Addendum to "A Tree in the Yard' 17/7/26

 It is important to distinguish between the object which can be grasped by the senses I.e. the tree in the yard and the metaphysical reality which makes that perception possible.  That reality is not itself perceptible but it can be realized.  That realization does not refer to a special mental condition or continuing experience.  Sankara in BSBh rejects the notion that samadhi is equivalent to the highest realization.  He regards it as just another state of mind.

What meaning then can we give to the notion of realization?  It is of course an unshakable belief in the unity of Being, the I AM that Nisargadatta focussed on during the time of his sadhana.  It creates a transformation in the qualities of the person, those that can be experienced by others.  It must be said that a penchant for the collection of Rolls Royce cars and high end watches is a counter indication of realization.  Spontaneous compassion and immediate insight into the spiritual condition of others is an essential indication.  Being in the presence of a sage can raise one’s own awareness to the point that instruction seems to come from within. I’m not sure that faith in him is even necessary.  It's a matter of spiritual harmonics.

The sense of IAM (3)

 

“Then what am I” Q asks:

Impossible to say. Knowledge is built on what is already known.  You brachiate from tree to tree as it were.  Self realization is not something you can get to know because you already know it.  It cannot be separated out from any state of the mind.  It is known with every state of awareness. “Pratibodha videtam” (known with every state of consciousness) says Sankara in a commentary on Kena Upanisad.

As Maharaj says:

You are nothing perceivable or imaginable.  Yet without you (i.e. true self) there can be neither perception nor imagination.  You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting, the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.  Can there be perception without you?”

M.  is adopting the saksin approach to this problem where the pure consciousness that pervades all things is poured so to speak, into the mould of a separate entity, the jiva, the person.  Pure consciousness has taken this form of limitation/upadhi.  Indeed a salient difference in Vedanta is the regarding of brain-body as inert (jada) only becoming conscious as it is pervaded by pure consciousness.  This citta (consciousness) in that form acts as a witness (saksin).

But says Q: Is not this ‘I am’ also an experience?

As M. has been saying- what gives you the core of the experience of identity is this pure consciousness at any one time but the mistake is take the common factor to be an embodied experience.

“Memory creates the illusion of continuity.  In reality each experience has its own experiencer and the sense of identity is due to the common factor at the root of all experiencer-experience relations.  Identity and continuity are not the same.   Just as each flower has its own colour, but all colours are caused by the same light, so do many experiencers appear in the undivided and indivisible awareness, each separate in memory, identical in essence."

How is this supreme awareness to be got?  Essentially what M. says is that you must ‘let it come to you’.  Practice.  You will not become isolated locked in an esoteric delusion, the erosion of separateness will be steady.  The ‘I AM’ practice makes you stick  to the moment and not be carried along.

No Sugar, No Trail

A further note on Katha Up. II.iii.13 continuing on from my previous post.
sugar

There are two key analogies in Vedanta. The best known one is the confusion analogy or taking the coiled rope for a snake. The other is taken from the Chandogya Up. VI.i.4 and is based on material identity. Earthenware vessels in all their shapes and sizes are fundamentally clay.

 “O good looking one, as by knowing a lump of earth, all things made of earth become known: All transformation has speech as its basis, and it is name only. Earth as such is its reality.

In Sankara’s commentary on Ka: II.iii.13 he writes ‘All modification is mere name, being supported by speech -- earth alone is real." Applying the purport of this analogy we can know the Self by its effects i.e. the saturation of all states of consciousness with self-awareness. The Self can only be known by its effects because it is the knower and therefore knowing it would lead to infinite regress. The Self therefore is different from both the known and the unknown and is described as non-different from the states of consciousness which it pervades. We infer the existence of the Self but we can’t know it in a quasi-objective manner in the way we are conscious of our states of mind, perceptions etc.

How though does “the Self that has been known, as merely existing, become favourably disposed (for self-revelation)”? Self realisation is not a state that can be achieved, it is already here. We then are enjoined to achieve a detached ego-less awareness. We are to seek without seeking and not identify with any particular state of mind including samadhi/super-conscious bliss.

There is nothing in it for you.

Nisargadatta on Samadhi (from I am That)

Matter is Consciousness Itself:
Maharaj: Everything moves according to its nature. ... Every action creates a reaction, which balances and neutraliszes the action. Everything happens, but there is a continuous cancelling out, and in the end it is as if nothing happened.


"Therefore I keep on saying that all happens by itself. There is order in my world too, but it is not imposed from outside. It comes spontaneously and immediately, because of its timelessness. Perfection is not in the future. It is now.

Maharaj is not bound by the maya of identification with a physical body. "I make no distinction between the body and the universe. Each is the cause of the other, each is the other, in truth. But I am out of it all."

"The most difficult are the intellectuals. They talk a lot, but are not serious."

How to go into Samadhi:

"If you are in the right state, whatever you see will put you into samadhi. After all samadhi is nothing unusual. When the mind is intensely interested, it becomes one with the object of interest - the seer and the seen become one in seeing, the hearer and the heard become one in hearing, the lover and the loved become one in loving. Every experience can be the ground for samadhi."
Questioner: Are you always in a state of samadhi?
Maharaj: Of course not. Samadhi is a state of mind, after all. I am beyond all experience, even of samadhi. I am the great devourer and destroyer; whatever I touch dissolves into void (akash).
Q: I need samadhis for self-realisation.
M: You have all the self-realisation you need, but you do not trust it. Have courage, trust yourself, go, talk, act: give it a chance to prove itself. With some realisation comes imperceptibly, but somehow they need convincing. They have changed, but they do not notice it. Such non-spectacular cases are often the most reliable.