I - she - they - pronouns and ego

Consider these pronouns :

He, she, they

Do 'he' thoughts, thoughts about someone, bring up 'not I' - "he's not I" - and thus 'I' thoughts? Thoughts of comparison: positive, negative, or even neutral/objective comparison?

Using '=>' to mean 'implies':

he => not I => I?

How about:

she => not I => I?

Or:

they => not I => I?

E.g., he is nice, he's not me, I am not nice. Or vice versa.

She's not nice, she's not me, I am also not nice.

They're blue-skinned, they're not me, I am brown-skinned.

(I am forced to use 'me' to satisfy English grammatical rules. But I hope the idea that 'he' thoughts can generate 'I' thoughts is clear.)

Other variations [1] on such thought sequences:

him => not me => me

her => not me => me

they => not me => me

his => not mine =>mine

hers => not mine =>mine

their => not mine => mine

All right, so what? Isn't this normal?

That's precisely the point. It doesn't have to be normal. Such thought sequences, especially by deliberate indulgence, bolster the sense of ego.

Simple awareness is sufficient to change.

Why change?

To reduce the energy wasted, on useless and even demotivating comparisons, especially on negative thoughts, and by the resulting physical stress. Using the brain efficiently also reduces one's ego!

Going inward for spiritual evolution is all very well. But if all we do by going inward is outward thinking, about others outside, that doesn't help us in removing our self-created layers of impurities and complexities. Again, it reduces the brain's efficiency.

NOTES

[1] based on "ego" implying "I, me, and my/mine" thoughts or emotions

Limpidity of OM as A-U-M

Om is considered a mystical sound. An entire upaniṣad [1] delves into its significance. But its physical experience as the split-sandhi a-u-m is incredibly limpid.

Try this little vocal exercise:

1. Relax your jaws, cheeks, and lips completely.
2. Open your mouth wide by letting the lower jaw come all the way down.
3. Inhale deeply for an extended, gentle, exhalation. Exhale gently and make a relaxed aaaa sound. (Any other sound will move the lips or the jaws)
4. Gently bring up the lower jaw, keeping the throat and lips relaxed.
5. Let the sound continue.
6. Listen to the change in the sound. When the lower jaw is midway, the sound changes clearly when the vibration has shifted from the back to the middle of the mouth.
7. Let the lips touch and let the sound die out.

The sound changes, effortlessly and naturally, from aaaa to uuuu to mmmm!

Try recording yourself and playing back.

Now, try it at a higher pitch, and bring up the lower jaw faster. But keep the lips completely relaxed to avoid shaping the sound. The change in sound should come from the jaw movement alone.

It's a really nice way to understand why Aa to mm is considered the full range [2] of vocal sound, from the very back to the very front.

NOTES

[1] The māṇḍukya - albeit the shortest upaniṣad at just 12 shlokas!

[2] The plosives - consonant sounds with the lips - require lip movements, while mmm doesn't. So one can argue that mmm is the last sound possible even if it isn't the last letter of an alphabet (Sanskrit, e.g.).

Stacks and thoughts in meditation

 Consider a stack used in a cafeteria for plates. It is spring-loaded to work on only one plate at a time. Plates are inserted into the stack singly, one on top of the other. To take out the lowest plate one must take out all the plates above it, one at a time.

Now imagine a thought is like a plate. When your attention is upon it, it is at the top of the stack. The next thought adds to the stack and one gets back to the previous one by letting go of this one. Related thoughts can keep piling up in this stack until attention shifts to a different stack altogether.

This is a limited metaphor since the mind need not behave like a stack or even a set of stacks. Still it is useful for describing meditation.

When practising meditation, we start with one point/location or thought or idea or concept and then rest our attention upon it for a while. When we realise our attention is no longer on that initial object, we try to come back to it. So, there is one plate on the attention stack first, and then another plate appears on top of it. Take out the second plate and the first one pops up to the top and regains our attention.

The effortless (or less effort) part of meditation lies in the ease with which one gets back to the first plate. One idea is to understand that attention is a gripping action. Relaxing one's mental grip or letting go of the thought causes that thought to drift away or somehow disappear. Engaging with the new thought - in any way whatsoever - gives it more attention and thus more energy or effort gets used to remove the second plate.

By this metaphor, meditation should ultimately be a stack of just one plate for a long time. As long as 12 seconds first is dhaaraNa. Then 12x12 - 144 seconds is dhyaana. (Beyond that, an exponentially longer time, comes samaadhi.)

The first 12 seconds is defined by a "location", which normally denotes a physical location for one's attention. But it could also be a mental location. A list of possibilities shows its generality - an idea, a feeling, an attitude, the mental counterpart of a physical activity (like an audible or subverbal japa).

Simplicity and generality result in fewer and fewer words or thoughts. Feeling is more subtle than thinking, being even more subtle than feeling.

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.

SMS - a simple model of spirituality

The SMS - simple model of spirituality - has these parts:

1. A physical body, of an individual human being;
2. a transcendental entity, "inside" 1;
3. an interface - practically unlimited - between 1 and 2, a non-physical part inside 1, yet different from 2;
4. the world outside 1 (the physical body), including living and non-living things. That includes other humans as well.

In Mind Sandwich, I talked about a single entity or field which is different at different levels or at different boundaries, next to two very different entities. This single field could be considered a communication channel - a pipe - or a layer between those two entities.

In communication networks, such a channel or pipe is a router or gateway, one that transforms one type of communication into another. For example, data sent in wireless mode changed to wired mode. Or vice versa.

Now imagine a similar thing exists inside you. Indian philosophy calls it antaḥ-karaṅa, literally, inner instrument. It is also translated as mind, intellect, ego, etc., depending on its function or mode. This inner instrument has two boundaries or interfaces or ends, one near a transcendental entity that subsumes the physical and spiritual universes, and one near the physical body.

Spiritual practice simply aims to activate the entirety of this inner instrument, especially the parts closer to the transcendental entity. Those parts are much, much, subtler than the parts closer to the physical body. Increase in subtlety comes with fewer and fewer qualities related to individual and separated entities. Thus, from selfishness - for one entity, or a limited set of entities related to that one entity - to selflessness - away from one or a small set of related entities, towards all entities.

The inner instrument translates communication from the transcendental entity to the physical body. But, since it carries out other functions like memory, ego, discrimination, emotion, etc. for the physical body, in contrast to the router, it also uses the communication in its own activities.

Different paths focus on different levels of the antah-karaNa. advaita, to take an extreme example, focuses only on the transcendental entity and the subtlest parts nearby, much to the detriment of the rest of the interface. cārvāka - the favourite whipping post of other Indian philosophies - is at the other extreme, focusing only on the physical body and very few parts of the antaḥ-karaṅa nearest to it.

The Patanjali Yoga Sutras take a three-pronged approach.

At the lowest level is the eight-step process - aṣṭānga yoga, including outward-oriented or other-oriented moral and ethical practices, as well as sensor- or boundary- (skin, ears, etc.) oriented, and inward-oriented practices which train the attention to face three different directions - outward, at the instruments, and inward.

At the middle level is the three-step process of kriya yoga, including austerity or reducing over-indulgence, self-study (of and by oneself), and feeling the presence of the transcendental entity at various levels of delimitation.

At the highest level is the unnamed two-step process of going directly from the grossest to subtlest levels of the interface - antaḥ-karaṅa - through the practice of stabilising or holding it at different levels of subtlety, and letting go or relinquishing grosser levels. That transmutes a grosser level of antaḥ-karaṅa into its subtler causal level. At the highest or subtlest level, the antaḥ-karaṅa becomes unmanifest for a single human being.

The higher levels become habitual, effortless, and effective only after the lower levels have been mastered. Those who want to do only the subtlest practices, a-la advaitins, risk getting subtler states randomly and definitely have trouble maintaining them.

(Along similar lines, Idries Shah writes that Sufi training emphasises practices for emotional stability first in order to reliably - and repeatedly - get and keep veridical - true inner - experiences.)

NOTES

The three levels of practice are based mainly on Swami Veda Bharati's translation and commentary on the Yoga Sutras. Any mistakes in interpretation or paraphrasing are mine.

The logical paradox of self-realisation

Revered practitioners in the advaita tradition say there is nothing to realise.

We are already self-realised.

A logical paradox since we don't normally feel self-realised or always peaceful and happy.

Some logical reasons from advaita for that statement:

- a state in which self-realisation is not and then occurs is not eternal

- nor is it stable, i.e, unchanging

- a state subject to change or loss is, by definition, not absolute

- self-realisation is absolute, by definition again

- hence it must be ever-present

(Practically, this means we don't have to struggle to achieve anything. We have to simply let go of whatever blocks the simple awareness of our natural state. Of course, easier said than done!)

From - just do it - to - just be

Let your

ever-busy,

cogitating, 

doubting, 

rearranging, 

creating, 

planning, 

worrying 

mind-field

take

a well-deserved nap.

Just BE.

Becoming happens.