Fwd: Ramana Maharshi & J. Krishnamurti, Illusion of Difference

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ThePowerOfSilence , viorica w <viorica

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RAMANA MAHARSHI & J. KRISHNAMURTI

 

Illusion of Difference

 

Kriben Pillay

 

 

 

The impetus for this paper arose as a direct response to an article

by Douglas Harding in the journal The Mountain Path, wherein Harding

points to an immense divide between the teachings of Ramana Maharshi

and J. Krishnamurti, both in form and practical realisation.

 

I have no quarrel with the view that the form and content of the

respective teachings of Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti show great

differences; but these are differences of the periphery rather than

of the essential centre. As I shall demonstrate later, in terms of

the actual practices advocated there is absolutely no difference

experientially, except in the labels given to them. For Ramana

Maharshi it was asking the question `Who am I?', for Krishnamurti it

was a matter of being choicelessly aware.

 

However, before examining the two methods of inquiry, it will be

useful to look more closely at Douglas Harding's `differences of

substance' as he puts it. It is by looking at just how valid these

are that prepares the ground for seeing what is essential in the two

teachings.

Quite rightly, I think, Douglas Harding draws attention to

essentially two kinds of spiritual teachers; the spiritual-

psychological and the spiritual-religious , but he presents an

uninformed point of view when referring to Krishnamurti. (I might add

that Douglas Harding, in a written reply to me about my reservations

concerning his assessment of Krishnamurti, acknowledged that his

study of Krishnamurti was not very extensive and was therefore

subject to misinterpretation. Also, during his visit to South Africa,

he publicly acknowledged that his `two-way seeing' was essentially no

different to Krishnamurti's choiceless awareness.) But in the article

he says:

The difference between them is wide and deep. For the first kind,

Reality or the Goal is strictly impersonal, am absence rather than a

Presence, a cold white light, a void, a disappearance, nothing at all

rather than the marvellous No-thing that's wide awake to Itself as

nothing and everything. (21-22) It is my view that Krishnamurti's

teachings evolved in response to the general condition of the western

mind which, already convinced by logic of the postulates of

materialism, was living in a universe where God was dead. In order to

touch that mind and open it to something beyond itself, Krishnamurti

had to take the psychological path, which included the path of

negation, in order to show what is.

V. Ganesan, in his article `Inquiry and Identity' (45) quotes Sri

Yogi Ramsuratkumar:

Krishnaji is for the non-believers. For believers, there are any

number of Masters for them to follow. But for a genuine non-believer,

what is the recourse? Hence, Krishnaji chose totally differing terms,

yet acceptable to non-believers ... I assure you, Krishnaji gives us

the same essence as any of the great Masters, but couched in opposite

terminology. Also, in Krishnamurti's notebooks there is more than

ample evidence that he was not pointing to `a void', but `an awakened

attention ... in which the origin of thought had ceased.' (1976:142)

This is perfectly in accordance with Maharshi's utterance that `the

intellect ... can never reach the Self' (83).

 

Ramana Maharshi's teachings on the other hand, arose within the

context of the traditional Indian mind where he had to negotiate the

simplicity of his vision with the spiritual heritages of those who

came to him. He is different in that while he insisted on the

supremacy of self-inquiry, he nevertheless also spoke in traditional

terms for those who were simply too conditioned spiritually to see

the profound in the simple.

 

However, both Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti radiated a quality

that drew listeners to them irrespective of whether they understood

these teachers intellectually or not.

 

Douglas Harding also asserts that because Krishnamurti, in his

psychological approach to Self-realisation, asks us to be

choicelessly aware of the activities of the mind in order that

thought may be transcended, he is inevitably involved in a `gradual

and cumulative' process. Ramana Maharshi, in contrast, argues

Harding, denies the mind and as such points directly to the Self

which is perceivable in the moment. Yet, this is to overlook the one

statement that Krishnamurti made most repeatedly; that transformation

can never be a matter of time, that it is always in the immediate

moment.

I assure you, you can do it immediately if you give your whole

attention to it. (1954:69) The other point that Harding draws our

attention to in order to substantiate his view that there is a great

divide between Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti, is the former's

acceptance of the traditional scriptures while the latter rejected

them completely. Yet, Ramana Maharshi is on record as saying:

The sage who is the embodiment of the truths mentioned in the

scriptures has no use for them. (36) I have gone into Harding's

points of difference in some detail simply to show that where

spiritual teachings are examined intellectually, one can arrive at

differing conclusions because it is the very nature of dynamic

teachings to deal with the challenges of the moment and to be true to

the requirements of the moment rather than to the consistency of

verbal utterances. For this reason, in both the teachings of Ramana

Maharshi and Krishnamurti, one will find statements that appear to

contradict each other. But this is as it should be, for finally the

teachings are pointing to that which is beyond words. It is precisely

because we are fixated with the relative that we fail to see that the

relative, by definition, cannot be wholly consistent. In the history

of religions this false identification has caused much suffering

through the resultant dispute over words. The equally great

teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj said:

I make no claims for consistency. You think absolute consistency is

possible; prove it by example. (254) Having attempted to clear the

area of the intellectual nit- picking that tends to cloud the more

fundamental understanding needed, let us now look at the respective

modes of self-inquiry advocated by Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti.

I shall begin with Krishnamurti's `choiceless awareness'.

For Krishnamurti, choiceless awareness meant awareness of the

totality of the observable field of consciousness without any

condemnation whatsoever. It is simply the act of observing; both the

outer and the inner, and the reactions of the inner to the outer.

Awareness is a state in which there is no condemnation, no

justification or identification, and therefore there is

understanding; in that state of passive alert awareness there is

neither the experiencer nor the experienced. (1954:176) If one

actually experiments with being choicelessly aware, one will

automatically perceive that the actions of the `me', the small self,

loosens its grip because the habitual process of identification that

creates the `I-am-my-body-and-my-thoughts' idea is negated by the act

of observing without a `me' that is doing the observing. Where there

is choice there is the moment to moment birth of the `me', but where

there is no choice there is just the state of awareness, which

Krishnamurti points to as being the ground of Silence which is the

gateway to the immeasurable, to that which cannot be named.

How different is choiceless awareness, which is not a process of

thinking but a ceaseless watching of thoughts, to Ramana Maharshi's

Self-inquiry? Let Ramana Maharshi speak for himself:

If the inquiry `Who am I?' were a mere mental questioning, it would

not be of much value. The very purpose of Self-inquiry is to focus

the entire mind at its Source. It is not, therefore, a case of

one `I' searching for another `I'. Much less is Self-inquiry an empty

formula, for it involves an intense activity of the entire mind to

keep it steadily poised in pure Self- awareness. (76) What is

pointed to here is precisely the act of being choicelessly aware. It

is experientially impossible to `focus the entire mind at its Source'

without being in a state of seeing, which at the beginning, at least,

will inevitably involve the seeing of the activities of thought, but

without identifying with them.

If Douglas Harding objected to Krishnamurti's way as being time-

bound as compared to the Maharshi's instant seeing of the Self, then

there has been a gross misunderstanding of both methods, because in

response to the question `How long should inquiry be practised?',

Ramana Maharshi answered:

As long as there are impressions of objects in the mind, so long

the inquiry `Who am I?' is required. As thoughts arise they should be

destroyed then and there in the very place of their origin, through

inquiry. (8) In fact, both teachings give rise to similar confusions

for inquirers. Both Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti state that

transformation, in the sense of having a true perception of who we

really are, can be attained now, yet both point to practices that

seem to involve time.

It is my contention that this is a paradox that one has to unravel

for oneself, for it is in the very unravelling of the paradox that we

gain an insight into the logical difficulties of attempting to

understand that which is beyond the intellect with the intellect.

Also, to attempt to explain it intellectually would be to shy away

from the real inquiry.

In this view one can see the significance of the Zen koan whose

sole purpose is to frustrate the intellect into surrender with its

maddening verbal play and so allow the mind to see its real nature.

However, there is more than a clue to what Ramana Maharshi and

Krishnamurti's teachings are really about in the following words of

Nisargadatta Maharaj, which in closing, more than adequately sums up

the central methods of these two spiritual geniuses of the twentieth

century.

The very fact of observation alters the observer and the observed.

After all, what prevents the insight into one's true nature is the

weakness and obtuseness of the mind and its tendency to skip the

subtle and focus the gross only. When you follow my advice and try to

keep your mind on the notion of `I am' only, you become fully aware

of your mind and its vagaries. Awareness, being lucid harmony

(sattva) in action, dissolves dullness and quietens the restlessness

of the mind and gently, but steadily changes its very substance. This

change need not be spectacular; it may be hardly noticeable; yet it

is a deep and fundamental shift from darkness to light, from

inadvertence to awareness. (271-272)

 

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