Barbellion (author of 'Journal of a Disappointed Man) and Apurva/the uncanny, unprecedented

 Reading the ‘Journal of a Disappointed Man’ by Barbellion I reach back to the early 20th.Century to hope for him.  What can that hope, that prayer, that earnest supplication ‘give that man a break’ God; what can it do?  Are prayers dropped into eternity and in that way outside time?   Are they are retroactively effective, landing into Barbellion’s time and helping him?  What is the Christian theology on this point?  The Hindus who have thought of everything, for whom abstruse points are the old normal, speak of the uncanny, the apurva.  The wikipedia article :

apurva

summarises the main thinking on the topic.  Essentially its this: how can the sacrifice rightly done, the results of which must fructify, remain in abeyance and benefit the celebrant after their death.  The normal causal connections seem broken.  

And now I remember that in Christianity prayer for the souls of the dead in Purgatory is efficacious. The space time continuum is not as firm a construction as we suppose it to be.  Adepts at an advanced level regularly flout it.  

Ramana Maharshi the great sage was once asked whether it was possible that someone could be the reincarnation of a person who had not yet died.

Yes, he replied, because the upadhis (forms of limitation) are different in that case.  Causal logic is subverted and by the normal understanding of karma actions yet to be performed were fructifying in another life.  

How very apurva!!

I absolutely recommend ‘Journal of a Disappointed Man’ by Barbellion as the sort of book that you can take up and read some entries occasionally for their poignant beauty and resolute courage in the face of a dismal prognosis.  He died at age 27.

Barbellion

available on 

gutenberg.org 

Tripura Rahasya and the Interval between Thoughts

Tripura Rahasya (The Mystery beyond the Trinity) was one of the favourite texts of Ramana Maharshi.  That’s peer review of the first water.  If I were to put it in a category it would be  Advaita with a Tantric face.  It aspires to shock one into insight using a close metaphysical analysis that leads into paradox.  Did you know that samadhi, the aspired to state of transcendental awareness is commonplace but that we are scarcely aware of it.  Those are not the very pure blissful consciousness of merging with the absolute but what the book calls ‘fleeting samadhi’.

85-86. But fleeting samadhi goes undetected because people are not so conversant with it. O Brahmin! Fleeting samadhi is indeed being experienced by all, even in their busy moments; but it passes unnoticed by them, for want of acquaintance with it. Every instant free from thoughts and musings in the wakeful state is the condition of samadhi.

87. Samadhi is simply absence of thoughts. Such a state prevails in sleep and at odd moments of wakefulness.

88. Yet, it is not called samadhi proper, because all the proclivities of the mind are still there latent, ready to manifest the next instant.  (from Chap.XVI)

King Janaka explains to Ashtavakra that these fleeting samadhis are useless but that they do demonstrate the capacity of the mind to become empty of mental modifications and have thus a philosophical value.

4-11. Listen, O Brahmin! The following are instances of that state: When a man remains unaware of ‘in and out’ for a short interval and is not overpowered by the ignorance of sleep; the infinitesimal time when one is beside oneself with joy; when embraced by one’s beloved in all purity; when a thing is gained which was intensely longed for but given up in despair; when a lonely traveller moving with the utmost confidence is suddenly confronted with the utmost danger; when one hears of the sudden death of one’s only son, who was in the best of health, in the prime of life, and at the apex of his glory.

12-14. There are also intervals of samadhi, namely the interim period between the waking, dream and sleep states; at the time of sighting a distant object, the mind holding the body at one end projects itself into space until it holds the object at the other end, just as a caterpillar prolongs itself at the time of leaving one hold to catch another hold. Carefully watch the state of mind in the interval.

.......Anyway, when once interruptions in the stream of Intelligence are admitted, it follows that these intervals between the various modifications of the intellect into objects, would represent its unmodified, original state. O son of Kahoela, know that if one can become aware of these broken samadhis, no other samadhi need attract one.

The casual i.e. fleeting samadhi can demonstrate the nature of the mind and dwelling on this experience for what it reveals can help to create conviction that a prolonged samadhi is possible for the one-pointed seeker.

39-47. Similarly, experience of casual samadhi in the absence of theoretical knowledge does not serve the purpose either. Just as a man, ignorant of the qualities of an emerald, cannot recognise it by the mere sight of it in the treasury, nor can another recognise it if he has not seen it before, although he is full of theoretical knowledge on the subject, in the same way theory must be supplemented with practice in order that a man might become an expert. Ignorance cannot be eradicated by mere theory or by the casual samadhi of an ignorant man.

‘The thoughts of youth are long long thoughts’.  They occur in time.  One train of thought ends and the next begins.  Enlarge the gap between them.  Live there.

Find a copy in all formats at:

tripura rahasya

 

Ramana Maharishi and The Man in the Mirror

 The man in the mirror is your conventional self, the self defined by superimposition and a depthless self lacking the profound life of the realised sage.  Pure consciousness that vivifies flows into it from outside. and would be expected if given a form to be opposite to that trapped in the illusion.   Is that overextending the metaphor?  Possibly unless we take cognisance of the experience of the Maharishi (great sage) Ramana.

I have been saying all along that the Heart Centre is on the right side, even when learned men differed from me. I speak from experience. I knew it even in my home during my self-absorption. Again during the incident recorded in Self-Realization, I had a very clear vision and experience. All of a sudden a light came from one side erasing the world-vision. I felt that the heart on the left had stopped and the body became blue and inert. Vasudeva Sastri embraced the body and wept over my death, but I could not speak. All the time I was feeling that the Heart Centre on the right was working as well as ever. This state lasted fifteen or twenty minutes. Then suddenly something shot out from the right to the left like a rocket bursting into the sky. The blood resumed circulation and the normal condition of the body was restored.

 

The life force had subsided into the Hridaya but Ramana dissuaded others from dwelling on that as the ultimate reality.  Pure consciousness is beyond any focal point. 

He also writes of the Hridaya:

18. Between the two breasts, below the chest and above the stomach, there are six organs of various colours. Of these one, looking like a lily bud, is the Heart, two digits to the right (of the centre of the chest).

19. Its face is turned downwards. In the tiny hole within it there exists the dense darkness (of ignorance) together with desire and so on. All the major nerves are connected with it; it is the abode of breath, the mind and the light (of consciousness).

Quasi-Formless Meditation

Augustine distinguishes between praying with the mind and praying with the spirit. I feel the distinction here is between the use of images, the reflection on the lives of the saints, aspirations, mantra and other ‘fixities and definites’ as against the formless meditation which is a total turning of the mind and heart that can alter your world. It allows the fullness of the being of consciousness to manifest as an objectless orientation. Unrestriction by an object allows expansion beyond the formal.

Is this way of thinking about Dhyana/meditation accurate when as the Kena Up. Says the Self is known with every state of consciousness. True but for the practice of seekers on their way an empty open approach may be a better way to avoid distraction. Being formless is difficult and a bare focus on the Heart centre on the right hand side of the chest may be useful. To sink into the Heart or fall into it has been practiced by the devotees of Ramana Maharshi though in strict non-dual terms it is metaphorical.

Bhagavan: No. Only the quest ‘Who am I?’ is necessary. What remains all through deep sleep and waking is the same. But in waking there is unhappiness and the effort to remove it. Asked who wakes up from sleep you say ‘I’. Now you are told to hold fast to this ‘I’. If it is done the eternal being will reveal itself. Investigation of ‘I’ is the point and not meditation on the Heart-centre. There is nothing like within or without. Both mean either the same thing or nothing. Of course there is also the practice of meditation on the Heart-centre. It is only a practice and not investigation. Only the one who meditates on the Heart can remain aware when the mind ceases to be active and remains still, whereas those who meditate on other centres cannot be so aware but infer that the mind was still only after it becomes again active. In whatever place in the body one thinks Self to be residing, due to the power of that thinking it will appear to the one who thinks thus as if Self is residing in that place. However, the beloved Heart alone is the refuge for the rising and subsiding of that ‘I’. Know that though it is said that the Heart exists both inside and outside, in absolute truth it does not exist both inside and outside, because the body, which appears as the base of the differences ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, is an imagination of the thinking mind. Heart, the source, is the beginning, the middle and the end of all. Heart, the supreme space, is never a form. It is the light of truth.

Coleridge and Newman on Conscience

Of course it was not Voltaire’s intention to sneer at God as an invention that was required to frighten miscreants with the prospect of eternal punishment. That was a useful side effect of God’s actual existence. Coleridge finds his way to the moral order via man’s actual existence.

In The Friend cf: coleridge on metaphysics
he by what Ramana Maharshi would have called atma vichara self-inquiry turned his attention to the nature of consciousness itself:

But what are my metaphysics ? merely the referring of the mind to its own consciousness for truths indispensable to its own happiness! To what purpose do I, or am I about to, employ them? To perplex our clearest notions and living moral instincts ? To deaden the feelings of will and free power, to extinguish the light of love and of conscience, to make myself and others worthless, soulless, God-less ?

He finds in the immediacy of consciousness the clarity of its truth seeking nature. As the upanishad tag has it : satyam vada, dharmam chara Speak the truth, follow dharma.

In the concluding section of Essay XV Coleridge declares:

God created man in his own image. To be the image of his own eternity created he man! Of eternity and self-existence what other likeness is possible, but immortality and moral self-determination ? In addition to sensation, perception, and practical judgment — instinctive or acquirable — concerning the notices furnished by the organs of perception, all which in kind at least, the dog possesses in common with his master; in addition to these, God gave us REASON, and with reason he gave us reflective SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS; gave us PRINCIPLES, distinguished from the maxims and generalizations of outward experience by their absolute and essential universality and necessity; and above all, by superadding to reason the mysterious faculty of free-will and consequent personal amenability, he gave us CONSCIENCE—that law of conscience, which in the power, and as the indwelling WORD, of a holy and omnipotent legislator commands us —from among the numerous ideas mathematical and philosophical, which the reason by the necessity of its own excellence creates for itself,—unconditionally commands us to attribute reality, and actual existence, to those ideas and to those only, without which the conscience itself would be baseless and contradictory, to the ideas of soul, of free-will, of immortality, and of God.

In contrast to the rolling thunder and fulminations of S.T.C. we have the quiet wisdom of Cardinal Newman:

An ethical system may supply laws, general rules, guiding principles, a number of examples, suggestions, landmarks, limitations, cautions, distinctions, solutions of critical or anxious difficulties; but who is to apply them to a particular case? whither can we go, except to the living intellect, our own, or another's? What is written is too vague, too negative for our need. It bids us avoid extremes; but it cannot ascertain for us, according to our personal need, the golden mean. The authoritative oracle, which is to decide our path, is something more searching and manifold than such jejune generalizations as treatises can give, which are most distinct and clear when we least need them. It is seated in the mind of the individual, who is thus his own law, his own teacher, and his own judge in those special cases of duty which are personal to him.

(from An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Chapter 9)

The Unattached Self

Besides, one has to imagine that the Self can have the attribute of coming into contact with others, which idea is repugnant to the Vedas and Smirtis; for such are the Vedic and Smirti texts: “Unattached, for It is never attached” (Brh.III.ix.26) “It is unconnected, and is the supporter of all” (B.G. XIII.14) Moreover, since logic demands that a thing that has attributes, and is not of a different category, can come into contact with another having attributes, therefore it is illogical to hold that the Self which is attributeless, undifferentiated, and distinct from everything else, can come into contact with anything whatsoever that does not belong to the same category. Hence if the Self is the witness of all cognitions, then and not otherwise is established the idea that the Self, which is an effulgence that is in reality eternal and undecaying knowledge, is Brahman. Therefore the expression pratibodha videtam (known with every state of awareness) has the meaning as explained by us.

(from Shankara’s commetary on Kena Up. II.4)
Here we have presented an idea similar to that of Aristotle in De Anima namely that only things of the same sort can interact. That book is not to hand at the moment so I will search out that citation later. Unchanging and present in all states of awareness means that it is identified with pure consciousness or Brahman and therefore the highest state of consciousness is spoken of as sahaj samadhi or natural samadhi.
Ramana Maharshi defined it as:

Sahaja samadhi is a state in which the silent awareness of the subject is operant along with (simultaneously with) the full use of the human faculties.

Ramana in the meditation hall sitting on his couch reading the newspaper, chatting with the devotees, ‘it says here’, never loses contact with the Self.

Seeing in the Dark

What is the meaning of ‘cessation of the knowledge of duality?’ Is it cessation of all cognition of duality? Or is it cessation of the the belief that duality is real? If it means cessation of all cognition of duality, then the Advaitins themselves do not accept it. But if it is cessation of the belief that duality is real, then this cessation is just what the Advaitins affirm. One who has known the shell in its true form no longer continues to believe in the illusory appearance of silver.

(page 540 The Method of Vedanta by Sri S.S.S.)

Swami Satcidanandendra is here questioning the view of Bhaskara whom he frequently castigates. It is an important point and variants of this error persist in the bemused doubt that Ramana felt pain. cf.
ramana's pain

I relate this to B.G. 2:69

The controlled man wakes in what is night for all creatures, as it is night for the seer of vision when the other creatures are awake

trans. van Buitenen

When it is night for all creatures, the man who restrains himself is awake, when creatures are awake, it is night for the perceptive seer.

trans.W.J. Johnson

In the dark night of all beings awakes to Light the tranquil man. But what is day to other beings is night for the sage who sees.

(trans. Juan Mascaro)

That contrast of night and day also occurs as an echo in the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhasya of Sankara. The aporetic impossibility of knowledge is the bridge to gnosis. The knot between the conscious and the inert (chit jada granthi) is cut through by the realisation of what makes knowledge actually possible. A sage is one who continues to experience mundane mutations but does not accept them as free standing phenomena. He ‘sees through’ them, an idiom I prefer to Swami’s lack of belief. It recalls the magic show of maya. Once we know how the trick is done, we view the sawing of the lady in two with impregnable sang froid.

What is the stars?

To answer Captain Boyle’s question (Juno and the Paycock) and say that the stars and all the furniture of the cosmos is an illusion, in the simplistic way that some proponents of advaitic vedanta do, would be wrong. Or should I say non-wrong because that 'all’ is not describable as real or unreal. Our attempt at closure fails because the criteria of closure are only operative, if at all, within the cosmos. For this reason the jnanis direct seekers into positive methods of inquiry:

For this reason, from the standpoint of the highest truth Advaitins should not be considered and spoken of as people who proclaim the falsity of the world. They should be considered, rather, as people who proclaim the sole existence and (undifferentiated) reality of the self. A false notion cannot be real while it lasts and then undergo obliteration at the time of correction. We find in the world that a rope, for example, will remain exactly what it is, even it be falsely imagined as a snake or the like. And in the same way, the Absolute remains what it is, even when it is falsely imagined as the world and soul and so forth. This is the finally accepted truth.

(pg. 116 The Method of Vedanta by Sri SSS.)

The sentence beginning with A false notion seems to be backsliding into illusionism away from the positive inquiry of such as Ramana Maharshi with his Who Am I atma vichara or Nisargadatta’s reflection on I am. I rather take it to be a saving irony because analogies as such are still within the cosmos. There is no final answer in them.


Boyle: An’, as it blowed an’ blowed, I ofen looked up at the sky an’ assed meself the question — what is the stars, what is the stars?
…
Joxer: Ah, that’s the question, that’s the question — what is the stars?
Boyle: An’ then, I’d have another look, an’ I’d ass meself — what is the moon?
Joxer: Ah, that’s the question — what is the moon, what is the moon?
“Juno and the Paycock”, Seán O’Casey (1924)

Seeker's Sabda

Nor can anyone acquire new and different knowledge of anything under the force of an injunction it he has already known it as different through a valid means of cognition. Even if he thinks of it differently (e.g. thinks of woman as the sacrificial fire, (cp. Chand:V.viii.l) under the conviction that he is enjoined to do so, this does not amount to knowledge, but only to imaginative mental activity. And if a thing that had been properly known through a valid means at cognition suddenly began to appear different of its own accord, that would simply he error. (B.S.Bh.III.ii.21)

(Swami S. Note)
Let us suppose that a person, who has know something in one way through a valid means of cognition, meditates upon it as something different in obedience to a Vedic injunction. The point here made is that genuine knowledge will remain unchanged by this, even though the person is obeying a vedic injunction. For instance, if one is enjoined to see vishnu in a stone image, that does not abolish the notion that it is a stone image. The notion of vishnu is the product of subjective human endeavour. It is only a piece of meditation, and so a piece of mental activity. If, however, there were only the stone image, and through darkness or some other obscuring factor there arose other ideas of it, such as the notion that it was a man, that should be considered simply as error.

(from The Method of Vedanta 134/5 by Swami Satchianandendra)

If, as is the case with most people, one has come within the purview of vedanta through the mediation of a teacher then the confirmation that one has experienced will become virtual sabda or a valid means of knowledge. That remains the touchstone in contrast to the mental understanding of even the highest teaching. The Master has become the portal. May I suggest that the presence of the Master becomes subtilized as the Seeker progresses. Even Ramana was first drawn by Arunachala Shiva. His atma vichara method or who am I inquiry is energized by his presence.

Deep Dreamless Sleep as a Protophaenomenon in Advaitic Vedanta

Even though I disagree with the basic approach of Professor Evan Thompson in the trailer to his new book due out in the Autumn Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy I found it stimulating dreamless sleep and I thought a summary of the advaitic position as I understand it from the writings of Sankara might be useful.
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In the Upanisads the altering of the felt nature of consciousness as it moves through the various modalities of waking, dream, and deep dreamless sleep (sushupti) is central to the understanding of self-nature and self-identity.  Deep Dreamless Sleep is what S.T.Coleridge would have called a protophaenomenon. 

 The naturalist, who cannot or will not  see, that one fact isoften worth a thousand , as including them all in itself,and that it first makes all the others facts ; who has notthe head to comprehend, the soul to reverence, a centralexperiment or observation ( what the Greeks would perhaps have called a protophaenomenon ) ; will never receive an auspicious answer from the oracle of nature.

From Essay VII on thePrinciples of Method.(The Friend)

That is to say D.S. (the knowledge that we have been in a state of dreamless sleep) is like an experiment of consciousness upon itself revealing its own structure. The core of the insight is simple and yet so profound, and so ordinary that it is overlooked. How do we know that we have slept soundly? In brief, that knowledge cannot be the result of an inference. We might infer as to how long we slept but as to the bare fact it is our experience that we are perfectly aware of it without any external aids. Might we not have been told 'you were asleep' upon waking up in our childhood and associated that experience with 'sleep'. That slow emerging into consciousness &c. In other words it is a learned language game. The assumption here is that D.S. is a state of pure blank nescience that has to be inferred in some way. It is obvious that we do not remember that we slept, for it must be an epistemic bedrock that we can only remember what we experienced. That would also apply to chemical traces left in the brain by the state of sleep which are 'read off' on waking. Those traces would be like the multitude of other somatic processes that we don't need to know about. In any case the trace if given as information is given now and is not 'about' then.


That this has never cropped up as a question in Western Philosophy barring a tangential reference by Thomas Reid in a rebuttal of Locke's theory of Identity and then not in the same sense is an indication of how deep the inner ravine of mental subject/mental objects is. The assumption is that if there is no consciousness in D.S. then how we know we were in it must be from an external source. If not, the knowledge should never have occurred at all. There would simply be sensations of tiredness, a blessed abatement of consciousness and that succeeded by the slow ascension to the waking state. In between there would be nothing.

Sankara and Ramana Maharshi stress this indication of the fact that - "the knowledge of the knower is never lost”.

Brhadaranyaka Upanisad:

That it does not know in that state is because, though knowing then, it does not know; for the knower's function of knowing can never be lost, because it is imperishable. But there is not that second thing separate from it which it can know.

IV.iii.30 trans. Swami Madhavananda pub.Advaita Ashrama.

In the Commentary Sankara deals with some objections which he goes into in a more detailed way in Upadesasahasri untrammelled by linkage to a text. Remember he is approaching it from the objection to the eternal nature of knowledge and its identity with the self, his philosophic milieu was broadly nondualistic so the fact of the knowledge that we have been in a state of deep dreamless sleep is not in dispute.

#92: Disciple: -"But I have shown an exception, namely, I have
no consciousness in deep sleep."
#93. Teacher.-" No, you contradict yourself."
            Disciple - "How is it a contradiction?"
            Teacher.-" You contradict yourself by saying that you are
not conscious when , as a matter of fact, you are so."
            Disciple. - "But Sir, I was never conscious of
consciousness or of anything else in deep sleep."
            Teacher. - "You are then conscious in deep sleep.  For you deny the existence of the objects of knowledge (in that state) but not
that of Knowledge.  I have told you that what is your consciousness is nothing but absolute Knowledge.  The Consciousness owing to whose presence you deny (the existence of things in deep sleep) by saying, `I was conscious of nothing is the Knowledge, the Consciousness which is your Self.  As it never ceases to exist, Its eternal immutability is self-evident and does not depend on any evidence; for an object of Knowledge different from the self-evident Knower depends on an evidence in order to be known.  Other than the object the eternal Knowledge that is indispensable in proving non-conscious things different from Itself, is immutable; for It is always of a self-evident nature.  Just as iron, water, etc., which are not of the nature of light and heat, depend for them on the sun, fire and other things other than themselves, but the sun and fire, themselves always of the nature of light and heat, do not depend for them on anything else; so being of the nature of pure Knowledge, It does not depend on any evidence to prove that It exists or that It is the Knower."

(from Upadesa Sahasri tran.Swami Jagadananda pub.Sri Ramakrishna Math)


In short we are conscious in deep sleep for we can say - 'I was conscious of nothing'. To throw this idea aside as a species of trifling sophistry is a temptation given that we are so much under the sway of the contents of consciousness picture of awareness - no contents, no awareness.


The significance of the bare fact as explained through an analogy struck me in the way that analogies often will. We feel their explanatory power more than we understand them in that they baffle the system of thought that we are at the moment using. It works like a wisdom virus unmaking our ignorance.

Tripura Rahasya or The Wisdom beyond the Trinity was where I encountered it. Though famous in Sanskrit; Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi regarded it as one of the greatest works expounding the Advaitic philosophy, it was not available in English, a fact which he regretted.  A devotee translated it and the ashram have since taken over the copyright.  It is a most peculiar work. Allegory is mixed with legend and deep reflection on the nature of reality and the sorts of samadhi.  Scholars distinguish it from Advaita Vedanta and ally it to the system called the Tantric or the Sakta.
However in both systems the favourite example of the world being an image reflected in consciousness as images in a mirror is used.
  -"Distinguish between the changeless truth and the changeful untruth and scrutinise the world comprised of these two factors, changeful phenomena and changeless subjective consciousness, like the unchanging light of the mirror and the changing images in it". pg. 86 Tr.Ra.

            Further down page 124/5 in Tr.Ra. the mirror analogy is carried on into the state of Deep Sleep.  It is given in the form of a dialogue between the sage King Janaka and a Brahmin interlocutor.
  

-"O King, if it is as you say that the mind made passive by elimination of thoughts is quite pure and capable of manifesting Supreme Consciousness, then sleep will do it by itself, since it satisfies your condition and there is no need for any kind of effort".
            Thus questioned by the Brahmin youth, the King replied,
  -"I will satisfy you on this point.  Listen carefully.  The mind is truly abstracted in sleep.  But then its light is screened by darkness, so how can it manifest its true nature?  A mirror covered with tar does not reflect images but can it reflect space either?  Is it enough, in that case, that images are eliminated in order to reveal the space reflected in the mirror?  In the same manner, the mind is veiled by the darkness of sleep and rendered unfit for illumining thoughts.  Would such eclipse of the mind reveal the glimmer of consciousness?.........

Moreover pursue the analogy of the tarred mirror.  The tar may prevent the images from being seen, but the quality of the mirror is not affected, for the outer coating of tar must be reflected in the interior of the mirror.  So also the mind, though diverted from dreams and wakefulness, is still in the grip of dark sleep and not free from qualities.  This is evident by the recollection of the dark ignorance of sleep when one wakes".

(Pgs.124/5 Tripura Rahasya. tran. Swami Ramananda Saraswathi.publ.
Sri Ramanasramam)
The image of the tarred mirror was the crystallising one. The quiescence of the physical brings a natural darkness to the awareness of the individual but the nature of the pervading consciousness does not change.

I still hold to the view that 'recollection' is not correct for the immediate knowledge that we have on waking that we were asleep. It is that peculiar sort of knowledge that we cannot not know.  It might be said that what we cannot not know we cannot know either.  There is no coming or going in that awareness it always is.

Heart Meditation

Your work with what you are given. The body and the organs of sense carry away your attention to the external world. The idea in yogic or chakra meditation is to activate the various centres of consciousness in the body or to make that which draws us away into a means. I am only going to speak of this in very general terms not being any sort of a guru except the tin-pot one. I’ll admit to being plated with what the sellers of lotas (pots) call german silver. The chakras that are used for meditation are generally the heart (anhata) and the brow (ajna). Others have spoken of the Hridaya (heart) which is on the right side of the body and represents the ultimate portal of the life force. Ramana Maharshi’s experience of it has been, I think, the stimulus for its adoption by seekers.

I have been saying all along that the Heart Centre is on the right side, even when learned men differed from me. I speak from experience. I knew it even in my home during my self-absorption. Again during the incident recorded in Self-Realization, I had a very clear vision and experience. All of a sudden a light came from one side erasing the world-vision. I felt that the heart on the left had stopped and the body became blue and inert. Vasudeva Sastri embraced the body and wept over my death, but I could not speak. All the time I was feeling that the Heart Centre on the right was working as well as ever. This state lasted fifteen or twenty minutes. Then suddenly something shot out from the right to the left like a rocket bursting into the sky. The blood resumed circulation and the normal condition of the body was restored.

Certain photographs have the power of icons. That photo of Ramana is well known.

Ramana Maharshi's Pain

“What I said was that the jnAni is not affected by joys and sorrows. So it is the same as what you are saying. The body of the jnAni is also made up of the same chemicals as ours and so it is also subject to the same ills, but the jnAni has no identification with the body and so he does not feel anything. Ramana had sarcoma and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had cancer of the throat, but they did not suffer like ordinary human beings.”

This is the statement of a man who is steeped in Advaitic Vedanta and who probably knows Sanskrit better than most professors of it. His father was a renowned pandit if I remember correctly. That is in any case irrelevant as what is presented here is clearly incorrect and demonstrably so. Here is the testimony of Ramana Maharshi’s medical attendant.
last days

Not identifying with the body/mind complex is not the same as not feeling. Pure Consciousness which the realised sage regards as his self or his reality pervades that complex which would be inert if that were not the case. All feeling is evoked by that pervasion. Ramana himself spoke of the chit jada granthi or the knot between the conscious and the inert. Now the question is: Did Ramana feel the pain as you or I would? I would say that he did while he was suffering but he did not dread it. He was patient in the full sense.

Descartes' Meditation led by Santayana

" I think, therefore I am," if taken as an inference is sound because analytical, only repeating in the conclusion, for the sake of emphasis, something assumed in the premise. If taken as an attestation of fact, as I suppose it was meant, it is honest and richly indicative, all its terms being heavy with empirical connotations. What is " thinking," what is "I," what is " therefore," and what is " existence " ? If there were no existence there would certainly be no persons and no thinking, and it may be doubted (as I have indicated above) that anything exists at all. That any being exists that may be called "I," so that I am not a mere essence, is a thousand times more doubtful, and is often denied by the keenest wits. The persuasion that in saying "I am " I have reached an indubitable fact, can only excite a smile in the genuine sceptic. No fact is self-evident ; and what sort of fact is this " I," and in what sense do I " exist" ?

further below:

 and this inner life of the body, I suspect, was the rock of vulgar belief which Descartes found at hand, easy to mount on, after his not very serious shipwreck. And the rock was well chosen ; not because the existence of my inner man is a simpler or a surer fact than any other ; to a true sceptic this alleged being so busily thinking and willing and fuming within my body is but a strange feature in the fantastic world that appears for the moment. Yet the choice of the inner man as the one certain existence was a happy one, because this sense of life within me is more constant than other perceptions, and not wholly to be shaken off except in profound contemplation or in some strange forms or madness. 

The last chapter of Scepticism and Animal Faith is a close analysis of the idealism of Descartes and Hume. It also indicates why Santayana was attracted to Indian philosophy. The method of questioning called Atma Vichara or the probing into the roots of the self by the inquiry who am I was presented by the modern sage Ramana Maharshi (d.1950).Who Am I
Now there is a double bind in this process in that there can be no answer to the question. However that self definition is the context of what Freud took to be the purpose of life namely the creation of a strong central ego. Maya, Sigmund, Maya.

The first extract above is about the process of questioning, the second indicates the goal or at least its partial attainment. The sense of life within me as bare awareness is channelled through a chakra. We in a sense allow ourselves because we are incarnated to fall through that level of awareness. This is generally the Ajna or Hridaya chakra. As Santayana says beyond that is profound formless contemplation.