Something to contemplate:
Ramana Maharshi:
"Shankara was criticized for his views on maya (illusion) without being understood. He said that
(1) Brahman (creative principle which lies realized in the whole world) is real,
(2) the universe is unreal, and
(3) The universe is Brahman.
He
did not stop at the second, because the third explains the other two.
It signifies that the universe is real if perceived as the Self, and
unreal if perceived apart from the Self. Hence maya and reality are one and the same.”
Source: David Godman, “Be As You Are, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi” p. 180
Recognize
the Self when in the world. Everything shines equally. Nothing can be
less than anything else. As long as anything is treated with disdain or
any lack of respect, then one is perceiving ‘apart from the Self.”
To
be perceiving “apart from the Self” means that I sees myself as not
part of the Self. It means that I am perceiving as though I were not
embedded in Self, as an integral part of the Self. It means that I have
momentarily “forgotten” (again) that “all that is”, actually consists of
the one Universal Being, which Ramana calls “the Self”.
It is
correct to say that when I perceive the universe “as the Self”, that I
perceive everything in the world being literally “the Self”. I also
perceive everything from the viewpoint of my identity “as the Self”. I
then perceive everything as sacred and I perceive everything as the Self
that is perceiving extensions of Itself.
11-X-15 Chefchaouen, Bab Souq
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http://digitalblasphemy.com/graphics/previews/cosmogony_preview.jpg
Am I in a "special state" after a particularly remarkable shift in perspective?
The
question as to as "special state" is an interesting one - this shift
that I am in shows me more clearly what all the sages mean, especially
Ramana and the Zen masters when they say that there is no enlightenment
and no liberation when one realizes that everything already is the Big
Mind, or the Self, and only our little mind taking a limited perspective
creates a world of separation from Self, Buddha Mind, or God, which are
all the same thing.
To say "only the little mind" is, of course,
an understatement, since it sounds like the "little mind" should not be a
big hindrance to just remaining as "what is", which is the one vast and
mysterious Universal Being showing up as many.
As you can see from my yesterday's post "The ego mind is a slug",
I am starting to look at the mind, to see if I can discover what it
actually is, or if it even really exists. It is quite mysterious. One
could say that all the world is an appearance in the Self, so of course
this includes the mind. The statement that "All, including the mind, is
an appearance in the Self" is first of all a concept. Do I get glimpses
of this as a direct experience? Yes. Is there a certain focus that I can
take to allow this to become a continuous realization? Yes, there does
seem to be, but it is rather difficult. In my experience it means taking
the stance "nothing plus nothing equals nothing" (all is but an
appearance in Self with no lasting substance in and of itself) and at
the same time being fully and passionately engaged in life, not falling
into nihilism etc. Ramana addresses this here: "The investigation
will resolve itself into a quest for the Self and it will cease only
after the non-Self is sifted away and the Self realized in its purity
and glory." source
p. 178 I could therefore say that the formula "nothing plus nothing
equals nothing" reminds me to "sift away the non-Self" and to remember
that everything I see and interact with is actually appearing in the
Self, which means it is all "identical with the beingness of the Self."
David Godman summarizes Ramana's views on this subject here:
"Sri Ramana adopted three different standpoints when he spoke about the nature of the physical world. …
1 Ajata vada
(the theory of non-causality). This is an ancient Hindu doctrine which
states that the creation of the world never happened at all. It is a
complete denial of all causality in the physical world. Sri Ramana
endorsed this view by saying that it is the jnani’s experience
that nothing ever comes into existence or ceases to be because the Self
alone exists as the sole unchanging reality. It is a corollary of this
theory that time, space, cause and effect, essential components of all
creation theories, exist only in the minds of ajnanis and that the experience of the Self reveals their non-existence.
This
theory is not a denial of the reality of the world, only of the
creative process which brought it into existence. Speaking from his own
experience Sri Ramana said that the jnani is aware that the
world is real, not as an assemblage of interacting matter and energy,
but as an uncaused appearance in the Self. He enlarged on this by saying
that because the real nature or substratum of this appearance is
identical with the beingness of the Self, it necessarily partakes of its
reality. That is to say, the world is not real to the jnani simply because it appears, but only because the real nature of the appearance is inseparable from the Self.
The ajnani,
on the other hand, is totally unaware of the unitary nature and source
of the world and, as a consequence, his mind constructs an illusory
world of separate interacting objects by persistently misinterpreting
the sense impressions it receives. Sri Ramana pointed out that this view
of the world has no more reality than a dream since it superimposes a
creation of the mind on the reality of the Self. He summarized the
difference between the jnani’s and the ajnani’s
standpoint by saying that the world is unreal if it is perceived by the
mind as a collection of discrete objects and real when it is directly
experienced as an appearance in the Self." source p. 175
The inquiry is on-going.
http://m.cdn.blog.hu/ko/koreainhungary/image/jackie-kim-korean-folk-art-min-hwa-15.jpg
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Q: So one should not try to perpetuate blissful or ecstatic states?
Ramana: The
final obstacle in meditation is ecstasy; you feel great bliss and
happiness and want to stay in that ecstasy. Do not yield to it but pass
on to the next stage which is great calm. The calm is higher than
ecstasy and it merges into samadhi. Successful samadhi causes a waking
sleep state to supervene. In that state you know that you are always
consciousness, for consciousness is your nature. Actually, one is always
in samadhi but one does not know it. To know it all one has to do is to
remove the obstacles.
Q: Through poetry,
music, japa, [chanting holy names], bhajans [devotional songs], the
sight of beautiful landscapes, reading the lines of spiritual verses,
etc., one experiences sometimes a true sense of the all- pervading
unity. Is that feeling of deep blissful quiet in which the personal self
has no place the same as the entering into the Heart of which Bhagavan
speaks? Will undertaking these activities lead to a deeper samadhi and
so ultimately to a full vision of the real?
A: There
is happiness when agreeable things are presented to the mind. It is the
happiness inherent in the Self, and there is no other happiness. And it
is not alien and afar. You are diving into the Self on those occasions
which you consider pleasurable and that diving results in self-existent
bliss. But the association of ideas is responsible for foisting that
bliss on other things or occurrences while, in fact, that bliss is
within you. On these occasions you are plunging into the Self, though
unconsciously. If you do so consciously, with the conviction that comes
of the experience that you are identical with the happiness which is
truly the Self, the one reality, you call it realization. I want you to
dive consciously into the Self, that is the Heart.
Q: I
have been making sadhana [spiritual practice] for nearly twenty years
and I can see no progress. What should I do? From about five o’clock
every morning I concentrate on the thought that the Self alone is real
and all else unreal. Although I have been doing this for about twenty
years I cannot concentrate for more than two or three minutes without my
thoughts wandering.
A: There is no other way
to succeed than to draw the mind back every time it turns outwards and
fix it in the Self. There is no need for meditation or mantra or japa or
anything of the sort, because these are our real nature. All that is
needed is to give up thinking of objects other than the Self. Meditation
is not so much thinking of the Self as giving up thinking of the
not-Self. When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your
mind from going outwards by turning it inwards and fixing it in the
Self, the Self alone remains.
David Godman, “Be As You Are, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi”, p. 167-8
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