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Sri Ramana Maharshi
has said
that the Real Self is the state in which
the word “I” does not arise.
Not even implicitly as a concept.
This might seem like a paradox, “How can there be a self if there’s no “‘I’?”
But when the “I” arises,
the Real is split open
between that which
is identified as “I” and that which is identified is not-“I.”
Suddenly we are in a world of subject-object duality.
But before that, reality is whole.
We are in the Real.
And then,
everything that is in subject is suddenly behind our back.
The “I” creates the unconscious.
And it creates a sense of a false self
which is a response, then, to the not-“I,”
to the other.
And then suddenly there's a power struggle
and a need to deceive the other,
a need to hide,
and that hiding becomes a hiding from
oneself
of all that had been repressed-- including that primordial wholeness.
And yet all of that is illusion,
but it's an illusion sustained by the production of language in the mind.
And so meditation is simply the refusal
to allow that production of words in the mind to continue;
we stop that flow of words, we return
to the original state of wholeness
that is prior to language--and beyond language.
Language, which is a great instrument, it has its purposes,
it's useful
to analyze
“reality” once
reality in the form of egos has come into being,
and to create sciences to study the various elements
of the natural world.
But the truth is there are no real elements: even what we think of as
material is simply a grid of concepts that have been laid over the Real.
And any grid of concepts, any system of thought, is going to be inadequate and
inconsistent,
and it will lack the wholeness.
And so the sciences have come to the limitations of their own potential
because the very observer, the “I” observing the other,
interferes
with the observations.
And it turns out that the observations based on what we can call Aristotelian
logic, which is the logic of identity,
the “I”
versus the not-“I,”
itself does not correspond
to the Real.
And since quantum physics began and they discovered that a single electron
can go through two slits simultaneously
they have had to throw out that logic,
at least at the level of the most elementary particles. And now they've
discovered more and more that that same truth is available,
is actually here at all levels, but we
conveniently tune it out
thanks to the censor
that lies behind the conscious “I.”
So the Real cannot actually be graphed
by science or logic or any system of thought.
So every system of thought comes to a point where it no longer serves us; it becomes
obsolete
and self-defeating.
That's called karma.
And once we have reached that point,
we eventually will recognize that it is our thought itself: it's not the world that
we project through our thought,
but the thought itself
that has some glitch,
some incorrect understanding of the Real.
And the only way to repair that and create a system upgrade that will then
be able to
more accurately
and more felicitously
understand reality
will require
a letting go of all of the frames of reference created
by language,
by our conceptualization of what is real,
which turns out to not be real.
So we discover that their is such a thing as Maya, illusion, and that all along
we've been living in illusion.
What the yogis have discovered --and this has now been confirmed
by modern
mathematical logic and science--
is that no system of understanding can grasp reality.
The only way
to grasp the Real is to realize that you are the Real.
And the effort to grasp it has actually been pushing it away
and creating a false sense of a separate “I” that wants to grasp
something alien to itself,
when in fact that which
it is trying to grasp is a projection
of its own essence.
And the “I” that wants to grasp it, that has that desire,
does not emerge from
the limited, local self,
but is actually an artifact of a non-local phenomenon,
a cosmic mind--the Cosmic Mind, in fact--
operating through a limited
instrument.
When we accept that reality,
that the limited mind is only an instrument of a larger mind, and that
larger mind does not use human language in order to
express itself,
then we can surrender the limited to the unlimited
and that will bring about an unrestricted act of understanding,
a capacity
that will now reunite
that alienated subject-object duality
in a recognition of Being.
And that is salvation, that is the redemption of the false self lost in a world of
matter,
of time, of space,
of meaninglessness, ultimately, since
no meaning can grasp
reality, ultimately,
and bring you back
to fullness, rather than an empty
entity,
the fullness of our True Being;
the bliss, love--
everything that we have been seeking and have felt had been lost, or that we had
been,
we have squandered,
and our tanks are now running on empty, all of those
feelings come only from identifying with
a false entity that never existed at all except as an imaginary illusion.
And when we willing to sit in the silence
and surrender to that Presence,
that transcends definition or description,
then alienated fragments of reality that had been caught in the
various levels of ego
reunite, they knit back together,
and there is an experience of wholeness and a flow of energy,
enormous, unlimited energy,
and no longer
a fearful entity
who is actually trying to ward off the very energy
that would save it from itself.
There will no longer be a terror of the infinite or a fear of love or a fear of
not being in control.
All of those
enemies within
that keep one from the happiness one seeks
will fall away naturally.
So the act of meditation is very simple,
it is simply returning
to the essential awareness that we are
prior to thought. That simple.
And then you'll discover
that that awareness is not an emptiness
in the normal sense
of being empty of
of energy or life or of being,
but in fact it is fullness.
What it is empty of is only words,
desire, fear,
all of the egoic
detritus that we took
for reality
but was just actually worthless.
And that Emptiness, once we have emptied out ego,
becomes the fullness of divine being.
In the beginning, because this fullness is intermittent,
most people experience this once in awhile
during a good meditation, but most of the time not, and many meditations not.
Therefore we cannot identify with it in the beginning;
it is not experienced as Self, it is experienced as grace,
as a downloading or a gift
of the presence of God.
And so when one is in that state of consciousness, or that assemblage point,
it is important to have reverence for God.
At a higher state,
that which is
considered God, is considered “other,”
will be realized as the Self:
that there's no duality between God and Self.
But we must begin by a surrender of what we think of as self, that really isn't, to
the Infinite.
And that is why religion
is so important.
But the religion must not
fixate God as some imaginary other
but recognize that when you use the word “God” you don't know what you mean.
And if you're not comfortable with “God,” put “X” or put “Buddha Nature”
or put
“Brahman” or any other word, it doesn't matter,
because it represents the unknown.
But when you surrender to that unkown that is transcendent then
knowledge
of real Being becomes palpable.
And then you can get to the state of realization of the Advaita,
the Nonduality, of all that is.
OK, so if we take this one step at a time
and not try to leapfrog
to a level
of truth that does not correspond to our actual feeling states,
we sabotage
the spiritual journey.
For Ramana Maharshi, Advaita is absolutely correct.
But for those who are in an ego state,
a sense of sacred surrender is essential
because that brings about humility
that punctures the ego’s vainglory, hubris,
“I know it all”
attitude,
cynicism
which also brings about, behind that, despair and
anxiety.
And so that's why religions have focused on puncturing the ego
because the ego will
have a false bravado about reality
and behind that
is only terror
and feeling like a fake,
feeling like someone
who is unreal--and that's a fact.
But behind the unreal, that we hide,
we have hidden from our self
the Absolutely Real
that is divine and beautiful
and without doubt and without fear and without
anything except bliss,
but a bliss that contains all that is
and is timeless,
and is the Source of everything that we consider beautiful
and is pure love.
So the fact that we are That, if we can have faith in that,
and if you don't yet realize that you are That, that there is
a divine, Supreme Real, Supreme Self, that is that and that is here for you in
unconditionally loving way,
you can break through
the despair of
the alienation
from all that is good.