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appendix
atma vichar patikam,
sadhana and work pg 222
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Path of Ramana part 2
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Unconditional Self surrender = Self abidance
We are finally brought to the conclusion that unconditional Self-surrender in which no room is given even to any kind of prayers, is the best karma (action). This is nothing but Self-abidance.
“This – permanently remaining absorbed into its source whence it had its rising – is Karma and Bhakti; this is Yoga and Jnana.”
– Upadesha Undiyar -Verse 10.
“The enquiry to whom is action (karma), non devotion, dis-union and ignorance is itself Karma, Bhakti, Yoga and Jnana... The abidance as the Self is verily the truth”.
– Ulladu Narpadhu - Anubandham - Verse 14.
So long as a man experiences himself and the world as two separate entities, each having a distinct individual existence, he cannot in practice conceive even the mind transcending state of Parinirvana
to be anything but a third which is distinct from himself and the world.
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.......In this manner, from the moment of waking up till the moment of going to sleep, from birth till death, from creation till dissolution, all people - indeed all living beings - direct their power of attention only towards second and third person objects, and
no one ever directs it towards the first person!
This great error is what is called the ‘original sin’.
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........namely that ‘I’ alone is the absolute truth, and if they have not thereby attained the true experience of Self, we will have to conclude that their research was not a scrutiny of the correct first person.
All that they have done was to attend to a second person object called ‘mind’.
...
Turning one’s attention towards oneself in order to find out ‘Who am I, who knows the mind?’ alone is the correct first person attention. Anyone who attends to himself in this manner, whoever he may be, will certainly attain the true Knowledge of Self.
.........
Since the eternal Self is non-dual and since there is no other path (to attain it) except (to attend to and thereby to abide as) Self, the goal to be attained is only Self and the path is only Self. Know them (the goal and the path) to be non different.
– Guru Vachaka Kovai verse 579
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But for the most advanced and mature aspirants who possess perfect courage and clarity of intellect, the Vedas teach only the final truth known as ‘no creation’ (ajata), the import of which is as follows: “No such thing as the world has ever come into existence; what you see is not the world; it is only you, the real Self. Other than you, nothing has ever existed. There never was any such thing as creation, sustenance or destruction. You alone exist”. That is, while teaching the truth of ajata, the Vedas do not at all accept the existence of the world even as a false appearance.
When one scrutinizes the form of the mind without forgetfulness, (it will be found that) there is no such thing as mind... – Upadesa Undiyar verse 17.
When the mind is thus found to be ever non - existent, the world-appearance seen by it will also be found to be non-existent.
Hence ajata alone is the absolute truth (paramarthika satya).
...
Similarly, if the light of self were not present, the creation, sustenance of this world could not take place. The light of Self is that which is commonly known by the name ‘God’, and without its presence the acts of creation and sustenance could not take place. For the sake of people who lack sufficient maturity of understanding, this truth is expressed metaphorically in the theory of gradual creation by saying that it is God who creates and sustains this world.
Drishtim jnanamayin kritva pasyet brahmamayamjagat which means,
“Making one’s outlook of the nature of knowledge (jnanamaya), one should see the world as Brahman”.
The same truth is also expressed by Sri Bhagavan in verse 52 and 54 of Guru Vachaka Kovai :
Having transformed one’s outlook as of the nature of knowledge (jnanamaya), if one sees through that outlook, which is of the nature of real knowledge, the world (consisting) of the five elements beginning with space will be (seen as) real, being (found to be nothing but) the supreme reality, which is of the nature of knowledge. See thus.
When one always abides unswervingly in one’s own state without knowing (any differences such as) ‘oneself’ and ‘others’... who is there other than oneself?
–Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham verse 38.
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There is no becoming, no destruction, no one in bondage, no one having desire to be released, no one making effort (to attain liberation) and no one who has attained Liberation. Know that this is the absolute truth (paramartha).
– Upadesa Tanippakkal verse 24
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If we turn our power of attention towards “our own” Self, our limited sense of individuality will cease to exist, and hence the appearances of the world and God will come to an end.
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And just as when one single ray of white light from the sun passes through a prism, it is diffracted and seen as various colours, so
when we imagine ourselves to be a petty individual soul on account of our slackness in Self-attention,
our own single and undivided Self is seemingly diffracted and experienced by us, the individual soul, as the triad consisting of the knowing mind, its act of knowing and the many objects of the world which are known by it.*
.......
Sri Bhagavan has emphatically declared in verse 26 of Ulladu Narpadu,
“If the ego comes into existence, everything (the world, God, bondage and liberation, pleasure and pain, and so on) will come into existence. If the ego does not exist, everything will not exist. (Hence) the ego itself is everything...”, and in verse 7 of Sri Arunachala Ashtakam, “If the thought ‘I’ does not exist, no other thing will exist...”
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If an aspirant truly engages himself in the practice of Self-attention, he will often feel as if the state of Self-consciousness, which is his own true nature, is clearly known for some time and as if it is afterwards obscured.
On such occasion he will be able to understand very clearly from his own experience how the world-appearance vanishes and how it again comes into existence.
Because of the speed of forgetfulness or pramada by which he swerve from the state of Self-attention, it may be difficult in the beginning for an aspirant to notice exactly when he loses his hold on Self-attention.
In due course, however, because of the clarity and strength which he will gain by repeatedly practicing Self-attention, it will become possible for him to notice the exact moment when Self-attention is lost, and thus it will become possible for him to regain it immediately.
On all the occasions when he thus clearly cognizes the moment when Self-attention is lost and the moment when it is regained, the aspirant will be able to know very easily from his own experience how the world is created by his losing Self-attention and how it is then destroyed by his regaining Self-attention.
Thus the aspirant will come to know with absolute certainty that his giving room to slackness in Self-attention is the means by which the body and world are created,
that his maintaining slackness in Self-attention on account of his lack of interest either to notice that such slackness had occurred or to put an end to it, is the means by which the world is sustained,
and that his firmly abiding once again in his own real and, blissful state of pure Consciousness,
which is devoid of the limitations of name and form,
having vigilantly known the exact moment when slackness in Self-attention occurred
and having thereby put an end to it,
is the means’ by which the world is destroyed.
When the aspirant comes to know this truth from his own direct experience,
he will realise himself to be the perfect Supreme Reality
which transcends the three functions of creation, sustenance and destruction,
Hence, he will remain unshakably established in the state of absolute peace.
A person will feel no liking to take to the practice of Self-attention until he gains the proper discrimination whereby he can understand that the two states of creation and sustenance, which are merely a mixture of pleasure and pain, are not worthy to be cherished and pursued.
So long as he continues to give importance to these two states, which are nothing but mere appearances, he will be liable to build castles in the air by imagining that he can eliminate pain from this mixture of pleasure and pain, which is one of the many dyads, and that he can thereby make pleasure alone prevail in two states of creation and sustenance.
Though such a person may be very broad-minded, generous-hearted and compassionate, since he may even be deluded to the extent of believing that the miseries which we now see in the world would not have existed if, the functions of creations and sustenance had been performed in accordance with his own visionary ideas.
Thus he will find fault even with God, who is now performing those functions.
He will wistfully imagine that he must take responsibility for carrying out a reform in the present manner in which God is governing the world. He will then proceed to draw up wonderful plans whereby he hopes to transform this world into a blissful heaven and remove all the miseries seen in it, even hoping to make the body of man immortal.
Such a well-intentioned but deluded person will then begin to ponder how and from where he can acquire the divine power or sakti which is necessary in order for him to carry out this wonderful unselfish plan of his, and he will begin to devise and practice many new kinds of yoga in the hopes of achieving such power.
Finally, however, he will have to come to the conclusion that he can obtain such power only from God, the almighty Supreme Lord who is at present creating and sustaining this whole world, and so he will then select the method of complete self-surrender as a means of begging and acquiring such power from Him.
Being confident that the unlimited power of God will surely be showered upon him if he adopts this method, and believing that with that power he can fulfil all the wonderful plans which he has drawn up, he will be waiting in eager expectation for the day when that power will descend from above.
Knowing that there were people who were actually so deluded as to imagine, like the man described above, that it was both necessary and possible for them to bring about a radical reformation in the manner in which the world had been created and was being governed by God, Sri Bhagavan composed the following two verses :
The buffonery of the madmen who, not knowing the manner in which they function by sakti (that is, not knowing the truth that it is only by the atmasakti or power of Self that they are enabled to function and perform activities), engage in activities saying,
“We shall obtain all occult powers (siddhis)”, is like the story of the cripple who said, “If someone helps me to stand, what are these enemies (that is, how powerless they will be in front of me)?”
See, when God is bearing the burden of the world, the pseudo soul (imagining as if it were) bearing (that burden) is a mockery like the form of a gopuram-tangi (a sculptured figure which seems to support the top of a temple
tower with great strain, but which in fact is itself supported by the tower).
Whose fault is it if someone who is travelling in a train, which is bearing a great burden, undergoes suffering by bearing (his small) burden on (his own) head instead of placing it on the train? – Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham verse 15 & 17
But if the man described above really takes to the path of complete self-surrender in order to acquire from God the power which is necessary for him to bring about such a radical reformation in the creation, what will actually happen in the end?
If and when the surrender becomes complete, the mind or ego which had risen as ‘I am so-and-so’ and which had cherished all the wonderful notions mentioned above, will surely drown and perish in Self, the source from which it had risen, thereby losing its separate individuality.
Until and unless the ego is thus annihilated, the surrender cannot be said to be complete.
Since a person therefore cannot remain as a separate individual entity after he has completely surrendered himself to God, upon whom is the divine power to descend, and who is to make use of that power to reform the world? Thus in the end all the hopes and ambitions cherished by this poor man will turn out to be completely meaningless and absurd, just like the patently ficticious story told in Kaivalya Navanitam, chapter 2, verse 89. The son of a barren woman and the man seen superimposed on a post, wearing wreaths of flowers imagined in the sky, haggled about the price of the silver in the mother-of-pearl, began to fight in the city shining in the clouds, stabbed each other with the horns of a hare, became exhausted and died, after which they both became ghosts: on hearing such a story, no wise man will be deceived. Why should any man unnecessarily tax his brain and confuse himself by cherishing such ideas and ambitions? When
Sri Bhagavan was once asked about the beliefs of a certain philosopher who cherished the strange notions mentioned above,
He briefly replied, ‘Let the surrender first become complete; we can see about everything else afterwards’.
Why did He reply in this way? Transforming this world into a heaven devoid of misery and making man immortal are not things which have to be newly done.
Even now the world is truly nothing other than Brahman, the blissful Supreme Reality, and man is in his true nature nothing other than Self, the immortal spirit.
Therefore the world and man do not now need to be made either blissful or immortal. All that we need to do is to see them as they really are.
That is why Sages say, “Making one’s outlook of the nature of knowledge, one should see the world as Brahman” (drishtim jnanamayin kritva pasyet brahmamayam jagat).
The defects which we now see in the world and in man are not defects in God’s creation but are only defects in our own outlook. Therefore there is no use in trying to rectify God’s creation by usurping His power; if we wish to rectify all the defects which we see, we must rectify our own outlook; there is no other way.
Those who know the reality will declare that there is no defect in creation (srishti), but that there is a defect only in outlook (drishti). – Sri Ramana Jnana Bodham, vol. 1, verse 1696.
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. Be they gross, subtle or causal, they are after all “a body” only! So long as one identifies oneself with anyone of these three bodies as ‘I’, it is only ignorance.
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