Michael James about nature of mind based on teachings of Ramana Maharshi - Part2

[Guest guest]

The more we experience the joy of just being, the less we will feel desire

to think or do anything, and thus by the practice of selfattention our

tendency to think will be gradually weakened and will finally be

destroyed. When

we have no desire to think anything, we will remain effortlessly established

in our own essential being, and thus even our effort to attend to our being

will subside. This is what Sri Ramana means by saying that the thought or

effort to know ‘who am I?’ will destroy all other thoughts and will itself

finally be destroyed.

 

Our mind is in fact nothing but our power of attention. When we direct our

power of attention towards thoughts and objects, which we imagine to be

other than ourself, we rise as our mind, leaving our natural state of mere

being. But when instead we direct our power of attention back towards

ourself, we return to our natural state of mere being, and so long as we

keep our attention fixed on ourself, without allowing it to stray out

towards anything else, we remain as our mere being – that is, as our own

essential self. In other words, our outward facing attention is our mind,

whereas our inward or ‘I’-ward facing attention is our real self – our own

simple and essential selfconscious being.

 

This focusing of our consciousness upon anything other than ourself is what

we call ‘imagination’, because everything other than our own essential

self-conscious being, ‘I am’, is merely a thought or image that we have

formed in our mind by our power of imagination. Since this ‘imagination’,

which is another name for our mind, causes us to delude ourself into

experiencing things that do not truly exist, it is also called maya, a word

that means ‘delusion’ or ‘self-deception’. Thus our mind or object-knowing

attention is merely a product of our own self-deceiving power of

imagination, which is the distorted use that we make of our power of

consciousness when we use it to imagine that we are experiencing anything

other than ourself.

 

Sri Ramana also describes this ‘place’ or state of egolessness as being

mauna or ‘silence’, because it is the state of perfectly silent or

motionless being. Since our real self is thus the state of perfect silence,

we can know it only by remaining silent, that is, by just being, without

rising to think anything. That is, since the restless activity or chattering

of our mind is the noise that prevents us from knowing the silence of pure

being, we can experience that silence only by silencing all our mental

activity. Therefore silence in this context does not mean mere silence of

speech, but complete silence of mind.

 

Since our mind is our false self, a spurious form of consciousness that we

mistake to be ourself, we can effect its dissolution only by fixing our

attention firmly in our real self, the innermost core of our being, which we

always experience as our fundamental and essential consciousness ‘I am’.

When we dissolve our mind thus in our real own self, the true nature of our

real self will reveal itself as mere being – being which is silent, peaceful

and devoid of any movement or activity. This state in which we thus dissolve

our mind in our real self is therefore described as summa iruppadu, the

state of ‘just being’ – that is, the state in which we merely are as we

truly ever are, devoid of even the least activity or ‘doing’.

 

No knowledge of anything other than ourself can be true knowledge, because

all such knowledge is acquired by us through the delusive and self-deceiving

consciousness that we call our ‘mind’. The only knowledge that is true or

real is the correct and uncontaminated knowledge of our own real self – our

essential nondual consciousness of our own being, ‘I am’.

 

So long as our mind is active we cannot know our real self, which is

perfectly peaceful and inactive being, because our mind becomes active only

when we imagine ourself to be the limited form of a particular body. When we

do not imagine ourself to be any body, as in sleep, all the restless

activity of our mind subsides, and we remain peacefully and happily in the

state of mere being.

 

 

Since the appearance of this world in the waking state, or of any other

world in a dream, is caused only by the rising of our mind, we cannot

experience the peaceful non-dual state of true self-knowledge so long as we

perceive this world. Therefore in the third paragraph of Nan Yar? Sri Ramana

says:

 

If [our] mind, which is the cause of all [dualistic, relative or objective]

knowledge and of all activity, subsides [becomes still, disappears or ceases

to exist], [our] perception of the world will cease. Just as knowledge of

the rope, which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of

the snake], will not arise unless knowledge of the imaginary snake ceases,

svarupa-darsana [true experiential knowledge of our own essential nature or

real self], which is the base [that underlies and supports the appearance of

the world], will not arise unless [our] perception of the world, which is an

imagination [or fabrication], ceases.

 

.... To be Continued

--

Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prasanth Jalasutram