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A reply to Tboni’s article on Spiritual Awakening

Admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:42:55 +0000

The spontaneous enlightenment experience, which strikes like a bolt
of lightening out of the blue, that one hears so much about, is generally, I think, taken by western seekers these days to be the norm.

I know I thought this was the norm for a very long time.

One thing which I feel is missing from your post, and it is something which I didn’t understand for a long time, is that there may be many ‘enlightened’ people around who don’t blow a horn or tell a story about it.

Why is that? Well, perhaps they don’t know that there is a horn to blow about it. Perhaps because implicit in the way they came to recognize the nature of reality was the understanding that they would come to know it anyway. In other words, it was kind of par for the course in the environment they were in.

In the tradition in which I study it’s just kind of assumed that the student will gain self-knowledge at some point. And when that happens, it’s more of a ‘Duh’ or perhaps a quiet ‘Aha,’ rather than a lightening strike. Maybe this is because the student’s mind is prepared for it, I don’t know, but that would be my assumption.

I’ve met many such people within the community in which I study. Sweet, kind, loving, gentle, ordinary, unspectacular people, who happen to have recognized the nature of reality. Most of these people were never involved in any other type of spiritual discipline except perhaps for a few things in the late 60’s or early 70’s.

Thus this whole enlightenment craze and the literature touting the spontaneous enlightenment bolt out of the blue experience is not on their radar screen at all.

So where are these people now? One drives a taxi. One tutors high school students. One is a cabinet maker. One teaches in an art college. One writes soft-ware. One has a business. Some work in the IT industry. They do lots of different things. In India many are swamis and are teaching.

Perhaps we hear about the big bolt of lightening out of the blue experiences because the people having them are not really prepared for them, and then it is a very radical shift for those people. One minute they were just ordinary folks or even messed up folks, and the next minute, Hey presto, enlightened.

So perhaps that’s why their experiences get so much press, I don’t know.

When I first encountered Vedanta, coming as I did from the school where the bolt of lightening experience was taken as the norm, I used to kind of inquire of others in a hushed voice if they knew of any who had become ‘enlightened.’ This question was often met with a puzzled quizzical look. Later I realized that some of those I was asking this question of were themselves ‘enlightened.’

Out in the wild and woolly world where spontaneous enlightenment experiences are taken to be the norm, the descriptions we read, or the experiences we hear of someone like Byron Katie and others, may lead us to think this is the way the enlightenment happens, and this is the only way it happens,
and this is the way it’s got to be.

And yet, from my experience, from meeting the people I have met and spoken with within the community of Vedanta, these types of extreme sorts of examples actually are not the norm at all.

If you’re sitting in a room listening to a teaching, and several of the people you are with have recognized the truth, then when you yourself recognize the truth are you going to stand up and announce it, or shout about it? Why on earth would you do something like that?

It would be like standing up and shouting in a room full of scientists, “You know what, the sky looks blue, but that’s an illusion,” or “The sun looks like it’s rising and setting and going around the earth,
but it isn’t!” That would be a bit out of place in such an environment, don’t you think?

I remember a long time ago hearing Goenakaji (a Theravadan Buddhist teacher) say, “India is a wonderful place. There are many enlightened people there, as enlightened as the Buddha.”

Once I heard Robert Thurman, the well-known Tibetan Buddhist scholar, say that there were hundreds of enlightened monks living in the monasteries in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion.

At the time I heard these statements, I discounted them, being conditioned as I was then by the bolt of lightening out of the blue way of thinking, but now I think they were probably accurate.

So just as a suggestion, one might consider that the types of ‘radical’ experiences that one reads or hears about may not actually be the norm at all. Rather I think it’s more of an outcome of the people having these realizations who weren’t prepared for them in the first place.

Ramana stayed in samadhi in a cave for a very long time, perhaps because at first he didn’t know he could walk, talk, and function normally, and that would not change what he had recognized to be the true.

When someone came and read some of the words of the Upanishads to him, he recognized that what was being described was his own experience. He also came to understand that the self is ’sahaja,’ natural, that one didn’t have to be constantly adsorbed in samadhi to know that. And then he resumed functioning the way that we all do, whether we have self-knowledge or not.

So one might consider when asking the question, why does a lineage continue? Perhaps the answer is it continues because it’s effective.

Author: Durgaji

On Spiritual Awakening or How did it all begin anyway.

Admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:34:32 +0000

An Ontogeny! It must have all started with Someone. The Upanishads surely did not arise out of thin air’. It seems to me that the phenomenon of spontaneous awakening/ realisation enlightenment has always been with us. Ramana Maharshi, Byron Katie, UG, Stephen Jourdaine and other recent folk who were never a part of any formal lineage are examples of this phenomenon.

Of course there may be gross disagreements by sophisticated learned observers as the extent, quality, and depth of these individuals awakening, but the facts
remain.

By realisation I would refer here to a sudden (or perhaps more gradual)
realisation that all that the person had hitherto espoused about themselves and
the world of their daily life as being real, was illusory, full of suffering,
dreamlike and that to them, others appeared as if living their lives totally
embedded in this dream.

I do not wish to specify the content of any realisation but instead to outline
the rough boundaries of what such experiences entail.

How might this be recognised?

1 By themselves?

To the person themselves it might be as outlined above. It is likely to be seen
as great shake-up in their former world-view.

2 By others?

It is likely that after such an experience they would be seen as speaking and
acting with a great understanding of the lives of many around them, and
furthermore they would behave in such ways that others recognised their
experience as being a superlative or wise understanding of what troubled them.
It is also likely that they would be seen as being wise and would invariably
attract others as potential students whether or not they wanted to do so or not.

Plagued by such questions the individual would have no recourse but to recount
their own experiences of what had happened to them, in the context in which it
happened when they had had their particular experiences.

As a consequence they would be seen as being a teacher or enlightened master.

If they had been meditating, contemplating a sunset, taking drugs, singing
dancing then it would seem as if it was these particular doings were in some way
responsible for their realisations.

Such activities might be seen to have something at least in common to do with
the gravity of their realisations.

Potential students, wishing to have such realisations themselves would either be
faced with either attempting to duplicate what the master did, or attempting to
understand what the master said in order to become awakened or realised
themselves.

Duplicating what the master did might entail meditating for long periods at a
stretch, becoming celibate, dancing, singing, praying or worshipping, doing good
works or whatever the originator held to account for his or her own
enlightenment.

This could be likened to attempting to invent the wheel for the first time twice
over.

Understanding the teachings of the Master could be likened to attempting to
savour a delicious meal by understanding the menu.

In other words such attempts would seemed to be invariably be doomed to failure
simply because the realisation was spontaneous to begin with.

It is very easy to see how such failures could invariably be accounted for by
claiming that the pupil’s attempts lacked a genuine property of commitment,
dedication, grace or purity, of the original teacher and that more teaching was
required in order to produce results.

This failure would guarantee a persistent (probably growing body) of
unsuccessful students around the teacher or enlightened one, over time and a
lineage would begin to be established. (unsuccessful because if say all who
were taught immediately became enlightened or realised, they would ignite the
realisation of their neighbours and the notion of there being an enlightened
master from whom one might receive the message would become superfluous as
everyone got the message. )

Yet if no one became enlightened in the student body then the lineage would
eventually collapse when they all died of old age along with their teacher.

Many of the spontaneous experiences recounted by folk who have awakened have
virtually nothing in common, let alone being related to the receiving any
teaching or instruction. For example some folk have had enlightening experiences
when hearing the name of a mountain one had never seen or heard of spoken by
one’s Uncle, being in a Mental Health Halfway House and having a cockroach crawl
over one’s leg, reading Descartes in depth when an adolescent, trying to catch a
bus in Paris, or being unwillingly given a huge dose of opiates in a foreign
country.

How therefore, is one to account for the persistence of lineages over hundreds
of years?

It is almost certain that, among the student body of an established early
lineage, spontaneous realisation will occur. And, furthermore it is very likely
that this will invariably be seen as a validation of the teachings of the master
who, if he or she accepts it, may hand on his or her robe and bowl.

Yet at the same time there are many accounts of folk who have had such
awakenings within a lineage who subsequently disown all such teachings as having
any bearing whatsoever in their own awakening. Some have actually claimed that
such teachings were actually a hindrance to their own realisation.

In such cases if the established teacher does not either recognise the
legitimacy of the students experience as being genuine, or takes exception to
what could be seen as a challenge to his or her leadership he or she is likely
to undermine it as being mistaken, inconsequential, or partial, thereby
maintaining his or her power, and at the same time preserving the integrity of
the teachings on which the viability of the rest of the community depends.

Accordingly, it seems to me that whilst the spiritual experience as a
spontaneous awakening or realisation in the first person singular cannot be
denied, there are many unanswered questions about whether such teachings can
hand on realisation in the third person plural.

There seems to be considerable doubt about whether such teachings are
legitimate or whether or not, however revered, they amount to empty rhetoric.

A hundred years teaching science has resulted in an ever changing technology to
which we are all privy simply by picking up a book and or watching TV, or
posting to this list.

The same cannot necessarily be said about religion and spirituality it seems to
me.

Just a few thoughts to pass the time.

Author: Tboni

Neem Karoli Baba

Admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:58:48 +0000

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Ramesh S. Balsekar

Admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:07:52 +0000

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Baba Hari Dass

Admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:42:44 +0000

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Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj

Admin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:53:01 +0000

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Sailor Bob

Admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:40:27 +0000

Australian. Guru Nisargadatta told him the greatest help that can be given to anyone is to take them beyond the need for further help. “…This Nisargadatta did by pointing to the reality, the actuality, THAT I AM. Now, I abide as THAT.” Feels right, mature, straight. Semi-ret, some disciples in the biz.

Links

http://members.iinet.net.au/~adamson7/

A commentary on Upanishads.

Admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:10:44 +0000

I read Rene Guenon’s article “The Vital Center Of The Human Being.
Rene Guenon has taken some famous quotes from various
Upanishads and tried to explain them according to
his understanding. I’ve studied some of these
Upanishads myself, and my teacher has unfolded,
and explained most of the verses which he is citing.

First of all, Guenon does start off with an error, which is
so common that it is not surprising to find it in his
writing. The error is the idea of ‘merging,’ that somehow
one has to merge in order to gain self-realization.

Who merges with what, I would like to know.
Self-knowledge isn’t ‘yoga,’ as in ‘union.’
It is actually vi-yoga, as in getting disconnected
from something.

What is that ’something’ one becomes disconnected
from? The false identity, the false idea, of taking
the self to be one with, and a product of, the body/mind. Self-knowledge is the
loss, the vi-yoga, the undoing of self-ignorance.

Now, if one wants to get technical, one can examine
how this vi-yoga takes place. What exactly happens?

What happens is this. Self-knowledge takes place
in the mind, in the form of a ‘thought.’ This isn’t
a ‘thought’ like an idea, or a concept, or something
hypothetical. It’s a ‘thought’ in the form of a direct
recognition.

And in explaining this, I can also bring in and
refer to some of the other things that Guenon has
referenced in his piece, which he hasn’t understood
or explained correctly.

Why is the self smaller than a seed, and larger
than all the worlds? Because the self is all pervasive,
like space (space, which I believe Guenon refers to
using the word ‘ether.’)

Everything comes from the self, is sustained by
the self, and resolves into the self. Everything
is in the final analysis the self.

Therefore the self is smaller than the smallest
and larger than the largest, because the self is
everything, and also that from which everything comes.

So, ’smaller than the smallest and larger than
the largest’ is a poetic and nice way that the
Upanishads have of explaining that, but actually
the self transcends size.

Guenon refers to the ‘guha,’ the cave of the heart.
This term is also is something else which is very
often misunderstood, because the actual meaning of
‘guha’ (cave of the heart), unless explained, seems
very obscure if one tries to understand the words
literally.

The cave of the heart, the ‘guha,’ is also called the
‘buddhi.’ The buddhi is that part of the mind capable
of decisive thinking.

Thus, just prosaically, when I’m wondering,
‘Did I lock the door?” as I’m driving down the driveway,
and I go back and check, and see, ‘Yes, I did lock the door,’
that cognition takes place in the buddhi, in the form of a
decisive or definite thought. Yes, I definitely know I
locked the door.

So that type of thought can be described as knowing without
a shadow of a doubt

1. Okay, now we have something which is smaller than
the smallest and larger than the largest, (i.e. something
which is all-pervasive), and transcends size (i.e. time and space)

2. And then we have the ‘guha,’ the cave of the heart,
aka the ‘buddhi,’ that part of the mind which is capable of
having a type of thought which is decisive, a ‘thought’ which
brings knowledge that is firm and unshakable.

3. Then we have self-knowledge, which takes place in the mind
(in the ‘buddhi,’ in the ‘guha,’ in the cave of the heart)
in the form of a certain ‘type’ of thought.

How does these three ‘things’ fit together?

If the self is all pervasive, then it also pervades my
mind at all times and in all places. If self-knowledge
takes place in the mind in the form of a decisive ‘thought,’
then technically what is it that occurs when self-knowledge
takes place?

What occurs is this. The mind, for an instant has no
content other than the self, which is always its constant content
anyway, but usually there are other cognitions mixed in as well,
cognitions which occur as a result of sense perception
of objects, or of varying mental states, such as fluctuating thoughts, moods and
emotions.

When self-knowledge takes place, it takes place in instant,
when then mind has no other content other than the ever
present self. In that instant self-knowledge takes place
in the form of, what is called in Sanskrit,
the ‘akhanda akara vritti,’ which translates as the
‘thought form in the form of the formless.’

It is because the self is ever present to every
thought that this can occur. The self doesn’t
come from anywhere or go anywhere. It is just for
an instant ’seen’ shining alone in its own glory.

And then ‘Aha’ one recognizes, “Oh that is me. That
is who I have always been.” This is the ‘bottom line’
reality.

This happens in less than a fraction of a second.
In a stroke, that vritti destroys self-ignorance,
leaving self-knowledge behind in its wake, and then
that vritti subsides.

Does this vritti need to be repeated? No.

Can this vritti be repeated? Yes.

Why does it not need to be repeated? Because
self-knowledge destroys self-ignorance forever.

So, this is pretty technical, but it is what does
take place.

Now, the mind knows without a shadow of a doubt
(having recognized it) that I am that self unchanging.
And once having recognized it, one always knows it.

So this isn’t really a ‘merging’ per se, but rather it is
that, in a mind devoid of all other content other than the
self, (which is ever present), the mind gains self-knowledge
and looses self-ignorance because of this vritti. And this
vritti does not need to be repeated, because once gone, self-ignorance is
forever gone.

From thereafter ‘I’ always ‘know’ who ‘I’ am.

Dennis Waite has a few places on his site that explain this.
http://www.advaita.org.uk/index.htm

If you do a pico search on his site for the words
akhaNDa akAra vRRitti
(using that spelling) you will find a lot of info

Here is a link to one conversation which Dennis and I had
on the subject before he knew how self-knowledge takes place.

http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/knowingself_durga.htm

At this point, Dennis being who Dennis is and having the mind
that he has, he can now probably explain it better than I can.

At the end of the piece are a few other paragraphs from
some other people which talk about the same thing.

And here is one more thing which I wrote out a while ago:

In March of 2008 I had the good fortune to attend some talks
which Swami Dayanandaji gave in Sydney Australia. One evening
some musicians, who are closely associated with Swamiji,
gave a small concert. They sang bhajans of Swamiji’s composition, including a
bhajan to mother Meenakshi.

Although I was not born a Hindu, nor do I know Sanskrit aside
from a few words, the beauty of the bhajan touched me deeply.

Some of us accompanied Swamiji to the airport in Sydney
prior to his return to India. We all sat together at a table
in an airport café drinking coffee. I remarked to Swamiji
how beautiful the Meenakshi bhajan was although I couldn’t
understand the words.

Sitting there Swamiji quietly began to hum. Then he began to
sing a few verses in Sanskrit. Then in English he translated,
“That very maya which brings forth this creation,
gives liberation in the form of a vrritti.
The akhanda akara vrritti”

To get back to Guenon’s article, he also talks about the
self lighting up all experience. He’s got this one pretty
correctly as far as I can see. He is quoting the Bhagavad Gita,
but actually the Bhagavad Gita, in several places, quotes
famous verses from various Upanishads, which are more ancient
texts that the Gita is.

This verse from Katha Upanishad is one of my favorites.
It is very often chanted during a puja when one is waving
the arti lamp (a small fire) in from of the deity.

“The sun does not shine there,
nor the moon or the stars,
nor does the lightening shine,
much less this fire.

Indeed That shines,
and everything shines after That.
By its light all this is lighted up.”

What does the above mean? The self lights up
(or shines in all experience). The self is
self-luminous. It is self-effulgent, swaprakasha.

It needs nothing else to ‘light it up.’
Because of the self, everything else is lighted up.
Even the luminaries themselves, the sun,
the moon, the stars, lightening, fire,
all these shine because the self, shining of
its own light, makes that possible.

Swami Dayananda has added that this verse
also means

“May that light of the self light up my buddhi,
the cave of my heart, and enable me to know,
my very own self.”

Author: Durgaji

From: Guru Ratings Forum

A spiritual experience.

Admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:56:42 +0000

The best ’spiritual’ experience I had ever had
took place at a Goenkaji ten day Vipassana course
held in Bombay. This was in the year “…”. It was
my first course with Goenka, and it was brutal.

It was May. It was unbelievably hot. It was humid
as well. We were staying at a school which was
empty for the summer, and we were sleeping in the
classrooms on a cement floor.

A guy came around with a bag full of white powder
on his shoulder, and dipping his hand in the bag,
he sprinkled a white powder all around the edges
of the room. What was the white powder? DDT.

The meditation sessions took place in some
huge kind of open metal building. Because the
building was open, pigeons used to come and roost
on the rafters over our heads.

We meditated for ten one hour sessions per day.
During one of the sessions we took a vow not
to move. Those sessions were excruciating, and with
the pigeons cooing up above, you never knew when
they might bless you with their ‘heavenly droppings.’

Of course in the evenings there were the mosquitoes,
and the smell of some horrible Indian mosquito
repellent which they seemed to attract them. You
might not think how long it takes to witness without
moving the sensation of a misquito biting you start to
finish while slimy misquito repellent runs down your face,
and your knee throbs in pain.

One day, added to all of these attractions,
someone in the neighborhood started blasting a
popular Bollywood film song of the time over a
loud speaker. I still remember the title of the song.
It was ‘Bobby.’

This was during one of our non-moving meditation sessions.
I decided I wasn’t going to let ‘Bobby,’ or the mosquitoes
or the pigeons, or the horrible pain in my leg get me down.

So I redoubled my efforts to concentrate and not to move.

All of a sudden I realized I had stopped breathing. Well,
after thinking about it a bit, I decided I wasn’t going to
let that effect me. I determined to keep on sitting.
Suddenly my whole body, burst into what I
can only describe as bliss on a cellular level. Still
‘I’ was present (That should have been a hint, but I didn’t
take it as such at the time)

When Goenkaji ended the session by chanting as he always
did, I didn’t really want to come out of it. After the
last meditation session of the day, people would form
a line and go up and talk to Goenkaji if they had any
questions to ask him.

I got in the line. When it was my turn, I said to
him, “The most wonderful thing happened this evening…”
and I wanted to go on and tell him what it was, cause
I thought I had really ‘gotten’ somewhere, and that it
was a big sign of progress.

Goenkaji stopped me mid-sentence, and he got a little
bit almost angry. He was definitely very stern, “If you
get attached to that kind of this, he said, “you will
never get anywhere.”

That burst my bubble. I was really shocked. My great
spiritual experience according to Goenka was something
that could actually be a hindrance.

Well, live and learn.

But you know, it really really was cool

Author: Durgaji

From: Guru Ratings Forum