely and to accordingly be exclusively self-attentive at all times, but by persistent practice of self-attentiveness we will steadily increase our clarity of discrimination (vivēka) and thereby our conviction that being self-attentive is the only worthwhile effort we can make will also increase correspondingly.

Beshwar said...

What I am stuck upon is that is it preordain that I do not listen to my higher Self, or that Voice, or spirit guides if you may when it guides me and tells me what is best for me? I am not sure if Sri Bhagavan discuss about spirit guides or what the whole teaching has on that inner voice.

If everything is preordain, then does it mean I don't have to do anything? Some say as long as you don't feel as if you are the doer, but how can anything get done? Though that is also the ego-thinking but what is one suppose to do if one has no choice? If someone where to offer me food, if I would rather have this or that. What am I suppose to say?

Michael James said...

Beshwar, according to Bhagavan all the guidance we require is available within us, but our inner guide or spirit is only our own essential self, and its voice is only silence, so in order to listen to it we must turn our inwards and remain silent, attending only to ourself and not to anything else whatsoever. If we do so, we will find that what the silent voice of our own essential self is telling us is best for us is only to remain silently and attentively self-aware.

Regarding your question, ‘If everything is preordain, then does it mean I don’t have to do anything?’, what is preordained is only whatever outward experiences we are to undergo, and not whether or not we experience what we really are. Whatever we may be preordained to experience so long as our mind is turned outwards (that is, towards anything other than ourself), we are always free to choose whether to allow our mind to go outwards to experience such things or to turn it within to experience ourself alone.

So long as we are experiencing anything other than ourself, we are experiencing ourself as a body and mind, and this body and mind cannot remain without doing anything. However, the actions of our body and mind are driven by two forces, our destiny (prārabdha) and our free will. We cannot avoid doing any actions that we are destined to do, but we can avoid doing any action by our free will.

If we allow our mind to rise and attend to anything other than ourself, our free will will drive it to a greater or lesser extent to do actions, so we cannot completely avoid doing any action by our free will so long as our mind is active. Therefore the only way to avoid entirely doing any action by our free will is to turn our mind within to experience ourself alone.

We cannot avoid feeling that we are the doer so long as we experience ourself as a body and mind, which are the instruments that do actions. Therefore the only way to avoid doership is to experience ourself as we really are.

We need not concern ourself too much about the mundane activities we do, so long as they are not harming anybody else. To use your example, if someone were to offer us a choice of food, we need not be concerned about which choice to make. What we need to do is just to vigilantly watch ourself, the ego who is making such choices, because the more we attend to our ego the more it will subside, and the more it subsides the less our actions will be driven by its will.

Beshwar said...

From Nisargadatta's disciple Ramesh Balsekar, he says that we have no free will and that everything is govern by cosmic laws. What is suppose to happen will happen and what will not happen won't happen. It is the same with our thoughts, they have been inherent within us from our DNA. We have the free will but it is according to God's free will. For example; you can go out and shoot the mass of people with machine gun, but still you are not the doer, but why won't you do it? It is because you are not set up to do so, your DNA won't allow you to.

"but we can avoid doing any action by our free will."

How is that so when even that is preordained. Just like 'my' so called thoughts which are not mine, they are all happening and I have no will whether to stop it or not, anything I am destined to think about, will be thought upon as I cannot escape it.

So what I am getting at is that, there is no point in doing anything because you cannot even do a thing because it is only accordance to the will of God', you have no free will. Everything just happens and you are only consciousness that is aware of what is going on and you suffer if you think you are the doer.

So now with that said, everybody's life is already preordain, if they were to be encounter with your readings, they would. If not, they would not.

What about effort? Ramakrishna and others says there must be effort but effort of what when I am only consciousness? I have no effort at all but to know that I am not the doer, therefore all activities will go on. But what effort?? How can you? It will be preordain if one will have effort or not, have the drive, the intense desire for liberation, all that is upon the will of God and not ours, would you say so?

Therefore when I say you cannot even do a thing, how can others say you must have effort when it is not even your choice? You have no choice to do so but to be aware of what's going on.

Michael James said...

Beshwar, as I suggested in my reply to your first comment, please read The karma theory as taught by Sri Ramana and Why did Sri Ramana teach a karma theory?, where I try to explain what Bhagavan taught us about free will.

If Ramesh Balsekar says that we have no free will, that would give us strong grounds to suspect that he does not know what he is talking about, because claiming that we have no free will would contradict the entire karma theory and all the spiritual teachings given by Bhagavan, Ramakrishna and numerous other sages. If we have to choose between believing Ramesh Balsekar and believing such sages, I think it is reasonable to conclude that it is safer to believe them than to believe him.

If we had no free will, we would not be able to create any āgāmya, because āgāmya is by definition the fruit of karmas that we do by our own free will, and hence there would be no fruit of any past karmas stored in our sañcita and available there to be selected as our prārabdha, so the entire karma theory would be invalidated. If we could not do any karma by our own free will, how would it be fair and just that we should experience the fruits of our past karmas? If what we now experience is the fruit of our past karmas but our past karmas are just what we were compelled to do as the result of previous karmas, the karma theory would not be a theory of moral justice, and would instead render all morality and ethics as meaningless. If we had no choice in anything that we do, any moral judgement of our actions would be like morally judging the actions of insentient objects or forces of nature such as gravity, wind or tides.

Moreover, if we had no free will, any spiritual teaching would be rendered meaningless. Why should sages teach us that we should investigate who we are, or that we should have bhakti or do pūjā, japa, dhyāna, yōga or any other type of spiritual practice, if we have no freedom to do so?

(I will continue this reply in my next comment.)

Michael James said...

In continuation of my previous comment in reply to Beshwar:

You say, ‘Everything just happens and you are only consciousness that is aware of what is going on’, but what is aware of what is going on is not pure consciousness but only the ego, which is a distorted form of consciousness — that is, it is consciousness mixed and confused with other things, such as a body and mind. Whenever we are aware of anything other than ourself, we are experiencing ourself as if we were a body and mind, so what is aware of those other things is only a body-and-mind-mixed consciousness.

Since we experience ourself as this body and mind, and since they do actions, we experience their actions as if we were doing them. Therefore we cannot avoid having a sense of doership so long as we experience anything other than ourself (that is, anything other than the pure adjunct-free consciousness that we really are).

So long as we experience ourself as this ego (the body-and-mind-mixed consciousness), we not only experience a sense of doership but also experience a limited freedom to will and act. That is, it seems to us that we are free to choose what we want or like and what we don’t want or don’t like, and also to choose what we try to do and what we try not to do. This limited freedom to will and act is as real as the ego that we now experience ourself to be. So long as we as this ego seem to be real, our freedom to will and act will also seem to be real, and hence we must use this freedom wisely.

According to Bhagavan, the only wise way to use our freedom is to investigate ourself by trying to experience ourself alone, in complete isolation from everything else. When we manage to experience ourself thus, we will experience ourself as we really are, and hence we will no longer experience ourself as this ego, so then only will the limited freedom of this ego no longer seem to be real. Until then, its freedom is as real as it is, so we are responsible for whatever use we make of this freedom.

Beshwar said...

"So long as we experience ourself as this ego (the body-and-mind-mixed consciousness), we not only experience a sense of doership but also experience a limited freedom to will and act. That is, it seems to us that we are free to choose what we want or like and what we don’t want or don’t like, and also to choose what we try to do and what we try not to do. This limited freedom to will and act is as real as the ego that we now experience ourself to be. So long as we as this ego seem to be real, our freedom to will and act will also seem to be real, and hence we must use this freedom wisely."

1. "and hence we must use this freedom wisely."

Sir, what freedom? Our only freedom is only of the will of God's. And if so perchance that we use this 'freedom' wisely, is it our choice to use this 'freedom' wisely? How can it be so? We have no choice whatsoever.

Whatever we are to experience, there is no escape. That means whatever thought process we had must have also been predetermined. No thought or will can change anything, therefore how can you say one has a free will?

R Viswanathan said...

I would once again recommend that Beshwar may please read the whole of this David Godman's blog:

http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.in/2008/04/god-scriptwriter.html

Particularly this answer from David Godman in that blog:

"In UIlladu Narpadu, verse 19, Bhagavan wrote:

The debate "Does free will prevail or fate?' is only for those who do not know the root of both. Those who have known the Self, the common source of free-will and fate, have passed beyond them both and will not return to them.

Debates about free will and destiny can only persist as longer as there is an idea that there is a 'chooser', someone who decides what he or she shall do or not do. After realisation the illusory chooser vanishes, and all actions are performed by the Self without any prior 'Should I do this? Should I do that?' You can only argue about this matter while you still believe that there is an entity that has choices. When that belief and that entity vanish, concepts of destiny and free will vanish along with it."

Michael James said...

Noob, in answer to your comment asking about thinking ‘I, I’ words such as nouns, pronouns and verbs each represent or denote something, so when we think of such a word it usually prompts us to think of whatever it represents. Since the word ‘I’ represents ourself, if we think repeatedly ‘I, I, I’ it should help to draw our attention back to ourself. Therefore when we think ‘I, I’ we should not merely attend to the word ‘I’ but should try to attend to ourself, who are what it represents or denotes.

It was with this intention that Bhagavan and Sadhu Om suggested thinking or doing mental japa of ‘I, I’. However, Sadhu Om explained that this is a clue that is intended primarily to help those who find it difficult either to understand what self-attentiveness is or to regain self-attentiveness whenever it is lost, because ideally we should be able to be self-attentive even without the aid of thinking the word ‘I’.

In other words, thinking ‘I, I’ is intended to be an aid to help us turn our attention towards ourself, and once it is turned, we should let go of the word ‘I’ in order to go deep into the experience of pure self-attentiveness or self-awareness — that is, awareness of nothing other than ourself alone.

So long as we cling to the word ‘I’ instead of attending to ourself alone, our attention is divided between ourself and the word, which is something other than ourself. Therefore, though initially thinking ‘I’ can help to turn our attention towards ourself, we will sooner or later have to let go of it in order to sink deep into ourself — that is, into the experience of pure otherless self-awareness.

Michael James said...

Beshwar, I have now replied to your latest comment above and also to two other comments that you wrote on another article, The karma theory as taught by Sri Ramana, in another two comments on that article, so please read my reply there.

Michael James said...

Viswanathan, in the answer given by David that you quote in your latest comment, he quoted a translation of verse 19 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, which is relevant in this context, but unfortunately that translation contains a serious misinterpretation of the original Tamil verse. That is, in the second sentence of the verse it misinterprets தன்னை (taṉṉai) as ‘the Self’, thereby implying that this word refers to our real self rather than to our ego.

I do not think David knows sufficient Tamil to translate this verse himself, so he is presumably not responsible for this misinterpretation, but I am surprised that he was not able to recognise that it is a misinterpretation, because Bhagavan would never imply that fate and free will have anything to do with our real self (as he makes clear, for example, in the fifteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?, in which he says that God (who is nothing but our real self) has no volition and is never touched by any karma). Of course, fate and free will originate from the ego, which in turn originates from our real self, so our real self is the ultimate source not only of the ego but also of everything else, including fate and free will, but that was not the point that Bhagavan was making in this verse.

One of the central ideas that he repeatedly expressed in many of the verses of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu is that the ego is the source, root and basis of everything (except of course our real self), so everything depends for its seeming existence only on the seeming existence of the ego and will therefore cease to exist when the ego investigates itself and thereby subsides and merges back into ourself, the source from which it arose. This verse is one of the many verses in which he clearly alluded to this fundamental truth.

Please see the more accurate translation of this verse that I gave today in a comment on another article, and also the reliable interpretations of it given by both Sadhu Om and Lakshmana Sarma in their respective Tamil commentaries on Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu. As I did in my translation, they both interpret the phrases ‘விதி மதி மூலம்’ (vidhi mati mūlam), ‘the root of fate and free will’, and ‘விதிமதிகட்கு ஓர் முதல் ஆம் தன்னை’ (vidhi-matigaṭku ōr mudal ām taṉṉai), ‘oneself, who is the one origin [cause or foundation] of fate and free will’, as referring only to the ego rather than to our real self, because fate (vidhi) and free will (mati) exist only for the ego and not for our real self.

Unfortunately the misinterpretation of தன்னை (taṉṉai) as ‘the Self’ in the translation quoted by David seems to have led him to conclude that ‘After realisation [...] all actions are performed by the Self’, which is certainly not the case, because our real self never does any action (karma), since its nature is pure being, and after ‘realisation’ there are no actions, since action is done only by the illusory ego, which seems to exist only so long as we do not experience ourself as we really are.

Incidentally, David gives a more accurate translation and correct interpretation of this verse in a note to the translation he edited of verse 522 of Guru Vācaka Kōvai, in which Bhagavan expresses the same idea that he expressed in the first half of this verse.

Zubin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Zubin said...

Even though everyone's experience of self-enquiry is different, I have found that the longer you hold onto the I AM feeling, the more likely the mind is to 'take a snapshot' of it (objectify it) and trick you into believing that you are stilling holding on to the truth of it.

If it feels like effort to hold onto I AM, most likely you have objectified it, only trapped a shadow of I AM in a cage.

In my experience, feeling I AM for 1-4 seconds is perfect. I cannot hold on to it any longer than that, but what I do have control over is how many times I return to those 1-4 second glimpses throughout the day.