Reply: STUDY GROUP on SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTION Ch2v13 (3rd attemop!!)

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Q: I see you doing things. How can you say that you never perform actions?

A: The radio sings and speaks, but if you open it you will find no one inside.

Similarly, my existence is like the space; though this body speaks like the

radio, there is no one inside as a doer.

Q: I find this hard to understand. Could you please elaborate on this?

A: Various illustrations are given in books to enable us to understand how the

jnani can live and act without the mind, although living and acting require the

use of the mind.

The potter’s wheel goes on turning round even after the potter has ceased to

turn it because the pot is finished.

In the same way, the electric fan goes on revolving for some minutes after we

switch off the current.

Prarabdha (predestined karma), which created the body, will make it go through

whatever activities it was meant for.

But the jnani goes through all these activities without the notion that he is

the doer of them.

It is hard to understand how this is possible. The illustration generally given

is that the jnani performs actions in some such way as a child that is roused

from sleep to eat,........ eats but does not remember next morning that it ate.

 

It has to be remembered that all these explanations are not for the jnani.

He knows and has no doubts. He knows that he is not the body and he knows that

he is not doing anything even though his body may be engaged in some activity.

 

These explanations are for the onlookers who think of the jnani as one with a

body and cannot help identifying him with his body.

The cinema example is explains the different components. One needs an

understanding of creation and onlooking to really have a feel of what Shri

Ramana was saying.

Don't think, just look By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

 

You may have many great notions about yourself, but when you sit with me, all

your deceptions are down and you stand stark. This is the very purpose of being

with a Sadhguru. It is important that you realise the deception is on. So don’t

think; start looking. Don’t use your stupid mind. It is the same nonsense. You

cannot think any other way than you have been trained to up until now.

 

Just look. The whole idea is to drop your stupid thinking. All this high and

low, right and wrong, is only in your mind. When you simply look at everything,

everything seems to be okay. If you stand here and just look – the grass, the

trees, the hill, the big mountain, the small mountain are all just part of the

scenery. Does the cloud look better than the mountain? Or does the sky look

better than the mountain? Everything is just a part of one unit. If you stand

here and think, "This is a mountain, that is a cloud," then everything seems

separate.

 

The moment you project like this, all your nonsense, lifetimes of karma confront

you. If you are simply here, looking at everything as it is, you become a

different kind of a being altogether. You will mellow down to something totally

different.

 

When you are in your mind, you don't travel anywhere. You only hallucinate. The

first stanza of the Guru Pooja is just that: Apavithra Pavithrova, Sarvavastan

Gatopiva, Yasmareth Poondari Kaksham, Sabahyabhyantara Suchihe.

 

'Anyone – whether holy or unholy, whatsoever state he has reached – who

meditates upon the lotus-eyed Lord, becomes sanctified both internally and

externally.’ This means you are not involved in your own self-emancipation.

You’re not trying to improve yourself. You’re not trying to purify yourself.

You just contemplate on what you hold as the highest right now.

 

Whatever is your highest, you just contemplate upon that. Your inner and outer

purity will happen naturally. If you try to emancipate yourself, to improve

yourself or to purify yourself, the more and more you do it, the more of a mess

you will be. You simply contemplate on what you hold as the highest; maybe God,

maybe the guru, or whatever you hold as the highest.

 

Cultivating Awareness

 

Everybody is making choices, but choices made in a state of unawareness are

compulsions. Let us say you get angry right now. It is your choice, actually,

to be angry. Somewhere, you believe that is the way to handle the situation,

but the choice is made in such unawareness that it is a compulsion; it’s

happening compulsively on a different level. So you are living by choice, but

choices are made without awareness – unconscious choices.

 

Now the whole thing is to shift into making conscious choices. Even a simple

act, like when you wake up in the morning, the unconscious choice is that you

don’t want to wake up. When the sun rises, you want to pull the sheet up a

little higher over your face. Do you see this? This is the unconscious choice.

Your physical body wants to remain in the bed for some more time, and some more

time, and some more time – for so many reasons, it doesn’t want to get up. There

are so many aspects of life, so many limitations in your experience of life,

that in many ways, unconsciously, you’re not really looking forward to the day.

Let’s say tomorrow, you have planned to go on a picnic. Do you see, before the

sun rises you will wake up on that day? Consciously you have decided the

previous day; you are

excited. You are looking forward to tomorrow. It is a joyful experience. You

will see, you will wake up before the sun comes up. Otherwise, unconsciously,

you try to pull the sheet higher up over your face because this light is not

something you are looking forward to, because with light comes today’s stock

prices; with light comes today’s problems; with light comes the whole world

into your life. So you’re trying unconsciously to screen yourself from that;

but now we make a conscious choice. Even after you wake up, the unconscious

choice is that you want to drink a cup of coffee the body feels comfortable

with that, but now you can make a conscious choice, “No, I will have a cold

water bath and do my yoga asanas.”

 

Why ascetic paths were set is simply because of this: you start doing things

that are naturally not comfortable for you. Once you start doing such activity

that is uncomfortable for you, you do it, but you don’t like it. If you have to

do something that you do not like, you can only do it consciously; there is no

other way to do it. Yes? Things that you like, you can do compulsively; but

things that you don’t like, you can only do consciously. That is why the

ascetic path. You start doing

2">everything consciously. There is no other way to be.

 

Now, slowly, you are practicing how to be conscious in various situations in

your life. When you are hungry, the natural urge is to grab food and eat. Now

you make a conscious choice, “I am very hungry, but I am not eating.” To stay

away from food, there is no other choice except being conscious about it, but

to go and eat, you don’t need consciousness; you can simply go and grab it when

you are hungry. These simple things are set up in life so that you start doing

things more consciously. For example, we have only two meals in our day-to-day

life, or sometimes even one meal. By the time this meal comes, naturally you

are very hungry, but you don’t immediately eat. You wait for everybody to sit

down. You wait for something to go onto everybody’s plate, then you utter an

invocation, and then you slowly eat. This needs consciousness. Just to give

that break when

you are hungry – just to wait for those three or four minutes – it takes an

enormous amount of awareness for a person.

 

So this way, you’re cultivating awareness into different aspects of life. Maybe

initially your awareness is only for half an hour a day, but gradually you are

bringing awareness into various aspects of life like this. The idea of

cultivating awareness is that it slowly seeps into your life. In one way that

is a reality, you are cultivating awareness. One thing it does is, it enhances

the quality of your life, but that’s not everything. The main aspect is that if

you can maintain awareness in various kinds of situations in life, only then

will you ever become capable of being aware at that moment when you have to

part with the body. Otherwise, that never arises in your life.

 

Ravi Sankar

anupadayachi <anupadayachi (AT) (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

STUDY GROUP on SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTIONCHAPTER 2PRACTICEAbhyasa V13.Q. How can

there be a connection between the Self which is pureknowledge and the

triplefactors (i.e., knower, known and knowledge), which are

relativeknowledge?M. This is, in a way, like the working of a cinema as shown

below:-CINEMA SHOW1.The lamp inside (the apparatus)2.The lens in front of the

lamp3.The film which is a long series of (separatephotos).4.The lens, the light

passing through it and thelamp, which together form the focused light.5.The

light passing through the lens and falling onthe screen.6.The various kinds of

pictures appearing in thelight of the screen.7.The mechanism which sets the

film in motion.SELF1.The Self2.The pure (sattvic) mind close to the Self.3.The

stream of latent

tendencies consisting of subtle thoughts.4.The mind, the illumination of it and

the Self,which together form the seer or the Jiva.5.The light of the Self

emerging from the mindthrough the senses, and falling on the world.6.The

various forms and names appearing as theobjects perceived in the light of the

world.7.The divine law manifesting the latent tendenciesof the mind.Just as the

pictures appear on the screen as long as the film throwsthe shadows through the

lens, so the phenomenal world will continue toappear to the individual in the

waking and dream states as long asthere are latent mental impressions. Just as

the lens magnifies thetiny specks on the film to a huge size and as a number of

pictures areshown in a second, so the mind enlarges the sprout-like

tendenciesinto tree-like thoughts and shows in a second innumerable

worlds.Again, just as there is only the light of the lamp visible when thereis

no film, so the Self alone shines without the triple factors whenthe mental

concepts in the form of tendencies are absent in the statesof deep sleep, swoon

and samadhi. Just as the lamp remains unaffecteddespite illuminating the lens,

and so on, the Self remains unaffecteddespite illuminating the ego

[chidabhasa]. -----anuPS decided to keep it simple..apologies re repeated

failed attemptsto present comparisons bet 'Cinema show' & 'Self' alongside

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