Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-62

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Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-62

 

PATH AND DOCTRINE - PART I

 

By Arthur Osborne in "Be Still, It Is The Wind That Sings"

 

A spiritual path rests on a doctrinal basis, just as a scientific

experiment does on a theoretical basis. To make them universally

available, outside the ritual of any religion, the paths the

Maharshi taught were simple and direct; and therefore the doctrine

on which they were based was universal and free from philosophical

technicalities. I say `paths' because in fact there were two. He

would often say: "Ask yourself `Who am I?' or submit". As simple as

that, and he declared that these two paths both lead to the same

goal.

 

The one that he offered first was always Self-enquiry. Only if some

one complained that he found this too difficult or that it did not

suit his temperament did he tell him in that case to submit,

assuring him that submission would lead to the same goal. Let us

therefore start with a consideration of Self-enquiry and the

doctrinal basis he provided for it.

 

THE PATH OF ENQUIRY

 

Self-enquiry is not analysis; it has nothing in common with

philosophy or psychology. The Maharshi showed this when he declared

that no answer the mind gives can be right. (And, indeed, in this it

resembles a Zen koan). If it had a mental answer it would be a

philosophical conundrum, not a spiritual practice; and it was as a

spiritual practice that the Maharshi prescribed it. So any one who

tells you what the answer to the enquiry is shows by that very fact

that he has not understood it. It does not mean arguing or saying

that I am not this or not that; it means concentrating on the pure

sense of being, the pure I-am-ness of me. And this, one discovers,

is the same as pure consciousness, pure, formless awareness.

 

So far is it from being a mental practice that the Maharshi told us

not to concentrate on the head while doing it but on the heart. By

this he did not mean the physical heart at the left side of the

chest but the spiritual heart at the right. This is not a physical

organ and also not a yogic or tantric chakra; but it is the centre

of our sense of being. The Maharshi told us so and those who have

followed his instructions in meditation have found it to be so. The

ancient Hebrews knew of it: "The wise man's heart is at his right

hand, but a fool's heart is at his left,"2 it says in the Bible. It

is referred to also in that ancient Advaitic scripture, the Yoga

Vasishta, in verses which the Maharshi quoted as Nos. 22-27 in his

Supplementary Forty Verses on Reality. Concentration on the heart

does not mean thinking about the heart but being aware in and with

the heart. After a little practice it sets up a current of awareness

that can actually be felt physically though far more than physical.

At first this is felt in the heart, sometimes in the heart and head

and connecting them. Later it pervades and transcends the body.

Perhaps it could be said that this current of awareness is

the `answer' to the question `Who am I?' since it is the wordless

experience of I-ness.

 

There should be regular times for this `meditation', since the mind

accustoms itself and responds more readily. I have put the

word `meditation' in inverted commas, since it is not meditation in

the usual sense of the word but only concentration on Self or on

being. As Bhagavan explained: "Meditation requires an object to

meditate on, whereas in Self-enquiry there is only the subject and

no object."3 Good times are first thing when you wake up in the

morning and last thing before going to sleep at night. At first a

good deal of time and effort may be needed before the current of

awareness is felt; later it begins to arise more and more easily. It

also begins to occur spontaneously during the day, when one is not

meditating. That explains Bhagavan's saying that one should keep up

the enquiry constantly, not only during meditation. It comes to be

more and more constant and, when lost or forgotten, to need less and

less re-awakening.

 

A man has three modes of manifestation; being, thinking and doing.

Being is the most fundamental of the three, because he can't think

or do unless he first is. But it is so covered over by the other two

that it is seldom experienced. It could be compared to the cinema

screen which is the support for the pictures without which they

could not be seen, but which is so covered over with them that it is

not ordinarily noticed. Only very occasionally for a brief glimpse,

does the spiritually untrained person experience

the sheer fact of being; and when he does he recalls it afterwards

as having been a moment of pure happiness, pure acceptance, pure

rightness. Self-enquiry is the direct approach to conscious being,

and therefore it is necessary to suspend thinking and doing while

practising it. It may lead to a state when conscious (instead of the

previous unconscious) being underlies thinking and doing; but at

first they would interrupt it, so they have to be held off.

 

This is the path; the doctrine on which it is based is Advaita, non-

duality, which might be rendered `Identity' or `Nootherness'. Its

scripture for the Maharshi's followers is his Forty Verses on

Reality together with the Supplementary Forty Verses which he later

added.

 

In this he declares: "All religions postulate the three

fundamentals; the world, the individual and God."4

 

Not all in the formal way, for there are also nontheistic religions;

but essentially this is what we start from. Whether I am educated or

uneducated, my own existence is the basis from which I start, the

direct awareness to which everything else is added. Then, outside

myself, my mind and senses report a world of chairs and tables and

trees and sky, and other people in it. Mystics tell me that all this

is illusion, and nowadays nuclear scientists agree with them. They

say that the red book I am holding is just a cluster of electrons

whirling about at high speed, that its redness is just the way my

optic apparatus interprets a vibration of a certain wavelength, and

similarly with its other qualities; but anyway, that is how it

presents itself of my perception. I also have a feeling of some

vastness, some power, some changeless Reality behind the

vulnerability of the individual and the mutability of the world. It

is about this third factor that people disagree, some holding that

it is the real Self of the individual, others that it is a Being

quite other than him, and others again that is does not exist at all.

 

The verse continues: "But it is only the One Reality that manifests

as these three." This implies that Self-enquiry is the quest of the

one Reality underlying the apparent trinity of individual, world and

God.

 

But the mistake inherent in dualism does not consist in supposing

that God is a separate Being from you but in supposing that you are

a separate being from God. It is not belief in God that is wrong but

belief in the ego. Therefore the verse continues: "One can say, `The

three are really three only so long as the ego lasts.' " Then the

verse turns to the practical conclusion, as Bhagavan always did in

his teaching: "Therefore to abide in one's own Being, where the `I'

or ego is dead is the perfect State."

 

And that is what one is trying to do by Self-enquiry; to abide as

the Self, the pure Being that one essentially is, casting aside the

illusory reality of the ego.

 

Feeling one's insignificance before that mighty Power, one may

worship It in one of Its manifestations—as Krishna, say, or Christ

or Rama, but: "Under whatever name and form one may worship the

Absolute Reality, it is only a means for realizing It without name

and form."5 That means appreciating Its Infinity, realizing that It

alone is, and leaves no room for a separate me subsisting apart from

It. Therefore, the verse continues: "That alone is true Realization

wherein one knows oneself in relation to that Reality, attains peace

and realizes one's identity with It."

 

And this is done by Self-enquiry. "If the first person, I, exists,

then the second and third persons, you and he, also exist. By

enquiring into the nature of the I, the I perishes. With it, `you'

and `he' also perish."6 However, that does not mean blank

annihilation; it only means annihilation of the illusion of separate

identity, that is to say of the ego, which is the source of all

suffering and frustration. Therefore, the verse continues: "The

resultant state, which shines as Absolute Being, is one's own

natural state, the Self."7

 

Not only is this not a gloomy or dismal state or anything to be

afraid of, but it is the most radiant happiness, the most perfect

bliss. "For him who is immersed in the bliss of Self-realization

arising from the extinction of the ego what more is there to

achieve? He does not see anything as being other than the Self. Who

can apprehend his State?"8

 

Note that in speaking of the unutterable bliss of Self-realization

Bhagavan says that it is achieved through the extinction of the ego,

that is the apparent individual identity. So that, although nothing

is lost, something does have to be offered in sacrifice; and while

being offered it appears a terrible loss, the supreme loss, one's

very life; only after it has been sacrificed does one discover that

it was nothing and that all has been gained, not lost. This means

that understanding alone cannot constitute the path. Whatever path

may be followed, in whatever religion, the battle must be fought and

the sacrifice made. Without that a man can go on all his life

proclaiming that there is no ego and yet remain as much a slave to

the ego as ever. Although the Forty Verses on Reality are a

scripture of the Path of Knowledge, Bhagavan asks in them: "If since

you are a single being, you cannot see yourself, how can you see

God?"9 And he goes on to answer: "Only by being devoured by Him."

 

This brings the path of enquiry to the same point as the path of

surrender, since in either case the ego must be sacrificed. It is a

very profound verse. It recalls the Hebrew saying: "No man can see

God and live." Many people see visions of God in one form or

another, but that is not seeing God. The mind and senses of a man

knot themselves together into what wrongly supposes itself to be an

individual entity separate from the Universal Being which it aspires

to see. But that Universal Being is the true Self of it. Only by

surrendering their illusory individual entity to be devoured out of

existence can the mind and senses become true instruments for

perception by what is thereafter understood to be their true Self,

so that, as the Maharshi sometimes said, the only way to see God is

to be God.

________________

2 Ecclesiastes, X, 2.

3 The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words, Sri

Ramanasramam, Ch. V.

4 Forty Verses on Reality, v. 2 (from the Collected Works of Ramana

Maharshi, published by Sri Ramanasramam).

5 Ibid., v. 8.

6 Ibid., v. 14.

7 Ibid., v. 14.

8 Ibid., v. 31.

9 Ibid., v. 21.