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Even though the ‘I’-consciousness while being withdrawn courses only along the sushumna nadi, on account of its extreme brilliance it illumines the five sense organs (jnanendriyas), which are near the sushumna, and hence the above–mentioned experiences happen.
How? When the light of ‘I’-consciousness stationed in the sushumna illumines the eye, the organ of sight, there will be visions of Gods and many celestial worlds; when it illumines the ear, the organ of hearing, celestial sounds will be heard such as the playing of divine instruments (deva dundubhi), the ringing of divine bells, Omkara and so on; when it illumines the organ of smell, delightful divine fragrances will be smelt; when it illumines the organ of taste, delicious celestial nectar will be tasted; and when it illumines the organ of touch, a feeling of extreme pleasure will permeate the entire body or a feeling of floating in an ocean of pleasantness will be experienced.
There is no wonder that these experiences appear to be clearer and of greater reality than the sense-experiences in the ordinary waking state, because the experiences of the present waking world are gained through the gross five senses, which are functioning by the impure ‘I’ – consciousness scattered all over the body, whereas these experiences of celestial worlds are gained through the subtle five senses, which are functioning by the pure, focused ‘I’ – consciousness.
Yet all these are only qualified mental experiences (visesha-manaanubhavas) and not the unqualified Self-experience (nirvisesha-ekatma-anubhava).
Since the mind is now very subtle and brilliant because it is withdrawn from all the other nadis into the sushumna, and since it is extremely pure because it is free from worldly desires, it is now able to project through the subtle five senses only the past auspicious tendencies (purva subha vasanas) as described above.
However, just because of these visions and the like, one should not conclude that the mind has been transformed into Self (atman).
Even now there has not been destruction of the mind (mono-nasa).
Being still alive with auspicious tendencies, it creates and perceives subtler and more lustrous second and third person objects, and finds enjoyment in them.
So this is not at all the unqualified experience of true knowledge (nirvisesha-jnana-anubhava), which is the destruction of the tendencies (vasanakshaya).
Whatever appears and is experienced is only a second person knowledge, which means that sadhana, the first person attention, is lost at that time!
Many are those who take these qualified experiences (visesha-anubhavas) of taste, light, sound and so on to be the final attainment of Self-knowledge (brahma-jnana), and because they have had these experiences they think that they have attained liberation and they become more and more entangled in attention to second and third persons, thus losing their foothold on Self-attention.
Such aspirants are called ‘those fallen from yoga’ (yoga-bhrashtas).
This is similar to a man bound for Delhi getting down from the train at some intermediate station, thinking ‘Verily, this is Delhi’, being deluded by its attractive grandeur!
Even siddhis, the superhuman powers that may come during the course of sadhana are only our illusion, barring our progress to liberation and landing us in some unknown place.
What are we to do to escape from falling into such dangers? Even in this difficult situation, the clue given by Bhagavan Sri Ramana alone serves as the proper medicine! How?
Whenever one is overtaken by such qualified experiences, the weapon of Ramana,
‘To whom are these experiences ?’, is to be used!
The feeling ‘To me’ will be the response!
From this, by the enquiry ‘Who am I?’, one can immediately regain the thread of Self-attention.
When Self-attention is thus regained, those qualified experiences of second and third persons will disappear of their own accord because there is no one to attend to them.
Just as a spirit possessing a man jumps and dances more and more so long as others attend to and try to hold the man, but leaves him if there is nobody to attend to him.
When the mind, giving up knowing those qualified external sense-objects, again turns towards its form of light (consciousness), it will sink into its source, the Heart, and lose its form for ever.
Therefore, the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ alone is the best sadhana even for aspirants on the path of raja yoga, which will guard and guide us to the end and save us.
It is the invincible supreme weapon (brahmastram) which is bestowed only by the Grace of Sri Ramana Sadguru!
It is the beacon-light which safeguards us lest we should stray away from the path to eternal happiness, which is the aim of the whole world! It is the path of Sri Ramana, which alone transforms us into Self, ‘I am that I am’! During the course of sadhana, an aspirant will now be able, by the strength of practice, to cognize tangibly what is the state of the absorption of the ego and what exactly is
Self-consciousness, at which he has been aiming till now. Although his pure Self-existence, devoid of body consciousness or any other adjunct, will often be experienced by him, this is still the stage of practice and not the final attainment! Why? Since there are still the two alternating feelings, one of being sometimes extroverted and the other of being sometimes introverted, and since there is the feeling of making effort to become introverted and of losing such effort while becoming extroverted, this stage is said to be ‘not the final attainment’, What Sri Bhagavan reveals in this connection is :
“If the mind (the attention) is thus well fixed in sadhana (attending to Self), a power of divine Grace will then rise from within of its own accord and, Subjugating the mind, will take it to the Heart”.
What is this power of divine Grace ? It is nothing but the perfect clarity of our existence the form of the Supreme Self (paramatman), ever shining with abundant Grace in the heart as ‘I-I’ !
The nature of a needle lying within a magnetic field is to be attracted and pulled only when its rust has been removed.
But we should not conclude from this that the magnetic power comes into existence only after the rust is removed from the needle. Is not the magnetic power always naturally existing in that field? Although the needle was all the while lying in the magnetic field, it is affected by the attraction of the magnet only to the extent that it loses its rust.
All that we try to do by way of giving up second and third attention and clinging to Self-attention is similar to scraping off the rust. So the result of all our endeavours is to make ourself is to become a prey to the attraction of the magnetic field of pure consciousness the Heart, which is ever shining engulfing all (that is reducing the whole universe to non-existence) with spreading rays of Self effulgence.
Mature aspirants will willingly and without rebelling submit themselves to this magnetic power of the Grace of Self-effulgence.
Others, on the other hand, will become extroverted (that is, will turn their attention outwards) fearing the attraction of this power.
Therefore, we should first make ourselves fit by the intense love (bhakthi) to know Self. And by the tremendous detachment (vairagya) of having no desire to attend to any second or third person.
Then, since our very individuality (as an aspirant) itself is devoured by that power, even the so-called ‘effort of ours’ becomes nil.
Thus, when the ‘I’ – consciousness that was spread all over the body is made to sink into the Heart, the real waking, the dawn of knowledge (jnana), takes place.
This happens in a split second !
“Death is a matter of a split second! The leaving off of sleep is a matter of a split second! Likewise, the removal of the delusion ‘I am an individual soul (jiva)’ is also a matter of a split second!
The dawn of true knowledge is not such that glimpses of it will be gained once and then lost! If an aspirant feels that it appears and disappears, it is only the stage of practice (sadhana).
He cannot be said to have attained true knowledge (jnana).
The perfect dawn of knowledge is a happening of a split second; its attainment is not a prolonged process.
All the age long practices are meant only for attaining maturity.
Let us give an example it takes a long lime to prepare a temple cannon-blast, first putting the gunpowder into the barrel, giving the wick, adding some stones and then ramming it, but when ignited it explodes as a thunder in a split second.
Similarly, after an age long period of listening and reading (sravana), reflecting (manana), practising (nidi-dhyasana) and weeping put in prayer (because of the inability to put what is heard into practice), when the mind is thus perfectly purified, then and then only does the dawn of self-knowledge suddenly break forth in a split second as ‘I am that I am’!
Since, as soon as this dawn breaks, the space of Self-consciousness is found, through the clear knowledge of the Reality, to be beginningless, natural and eternal,
even the effort of attending to Self ceases then!
To abide thus, having nothing more to do and nothing further to achieve, is alone the real and supreme state.”
-‘Sadhanai Saram’
That which we are now experiencing as the waking state is not the real waking state. This waking state is also a dream!
There is no difference at all between this waking and dream. In both these states, the feeling ‘I am’ catches hold of a body as ‘I am this’ and, seeing external objects, involves itself in activities. To awaken as described above from the dream of this waking state is the dawn of knowledge, our real state, or the real waking.
In this connection, some raise the following doubt: “If it is said that we have awakened from one dream and have come to another dream, the present waking state, why, after we awaken from this waking state, will even that not be another dream like this? How are we to determine, ‘Another awakening is no longer necessary; this is the real waking’?” Whatever state it may be which we feel to be waking, so long as there is an experience of the existence of any second or third persons, which are other than oneself, it is not at all the real waking state; it is only a dream!
Verify, our real waking (our real state) is that in which our existence alone (not attached to any kind of body) shines unaided and without cognizing anything other than ‘we’. The definition of the correct waking is that state in which there is perfect Self-consciousness and singleness of Self- existence, without the knowledge of the existence of anything apart from Self!
From this one can determine the real waking. It is this waking that Sri Bhagavan refers to in the following verse:
“Forgetting Self, mistaking the body for Self, taking innumerable births, and at last knowing Self and being Self is just like waking from a dream of wandering all over the world. Know thus.”
- ‘Ekatma Panchakam’, verse 1.
Just as one place, a big hall, is divided into three chambers when two walls are newly erected in it, so our eternal, non-dual, natural and adjunctless existence consciousness appears to be three states, namely waking, dream and sleep, when the two imaginary walls of waking and dream, which are due to the two body-adjuncts (the waking body and the dream body), apparently rise in the midst of it on account of tendencies (vasanas).
If these two new imaginary risings, waking and dream, are not there, that which remains will be the one state of Self consciousness alone.
It is only for the sake of immature aspirants who think the three states to be real, that the sastras have named our natural, real state, the jnana-waking, as ‘the fourth state (turiya avastha).
But since the other three states are truly unreal, this state (the fourth) is in fact the only existing state, the first, and so it need not at all be called ‘the fourth’ (turiya), nor even ‘a state’ (avastha).
It is therefore ‘that which transcends the states’ (avasthatita).
It is also called that which transcends the fourth’ (turiyatita). Hence, turiyatita should not be counted as a fifth state.
This is clearly said by Sri Bhagavan : “It is only for those who experience the waking, dream and sleep states, that the state of wakeful sleep is named turiya, a state beyond these. Since that turiya alone really exists and since the apparent three states do not exist, turiya itself is turiyatita. Thus should you bravely understand !” -
‘UIladhu Narpadhu – Anubandha’, verse 32
“It is only for those who are not able to immerse and abide firmly in turiya (the state of Self), which shine piercing through the dark ignorance of sleep, that the difference between the first three dense states and the fourth and fifth states are (accepted in sastras).”
-‘Guru Vachaka Kovai’, verse 567.
When, through the aforesaid Self-attention, we are more and more firmly fixed in our existence-consciousness, the tendencies (vasanas) will be destroyed because there is no one to attend to them.
Thus, the waking and dream states, which have been apparently created by these imaginary tendencies, will also be destroyed.
Then the one state which survives should no more be called by the name ‘sleep’- “When, the beginningless, impure tendencies, which were the cause for waking and dream, are destroyed, then sleep, which was (considered to be) leading to bad results (that is, to tama,) and which was said to be a void and ridiculed as nescience, will be found to be turiyatita itself !”
-‘Guru Vaehaka Kovai’, verse 460 .
Since that which has been experienced till now as sleep by ordinary people was liable to be disturbed and removed by waking and dream, it appeared to be trivial and temporary. That is why it was said on pages 51 to 52 of this book that sleep is a defective state, and in the footnote of the same pages that the real nature of sleep would be explained later in the eighth chapter.
Therefore, our natural state, the real waking, alone is the supreme Reality. Since this real waking is not experienced as a state newly attained, for a Liberated One (jivanmukta) the state of liberation does not become a thought!
That is, since bondage is unreal for Him, He can have no thought of liberation. Then how can the thought of bondage come to Him? The thought of bondage and liberation can occur only to the ignorant one (ajnani), who thinks that he is bound.
Therefore, to remain in this state of Self, having attained tile supreme bliss (the eternal happiness which is, as pointed out in chapter one. the sole aim of all living beings), which is devoid of both bondage and liberation, is truly to be in the service of the Lord. This alone is our duty. This alone is the path of Sri Ramana.
“To remain in the state (of Self), having attained the supreme bliss, which is devoid of both bondage end liberation, is truly to be in the service of the Lord.”
-‘Upadesa Undhiyar’, verse 29
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