Friday 10 April 2015

Tuning your ear for Sravana


Rambachan is right you know but it’s a very narrowly focused correctness. Epistemology, it has to be admitted, is a cup of cold tea for a lot of people. Fortunately, in religious discourse creative ambiguity is not far away and in his intense focus on sravana he does not notice the missing manhole cover. To prepare ourselves for jnana our hearing has to be tuned by various practices which create the spirit that is receptive. He speaks of predispositions and their cultivation.

The predispositions for brahmajijnasä have been classified by Shankara under four headings:
1. Viveka
2. Vairägya
3 Samadisadhanasampat
4. Mumukshutvam

Cavil as he might well do about the clear distinction between action based sadhana and the true source of knowledge this ascetic groundwork is covered by those he deprecates for their love of phenomena. Yet leelas and mahimas are to be expected to occur when the cosmos is being abrogated. Mind is in the process of being abolished as an ultimate and therefore the natural glue of causality that governs the time-space continuum loses its grip. This slippage is evinced by miracles, clairvoyance, bi-location and all the other traces of the passage of saints.

And so the creations and withdrawals of the universe down the ages are imagined, just as the distinctions of time and space are. When you have seen reality, you know that the creation, maintenance and withdrawal of the universe are impossible. (Brh.Up. Vartika/Sureshvara:II.i.411)
(page 382 Method of Vedanta by Sri SSS)

When this ‘worm-hole’ is approached anomalies and strange states of mind such as samadhi occur . When I read the Raja Yoga of Vivekananda it is his enthusiasm that communicates itself, there is no cool conceptual analysis so I am disinclined to take his writing as finished doctrine.
cf:Ramakrishna

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