Happiness of Being - The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

Manōnāśa – destruction of mind

2011-10-07T13:57:00.007+01:00

Someone wrote to me recently saying that he thinks the use of the word ‘destruction’ in ‘destruction of mind’ (manōnāśa) is just ‘Indian hyperbole’ and should not be taken literally, because of it is obvious that Bhagavan and other jñānis think, since without thinking they could not walk or talk. I hope there are not many other people who have misunderstood Bhagavan’s teachings about manōnāśa in such a way, but since manōnāśa is the goal that he has taught us that we should aim to attain, I believe that the following adaptation of my reply to this person may be helpful to other devotees.

In order to understand what Bhagavan means by manōnāśa (the destruction, annihilation, elimination, ruin, disappearance or death of the mind), we should first consider what he means by ‘mind’ or manas. In verse 18 of Upadēśa Undiyār (the original Tamil version of Upadēśa Sāram) he says:

Mind is only thoughts. Of all thoughts, the thought called ‘I’ is the root. [Therefore] what is called ‘mind’ is [in essence just this root thought] ‘I’.

In verse 2 of Āṉma Viddai he indicates that what he means here by ‘the thought called I’ is the thought ‘I am this body’ (the illusion that the physical body is ‘I’):

Since the thought ‘this body composed of flesh is I’ alone is the one thread on which [all] the various thoughts are strung, if [one] goes within [investigating] ‘Who am I? What is [its] place [the source from which this ‘I’ has risen, and the ground on which it stands]?’ thoughts will cease, and in the cave [of one’s heart] ātma-jñāna [self-knowledge] will shine spontaneously as ‘I [am only] I’. This is silence, the one [empty] space [of consciousness], the abode of bliss.

The fact that the mind is in essence nothing but the false identification of our self, which is pure consciousness of being (sat-cit), as a physical body, which is a non-conscious (jaḍa) object, is also emphasised by Bhagavan in verse 24 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:

The jaḍa [non-conscious] body does not say ‘I’ [because it does not experience itself]; sat-cit [being-consciousness] does not rise [or come into being]; [but] in between [consciousness and the body] an ‘I’ rises as the dimension of the body. Know that this [false consciousness ‘I am this body’] is cit-jaḍa-granthi [the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious], bandha [bondage], jīva [the soul or person], the subtle body, the ego, this saṁsāra [wandering, restless activity, illusion or ignorance] and manam [the mind].

Thus the mind is a confused mixture of the real and the unreal. Its real element is its sat-cit aspect, ‘I am’, and its unreal element is its jaḍa aspect, the body and all the other adjuncts that it confusedly mistakes to be ‘I’. What is destroyed in manōnāśa is only its unreal jaḍa aspect and not its real sat-cit aspect, which is eternal and hence indestructible and immutable.

Because the mind thus confuses consciousness (cit) with the non-conscious (jaḍa), it is called the cit-jaḍa-granthi, the knot (granthi) that seemingly binds consciousness to the non-conscious. In a conversation recorded in the last chapter of Maharshi’s Gospel (13th edition, 2002, page 89), Bhagavan emphasises this fact that the mind or ego is nothing but the cit-jaḍa-granthi:

[...] the ego has one and only one [relevant] characteristic. The ego functions as the knot between the Self[,] which is Pure Consciousness[,] and the physical body[,] which is ... insentient. The ego is therefore called the cit-jaḍa granthi. In your investigation into the source of aham-vṛtti [the thought ‘I’], you take the essential cit aspect of the ego; and for this reason the enquiry must lead to the realization of the pure consciousness of the Self.

Bhagavan says that this primal thought ‘I’ (the false impression ‘I am this body’) is the root of all other thoughts and the thread upon which they are strung, because it is the thinker and experiencer of them, so without it no other thought could exist. Therefore all thought or mental activity is dependent upon this delusion ‘I am this body’, which is the mind or ego.

In waking the mind mistakes itself to be this present body, and in dream it mistakes itself to be some other imaginary body. The bodies change, but the false ‘I’ that takes each of them to be itself remains essentially the same. Since our entire bodily life is just a dream that occurs in our prolonged sleep of self-ignorance, when one body dies, the mind imagines another body to be itself, and thus it undergoes a long series of bodily lives (dreams). This is why Bhagavan says in verse 25 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:

Grasping form [a body], the formless ghost-ego comes into being; grasping form [a body, objects perceived through the senses of that body, and thoughts and feelings about such objects], it endures; grasping and feeding upon form [such thoughts and objects], it grows [expands or flourishes] greatly; leaving [one] form, it grasps [another] form. [However] if [one] seeks [the truth of it by investigating what it is], it takes flight. Know [thus].

Because the mind or ego has no form of its own, it seems to exist only by attending to forms (which are all products of its imagination), but if it attempts to attend to itself, it will find no form to grasp, so it will subside and disappear.

The mind seems to exist only in waking and in dream, when it has grasped a body as itself, but it subsides and disappears in sleep, because sleep is a state in which it is too exhausted to grasp any form, so it subsides in its source to recuperate its energy.

Because sleep is only a temporary state of subsidence, it is a state of manōlaya (abeyance of mind), and from it the mind will certainly rise again. Likewise death and coma are both only states of manōlaya, as also is any temporary subsidence or samādhi achieved by means of yōga and other such spiritual practices that entail attending to anything other than ‘I’.

Therefore in verse 13 of Upadēśa Undiyār Bhagavan distinguishes the two basic kinds of subsidence of mind, temporary and permanent:

Subsidence [of mind] is [of] two [kinds], laya and nāśa. That which is lying down [in laya] will rise. If [its] form dies [in nāśa], it will not rise.

In this verse Bhagavan makes clear that nāśa is distinct from any kind of laya (which are all temporary, because they are states from which the mind will sooner or later rise again), and that it is permanent, because it is a state in which the mind is dead and from which it will never rise again.

Bhagavan wrote this verse in the context of a brief outline that he gave of yōga practices such as prāṇāyāma (breath-restraint), which by themselves can only bring about manōlaya and not manōnāśa (as he explains in more detail in the eighth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?, which I quote below), so in the next verse he emphasises that the mind will be destroyed only when we practise the unique path of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra):

Only when [one] sends the mind — which subsides [only temporarily in laya] when [one] restrains the breath — on the ōr vaṙi, will its form cease [or die in nāśa].

The Tamil words ōr vaṙi have two possible literal meanings, ‘[the] one [unique or special] path’ and ‘[the] investigating [examining or knowing] path’, but whichever meaning we choose, they refer to the same path, namely the unique path of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra).

Bhagavan expresses this same truth in other words in the eighth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?):

To make the mind subside [permanently], there are no adequate means other than vicāra. If restrained by other means, the mind will remain as if subsided, [but] will emerge again. Even by prāṇāyāma [breath-restraint], the mind will subside; however, [though] the mind remains subsided so long as the breath remains subsided, when the breath emerges it will also emerge and wander under the sway of [its] vāsanas [propensities, inclinations, impulses or desires]. [...] Therefore prāṇāyāma is just an aid to restrain the mind, but will not bring about manōnāśa [the annihilation of the mind].

In the next verse of Upadēśa Undiyār (verse 15) Bhagavan describes the state of manōnāśa as follows:

When the mind-form is annihilated, for the great yōgi who is [thereby] established as the reality, there is not a single action [or doing], [because] he has attained his [true] nature [which is actionless being].

The person who wrote to me claiming that manōnāśa (destruction of mind) should not be taken literally wrote, ‘Thinking continues, even for someone like Ramana (and all the other Jnanis), otherwise how can Ramana walk to the kitchen or answer questions’, but in this verse Bhagavan emphasises that for jñānis there is no action whatsoever, which means that there is absolutely no thinking, talking or walking.

As he often explained, the bodily and mental activities of the jñāni appear to exist only in the ignorant outlook of others (ajñānis), who mistake him to be the body and mind that do such actions, because in the clear view of the jñāni all that exists is only self, which is pure non-dual being-consciousness (sat-cit). Because we mistake ourself to be a body and mind, we mistake even the jñāni to be a body and mind, but for him (or her) there is no such thing.

When Bhagavan translated this verse into Malayalam (in a metre that was longer than the metres he used in the Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu versions), he added a relative clause that describes the great ātma-yōgi as ‘who is seen as a human by outward appearance’ (vēṣattāle manuṣyanāy kāṇum), thereby indicating that the human form of the jñāni is merely an outward guise (vēṣa) that appears to be real only in the outlook of ajñānis.

This is why Bhagavan used to say (as recorded in verse 283 of Guru Vācaka Kōvai and elsewhere) that the appearance of the guru in human form is like the appearance of a lion in the dream of an elephant, the shock of seeing which causes the elephant to wake up. Though the lion is unreal, being just a creation of the elephant’s own mind, the waking that it causes is real. Likewise, the outward form of the guru is unreal, being just a creation of our own dreaming mind, but it causes us to awaken to our real self, because what we see outwardly as the human form of the guru is actually nothing but our own essential self, which always shines in our heart as ‘I am’.

The truth that Bhagavan teaches us in verse 15 of Upadēśa Undiyār is taught by him equally emphatically in verse 31 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:

For those who enjoy tanmayānanda [the ‘bliss composed of that’, namely the real self], which rose [as ‘I am I’] destroying the [false] self [the mind or ego], what one [action] exists for doing? They do not know anything other than self, [so] who can [or how to] conceive their state as ‘it is such’?

In the clear, undefiled experience of a jñāni, nothing exists other than self, so there is no mind, body or world, and therefore nothing to do any action. This is a truth that Bhagavan repeatedly emphasised not only in his own writings but also in many of the conversations with him that have been recorded by others, and it is why he wrote in verses 30 to 33 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Anubandham:

Like a person who is [seemingly] listening to a story [but whose] mind has gone far away [and who therefore does not actually hear what is being said], a mind in which [all] vāsanas [propensities or desires] have been destroyed does not [actually] do [anything] even though it is [seemingly] doing. [On the other hand] a mind that is saturated with them [vāsanas] is actually doing even though it is [seemingly] not doing [anything], [just like] a person who climbs a hill and falls over a precipice in a dream, even though he is lying motionless here [in this waking world].

The [waking or dream] activity, the niṣṭhā [absorption or samādhi] and the sleep that are [seemingly occurring] to the mey-jñāni [the knower of reality], who is asleep within the fleshy body, which is [like] a cart, are similar to the cart moving, standing or the cart remaining alone [with the bullocks unyoked] to a person sleeping in the cart. [That is, these transient states of the body and mind are not experienced by the jñāni, just as the states of a cart are not experienced by a person who is sleeping in it.]

For those who experience waking, dream and sleep, waking-sleep, [which is] beyond [these three transient states], is called turīya [the ‘fourth’]. Since that turīya alone exists, [and] since the three [states of waking, dream and sleep] that appear [to exist] do not exist, be assured [that turīya is actually] turīya-v-atīta [turīyātīta, that which transcends the ‘fourth’].

Saying ‘saṁcita and āgāmya do not adhere to the jñāni [but] prārabdha does remain’ is a reply told to the questions of others. Just as [any of] the wives do not remain unwidowed when the husband has died, know that [when] the doer [has died] all the three karmas cease.

Since the experience of the jñāni is that self alone exists, and nothing else has ever existed, the mind that we now experience does not really exist but is just an illusion. Therefore the state that is called manōnāśa (destruction of mind) is not actually a state in which something that existed has been destroyed, but is just the clear knowledge that nothing other than self has ever existed. This is why in verse 17 of Upadēśa Undiyār Bhagavan says:

When [anyone] scrutinises the form of the mind without forgetting, [it will be clear that] anything as ‘mind’ does not exist. For everyone, this is the direct [straight, proper, correct or true] path.

If we see a rope lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk, we may mistake it to be a snake. Just as that snake does not really exist but is just an imagination, this mind does not really exist but is just an imagination. And just as the sole reality underlying the appearance of the snake is only a rope, so the sole reality underlying the appearance of this mind is only self, which is absolutely non-dual being-consciousness, and therefore completely devoid of all thoughts, perceptions and differences.

In other words, what we now experience as our finite mind is in fact nothing but our infinite self, and if we experience as it really is, it will no longer appear to be this finite mind, which thinks thoughts and experiences things that appear to be other than it.

Therefore, saying that the mind is destroyed by our recognising that it is actually nothing other than self is like saying that the snake is destroyed by our recognising that it is actually just a rope. Such statements are not intended to imply that either the mind or the snake ever really existed as such, because what is destroyed is not their actual existence but only the illusion that they existed.

When the mind is thus destroyed, the cit-jaḍa-granthi (the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious) is cut asunder, which means that its jaḍa (non-conscious) portion (namely the body and all the other adjuncts that we identify as ‘I’) disappears, and only its cit (consciousness) portion, ‘I am’, remains, because it is the sole reality.

Because this knot is a wrong knowledge of ourself, it can be destroyed only by true self-knowledge, and the only means by we can experience true self-knowledge is ātma-vicāra, because we cannot experience what we really are unless we keenly and vigilantly attend to ourself, withdrawing our power of attention entirely from all other things. This is the truth that Bhagavan teaches us in verse 16 of Upadēśa Undiyār:

Having given up [knowing] external viṣayas [objects, affairs, states, events or experiences], the mind knowing its own form of light alone is true knowledge [or knowledge of reality].

In states of manōlaya such as sleep, coma, death or yōga-nidrā (which is a term that Bhagavan is recorded as having sometimes used to describe any state of samādhi that is brought about by any means of than self-attentiveness), the mind has subsided because it has ceased experiencing any external viṣayas, but its subsidence is only temporary, because it has subsided without clearly knowing ‘its own form of light’ — its essential form of pure consciousness. In order to be destroyed, the mind must not only cease experiencing any external viṣayas, but must also clearly experience ‘its own form of light’ (which is ‘the essential cit [consciousness] aspect of the ego [the mind or cit-jaḍa granthi]’ that Bhagavan referred to in the portion of the conversation recorded in the last chapter of Maharshi’s Gospel that I referred to earlier).

The mind cannot experience ‘its own form of light’ with absolute clarity unless it has completely given up experiencing any external viṣayas even to the slightest extent, but it can completely give up experiencing any external viṣayas without clearly experiencing ‘its own form of light’, as it does in sleep and other states of manōlaya. This is why in this verse Bhagavan places the emphasis on ‘the mind knowing its own form of light’ by making it the subject of the sentence, and relegates ‘having given up external viṣayas’ to a subsidiary position by making it a participle clause.

That is, giving up experiencing external viṣayas is a necessary condition for manōnāśa, but not a sufficient condition, whereas the mind knowing its own form of light is not only a necessary condition but also a sufficient condition for manōnāśa. Therefore, what Bhagavan teaches us in this extremely important verse — the central gem of Upadēśa Undiyār — is that in order to experience true self-knowledge, which alone can destroy the mind, we must not only give up experiencing external viṣayas but must also experience our own ‘form of light’ — our real nature, which is the absolutely clear light of pure (content-free) consciousness.

In different states of manōlaya there may be differing degrees of clarity of self-consciousness, but because it is not a complete clarity it does not destroy the mind, and hence the mind will rise again. Moreover, because we can make no effort in such a state, we cannot increase the degree of clarity until we come out of that state. Only when the mind has risen out of laya can it make the necessary effort to focus its attention keenly and exclusively upon ‘its own form of light’.

This is why Bhagavan repeatedly emphasised that when practising ātma-vicāra we should not only avoid being carried away by any thoughts but should also avoid subsiding into any form of manōlaya, and that the only means by which we can thus remain firmly established in our natural state of self-abidance or ātma-niṣṭhā (in which our power of attention stands steadily balanced in the central point between its two customary states of thinking and laya) is by keenly and vigilantly attending to our own ‘form of light’ — the ‘essential cit aspect’ of our mind.

The power of māyā or self-deception that prevents us from knowing ourself as we really are has two forms, which are called āvaraṇa śakti (the power of covering, veiling, concealing or obscuration) and vikṣēpa śakti (the power of projection, dispersion or dissipation). The former is the fundamental lack of clarity of self-consciousness that forms the background darkness that enables the latter to project thoughts (some of which seem to exist outside the mind as the objects, states and events of the physical world), just as the darkness in a cinema enables pictures to be projected upon the screen. In waking and dream these two forms of māyā are both functioning, whereas in manōlaya the vikṣēpa śakti has ceased to function and only the āvaraṇa śakti persists.

When we give up experiencing external viṣayas (which include all thoughts, both those that seem to exist only in our mind and those that seem to exist outside our mind as the objects and events of the physical world), we are temporarily suspending the functioning of vikṣēpa śakti, and thus we subside in manōlaya, in which we remain enveloped in āvaraṇa, the veil of self-ignorance. Therefore, to know ourself as we really are, we must not only give up experiencing external viṣayas but must also strive to experience our own ‘form of light’, because only by experiencing this will we be able to pierce through this fundamental veil of self-ignorance (our lack of clarity of self-consciousness) caused by āvaraṇa śakti.

Since the mind and all its manifold creations can appear to exist only under the dark veil of āvaraṇa śakti, and since this veil can be dissolved only by the experience of absolutely clear self-consciousness, in order to destroy the fundamental cause of the illusory appearance of the mind we must strive relentlessly to experience the ‘essential cit aspect’ of our mind, devoid of all the non-conscious adjuncts (jaḍa upādhi) that we now superimpose upon it.

When we thus experience the essential cit element of our mind without any of its jaḍa adjuncts, we will split the cit-jaḍa-granthi (the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious), which is far more subtle and fundamental than any physical atom, and as Bhagavan used to say (for example, on the afternoon of 22-11-1945, as recorded in Day by Day with Bhagavan, 2002 edn, p. 49), the splitting of this mental atom will release the infinite power of jñāna, which will instantly and forever swallow the false appearance of the entire universe and anything else that may appear to be other than our essential self — our pure consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

This state, in which everything other than ‘I’ has been swallowed by the clear light of true self-knowledge (as alluded to by Sri Bhagavan in verse 27 of Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai and verse 1 of Śrī Aruṇācala Pañcaratnam), is our natural state of egoless being-consciousness (sat-cit), which is the real state denoted by the term manōnāśa, ‘destruction of mind’.

Experiencing the pure ‘I’ here and now

2011-01-25T09:05:00.011Z

In a comment on my previous article, How to avoid creating fresh karma (āgāmya)?, an anonymous friend quoted the following passage from Lucy Cornelssen’s book Hunting the ‘I’ (5th edition, 2003, pp. 20-21):

There are other opportunities, when we could experience this pure ‘I’ consciously. One such is during the tiny gap between two thoughts, when the attention has given up its hold on one thought and not yet caught the next one. But since we never tried our attention is not trained this way, and we will hardly succeed in the attempt.

There is a better chance to catch it between sleeping and awaking. It is very important to try it, if you are serious in your hunting the ‘I’. Take care of a few conditions: Try at night just before you fall asleep to keep as the last thought your intention to catch as the first thing of all on waking in the morning the experience of your true ‘I’.

What Lucy describes here as the pure ‘I’ or true ‘I’ is simply the one and only ‘I’ as it really is — in other words, ourself as we really are. Therefore the pure ‘I’ is not something distant (in either time or space) or other than ourself, but is simply what we always actually are. It appears to be something unknown to us only because we have obscured it by confusing it with adjuncts such as a physical body and a thinking mind.

However, though it now appears to us to be obscured, it is actually the essence of what we always experience as ‘I’ — our pristine and non-dual consciousness of our own being. Therefore self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) is not really a matter of ‘hunting’ the pure ‘I’ (as if it were something distant or not now experienced) but is simply the practice of attending to and thereby being what we always truly are — our own essential self, ‘I am’.

Since this pure ‘I’ is ever-present — never removed from or distant to us in either time or space — we can experience it as it really is only here and now. Therefore we should not think of it as something that we do not experience now but will experience in future, because as soon as we anticipate experiencing it in future, we have in our imagination created a distance between it and us, as if it were something objective or other than ourself.

Therefore Lucy’s suggestion in this passage that we should try at night just before falling asleep to keep as our last thought the intention to catch as the first thing of all on waking in the morning the experience of our true ‘I’ is potentially counter-productive, because the experience of ‘I’ that we would then be anticipating catching on waking is in the future and is therefore removed from what we actually are here and now.

Therefore, rather than intending to catch some future experience, we should try to experience ourself as we actually are here and now. The intention or anticipation to experience anything in future is a thought that we are thinking now, so it is a distraction of our attention from experiencing our true ‘I’ as it is at present (which is as it always has been and always will be, if at all there is really any such thing as the past or future).

If we are to experience our true ‘I’ in the present moment — which is the only moment in which we ever can actually experience it — we should not intend to experience it at any moment other than now, at this precise present moment, because every other moment is only a thought, and every thought is a distraction from pure self-attentiveness, which is the state that we should be aiming to experience.

If our pure ‘I’ can be experienced at the moment between sleeping and awaking, as Lucy suggests, it can equally well be experienced at the moment between being awake and falling asleep. Therefore, rather than wasting that precious moment just before falling asleep trying ‘to keep as the last thought your intention to catch’ the experience of ‘I’ on waking the next morning, we should utilise it to fix our attention only on ‘I’ to the exclusion of all other thoughts.

If we fall asleep being self-attentive, we stand a better chance of waking up in a self-attentive state than if we fall asleep with the thought that we should be self-attentive when we wake up. If we fall asleep with the latter thought, we will probably wake up with the same thought, and this thought that we should be self-attentive at some time in the future is not the same as actually being self-attentive in the present moment, here and now.

Our pure ‘I’ is ever-present, so in order to experience it as it is we do not have to wait for any gap such as between two thoughts or between two states. All thoughts (including thoughts of the past or future, or of gaps between thoughts or states) and all states (such as waking, dream and sleep) appear to exist only because we attend to them, so if we ignore them by attending only to ‘I’ they will cease to exist, being mere illusions created by māyā, our own self-deceptive power of imagination.

Though Sri Ramana taught us that we experience ‘I’ in its pure state in the tiny gap between any two consecutive thoughts or between any two consecutive states, he did not expect us to wait in anticipation for such a gap at any time in future, but only urged us to attend to ‘I’ now (and at every other moment — as and when we experience it as ‘now’), because so long as we are deeply self-attentive and thereby ignoring all thoughts, states and passing times, we are truly experiencing the gap to which he was referring.

Unless we are deeply self-attentive (and thereby completely devoid of all thoughts) at this present moment, we cannot actually experience the pure ‘I’ that shines in the gap between each two consecutive thoughts or states. Therefore, without thinking of anything else whatsoever, we should here and now attend wholly and exclusively to ‘I’ alone, as Sri Ramana instructs us emphatically in the last two lines of verse 27 of Bhagavad Gītā Sāram (which is his Tamil rendering of Bhagavad Gītā 6.25):

சித்தத்தை யான்மாவிற் சேர்த்திடுக மற்றெதுவு
மித்தனையு மெண்ணிடா தே.

cittattai y-āṉmāviṯ sērttiḍuka maṯṟeduvu
m-ittaṉaiyu m-eṇṇiḍā dē.

Fix the mind [your power of attention] in ātman [your essential self]; do not think even in the least of anything else whatsoever.

What we need to experience is only one moment of absolutely thought-free and therefore perfectly clear self-attentiveness, because that alone will be sufficient to destroy forever the illusion that we are this mind or anything else other than what we really are (the pure and true ‘I’), and until we experience such a moment of pure self-attentiveness we will remain tightly bound in the grips of this illusion — and of all the troubles that it brings in its wake.

How to avoid creating fresh karma (āgāmya)?

2011-01-21T11:16:00.005Z

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

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

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

By making such selfward-directed effort, we will not alter what the mind is destined to experienced, but will remove the illusion that we are this experiencing mind. This is what Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 38 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
If we are the ‘doer’ of actions, which are like seeds, we will experience the resulting ‘fruit’. [However] when we know ourself by investigating ‘who is the doer of action?’, ‘doership’ will depart and all the three karmas will slip off. This indeed is the state of liberation, which is eternal.
That is, actions (karmas), which are motivated by our desires, are like seeds, because they generate more desires to do further actions and thereby they reproduce themselves endlessly, and so long as we continue doing actions (of mind, speech or body), we will have to experience their ‘fruit’ or consequences. However, if instead of indulging in more action we investigate ‘who am I, who seem to be doing action?’, we will experience ourself only as pure non-active self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

When we thus experience ourself only as action-free being, both our sense of ‘doership’ (kartṛtva) and our sense of ‘experiencership’ (bhōktṛtva) — that is, our feeling that ‘I am doing action’ and ‘I am experiencing the result of my actions’ — will cease to exist, and thus all our three karmas (āgāmya, sañcita and prārabdha) will also cease to exist. The resulting state, which is devoid of the doer, the experiencer and his or her three karmas, is liberation (mukti), which is eternal — being without beginning, interruption or end.

Yesterday a friend wrote to me an e-mail in which he referred to the first two paragraphs from the above-quoted portion of my reply and asked:

I find your reply very helpful and inspiring. But I also wonder how to balance living and acting in the “outer” world, try to change situations that can be changed and on the other side refrain from any outward action and just directing the attention selfwards. Any outward directed action and any desire seems to create new karma.

In my reply to him I wrote as follows:

The first teaching of Sri Ramana that has been recorded is the note that he wrote for his mother in December 1898, when he was barely nineteen years old and she came to implore him to return home. What he wrote then was as follows:

According to their-their prārabdha [that is, according to the destiny of each person], he-who-is-for-that [God] being there-there [in the heart of each person] will make [him or her] act. That which is never to happen will not happen whatever effort [we] make [to make it happen]. That which is to happen will not stop whatever obstruction [or resistance] [we] do [to prevent it happening]. This indeed is certain. Therefore silently being [or being silent] is good.

Whatever outward work we are destined to do we will be made to do, so we need not concern ourself with such outward activities. If we are meant to do anything that will change any situation, we will certainly do it, whether we want to try or not; and if we are not meant to do so, no matter hard we try we will not manage to do so.

Therefore we should concentrate all our deliberate effort on turning our mind inwards (selfwards) and thereby ‘being silent’. As Bhagavan says in the thirteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?):

Being completely absorbed in ātma-niṣṭha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other cintana [thought] except ātma-cintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God.

By being self-attentive we are truly surrendering ourself (and hence our will, our body and our mind) to God, so how he then uses our body and mind to do whatever they are destined to do will be no concern of ours. Because we will be completely surrendered to him, attending to nothing other than self, we will not be creating any fresh karma (āgāmya), because we will not be the doer of any action.

Second and third person objects

2011-01-10T11:31:00.013Z

Three significant Tamil words that Sri Ramana often used in his own writings and in his oral teachings are தன்மை (taṉmai), which literally means ‘self-ness’ (taṉ-mai) or ‘selfhood’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the first person’, முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai), which etymologically means ‘that which stands in front’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the second person’, and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), which etymologically means ‘that which has spread out’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the third person’.

Of these three words, the most significant is of course தன்மை (taṉmai), the first person, the subject ‘I’, but in this article I will focus more on the other two words in order to clarify their meaning in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings.

Though these words are all grammatical terms, in his teachings Sri Ramana did not use them in their usual grammatical sense but in an epistemological sense. That is, தன்மை (taṉmai), the first person, is the epistemic subject, the knower or experiencer, whereas முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai) and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), second and third persons, are epistemic objects, things that are known or experienced by the subject as other than itself.

The question then is why Sri Ramana used these two terms — instead of just one term — to describe all objects? Which objects are second person objects, and which are third person objects? These are some of the principal questions that I will consider in this article.

Because this is a long article, I have divided it into the following seventeen sections:

Second and third person are thoughts that depend upon the first person, the thinking thought ‘I’

In the final sentences of the fifth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?) Sri Ramana wrote:

மனதில் தோன்றும் நினைவுகளெல்லாவற்றிற்கும் நானென்னும் நினைவே முதல் நினைவு. இது எழுந்த பிறகே ஏனைய நினைவுகள் எழுகின்றன. தன்மை தோன்றிய பிறகே முன்னிலை படர்க்கைகள் தோன்றுகின்றன; தன்மை யின்றி முன்னிலை படர்க்கைக ளிரா.

maṉatil tōṉḏṟum niṉaivugaḷ-ellāvaṯṟiṟkum nāṉ-eṉṉum niṉaivē mudal niṉaivu. idu eṙunda piṟahē ēṉaiya niṉaivugaḷ eṙukiṉḏṟaṉa. taṉmai tōṉḏṟiya piṟahē muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ tōṉḏṟukiṉḏṟaṉa; taṉmai y-iṉḏṟi muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ irā.

Of all the thoughts that appear [or arise] in the mind, the thought ‘I’ alone is the first thought. Only after this rises do other thoughts rise. Only after the first person appears do second and third persons appear; without the first person second and third persons do not exist.

As the juxtaposing of these sentences implies, the first person (taṉmai) is the first thought, ‘I’, whereas second and third persons (muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ) are all the other thoughts, which are thought by this first thought, ‘I’.

Sri Ramana describes the ‘I’ that thinks all other thoughts as a thought because it is not the real and original form of ‘I’, but is only a distorted form of it that rises and subsides with other thoughts. Whereas our real ‘I’ is the pure, adjunct-free consciousness of being, ‘I am’, this thought ‘I’ is an adjunct-mixed consciousness, ‘I am this body’.

Whenever we think any thought, we do so with the feeling that we are a particular body, and this feeling that ‘I am this body’ is the first thought, which is the root of all other thoughts. Without this first thought no other thought can arise.

Thinking is a process that consists of two inseparable aspects, creating (or forming) and experiencing. That is, when we think any thought, we create it and simultaneously experience it. Without experiencing it, we cannot create it, so if it is not experienced by us, it does not exist.

The thinking thought is therefore fundamentally different to all other thoughts, because the former is the conscious experiencer, whereas the latter are non-conscious objects that exist only when they are experienced by it. This is why Sri Ramana says:

Only after this [first thought] rises do other thoughts rise. [...] without the first person second and third persons do not exist.

Since all other thoughts are objects created and experienced by the first thought (the first person, ‘I’), Sri Ramana describes them collectively as ‘second and third persons’, but which thoughts are second persons, and which are third persons? By using these two terms to describe all thoughts other than ‘I’, is he indicating that there are two distinct categories of thoughts, and if so, what are these categories?

The world is nothing but a series of thoughts

Since thoughts are things that exist only in our own mind, we generally consider them to be distinct from things that appear to exist outside our mind, namely the objects that constitute the physical world. However, the world (and all the objects and events in it) is actually nothing but a series of thoughts in our own mind, as Sri Ramana repeatedly emphasised.

For example, towards the end of the fourteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? he wrote, ‘ஜகமென்பது நினைவே’ (jagam-eṉbadu niṉaivē), which means, ‘What is called the world [is] only thought’, and in the fourth paragraph he wrote even more emphatically:

[...] நினைவுகளைத் தவிர்த்து ஜகமென்றோர் பொருள் அன்னியமா யில்லை. தூக்கத்தில் நினைவுகளில்லை, ஜகமுமில்லை; ஜாக்ர சொப்பனங்களில் நினைவுகளுள, ஜகமும் உண்டு. சிலந்திப்பூச்சி எப்படித் தன்னிடமிருந்து வெளியில் நூலை நூற்று மறுபடியும் தன்னுள் இழுந்துக்கொள்ளுகிறதோ அப்படியே மனமும் தன்னிடத்திலிருந்து ஜகத்தைத் தோற்றுவித்து மறுபடியும் தன்னிடமே ஒடுக்கிக்கொள்ளுகிறது. [...]

[...] niṉaivugaḷai-t tavirttu jagam-eṉḏṟ(u)-ōr poruḷ anniyamāy illai. tūkkattil niṉaivgaḷ-illai, jagamum-illai; jāgra soppaṉaṅgaḷil niṉaivugaḷ-uḷa, jagamum uṇḍu. silandi-p-pūcci eppaḍi-t taṉṉiḍamirundu veḷiyil nūlai nūṯṟu maṟupaḍiyum taṉṉuḷ iṙundu-k-koḷḷukiṟadō, appaḍiyē maṉamum taṉṉiḍattilirundu jagattai-t tōtruvittu maṟupaḍiyum taṉṉiḍamē oḍukki-k-koḷḷukiṟadu. [...]

[...] Thoughts excluded, anything called ‘world’ does not exist separately. In sleep there are no thoughts, and there is also no world; in waking and dream there are thoughts, and there is also a world. Just as a spider spins thread out from within itself and again draws [it back] into itself, so exactly the mind creates [or projects] the world from within itself and again dissolves [it back] into itself. [...]

When we perceive the world, it appears to us that we are perceiving something that exists outside and independent of our perceiving mind, whereas in fact the seemingly external world is only a mental creation, like the world that we experience in a dream. In other words, our perceptual experiences are caused entirely by our power of imagination, and not by anything outside or independent of our mind.

The broad meaning of ‘thought’ as it is used by Sri Ramana

Everything that we experience as other than ourself is a thought of one kind or another. Though in English the word ‘thought’ is generally understood to mean only certain kinds of mental experiences, when it is used in English translations of Sri Ramana’s teachings it denotes all kinds of mental (or emotional) experiences.

Sri Ramana used various words in Tamil to denote ‘thought’ (or ‘idea’) in this broad sense, but the two words that he used most frequently in this sense were நினைவு (niṉaivu) and எண்ணம் (eṇṇam). Whenever he used these or any other words that mean ‘thought’ or ‘idea’, their meaning includes all perceptions, conceptions, ideas, imaginations, beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires, fears and anything else that we experience as other than our essential being, ‘I am’.

Second person thoughts and third person thoughts

From our perspective, all such thoughts can be divided into two distinct categories, namely those that appear to us to be things that exist only in our own mind, and those that appear to us to be things that exist outside and independent of our own mind. Therefore we can reasonably infer that the former category of thoughts are what Sri Ramana means by the term முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ), second persons, and the latter category of thoughts are what he means by the term படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ), third persons.

This interpretation of these two words in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings is also suggested by their etymology: முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai) is a compound of முன் (muṉ), which means ‘in front’, and நிலை (nilai), which means ‘standing’, ‘staying’ or ‘state’, so it means ‘that which stands in front’, ‘that which stays in front’ or ‘the state in front’, and thus in an epistemological sense it implies that which is known or experienced most closely, intimately, immediately or directly. படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), on the other hand, is a noun derived from the verb படர் (paḍar), which means to ‘spread’, ‘ramify’, ‘expand’ or ‘be diffused’, so it means ‘that which has spread out’, and thus in an epistemological sense it implies that which is known or experienced more remotely, less intimately or less directly.

Though from a gross physical perspective the objects the world that we see in front of us appear to be முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ), ‘those things that stand in front’ or ‘those things that are known most closely’, from a more subtle perspective it is clear that we know our own thoughts more closely than we know any physical objects (because the physical objects that appear to be outside ourself are known by us only indirectly through the media of our body and its five senses), so it is more appropriate for us to consider our own thoughts to be முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ) and physical objects (or events) to be படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ).

Thus what Sri Ramana describes as முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ) or ‘second persons’ are those things that are commonly described as ‘mental’ or ‘subjective’, whereas what he describes as படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ) or ‘third persons’ are those things that are commonly described as ‘physical’ or ‘objective’.

The ‘subjective’-‘objective’ distinction

In this context it is worth noting that though things that we experience only in our own mind are generally considered to be ‘subjective’, from the perspective of Sri Ramana’s teachings everything other than ‘I’ is actually objective. Mental phenomena are generally considered to be ‘subjective’ because they are — and can only be — experienced by only one subject (one person or sentient creature), whereas physical phenomena are generally considered to be ‘objective’ because they appear to be experienced (or at least potentially experienced) by many subjects (many people or sentient creatures).

When the terms ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ are used in this sense, their meaning is different to the more strict sense in which we would use them in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings, in which we would consider the only truly subjective thing to be the actual experiencing subject — the first person, ‘I’ — and we would consider everything that this subject experiences as other than itself to be objective.

Everything that is objective in this latter sense is either a second person or a third person. If it appears to us to be a mental phenomenon, it is a second person object, and if it appears to us to be a physical phenomenon, it is a third person object.

The unreality of the ‘second person’-‘third person’ distinction

However, though Sri Ramana described everything that is objective in this latter sense as முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ) or ‘second-and-third-persons’, his intention was not to teach us that there is any real difference between mental and physical phenomena, but was only to club them all together as objects or things that are other than ‘I’, because in order to know ‘I’ as it really is, we must ignore everything else and focus our entire attention only on ‘I’, the first person.

This is why he seldom if ever spoke of முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ) and படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ) separately, but almost invariably referred to them collectively முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ) or ‘second-and-third-persons’. The reason why he used these two words rather than just one word to describe all objects was not because physical phenomena are actually distinct from mental phenomena, but was only because they seem to us to be distinct.

As he repeatedly emphasised, all things that appear to be physical are actually only mental, because everything that we experience as other than ‘I’, the first person, is only a thought or idea that is created and experienced only by our own mind. Therefore, when he taught us that we must set aside (ignore) all thoughts in order to know ourself as we really are, he intended us to understand that the term ‘thoughts’ includes everything that appears to be other than ourself.

Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 14

In verse 14 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Sri Ramana says:

[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] உடனா — னென்னுமத்
தன்மையுண்டேன் முன்னிலைப டர்க்கைக டாமுளவாந்
தன்மையி னுண்மையைத் தானாய்ந்து — தன்மையறின்
முன்னிலைப டர்க்கை முடிவுற்றொன் றாயொளிருந்
தன்மையே தன்னிலைமை தான். [...]

[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] uḍaṉā — ṉeṉṉumat
taṉmaiyuṇḍēṉ muṉṉilaipa ḍarkkaiga ḍāmuḷavān
taṉmaiyi ṉuṇmaiyait tāṉāyndu — taṉmaiyaṟiṉ
muṉṉilaipa ḍarkkai muḍivuṯṟoṉ ḏṟāyoḷirun
taṉmaiyē taṉṉilaimai tāṉ. [...]

In Tamil verses words are fused together according to the rules of saṁdhi or conjunction and are then written divided into separate metrical feet, so to interpret a Tamil verse we first have to write a padacchēdam or ‘word-separation’ of it. The padacchēdam of this verse is as follows:

‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் தன்மை உண்டேல், முன்னிலை படர்க்கைகள் தாம் உள ஆம். தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து தன்மை அறின், முன்னிலை படர்க்கை முடிவு உற்று, ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் தன்மையே தன் நிலைமை தான்.

‘uḍal nāṉ’ eṉṉum a-t-taṉmai uṇḍēl, muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ tām uḷa-v-ām. taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu taṉmai aṟiṉ, muṉṉilai paḍarkkai muḍivu uṯṟu, oṉḏṟāy oḷirum taṉmaiyē taṉ nilaimai tāṉ.

The first four words, ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் (‘uḍal nāṉ’ eṉṉum a-t), were added by Sri Ramana when he wrote the kaliveṇbā version of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, in which he added such words between each pair of consecutive verses in order to link all the forty plus two verses together as a single long verse.

உடல் (uḍal) means ‘body’, நான் (nāṉ) means ‘I’, and என்னும் (eṉṉum) is a quotative relative participle (formed from the verb என், eṉ, to ‘say’ or ‘express’) that means ‘which is called’ (or simply ‘called’), but that can also be represented in English by inverted commas enclosing the meaning of the preceding word or clause. Thus ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் (‘uḍal nāṉ’ eṉṉum) is a relative clause that means ‘which is called “body [is] I”’ or ‘called “I [am this] body”’.

This relative clause qualifies அத் தன்மை (a-t-taṉmai), which means ‘that first person’. அ (a) is a distal demonstrative prefix meaning ‘that’, and the letter த் (t) is appended to it to form a conjunction with தன்மை (taṉmai), which in this context means ‘first person’. உண்டேல் (uṇḍēl) is a conditional form of உண்டு (uṇḍu) and therefore means ‘if [it] exists’. Thus ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் தன்மை உண்டேல் (‘uḍal nāṉ’ eṉṉum a-t-taṉmai uṇḍēl) is a conditional clause that means ‘if that first person called “I [am this] body” exists’.

முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ) is a plural compound noun meaning ‘second-and-third-persons’, and தாம் (tām) is a plural form of the pronoun தான் (tāṉ) and basically means ‘they’ or ‘themselves’, but when appended to a plural noun acts as an intensifier, adding emphasis to it in the sense of either ‘themselves’ or ‘certainly’. உள (uḷa) is an infinitive form of the verb உள் (uḷ), ‘to be’ or ‘to exist’, and ஆம் (ām) is a third person future form of the verb ஆ (ā) and means ‘will come into being’, ‘will happen’, ‘will occur’ or ‘will be’, so உளவாம் (uḷa-v-ām) means ‘will happen to be’ or ‘will appear to exist’. Thus முன்னில-படர்க்கைகள்-தாம் உளவாம் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ-tām uḷa-v-ām) means ‘second and third persons will certainly appear to exist’, so the entire first sentence of this verse means:

If that first person called ‘I [am this] body’ exists, second and third persons will [also] certainly appear to exist.

தன்மையின் (taṉmaiyiṉ) is an oblique case form (acting as a genitive form) of தன்மை (taṉmai), so means ‘of the first person’; உண்மையை (uṇmaiyai) is the accusative form of உண்மை (uṇmai), which means ‘existence’, ‘reality’, ‘truth’ or ‘nature’; தான் (tāṉ) is a pronoun that means ‘one’, ‘oneself’ or ‘self’; and ஆய்ந்து (āyndu) is a participle form of the verb ஆய் (āy), which means to ‘investigate’, ‘examine’ or ‘scrutinise’, so தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து (taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu) means ‘[by] oneself examining the reality of the first person’. In this clause தன்மை (taṉmai) is a nominative used as an accusative and means ‘one’s nature’, ‘one’s essence’ or ‘one’s reality’, and அறின் (aṟiṉ) is a conditional form of the verb அறி (aṟi), so means ‘if [one] knows’ or ‘if [one] experiences’. Thus தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து தன்மை அறின் (taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu taṉmai aṟiṉ) is a conditional clause that means ‘if one knows one’s essence [by] examining the reality of the first person’.

As explained already, முன்னிலை-படர்க்கை (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkai) means ‘second-and-third-persons’; முடிவு (muḍivu) means ‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘termination’ or ‘death’, and உற்று (uṯṟu) is a participle form of the verb உறு (uṟu), which means to ‘be’, ‘happen’, ‘occur’, ‘reach’, ‘undergo’ or ‘suffer’, so முடிவற்று (muḍivuṯṟu) means ‘reaching the end’, ‘undergoing termination’ or ‘ceasing to exist’. Thus முன்னிலை படர்க்கை முடிவுற்று (muṉṉilai paḍarkkai muḍivuṯṟu) means ‘second and third persons ceasing [or having ceased] to exist’.

ஒன்றாய் (oṉḏṟāy) is an adverbial form of ஒன்று (oṉḏṟu), ‘one’, and therefore means ‘singly’ or ‘as one’, and ஒளிரும் (oḷirum) is a relative participle form of the verb ஒளிர் (oḷir), which means to ‘shine’, so ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் (oṉḏṟāy oḷirum) is a relative clause that means ‘which shines singly’ or ‘which shines as one’. தன்மையே (taṉmai-y-ē) is an intensified form of தன்மை (taṉmai), which in this context means ‘the essential reality’, and the intensifying suffix ஏ (ē) means ‘alone’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’. தன் (taṉ) is an oblique case form of தான் (tāṉ), which means ‘one’, ‘oneself’ or ‘self’, and in this context the oblique case can either represent the genitive case, ‘one’s own’, or serve to form the first part of a compound, ‘self-’; நிலைமை (nilaimai) means ‘state’, ‘nature’ or ‘reality’, so தன் நிலைமை (taṉ nilaimai) means ‘one’s own state’, ‘the self-state’ or ‘the state of self’. The final word தான் (tāṉ) acts here as an intensifier meaning ‘itself’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’. Thus ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் தன்மையே தன் நிலைமை தான் (oṉḏṟāy oḷirum taṉmaiyē taṉ nilaimai tāṉ) means ‘only the essential reality that shines as one [is] truly the state of self’ or ‘only the singly shining essence [is] truly one’s own [natural] state [or reality]’, so the final sentence of this verse means:

If one knows one’s essence [by] examining the reality of the first person, second and third persons will cease to exist, [and] only the essential reality that [then remains and] shines as one [is] truly the state of self.

Thus this entire verse means:

If that first person called ‘I [am this] body’ exists, second and third persons will [also] certainly appear to exist. If one knows one’s essence [by] examining the reality of the first person, second and third persons will cease to exist, [and] only the essential reality that [then remains and] shines as one [is] truly the state of self.

The reason why second and third persons will cease to exist if one knows one’s essential self by examining the reality of the first person is that such self-examination will expose the unreality — the non-existence — of the first person, and without the first person second and third persons cannot exist.

The fundamental principle of Sri Ramana’s teachings

This is the fundamental principle of Sri Ramana’s teachings: second and third persons appear to exist only so long as the first person appears to exist, and the first person appears to exist only so long as it does not attend to itself; if it attends to itself solely and exclusively — excluding from its attention even the slightest trace of any second or third person — it will cease to exist as the first person and will remain only as the one non-dual reality, the pristine self-conscious being ‘I am’.

The false state in which we experience ourself as a separate first person or subject that experiences second and third person objects is a state of duality or multiplicity, and it is sustained only by our diverting our attention away from ourself towards second and third persons, which appear to be other than ourself. When we cease to divert our attention away from ourself in this manner, this appearance of multiplicity will cease, and the non-dual consciousness of being that will then remain shining as the one essential reality is our natural state — the state in which we experience ourself as we really are.

Pramāda: the first person seems to exist only because we do not attend to it

Second and third persons seem to exist only because we attend to them, whereas the first person seems to exist only because we do not attend to it (or in more technical philosophical terminology, only because of pramāda or self-negligence). This is a fundamental and extremely important difference between the nature of the first person and that of second and third persons, and it is a difference that is not so clearly or emphatically expressed in any scriptural texts or in any of the surviving records of the teachings of any sage prior to Sri Ramana as it is in his written and oral teachings.

This fundamental difference between the first person and second and third persons is one of the crucial reasons why ātma-vicāra (self-investigation or self-attentiveness) is the only means by which we can experience ourself as we really are and thereby destroy the illusion that the mind (the ego or first person) is real.

The reason for this fundamental difference is that the first person is conscious whereas second and third persons are non-conscious. Because they are non-conscious, second and third persons appear to exist only when they are known by the first person, which is the only consciousness that can experience their seeming existence. And because the first person is the consciousness (the subject) that knows or experiences second and third persons (all objects), it appears to exist as such only so long as it is experiencing any of them. If it ceases to experience any of them by attending exclusively to itself, it will cease to be the first person that it now appears to be, and will remain instead as pure non-dual self-conscious being.

Therefore, if we attend to the first person, it will disappear, because it is truly non-existent as such, and when it disappears all second and third persons will disappear along with it, because their seeming existence depends upon its seeming existence.

The practical application of the rope-snake analogy

Just as the imaginary snake will disappear only if we look at it carefully and thereby recognise that it is only a rope, so the false first person will disappear only if we look at it carefully and thereby recognise that it is only the one infinite, indivisible and otherless space of pure self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

Though this analogy of the rope that appears to be a snake was used by many sages before Sri Ramana, the manner in which they applied it did not show that it can be a vital clue to the means by which we can destroy the illusion of the mind, because they generally used it to illustrate that the world (the totality of all third person objects) is illusory, like the snake, and that brahman (the absolute reality, which is our own essential self) is the underlying reality, like the rope.

Though it is true that the world is a figment of our imagination, like the snake, and that brahman is the reality underlying its false appearance, just as the rope is the reality underlying the false appearance of the snake, this application of this analogy fails if we try to extend it further by inferring that just as the snake will be found to be a rope if we look at it carefully, the world will be found to be brahman if we look at it carefully.

No matter how carefully we scrutinise the world or any other second or third person object, their illusory nature and the true nature of their underlying reality will not be revealed, because by attending to them we are sustaining and perpetuating their seeming reality. Their unreality will be revealed only if we scrutinise the first person, the ego, which is the false foundation upon which their seeming existence rests.

We can experience brahman — the ultimate reality that underlies the false appearance of both the first person and all the second and third persons that it experiences — only by looking carefully at the first person, the impostor who poses as ‘I’, which is truly the nature of brahman. Only if we look carefully at this false ‘I’ (which is a confused mixture of the true consciousness ‘I’ with a collection of non-conscious adjuncts, including a physical body and everything associated with it), will we be able to experience our real ‘I’ (which is pure consciousness of being, uncontaminated by any adjuncts).

Sri Ramana’s teachings are a subtle refinement of advaita vēdanta

Thus Sri Ramana’s teachings are a subtle refinement of the ancient philosophy of advaita vēdanta. However, though the refinement that he has given us is very subtle, it is nevertheless extremely valuable, because it enables us to understand both the efficacy and the actual practice of ātma-vicāra so much more clearly than we could by studying any of the earlier texts of advaita vēdanta.

One clear example of the subtle refinement of advaita vēdanta that Sri Ramana has given us lies in the fact that whereas in earlier texts of advaita vēdanta we were taught that everything is brahman (sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma, ‘All this indeed is brahman’, as stated in Chāndogyōpaniṣad 3.14.1), in verse 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Sri Ramana has taught us that everything is actually the ego (அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம், ahandaiyē yāvum ām, ‘The ego indeed is everything’).

It is of course true that everything is ultimately brahman, because brahman is the fundamental reality underlying the false appearance of everything else, but though brahman is the ultimate foundation upon which the seeming reality of everything else rests, the more immediate — the intermediate — foundation upon which everything rests is only the ego, the false first person.

Everything else (all second and third persons) seems to exist only because the ego (the first person) seems to exist, so the ego is the seed, embryo, root and cause of the false appearance of everything else. In other words, the ego is the source and substance of everything else, and everything else is only an expansion of the ego. This is why Sri Ramana emphatically declared, ‘அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம்’ (ahandaiyē yāvum ām), ‘The ego indeed is everything’.

If we look carefully at this ego, we will discover that it is actually nothing other than brahman, so brahman is indeed the ultimate reality and substance of everything. But in order for us to experience this truth, it is extremely useful to appreciate the fact that the ego is the essential link — the intermediate foundation — between brahman and everything else, because we can experience brahman as it is only by carefully attending to the ego and not by attending — no matter how carefully — to anything else whatsoever.

Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 26

In verse 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, besides teaching us this important truth that ‘the ego indeed is everything’, Sri Ramana reiterates much of the same truth that he taught us in verse 14, but using other words, as follows:

[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] — கருவா
மகந்தையுண் டாயி னனைத்துமுண் டாகு
மகந்தையின் றேலின் றனைத்து — மகந்தையே
யாவுமா மாதலால் யாதிதென்று நாடலே
யோவுதல் யாவுமென வோர். [...]

[... ... ... ... ... ... ...] — karuvā
mahandaiyuṇ ḍāyi ṉaṉaittumuṇ ḍāhu
mahandaiyiṉ ḏṟēliṉ ḏṟaṉaittu — mahandaiyē
yāvumā mādalāl yādideṉḏṟu nādalē
yōvudal yāvumeṉa vōr. [...]

The padacchēdam of this verse is as follows:

கரு ஆம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின், அனைத்தும் உண்டாகும்; அகந்தை இன்றேல், இன்று அனைத்தும். அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம். ஆதலால் ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் என ஓர்.

karu ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ, aṉaittum uṇḍāhum; ahandai iṉḏṟēl, iṉḏṟu aṉaittum. ahandaiyē yāvum ām. ādalāl ‘yādu idu?’ eṉḏṟu nādalē ōvudal yāvum eṉa ōr.

கரு (karu) is a Tamil word derived from the Sanskrit word garbha and means ‘womb’, ‘embryo’, ‘germ’, ‘seed’, ‘mould’, ‘matrix’, ‘efficient cause’, ‘substance’ or ‘foundation’; and ஆம் (ām) is here a relative participle form of the verb ஆ (ā) and means ‘which is’, so கருவாம் (karu-v-ām) is a relative clause that means ‘which is the womb [embryo, germ, seed, substance or foundation]’.

This relative clause qualifies அகந்தை (ahandai), which is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word ahaṁtā and which means ‘I-ness’ or ‘ego’. உண்டாயின் (uṇḍāyiṉ) is a conditional form of the verb உண்டா (uṇḍā), so it means ‘if [it] comes into existence’ or ‘if [it] arises’. Thus கரு ஆம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின் (karu ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ) is a conditional clause that means ‘if the ego, which is the embryo [seed, substance or foundation], comes into existence’.

அனைத்தும் (aṉaittum) means ‘all’, ‘everything’ or ‘the whole’, and உண்டாகும் (uṇḍāhum) is a third person future form of உண்டா (uṇḍā), so it literally means ‘[it] will come into existence’ or ‘[it] will arise’. However, in Tamil the future tense is often used as an habitual present tense — that is, to express an action or state that happens habitually, usually, typically or invariably — so உண்டாகும் (uṇḍāhum) can also be translated as ‘[it] comes into existence’ or ‘[it] arises’. Thus the first sentence of this verse, கரு ஆம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின், அனைத்தும் உண்டாகும் (karu ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ, aṉaittum uṇḍāhum), means:

If the ego, which is the embryo [seed, substance or foundation], comes into existence, everything comes into existence.

In the second sentence, அகந்தை இன்றேல், இன்று அனைத்தும் (ahandai iṉḏṟēl, iṉḏṟu aṉaittum), Sri Ramana states the other side of the same coin:

If the ego does not exist, everything does not exist.

In this sentence, இன்றேல் (iṉḏṟēl) is a conditional form of இன்று (iṉḏṟu), which acts as a finite verb expressing the negation of existence. Thus அகந்தை இன்றேல் (ahandai iṉḏṟēl) is a conditional clause that means ‘if the ego does not exist’, and இன்று அனைத்தும் (iṉḏṟu aṉaittum) is the main clause and means ‘everything does not exist’.

Then in the third sentence, அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம் (ahandaiyē yāvum ām), Sri Ramana states emphatically:

The ego indeed is everything.

In this sentence the suffix ஏ (ē) that is appended to அகந்தை (ahandai) is an intensifier that means ‘alone’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’, so அகந்தையே (ahandai-y-ē) means ‘the ego indeed’. யாவும் (yāvum), like அனைத்தும் (aṉaittum), means ‘all’, ‘everything’ or ‘the whole’, and ஆம் (ām) is a third person future (or habitual present) form of the verb ஆ (ā), so in this context means ‘is’.

Finally in the fourth sentence, ஆதலால் ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் என ஓர் (ādalāl ‘yādu idu?’ eṉḏṟu nādalē ōvudal yāvum eṉa ōr), Sri Ramana concludes:

Therefore, know that investigating [or scrutinising] ‘what is this [ego]?’ is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything.

In this sentence ஆதலால் (ādalāl) means ‘therefore’; யாது (yādu) is an interrrogative pronoun that means ‘what’ or ‘which’; இது (idu) is the neuter singular proximal demonstrative pronoun, ‘this’ or ‘it’, and refers here to the ego; and என்று (eṉḏṟu) is a quotative verbal participle (formed from the verb என், eṉ) that means ‘saying’, ‘thus’ or ‘that’, but that can also be represented in English by inverted commas enclosing the meaning of the preceding word or clause. Thus யாது இது என்று (yādu idu eṉḏṟu) is a quotative clause that means ‘what is this [ego]?’.

நாடலே (nādal-ē) is an intensified form of நாடல் (nādal), which is a verbal noun (formed from the verb நாடு, nādu) that means ‘investigating’, ‘examining’, ‘exploring’, ‘searching’, ‘scrutinising’, ‘watching’, ‘attending to’ or ‘knowing’, and the intensifying suffix ஏ (ē) means ‘alone’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’. ஓவுதல் (ōvudal) is a verbal noun (formed from the verb ஓவு, ōvu) that means ‘giving up’ or ‘renouncing’, and யாவும் (yāvum) means ‘everything’, so ஓவுதல் யாவும் (ōvudal yāvum) means ‘giving up everything’. என (eṉa) is an infinitive form of the verb என் (eṉ), to ‘say’, that acts here as a quotative verbal participle meaning ‘that’ or ‘thus’; and ஓர் (ōr) means ‘know’.

Thus this entire verse means:

If the ego, which is the embryo [seed, substance or foundation], comes into existence, everything comes into existence. If the ego does not exist, everything does not exist. The ego indeed is everything. Therefore, know that investigating [or scrutinising] ‘what is this [ego]?’ is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything.

The reason why investigating ‘what is this ego?’ is giving up everything is that everything exists only so long as the ego exists, and the ego exists only so long as we do not carefully scrutinise it in order to know what it really is.

When we investigate and know what it really is, we will discover that it is not the finite body-bound consciousness that it now appears to be, but is only the infinite consciousness of pure being, ‘I am’, which knows nothing other than itself. When the body-bound ego is thus found to be non-existent, everything else that it appeared to know will also be found to be non-existent, and only beginningless, endless and undivided being-consciousness-bliss (anādi ananta akhaṇḍa sat-cit-ānanda) will remain as the sole reality (as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 28 of Upadēśa Undiyār).

Parallels between verses 14 and 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu

There are clear parallels between this verse and verse 14. தன்மை (taṉmai), the first person, is அகந்தை (ahandai), the ego, and முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ), second and third persons, are அனைத்தும் (aṉaittum) or யாவும் (yāvum), everything other than the ego.

Therefore, ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் தன்மை உண்டேல், முன்னில-படர்க்கைகள்-தாம் உளவாம் (‘uḍal nāṉ’ eṉṉum a-t-taṉmai uṇḍēl, muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ-tām uḷa-v-ām), ‘If that first person called “I [am this] body” exists, second and third persons will certainly appear to exist’, means essentially the same as கருவாம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின், அனைத்தும் உண்டாகும்; அகந்தை இன்றேல், இன்று அனைத்தும் (karu-v-ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ, aṉaittum uṇḍāhum; ahandai iṉḏṟēl, iṉḏṟu aṉaittum), ‘If the ego, which is the embryo, comes into existence, everything comes into existence; if the ego does not exist, everything does not exist’.

Likewise, தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து தன்மை அறின், முன்னிலை படர்க்கை முடிவுற்று [...] (taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu taṉmai aṟiṉ, muṉṉilai paḍarkkai muḍivuṯṟu [...]), ‘If one knows one’s essence [by] scrutinising the reality of the first person, second and third persons ceasing to exist [...]’, implies that ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் (‘yādu idu?’ eṉḏṟu nādalē ōvudal yāvum), ‘scrutinising “what is this [ego]?” is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything’.

When the ego and everything else cease to exist as a result of our vigilantly scrutinising the ego, what will remain is தன் நிலைமை தான் (taṉ nilaimai tāṉ), ‘only [our real and natural] state of self’, which is ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் தன்மையே (oṉḏṟāy oḷirum taṉmaiyē), ‘only the essential reality that shines as [the] one [infinite and indivisible whole]’.

Interpreting the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ individually

By comparing these two verses, we should clearly understand that when Sri Ramana uses the term முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ), ‘second-and-third-persons’, he means everything that appears to be other than the first person, the ego. How we choose to interpret முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai), ‘second persons’, and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), ‘third persons’, individually is a secondary matter, and one that leaves room for flexibility, so long as whatever interpretation we choose means that together they make up the totality of everything other than ‘I’, the first person or ego.

The value of any interpretation of these two terms individually depends upon its explanatory power — that is, upon how much it helps us to understand Sri Ramana’s teachings as a whole. As I explained above, I consider that one of the most useful interpretations of them is that முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai), ‘second persons’, means everything that appears to be mental, and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), ‘third persons’, means everything that appears to be physical.

I consider this interpretation to be so useful because the seeming distinction between the mental and the physical appears to us to be so fundamental that we naturally divide all the objects that we experience into these two categories. Whether this distinction is true or not does not alter the fact that in our experience it appears to be true and fundamental.

This distinction appears to be so fundamental that philosophers have written countless volumes arguing whether the mental and the physical are two separate substances, whether one is merely a property of the other, whether all physical things are in fact mental, or whether all mental things are in fact physical. However, philosophers who lack the all-transcending experience of sages like Sri Ramana are unable to resolve such questions with any degree of certainty, because by its mere power of reasoning the human mind cannot know the truth that underlies the appearance of its seeming existence, so to know this truth we have to turn our mind selfwards, away from all thoughts, as taught by Sri Ramana and other self-experiencing sages.

Sri Ramana’s verdict on the question of the relationship between the mental and the physical (a verdict that, unlike the beliefs of other philosophers, is based not merely upon mental speculation or reasoning, but upon the firm evidence of his own clear self-experience) is that all physical things are actually mental (because everything that the mind experiences other than its own being, ‘I am’, is just one of its own thoughts or ideas), but that even the mental is not actually real.

So long as the mind (the first person or subject) appears to be real, all the objects (the second and third persons) that it experiences also appear to be real, and so long as it continues to experience such objects, the illusion that it is real will persist, because its seeming existence is sustained by its feeding upon objective experiences — that is, upon experiences of mental objects (which are second persons) and physical objects (which are third persons).

Therefore, in order to destroy the illusion that the mind and everything experienced by it are real, we must attend exclusively to the first person (the experiencing subject, ‘I’) and thereby cease attending to any second or third person. Whenever we do not attend to any second or third person, they cease to exist (as happens whenever we are asleep), but we cannot destroy the mind unless we focus our entire attention keenly and vigilantly upon the first person in order to experience what it really is: ‘who am I?’

Interpretation in Happiness and the Art of Being

In Happiness and the Art of Being I have interpreted the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ in much the same way that I have done here, and I have discussed this interpretation on pages 226, 230-1 and 397-403. On pages 397-403 I wrote:

[...] Sri Ramana frequently used the Tamil equivalents of the English terms ‘first person’, ‘second person’ and ‘third person’.

Since he used these terms in place of the usual philosophical terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’, he in effect divided all the objects known by us into two distinct groups. That is, he used the Tamil equivalent of the term ‘second person’ to denote all those mental objects or images that we recognise as being thoughts that exist only within our own mind, and the Tamil equivalent of the term ‘third person’ to denote all those mental objects or images that we imagine we are perceiving outside ourself through one or more of our five senses.

Whereas the ‘second person’ objects are those objects or thoughts that we recognise as existing only within the space of our own mind, the ‘third person’ objects are those objects or thoughts that we imagine we are perceiving in physical space, outside our mind. Thus the second person objects are those objects that we recognise as existing only within the field of our mental conception, while the third person objects are those objects that we imagine to exist outside the field of our mental conception, in the seemingly separate field of our sense perception.

[...] In reference to the act of knowing, the term ‘second person’ means whatever we know most directly or immediately, while the term ‘third person’ means whatever we know more indirectly or mediately.

Compared to the objects that we perceive through the media of our five senses, the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind are known by us more directly or immediately, and hence they are our ‘second person’ thoughts or objects. Since the objects that we think we perceive outside ourself are known by us not only through the primary medium of our mind but also through the secondary media of our five senses, they are a comparatively indirect or more mediate form of knowledge, and hence they are our ‘third person’ thoughts or objects.

Though in Tamil these ‘three persons’ are collectively called the ‘three places’ or mū-v-iḍam, individually they are not called the ‘first place’, ‘second place’ and ‘third place’, but are called respectively the ‘self-ness place’, the ‘place standing in front’ and the ‘place that has spread out’. The actual term used in Tamil to denote the first person is taṉmai-y-iḍam, or more commonly just taṉmai, which etymologically means ‘self-ness’ or ‘selfhood’, and which therefore denotes our sense of ‘self’, the subject or first thought ‘I’. The Tamil term for the second person is muṉṉilai, which etymologically means ‘what stands in front’, and which therefore from a philosophical viewpoint denotes our most intimate thoughts, those mental objects or images that figuratively speaking stand immediately in front of our mind’s eye, and that we therefore recognise as being thoughts that exist only within our own mind. And the Tamil term for the third person is paḍarkkai, which etymologically means ‘what spreads out, ramifies, becomes diffused, expands or pervades’, and which therefore from a philosophical viewpoint denotes those thoughts that have spread out or expanded through the channel of our five senses, and that have thereby been projected as the objects of this material world, which we seem to perceive through those five senses, and which we therefore imagine to be objects existing outside ourself.

The space of our mind is thus divided into three distinct parts, areas or fields, which we can picture as three concentric circles. The most intimate part of our mind, the innermost of these three circles, which is also their central point, is our first person thought ‘I’, our limited individual consciousness that feels ‘I am this body’, ‘I am such-and-such a person’. The next most interior or intimate part of our mind, the field or circle that most closely surrounds our first person thought ‘I’, is all our second person thoughts, the objects that we recognise as existing only within our own mind, and that we therefore consider to be the field of our mental conception. The most exterior part of our mind, the outermost field or circle surrounding our first person thought ‘I’, is all our third person thoughts, the objects that we imagine we perceive in an external physical space, and that we therefore mistake as existing outside our mind. Thus the entire external universe and the physical space in which we imagine it to be contained is just the outermost part of the space that is our own mind, the part of that space which we consider to be the field of our sense perception.

Though in our imagination we make a distinction between the thoughts that we recognise as existing within ourself and the material objects that we imagine we perceive outside ourself, this distinction is actually false, because both are in fact only thoughts that we form within our own mind by our power of imagination. Whereas we recognise some of our thoughts to be only images that we form in our mind, we wrongly imagine certain of our thoughts to be objects that actually exist outside us, and that are therefore distinct from our thoughts and our thinking mind. In fact, however, even the objects that we think we perceive outside ourself are only our own thoughts — images that we have formed within our own mind.

Nevertheless, though this distinction between our second person thoughts and our third person thoughts is illusory, in our mind it appears to be quite real. So long as we imagine that we are perceiving objects outside ourself, we will continue to imagine that there is a real distinction between those objects and the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind. Therefore this seeming distinction between our second person objects, the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind, and our third person objects, the objects that we think we perceive outside ourself, will continue to appear to be real so long as our thinking mind appears to be real.

Because it appears to us to be real, Sri Ramana allows for this seeming distinction between the second person and third person objects, but he does so only to make clear to us that the term ‘objects’ includes not only all the material objects we think we perceive outside ourself, but also all the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind. Even our most intimate thoughts or feelings are only objects known by us, and are accordingly distinct from us.

Therefore, when Sri Ramana advises us to withdraw our attention from all the ‘second persons’ and ‘third persons’ and to focus it instead on the ‘first person’, what he wants us to understand is that we should withdraw our attention from all objects — both those that we recognise as being merely our own thoughts or feelings, and those that we mistake to be objects existing outside ourself — and fix it only upon our sense of self, ‘I’, which we always experience as being here and now, in this precise present point in space and time. In other words, in order to know our real self, we should withdraw our attention from all our thoughts — both our second person thoughts, which we recognise as being thoughts, and our third person thoughts, which we imagine to be material objects existing outside ourself — and should instead focus it wholly and exclusively upon our ever-present self-consciousness, our fundamental consciousness of our own essential being, ‘I am’. [...]

Our individual ‘selfhood’ or taṉmai, which is the adjunct-mixed consciousness that feels ‘I am this body’, appears to exist only because we have failed to investigate or scrutinise the underlying truth or ‘am’-ness of it closely. If we scrutinise this false first person consciousness closely in order to know its underlying truth or reality, we will discover it to be nothing other than our non-dual consciousness of our own being, ‘I am’, which is our real and essential self, our true state of mere being.

When we thus discover that our real ‘selfhood’ is merely our non-dual self-consciousness ‘I am’, we will thereby discover that our false individual ‘selfhood’, which is our distorted and dualistic consciousness ‘I am this body’, and which by thus identifying itself with a physical body has limited itself within the bounds of time and space, is a mere apparition that has never truly existed. Just as the illusory snake, which we imagined that we saw lying on the ground, disappears as soon as we see that it is nothing but a rope, so the illusory first person will disappear as soon as we discover that it is nothing but our real non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’. When this illusory first person, our false individual ‘selfhood’, thus disappears, all the second and third person objects or thoughts, which were created and known only by this false first person, will disappear along with it.

An alternative interpretation in Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana

Though I interpreted the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ in this way in Happiness and the Art of Being, and though I consider this to be generally the most appropriate and useful way in which they can be interpreted, in certain contexts they can be usefully interpreted in other ways. For example, on page 2 of Part Two of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி (Śrī Ramaṇa Vaṙi), the Tamil original of The Path of Sri Ramana, Sri Sadhu Om wrote:

இந்த முப்பொருள்களில் உயிர் அல்லது ஜீவன் எனப்படுவது நாம்; அதாவது தன்மைப் பொருள். புலன்களால் நம் முன்னிலையில் நாம் காணும் (உணரும்) இவ் வுலகம் முன்னிலைப் பொருள். கடவுளும், இவ் வுலகப் பொருள்களில் நமது தற்சமயப் புலனறிவுக் கெட்டாது அப்பாலுள்ள பொருள்களும் படர்க்கைப் பொருள்க ளாகும்.

inda mu-p-poruḷgaḷil uyir alladu jīvaṉ eṉappaḍuvadu nām; adāvadu taṉmai-p poruḷ. pulaṉgaḷāl nam muṉṉilaiyil nām kāṇum (uṇarum) i-v v-ulaham muṉṉilai-p poruḷ. kaḍavuḷum, i-v v-ulaha-p poruḷgaḷil namadu taṯsamaya-p pulaṉ-aṟivu-k k-eṭṭādu appāl-uḷḷa poruḷgaḷum paḍarkkai-p poruḷgaḷ āhum.

On page 2 of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana this paragraph has been translated as follows:

Among these three entities, what is called the soul or jiva is ‘we’, the first person. This world which we perceive in front of us through the five senses is a second person object, while God and these objects of the world which we do not now directly perceive through the senses are third person objects.

However, a more accurate translation of it would be:

Among these three entities [soul, world and God], what is called the soul or jīva is ‘we’; that is, the first person entity. This world that we see (experience) in front of us by [our] senses is the second person entity. God and the objects of this world that are currently beyond the reach of our senses are third person entities.

The reason why Sri Sadhu Om thus described the portion of the world that currently appears to be ‘standing in front’ (muṉṉilai) of us as the ‘second person’ (muṉṉilai) and everything else that does not currently appear to be standing physically in front of us as the ‘third person’ (paḍarkkai) is that he wrote this at the beginning of the chapter on ‘The World and God’, so at that preliminary stage he was describing the soul, world and God as they are generally conceived to be by people who have not thought deeply about their nature.

His aim in the preliminary pages of this chapter was to make us understand that investigating (doing research on) the world and God (which are second and third person objects) without first investigating ourself (the first person) is futile, and for this purpose it was useful to interpret the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ as he did.

However, later on in the same chapter he explains very clearly that the world that appears to be in front (and outside) of us is actually only a mental projection — a figment of our own imagination — so from that point of view it does not really ‘stand in front’ of us but is only a series of thoughts, and since it appears to be outside rather than inside the mind, it can be more appropriately described as a third person than as a second person (that is, as something that is mentally ‘spread out’ rather than ‘standing in front’).

The perspective from which he explained the meaning of முன்னிலைப் பொருள்கள் (muṉṉilai-p poruḷgaḷ), ‘second person objects’, and படர்க்கைப் பொருள்கள் (paḍarkkai-p poruḷgaḷ), ‘third person objects’, in the preliminary pages of this chapter is a physical perspective — the perspective that we all normally have when we experience the physical world as if it were something that really exists outside and independent of our mind — whereas the perspective from which I have explained their meaning (both here in this article and in Happiness and the Art of Being) is a mental perspective — the perspective that we can adopt if we reflect upon the rationality of Sri Ramana’s teaching that what we call ‘the world’ is actually only our own thoughts (because it is only a series of perceptual experiences that appear in our mind due to māyā, our self-deceptive power of imagination, just like the world that we experience in a dream).

Sri Sadhu Om wrote from such a physical perspective in the preliminary pages of this chapter because this is the ‘common sense’ perspective that we all normally have when we do not consider the intrinsically mental nature of all our experience (other than our experience of our own being, ‘I am’), but after the first ten pages in Tamil (1998 edition) or the first fourteen pages in English (2006 edition) — that is, from the paragraph in which he begins by explaining that the etymological meaning of the Sanskrit word lōka, which means ‘world’, is ‘what is seen’ or ‘what is perceived’ (because it is derived from the verb lōk, which means to see, behold, perceive or know) — he begins to explain Sri Ramana’s teaching that the world is only a creation of our own mind, and he wrote the remaining eighty per cent of this chapter from such a mental (rather than physical) perspective.

Interpretations must be appropriate to the context and the audience

After I wrote Happiness and the Art of Being I wondered whether anyone would notice and ask me about the difference between my interpretation of the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ and the interpretation of them given by Sri Sadhu Om the preliminary pages of the first chapter of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana, and recently a friend did write to me asking about this. In his e-mail he quoted the paragraph on page 2 of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana referred to above and contrasted it with the following paragraph on page 226 of Happiness and the Art of Being:

When describing the dependence of all our other thoughts upon our primal thought ‘I’, Sri Ramana refers to the latter as the ‘first person’, and the former as the ‘second and third persons’. Which of our other thoughts does he refer to as ‘second persons’, and which does he refer to as ‘third persons’? Our ‘second person’ thoughts are all those thoughts that we recognise as existing only in our own mind, and which we therefore feel are most close and intimate to us, whereas our ‘third person’ thoughts are all those thoughts that we imagine to be external objects that we perceive through one or more of our five senses.

The rest of this article is adapted from the reply that I wrote to him.

Though Sri Sadhu Om often explained the meaning of muṉṉilai (second person) and paḍarkkai (third person) as he did on page 2 of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana, he also sometimes said that our thoughts are muṉṉilai and the objects of the world are paḍarkkai, so I once asked him about this, and he explained that the explanations he gives are always intended to be appropriate to the context and to the understanding of whoever he is talking with or writing for.

As he explained, people generally consider that our most immediate knowledge is our knowledge of whatever we are currently perceiving through our senses, and that our knowledge of other things is less immediate, and they consider thus because their minds are constantly extroverted, dwelling only on things that appear to be outside themselves. For such people it is appropriate to describe their present sensory experiences as muṉṉilai (‘that which stands in front’), and all the other things that they believe to be far away in time or space as paḍarkkai (‘that which has spread out [and become remote]’).

However, people of more subtle understanding recognise that we know our thoughts more directly and immediately than we know any object that appears to be outside ourself (though in fact such objects are not really outside ourself, but are only thoughts in our own mind), and for such people it is more appropriate to describe those thoughts that we recognise as thoughts as muṉṉilai, and all the other thoughts that appear to be external objects as paḍarkkai (as I explain in more detail on pages 397-403 of Happiness and the Art of Being, extracts from which I have quoted above).

One example of a case in which Sri Sadhu Om referred to thoughts as muṉṉilai-p-poruḷgaḷ (second person objects) and external objects as paḍarkkai-p-poruḷgaḷ (third person objects) is in chapter 7 of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி (Śrī Ramaṇa Vaṙi, the Tamil original of The Path of Sri Ramana) Part One (4th edition, 1998, pages 130-1), where he says:

முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைப் பொருள்களாகிய எண்ணங்களையும் இதரப் பொருள்களையும் பார்த்துக்கொண்டே யிருக்கும்படி எவ்வளவு காலம் இந்த மனம் அனுமதிக்கப்ப்டுகின்றதோ அதுவரை மனம் அடங்கவே அடங்காது.

muṉṉilai-paḍarkkai-p poruḷgaḷāhiya eṇṇaṅgaḷaiyum itara-p poruḷgaḷaiyum pārttu-k-koṇḍē y-irukkumpaḍi e-vv-aḷavu kālum inda maṉam aṉumatikkappaḍukiṉḏṟadō adu-varai maṉam aḍaṅgavē aḍaṅgādu.

This sentence means:

So long as this mind is allowed to continue watching [or attending to] thoughts and other objects, which are [respectively] second and third person objects, it will most certainly not subside.

(This sentence is part of one of the portions that Sri Sadhu Om added in the 1985 edition of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி, so unfortunately it does not appear in the current edition of The Path of Sri Ramana, which was translated before 1985.)

I once told Sri Sadhu Om that I found the latter explanation of the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ to be generally more useful than the former, and I asked him which he considered more appropriate. He replied jokingly, ‘If you ask me in private, I will agree with you, but if you ask me in public, I will cast my vote with the majority in favour of the former’, because as he went on to explain, for the majority of people the objects we see in front of us appear to be known more closely than our thoughts about distant objects or God, and we should always explain subtle things in a way that can be understood by the people to whom we are explaining them.

He also sometimes joked when explaining the terms second person and third person in the former way, ‘Michael will not agree with us. His second person objects are everyone else’s third person objects, and his third person objects are everyone else’s second person objects’, and when explaining the terms second person and third person in the latter way he sometimes referred to them jokingly as ‘Michael’s second person’ and ‘Michael’s third person’.

On a more serious note, the most important point that he made clear about these terms muṉṉilai (second person) and paḍarkkai (third person) is that it does not actually matter how we interpret each of them individually so long as we understand that Sri Ramana used them collectively to encompass all objects — everything that we experience as other than ourself — that is, both those objects that we recognise as being our own thoughts and those objects that seem to exist outside and independent of our mind.

As Sri Sadhu Om explained, the reason why it does not actually matter how we interpret each of these terms individually is that all such objects are anātman (‘non-self’ or other than ourself) and must therefore be rejected or ignored by us if we wish to know ourself as we really are. As Sri Ramana said in the seventeenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?), there is no use in classifying rubbish that is all to be collectively discarded, and every object — whether it is classified as a second person object or a third person object — is to be discarded like such rubbish when we practise self-attentiveness in order to know who or what we really are.

Though Sri Ramana divided all objects into these two groups, second person objects and third person objects, he did not do so with an intention that we should believe that there is any significant distinction between them, but only with the intention that we should understand that all objects — whether they appear to be mental objects (thoughts) or objects outside our mind — must be ignored if we are to focus our entire attention upon the first person, ‘I’, and thereby experience our real nature as it truly is.

We should seek guru only within ourself

2010-08-12T08:26:00.001+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

My question is about the role of the teacher. When you read about spiritual practice it seems to me that most writers consider the intimate contact with a living (enlightened) teacher to be necessary. Since I don’t have a teacher and I can’t see how to meet one anytime soon (living in a small town far away from anyone in the least interested in atma-vichara) these writers create a nagging doubt in me. Am I just fooling myself? Should I just give up and live my life to the best of my ability and try to be ‘normal’?

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

People who talk of the need for a ‘living’ guru have clearly failed to understand the true nature of guru, and when they have failed to understand this they also fail to understand the true role of guru.

As Sri Sadhu Om used to say, guru alone is living, and we are all dead. That is, guru is the one ever-living reality, and we who have forgotten this reality are in effect dead, because we take this mortal body to be ourself.

Sri Ramana always emphasised that guru is not a body but the eternal self, and since self is immortal, guru is by definition ever living.

If by ‘living’ guru we mean a person whose body is living, we are mistaking a body to be guru. Such a ‘living’ guru will one day be a dead guru, so what is the use of such a guru for us, who seek immortal bliss?

You say that you understand how to practise atma-vicāra. How did you come to understand this? Was it not by studying the teachings of Sri Ramana? Is it not clear then that he is your guru?

Guru is ever living in our heart as ‘I am’, so to experience him as he is we must turn our attention inwards, away from all outward appearances. The only reason why guru appears outside in human form is to teach us the need to turn within and discover that he is none other than our own essential self. When he has given this teaching, the body in which he appeared has served its purpose, so when we have read his teachings we no longer have any need of any outward guru (other than his teachings to remind us and support us whenever our effort to turn inwards falters).

If we go in search of another ‘living’ guru because the body in which our guru appeared is dead, that ‘living’ guru can do no more than give us the same teaching: to find the real guru you must turn within. But if we have failed to understand this simple teaching from Sri Ramana, how can any other guru help us?

Belief in the need for a ‘living’ guru will only appeal to those whose mind are strongly extroverted, still believing that the appearance of this external world and all the people in it is real. But if we have understood Sri Ramana’s teachings, we will not feel any need for any outward help other than his teachings.

If his teachings have not convinced us that we can experience the truth only by vigilant self-attentiveness, the only help we can receive from the outside world is the repeated disappointment we will inevitably experience from all our efforts to find the truth in anything other than our essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

You are certainly not fooling yourself by trying to practise atma-vicāra, which alone can reveal the reality, but you would be fooling yourself if you were to imagine that a ‘living’ guru could provide you with any help that has not already been provided by the teachings of Sri Ramana.

He is in our heart, giving us all the help we need, so we should avail ourself of his help by turning our mind inwards and thereby lovingly surrendering ourself to him.

In this connection, you may also find it helpful to read three other articles in this blog, Where to find and how to reach the real presence of our guru?, Is a ‘human guru’ really necessary? and Let us not be distracted from following the real teachings of Sri Ramana.

Sri Ramana’s mangalam verse to Vivekacudamani

2010-01-09T11:10:00.007Z

When Sri Ramana translated Vivēkacūḍāmaṇi into Tamil prose, he composed a maṅgalam or ‘auspicious introductory verse’ for it.

Recently a friend asked me to translate this verse, because he was not satisfied with the translation of it on page 212 of The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, which is as follows:

Rejoice eternally! The Heart rejoices at the feet of the Lord, who is the Self, shining within as ‘I-I’ eternally, so that there is no alternation of night and day. This will result in removal of ignorance of the Self.

The original Tamil verse is:

அகமெனு மூல வவித்தை யகன்றிட
வகமக மாக வல்லும் பகலற
வகமொளி ராத்ம தேவன் பதத்தினி
லகமகிழ் வாக வனிசம் ரமிக்கவே.

ahameṉu mūla vaviddai yahaṉḏṟiḍa
vahamaha māha vallum pahalaṟa
vahamoḷi rātma dēvan padattiṉi
lahamahiṙ vāha vaṉiśam ramikkavē.

In a Tamil verse the words are coalesced according to natural euphonic principles of syllable-conjunction called puṇarcci or sandhi (which for example will cause in certain circumstances a final ‘u’ to be dropped before another vowel, a final ‘m’ to be dropped before another ‘m’, an extra ‘v’ or ‘y’ to be inserted between two vowels, certain initial consonants to be doubled after a final vowel, or certain final consonants to mutate into another related consonant before certain other consonants), and the resulting string of coalesced words is then split according to the poetic metre, which in this case consists of four feet per line.

Therefore when interpreting a verse, the first step is the make a padacchēda (pada-c-chēda or ‘word-separation’), that is, to split it into separate words. For this verse, the padacchēda is as follows:

அகம் எனும் மூல அவித்தை அகன்றிட ‘அகம் அகம்’ ஆக அல்லும் பகல் அற அகம் ஒளிர் ஆத்ம-தேவன் பதத்தினில் அக-மகிழ்வு ஆக அனிசம் ரமிக்கவே.

aham eṉum mūla aviddai ahaṉḏṟiḍa ‘aham aham’ āha allum pahal aṟa aham oḷir ātma-dēvan padattiṉil aha-mahiṙvu āha aṉiśam ramikkavē.

The meaning and grammar of each of these words is as follows:

அகம் (aham) {Sanskrit nominative first person singular pronoun} ‘I’
எனும் (eṉum) {quotative relative participle} which is called
மூல அவித்தை (mūla aviddai) {Sanskrit compound noun, mūla avidyā} root [fundamental] ignorance
அகன்றிட (ahaṉḏṟiḍa) {infinitive used to indicate aim or purpose} to leave, to vanish, so that [it] vanishes
அகம் அகம் (aham aham) ‘I [am] I’
ஆக (āha) {infinitive used adverbially} to become, to be, as
அல்லும் (allum) {அல், al, with the suffix உம், um, meaning ‘and’} night [or darkness] and
பகல் (pahal) day, daytime, daylight
அற (aṟa) {infinitive used adverbially} to cease, to separate, so that [it] ceases, without, devoid of
அகம் (aham) ‘I’, inside, within
ஒளிர் (oḷir) {verbal root used as a relative participle} which [or who] shines
ஆத்ம-தேவன் (ātma-dēvan) {personal form of Sanskrit compound noun, ātma-dēva} God, [who is] self
பதத்தினில் (padattiṉil) {locative form of பதம், padam, the Tamil form of a Sanskrit noun, pada} in [or at] foot, standpoint, state, abode
அக-மகிழ்வு (aha-mahiṙvu) inner joy, happiness of self
ஆக (āha) {infinitive used adverbially} to become, to be, as
அனிசம் (aṉiśam) {Sanskrit adverb, aniśa} uninterruptedly, incessantly, continually, always
ரமிக்கவே (ramikkavē) {infinitive used as a respectful optative, with the intensifying suffix ஏ, ē} only to rejoice, may we rejoice, let us rejoice, let us revel

Thus the meaning of this verse is:

So that the fundamental ignorance (mūla avidya) called ‘I’ [the ego] vanishes, let us rejoice incessantly as the happiness of self at the feet [or in the state] of ātma-dēva [God, who is self], who shines within as ‘I [am] I’ without [any differences such as] night and day [or darkness and light].

This verse is centred around one of Sri Ramana’s favourite words, அகம் (aham), which in Tamil has two distinct but quite similar meanings. As a word borrowed from Sanskrit, it is the nominative first person singular pronoun, ‘I’ (which according to the context can denote either our real self or our false ego), and as a word of pure Tamil origin it means inside, within, heart, mind, home and so on (see the meanings for அகம்⁵ and அகம்¹ respectively on page 12 of the Tamil Lexicon).

In this verse Sri Ramana clearly implies that in order to eradicate our false ‘I’ or ego, which is our mūla avidya or fundamental ignorance of our real self, we must abide uninterruptedly in self as self, which is the true form of God and infinite happiness.

How are we to abide thus in self as self? Since being self is the same as knowing self, as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 26 of Upadēśa Undiyār, we can be nothing other than self only by attending to and thereby knowing nothing other than self.

This truth is also clearly indicated by him in verses 8 and 9 of Upadēśa Undiyār. In verse 8 he describes self-attentiveness as ananya-bhāva, ‘otherless meditation’ or ‘meditation on what is not other [than oneself]’, saying that it is the best among all forms of meditation, and in verse 9 he says that by the strength of such self-meditation we will be in sat-bhāva (our ‘true being’ or ‘state of being’), which transcends bhāvana (imagination or meditation as a mental activity), and that being thus is para-bhakti tattva — the true state of supreme devotion.

Therefore to eradicate our fundamental self-ignorance, which causes us to mistake this body-bound mind to be ‘I’, we must abide perpetually as self, our sat-bhāva or ‘true being’, and to abide thus we must vigilantly and persistently practise being keenly self-attentive.

This is why in this verse Sri Ramana focuses our attention on ‘I’ by repeating the word அகம் (aham) five times, as he also does in several other verses, such as verse 3 of Śrī Aruṇācala Pañcaratnam and verses 9 and 40 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Anubandham.

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

2009-10-29T09:48:00.003Z

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

... To me it is important to understand the connection between japa which is an object and “I am”. As I do experience, the “me” practicing japa vanishes and some silent apperception of being appears which I am unable to describe. I suppose this is still another subtle object, however I can’t proceed any further. May be Michael will clear up this state of affairs. ...

Other than our pure and absolutely non-dual self-consciousness ‘I am’, everything that we experience is ‘still another subtle object’, as Hans rightly calls it.

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

However, as our self-attentiveness becomes increasingly refined and subtle, the subtle thoughts that seemingly obscure our pristine self-consciousness become increasingly tenuous and transparent, enabling us to experience ‘I am’ ever more clearly.

Therefore our sole aim during practice should be to centre our entire attention more vigilantly, keenly, accurately, exclusively, solely and clearly on, in and as ‘I am’. This is the only means by which we can ‘proceed any further’ and eventually reach our goal, the experience of true self-knowledge.

In other words, whatever subtle experiences — thoughts or objects — may arise as we proceed, our sole aim should be to try to know ‘who is experiencing all this?’

Hans wrote, ‘To me it is important to understand the connection between japa which is an object and “I am”’. It is true that japa is objective, because it is a vocal or mental repetition of a word or words, and all words are objects. However, the real aim and purpose of japa is to direct our attention not just towards the word that we are repeating but towards whatever is denoted by that word (for example, if we repeat a name of God, our aim should be to fix our attention firmly upon the thought of God), so if we repeat ‘I’ or ‘I am’, our aim should be to use these words as an aid to help us to fix our attention firmly on our essential consciousness of being, which is what they really denote.

Hans then wrote, ‘As I do experience, the “me” practicing japa vanishes and some silent apperception of being appears which I am unable to describe’. This is precisely what we should experience when we repeat ‘I’ or ‘I am’ correctly, trying to fix our entire attention on the consciousness that they denote.

That is, in order to repeat ‘I’ or ‘I am’, the thinking and object-knowing consciousness that we call ‘me’ (our mind or ego) must be present, but when our entire attention is fixed solely on our essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’, this false ‘me’ will vanish (or will at least subside to a considerable extent), since it can appear to exist as a separate entity only when it seems to be knowing anything other than itself.

When this false thinking ‘me’ thus vanishes or subsides as a result of our keen self-attentiveness, what remains in its absence is our natural clarity of pure non-dual self-consciousness, which Hans describes accurately as ‘some silent apperception of being ... which I am unable to describe’.

As Hans wrote in his earlier comment, japa ‘will drop off as awareness [self-attentiveness] increases’, because japa cannot continue in the absence of the ‘me’ who was practising it. Therefore, though japa of ‘I’ or ‘I am’ can be an effective tool that we can use to help us fix our attention firmly in and as our simple being, ‘I am’, we must allow it to subside or ‘drop off’ as soon as it has served this purpose.

So long as we are firmly established in our natural state of silent self-consciousness, no japa is necessary or even possible, but whenever we slip down from this state (and particularly when our mind is excessively agitated by thoughts or anxieties), silently repeating ‘I’ or ‘I am’ can be a powerful aid in our effort to restore our calm self-attentiveness.

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

2009-10-21T09:43:00.003+01:00

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

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

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

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

Clinging to ‘I am’ alone means having our entire consciousness centred on, in and as ‘I am’ to the complete exclusion of everything else. Only in this state of absolute self-attentiveness or self-abidance can we experience the profound peace and infinite joy of just being, knowing nothing other than ‘I am’.

Because of the strong desire for and attachment to the fleeting experiences of our ephemeral mind that we have accumulated during the course of innumerable dreams (so-called bodily ‘lifetimes’), our attention is constantly being drawn back to such things, but the more we cultivate the habit of being self-attentive — even if at first it is just for brief moments now and then — the more our desires and attachments will be weakened, and the more our love just to be will be nourished and grow.

Therefore persistent practice of self-attentiveness is necessary — in fact, it is the only solution to all our problems. No matter how difficult the struggle to overcome all our desires by means of simple self-attentiveness — trying to know ‘who is desiring all these things?’ — may appear to be, we can be sure that we will certainly succeed by steadfast perseverance.

That is, though our love to be self-attentive (which is true bhakti or devotion to God, since the true form of God is none other than ‘I am’, our own essential self) may appear at first to be very weak and tenuous, when we steadily cultivate it by practice, it will gradually begin to snowball, increasing in intensity exponentially, until eventually it will entirely consume us and all our petty desires, thereby establishing us firmly and eternally in the infinitely peaceful and joyful state of pristine self-conscious being.

Therefore we should never despair, but should patiently and persistently continue to practise simple self-attentiveness or self-remembrance. As Sri Ramana says in the eleventh paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

... If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarūpa-smaraṇa [self-remembrance] until one attains svarūpa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. ...

The love to be self-attentive that we now have at least in small measure and that we must continue to cultivate is the truest and most pure form of God’s grace, because he is the clear light of consciousness that shines in our heart as ‘I am’, and because of his infinite love for us, he enkindles in our heart the clarity to discriminate the real from the ephemeral, and this clarity manifests itself as the love to attend only to that which alone is real, ‘I am’.

Thinking, free will and self-attentiveness

2009-08-16T18:28:00.001+01:00

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

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

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

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

However, only a small proportion of all the thoughts that we think are necessary for us to experience our allotted prarabdha, so the vast majority of our thoughts are not impelled by our prarabdha but only by our vasanas, which are the seed-forms of our desires that we have cultivated by our thoughts and actions in the past. In other words, the force that impels our mind to think most of its thoughts is not our destiny but our own free will.

However, since our destiny is the fruit of actions that we have done in the past according to our own free will, the ultimate driving force behind all our thoughts is our free will, whether exercised in the past or at present. Therefore that which ‘gives’ us whatever thoughts we think is ultimately only our own free will, so we alone are responsible for all our thoughts and actions.

Since thinking and doing actions are not our natural state, which is just being, they are a misuse of our free will, and all that we experience (other than ‘I am’) is a result of such misused free will. Since we are free to will whatever we want, the solution to all our problems is to use our free will correctly by cultivating the love just to be.

This love just to be (without thinking anything) is called sat-vasana (the inclination to experience nothing other than being) or svatma-bhakti (self-love), and we can cultivate it only by persistently practising self-attentiveness, because so long as we are attending to anything other than ‘I’ our mind is engaged in the activity of thinking. That is, whereas our mind rises only by attending to things other than itself (namely thoughts and seemingly ‘external’ objects) and remains active so long as it continues to attend to such other things, it subsides by attending to itself and remains inactive so long as it continues to be self-attentive.

The more we persevere in our practice of self-attentiveness, the more our mind will be purified of all its desires or visaya vasanas (inclinations to experience things other than itself), and the more clearly its natural inner light of self-consciousness will shine. Thus when we persistently practise self-attentiveness, our love for the natural peace and joy of just being as we really are (that is, clearly self-conscious but free of the self-obscuring cloud of thoughts) will steadily increase, until finally it will become so intense that it will consume all our other desires in the clear light of absolutely pristine self-consciousness.

Since the ‘will of God’ is that we should be happy, and since we can truly be happy only by knowing ourself as we really are, when we persistently use our free will to be self-attentive and thereby to experience ourself as we really are, we are truly surrendering our own will to the will of God.

And since we now appear to be separate from him only because we are constantly misusing our will by liking to experience anything other than ourself, when we use it correctly by surrendering it to him, we are truly surrendering ourself entirely to him. Therefore, as Sri Ramana says in the thirteenth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

Being completely absorbed in atma-nistha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other cintana [thought] except atma-cintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

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

2009-07-27T09:24:00.007+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me suggesting:

... Indeed Nan Yar? contains everything we need to know and I would be very grateful if you would do translation for mumukshu, giving roman transliteration of every word according to the dictionary (minimum two words which fit in this context) and indicate why you use such and such a word when we could use other (I mean non-trivial words). I don’t know Tamil, that’s why I say such translation is very good for mumukshu. I like your translation but it’s still arbitrary. Giving transliteration you enable all people with different vasanas to create their own translation.

In the same e-mail he wrote about a ‘really great and powerful master who doesn’t speak much but is teaching through experience’, saying that this master ‘advises atma-cintana and if someone can’t he tells to do svarupa-dhyana or mantra japa etc.’ He also wrote that ‘There’s no difference of experience if we use atma-vicara, pranayama or other techniques’, and that ‘I found that Bhagavan used the name atma-vicara and svarupa dhyana, atma cintana to indicate different stages of practice’.

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

All differences exist only in our mind, and not in reality. Ātma-vicāra (self-investigation), svarūpa-dhyāna (self-attentiveness), svarūpa-smaraṇa (self-remembrance), ātma-cintanā (self-meditation), ātma-niṣṭhā (self-abidance) and summā iruppadu (just being) are various terms that Sri Bhagavan uses in Nan Yar? (Who am I?) to denote the non-dual practice (or state) of being self-attentive. There are truly no differences in the one non-dual state that all these terms describe.

When our attention is entirely centred in ourself, where is the room for any duality or differences? That is, when the attending consciousness is that which is attended to, all duality ceases.

In this state of pure self-attentiveness (or self-consciousness), even the ‘act’ of attending is not other than the one consciousness that is both attending and attended to, because the very nature of that consciousness is to be clearly self-conscious (or self-attentive). In other words, self-attentiveness is not really an ‘action’ but our very being, because our being is always clearly self-conscious — that is, conscious of itself as ‘I am’.

Thus self-attentiveness is not any form of objective attention, because it is the state in which attention (or consciousness) just remains centred in itself, as itself.

Therefore self-attentiveness is the only truly non-dual practice (or state), because in any other practice (such as prāṇāyāma) our attention is directed out towards something other than ourself, the one attending consciousness. Hence if we see any differences in this state, we have not understood it correctly. Pure self-attentiveness is the one truly nirvikalpa state (the only state that is devoid of all vikalpas or differences).

You say that ‘Atma-vicara state is the same as external nirvikalpa samadhi’, but in a state that is truly devoid of vikalpa (variation, diversity, distinction or difference), where is any room for any distinction such as ‘internal’ and ‘external’? Any terms that imply such differences are liable to distract our attention away from the essentially non-dual and therefore nirvikalpa nature of the simple state of self-attentiveness. That is why Sri Ramana avoided using terms such as bahya-nirvikalpa-samādhi (external nirvikalpa samādhi) and āntara-nirvikalpa-samādhi (internal nirvikalpa samādhi) except when he was specifically asked about them.

Incidentally, there appears to be an inconsistency in what you write, because in one sentence you say (referring to the ‘great master’ whom you write about), ‘He advises atma-cintana and if someone can’t he tells to do svarupa dhyana’, but further on you say, ‘He said that atma-cintana, svarupa dhyana are the same’. It is true that ātma-cintanā and svarūpa-dhyāna are the same, because both terms mean self-meditation or self-attentiveness, but why then to advise someone who cannot do ātma-cintanā to do svarūpa-dhyāna?

Moreover, who cannot ‘do ātma-cintanā’? We all know ‘I am’ more clearly than we know any other thing, so who cannot meditate upon ‘I am’? What can be easier than simply centring our attention in its own natural centre and source, ‘I am’?

It is true that our outward-going desires do make it appear difficult for us to remain firmly centred in ‘I am’, but anyone who truly wants to remain thus can overcome this seeming difficulty by persistently returning to the centre from which everything is known whenever his or her attention is distracted away from it by the desire to think of anything else.

I agree that Nan Yar? contains everything that we need to know, and one of the projects that I would like to do in future is to write a detailed explanatory word-for-word translation of it, as you suggest. I know that this will be a very big task, but it is one that I look forward to doing if Sri Ramana gives me the time to do so.

‘Tracing the ego back to its source’

2009-07-12T11:04:00.002+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

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

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

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

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

Grasping form [that is, attaching itself to a body] it comes into existence; grasping form [that is, attending to thoughts or perceptions of a seemingly external world] it stands [or endures]; grasping form it feeds and grows [flourishes or expands]; leaving [one] form it grasps [another] form. If [we] seek [search, investigate, examine or scrutinise it], it will take flight. Know [that this is the nature of this] formless ghost-ego.

That is, since this ego has no form (no finite or separate existence) of its own, it can seemingly come into existence and endure only when we imagine ourself to be a form (a physical body), and it flourishes when we attend to any form (anything that appears to be separate from ourself). In other words, since this ego is thus just a ‘formless ghost’, it can rise, endure and flourish only by ‘grasping form’, and hence when it tries to ‘grasp’ (or attend to) itself, which is not a form, it will subside and disappear.

The truth that Sri Ramana teaches us here can therefore be rephrased thus: our mind or ego is nourished and sustained by attending to anything other than itself, and hence it will be dissolved and destroyed only by attending to itself. This is a fundamental and extremely important truth, which I have described elsewhere as the ‘first law of consciousness’ or ‘first law of the science of self-knowledge’.

In order to trace our ego back to its source, therefore, all that we need do is to scrutinise it keenly and closely, because as soon as we begin to attend to it, it will begin to subside and sink back into the source from which it originated. Thus we can ‘go back the way we came’ only by being vigilantly self-attentive.

You say that when you try to trace your ego back to its source, ‘there is an arresting of thoughts and a feeling near my chest and I am not able to proceed further’. When we attend to our ego, all other thoughts will naturally be arrested, because thoughts can rise and persist only when we think them, so when our mind is fully engaged in attending to itself (its essential thought ‘I’), no other thought can arise.

However, if we experience a feeling near our chest, our attention has obviously been distracted away from ourself towards our body. Since our body, our chest and any physical sensation are all only thoughts, we will not be aware of them when all thoughts have really been arrested.

That is, any feeling near our chest is only an objective experience — something that the knowing subject, ‘I’, experiences as other than itself — and all objective experiences are only thoughts that we form in our mind by our kalpanā-śakti or ‘power of imagination’ (which is otherwise called māyā), so as long as we experience any such objective phenomenon, we are not actually experiencing a state devoid of all thoughts. In the truly thought-free state, we will be conscious of nothing other than our mere being, ‘I am’.

Therefore, in order to ‘proceed further’, whenever we become aware of our body or of any feeling in it — or of anything else other than ‘I’ — we should regain our self-attentiveness by investigating ‘who am I, who am aware of these things?’

The fact that we can free ourself from all thoughts and return to the source (or ‘birthplace’) from which we arose as this ego only by attending vigilantly to ‘I’ is clearly explained by Sri Ramana in the sixth, eleventh, tenth and thirteenth paragraphs of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

... If other thoughts rise, without trying to complete them [we] should investigate to whom they have occurred. However many thoughts rise, what [does it matter]? As soon as each thought appears, if [we] vigilantly investigate to whom it has occurred, ‘to me’ will be clear [that is, we will be clearly reminded of ourself, to whom each thought occurs]. If [we thus] investigate ‘who am I?’ [that is, if we turn our attention back towards ourself in order to discover who or what we really are], [our] mind will return to its birthplace [our real self, which is the source from which it arose]; [and since we thereby refrain from attending to it] the thought which had risen will also subside. ...

... As and when thoughts arise, then and there [we] should annihilate them all by vichāraṇā [vigilant self-investigation] in the very place [or source] from which they arise. ...

... Without giving room even to the doubting thought, ‘Is it possible to dissolve so many vāsanās [desires to think and experience objective phenomena] and be only as self?’, [we] should cling tenaciously to svarūpa-dhyāna [self-attentiveness]. ...

Being completely absorbed in ātma-niṣṭha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other chintanā [thought] except ātma-chintanā [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

Therefore in practice ‘tracing the ego back to its source’ means only attending vigilantly to our ego or finite sense of ‘I’ in order to make it subside back into our pristine non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’, which is the source or ‘birthplace’ from which it originated.

‘Just sitting’ (shikantaza) and ‘choiceless awareness’

2009-07-11T14:14:00.002+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me as follows:

I have been reading chapter 9 (Self-Investigation) of your book Happiness and the Art of Being.

What you describe regarding the practice of atma-vichara as advocated by Ramana Maharishi, I interpret as being very similar to the practice of choice-less awareness, or shikantaza, as it is commonly referred to by Zen practitioners.

The significant difference between the two techniques is that I, as a Zen practitioner, am trained to use the power of attention in order to step back from ‘I’ thoughts and ‘I’ feelings. And thereby effectively return to the abiding silence.

The self-investigation technique in contrast uses the question, who?, whose?, where? etc in order to disentangle from ‘I’ thoughts and ‘I’ feelings, effectively returning to the abiding silence (and yes, I understand that you prefer to define self-investigation as the practice of being nothing other than oneself and not a process of mental questioning).

Some ‘I’ thoughts and feelings are so very powerful that challenging the validity of the ‘I’ by directly asking who? whose? where?, may very well be a more potent technique for disentangling from the ‘I’ chain, thereby returning to the abiding silence.

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

I understand what you are saying, but I think a few points in what you write require some clarification.

Firstly you refer to ‘I’ thoughts and ‘I’ feelings, but actually there is only one thought (or feeling) ‘I’, which is our ego, the subject who thinks all other thoughts. This single thought ‘I’ may appear in any number of different forms, because it identifies itself with many different adjuncts, but though its forms may thus be many, it itself is just one, because we never feel that we are more than one ‘I’.

This single thought ‘I’ is a compound form of consciousness, because it is a mixture of our pure non-dual consciousness of being, ‘I am’, and various adjuncts such as our body and mind. That is, when we feel ‘I am this body’, ‘I am a person called so-and-so’, ‘I am sitting’, ‘I am reading’, ‘I am thinking’, ‘I am seeing’, ‘I am hearing’, ‘I perceive this world’, ‘I know this or that’, ‘I remember’, ‘I hope’, ‘I believe’, ‘I want this or that’, ‘I am happy’, ‘I am unhappy’ and so on, the ‘I’ that feels all these is our primal thought ‘I’, our mind or ego.

In verse 18 of Upadesa Undiyar Sri Ramana explains that this thought ‘I’ is the root and essence of the false thinking consciousness that we call ‘mind’:

Mind is only [a collection of] thoughts. Of all [these thoughts], the thought called ‘I’ alone is the root. [Therefore] what is called ‘mind’ is [in essence just this root thought] ‘I’.

So long as this spurious thought ‘I’ appears to exist, we cannot really ‘step back’ or ‘disentangle’ ourself from it, because it appears to exist only when we experience ourself to be it. How can ‘I’ step back or disentangle itself from ‘I’? In order to disentangle ourself from it, we must erase it entirely, and since it is a mere illusion or figment of our imagination, we can erase it only by seeing through it — that is, by experiencing the reality that underlies it.

So long as we are attending to anything other than ‘I’, we are experiencing ourself as this spurious object-knowing ‘I’ (the ego or thought ‘I’), and thus we are sustaining it, nourishing the illusion that it is really ourself. But when we withdraw our attention from all other things by focusing it wholly and exclusive upon ourself, we are literally seeing through this false ‘I’, because by attending only to ‘I’ we begin to experience ourself as the one real ‘I’ — our pure adjunct-free non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’ — which underlies and supports the illusion of our false adjunct-bound thought ‘I’.

This false thought ‘I’ is a mere imagination, like the imaginary snake that we think we see lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk. If we look carefully at the imaginary snake, we will see through its false appearance and recognise that it is actually only a rope. Likewise, if we keenly scrutinise this primal imagination, our thought ‘I’, we will see through its false appearance and recognise that it is actually only the one real non-dual self-consciousness, ‘I am’.

Thus vigilant self-attentiveness is the only means by which we can effectively step back or disentangle itself from our false thought ‘I’, because it is an illusion that we can destroy only by carefully examining it and thereby seeing the reality that underlies it.

As you say, when we thus examine this false thought ‘I’ in order to know who or what it really is, we will ‘thereby effectively return to the abiding silence’, which is our essential self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

You say that in Zen Buddhism this practice is called shikantaza (which you describe as ‘choice-less awareness’), so I did a Google search to find out what exactly shikantaza means. According to the Wikipedia page about shikantaza, it literally means, ‘nothing but (shikan) precisely (da) sitting (za)’, or in other words ‘just sitting’. I assume that whoever coined this word in this context did not intend ‘just sitting’ to mean merely a state in which the body is just sitting, but intended it to mean the state in which our mind is ‘just sitting’ — that is, abiding free of all activity or thinking.

If this is really the intended meaning of shikantaza, it means the same as the Tamil term summā iruppadu, which means ‘just being’ and which Sri Ramana defines in the sixth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) as ‘making the mind to subside in ātma-svarūpa [our essential self]’. That is, the adverb summā literally means without work or activity, leisurely, silently, peacefully, restfully, merely, only or just, and iruppadu is a verbal noun that literally means being, so summā iruppadu means just being without any activity whatsoever.

In verse 4 of Anma-Viddai Sri Ramana describes the state of summā iruppadu or ‘just being’ very clearly as follows:

... When [one] just is, having settled down without the least action (karma) of speech, mind or body, ah, in [one’s] heart only the light of self (ātma-jyōti) will be [one’s] eternal experience, fear will not exist, [and] only the ocean of happiness [will remain].

In order for us just to be, our mind must completely subside along with all its activity. In other words, the thinker — the primal thought ‘I’, which thinks all other thoughts — must cease to exist along with all its thoughts.

As Sri Ramana says in verse 2 of Anma-Viddai:

Only the thought ‘this body composed of flesh alone is I’ is the one thread on which [all the other] various thoughts are strung. Therefore if [one] goes within [by scrutinising] ‘Who am I? What is the place [the ground or source from which this false ‘I’ originates]?’ [all] thoughts will disperse [because their root will be dissolved], and self-knowledge (ātma-jñāna) will shine forth spontaneously as ‘I [am] I’ within the cave [of our heart]; this alone is silence, the one [non-dual] space [of pure being-consciousness], the abode of [true] happiness.

Since this primal thought ‘I’ (which always experiences itself as ‘I am this body’) will continue to exist as long as it is thinking of things other than itself, and since those other thoughts will continue to exist as such as long as it is thinking them, neither will subside unless the other also subsides. That is, so long as other thoughts exist, the first thought ‘I’ must be existing to think them, and since this thinking thought ‘I’ can exist as such only when it is thinking other thoughts, so long as it exists, other thought will certainly exist along with it.

Therefore this thought ‘I’ will cease to exist only when it ceases thinking of any other thing, and it will permanently cease thinking of any other thing only when its entire attention is fixed firmly upon itself. Though it does cease thinking when it falls asleep, it does so only due to sheer exhaustion, and hence it rises from sleep as soon as it has recuperated sufficient energy by resting in its essential being.

Therefore, in order to subside permanently, the thinking mind (the first thought ‘I’) must not only cease thinking of any other thing, but must also vigilantly focus its attention upon its own essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’. As Sri Ramana says in verse 16 of Upadesa Undiyar:

The mind knowing its own form of light [its essential light of self-consciousness, ‘I am’], having given up [knowing] external viṣayas [objects or experiences], alone is true knowledge.

That is, since this mind, our primal thought ‘I’, is an illusion, a false form of consciousness, it can be destroyed only by true knowledge of our real ‘I’, so to destroy it permanently we must focus our entire attention upon ourself — our true ‘form of light’ or self-luminous consciousness, ‘I am’ — thereby withdrawing it completely from all other things (which are only thoughts or figments of its imagination).

Therefore keen and vigilant self-attentiveness is the only effective means by which we can truly abide in silence, our natural state of ‘just being’, shikantaza or summā iruppadu.

You describe this true state of shikantaza as ‘choice-less awareness’, but this term ‘choiceless awareness’ (which was popularised by J. Krishnamurti) is potentially misleading and on analysis is actually devoid of any truly substantial meaning. Awareness or consciousness (chit) is our real nature, our essential being (sat), so there is truly never a time when we are not aware (or conscious). Therefore we really have no choice (or option) whether to be aware or not.

However, we can choose what we are aware of. We are now aware of our mind, our present body and this world because we choose to attend to them, and we can become aware of our real self only when we choose to cease attending to anything else and to attend instead only to our own essential being, ‘I am’.

Our choice to be aware of our thinking mind and whatever is known by it is called desire or attachment, whereas our choice to be aware only of our essential self, ‘I am’, is called true love or non-attachment — that is, true self-love or svātma-bhakti. Without this choice or love to know nothing other than ourself, we cannot know ourself as we really are, because our awareness of other things is the cloud that obscures and conceals our natural state of pure non-dual self-consciousness (or self-awareness).

As Sri Ramana often used to say, bhakti is jñāna-mata — that is, love is the mother of true knowledge — because we cannot experience ourself as we really are unless our love to experience ourself thus is all-consuming. That is, our love to know and to be nothing other than our real self must be so intense that it completely consumes all our other desires (which drive our mind outwards, away from ourself to experience other things).

When our love to be aware of nothing other than our essential self, ‘I am’, is so intense that it dissolves the illusion of our thinking and object-knowing mind in the absolute clarity of pristine non-dual self-consciousness, we will discover that such self-consciousness (or ‘self-awareness’) is our real nature and therefore absolutely ‘choiceless’ and ‘effortless’.

However, until we experience it thus, it is necessary for us to make a positive ‘choice’ and ‘effort’ to be vigilantly and persistently self-attentive or ‘self-aware’.

Svarupa-dhyana and svarupa-darsana

2009-07-08T14:37:00.002+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

Does svarupa-dhyana, atma-chintana and atma-smarana mean focusing attention on the first thought ‘I am’, consciousness of being? I mean, is it concentration on being, staying without thoughts but still aware of external world? If so, svarupa-darshana is different experience and is the same as kevala nirvikalpa samadhi. Isn’t it?

Here the mention of ‘svarupa-darshana’ and ‘external world’ appears to be a reference to the third paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?), in which Sri Ramana says:

If [our] mind, which is the cause of all [objective] knowledge and of all activity, subsides [completely], [our] perception of the world (jaga-dṛṣṭi) will cease. Just as knowledge of the rope, which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of the snake], will not arise unless knowledge of the imaginary snake ceases, svarūpa-darśana [true knowledge of our essential self], which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of the world], will not arise unless [our] perception of the world, which is an imagination, ceases.

In reply to this friend I wrote as follows:

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

Sri Ramana also sometimes described ātma-vichāra as focusing our attention upon our mind or ego — our primal thought ‘I’ — because just as the imaginary snake that we see lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk is actually nothing but a rope, so the ‘I’ that we now imagine to be this mind or ego is actually nothing but our real self.

When we look carefully at the imaginary snake, we will see that it is only a rope. Likewise, when we look carefully at our ego or mind, the thinking thought ‘I’, we will see that it is only our essential self, the one real consciousness, ‘I am’.

When our attention is not focused wholly and exclusively upon ‘I’, we will continue to be aware of thoughts and the external world (which is actually nothing but a collection of thoughts), but when it is focused solely upon ‘I’, nothing else will exist or be known.

When we are still trying to practise being conscious of nothing other than ‘I’, our as yet imperfect self-consciousness (or self-attentiveness) is called ātma-vichāra, svarūpa-dhyāna, svarūpa-smaraṇa or ātma-chintana, but when our self-consciousness becomes perfectly clear and thereby destroys the illusion of our mind entirely, it is called svarūpa-darśana or true self-knowledge.

Terms such as kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi mean different things to different people and in different contexts, so they really do not help to clarify the nature of the state of absolutely pure thought-free non-dual self-consciousness that we are seeking to experience.

Literally kēvala means alone, solitary, isolated, pure or absolute, nirvikalpa means devoid of differences, diversity, variation, imagination or thinking, and samādhi means fixed attention, intense contemplation or complete absorption of mind, so kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi actually means the state in which the mind is completely absorbed in absolutely undifferentiated or thought-free self-contemplation. As such it is a term that can be used to describe either the practice of pure ātma-vichāra or the experience of true self-knowledge.

However, since this term kēvala nirvikalpa samādhi is also used by some people to describe the state of manōlaya or temporary subsidence of mind that is achieved by artificial yogic techniques such as prāṇāyāma (breath-restraint), it can cause confusion, and can therefore potentially distract us from our real aim, which is just to know clearly ‘who am I?’

Therefore, without using any such obscure technical vocabulary, we can summarise the essence of Sri Ramana’s teachings simply as follows:

The one indubitable truth is that we all know ‘I am’, so our aim is only to know this ‘I am’ perfectly clearly, to the exclusion of all else. There is really nothing other than this that we need to understand.

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

2009-07-04T12:07:00.001+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In reply to this I wrote as follows:

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

However, as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar, if we do any other practice without desire for any finite gain but only out of love for God (who is actually nothing other than our real self, our essential being, ‘I am’), our mind will thereby be purified and thus it will gain the clarity to understand that the true ‘path to liberation’ is only ātma-vichāra.

The mettā bhāvanā or ‘loving-kindness meditation’ that you practise is a form of such niṣkāmya karma or ‘desireless action’ done for the love of God, so it will certainly help to purify your mind — that is, to cleanse it of its impurities, which are its desires or vāsanās — and thereby enable it to go deeper into the practice of ātma-vichāra. Therefore, so long as you find your practice of this ‘loving-kindness meditation’ to be helpful to your practice of ātma-vichāra, there is no harm in continuing it, but as you say, it ‘will naturally drop away when [you] get more experienced in atma-vichara’.

While practising mettā bhāvanā, you may find it helpful to remember the source from which the mettā (the maitrī, benevolence, love or kindness) originates, which is yourself. In fact in its pristine form, mettā is nothing other than pure love, which is the true nature of our essential self.

Because happiness or ānanda is our real nature, we naturally love ourself above all other things, and we love other things or living beings only because they are nothing but a reflection of our real self. Therefore love (that is, absolutely non-dual self-love) is what we really are, and hence the mettā or ‘loving-kindness’ that we feel for other living beings arises only from our essential self, ‘I am’.

Therefore, when you practise mettā bhāvanā or ‘loving-kindness meditation’, if you attend to the source from which the feeling of mettā or ‘loving-kindness’ arises, you will actually be practising ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness. However, if you allow your attention to be diverted away from the source of your mettā (which is yourself) towards the objects of it (which are the other living beings for whom you feel it), you will thereby be distracted from your self-attentiveness.

Though mettā bhāvanā and other such forms of niṣkāmya karma will gradually purify our mind, they are all slow and roundabout routes, and they will never purify it completely. The most direct and effective means by which we can purify our mind — and the only means by which we can purify it completely — is ātma-vichāra.

That is, since the impurities in our mind are our viṣaya-vāsanās or desires to experience things that are other than ourself, they can be curbed most effectively and eventually destroyed only by our making effort to be constantly self-attentive, thereby withdrawing our attention from every other thing.

As Sri Bhagavan teaches us in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) :

Even though viṣaya-vāsanās, which come from time immemorial, rise [as thoughts] in countless numbers like ocean-waves, they will all be destroyed when svarūpa-dhyāna [self-meditation or self-attentiveness] increases and increases. Without giving room even to the doubting thought, ‘Is it possible to dissolve so many vāsanās and be only as self?’, [we] should cling tenaciously to svarūpa-dhyāna. ...

As long as viṣaya-vāsanās exist in [our] mind, so long the investigation (vichāra) ‘who am I?’ is also necessary. As and when thoughts arise, then and there it is necessary to annihilate them all by vichāra [keen and vigilant self-attentiveness] in the very place from which they arise. Being without attending to [anything] other [than ourself] is vairāgya or nirāsa [desirelessness] ... Just as a pearl-diver, tying a stone to his waist and submerging, picks up a pearl which lies at the bottom of the ocean, so each one [of us], submerging and sinking within ourself with vairāgya [desirelessness], can attain the pearl of self. If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarūpa-smaraṇa [self-remembrance] until one attains svarūpa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. As long as enemies are within the fort, they will continue coming out from it. If [we] continue destroying [or cutting down] all of them as and when they come, the fort will [eventually] come into [our] possession.

As I mentioned above, in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar Sri Ramana teaches us that if we practise any form of niṣkāmya karma or ‘desireless action’ for the love of God, it will purify our mind and thereby ‘show [us] the path to liberation’ — in other words, it will enable us to understand that the true ‘path to liberation’ is only ātma-vichāra. Therefore, when you already know that (in your own words) ‘the only practice which leads to final liberation and experience of true self-knowledge is atma-vichara or self-abidance’, you have already gained the only real benefit that can be gained from dualistic practices such as mettā bhāvanā.

Therefore, rather than continuing to spend your time and effort in trying to practise mettā bhāvanā, you could spend the same time and effort more fruitfully in trying to practice ātma-vichāra. Even a few moments of ātma-vichāra will purify our mind more effectively than many hours spent practising any other form of meditation.

As Sri Ramana says in verses 8 and 9 of Upadesa Undiyar, rather than any form of anya bhāva (meditation upon what is anya or other than ourself), ananya bhāva (meditation upon what is ananya or not other than ourself) is ‘certainly the best among all [forms of meditation]’, and by the strength of such ananya-bhāva (or self-attentiveness), remaining in sat-bhāva (our ‘real being’ or ‘state of being’), which transcends all bhāvanā (imagination, thinking or meditation), is alone para-bhakti tattva (the true state of supreme devotion).

Having taught us in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar that desireless action done for the love of God will purify our mind, in verses 4 to 8 he discusses the various forms of action that we can thus do without desire for anything other than God, grading them in ascending order of their efficacy in purifying our mind. Therefore when he says in verse 8, ‘ananiya bhāvamē aṉaittiṉum uttamam’, which means, ‘meditation upon what is not other [than ourself] is certainly the best among all [forms of meditation]’, the truth that he is teaching us is that meditation upon ourself is more purifying than meditation upon any other thing.

This truth is stated by him even more explicitly in the Sanskrit and Malayalam versions of verses 8 and 9 respectively. That is, in verse 8 of Upadesa Saram (the Sanskrit version of Upadesa Undiyar) he says that rather than bheda-bhāvanā (meditation upon what is different or separate from ourself), bhāvanā-abhidā (meditation upon what is not separate from ourself) is to be considered pāvanī (purifying), and in verse 9 of the Malayalam version he says that by the strength of abhēda-bhāva (meditation upon what is not separate from ourself), abiding firmly in sat-bhāva (our ‘real being’), which transcends bhāva (imagination or thought), is certainly more purifying than bhāvanā-bhakti (dualistic devotion, which is associated with bhāvanā, imagination or thought), and that it alone is supreme devotion and will alone bestow liberation.

In these three versions of verse 8 the terms ananya bhāva, bhāvanā-abhidā and abhēda-bhāva all mean only ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness, because that which is not anya (other), bhidā or bhēda (different or separate) is only ourself. Therefore in verse 9 the words bhāva-bala (or bhāvanā-bala) mean the strength of self-attentiveness, by means of which alone we can abide firmly in our sat-bhāva or ‘real being’, which transcends all bhāvana or ‘meditation’.

Thus Sri Ramana teaches us clearly that self-attentiveness — and the firm self-abidance in which the power of our self-attentiveness will establish us — is more purifying than any other form of meditation. Knowing this, we should make every effort to be self-attentive as much as possible.

When we compare the benefits that we can gain from ātma-vichāra with the benefits that we can gain from any other form of meditation (such as mettā bhāvanā), the former far outweigh the latter, because though other forms of meditation can gradually purify our mind, none of them can directly (or by itself) give us true self-knowledge (the state of ‘liberation’ from self-ignorance and from all its effects), whereas ātma-vichāra will not only purify our mind far more effectively, efficiently and quickly, but will also enable us to experience true self-knowledge directly. Therefore whatever time or effort we invest in practising ātma-vichāra will certainly prove to be a far more profitable investment than the same amount of time or effort spent practising any other form of meditation.

You say that you find that practising mettā bhāvanā ‘is a help when [you] try to practice atma-vichara because self-attention seems to be easier with a mind which is not so noisy and turbulent’, and that ‘as a beginner [you] find it difficult to practice self-attention, especially when there are difficult emotions, plenty of thoughts and the stress of day-to-day life’. It is true that other forms of meditation such as mettā bhāvanā can help to calm our mind and thereby bring it to a state that is conducive to the practice of self-attentiveness, but there is actually no easier or more effective way to calm our mind than trying to be self-attentive.

Other forms of meditation may sometimes seem to be easier that self-attentiveness, but that is only because no other form of meditation directly threatens the very existence of our mind, and hence our mind will not rebel against it so strongly. On the other hand, since the clear light of self-attentiveness exposes the unreality of our mind, it is a direct threat to its existence, so our mind tends to rebel very strongly against it, making it appear to be difficult.

However, just because it may thus sometimes appear to be easier to calm the superficial activity of our mind by means of other forms of meditation than by means of ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness, this does not mean that trying to calm our mind by other forms of meditation will really help us to practise self-attentiveness more effectively, because if our mind tends to rebel strongly against self-attentiveness in order to preserve the illusion of its existence, it will rebel even if its superficial activity has just been calmed by some other means.

The factor that actually determines the success of our effort to be self-attentive is not the relative calmness of our mind when we commence our practice, but is only the intensity of our love to know and to be nothing other than our essential self, ‘I am’. Sri Ramana’s mind was not calm but in a state of intense fear of death when he turned his attention inwards to discover ‘who am I?’, but he instantly succeeded in his effort because of his intense love to discover whether he himself would die along with the death of his physical body. He did not need to adopt some artificial means to calm his mind before becoming clearly and exclusively self-attentive, because his love to know his real self was so intense that his mind immediately subsided and merged in its source — its essential self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

What obstructs and impedes our efforts to be clearly and exclusively self-attentive is only our viṣaya-vāsanās or desires to experience things that are other than ourself, so these desires can be overcome only by their opposite, which is svātma-bhakti — the love to experience nothing other than our own essential self, ‘I am’. This is why Sri Ramana teaches us in the eleventh paragraph of Nan Yar? (which I quoted above) that in order to sink deep within ourself we should tie to our mind the stone of vairāgya or desirelessness.

Since the intensity of our vairāgya is directly proportional to the intensity of our svātma-bhakti, when Sri Ramana compares vairāgya to the stone that a pearl-diver ties to his waist in order to sink to the lowermost depth of the ocean, he is in effect teaching us that in order to know ourself as we really are we must have all-consuming svātma-bhakti or love to experience nothing other than ourself. To gain such svātma-bhakti, we must purify our mind, cleansing it of all its viṣaya-vāsanās or desires for any other thing, and (as he teaches us in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of Nan Yar? and in verses 3 to 9 of Upadesa Undiyar) the most effective means by which we can purify it is by persistently trying to practise self-attentiveness.

As is the case with all other forms of meditation, the real purpose of (and benefit to be gained from) mettā bhāvanā is only the purification of our mind, but its more ostensible and superficial aim is to develop mettā (love, affection or goodwill) for all living beings. However, as Lord Buddha taught us by the example of his compassionate life, if we truly have love for all living beings we should seek to remove all their sufferings, and the most effective means to do that is to turn our mind inwards to destroy our illusion of being a separate self.

All other living beings appear to exist and to be bound by the limitations and inevitable suffering of embodied existence only because we wrongly imagine ourself to be this body-bound mind, which is our false self (the ‘self’ that is truly anattā, anātman or ‘non-self’). Just as the other people that we see in a dream appear to exist only so long as we imagine ourself to be a body living in that dream-world, so all the living beings in this so-called waking world (which is actually just another dream-world) appear to exist only so long as we imagine ourself to be this body.

If we see people or other living beings suffering in our dream, what can we do to relieve them of their suffering most effectively? Nothing that we do in the dream can relieve all the living beings in that dream-world of all their sufferings completely, but if we simply wake up, all their sufferings will immediately cease to exist. Likewise, if we wake up from the dream of our present body-bound life by knowing what we really are, this world and all the suffering that exists in it will instantaneously cease to exist, because they appear to exist only in our mind, and our mind appears to exist only because we do not know ourself as we really are.

Therefore if we practise ātma-vichāra or self-attentiveness, we will not only purify our mind — ridding it of all its narrow-minded selfishness, and thereby developing true mettā (love and compassion) for all living beings — but will also eventually destroy our mind, which is the root cause of all the suffering that appears to exist both in us and in the world around us.

Staying with ‘I am’

2009-07-01T09:15:00.001+01:00

A friend recently wrote to me asking:

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

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

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

Some pointer or direction is needed.

To this I replied as follows:

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

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

However, it is true that when he was asked by some spiritually immature devotees what the location of the heart is in this body, as a concession to their limited understanding he said that it is ‘two digits to the right from the centre of the chest’, because this is the point in which our mind feels that ‘I’ is centred in this body. However, since this body is just a figment of the mind’s power of imagination (just as any body that we experience ourself to be in a dream is), this location of the heart in the body is obviously only a relative truth. Where is the body when we do not think of it, as in sleep?

Since this body is a mere thought that arises only when our mind is active, how can concentration upon any location in it enable us to experience ourself as we really are? In order to know our real self, we must ignore all thoughts, including this imaginary body.

The practice that Sri Ramana actually taught us is only atma-vichara or ‘self-investigation’, which is the simple practice of self-attentiveness — that is, being conscious of nothing other than our own essential being, ‘I am’. This is the thought-free state of ‘just being’, because when the mind attends to its essential being, it subside and merges in it (and thereby ceases to be the thinking mind that it appears to be so long as it is attending to anything else).

There is no use in trying to ‘watch thoughts go by without getting emotionally involved’, because ‘thoughts go by’ only when we think them, and we think them only because we are ‘emotionally involved’ with (or have some desire or aversion for) whatever we are thinking of. Thinking feeds and nourishes the mind, perpetuating the illusion that it is our real self, so we can never experience ourself as we really are so long as we are thinking (or ‘watching thoughts go by’, which is possible only so long as we are thinking those passing thoughts).

Therefore Sri Ramana said that whatever thought may arise, we should immediately destroy it at its very source by investigating ‘who thinks this?’. In other words, instead of attending to any thought, we should constantly try to attend only to the ‘I’ that thinks them. When we thus attend to this thinking ‘I’, it will subside in the source from which it arose, which is our own pure self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

What you call “staying with ‘I am’” means only such keen and vigilant self-attentiveness, because so long as our entire consciousness or attention is focused exclusively on itself, ‘I am’, there is no room for any thought to arise (since no thought can arise unless we attend to it). We are in truth always “with ‘I am’”, but we seem to be distracted from it only by our habit of thinking of other things.

Therefore we should deny all thoughts our attention, and we can do this effectively only by attending exclusively to ourself, ‘I am’.

In order to thus attend exclusively to (or “stay with”) ‘I am’, we must have all-consuming love (or ‘affection’) for just being thus. Without intense love for our real being, we cannot attend to it to the exclusion of every other thing, and hence we cannot experience ourself as we really are. This is why Sri Ramana often used to say that bhakti (love or devotion) is jnana-mata, the ‘mother of true knowledge’, and that true bhakti is only swatma-bhakti, love for our own essential self.

You may also find it useful to read some of the recent articles in my blog, such as How to start practising atma-vichara?, What is self-attentiveness? and Sadhanai Saram – The Essence of Spiritual Practice (sadhana), in which I discuss the practice of atma-vichara in more detail.

Sadhanai Saram – The Essence of Spiritual Practice (sadhana)

2009-06-27T09:15:00.004+01:00

As I had intimated in several of my recent articles, today I have uploaded the following four new e-books to the Books section of my website:

An e-book copy of the English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael James of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam.
An e-book copy of the English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael James of Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai.
An e-book copy of Sadhanai Saram by Sri Sadhu Om.
An e-book copy of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana by Sri Sadhu Om.

I have also uploaded a PDF copy of La Félicité et l'Art d'Etre – Chapitre 1, ‘Qu’est-ce que la Félicité?’, which is a French translation of the first chapter of Happiness and the Art of Being, ‘What is Happiness?’.

The following is an extract from the introductory page that I wrote for Sadhanai Saram:

சாதனை சாரம் (Sadhanai Saram), the ‘Essence of Spiritual Practice’, is a collection of several hundred Tamil verses composed by Sri Sadhu Om on the subject of the practice of atma-vichara (self-investigation) and atma-samarpana (self-surrender).

சாதனை (sadhanai) is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word sadhana, which in a spiritual context means ‘spiritual practice’ but which more generally means an ‘expedient’ or ‘means to an end’, that is, any means that is adopted to accomplish a particular aim or goal (being derived from the verbal root sadh, which means to ‘go [or lead] straight to a goal’, ‘achieve’, ‘accomplish’, ‘effect’, ‘bring about’ or ‘produce’), and சாரம் (saram) is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word sara, which means ‘substance’, ‘essence’ or ‘inner core’, or in a literary context a ‘summary’ or ‘epitome’, or the ‘gist’, ‘main point’ or ‘real meaning’ of a subject.

Since people have many different aims — even in a spiritual context (since they espouse many different concepts about the goal or purpose of spiritual or religious endeavour) — they adopt many different practices or sadhanas to achieve whatever goal they are seeking. Therefore in the name of sadhana people do many different forms of meditation, yoga, prayer, worship and other such actions of mind, speech or body.

Each of these actions done in the name of sadhana or ‘spiritual practice’ will no doubt produce some result, but whatever that result may be, is it the real spiritual goal that we should all be seeking? What actually is the real spiritual goal?

One thing that is common to all the many goals or results that we each seek to achieve by all our various spiritual and worldly endeavours is that we regard them as a means to happiness. Ultimately the one goal that we all seek to achieve is to be happy, so the real spiritual goal is happiness — unlimited, unalloyed and everlasting happiness — and only when we achieve such happiness will all our endeavours or sadhanas be fulfilled and finally come to an end.

What is real happiness, and how are we to achieve it? As Bhagavan Sri Ramana has taught us, infinite happiness is our true nature — our own essential self — and our present seeming lack or deficiency of happiness is caused only by our self-ignorance — our lack of clear and certain knowledge about who or what we really are. Therefore he taught us that the one real goal of all spiritual endeavour is only the experience of clear self-knowledge, because only when we know ourself as we really are will we experience the true happiness that we all seek.

Since self-ignorance is the ultimate cause of all forms of unhappiness, a sadhana or ‘means’ can enable us to achieve unalloyed and infinite happiness only if it is able to remove our fundamental self-ignorance. Therefore Sri Ramana taught us that the only true sadhana or ‘spiritual practice’ is atma-vichara — the practice of self-investigation, self-scrutiny or self-attentiveness.

That is, in order to destroy our self-ignorance we must experience ourself as we really are, and we cannot know ourself as we really are without attending to ourself — that is, without keenly and carefully examining or scrutinising ourself with true and all-consuming love to know ‘who am I?’. Only when we withdraw our attention from everything else — from all thoughts, from all objects and from everything that is other than ‘I’ — and focus it keenly and exclusively upon our fundamental self-consciousness, ‘I am’, will we be able to experience ourself without the superimposition of any of the adjuncts that we now mistake to be ourself, such as our body and our thinking mind.

We now mistake ourself to be this body and mind only because we have never tried (or have not yet succeeded in our effort) to know our essential self exclusively — free from even the least consciousness anything other than ‘I’. This self-negligence or habit of ignoring or overlooking our essential self is called pramada (‘negligence’ or ‘carelessness’), and the only means or sadhana by which we can overcome it is vigilant self-attentiveness or self-remembrance, which is the practice of atma-vichara or self-investigation.

This practice of atma-vichara is also called atma-samarpana or self-surrender, because when we investigate and know our real self we will automatically give up or ‘surrender’ our false self, which is our mind or ego, the spurious form of consciousness that experiences itself as ‘I am this body, a person called so-and-so’.

Every religion teaches us that we should deny ourself or surrender ourself to God, but how can we truly surrender or deny ourself when we do not even know what we really are? Until we know ourself as we really are, we cannot know what the ‘self’ is that we should deny or surrender to God.

We can never truly deny or surrender our real self — that which we really are — so the ‘self’ that we are to surrender or efface can only be our false self — that which we are not but merely appear to be. However, we cannot surrender or separate ourself from this false self, our mind or ego, so long as we experience it as ourself. Therefore we can surrender our false self only by experiencing ourself as our real self.

That is, though we may be able to surrender (not completely but at least to a limited extent) the desires and attachments of our false self without knowing our real self, we cannot surrender our false self itself until we experience ourself as we really are. Therefore our self-surrender or self-denial will be complete only when we investigate ‘who am I?’ and thereby know what we really are.

Thus atma-vichara or self-investigation is the only truly effective means or sadhana by which we can surrender ourself to God, and this is why Sri Ramana says in the thirteenth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

Being completely absorbed in atma-nishtha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other chintana [thought] except atma-chintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

Our mind or false self rises and sustains itself by thinking — that is, by attending to anything other than itself — so when we focus our entire ‘thought’ or attention upon ourself (our essential self-consciousness, ‘I am’) and thereby exclude all other thoughts, our mind will automatically subside and dissolve into our real self, ‘I am’, which is the ‘ground’ or fundamental consciousness of being that underlies and support its false appearance.

In other words, thought or objective attention is the air that our mind must constantly breathe in order to survive. Therefore, by thinking of (or attending to) anything other than ourself, we are feeding and nourishing our mind, whereas by thinking of (or attending to) ourself alone, we are starving or stifling it, thereby causing it to subside or surrender itself to its underlying reality, our pristine non-dual self-consciousness, ‘I am’.

Therefore, as Sri Ramana teaches in this important passage of Nan Yar?, we can surrender ourself effectively and entirely only by being vigilantly self-attentive and thereby excluding not only all other thoughts but even our thinking mind itself.

Conversely, we can be truly self-attentive — that is, firmly established in the non-dual practice of atma-vichara or atma-nishtha — only to the extent that we surrender or deny ourself by refraining from rising as this thinking mind, which is our false self. Therefore self-investigation and self-surrender are truly one and inseparable, like the two sides of a single piece of paper.

The reason why the one true sadhana or means by which we can know ourself as we really are is sometimes described as atma-vichara or self-investigation and sometimes as atma-samarpana or self-surrender is that the former emphasises its jnana or ‘knowing’ aspect while the latter emphasises its bhakti or ‘love’ aspect. We cannot know ourself as we really are and thereby surrender all that we are not unless we have intense and all-consuming love to experience ourself thus, and our love to experience ourself thus will grow and increase to the extent to which we gain true clarity of self-consciousness by constantly practising self-attentiveness.

Therefore the single sadhana or practice of self-investigation and self-surrender is not only the true jnana yoga or ‘path of knowing’ but is also the pinnacle or culmination of bhakti yoga or the ‘path of devotion’. Since God is our own essential self, we can surrender our false self and merge in him only by investigating and knowing who we really are.

Though there are many different forms of sadhana or spiritual practice, among all of them there is ultimately only one true and essential form, and that is this non-dual practice of atma-vichara or self-investigation, because it is the only sadhana by which we can directly and immediately experience ourself as we really are.

As Sri Ramana once said, though various paths may help to purify our mind and thereby lead us close to the citadel of true self-knowledge, in order to actually enter that citadel we must pass through the only gateway, which is the practice of atma-vichara or self-investigation, because we cannot know ourself as we really are unless we keenly scrutinise ourself with an intense love to discover ‘who am I?’.

That is, though other forms of sadhana may purify our mind and thereby give it the clarity to understand that the only true sadhana or means to self-knowledge is vigilant and keenly penetrating self-attentiveness (as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 3 of Upadesa Undiyar), no other sadhana can enable us to experience self-knowledge directly, because we cannot know ourself as we really are unless we closely and carefully attend to ourself. Attention, which is our ability to direct our consciousness towards something (or rather, our ability to bring something within the centre of our consciousness), is the only means by which we can know anything, so we can know our essential self only by attending to it — that is, by attending to our fundamental self-consciousness, the consciousness that we always experience as ‘I am’.

Whereas every other form of sadhana is a karma or action, since it involves some form of objective attention — that is, attention to something other than our essential self — the practice of atma-vichara is not an action or ‘doing’ but is only a state of just ‘being’, since it is an absolutely non-objective attention — that is, an attention to nothing other than our essential self, ‘I am’. Since our goal is not any state of action or karma but only the pristine state of absolutely action-free being, we cannot attain it by any kind or any amount of action, but only by refraining completely from all forms of action, which we can do only by our focusing our entire attention upon our essential self, thereby withdrawing it from everything else and causing our mind to subside without action in our natural state of pure self-conscious being.

Therefore this sadhana or practice of self-investigation and self-surrender that Sri Ramana has taught us is truly sadhana sara — the essence, core or cream of all forms of spiritual practice — and hence this collection of verses composed by Sri Sadhu Om on this essential form of spiritual practice is called Sadhanai Saram, the ‘Essence of Spiritual Practice’.

Upadesa Tanippakkal – an explanatory paraphrase

2009-06-26T17:12:00.001+01:00

In continuation of my previous six articles, which were explanatory paraphrases of Upadesa Undiyar, Ulladu Narpadu, Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham, Ekatma Panchakam, Appala Pattu and Anma-Viddai (Atma-Vidya), the following is the last of seven extracts from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai (an e-book copy of which I will be uploading to the Books section of my website within the next few days, along with e-book copies of Sri Arunachala Stuti Panchakam, Sadhanai Saram and Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana):

Besides these six poems that form உபதேச நூன்மாலை (Upadesa Nunmalai), there are a total of twenty-seven separate verses of upadesa (spiritual teaching) that Sri Ramana composed, which are not included in the Upadesa Nunmalai section of ஸ்ரீ ரமண நூற்றிரட்டு (Sri Ramana Nultirattu), the Tamil ‘Collected Works of Sri Ramana’, but which could appropriately be included there.

However, as I explain in the introduction that I wrote for this English translation of Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai, which is contained in the printed book and in the e-book copy of it (and also in a separate article in my blog, Sri Ramanopadesa Nunmalai – English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael James), Sri Sadhu Om gathered these twenty-seven verses together and arranged them in a suitable order to form a work entitled உபதேசத் தனிப்பாக்கள் (Upadesa-t-tani-p-pakkal), the ‘Solitary Verses of Spiritual Teaching’, and he included this work at the end of his Tamil commentary on Upadesa Nunmalai, which is a book called ஸ்ரீ ரமணோபதேச நூன்மாலை – விளக்கவுரை (Sri Ramanopadesa Nunmalai – Vilakkavurai).

At least thirteen of these twenty-seven verses of Upadesa Tanippakkal (namely verses 2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24 and 25) were originally composed by Sri Ramana as part of Guru Vachaka Kovai, and were therefore included in the second edition of it (which was published in 1971) as verses B4, B5, B16, B10, B15, B12, B13, B19, B6, B24, B26, B28 and B27 respectively (of which all except verse B24 [Upadesa Tanippakkal verse 21] were also included in the first edition, which was published in 1939). The other fourteen of these twenty-seven verses may not actually have been composed as part of Guru Vachaka Kovai, but were nevertheless included in the third edition of it, which was published in 1998.

Eight verses of Upadesa Tanippakkal (namely verses 1, 8, 11, 17, 21, 23, 24 and 25) are translations or adaptations of verses from ancient Sanskrit texts, and verse 22 is a condensed adaptation of a verse from a Tamil text called Prabhulinga Lilai, but the other eighteen verses are all Sri Ramana’s own original compositions.

In verse 1 (which is an adaptation of the first verse of a Sanskrit text called Siva Jnana Bodham, and which is included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 114-a [the first verse in the appendix of our English translation]) he says that because this world, which consists of female, male, neuter and so on, is seen as an effect (karya), a ‘doer’ (or agent) who creates it does exist as the cause (karana) of this world, and that this ‘doer’ destroys and creates this world, and is known as Hara (or God).

That is, so long as we see this world as an effect (a result or product, that is, something that is not permanent but has come into existence), we have to accept the existence of cause or creator that has brought it into existence, and this cause, which not only creates but also destroys this world, is called ‘Hara’ or ‘God’. This truth is stated by Sri Ramana in a more refined manner in the first verse of Ulladu Narpadu, in which he says that this ‘cause’ — the ஓர் முதல் (or mudal) or ‘one primal reality’, which is self — is that which appears as everything: the seeing mind, the world-picture that it sees, the light of consciousness by which it sees, and the ground or underlying being that supports its seeing.

However, our real self appears as God, the cause or creator of this world, only so long as we see this world instead of seeing ourself as we really are. When we look inwards to see the reality of our mind, which sees this world-appearance and infers the existence of a creating God, our mind will dissolve and disappear, and in the absence of this seeing mind neither the world nor any separate God will exist. That is, the mind (or ‘soul’), world and God are all a false appearance, the sole reality of which is our true self — our essential consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

In verses 2 and 3 (which are also verses B4 and B5 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana explains the tattva or truth signified by Deepavali (the ‘array [or series] of lights’), an important Hindu festival that celebrates the destruction of the demon Narakasura, who symbolises the ego.

In verse 2 he summarises the meaning of verses 181 and 182 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that a person who slays Narakan (the demon who embodies our ego) with the jnana-chakra (the discus of self-knowledge) by investigating ‘where is Narakan, who rules the world of hell (naraka) as “[this] hell-body is I”?’ is Narayana (Lord Vishnu), and that that day (on which Narakasura is thus slain) is the auspicious day of Naraka Chaturdasi (the day of the fourteenth waning moon, on which people commence the Deepavali festival by taking a ritual bath to celebrate his destruction).

In verse 3 he rephrases verse 183 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that Deepavali (the ‘array of lights’) is our shining as self, having scrutinised and thereby destroyed the great sinner, the evil Narakasura, who degenerated by imagining the illusory (or miserable) body abode, which is the form of hell (naraka), to be ‘I’.

That is, Narakasura is our mind or ego, which has fallen from our natural state of pure non-dual self-consciousness by imagining itself to be a body, and he can be killed only by our scrutinising him to know who he really is. When we thus investigate ‘who (or what) is this evil ego?’ and thereby destroy it, we will remain as the victorious Narayana (God), the slayer of Narakasura. This slaying of Narakasura is the significance of Naraka Chaturdasi, and our subsequent shining as Narayana, who is our own real self, is what is symbolised by Deepavali, the festival of the ‘array of lights’.

Verses 4 and 5 (which are included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verses 603-a and b [the fourth and fifth verses in the appendix of our English translation]) were composed by Sri Ramana in 1912 on the day that his devotees first decided to celebrate his jayanti (birthday).

In verse 4 he addresses those who thus wanted to celebrate the birthday of his body as a great festival, asking them what our real birthday is, and answering that it is only that day on which — by carefully investigating ‘where [or how] were we born?’ — we are born in பொருள் (porul), the true substance, essence or reality, which always shines as one (the one non-dual and only existing reality) without being born or dying (and without any other form of duality).

In verse 5 he says that knowing self and thereby subsiding (sinking, dissolving or ceasing to exist) — having discriminated, ‘Instead of lamenting about [my] birth at least on [my] birthday, cherishing [or celebrating] [my] birthday as a festivity is [like] cherishing [or celebrating] a dead corpse by decorating it’ — alone is true knowledge (or wisdom).

In verse 6 (which is included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 492-a [the third verse in the appendix of our English translation]) he writes as the stomach making a complaint to ‘my very evil [or misery-inflicting] soul’, saying that ‘you do not give me rest for even one nazhigai [twenty-four minutes]’, because ‘you do not cease eating for even one nazhigai in a day’, and that ‘you never know my suffering’, so ‘living with you is difficult’.

He composed this verse in 1929 on Chitra purnima (full moon in April-May), when, after eating a sumptuous meal, a devotee quoted a Tamil verse by Auvaiyar, in which she complains to ‘my misery-inflicting stomach’, saying that ‘if I ask [you] to forgo food for one day, you do not forgo; if I ask [you] to accept [enough food] for two days, you do not accept; you never know my suffering; living with you is difficult’. Hearing this, Sri Ramana explained that Auvaiyar’s complaint against her stomach was justified, because she was a mendicant who lived on begged food and therefore often had to survive without food, but that the same complaint was not justified when it was made by someone who had just overeaten to gratify the greed of his own mind. Therefore he adapted the verse of Auvaiyar to form this complaint made by the stomach against the greedy mind or soul.

Verse 7 (which is also verse B16 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) is a reply that Sri Ramana wrote to a question that Sri Muruganar asked him in a Tamil verse (which is now verse 815 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) about the following incident, which had happened many years earlier: One day when he was wandering alone on the northern slopes of Arunachala, Sri Ramana’s thigh accidentally brushed against a thicket in which a hornets’ nest was concealed. A swarm of angry hornets at once emerged and attacked the offending thigh, so feeling sorry for the disturbance that he had accidentally caused them, he stood still and calmly allowed them to sting his thigh to their hearts’ content.

In his verse Sri Muruganar therefore asked him why he felt repentant and allowed them to sting his thigh even though the disturbance he had caused them was not intentional, in reply to which he composed this verse asking what the nature of his mind would be (that is, how hard-hearted it would be) if it had not at least felt sorry, even though the swarming hornets stung the leg that touched and damaged their nest, causing it to become inflamed and swollen, and even though the damage he had caused was a mistake that happened unintentionally.

In verse 8 (which is an adaptation of a verse from a Sanskrit text called Sri Rama Gita, and which is included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 224-a [the second verse in the appendix of our English translation]) he expresses wonder at the self-delusion of siddhas (those who use siddhis or ‘supernatural powers’ to perform ‘miracles’), saying that a conjuror will delude the people of this world without himself being deluded, whereas a siddha will delude the people of this world and will himself also be deluded (believing his powers and miracles to be real).

In verse 9 (which is also verse B10 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 682 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that people who regard a (human) body, which eats pure food and transforms it into filth, as ‘I’ are worse than a pig, which eats filth. That is, though people often despise pigs because they eat excreta, Sri Ramana humbles us by saying that we are in fact even more despicable than pigs, because we imagine ourself to be this human body, which eats pure food and transforms it into excreta. In other words, identifying oneself as a body that produces excreta is worse than identifying oneself as a body that eats excreta.

In verse 10 (which is also verse B15 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 802 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that only a person who is saved (that is, liberated from the bondage of embodied existence) can save people in this world, whereas anyone else (that is, anyone who has not yet saved himself or herself yet who tries to save other people) is like the blind leading the blind. That is, just as darkness can be removed only by light, the dense darkness of our self-ignorance can only be removed by the real guru, who knows and abides as the clear light of pure self-consciousness.

In verse 11 (which is another but briefer adaptation of the same Sanskrit verse that he adapted as verse 2 of Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham, and which is included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1127-a) Sri Ramana says that the state (of true self-knowledge) that is attained by the means (the practice of atma-vichara) that arises clearly (within us) due to சாது உறவு (sadhu-uravu) — intimate friendship with or love for a sage who knows and abides as self — cannot be attained by (any other means such as) a preacher, sacred texts or virtuous deeds.

Verse 12 (which is included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1127-a) was composed by Sri Ramana on 30th July 1928, but later that day he modified the first two lines in order to pack more meaning into it, and the modified version is now included in Ulladu Narpadu as verse 13. In this original version of that verse he says that jnana (knowledge or consciousness) alone is real, and that ajnana (ignorance), which is nothing other than the jnana that sees as many (that is, the mind, which is the false consciousness that sees itself as this entire experience of duality or multiplicity), is nothing other than self (its only real substance), which is jnana, just as all the many ornaments, which are unreal (as separate forms), are not other than gold (the real substance of which they are made).

Verse 13 (which is included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 603-c) was composed by Sri Ramana in the second week of August 1927, but a year later he modified it in order to encompass in it a discussion not only of time but also of space, and the modified version is now included in Ulladu Narpadu as verse 16. In this original version of that verse he first asks the rhetorical question ‘நாம் அன்றி நாள் ஏது?’ (nam andri nal edu?), which means ‘except we, where is time?’ and which clearly implies that ‘we’ alone truly exist and that time does not actually exist. He then says ‘நாம் நம்மை நாடாது “நாம் உடல்” என்று எண்ணில், நமை நாள் உண்ணும்’ (nam nammai nadadu ‘nam udal’ endru ennil, namai nal unnum), which means ‘if — without scrutinising ourself — we think that we are a body, time will eat [devour or consume] us’, but then asks another rhetorical question, ‘are we [a] body?’, implying that we are not. He then concludes by saying that we are ‘one’ (the one non-dual immutable reality), now, in past and future times, and that therefore we — we who have eaten (devoured or consumed) time — exist.

That is, we seem to be ensnared within the limits of time only so long as we imagine ourself to be a body, but when we scrutinise ourself and discover that we are not this body but only the infinite and eternal reality that underlies and supports the appearance of this body and everything else, we will thereby consume time and remain as the one non-dual immutable reality that we always truly are.

Having thus indicated that our present confused knowledge about ourself and everything else exists only because we have not scrutinised ourself — that is, investigated who or what we really are — in verses 14 to 16 Sri Ramana discusses the actual practice of atma-vichara or ‘scrutinising ourself’.

In verse 14 (which is also verse B12 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) he rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 706 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that for people who do not abide in jnana (knowledge or consciousness), which is the sthana (place, abode or home) where ‘I’ resides, knowing in japa the sthana where para-vak (the supreme speech or word) resides is good (or suitable).

This verse, which is intended to be a concession to those who complain that they are unable to practise atma-vichara or who are strongly attached to the practice of mantra-japa (repetition of a name of God or any other sacred words), can be best be understood by considering it in the light of how Sri Ramana came to compose it, which is as follows:

On 18th November 1907 a Vedic scholar and Sanskrit poet called Kavyakantha Ganapati Sastri came to Sri Ramana and asked him what the real meaning of tapas (austerity or severe spiritual practice) is. Sri Ramana replied by remaining silent and looking at him steadily, but after fifteen minutes Ganapati Sastri asked him to reply in words. Sri Ramana then said, ‘If one observes that from which that which says “I”, “I” emerges, the mind will subside there; that alone is tapas’, but Ganapati Sastri responded by asking, ‘Is it not possible to attain that state by japa also?’ so he replied, ‘If one repeats a mantra and observes that from which the sound of that mantra emerges, the mind will subside there; that alone is tapas’.

Many years later, when discussing this incident with Sri Muruganar and other devotees, Sri Ramana explained that atma-vichara, which is the practice of observing the source from which our mind arises as ‘I’, is the only means by which we can know who or what we really are, but that if someone says that he wants to achieve self-knowledge by mantra-japa, instead of insisting that he should only practise atma-vichara, it is better to tell him to carry on with his mantra-japa but to observe the source from which the mantra-dhvani (the sound of that mantra) originates, because it originates only from the person who repeats it, so trying to observe from where it originates is a means of diverting one’s attention away from the mantra towards the ‘I’ who is repeating it. In other words, observing the source of the mantra-dhvani is the same as observing the source of the rising ‘I’ (the mind that repeats it), because the source of both is the same fundamental consciousness, which is our being ‘I’.

Sri Ramana also explained that because ‘I’ is the source of all sounds or words, it is called the para-vak or ‘supreme word’, and it is the original and foremost name of God. Therefore there is no mantra (sacred word) greater than the word ‘I’ (in whichever language it may be expressed), because unlike any other mantra, when we repeat it draws our attention directly towards its source, which is our essential self-consciousness, ‘I am’.

Sri Muruganar summarised this explanation given by Sri Ramana in verses 706 and 707 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, and then Sri Ramana rephrased the meaning of verse 706 in a more condensed manner in this verse. Therefore his intention when he composed this verse was not to suggest that japa is an alternative to atma-vichara as a means by which we can know our self, but was only to indicate that the true benefit of mantra-japa can only be achieved by observing ‘I’, the source from which the mantra-dhvani originates.

On the path of bhakti or devotion, japa or repetition of a name of God is used as a means by which we can focus our love and attention upon the thought of God, but since God is truly our own essential self, ‘I am’, the easiest and most effective means by which we can focus our love and attention upon him is the practice of atma-vichara or svarupa-smarana — self-attentiveness or self-remembrance. This truth is clearly stated by Sri Ramana in verse 15 (which is also verse B13 of Guru Vachaka Kovai), in which he rephrases in a more condensed and emphatic manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 730 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that atma-anusamdhana is parama-isa-bhakti (supreme devotion to God) because God exists as atma (our essential self).

The meaning of the Sanskrit word anusamdhana is essentially the same as that of vichara, namely investigation, enquiry, scrutiny, close inspection or deep contemplation, so atma-anusamdhana means self-scrutiny or being keenly attentive to our essential self. Such keen and vigilant self-attentiveness is possible only when we have intense and all-consuming love for self — our pure consciousness of being, ‘I am’ — which is the true form of God.

In verse 16 (which is also verse B19 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) he rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verses 957 and 958 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that in waking the state of sleep will occur by subtle investigation, which is the practice of constantly scrutinising oneself, and that until sleep shines pervading throughout both waking and dream, we should incessantly practise that subtle investigation.

This ‘state of sleep’ that will occur in waking and that will eventually pervade throughout both waking and dream when we constantly practise atma-vichara or subtle self-investigation is the state that is known as jagat-sushupti or ‘waking sleep’, which is the only real state (as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 32 of Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham). This state is our natural state of true self-knowledge, and it is called ‘waking sleep’ because it is the state in which we are clearly conscious of (or ‘awake’ to) the only reality, ‘I am’, and completely unaware of (or ‘asleep’ to) anything other than that.

The only means by which we can experience this state of true self-knowledge is atma-vichara, the subtle practice of keenly vigilant self-attentiveness, so until we experience it we should persevere in being self-attentive as constantly as possible. As Sri Ramana says in the tenth and eleventh paragraphs of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

... without giving room to even [the slightest] thought, one should persistently cling fast to svarupa-dhyana [self-contemplation]. ...

... If one clings fast to uninterrupted svarupa-smarana [self-remembrance] until one attains svarupa [one’s own essential self], that alone [will be] sufficient. ...

In verses 17 to 23 Sri Ramana states some truths about the state of attainment of true self-knowledge.

In July 1948 Sri Ramana translated the sixty-eight verses of Sri Adi Sankara’s Atma-Bodha into Tamil in verse form, and though he translated all the other verses in venba metre, he translated the last verse at first in a six-foot viruttam metre, but later recomposed it as a six-line pakrodai venba in order to make it conform metrically with all the other verses. The pakrodai venba version is now the final verse of his translation of Atma-Bodha, and the original viruttam version is verse 17 of Upadesa Tanippakkal (and is also included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 227-a).

In this verse he says that whoever bathes without action in atma-tirtha (the holy waters of self), which shines abundantly as unblemished nityananda (eternal happiness), which is untouched by (any limitation such as) direction, time, place and so on, pervading everywhere and bereft of (any physical sensation such as) cold and so on, that firm (or steady) person (the person who is thus firmly established in self) is omnipresent, omniscient and immortal.

The state that is described here as ‘bathing without action in atma-tirtha’ is the state of firm self-abidance, which Sri Ramana describes in verse 4 of Anma-Viddai as ‘settling down and just being without the slightest action (karma) of speech, mind or body’ and which we can achieve only by focusing our entire attention upon our essential self-consciousness, ‘I am’, thereby excluding all thought about anything else.

In verse 18 (which was composed on 28th May 1944 and which is also included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1027-a) Sri Ramana reiterates the same truth that he stated in verse 28 of Upadesa Undiyar, namely that if we know our ‘true form’ (our real nature) in our heart, we will know ourself to be sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss), which is fullness (or infinite wholeness) without beginning or end.

In verse 19 (which is also verse B6 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) he rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 216 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, saying that only that which is experienced as santi (peace) in the state of introversion is that which appears as sakti (power) in the state of extroversion, and that to those who have investigated and known (the reality) they are one.

That is, as Sri Sadhu Om explains in his Tamil commentary on this verse, our real self, which is sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss), is the fullness of both infinite peace and infinite power. When our mind turns within and merges in self, it experiences itself as the ocean of infinite peace, but when it rises and rushes outside towards the world of thoughts and sense perceptions, its own essential self appears to be God, the supreme power that creates, sustains and dissolves this world. Hence for those who know and abide eternally as self, peace and power are one, being both nothing other than self. Therefore all the many different kinds of power that are seen in this world are in truth only an infinitesimal reflection of the infinite ocean of peace that a mey-jnani (one who knows and abides as the reality) experiences as his true nature.

Verse 20 (which is also included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1147-a) consists of a metaphorical statement made by a devotee named K. V. Ramachandran and the equally metaphorical reply given by Sri Ramana. One day when they were walking together on Arunachala hill they saw a bird being caught in a net by a hunter, whereupon Ramachandran composed a kural venba (a two-line form of a venba) in which he said, ‘If a dove that is caught in the hand of a hunter is released, it will escape [or go away] even from the forest’, implying that if a person is liberated from the bondage of maya or self-delusion, he or she will depart from his or her body.

Sri Ramana replied by extending the second line and adding two more lines to this verse, thus transforming it into a venba (a four-line verse in a particular metre), in which he said, ‘If [you] say thus, [the reply is that] when the hunter seeking [or desiring to go] home departs elsewhere [leaving the bird], even the forest, which was alien, will end as home’, implying that when the mind, which is maya, seeks its original abode by scrutinising itself and thereby departs (or ceases to exist), even the body, which we previously considered to be an alien object (something other than our real ‘I’), will be recognised as being nothing other than our real self.

That is, so long as we are seeking to know ourself as we really are, we have to consider our body to be an alien object (because we cannot know the real nature of ‘I’ so long as we experience this body as ‘I’), but as soon as we know ourself as we really are, we will recognise that this mind, body and world are all nothing other than ‘I’, which is the sole reality (just as the imaginary snake is nothing other than the rope, which alone is real). Therefore when a person experiences true self-knowledge, his or her body does not necessarily die or cease to exist, but will continue to live (at least in the view of those who do not know self) until the prarabdha or destiny that brought it into existence has been completed.

In verse 21 (which is also verse B24 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana rephrases the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 1148 of Guru Vachaka Kovai (which is an adaptation of Srimad Bhagavatam 11.13.36, a verse that he sometimes cited and explained), saying that whether the impermanent body is settled (inactive or asleep) or risen (active or awake), whether it is present (living) or has departed (died), a sage who knows self does not know the body, just as a person blinded by alcohol intoxication does not know the fine cloth (whether it is still on or has slipped off his body).

That is, the body of a sage who knows self seems to exist only in the view of those who do not know self, because in the absolutely clear perspective of true self-knowledge only the one infinite and formless self exists. Since the body and everything else except self is a mere imagination, it is known only by the imagining mind (which is itself just an unreal imagination) and not by the non-dual real self. Therefore the sage or jnani knows neither the body nor the world, nor anything else except self, the pure and infinite non-dual consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

In verse 22 (which is a condensed adaptation of Prabhulinga Lilai 12.11, and which is also included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1141-a) he says that just as we would discard a leaf plate after eating the food served on it, so one who has seen (or experienced) self will discard the body. That is, the only purpose of our body is to serve as a plate from which we should eat the sumptuous feast of true self-knowledge by constantly practising vigilant self-attentiveness, and once this purpose has been served, we will happily discard it.

In verse 23 (which is also verse B26 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 1166 of Guru Vachaka Kovai (which is an adaptation of Bhagavad Gita 4.22, a verse that he sometimes cited and explained and that he later translated again as verse 40 of Bhagavad Gita Saram), saying that an equanimous person who experiences happiness in whatever happens (according to prarabdha or destiny), who has put an end to jealousy, and who has discarded dvandvas (all pairs of opposites), is devoid of bondage (the bondage of karma, action or ‘doing’) even though doing.

That is, even though such a perfectly equanimous sage may appear to be doing actions of mind, speech and body such as thinking, talking, walking and eating, he or she does not in fact do anything, because he experiences himself as the one infinite self-consciousness, ‘I am’, which never does anything but just is, and not as the body and mind, which are the instruments that do action.

In verse 24 (which is also verse B28 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 1227 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, which is an adaptation of the following Sanskrit verse, which he often cited and explained:

na nirodho na chotpattir na baddho na cha sadhakah |
na mumukshur na vai mukta ity esha paramarthata ||

This verse, which occurs in several ancient texts such as Amritabindu Upanishad verse 10, Atmopanishad verse 31, Avadhutopanishad verse 8, Mandukya Karikas 2.32 and Vivekachudamani verse 574, means:

[There is] no nirodha [stopping, ending or destruction] and no utpatti [arising, origination, birth, production or creation], no baddha [person who is bound] and no sadhaka [person doing spiritual practice], no mumukshu [person seeking liberation] and even no mukta [person who is liberated] — thus is paramartha [the supreme or ultimate truth].

In his prose translation of Vivekachudamani Sri Ramana has translated this verse literally thus, and in verse 24 of Upadesa Tanippakkal he has translated it more freely as:

[There is] no becoming [or coming into being], destruction, bondage, desire to become free [or unbound], effort [or] those who have attained [liberation]. Know that this is paramartha [the ultimate truth].

Creation and destruction, birth and death, beginning and end, bondage and liberation, desire for liberation and effort to be liberated, and any person who experiences such things, all exist only in the distorted consciousness that we call ‘mind’, and hence they are only as real as this mind that experiences them. However, as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 17 of Upadesa Undiyar, when we vigilantly scrutinise this mind, we will find that there is actually no such thing, and therefore when we thus know that the mind has never really existed, we will also clearly know that none of the duality, multiplicity or otherness that it seemed to experience ever really existed.

Thus when we know ourself as we really are — that is, when we know that we are always nothing other than the one infinite non-dual self-consciousness, ‘I am’, and that we have never really been this mind that we now imagine ourself to be — we will clearly know that nothing other than ourself has ever existed or even appeared to exist. This ultimate experience of absolute non-duality is known as ajata — ‘no birth’, ‘no arising’, ‘no becoming’, ‘no happening’, ‘no appearing’, ‘no being brought into being’ or ‘no creation’.

This experience of ajata is a truth that cannot truly be grasped by our mind or intellect, which appears to exist only by experiencing duality, but it can be known clearly and certainly if we investigate the truth of our knowing mind by turning its attention back on itself, away from all duality or otherness towards the one consciousness that we always experience as ‘I am’.

In the final three verses of Upadesa Tanippakkal Sri Ramana turns our attention towards mauna or ‘silence’, which is the true language of non-duality and which is the only means by which we can experience reality as it is. In this context mauna means absolute silence or stillness of mind, which is itself the one reality that it alone can reveal.

In verse 25 (which is also verse B27 of Guru Vachaka Kovai) Sri Ramana rephrases in a more condensed manner the truth that Sri Muruganar recorded in verse 1181 of Guru Vachaka Kovai (which is an adaptation of Panchadasi 2.39, a verse that he sometimes cited and explained), saying that questions and answers can occur only in this language of duality (dvaita), and that in the true state of non-duality (advaita) they do not exist.

Thus he indicates that in order to experience our true state of advaita or absolute non-duality we must go beyond our habit of asking verbal questions and seeking verbal answers. The only ‘question’ that will enable us to experience the non-dual reality directly is the non-verbal investigation ‘who am I?’ — that is, the thought-free inward scrutiny of our fundamental consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

Such thought-free self-investigation or atma-vichara is ‘questioning’ in silence, which is the true language of non-duality, and the ‘answer’ that this silent questioning will evoke is likewise only absolute silence or mauna, which is the true nature of our real self.

In verse 26 (which is also included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1172-a) he begins by saying that that which is அக்கரம் (akkaram) is ஓர் எழுத்து (or ezhuttu), the ‘one [unique or peerless] letter’. அக்கரம் (akkaram) is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word akshara, which means both ‘imperishable’ (or ‘immutable’) and a ‘letter’ of the alphabet (or a ‘syllable’ written as a compound letter, such as the sacred syllable ‘om’), so the implied meaning of this first sentence is that the ‘one letter’ is that which is imperishable and immutable — that is, the one eternal, imperishable and immutable reality, which is our own essential self, ‘I am’.

In the second and third sentences of this verses he says that ‘you want [me] to write that which is one letter (akshara) in this book’ and that the ‘one letter (ezhuttu), which is imperishable (akshara), is that which always shines spontaneously [or as self] in the heart’, and in the final sentence he asks rhetorically, ‘Who is able to write it?’, implying that it cannot be written by anyone.

The origin of this verse is as follows: On 30th September 1937 a devotee called Somasundara Swami asked Sri Ramana to write ‘one letter’ in his notebook, and he responded by writing a kural venba (a two-line verse in venba style) that means:

One [unique or peerless] letter (or ezhuttu) is that which always shines spontaneously [or as self] in the heart. Who is able to write it?

Sri Ramana later explained more about the nature of this ‘one letter’, and Sri Muruganar recorded his explanation in verse 1172 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, in which he incorporated this kural venba as the last two lines:

One letter is that which always shines spontaneously [or as self] in the heart as that which is [absolutely] pure, as that which bestows the clarity of true knowledge, and as the source of all the letters that are formed [or appear as sounds or symbols]. Who is able to write it?

Sri Ramana also translated this kural venba into Sanskrit as follows:

ekam aksharam hridi nirantaram |
bhasate svayam likhyate katham ||

This Sanskrit version means:

One letter shines incessantly [and] spontaneously in the heart. How is it to be written?

On 21st September 1940, three years after he composed this kural venba, he added two lines before it to form this venba, verse 26 of Upadesa Tanippakkal, in which he emphasised that this ‘one letter’ is that which is imperishable and also indicated why he composed this verse, saying ‘you want [me] to write that which is one letter in this book’.

This imperishable ‘one letter’, which ‘always shines in [our] heart as self’ and which ‘bestows the clarity of true knowledge’, is mauna or ‘silence’, the peerless language that alone will enable us to experience ourself as we really are.

Finally in verse 27 (which is also included in Guru Vachaka Kovai as verse 1172-a), a one-line verse that he composed after seeing an English article that a devotee wrote about him entitled ‘Where Silence is an Inspired Sermon’, he says:

Silence (mauna) is indeed the state of grace, the one [unique or
peerless] language that rises [surges forth or manifests] within.

As Sri Sadhu Om says in his Tamil commentary on this verse, though the aforesaid ‘one letter’ that ‘always shines in [our] heart as self’ cannot be made known by speech or writing, it is possible for us to experience it directly, because it is the true form of grace, and hence its nature is to make itself known. How it does so is as follows:

The more our heart becomes spiritually matured, being purified or cleansed of all its vishaya-vasanas (its desires or outgoing impulses), the more the clear light of grace will ‘rise’ or shine forth as an inner clarity of firm satya-asatya vastu viveka (true discrimination or discernment, which is the ability to distinguish what is real from what is unreal), as a result of which we will gain intense bhakti (devotion or love to know and to be only self, which alone is real and which is the sole abode of all happiness) and steadfast vairagya (freedom from desire to attend to or experience anything other than self). Since such bhakti and vairagya will enable and impel us to abide firmly as self, ‘settling down and just being without the slightest action (karma) of speech, mind or body’, the atma-jyoti or infinite light of true self-knowledge will thereby spontaneously shine forth in our heart as our nitya-anubhuti or ‘eternal experience’ (as Sri Ramana says in verse 4 of Anma-Viddai).

Thus grace, which at first began to rise as the clarity of viveka or discrimination, will finally blossom fully as the infinite light of atma-jnana or true self-knowledge. This blossoming is what Sri Ramana describes as அருள் விலாசமே (arul vilasame), the ‘shining forth of grace’, in verse 3 of Anma-Viddai.

Since the light of grace that thus wells up in our heart will bestow the state of true self-knowledge, which cannot be made known by words, it is the peerless language that Sri Ramana describes in verse 26 as ஓர் எழுத்து (or ezhuttu), the ‘one [unique or peerless] letter’, and in this verse as ஒரு மொழி (oru mozhi), the ‘one [unique or peerless] language’. Since this light of grace shines transcending all the various kinds of gross and subtle sounds and lights that our mind can perceive, it is called mauna or ‘silence’.

As Sri Ramana says in Maharshi’s Gospel, Book One, chapter 2:

That state which transcends speech and thought is mauna [silence]; ... it is the perennial flow of ‘language’. ... Silence is unceasing eloquence. It is the best language. ... how does speech arise? There is abstract knowledge [the knowledge ‘I am’ — our fundamental consciousness of being, which is ever motionless and unchanging and is therefore called ‘silence’], whence arises the ego [the spurious consciousness ‘I am this body, a person called so-and-so’], which in turn gives rise to thought, and thought to the spoken word. So the word is the great-grandson of the original source [our silent consciousness ‘I am’]. If the word can produce effect, judge for yourself how much more powerful must be the preaching through silence! ... Preaching is simple communication of knowledge; it can really be done in silence only. ...

Since this unsurpassed language of non-duality (advaita-bhasha) called mauna or ‘silence’ surges forth in our heart by its avyaja-karuna (pretextless or uncaused grace) as the infinite light of true self-knowledge, tearing aside the darkness of self-ignorance that gives rise to our mind, it is truly அருள் நிலையே (arul nilaiye), the ‘state [or real nature] of grace’, as Sri Ramana declares in this verse.

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

2009-06-24T10:08:00.008+01:00

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

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

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

The title of this song, ஆன்மவித்தை (anma-viddai), is a Tamil form the Sanskrit term atma-vidya, which is a compound of two words: atman, which means ‘self’, and vidya, which means ‘knowledge’, ‘science’, ‘philosophy’ or ‘art’. Thus atma-vidya (or anma-viddai) means the ‘science of self’ — that is, the science and art of true self-knowledge, the practice of which is called atma-vichara or ‘self-investigation’.

In the pallavi or refrain (which completes the meaning of the anupallavi and each of the four verses) Sri Muruganar says, ‘Ah [what a wonder], atma-vidya is extremely easy, ah, [so] extremely easy!’ and in the anupallavi or sub-refrain he says that self (‘I am’) is so very real even to simple-minded people that in comparison even an amalaka fruit in our palm is unreal. That is, nothing is so clear, self-evident and obviously real as ourself, our fundamental consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

In verse 1 Sri Ramana says that though self is always imperishably (indubitably or unforgettably) real, the body and world, which are in fact unreal, sprout up and appear as real; but that when mind (or thought), which is composed of unreal darkness (the darkness of self-ignorance), is dissolved in such a manner that not even a trace of it survives, self, which is the real sun (of pure self-consciousness), will shine forth spontaneously in the space of our heart, the darkness (of self-ignorance) will disappear, suffering will cease and happiness will surge up.

That is, the cause of the unreal appearance of our body and this world, and of the suffering that always follows in their wake, is only our mind, which is the embodiment of self-ignorance — the imaginary darkness in which it arises. Therefore, when this mind is dissolved in the clear light of pure self-consciousness — like darkness in the bright light of the sun — the body, the world and the suffering that they cause will all cease to exist, and only perfect happiness will remain.

In verse 2 he says that since the thought ‘this body composed of flesh is certainly I’ is the one string on which all our other various thoughts are strung, if we penetrate within ourself by scrutinising ‘who am I?’ or ‘what is the place [the source or ground from which this false ‘I’ rises]?’, all thoughts will disappear and self-knowledge (atma-jnana) will shine forth spontaneously as ‘I [am only] I’ within the cave (of our heart), and he declares that this self-knowledge alone is silence (mauna), the ‘one space’ (the non-dual space of infinite being-consciousness) and the abode of bliss.

That is, since other thoughts can arise only after our primal thought ‘I am this body’ has arisen (because this primal thought is the false ‘I’ that thinks all other thoughts), and since this primal thought can rise and stand only by thinking those other thoughts, when — instead of thinking any other thought — it attends only to itself in order to know ‘who am I?’, it will subside and dissolve in the source from which it has arisen (which is our real ‘I’), and hence all other thoughts will disappear along with it. What will then remain is only pure self-consciousness, the clear knowledge that ‘I am only I’, which is the state of absolute silence — complete absence of the ever-chattering mind — and therefore the infinite abode of true happiness.

In verse 3 he asks us what use it is if we know anything else but do not know ourself, and what there is to know if we have known self (since everything else will cease to exist when we know ourself as we really are and thereby destroy the illusion of our mind and everything that it appears to know). He then says that when we know within ourself the one real self, which clearly shines without any difference in all the different souls (or living beings), the bright light of self (atma-prakasa) will flash forth within ourself, and that this is the shining forth of grace, the destruction of ‘I’ (the mind or ego) and the blossoming of true happiness.

In verse 4 he says that for the bonds of action (karma) and so on (that is, action and objective knowledge or experience) to be untied and for the destruction of birth and so on (that is, bodily birth, life and death) to occur, rather than any other path (or means), this path (of knowing self) is extremely easy. He then explain what ‘this path’ is and why it is so very easy, saying that when we settle down and just be, without the least action (karma) of speech, mind or body, ah, the light of self (atma-jyoti) in our heart will be our eternal experience, fear will not exist, and the ocean of happiness alone will remain.

That is, since this path of atma-vichara or scrutinising and knowing ourself does not involve even the least action of our mind, speech or body, but is simply the state in which our mind subsides and remains as it really is — that is, as simple non-dual thought-free self-conscious being, ‘I am’ — it is infinitely easier than any other spiritual practice, all of which involve some form of action of our mind, speech or body. What can be easier than just being?

Since our being is always self-conscious, in order to know ourself all that is required is that we just be — that is, just remain as we really are, clearly and exclusively self-conscious, thereby excluding all thoughts and all actions (which are actually just thoughts). Therefore knowing and being our real self is ‘extremely easy, ah, [so] extremely easy!’ This is the decided conclusion that Sri Ramana knew from his own experience.

Finally in verse 5 he says that ‘in the ullam [heart or mind] that scrutinises [itself] within [by just being] as it is, without thinking anything else’, self — which is called Annamalai (an alternative name of Arunachala, which in this context means ‘God’), and which is the one porul (substance, essence or reality) that shines as the ‘space even to the mind-space’ (that is, as the fundamental space of consciousness in which the ‘space’ of our mind is contained) and as the ‘eye even to the mind-eye, which is the eye even to the [five physical] senses beginning with the eye, which illumine [the five physical elements] beginning with space’ — will be seen. He then adds that ‘grace is also needed’ (in order for us just to be and thereby to experience self as it really is) and therefore advises us to ‘have love’ (that is, to have love for just being, which is the true form of grace), and concludes by saying that ‘happiness will [thereby] arise’.

Thus in this verse Sri Ramana once again emphasises that the easiest — and indeed the only — means by which we can experience ourself as we really are is just to be as we really are by inwardly scrutinising ourself and thereby excluding all other thoughts, and he also emphasises that we can experience this state of ‘just being as we are’ only if we have all-consuming love for it.

Appala Pattu – an explanatory paraphrase

2009-06-23T09:00:00.000+01:00

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

அப்பளப் பாட்டு (Appala-p-pattu), the ‘Appalam Song’, is a Tamil song that Sri Ramana composed for his mother one day in about 1914 or 1915, when she asked him to help her make some appalams (a thin crisp wafer made of gram flour and other ingredients, also known as parpata, pappadam, poppadum or pappad, which can either be fried or toasted over a naked flame or in hot embers). He responded by composing this song, in which he compares each of the ingredients, implements and actions required to make an appalam to the qualities and practices required for us to experience true self-knowledge.

In the pallavi or refrain (which completes the meaning of the anupallavi and each of the four verses) he simply says, ‘Making appalam, see; eating it, fulfil [or destroy] your desire’. The appalam that he asks us to prepare is the appalam of true self-knowledge, and what he asks us to see is who we really are. By eating this appalam — that is, by experiencing true self-knowledge — we will satisfy our hunger for infinite happiness, and thus we will destroy all our other desires, which are all just distorted forms of our fundamental desire for real happiness.

In the anupallavi or sub-refrain he says that, instead of wandering in this material world craving the fulfilment of other desires, we should satisfy our hunger for real happiness by preparing and eating the appalam of true self-knowledge in accordance with ‘the unequalled and unsurpassed one [non-dual] language’, which is the tattva or reality that the sadguru (the guru who teaches sat, being or reality), who is sat-bhoda-sukha (being-consciousness-bliss, or the happiness of true knowledge), said without saying. The sadguru whom Sri Ramana refers to here is the primal guru Dakshinamurti, and the ‘unequalled and unsurpassed one language’ that he ‘said without saying’ is silence, which is the true language of non-duality.

In verse 1 he begins to explain how we should make the appalam of true self-knowledge, saying that we should break up black gram, which is the pride ‘I’ that grows in the field of five sheaths (the body, life, mind, intellect and the underlying self-ignorance), which are not self, reducing it to powder as ‘not I’ in the hand-mill, which is the jnana-vichara (knowledge-investigation) ‘who am I?’.

That is, our ego, which rises in this body as ‘I am this’ and which Sri Ramana therefore describes as “the pride ‘I’ that grows in the field of five sheaths”, is compared to black gram, which is the principal ingredient in an appalam, and the practice of jnana-vichara — investigating what our fundamental knowledge ‘I am’ really is — is compared to the hand-mill in which we should break up this ego, reducing it to powder as ‘not I’.

In verse 2 he says that we should blend the following ingredients with the pulverised black gram: the juice of square-stalked vine, which is sat-sanga (clinging to being, or to one who knows and abides as being); cumin, which is sama (equanimity, tranquillity or calmness); pepper, which is dama (self-restraint); salt, which is uparati (cessation, which means renunciation of worldly desires and refraining from indulgence in sensual enjoyments and worldly actions); and asafoetida, which is good vasana (propensity, inclination, impulsion or desire) in the heart (or mind).

In this context உள்ள நல் வாசனை (ulla nal vasanai) or the ‘inner good vasana’ means the sat-vasana, the desire or inclination just to be, which alone can root out all our karma-vasanas, our desires to be active.

Having thus described the ingredients and their initial preparation in verses 1 and 2, in verses 3 and 4 Sri Ramana describes the process of cooking the appalam of true self-knowledge.

In verse 3 he says that in the mortar of our heart we should unceasingly and without agitation (or confusion) pound the blended ingredients with the pestle of ul-mukham (introversion or ‘facing inwards’) as ‘I [am only] I’, and then on the board, which is sama (‘evenness’ or ‘levelness’ of mind, that is, samadhi), with the rolling-pin, which is peace, we should continuously, joyfully and without calippu (weariness, pramada or self-negligence) satisfy our desire by preparing and eating the appalam of true self-knowledge.

In verse 4 he says that — in order to experience ourself as தானே தான் (tane tan), ‘self alone [is] self’ (or ‘only I [am] I’) — in the endless (infinite and eternal) pan, which is mauna-mudra (the seal, stamp or mark of silence), in the excellent ghee (or clarified butter) of brahman (the absolute reality), which is heated by jnanagni (the fire of true knowledge), we should always fry (the appalam of self-knowledge) as ‘I [am] that [brahman]’, and should thereby satisfy our desire by preparing and eating the tanmaya-appalam (the appalam that is composed of tat or ‘that’, the one absolute reality called brahman).

Ekatma Panchakam – an explanatory paraphrase

2009-06-22T12:18:00.006+01:00

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

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

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

Like Ulladu Narpadu and many of his other works, Sri Ramana composed Ekatma Panchakam in venba metre, and he later linked the five verses together as a single verse in kalivenba metre by lengthening the third foot of the fourth line of each verse and adding a fourth foot. This kalivenba version of Ekatma Panchakam is called ஏகான்ம விவேகம் (Ekanma Vivekam), ‘Discernment the Oneness of Self’, and an English translation and brief commentary upon it by Sri Sadhu Om and me was published on pages 7 to 12 of the January 1982 issue of The Mountain Path, and in May 2009 I posted a copy of it in my blog under the title Ekatma Vivekam – the kalivenba version of Ekatma Panchakam.

In verse 1 he says that having previously forgotten our real self, having imagined a body to be ourself, and having thereby taken innumerable births, our finally knowing and being our real self is just like waking from a dream of wandering about the world.

That is, our present so-called waking life is in fact nothing but one of the many dreams that we experience in our long sleep of self-forgetfulness — self-ignorance or seeming lack of clarity of self-consciousness (a lack of clarity that is characterised by our knowing clearly that we are, but not what we are). Therefore, when — by the practice of atma-vichara or keen self-scrutiny — we experience ourself as we really are and thereby awaken from this underlying sleep of self-forgetfulness, our present life as a finite individual will dissolve completely, along with all the other such lives that we have ever lived, just as all our dreams are dissolved when we wake up from sleep.

In verse 2 he says that a person who asks himself ‘who am I?’ or ‘what is the place in which I exist?’, even though we always exist as our real self, is equal to a drunkard who asks himself ‘who am I?’ or ‘where am I?’.

This verse is not intended to ridicule those who practise atma-vichara correctly, penetrating deep within themselves by focusing their entire attention upon their fundamental consciousness of being, ‘I am’, but ridicules only those who float on the surface of their mind among the waves of thoughts, continuously asking themselves questions such as ‘who am I?’ or ‘whence am I?’ instead of ignoring all thoughts by concentrating their attention on the ‘I’ who is thinking them.

Sri Ramana sometimes described the practice of atma-vichara or ‘self-investigation’ as the investigation ‘who am I?’ or ‘whence am I?’ because it is the effort that we make to scrutinise ourself in order to know what we really are and from which source we have arisen as this thinking mind. He also suggested that we could use questions such as ‘to whom do these thoughts occur?’ or ‘who thinks these thoughts?’ as a means to divert our attention away from all other thoughts towards the consciousness ‘I’ that thinks and knows them.

However, he also clearly explained that keenly vigilant self-attentiveness alone is the correct practice of atma-vichara, and that these questions are just an aid that we can use to regain such self-attentiveness, which is our natural state of clear self-conscious being. Therefore he composed this verse in order to emphasise that we should not blindly ask these questions like a drunkard, but should only ask them as a means to focus our entire attention upon our fundamental consciousness ‘I’.

Another misconception that some people have about the practice of atma-vichara is that it is either an exercise of concentrating our attention upon the right-side of our chest — which is said to be the location of our ‘heart’ (our innermost core or real self) in our body — or an exercise of imagining that we are ‘diving into’ or ‘entering’ this point in our body. Therefore, in order to remove this misconception and to clarify that meditating upon the right-side of our chest or any other point in our body is not svarupa-dhyana or meditation upon self, in verse 3 he says that when our body is actually in self, which is being-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda), a person who imagines that self is located in this non-conscious body is like a person who imagines that the cloth screen that supports a cinema picture is within that picture.

That is, just as the cinema screen is the underlying base or background upon which a cinema picture appears, so self is the adhara or underlying reality in which our body and everything else appears. Therefore it is only because of our deeply rooted self-forgetfulness or self-ignorance that we not only experience ourself as existing within the confines of this body, but also experience this body as ‘I’.

Since the purpose of atma-vichara is to enable us to know ourself as we really are and thereby to destroy the self-ignorance that makes us experience ourself as being limited within this body, meditating upon any point within this body imagining that that is the location of our real self cannot be the correct practice of atma-vichara. Since our body is only an imagination — a thought that exists only in our own mind, like the body that we experience as ‘I’ in a dream — it appears to exist and to be ourself only because we attend to it, so if we meditate upon it in any way, we will sustain its unreal appearance and thereby perpetuate the self-ignorance that gives rise to it. Therefore, in order to know ourself as we really are, we must withdraw our attention completely from this body and from every other thought or object by focusing it exclusively upon ‘I’, our essential consciousness of our own being.

Our real self is not only the adhara — the support, substratum, ground or foundation — of our body, but is also the sole vastu — substance or essence — of which it and everything else is made. This truth is clearly stated by Sri Ramana in verse 4, in which he asks two rhetorical questions that imply that just as an ornament is not other than gold, the vastu or substance of which it is made, so the body is not other than self. He then concludes this verse by saying that a person who thinks himself or herself to be a body is an ajnani (someone who does not know self), whereas one who takes himself or herself to be self is a jnani who has known self.

That is, our real self, which is the pure non-dual consciousness of being, ‘I am’, is the only real substance that appears as our mind, the false thinking and object-knowing consciousness that experiences itself as ‘I am this body’, and this mind in turn is the substance that appears as everything else that we know. Nothing exists except in our consciousness, because everything is just a thought that our consciousness has formed within itself — and of its substance.

The consciousness that thus forms itself into thoughts — which include all the objects that it knows — is our mind, and this mind is in turn just a limited and distorted form of our original self-consciousness, ‘I am’. Therefore, just gold is the one substance that appears as all the various gold ornaments, so consciousness, our real self, is the one substance that appears as our mind, our body and everything else that we experience.

Thus, though our body is in reality nothing other than our real self, so long we experience it as a finite form and not as the one consciousness that it really is, our experience of it as ‘I’ is ignorance or ajnana. Therefore, as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 17 of Ulladu Narpadu, a person who experiences ‘I’ as being only the limited form of this body is an ajnani (someone who ignorant of his or her real self), whereas anyone who experiences themself as self, the formless and therefore unlimited consciousness that is the only real substance of the body and everything else, is a jnani (someone who experiences themself as they really are).

This one real self, which is the sole substance of everything, is the only thing that always exists and that knows itself by its own light of consciousness, as Sri Ramana teaches us in the first line of verse 5 and in the preceding ‘link words’ of the kalivenba version, ‘தனது ஒளியால் எப்போதும் உள்ளது அவ்வேகான்ம வத்துவே’ (tanadu oliyal eppodum ulladu a-vv-ekanma vattuve), which means, ‘That which always exists by its own light is only that ekatma-vastu [the one substance, which is self]’.

Since self is thus the only existing reality, there is truly nothing that is other than it, so it cannot be made known by words. Therefore in the last three lines of this final verse Sri Ramana asks rhetorically who can reveal this real substance by ‘saying’ (that is, by spoken or written words), when in ancient times even the primal guru Dakshinamurti was able to reveal it only by ‘saying without saying’ (that is, by just being silent).

That is, the real nature of the one self is ineffable, because it could be made known by words only if there were at least two distinct people, a guru to teach it and a disciple to understand it, but since there is nothing other than self, who is to make it known to whom? Therefore we can know it as it really is only by merging and losing ourself in infinite silence — the silence of clear thought-free being — which is its true nature.

Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham – an explanatory paraphrase

2009-06-21T10:30:00.005+01:00

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

உள்ளது நாற்பது – அனுபந்தம் (Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham), the ‘Supplement to Forty [Verses] on That Which Is’, is a collection of forty-one Tamil verses that Sri Ramana composed at various times during the 1920’s and 1930’s.

The formation of this work began on 21st July 1928, when Sri Muruganar asked Sri Ramana to write a text to ‘reveal to us the nature of reality and the means by which we can attain it so that we may be saved’ (மெய்யின் இயல்பும் அதை மேவும் திறனும் எமக்கு உய்யும்படி ஓதுக [meyyin iyalbum atai mevum tiranum emakku uyyumpadi oduka], which are words that Sri Muruganar records in his payiram or prefatory verse to Ulladu Narpadu). At that time Sri Muruganar had collected twenty-one verses that Sri Ramana had composed at various times, and he suggested that these could form the basis of such a text.

Over the next two to three weeks Sri Ramana discussed many ideas with Sri Muruganar and composed about forty new verses. As he composed them, he and Sri Muruganar arranged them in order, and while doing so they decided that for one reason or another most of the previously existing twenty-one verses were not suitable to include in the text that he was writing.

In the end, they decided to include in Ulladu Narpadu only three of the original twenty-one verses, namely verses 16, 37 and 40 of Ulladu Narpadu. Of these three, verse 16 was not actually included in its original form, which Sri Ramana had composed in August 1927 (and which is now included in Upadesa Tanippakkal as verse 13, a translation of which I have given on pages 408-9 of Happiness and the Art of Being), but was modified by him while he was composing and editing Ulladu Narpadu.

The principal reason why they decided not to include the other eighteen of the original twenty-one verses was that most of them were not entirely suitable to the central aim of Ulladu Narpadu, which was to teach us ‘the nature of reality and the means by which we can attain it’. In addition to these eighteen verses, they also decided not to include three of the new verses that Sri Ramana composed during the three weeks that he was composing and editing Ulladu Narpadu.

However, since Sri Muruganar did not want the twenty-one verses that they had thus decided not to include in Ulladu Narpadu to be forgotten or neglected, he suggested to Sri Ramana that they should arrange them in a suitable order and append them as an anubandham (an ‘appendix’ or ‘supplement’) to Ulladu Narpadu. Therefore, when it was first published in 1928, Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham consisted of only twenty-one verses, but by 1930 or 31 it contained thirty verses, in 1938 it contained thirty-seven verses, and finally in 1940 it contained forty-one verses, one of which is the mangalam or ‘auspicious introduction’ and the remaining forty of which form the nul or main ‘text’.

Of these forty-one verses, only eleven are verses that Sri Ramana did not translate from any other language but composed originally in Tamil, namely verses 13 to 17, 31 to 33, 35, 36 and 38. Verses 8 and 10 are his Tamil translations of two verses that he first composed in Sanskrit. Verse 11 is his Tamil translation of a Sanskrit verse that Lakshmana Sarma (the author of Maha Yoga) composed recording a teaching that he had given orally. And though the last two lines of verse 12 are a translation by him of verse 84 of Vivekachudamani, a Sanskrit text composed by Sri Adi Sankara, the first two lines are an original composition by Sri Ramana.

The other twenty-six verses of Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham are translations or explanatory adaptations that he composed of verses by other authors. Verse 20 is an adaptation or paraphrase that he wrote of two verses (19.59 and 62) from a Tamil work called Prabhulinga Lilai (which is a verse adaptation of the original in Kannada). Nine verses, namely the mangalam, 21 to 24, 26, 27, 29 and 30, are translations of Sanskrit verses from Yoga Vasishtha. Verses 1, 7 and 39 are translations of Sanskrit verses by Sri Adi Sankara. Verse 5 is a translation of a Sanskrit verse from Srimad Bhagavatam (10.48.31). Verses 9 and 25 are translations of two verses (46 and 47) from Jnanachara-Vichara-Padalam, a chapter (the whole of which Sri Ramana translated separately) of a Sanskrit upagama text called Devikalottara. Verses 18 and 19 are translations of two verses from the Malayalam version of an ancient ayurvedic medical text called Ashtanga Hridayam. Verse 37 is a translation of a Sanskrit verse that was probably composed by Sri Sadasiva Brahmendra. And the remaining seven verses, namely 2, 3, 4, 6, 28, 34 and 40, are translations of verses from various other Sanskrit texts.

The mangalam verse, which is a translation (or rather an explanatory paraphrase) of Yoga Vasishtha 5.8.12, is a dhyana sloka or ‘verse of meditation’ upon svarupa (our ‘own form’ or essential self), in which our svarupa is described as the one truly existing reality, in which everything exists, whose everything is, from which everything comes into being, for which everything exists, by which everything comes to be, and which alone everything actually is.

The first five verses of the nul or main ‘text’ are translations of Sanskrit verses about the efficacy of sat-sanga, a term that literally means ‘clinging to [attachment to, devotion to, contact with or association with] reality [or being]’, but that by extension also means association with those who know and abide as the reality. As Sri Ramana often explained, the most perfect form of sat-sanga is only atma-vichara, the practice of attending or ‘clinging’ to self, which is the only reality, but as an aid to our practice of atma-vichara, we can also be greatly benefited by less perfect forms of sat-sanga such as studying and reflecting upon the teachings of those who know and abide as the reality, or simply being in their company.

Verse 1 is an adaptation of verse 9 of Moha Mudgara (the ‘Hammer on Delusion’, a song by Sri Adi Sankara, which is more popularly known as Bhaja Govindam), ‘satsangatve nissangatvam; nissangatve nirmohatvam; nirmohatve nischalatattvam; nischalatattve jivanmuktih’, which literally means:

In [or through] the state of sat-sanga [attachment to being], the state of nissanga [non-attachment] [arises]; in the state of nissanga, the state of nirmoha [freedom from delusion] [arises]; in the state of nirmoha, nischala-tattva [the true state of motionless being] [arises]; in nischala-tattva, jivanmukti [liberation in this life] [arises].

In his Tamil adaptation of this verse, Sri Ramana says that by சத்திணக்கம் (sat-t-inakkam) — friendship, intimacy, harmony or union with being, or with those who abide as being — attachment (to the external world) will leave us; that when such attachment leaves us, mental attachment (that is, our vasanas, which are the subtle seeds of our desires) will be dispersed (or destroyed); that people who are thus freed from mental attachment will perish in that which is motionless; and that they will thereby attain jivanmukti (liberation in this life). He then concludes this verse by adding ‘அவர் இணக்கம் பேண்’ (avar inakkam pen), which means ‘cherish their friendship [or intimacy]’. In other words, he advises us that we should therefore cherish the intimate friendship and company of those who abide as sat, ‘being’ or the reality.

The key word in this Tamil adaptation is இணக்கம் (inakkam), which Sri Ramana used to convey the meaning of the Sanskrit word sanga in the compound word sat-sanga. Whereas sanga means ‘clinging to’, ‘attachment to’, ‘devotion to’, ‘affection for’, ‘contact with’ or ‘association with’, inakkam means ‘friendship’, ‘intimacy’, ‘love’, ‘attachment’, ‘affection’, ‘agreement’, ‘attunement’, ‘harmony’, ‘compatibility’, ‘connection’, ‘alliance’ or ‘union’, so rather than merely meaning outward contact or company, both these words more significantly mean the subtle inward feeling of love, affection, intimacy and attunement of heart.

Therefore sat-sanga (or sat-inakkam) does not merely mean living in the physical presence of a sage who abides as sat, the one absolute reality, but more exactly means profound love for and intense attachment to such a sage and the state of pure being in which and as which he or she abides. Thus, even if we do not outwardly live in the company of such a sage, if we inwardly cling to him with pure love, we will always enjoy the benefit of his true sat-sanga.

Therefore when Sri Ramana advises us to ‘cherish their inakkam’, he does not only mean that we should cherish their outward company, but more importantly that we should inwardly cultivate and cherish true love for them and for the sat or pure being of which they are an embodiment.

In verse 2 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse whose source I do not know) he says that the supreme state (of true self-knowledge) that is attained by means of clear vichara (self-investigation), which will arise in our heart when we take refuge in சாது உறவு (sadhu-uravu) — intimate friendship with or love for a sadhu (a word that literally means a person who is going or has gone straight to a goal, and that in this context means a sage who knows and abides as self, the absolute reality) — cannot be attained by listening to a preacher, by understanding the meaning of sacred texts, by virtuous deeds, or by any other means.

In verse 3 (which is also a translation of a Sanskrit verse whose source I do not know, and which he composed for a child who wanted to observe a fast as a niyama or form of religious self-restraint) he asks a rhetorical question that implies that if we gain sahavasa (close association or friendship) with those who are sadhus (those who know and abide as self), all these niyamas (the various forms of self-restraint prescribed for the practice of yoga or for living a virtuous life) will serve no purpose, just as there would be no benefit in holding a hand-fan when a cool southern breeze is blowing.

In verse 4 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse, the original source of which is not known, but which is included in a well-known collection of ‘gems of wise sayings’ called Subhashita Ratna Bhandara as verse 6 of section 3) he says that heat (or mental anguish) will be removed by the cool moon, poverty by the divine wish-fulfilling tree, and sin by the river Ganga, but that all three of these will be removed merely by the precious sight of incomparable sadhus.

In verse 5 (which is an adaptation of Srimad Bhagavatam 10.48.31) he says that tirthas (sacred bathing places), which are composed of water, and daivas (images of deities), which are composed of stone or earth, cannot be compared to those great souls, because they (the tirthas and daivas) will gradually bestow purity (of mind) over a long period of time, whereas sadhus will bestow purity as soon as we see them with our eyes (or as soon as they see us with their eye of grace).

Verses 6 and 7 are two dialogues between a guru and a disciple that are intended to help us determine the true nature of self.

Verse 6 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse whose source I do not know) begins with a disciple’s question, ‘Who is God?’, to which the guru replies with a counter-question, ‘Who knows the mind?’. The dialogue then continues: ‘My mind is only known by me, the soul’, ‘Therefore you are certainly God, because the srutis [sacred texts] say that God is the one [who alone truly exists]’.

Verse 7 (which is an adaptation of Sri Adi Sankara’s Eka Sloki) begins with a guru’s question, ‘What is the light for you?’, and the dialogue that ensues is as follows: ‘For me, by day the sun, by night a lamp’, ‘What is the light that knows [these physical] lights?’, ‘[My] eye’, ‘What is the light that knows that [your eye]?’, ‘[That] light is [my] mind’, ‘What is the light that knows [your] mind?’, ‘That is I’, ‘[Therefore the light] that shines in [all other] lights is you’, ‘I am only that [the original light of consciousness, by means of which all other lights are known]’.

Verse 8 is Sri Ramana’s Tamil translation of the Sanskrit verse ‘hridaya kuhara madhye ...’, which he had composed in 1915. Though the original Sanskrit version of this verse was completed by Sri Ramana, the first three words were composed by a devotee called Jagadisa Sastri, and when he completed it Sri Ramana signed the name ‘Jagadisan’ at the foot of it, indicating thereby that he had written in it only the ideas that Jagadisa Sastri wanted to express but was unable to do so in verse.

In the first two lines of this verse he says that in the centre of the ‘cave’ that is our heart the one brahman (the absolute reality or one true being) alone shines directly as atman (our true self), (which always experiences itself) as ‘I [am] I’. Then in the last two lines he tells us the means by which we can experience and abide as this one non-dual reality, instructing us to enter (approach, reach or take refuge in) our heart either by our mind sinking (within) contemplating ourself, or by our mind sinking (within) with the breath (restrained), and thereby to be one who abides in atman.

Though most of this verse accurately expresses the teachings of Sri Ramana, which Jagadisa Sastri had often heard him saying, the idea expressed in the final line by the words (in the Sanskrit original) ‘va pavana chalana rodhat’, which means ‘or by restraining the movement of [your] breath’, is not in tune with his teachings, because these words imply that we can enter our heart — the innermost core of our being — and abide as our real self not only by svam chinvata or ‘self-investigation’ but also by breath-restraint.

The fact that by restraining our breath we can restrain our mind only temporarily, that breath-restraint (pranayama) will not destroy or weaken our vasanas or latent desires, and that it is therefore only an aid to restrain our mind but will not bring about manonasa or ‘annihilation of mind’ is clearly taught to us by Sri Ramana in the eighth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?). Therefore we should understand that the words ‘hridi visa ... pavana chalana rodhat atmanishtho bhava tvam’ (which mean ‘enter [your] heart ... by restraining the movement of [your] breath [and thereby] be you in atma-nishtha [self-abidance]’) in this verse express a belief of Jagadisa Sastri and not a actual teaching of Sri Ramana.

To clarify that the only means by which we can destroy our mind and thereby abide eternally as self is svam chinvata or ‘self-investigation’ and not pavana chalana rodha or ‘restraining the movement of the breath’, when Sri Ramana and Sri Muruganar arranged the order of verses in Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham, they placed immediately after verse 8 a verse that is a translation by Sri Ramana of verse 46 of the Jnanachara-Vichara-Padalam of Devikalottara, which clearly states the truth that only consciousness, which is the pure and motionless ‘I’ that exists and shines in the lotus of our heart, will bestow liberation, the natural state of self, by destroying ‘I’ (our mind or ego).

In verse 10 (which he composed first in Sanskrit and then in Tamil), while elaborating upon the central teaching of advaita vedanta — namely ‘deham naham; koham? soham’ — Sri Ramana explains in his own words why and how this pure consciousness ‘I’ will destroy our ego.

The four words ‘deham naham; koham? soham’, each of which is in turn the first word of each of the four lines of this verse (both in Sanskrit and in Tamil), mean ‘the body (deham) [is] not (na) I (aham); who (kah) [am] I (aham)? he (sah) [is] I (aham)’. The first sentence, ‘deham naham’ or ‘the body is not I’, denotes the initial process of self-analysis by which we gain the intellectual conviction that the body, mind and other adjuncts that we have superimposed upon ourself are not our essential self or ‘I’; the second sentence, ‘koham?’ or ‘who am I?’, denotes the practice of atma-vichara or self-investigation, whereby we will actually experience what ‘I’ really is; and the third sentence, ‘soham’ or ‘he is I’, denote the experience of true self-knowledge that we will gain by practising atma-vichara.

In the first two lines of this verse Sri Ramana explains the first sentence, ‘deham naham’, saying that the body is not ‘I’ because it is jada (non-conscious) like a clay pot, because it does not have any ‘shining’ (or consciousness of itself) as ‘I’, and because our nature (or essential being) is experienced by us daily in sleep, in which this body does not exist.

In the last two lines he explains the last two sentences, ‘koham? soham’, saying that within the heart-cave of those who abide (as self), having known (by self-investigation) ‘who is this ego, the person who poses as I?’ (or) ‘where is he?’, the omnipresent God (arunagiri-siva-vibhu) will shine forth spontaneously as the sphurana (the clarity of pure self-consciousness) ‘he is I’. That is, when we investigate ‘who am I?’ we will experience the truth that ‘I’ is nothing other than the one omnipresent absolute reality, which we call ‘God’ or ‘Arunagiri Siva’.

By placing this verse after verses 8 and 9, Sri Ramana clearly implied the truth that since the real nature of our fundamental consciousness ‘I’ is nothing other than the one non-dual reality, we can destroy the illusory appearance of our mind and thereby abide firmly as our real self only by keenly scrutinising and knowing this consciousness ‘I’ as it really is.

Verse 11 is a Tamil translation by Sri Ramana of a Sanskrit verse in which Lakshmana Sarma recorded what he had once said, namely that the person who is truly born is only he (or she) who is born in his own source, which is brahman (the one absolute reality), by keenly investigating ‘where was it (this mind or ego) born as I?’, and that such a person is munisan (the lord of all sages) and is eternal and ever new and fresh.

In verse 12 Sri Ramana advises us to cease thinking this wretched body to be ‘I’ and to know self, which is ever-unceasing happiness, and then he adds a warning (which he adapted from verse 84 of Vivekachudamani), namely that trying to know self while cherishing this perishable body is like trying to cross a river using a crocodile as a raft.

In verse 13 he teaches us that destroying our dehatma-bhava (the false attitude or imagination that ‘this body is I’) is in effect the perfect performance of all good deeds and the achievement of all virtues and happiness, such as charity (dana), asceticism (tapas), ritual sacrifice, dharma (righteousness or good conduct), yoga (union with God), devotion (bhakti), heaven, wealth, peace (santi), truth, grace, silence (mauna), abidance (as self), death without dying, knowledge, renunciation, liberation and bliss.

In verse 14 he teaches us that by practising atma-vichara we will achieve the true aim of all forms of spiritual practice (each of which can be classified as being a form of one of the four ‘yogas’, namely karma, bhakti, yoga and jnana), saying that investigating ‘to whom are karma (action), vibhakti (lack of devotion), viyoga (separation from God) and ajnana (ignorance of self)?’ is itself karma (the path of desireless action), bhakti (the path of devotion), yoga (the path of union) and jnana (the path of knowledge), because when we investigate ourself thus, we will discover that this ‘I’ (who does karma, lacks bhakti, feels itself to be separate from God, and is ignorant of its real self) does not really exist, that without this false ‘I’ these defects (karma, vibhakti, viyoga and ajnana) never exist, and that the truth is therefore that we permanently exist only as the one real self.

In verses 15 to 17 Sri Ramana ridicules those who desire to acquire siddhis (supernatural or miraculous powers) and thereby to reform the world or rectify all its problems, and he teaches us that such desires would certainly prevent our mind subsiding in the peaceful state of absolute non-activity, in which alone we can experience ‘liberation’, which is the state of true self-knowledge.

In verse 15 he says that the buffoonery of ‘lunatics’ who do not know the truth that sakti (the one divine power) alone enables them to function, yet who exert themselves actively saying ‘we will attain siddhis’, is like the story of a cripple who said, ‘If someone raises me up [enabling me to stand], what measure are these enemies [that is, what power will they have to withstand me]?’

In verse 16 he asks a rhetorical question which implies that since absolute peace of mind alone is liberation, which is in truth always attained, people who set their mind upon siddhis, which cannot be attained without activity of mind, cannot immerse in the bliss of liberation, which is completely devoid of mental turbulence, agitation or activity.

In verse 17 he compares the ‘spurious [unreal or deceptive] soul’ who imagines that he or she is bearing the burden of the world, when in fact God is bearing it all, to the form of a gopuram tangi (one of the four plasterwork figures that stand near the top of a gopuram [a monumental tower erected above a temple gateway] and seem to bear its cylindrical upper section on their shoulders), saying that the attitude of such a person is a mockery. In the second half of the verse he gives another analogy (one that he also used in the thirteenth paragraph of Nan Yar?), asking whose fault it is if a person who is travelling on a train, which is carrying a huge burden, suffers by carrying his own luggage on his head instead placing it on the train.

Verses 18 to 24 are centred around the subject of the ‘heart’, a term that in a spiritual context means the innermost core or essence of our being — our pure, adjunct-free, non-dual self-consciousness, ‘I am’.

Though the real nature of our ‘heart’ is infinite consciousness, which transcends all forms of limitation, such as time, space or our material body, verses 18 and 19 describe it as being like a lily bud located within our chest, ‘two digits to the right’, and say that in the tiny hole inside its closed mouth the darkness (of self-ignorance) exists along with desire and other passions; that all the major nadis (subtle channels through which consciousness and prana flow) depend upon it; and that it is the abode of the light (of consciousness), the mind and the prana (life-force).

This description of the ‘heart’, which Sri Ramana translated from the Malayalam version of Ashtanga Hridayam (one of the three principal texts of the ancient system of medicine called ayurveda), is obviously not the absolute truth, but is only a relative truth — a fact that appears to be true only from the limited and distorted perspective of our mind, which always experiences itself as a body. Since our mind experiences a body as ‘I’, in its finite view this ‘I’ seems to originate from and to be centred in a particular place within this body, and hence this place, which is the point ‘two digits to the right’ from the centre of the chest, is loosely described as being the ‘heart’ or centre for ‘I’ in this body.

The fact that our real ‘heart’ is actually not this or any other point in our body is clearly indicated in Upadesa Manjari, in which Sri Natananandar records that — in the answer to the ninth question of the second section, ‘What is the svarupa [‘own form’ or essential nature] of the hridaya [heart or core]?’ — Sri Ramana quoted these two verses of Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham and explained that though some texts describe it thus:

... in absolute truth (paramartha) the meaning of the word hridaya [heart] is only self (atman). Since it is defined by the characteristics being (sat), consciousness (chit), happiness (ananda), permanence (nitya) and wholeness (purna), for it there are not any differences such as ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ or ‘up’ and ‘down’. The motionless place [space, ground or state] in which all thoughts cease is alone called the state of self (atman). When [we] abide knowing its svarupa [essential nature] as it is, there will be no room there for considerations such as that it is either inside or outside the body.

Since our ‘heart’ or real self is the one infinite whole (purna), how can it be confined within any particular form or located at any particular place? It is the one unlimited consciousness in which everything is contained, and the one true substance that exists as everything, so it is both inside and outside everything, and at the same time neither inside nor outside anything.

In verse 20 (which is an adaptation of verses 59 and 62 of chapter 19 of a Tamil work called Prabhulinga Lilai) Sri Ramana indicates that the only means by which we can experience our ‘heart’ as it really is is to mediate upon ‘I’ with the firm conviction that God is nothing other than that, and that we should persevere in practising such self-meditation until our present illusion ‘I am this body’ is utterly destroyed. That is, he teaches us that God is that which “shines as ‘I’ in the cave of [our] heart-lotus”, and that if we abide as this ‘I’ by the strength of our persistent meditation upon it, and if our abidance as it becomes established as firmly as our sense of ‘I’ is now established in our body, our avidya (ignorance or false knowledge) ‘I am this perishable body’ will be dispersed like darkness in front of the sun.

The next four verses (which are adapted from verses 32 to 38 of chapter 78 of part 5 of Yoga Vasishtha) emphasise the truth that our real ‘heart’ is only consciousness.

In verse 21 (Yoga Vasishtha 5.78.32-3) Sri Rama asks Vasishtha in which great mirror all the worlds that we see appear as a reflection (or shadow), and what is said to be the ‘heart’ of all the living beings in this world (implying that that ‘great mirror’ is the ‘heart’ of each one of us), and Vasishtha replies that the heart of all beings is of two kinds.

In verse 22 (Yoga Vasishtha 5.78.34-5) Vasishtha continues to describe the characteristics of these two kinds of heart, saying that one of them should be accepted and the other rejected. The physical organ called ‘heart’ that is situated in a location within the chest should be rejected (as being of no concern to us in our search for true self-knowledge, since it is just an unreal product of our mind’s imagination), whereas the ‘heart’ whose form is the one consciousness (our essential non-dual consciousness, ‘I am’) should be accepted (as being the sole reality and hence the only means by which we can know ourself as we really are). He concludes this verse by saying that this ‘heart’ that is consciousness exists both inside and outside, but is not that which exists only inside or only outside.

In verse 23 (Yoga Vasishtha 5.78.36-7) he says that only this (the ‘heart’ that is consciousness) is mukhya hridaya (the principal or original heart); that in it this entire world abides; that it is the mirror to everything (the ‘great mirror’ mentioned in verse 21, in which everything that we see appears as a reflection); that it alone is the abode of all wealth (prosperity or happiness); that therefore only consciousness is declared to be the heart of every living being; and that it is not a small part in a portion of the body, which is jada (non-conscious) like a stone.

In verse 24 (Yoga Vasishtha 5.78.38) Vasishtha concludes by saying that therefore by the sadhana (practice) of fixing the mind in the pure heart, which is composed only of consciousness, together with the vasanas (the desires that impel the mind to be active) the breath will automatically subside.

In verse 25 (which is a translation of verse 47 of the Jnanachara-Vichara-Padalam of Devikalottara) Sri Ramana instructs us to banish all attachments from our mind by incessantly meditating in our heart that sivam (the auspicious reality), which is the consciousness that is devoid of all adjuncts, is ‘I’.

When Sri Ramana was asked to point out the most important or useful verses in Yoga Vasishtha, he selected verses 17 to 26 of chapter 18 of part 5, in which Vasishtha teaches Sri Rama that he should know the reality in his own heart yet outwardly act according to his role in this world, as if it were real, and that he should thus be inwardly free from desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, enthusiasm, initiative, effort and action, yet outward appear to be bound by all of these.

Since Sri Ramana noticed that only six of these ten verses (namely 17, 18, 22, 25, 19 and 21) had been translated in Jnana Vasishtha (which is a versified Tamil adaptation of the Laghu Yoga Vasishtha, a condensed version of Yoga Vasishtha that contains about six thousand of the thirty-two thousand verses in the full text) as verses 32 to 34 of the chapter called ‘Punya Pavanar Kathai’ (The Story of Punya and Pavana), he translated the other four verses (namely 20, 23, 24 and 26) as two Tamil verses in the same metre as the three verses in Jnana Vasishtha. These two verse are now included in Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham as verses 26 and 27.

In verse 26 (Yoga Vasishtha 5.18.20 and 23) Vasishtha tells Sri Rama that outwardly he should play his role in this unreal world, but inwardly, having investigated all the various states, he should cling only to the one which is the ultimate state devoid of unreality (namely the state of absolutely clear self-consciousness); and that he should outwardly play his role in this world, without ever inwardly loosing sight of his knowledge of that (true self) which exists in his heart as the one reality underlying all the various appearances.

In verse 27 (Yoga Vasishtha 5.18.24 and 26) Vasishtha tells Sri Rama that he should outwardly play in this world as one who seemingly experiences enthusiasm and joy, who seemingly suffers anxiety and dislikes, and who seemingly makes effort and initiates action, but who is inwardly free of all such blemishes; and that as one who has been freed from the many bonds of delusion and who is steadfastly equanimous in all conditions, he should play in this world as he likes (or as required), outwardly doing action that is appropriate to his vesa (assumed appearance, disguise or role).

Having thus described in verses 26 and 27 how we should live in this world as an atma-jnani (one who knows self), in verses 28 to 31 and 33 Sri Ramana discusses the state of such an atma-jnani, and in verse 32 he teaches us the truth that though this state of self-knowledge (atma-jnana) is called the ‘fourth’, it is in fact the only real state.

In verse 28 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse whose source I do not know) he says that a person who has ‘conquered the senses’ (that is, overcome all desire for any experience obtained through any of the five senses) by knowledge (of self) is an atma-vid (one who knows self), who abides as true knowledge (or being-consciousness); and that he (or she) is the ‘fire of knowledge’ (jnanagni), the wielder of the ‘thunderbolt of knowledge’ (jnana-kulisa), the ‘destroyer of time’ (kala-kala) and the hero who has killed death.

In verse 29 (which is an adaptation of Yoga Vasishtha 5.76.20) he says that light (inward illumination, clarity or wisdom) and power of intellect will spontaneously increase in those who ‘see reality’ (that is, those who experience the tattva, the one non-dual reality, which is our own essential self), just as trees in this world shine forth with all qualities such as beauty as soon as spring arrives.

In verse 30 (which is an adaptation of Yoga Vasishtha 5.56.13-4) he says that a mind from which all vasanas (impulses, propensities or desires) have been erased (by the clear light of true self-knowledge) does not actually do anything, even though it seems to be active, just as a person who seems to be listening to a story but whose mind has gone far away does not actually hear it, whereas a mind that is saturated with vasanas is truly active, even though it seems to be doing nothing, just like a person who climbs a hill and falls over a precipice in a dream, even though he seems to be lying motionless here (in our waking world).

In verse 31 he describes a mey-jnani (one who knows the reality) as being ‘asleep in a body of flesh’ (that is, unaware of the body or anything else other than the one reality, which is self) and says that he (or she) does not know the passing states of bodily activity, nishtha (self-absorption) and sleep, just as a person who is asleep in a bullock cart does not know whether the cart is moving, stationary or unyoked.

In verse 32 he says that the transcendent state of ‘waking sleep’ (that is, the state of true self-knowledge, in which one is awake to self, the one reality, but asleep to the unreal mind, body and world) is called turiya (the ‘fourth’ state) only for those who experience waking, dream and sleep (which are in fact unreal); and that since only turiya really exists, and since the other three states does not really exist, it (turiya) is turiyatita (that which transcends the ‘fourth’).

He refers here to turiyatita and says that turiya itself is turiyatita because some texts describe our natural state of ‘waking sleep’ not only as turiya (the ‘fourth’) but also as turiyatita (the ‘fourth-transcendent’), which creates the wrong impression in the minds of some people that turiyatita is a fifth state. The truth is that the state of ‘waking sleep’, which is our natural state of absolutely non-dual self-consciousness, is the only real state, so there is truly no difference between turiya and turiyatita. All differences or dualities appear to be real only in the imaginary perspective of our unreal mind, and hence in the clear light of true self-knowledge they will disappear along with this mind.

In verse 33 he teaches us the truth that though some texts say that an atma-jnani (one who knows self) is free of sanchita (the store of one’s past actions or karmas that are yet to give fruit) and agamya (the actions that one does in this life by one’s own volition or free will) but that prarabdha (destiny or fate, which is the fruit of past actions that are destined to be experienced in this life) does remain to be experienced by him (or her), this is only a ‘reply that is said to the questions of others’ (that is, it is said as a concession to those who cannot understand the truth that the jnani is not the mind or body that experiences prarabdha), and he illustrates this truth by saying that just as no wife will remain unwidowed if a husband (with three wives) dies, so none of the three karmas (agamya, sanchita or prarabdha) will remain when the karta (the ‘doer’ or agent who does karmas and experiences their fruit) is destroyed (by the clarity of true self-knowledge).

In verses 34 to 37 Sri Ramana teaches us the truth that studying too many books can become a serious obstacle in our spiritual path, because the truth that we seek to know exists only within ourself and cannot be found in any book or sacred text. Texts that are either written by an atma-jnani or that record or discuss the teachings of an atma-jnani are truly useful to us only to the extent that they enable us to understand the truth that we can experience the reality only by turning our mind inwards and drowning it in the innermost depth of our own heart, and to the extent that they thereby motivate us to give up seeking anything outside ourself and to seek only the reality that always exists as our essential self, ‘I am’.

As Sri Ramana says inthe sixteenth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

Since in every [sacred] text it is said that for attaining mukti [liberation or salvation] it is necessary [for us] to restrain [our] mind, after knowing that mano-nigraha [subjugation or destruction of our mind] is the ultimate intention [or purpose] of [such] texts, there is no benefit [to be gained] by studying without limit [a countless number of] texts. For restraining [our] mind it is necessary [for us] to investigate ourself [in order to know] who [we really are], [but] instead [of doing so] how [can we know ourself by] investigating in texts? It is necessary [for us] to know ourself only by our own ‘eye of jnana’ [that is, by the clarity of our own self-consciousness]. Does [a person called] Raman need a mirror to know himself as Raman? [Our] ‘self’ is within the pancha-kosas [the ‘five sheaths’ with which we seem to have covered and obscured our true being], whereas texts are outside them. Therefore investigating in texts [hoping to be able thereby to know] ourself, whom we should investigate [with an inward-turned attention] having removed [set aside, abandoned or separated] all the pancha-kosas, is useless. ...

In verse 34 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse whose source I do not know) he says that for a person of little learning, his wife, children and other relatives form just one family, whereas in the minds of those who have vast learning there are not just one but many families in the form of books that stand as obstacles to yoga (spiritual practice or ‘union’ with God).

In verse 35 he asks what use is our learning the ‘letters’ (the words written in sacred texts) if we do not intend to erase the ‘letters’ (of destiny) by investigating where we, who have learnt these ‘letters’, were born (that is, from which source we arose as this false learning mind), and he says that those who acquire such learning without attempting to investigate and experience their own source are no better than a sound-recording machine.

In verse 36 he says that rather those who are learned but have not subsided (surrendered their mind and become truly humble), the unlearned are saved, because they are saved from the ghost of pride that possesses those who are learned, saved from the disease of many whirling thoughts, and saved from running in search of fame (repute, respect, esteem or glory). Therefore he concludes that they are saved not just from one but from many evils.

In verse 37 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse that was probably composed by Sri Sadasiva Brahmendra) he says that though they regard all the worlds as mere straw, and though they have mastered all the sacred texts, for people who have come under the sway of the wicked whore called puhazhcci (praise, applause, appreciation, respect or fame), it is rare (or very difficult) to escape their slavery to her.

In verse 38, in order to teach us that praise and blame are both of no concern whatsoever to a person who experiences the one real self, he asks us three rhetorical questions, namely who there is besides ourself when we always abide unswervingly in our own true state (of clear self-knowledge), without knowing the illusory distinction between ‘self’ and ‘others’, and what it would then matter whoever may say whatever about us, because what would it matter to us if we were to talk to ourself either extolling or disparaging ourself?

In verse 39 (which he composed in 1938 as a translation of verse 87 of Tattvopadesa by Sri Adi Sankara) he says that we should always experience advaita (non-duality) in our heart, but should never attempt to express it in action, and he concludes the verse by saying rather cryptically: ‘O son, advaita is fit in the three worlds; with guru, advaita is not fit; know [thus]’. The ‘three worlds’ here means brahmaloka, vaikuntha and kailasa, the ‘worlds’ or ‘heavens’ in which each of the three principal forms of God, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, are said to reside, so ‘advaita is fit in the three worlds; with guru, advaita is not fit’ implies that though it may be appropriate for us to approach any of these three forms of God and claim ‘you and I are one’, we should never behave towards guru in such a manner, but should always outwardly show all due reverence towards him, even though in our heart we should experience him as our own true self.

Though the one reality that appears as the various forms of God is actually — like guru — only our own essential self, these three forms of God and their respective functions (namely the creation, sustenance and dissolution of this world-appearance) appear as such only within the unreal realm of our self-ignorance, and hence their functions are in no way comparable to the function of guru, which is to destroy the underlying self-ignorance in which the outward forms of God and guru appear to be real. Therefore the reverence that is due to guru is even greater than the reverence that is due to God.

Moreover, since the creation, sustenance and dissolution of this world are actually caused only by the rising and subsiding of our own mind, we can justifiably claim to be performing the functions that are attributed to Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, but we can never claim to be performing the function of guru, because as the embodiment of self-ignorance, our mind can never destroy itself, just as darkness can never destroy itself. Just as darkness can be destroyed only by light, our mind and the self-ignorance that gives rise to it can only be destroyed when it subsides and merges in the clear light of pure self-consciousness, ‘I am’, from which it arose.

Therefore this verse teaches us that though we should always experience our absolute oneness with guru in our heart by subsiding and merging in our essential self-consciousness, which is his true form, we should never rise as this mind and claim ‘guru and I are one’ or behave as if we are guru.

Moreover, since all action and our outward behaviour take place only in the realm of duality, it is both meaningless and futile to try to express non-duality in action. Since we can only experience non-duality (advaita) in our own heart, this verse says, ‘Always experience non-duality in [your] heart, [but] do not ever express non-duality in action’.

Sri Ramana concludes Ulladu Narpadu – Anubandham by declaring the ‘essence of the established conclusion of the entire vedanta’ (akila vedanta siddhanta sara) in verse 40 (which is a translation of a Sanskrit verse whose source I do not know), saying ‘அகம் செத்து அகம் அது ஆகில், அறிவு உரு ஆம் அவ்வகம் அதே மிச்சம்’ (aham cettu aham adu ahil, arivu uru am a-vv-aham ade miccam), which means: “If ‘I’ dies and ‘I’ becomes ‘that’, that ‘I’, which is the form of consciousness, alone is remnant”. That is, if our ego dies and our real self is thereby experienced as ‘that’ (God or brahman, the one absolute reality), what will remain is only that real ‘I’, whose form is pure consciousness.

Ulladu Narpadu – an explanatory paraphrase

2009-06-14T11:12:00.012+01:00

In continuation of my previous article, Upadesa Undiyar – an explanatory paraphrase, the following is the second of seven extracts from the introductory page that I have drafted for Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai:

உள்ளது நாற்பது (Ulladu Narpadu), the ‘Forty [Verses] on That Which Is’, is a Tamil poem that Sri Ramana composed in July and August 1928 when Sri Muruganar asked him to teach us the nature of the reality and the means by which we can attain it.

In the title of this poem, the word உள்ளது (ulladu) is a verbal noun that means ‘that which is’ or ‘being’ (either in the sense of ‘existence’ or in the sense of ‘existing’), and is an important term that is often used in spiritual or philosophical literature to denote ‘reality’, ‘truth’, ‘that which is real’ or ‘that which really is’. Hence in a spiritual context the meaning clearly implied by ulladu is atman, our ‘real self’ or ‘spirit’.

Though நாற்பது (narpadu) means ‘forty’, Ulladu Narpadu actually consists of a total of forty-two verses, two of which form the mangalam or ‘auspicious introduction’ and the remaining forty of which form the nul or main ‘text’.

Like many of his other works, Sri Ramana composed Ulladu Narpadu in a poetic metre called venba, which consists of four lines, with four feet in each of the first three lines and three feet in the last line, but since devotees used to do regular parayana or recitation of his works in his presence, he converted the forty-two verses of Ulladu Narpadu into a single verse in kalivenba metre by lengthening the third foot of the fourth line of each verse and adding a fourth foot to it, thereby linking it to the next verse and making it easy for devotees to remember the continuity while reciting.

Since the one-and-a-half feet that he thus added to the fourth line of each verse may contain one or more words, which are usually called the ‘link words’, they not only facilitate recitation but also enrich the meaning of either the preceding or the following verse.

Since Sri Ramana formed this kalivenba version of உள்ளது நாற்பது (Ulladu Narpadu) by linking the forty-two verses into a single verse, the term நாற்பது (narpadu) or ‘forty’ is not appropriate for it, so he renamed it உபதேசக் கலிவெண்பா (Upadesa Kalivenba).

An English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and me of this kalivenba version of Ulladu Narpadu was published on pages 217 to 222 of the October 1981 issue of The Mountain Path, and in May 2008 a copy of it was posted by David Godman in his blog under the title Ulladu Narpadu Kalivenba.

In the first verse of the mangalam or ‘auspicious introduction’ to Ulladu Narpadu (which I have discussed in more detail in the introduction to this book, Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai, and also in a separate article, The crest-jewel of Sri Ramana’s teachings) Sri Ramana summarises in an extremely clear and powerful manner the essence of his entire teaching about the nature of the reality and the means by which we can attain it, and thus this verse is in effect both a summary of the central import of Upadesa Undiyar and an introduction to the central theme of Ulladu Narpadu.

In the first two lines of this verse he teaches us the nature of reality, firstly by asking a rhetorical question, ‘உள்ளது அலது உள்ளவுணர்வு உள்ளதோ?’ (ulladu aladu ulla-v-unarvu ullado?), which means ‘other than being, does being-consciousness exist?’ and which implies that (as he taught us in verse 23 of Upadesa Undiyar) our consciousness of being, ‘I am’, is not other than our being itself. In other words, our reality or being is self-conscious — that is, it itself knows its own being, not by the aid of any other thing, but simply by being itself.

In the second sentence of this verse he continues to explain the nature of reality, firstly with a subsidiary clause in which he says ‘உள்ளபொருள் உள்ளல் அற உள்ளத்தே உள்ளதால்’ (ulla-porul ullal-ara ullatte ulladal), which means ‘since [this] being-substance exists in [our] heart devoid of thought’, and secondly with a relative clause, ‘உள்ளம் எனும்’ (ullam enum), which means ‘which is called heart [or ‘am’]’ and which qualifies the term உள்ளபொருள் (ulla-porul) or ‘being-substance’ in the main clause.

That is, the reality or true being is not only self-conscious but also devoid of thought, and it exists in our ‘heart’ (the innermost core of ourself) as our ‘heart’. In other words, the reality is our true self — our own essential being, which we always experience as ‘I am’.

After explaining that the nature of the reality is such, in the last two lines of this verse he teaches us the means by which we can experience it as it is, firstly by concluding the second sentence with the question ‘உள்ளபொருள் உள்ளல் எவன்?’ (ulla-porul ullal evan?), which means ‘how to [or who can] think of [or meditate upon] [this] being-substance?’ and secondly by answering ‘உள்ளத்தே உள்ளபடி உள்ளதே உள்ளல் உணர்’ (ullatte ullapadi ullade ullal unar), which means ‘know that only being in [our] heart as it is [or as we are] [is] thinking [or meditating] [upon our essential being-substance]’.

The key words in this final sentence are உள்ளபடி உள்ளதே (ullapadi ullade), which means, ‘only being as it is [or as we are]’. Here உள்ளபடி (ullapadi), ‘as it is’ or ‘as we are’, means ‘as [our] being-substance is’, and since our ‘being-substance’ (our essential self) is self-conscious and devoid of thought, in this context these words ‘only being as it is’ clearly imply ‘only being self-conscious and devoid of thought’.

Thus in this verse Sri Ramana teaches us that we can truly meditate upon and experience the one absolute reality, which is our own self-conscious being, ‘I am’, by just being exclusively self-conscious — that is, clearly conscious of nothing other than our own essential being, ‘I am’ — and therefore free of all thoughts.

Since no thought can exist unless we think it, and since we cannot think any thought without attending to it, when our entire attention is concentrated only on ourself, no thought can exist. Therefore we can ‘be as it is [or as we are]’ simply by being keenly self-attentive and thereby excluding all thoughts of anything other than ourself. This is the simple essence of the practical teachings of Sri Ramana.

Whereas in the first verse of the mangalam Sri Ramana explains this practice of ‘just being as we [really] are’ in terms of the path of jnana (knowledge) or atma-vichara (self-investigation), in the second verse of the mangalam he explains it in terms of the path of bhakti (devotion) or self-surrender. That is, when we are vigilantly self-attentive, we thereby exclude not only all thoughts but also the thinker of those thoughts — our thinking mind itself — so this practice of atma-vichara is the only truly effective means by which we can surrender our false self entirely, as Sri Ramana says in the thirteenth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

Being completely absorbed in atma-nishtha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other chintana [thought] except atma-chintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

In the second verse of the mangalam Sri Ramana says that mature people who have an intense inner fear of death will take refuge at the feet of God, who is devoid of death and birth, depending upon him as their sole protection, and that by their surrender they will experience death (the death or dissolution of their finite self). He then ends the verse by asking a rhetorical question that implies that having died to their mortal self and thereby become one with the immortal spirit, they will never be troubled again by any thought of death.

In this verse the words மரணபவமில்லா மகேசன் சரணமே சார்வர் (marana-bhavam-illa mahesan caraname carvar), which literally mean ‘they will take refuge at [depend upon or surrender to] the feet of the great lord, who is devoid of death and birth’, are a graphic description of the state of complete self-surrender — that is, the state in which we surrender our false finite self in the clear light of our true infinite self.

The term மரணபவமில்லா மகேசன் (marana-bhavam-illa mahesan), ‘the great lord [or God], who is devoid of death and birth’, is a poetic description of our eternal self, and his சரணம் (caranam) or ‘feet’ is our natural state of absolutely clear non-dual self-consciousness, ‘I am’. The verb சார்வர் (carvar), ‘they will take refuge at [depend upon or surrender to]’, denotes the state in which our mind turns towards and merges in this true self-consciousness. Thus these words denote the same state of thought-free self-conscious being that he described in the previous verse as உள்ளத்தே உள்ளபடி உள்ளதே (ullatte ullapadi ullade) or ‘only being in [our] heart as it is [or as we are]’.

In the first verse of the nul or main ‘text’ he establishes the truth that there is one absolute reality underlying the false appearance of all multiplicity and that everything is nothing other than this one reality, which is our own true self. That is, he says that because we see the world, accepting ஓர் முதல் (or mudal) — one primal reality, origin, source, base, substratum, ground or first cause — with a ‘power that is many’ (that is, a power that can appear as if it were many different things) is indeed certain, and that this ‘one primal reality’, which is self, is that which appears as everything: the seeing mind, the world-picture that it sees, the light of consciousness by which it sees, and the ground or underlying being that supports its seeing.

In verse 2 he says that all disputes about the nature of this one reality — whether the soul, world and God are in essence all just this one reality, or whether they are eternally three separate realities — are possible only so long as our ego exists, and that abiding in our own natural state (of pure thought-free self-conscious being) is the highest achievement.

In verse 3 he reiterates the same truth, asking what is the use of arguing whether the word is real or a false appearance, whether it is knowledge or ignorance, or whether it is a source of happiness or not, and pointing out the simple truth that the egoless state in which we have given up all thought of the world and known only our own essential self, thereby freeing ourself from our false ‘I’ (the mind or ego) and its thoughts about ‘one’ (non-duality) and ‘two’ (duality), is agreeable to everyone.

In verse 4, by asking a rhetorical question, ‘கண் அலால் காட்சி உண்டோ?’ (kan alal katchi undo?), which means ‘is the sight otherwise than the eye?’, he teaches us a subtle but very important truth, namely that the ‘sight’ (whatever is seen or experienced) cannot be otherwise than the ‘eye’ (the consciousness that sees or experiences it). Hence he says that if we are a form (a body), the world and God will be likewise, but if we are not any form, who could see their forms, or how could we see them? He then ends this verse by saying that the real eye is only our essential self, which is the ‘endless eye’ (the infinite consciousness of being, ‘I am’).

In verse 5 he says that the term ‘body’ denotes not only our physical body but all our ‘five sheaths’ (our physical body, the prana or life that animates it, our mind, our intellect and the peaceful absence of objective knowledge that we experience in sleep), and then asks rhetorically whether the world exists in the absence of such a body (implying that it does not), or whether anyone has seen the world after separating from the body (as in sleep or death).

In verse 6 he says that the world is nothing other than our five kinds of sense perception (sights, sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations), which are sensations perceived by our five senses, and then asks rhetorically whether, since our one mind knows the world though these five senses, the world exists in the absence of this mind (implying that it does not).

In verse 7 he reiterates this truth that the world exists only in our mind, saying that though the world and our mind — the consciousness that knows it — arise and subside (appear and disappear) simultaneously (or as one), the world ‘shines’ (appears to exist or is made known) only by our mind, and then declares that the ‘whole’ (the infinite fullness of being or consciousness), which shines without appearing or disappearing as the ground for the appearance and disappearance (of our mind and the world), alone is the பொருள் (porul), the ‘substance’, ‘essence’ or ‘reality’ (of all that thus appears and disappears).

Having discussed the reality of our experience of this world-appearance in verses 3 to 7, in verse 8 Sri Ramana discusses the reality of ‘seeing’ or experiencing God, saying that though he is the பொருள் (porul) or ‘essential reality’, which is truly devoid of name or form, it is possible to see him in name and form by worshipping him in any form, giving him any name, but that knowing one’s own உண்மை (unmai) — ‘truth’, ‘being’ or ‘am-ness’ — and thereby subsiding and becoming one with his உண்மை (unmai) is alone seeing him in truth.

In verses 9 to 13 Sri Ramana discusses the reality of knowledge and ignorance and establishes the nature of true knowledge.

In verse 9 he begins by teaching that all dualistic or objective knowledge depends upon ‘one’ (namely our mind, which alone experiences such knowledge), and that if we look within our mind to see what that ‘one’ is, such knowledge will cease to exist (because we will discover that our mind, upon which it depends, is itself non-existent).

In verse 10 he says that knowledge and ignorance (about objects or otherness) are interdependent, each existing only in relation to the other, and that true knowledge is only the ‘knowledge’ (or consciousness) that knows the ‘self’ (the mind or ego) to whom knowledge and ignorance appear to exist (in other words, true knowledge is only the consciousness that experiences the truth that the mind — which is the sole root, base or foundation of objective knowledge and ignorance — is itself non-existent).

In verse 11 he says that knowing otherness without knowing ourself who experiences such knowledge (of otherness) is not knowledge but only ignorance, and that when we know ourself (this unreal mind), who is the adhara (the support, substratum or ground) of knowledge and ignorance, they will cease to exist (since we will discover that the mind itself is non-existent).

In verse 12 he says that true knowledge is not that (our mind) which knows (otherness), but only that (our real self) which devoid of both knowledge and ignorance (about otherness), and that our real self is not a void (even though it is devoid of both knowledge and ignorance about otherness) but true knowledge, because it shines without any otherness for it to know or to make known.

In verse 13 he says that self, which is jnana (knowledge or consciousness), alone is real; that manifold knowledge (knowledge or consciousness of multiplicity) is only ajnana (ignorance); and that even such ignorance, which is unreal, is nothing other than self (its only real substance), which is jnana, just as all the many ornaments, which are unreal (as separate forms), are not other than gold (the real substance of which they are made).

In verses 14 to 16 Sri Ramana discusses the reality of space and time, and establishes the truth that ‘we’, who are devoid of time and space, alone are real.

In verse 14 he begins with the subject of space or ‘place’, and since in Tamil grammar the three persons are called மூவிடம் (mu-v-idam) or the ‘three places’, he says that if the first person, our false consciousness ‘I am this body’, exists, the second and third persons will also seem to exist, but that if we scrutinise the truth of the first person, it will cease to exist, and along with it the second and third persons will also cease to exist, and that the remaining single (non-dual) தன்மை (tanmai) — ‘self-ness’, ‘essence’, ‘reality’, ‘first person’ or ‘state’ — alone is ‘self’, our own real state.

In the first two sentences of this verse, the word தன்மை (tanmai) or the ‘first person’, which etymologically means ‘self-ness’, denotes ‘I’, the conscious mind or subject, which always experiences itself as being ‘here’ and ‘now’, in the present place and time; the word முன்னிலை (munnilai) or the ‘second person’, which etymologically means ‘that which stands in front’, denotes the objects that the mind experiences most immediately, namely its own intimate thoughts; and the word படர்க்கை (padarkkai) or the ‘third person’, which etymologically means ‘that which spreads out [or expands]’, denotes the objects that the mind experiences more remotely, namely those thoughts that appear as the objects of the seemingly external world.

Since all objects — both those that we recognise as being mere thoughts (the ‘second person’ objects) and those that appear to exist in an external world (the ‘third person’ objects) — seem to exist only when they are known by our thinking mind (the ‘first person’ or subject), they will cease to exist as soon as we experience the truth that this false ‘first person’ is actually non-existent. And since space is an illusion that is created by the seeming separation between the knowing subject (the ‘first person’) and the many objects (the ‘second and third persons’) that it knows, space will cease to exist as soon as the ‘first place’ (the ‘first person’ or ‘here’) ceases to exist.

In verse 15 Sri Ramana goes on to discuss the reality of time, saying that the past and future stand clinging to the present (that is, their seeming existence depends upon the present); that while occurring they are both the present; that the present is ‘only one’ (that is, the only one time that we ever actually experience); and that trying to know the past or future without knowing the truth of the present is like trying to count without knowing ‘one’ (the basic number of which all other numbers are constituted).

In verse 16 he concludes his discussion of time and space by first asking the rhetorical question ‘நாம் அன்றி நாள் ஏது, நாடு ஏது, நாடும் கால்?’ (nam andri nal edu, nadu edu, nadum kal?), which means ‘when [we] scrutinise, except we, where is time [and] where is place?’ and which clearly implies that when we keenly scrutinise ourself in the precise present place and precise present moment, ‘here’ and ‘now’, we will discover that ‘we’ alone truly exist and that time and place are completely non-existent.

After asking this question, he says that if we are a body, we shall be ensnared in time and place, but then asks another rhetorical question, ‘are we [a] body?’, implying that we are not. He then concludes by saying that since we are ‘one’ (the one non-dual immutable reality), now, then and always, here, there and everywhere, that which really exists is only ‘we’, who are devoid of time and place.

In verses 17 and 18 he teaches us the unreality of our present experience — both of ourself as a finite body and of the world as a collection of finite forms — by contrasting it with the experience of those who have known self.

In verse 17 he says that both for those who have not known self and for those who have known it, the body is certainly ‘I’, but that the difference between them is that to those who have not known self, ‘I’ is limited to the measure of the body, whereas to those who have known self, ‘I’ shines without any limit (and hence neither the body nor anything else exists as other than it).

In verse 18 he says that both for those who have not known self and for those who have known it, the world is real, but that the difference between them is that to those who have not known self, the reality is limited to the measure of the world, whereas to those who have known self, the reality abides devoid of form as the adhara (the support, substratum or ground) of the world. That is, whereas we experience the multiple forms of this world as real, a person who has known self experiences only its formless ground or underlying substance as real.

In verse 19 he says that the dispute whether fate (vidhi) or free will (mati) prevails is of interest only to those who do not know the மூலம் (mulam) — the root, base, foundation, origin or source — of both fate and free will (namely the mind, which misuses its free will and experiences whatever fate results therefrom), and that those who have known the truth of this mind have thereby separated themselves from fate and free will and will not hereafter become entangled with them again. In other words, fate and free will appear to exist only so long as our mind appears to exist, but when we scrutinise this mind and thereby know the truth that it does not really exist, fate and free will will also cease to exist.

In verses 20 to 22 he returns to the subject of ‘seeing’ God, which he had discussed earlier in verse 8 (and also in verses 24 to 26 of Upadesa Undiyar), and once again emphasises the truth that we can experience God as he really is only by knowing our real self and thereby surrendering our false self.

In verse 20 he says seeing God without seeing oneself, who sees him, is only seeing a மனோமயமாம் காட்சி (manomayam-am katchi) — a ‘sight which is composed of mind’ or ‘mind-made vision’ — and that only he who sees his real self, which is the source and base of his false self, has truly seen God, because our real self, which alone remains after the destruction of our false self, which is the root (of all mental visions or experiences), is not other than God.

In verse 21 he asks how we can ‘see’ ourself, since ourself is one (and is therefore not something that we can ‘see’ as an object that is other than ourself), and how we can ‘see’ God (as an object of experience), since we cannot even ‘see’ ourself (as an object of experience), and he concludes by saying ‘ஊண் ஆதல் காண்’ (un adal kan), which means ‘becoming food [is] seeing’. That is, we can truly see God, who is our own real self, only by surrendering ourself entirely to him, allowing ourself to be consumed in his infinite light of pristine self-consciousness, ‘I am’.

In verse 22 he asks us to consider how we can meditate upon or know God by our mind, except by turning our mind back within and immersing it in God, who shines within it (as its essential self-consciousness, ‘I am’) giving it light (the light of consciousness by which it is able to know both itself and the appearance of thoughts, objects or otherness).

In verses 23 to 29 he discusses the rising of our false ‘I’, the mind or ego, and the means by which we can return to our natural state, in which this ‘I’ does not rise.

In verse 23 he says that this body does not say ‘I’, because it is not conscious; that no one says ‘in sleep I do not exist’ (even though our body and mind do not exist in sleep); and that after one ‘I’ (our mind or ego) rises, everything arises. Therefore he instructs us to scrutinise with a நுண் மதி (nun mati) — a subtle, acute, precise and keen mind, intellect or power of discernment — where this ‘I’ rises, and in the kalivenba version he adds that when we scrutinise it thus, it will ‘slip off’, ‘steal away’ or ‘stealthily escape’.

That is, this false ‘I’ appears to exist only so long as we do not keenly scrutinise it, and it disappears as soon as we focus our entire attention upon it (just as an imaginary snake would disappear when we look at it carefully and thereby recognise that it is only a rope). The fact that this is the nature of our mind or ego — our primal thought ‘I’ — is an extremely important truth that Sri Ramana emphasised repeatedly, because it is a vital clue that explains the unique and infallible efficacy of atma-vichara or self-investigation.

In all forms of spiritual practice other than atma-vichara, our attention is directed towards something other than our essential self — our fundamental consciousness ‘I’ — so such practices will only sustain and perpetuate the illusion of the false ‘I’ who is practising them, and hence they can never destroy it. The only means by which we can destroy this illusion is to withdraw our attention from everything else and focus it exclusively upon ‘I’, because just as we would not recognise the truth that the imaginary snake is actually nothing other than a rope unless we looked at it carefully, so we will not recognise (or truly experience) the truth that this imaginary finite ‘I’ is actually nothing other than the one real infinite ‘I’ unless we scrutinise it keenly.

In verse 24 he begins by reiterating the truth that this non-conscious body does not say ‘I’, and then he says that being-consciousness (sat-chit) does not rise (appear or come into existence), but that in between being-consciousness and this non-conscious body one ‘I’ rises as the ‘measure’ of this body (that is, a spurious consciousness ‘I’ rises as ‘I am this body’, assuming the boundaries of bodily existence, being confined within the limits of time and space). This false ‘I’, he says, is chit-jada-granthi (the knot that binds together consciousness and the non-conscious), bondage, the soul, the ‘subtle body’, the ego, the mind and this samsara (‘wandering’, the state of incessant activity, passing through one dream-life after another).

In verse 25 he describes this false ‘I’ as உருவற்ற பேய் அகந்தை (uru-v-atra pey ahandai), the ‘formless ghost-ego’, and says that it comes into existence by grasping form (that is, by attaching itself to a body), endures by grasping form (that is, by attending to thoughts or perceptions of a seemingly external world), feeds and grows (flourishes or expands) abundantly by grasping form, and having left one form it grasps another form. That is, since this ego has no form (no finite and separate existence) of its own, it can seemingly come into existence and endure only when we imagine ourself to be the form of a body, and it flourishes when we attend to any form (anything that appears to be separate from ourself).

Having thus explained how this ‘I’ rises, endures and flourishes, he explains how it can be destroyed, saying தேடினால் ஓட்டம் பிடிக்கும் (tedinal ottam pidikkum), which literally means ‘if [we] seek [search, investigate, examine or scrutinise it], it will take flight’. That is, since this ego is a ‘formless ghost’ and since it can therefore rise and endure only by ‘grasping form’, when it tries to ‘grasp’ (or attend to) itself, which is not a form, it will subside and disappear.

Thus in this verse Sri Ramana explains more clearly the crucial truth that he had mentioned briefly in the last sentence of the kalivenba version of verse 23 — ‘நான் எங்கு எழும்?’ என்று நுண் மதியால் எண்ண நழுவும் (‘nan engu ezhum?’ endru nun matiyal enna nazhuvum), which means ‘when [we] scrutinise with a subtle power of discernment “where does [this] I rise?”, it will steal away’ — namely the truth that our mind or ego is nourished and sustained by attending to anything other than itself, and will therefore be dissolved and destroyed only by attending to itself.

As I mentioned above, this truth — which can aptly be called the ‘first law of consciousness’ or ‘first law of the science of self-knowledge’ — is a fundamental principle that we must understand if we are to recognise the unique efficacy of atma-vichara and the fundamental limitation of every other form of spiritual practice. It is also the key to complete self-surrender, because our false self is sustained by attending to anything other than itself, and hence we can effectively surrender it only by vigilantly scrutinising it, as Sri Ramana teaches us in the thirteenth paragraph of Nan Yar? (Who am I?):

Being completely absorbed in atma-nishtha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other chintana [thought] except atma-chintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God. ...

In verse 26 he states another fundamental principle of this science of self-knowledge, saying that if the ego comes into existence, everything will come into existence, and that if the ego does not exist, everything else will not exist. Therefore he declares the truth that அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம் (ahandai-y-e yavum am), which means ‘the ego indeed is everything’, and he concludes by saying ஆதலால் ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் (adalal ‘yadu idu?’ endru nadal-e ovudal yavum), which means ‘therefore investigating [or scrutinising] “what is this [ego]?” is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything’. That is, since we can renounce or surrender our ego only by scrutinising it vigilantly to know what it really is, and since everything else is actually nothing other than this ego, scrutinising ‘what am I?’ is truly renouncing everything.

Thus Sri Ramana teaches us that we cannot truly renounce the world merely by becoming a monk, hermit or ascetic, but only by keenly attending to our fundamental consciousness ‘I’, thereby refraining from attending to any other thing. Therefore this practice of atma-vichara or self-investigation is not only complete self-surrender but also absolute renunciation of everything.

In verse 27 he teaches us that atma-vichara is the only means by which we can experience the truth declared in the mahavakyas or ‘great sayings’ of the Vedas such as aham brahmasmi, ‘I am brahman [the absolute reality]’, and tat tvam asi, ‘that [God or brahman] you are’.

In the first line he says that the state in which ‘I’ abides without rising is the state in which we abide as ‘we are that’, and then he asks how we can reach or attain this egoless state, in which ‘I’ does not rise, unless we scrutinise the source from which it rises. Here the words நான் உதிக்கும் தானம் (nan udikkum [s]thanam), which literally mean the ‘place where I rises’ or the ‘rising-place of I’, denote our real self, which is the ‘place’ or source from which our false self rises (just as the rope is the ‘place’ or source from which the imaginary snake arises).

After thus implying that self-scrutiny is the only means by which we can ‘reach’ our natural state of non-rising, he asks another rhetorical question, which reiterates the truth that he stated in the first line by implying that unless we reach this egoless state, we cannot abide as ‘that’ which we really are (namely brahman, the one absolute reality).

In verse 28 he describes the practice of atma-vichara in a more graphic manner, saying that just as we would sink (immerse or dive) in order to find something that had fallen into the water, we should sink deep within ourself with a keenly penetrating power of discernment, thereby controlling our breath and speech, and know the ‘rising-place’ or source of our ego, which rises (as the root of all rising).

In verse 29 he teaches us that such keen self-scrutiny or atma-vichara — which he describes as the practice of ‘having discarded our body like a corpse and not uttering the word “I” by mouth, scrutinising with an inward-sinking mind “where does it [our mind] rise as I?”’ — alone is the path of jnana (or true knowledge), and that other practices such as meditating upon the thoughts ‘I am not this body, I am brahman’ are only aids but are not the actual practice of atma-vichara.

In verse 30 he reiterates the truth that he stated in verse 20 of Upadesa Undiyar and verse 2 of Anma-Viddai, saying that when our mind reaches our heart (the innermost core of our being) by inwardly scrutinising ‘who am I?’ and thereby dies, the one reality will ‘appear’ or ‘shine forth’ (that is, will be experienced) spontaneously as ‘I [am] I’, and then he clarifies that though it ‘appears’, it is not ‘I’ (the ego) but is the whole porul (the one infinite ‘substance’, ‘essence’ or ‘reality’), the porul which is self.

That is, since our real self is infinite, eternal and unchanging, it never truly ‘appears’ (or ‘shines forth’), but it is described as ‘appearing’ (or ‘shining forth’) because at the precise moment that our mind subsides into the innermost depth of our being, we will seem to experience it with an altogether new and fresh clarity. This fresh clarity of self-consciousness or self-knowledge (which is what is sometimes called aham-sphurana or atma-sphurana, the ‘shining forth of I’ or ‘clear appearance of self’) will instantly destroy the last vestige of our mind, whereupon its newness will subside and we will experience it as our eternally clear and ever immutable self.

In verse 31 he reiterates the truth that he stated in verse 15 of Upadesa Undiyar, asking rhetorically what there is to do for one who enjoys the bliss of self, which rose (as ‘I [am] I’) destroying the false self (or ego) — thereby implying that our natural state of clear self-consciousness is absolutely devoid of karma or action (since the mind, the agent or ‘doer’ of all action, has cease to exist) — and he concludes this verse with another rhetorical question, asking who can understand what this non-dual state of true self-knowledge really is, since one in this state does not know anything other than self.

In verse 32 he returns again to the subject of how we can experience the truth taught in mahavakyas such as tat tvam asi or ‘that you are’ (which he had discussed in verse 27 and 29, and which he mentions again in verse 36), saying that when the Vedas declare that ‘that you are’, we should know and be our true self by investigating ‘what am I?’, and that if instead of knowing ourself thus we just think ‘I am that [reality], not this [unreal body]’, that is due to lack of clear discrimination (or strength of conviction), because ‘that’ (the one absolute reality or God) always abides as our true self.

In verse 33 he clarifies the nature of true self-knowledge, which is absolutely non-dual and non-objective, teaching us that saying either ‘I do not know myself’ or ‘I have known myself’ is a ground for ridicule, because we are not two selves, one of which could be an object known by the other, since being one is the true experience of each one of us.

In verse 34 he teaches us that it is foolish to argue about the nature of the reality instead of abiding as it, saying that since the பொருள் (porul) or ‘essential reality’ always exists as the true nature of each one of us, disputing whether it exists or does not exist, whether it is a form or formless, or whether it is one or two or neither (one nor two), instead of knowing and firmly abiding as it in our heart, where it exists (or by means of an inward merging mind), is மாயைச் சழக்கு (mayai-c-cazhakku), a fault or evil of maya or self-deception.

In verse 35 he teaches us that the only worthy siddhi or ‘attainment’ is atma-siddhi or ‘self-attainment’ and not the attainment of any supernatural power, saying that knowing and being the பொருள் (porul) or ‘essential reality’, which is always attained, is the only true attainment, and that all other attainments are merely attainments experienced in a dream. He then asks whether such attainments will be real if we wake up from our present sleep of self-forgetfulness, and whether those who abide in the state of உண்மை (unmai), ‘reality’ or ‘being’, and who have thereby discarded unreality, will be deluded (by any such false attainment).

In verse 36 he again teaches us that we cannot experience ourself as the one absolute reality merely by meditating ‘I am that’, saying that if we think we are this body, thinking ‘no, we are that’ will be a useful aid in reminding us to abide as ‘that’, but then asking why we should always be thinking that ‘we are that’, since in truth we always exist as ‘that’. To illustrate the folly and futility of meditating ‘I am that’, he asks whether anyone meditates ‘I am a human being’ (implying that just as it is not necessary for a person to think ‘I am a human being’ in order to be human, so in order to be the reality that we always are we do not need to meditate ‘I am that’).

In verse 37 he reminds us that we are always the one non-dual reality, even when we imagine that we are seeking to experience ourself as such, saying that even the contention that ‘duality [is real] in [the state of] spiritual practice, [but] non-duality [is real] in [the state of] spiritual attainment’ is not true, and to illustrate this truth he asks who we are other than the tenth man, both when we are desperately searching (for ourself) and when we have found ourself.

As I explain in a separate article, Non-duality is the truth even when duality appears to exist (which is an extract from pages 310 to 314 of Happiness and the Art of Being), the dasaman or ‘tenth man’ whom Sri Ramana mentions in this verse is any one of the ten dull-witted men in a well-known story, according to which they imagined that they had lost one of their companions because, after fording a river, each one of them counted his nine companions but forgot to count himself, the proverbial ‘tenth man’. Just as each of them was the missing ‘tenth man’ even when he imagined the ‘tenth man’ to be lost, so we are each the one real self even when we imagine ourself to be lacking clear knowledge of who we really are.

However, though our present self-ignorance and all its effects are a mere imagination, just as the loss of the ‘tenth man’ was a mere imagination, so long as we experience any of these effects — even the slightest trace of duality or otherness — we must make effort to know ourself and thereby dispel this illusion of self-ignorance, which is the root cause of all duality.

To emphasise the truth that we must certainly make effort to dispel our imaginary self-ignorance, in verse 38 Sri Ramana says that if we are the agent or ‘doer’ of actions, we will certainly experience the resulting ‘fruit’ or consequences, but that when we know ourself by investigating ‘who is the doer of action?’ our kartritva or sense of ‘doership’ (our feeling that ‘I am doing action’) will depart and all the ‘three karmas’ will cease to exist. This state devoid of the ‘doer’ and his or her ‘three karmas’ is, Sri Ramana says, the state of mukti or ‘liberation’, which is eternal (being without beginning, interruption or end).

As I explain in a separate article, Actions or karmas are like seeds (which is an extract from pages 258 to 261 of Happiness and the Art of Being), the ‘three karmas’ are (1) our agamya karma, our present actions, which we perform by our free will under the influence of our vasanas (the latent ‘seeds’ of our desires) and which therefore generate not only more such ‘seeds’ but also ‘fruits’ to be experienced by us later; (2) our samchita karma, the store of the ‘fruits’ of our past actions that are yet to be experienced by us; and (3) our prarabdha karma, our present destiny or fate, which is the set of those ‘fruits’ of our past actions that God has selected and ordained for us to experience now. These ‘three karmas’ will all appear to be real so long as we mistake ourself to be a ‘doer’ and an ‘experiencer’, that is, an individual who does actions and experiences pleasure and pain, which are the ‘fruits’ or consequences of actions that we have done in the past.

However, if we investigate ‘who am I, who now feel that I am doing actions?’ — that is, if we keenly scrutinise our own essential consciousness ‘I am’, which we now confuse with the mind, speech and body that do actions — we will discover that we are actually not a finite individual who does actions by mind, speech and body, but are only the infinite consciousness that just is. When we thus come to know ourself as we really are, we will cease to mistake ourself to be either the ‘doer’ of any action or the ‘experiencer’ of the fruit of any action.

In verse 39 he emphasises once again our need to make effort to dispel our imaginary self-ignorance, saying that thoughts of bondage and liberation will exist only so long as we experience ourself as ‘I am a person in bondage’, but that when we see ourself by investigating ‘who is this person in bondage?’ our real self, which is eternally liberated, will alone stand as that which is ever attained, and then he asks whether in front (of such clear self-knowledge) the thought of liberation can stand, since the thought of bondage cannot stand.

Finally in verse 40 Sri Ramana answers those who say that the mukti or liberation that we can attain is of three kinds, with form, without form, or with or without form, stating emphatically that liberation is the destruction of the imaginary form of the ego, which distinguishes these kinds of liberation, with form, without form, or with or without form.