Understanding the inner universe

 I wonder.

The simple notion that there is a universe inside each of us seems difficult to get across.

Or, that, to know it, one turns inward.

That it reveals itself is really the most difficult to understand, let alone accept.

Or that our biases and preconditions, built up so carefully over the years, colour and even block revelations.

Or that its rules are different.

After all, we're so used to the idea of struggling to attain things in the external universe. Of adding to our minds. Relinquishing is tough. Especially ideas and concepts, of ourselves in relation to others.

Why a direct experience of self-realisation?

Why should self-realisation be experienced and not just understood?

Here's one perspective [1]:

A new moon in the sky may be hard to see. But someone who has seen it himself can say to those who haven’t, ‘Look, there is a crow sitting on the branch of that tree. Look where my finger is pointing. Behind the head of the crow you can see the moon.’

If you follow the advice you will see the moon, but if you keep your attention on the pointing finger or the crow or the branch of the tree, you will miss the point of the directions that are being given to you.

The books that have been left by the founders of various religions and the teachers who expound on them are the fingers that point. People end up focussing on these fingers and not following the line of sight to see what they are pointing at.

No book, no person, no word reveals the truth. You have to look and see it for yourself. It has to be your own experience, not something you have picked up from someone else.

(In the same book, two experiences are described. One was at the age of six! Another was twenty-five years later.

Understanding self-realisation is difficult precisely because it is not anything new which springs into existence. Papaji, e.g., found no difference in the two experiences, but still continued with his japa until experiences of the Divine as another entity outside him ended naturally.)

Another, simpler, perspective. Babuji (and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa) advised: taste the mango, don't just talk about it!

NOTES

[1] Godman, David. 1998. (Kindle ed.) Nothing Ever Happened - Papaji Biography, vol.I. Chapter: Ramana Maharshi. Question on experience at age of six.

Inertia, impetus, and understanding

A different take on the three gunas - tamas, rajas, sattva.

Think of tamas as inertia - that which impedes movement and sustains rest. A mind or attention with tamas dominant is also at rest, a stuporous and involuntary rest, upon some object.

Think of rajas as impetus - that which makes something move and sustains movement. Attention of a rajas-dominant mind is also in motion, uncontrollable and without volition, pulled all over the place by different objects.

Think of sattva as understanding, and subtle, increased willpower. Understanding is independent of, othogonal to, motion or the lack of it. Attention with sattva dominant can rest on an object with little effort and for as long as one wills. It can also move from object to object with little effort as one wills.

A saattvic mind controls its tamasic and rajasic tendencies as needed to change attention naturally, i.e. resting on an object or moving to another as desired.