Anonymity and other spiritual rules

Anonymity

Spiritual practice, especially work done for others, must be done without fanfare, in fact, even without acknowledgement.

Perhaps this is to imitate Nature. Nature works - creates, maintains, and destroys - automatically and without fuss, because work or dynamism is its inherent nature.

Some other, little-known, rules:

Generosity

One who gives, gets more and more - to give.

E.g., one who gives money to others gets more and more money, but to keep giving, not to hoard.

Generosity opens up one's heart.

One definition of spiritual progress is large-heartedness. Another is soft-heartedness.

Work

(Corollary to previous rule)

One who works efficiently is rewarded - with more work.

So how does one avoid the management principle "Work going to the most efficient worker multiplies until he drowns?"

Teach others how to do your present work and keep working on new things. Also see Rest.

Work efficiently, and with interest. Try to improve in terms of energy expended, especially emotional energy, and reduced strain.

Rest

    Change of work is rest.

Chariji [1] was a wonderful exemplar.

Change

Change is constant. Accept or tolerate it, at the very least. At best, welcome it.

There is an intriguing paradox though. Spiritual progress is sometimes assessed by how boring or routine one's life is. Such a life gives ample time and opportunity for spiritual practice. Those who lead exciting or complicated lives seldom think about going inward. On the other hand, spiritual masters who lead busy lives, though, have gone through their periods of boredom or internal focus to acquire a solid base of emotional stability.

Constant Practice

(In the midst of constant change, unremitting spiritual practice is the stable foundation and background.)

Do the practice for the long-term. 12 years is a magic number.

Do with interest, and yet light-heartedly - without frowning or a "castor-oil" face. [2]

        Observe patterns in practice over the short, medium, and long-term.

If the effects are stagnant (and you are convinced of the practice, its practitioners, and its propounder), then you are not following the steps correctly. Re-read, or get clarified, the introductory material. Reboot, in other words.

Depth in practice is accompanied by increasing subtlety and lightness. Often thoughts are fewer and decision-making clearer.

Courageous thinking

Think freely, unmindful of emotional pressure. Act, once convinced, fearlessly. Accept mistakes.

Yet, follow rules aimed at maintaining peace and routine. Yet again, abusive people need not be encouraged.

Serious disciples understand the spirit of the practices in a system and can respond positively to hints or unwritten rules.

Notes

[1] Chariji, Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari of Chennai, was the third guru in the Sahaj Marg tradition. He was famed for his indefatigable and unflappable workstyle, often working continuously without rest for a very long time while switching between different tasks.

[2] Swami Sivananda of DLS, Rishikesh used this phrase often to mock those who did their spiritual practice with a frown. (People who regularly drank a dose of castor oil, for health, generally puckered up their faces at its taste.)

Stalactites and separation

Think of a cave.

A limestone cave.

A cold climate.

Water seeps in from the ground above and covers the ceiling.

It freezes into ice.

Water keeps seeping in, and the layers and projections of ice start to descend.

They lengthen as icy water keeps flowing inside, and each stalactite grows, separated from the others.

Now, imagine the water in a stalactite coming alive. It wants to fully experience its original unity, its commonality, with the others. Resisting gravity, it returns to the ceiling and the flowing water beyond.

Next, imagine your mind, weighed down by its identification with your body. It seeks its original lightness, balance, understanding, and expansiveness. It wants to become subtler and relaxed, but has to strive against its own habits of painful effort, of experiencing and expressing itself grossly, through the body, and against others.

Thinking and meditation

(from Daaji - mostly verbatim)

Meditation as an act is resting the attention on something effortlessly.

Every human being does this activity multiple times every day, especially when doing something enjoyable (such as eating ice-cream).

This also happens during work, business, planning meals for the family, etc.

Spiritual meditation is effortless focus on an infinite object.

(based on Daaji's talks & writings; paraphrased and extended)

Meditation training using one's own mind is about effortless focus on something that is not immediately enjoyable.

In Sahaj Marg meditation, one places one's attention on the divine light in one's heart. The source of that light then pulls one's attention towards itself.

The source being infinite, one's mind cannot grasp it and has trouble resting stably in the heart.

When attention has drifted away from the light onto another object, and one becomes aware of that change, one should simply relax the attention, the mental grip. It will naturally glide back to the previous object, the heart and the light within.

Learning to focus effortlessly for a long time on an object means using lesser and lesser energy to deal with the movement of attention. [1]

One should also understand that attention is one's mind gripping something, consciously or subconsciously. Relaxing is all that is needed to un-grip, not yanking it away or cutting it or anything else needing more effort.

Progress in meditation may be defined as the ability to focus on subtler and subtler objects for longer times. But in Heartfulness meditation, the object of meditation stays the same (being already infinite and deliberately undefined) but our understanding becomes subtler.

(My speculations)

Cleaning is a way of returning to the condition (of our heart, mind, and body) received, or gifted to us, by our morning meditation.

Prayer meditation, along with going over the day's activities, is introspection; so as to change ourselves with the help of that which is inside our own hearts, as well in the heart of each and every human being.

NOTES

[1] Daaji writes that after thinking - effortless focus - on the object comes feeling the object - without words or thoughts, and after feeling comes being the object. The Yoga Sutras put it differently - the object alone stays in conscious awareness, and awareness of meditation and meditator are lost during that time.

Daaji also says that after being there is becoming and then one goes beyond. These two are subtler states leading to the next level.

The important point, though, is thinking is only one of the many activities of the mind.

Rote learning and traditional learning methods

Rote learning - simple memorisation and regurgitation of textual/teacher-enforced knowledge - directly causes atrophying of two of the three traditional ways of getting valid knowledge - direct perception, analysis and prediction based on direct perception, and authoritative or authentic sources.

How does a baby learn?

I think primarily with its sense organs. Its brain is used mainly for memory, and for innate processing of physical events such as hunger, discomfort, and pain. [1] But, it is also used for emotional learning - happiness, surprise, etc. - from the moods of people and other living things around the baby. It is probably fair to say that a baby learns through direct perception of its physical and mental world and simple rule-making or analysis of its perceptions.

How does a child learn?

A child (in India at least!) is stuffed with facts, generally randomly and confusingly put together sans a consistent/logical framework. Such facts are often completely out of sync with the child's world, making them even more difficult to memorise and regurgitate. It learns to behave primarily based on physical, emotional, and mental reactions of surrounding adults to its own behaviour, and not from being allowed to explore freely in a safe and prepared environment. Ultimately, a baby's natural capacity to learn through its own senses and independent thinking is lost by childhood's end.

Why does it matter?

A child who depends mainly, or completely, on inputs, assessments, and discipline from the outside world and other people has lost the ability to sense its internal world - its own body [2] and mind. It has lost confidence in its own conceptual frameworks of its world. It is not taught how to travel skillfully among sensations, percepts, and concepts - basic ones or higher degrees or layers of concepts. It does not know how to validate what it reads and hears against its frameworks since insistence on rote memorisation means ignoring or deleting the frameworks. Nor does it know how to subsume, expand, or otherwise modify its frameworks since a child is not encouraged to experiment and analyse. [4]

Isn't it inefficient to teach through experimentation and self-analysis?

It depends on the definition of inefficiency. In the animal kingdom, a human child is already the most inefficient because it takes about twenty years to learn to fit into adult human groups.

Compared to other, more specialised, animals, humans are general-purpose, and are not the best at anything physical. Humans have succeeded as a species due to the evolution of their mental capabilities. This evolution came from original ideas and their sharing. There is also an exponential growth of knowledge across generations. So, yes, it is more efficient to learn from the experience of others (authoritative sources). After all, they have already gone down many mental and physical blind alleys and found viable paths that save time. Also, teaching is often a more efficient process than replicating an experience.

However, evolution of human consciousness requires the evolution of a majority of human beings, not just the rare special ones. Also, useful learning, understanding, and perhaps most importantly, creativity, result only when each human child, teenager, and adult has learned to generate and validate its own sensations, percepts, and concepts.

What is validation of knowledge or true understanding?

In a traditional Indian darśana, something is true or valid if it is found to be valid according to all the pramāṇas or channels of knowledge for that darśana. Thus, in sāṁkhya-yoga, something is obviously valid, true, or factual if one has directly experienced it (pratyakṣa), it fits into one's conceptual frameworks (anumāna), and it has been recorded precisely and faithfully by authorities (āgama).

However, all three validations are not necessary or even possible. So they are ranked. A directly-experienced sensation - a physical sensation, a thought, a mood/emotion, or even an energy sensation - always has precedence over concepts and authoritative sources. This is because concepts and their relationships change. So does understanding of authoritative sources, with more and different direct experiences, and changes in one's ideas, and different (deeper, wider) inputs from authorities. A truly original experience or conceptual framework, never experienced or thought-of by anyone else before, obviously means āgama cannot be used for validation.

Finally, in the oral tradition of yoga, āgama (arrival, etc. in Sanskrit) is construed to mean the transfer of the direct experience or inference of the authority into the student or practitioner. [5] For the first, an experience transfer, or evocation, requires a prepared mind or brain. In the spiritual context, that preparation comes through meditation and contemplation. When āgama is considered as transferring theories or concepts or ideas, we have the more usual meaning of teaching a concept after assuming that the student knows the concepts required to understand it.

Conclusion?

In both material and spiritual contexts, simple rote-memorisation isn't enough for "future-proofing" human beings. In a dynamic world filled with new ideas, cross-linkages across scientific and other fields of knowledge, and regeneration of traditional approaches to life, skills in validating one's own experiences and ideas and those of others are increasingly essential. Paradoxically, such skills come not from frenetic external activity, but an elegantly simple and relaxing journey inside oneself - leading one to concur with true sages that a natural human life can be both simple and stress-free, though not necessarily easy!

NOTES

[1] Sounds - language and play-acting, touch, taste, etc. as well. Babies are often stopped from experiencing things using all their senses. Unfortunately, this teaches behaviour at the expense of direct perception.

[2] One's reaction to hunger, for example, and eating only till one's body is naturally satiated, is trained artificially based on precepts like "finish your plate" [3] and mindless intake of over-processed food.

[3] This makes sense only if one is also allowed to take only as much as needed.

[4] Essentially, an experiment is a prediction of sensations, or percepts, based on concepts and their implications.

[5] A matter seen or inferred by an accomplished person (āpta) is taught in the form of words in order to transfer one's knowledge into another. The vṛtti from that word, with its matter and meaning as the object, is the listener's acquisition (āgama) - Vyāsa Bhāṣya for PYS I.7, translated by Swami Veda Bharati in his PYS w/ VB, vol.I, Samādhi Pāda, pg. 149

Samādhi - a simple definition

Here's a very simple way to understand samādhi.

Think of a sentence as subject, verb/activity, and object.

I - meditate upon - something.

Initially, there is awareness or consciousness of all three parts. Then, one loses consciousness of the subject. Work/activity/thought gets done unselfconsciously. Then, if one is sitting with closed eyes, one loses consciousness of the activity also. What is left is awareness only of the object. This is a simple idea of samādhi.

 

Since one's mind is not used to systematically or regularly doing this, it keeps jumping around the three parts. Much like falling asleep though, even meditation, let alone samādhi, does not occur by doing something, but by relaxing and letting go of activities.

 

dhāraṅa - dhyāna - samādhi form a progression of states. [1] One might say all three (I, meditate, object) are present in dhāraṅa, only two (meditate, object) in dhyāna, and only one (object) in samādhi. [2]

 

NOTES

[1] In the Kūrma Purāṅa, as quoted by Sw. Vivekananda in Raja Yoga, dhāraṅa is a thought that lasts 12 seconds, dhyāna 12x12 or 144 seconds, and samādhi 12x12x12 or 1728 seconds or 28 minutes.

 

[2] samādhi, according to PYS, is not just one state or epiphany. Depending on the type of object and the type of mental activity, it is of multiple types. This is probably why it is widely misunderstood.

Losing one's identity

To continue with the floating up metaphor from Why meditate?, if one's body becomes vaporous to the point where the skin is also gas, wouldn't wind and other physical forces in the sky dissipate it? Wouldn't one's identity get lost?

Yes, that is possible or can definitely be imagined.

So, by analogy, what about losing one's mind or sanity when it goes to subtler and subtler levels?

There are a few traditional reassurances regarding spiritual practice.

One, if subtler levels are reached by one's own volition through relaxation, without chemical or other means that overwhelm the brain's natural processes [1], that will not happen. It is like walking to a strange place versus being taken there in a windowless vehicle.

Two, if one's mind is guided by someone to different levels, that same person will guide it back. [2]

Three, subtler states without jealous individuation or sharp separation from others are more natural, or sane, than our usual fear and other negative emotions-ridden states. In other words, so what if you lose your self? You have gained your Self!

NOTES

[1] Hence the injunction in spiritual paths to avoid alcohol and drugs. The clarity, peace, affection, and joy in subtler mental states far outweigh the relaxation, stupor, and carefree feeling that come with alcohol.

[2] How, or even if, this happens is a matter of experience.

Why meditate?

Why meditate?

Or, why do spiritual practice at all?

One interesting reason is, to evolve one's mind to subtler levels, to expand its capabilities. A different perspective, somewhat complementary, is to prevent one's mind from atrophying, from losing its ability to sustain subtle, but simple, thoughts. The dynamic nature of the mind means it either progresses or regresses.

Let me try to explain with a simple model of a human being [1]

 

I           E

N    D

SI

--------

M    D

IN

--------

BODY

--------

OUTSIDE

Humans are primarily distinguished by their ability to think, to use, more than other species, that part of themselves which is not physical, the non-body. But, like other species, humans also naturally learn and share their knowledge with their own species.

So, thinking is natural to the mind, the non-physical part of a human being.

What kind of thinking does the mind do? Consider these four types of increasingly subtle thoughts, about what is outside the physical body, about the physical body itself, about what is inside the body - the mind - itself, and lastly, about other mental concepts inside the mind. [2]

The mind is constantly thinking. But it may or may not be aware of its own activity. If one observes one's thoughts, the vast majority of them - in frequency, duration, and intensity - are about the outside. Fewer are about the body, and even fewer about the mind. Very rarely are our thoughts about the inside. Conceptual thoughts, yes, but again about the outside - the world and other people. And, if at all about oneself, thoughts about oneself in relation (and usually negative at that) to others.

Consider this analogy. A diver can sink naturally to a certain depth just by body weight. Using momentum - by diving - one can go deeper. Once the buoyant force of water matches the body weight, the diver stays, or is held, at that depth. Greater depths can be reached by increasing one's weight, by holding a boulder, as done by pearl divers, for example.

Imagine the opposite situation, floating or diving up into the sky. Instead of increasing weight, one has to reduce weight to counteract gravity. One can  float up to even greater heights naturally by converting the solid matter of one's body to gaseous matter.

Now, consider thoughts in the mind.

Thoughts about the body are heavier or grosser than the lighter or subtler thoughts about the mind itself. Thoughts about concrete material things outside the body are similarly grosser. Thoughts about ideas and concepts, and about the inside of the mind, are subtler.

Think about energy.

How much energy is needed by mentally to contemplate changing the position of a window in a room? How much energy is needed by one's mind and body to physically make the change?

Obviously, thinking is subtler than physical action.

Extend the idea of reduction in energy to subtlety of thoughts. A subtler thought should require less energy than a grosser thought. Or, if that may be tough to swallow, a simpler idea should require less energy than a complex one. As one's thoughts go to subtler and subtler levels [3] inside, less and less energy is needed. Not less time, but less energy.

But, like one's physical solidity having to become physical vapour to float higher in the sky, one's thoughts have to become lighter to reach more subtle levels. It is easy to understand or imagine that more and more relaxation of one's mind is needed to have subtler and subtler thoughts. So, the opposite and generally-accepted idea, that spiritual practice - or subtle thinking - must be mentally strenuous is axiomatically wrong. Research [4] has validated this assumption.

Reaching simpler or subtler levels of thought requires not just a relaxed mind, but also time. And thus patience. [5]

Finally, habit. If one has never or rarely thought at a subtle level, what are the chances one will do so? Once habituated to thinking only at a particular gross level, or to particular types of thought, one's mind continues that type of activity. Habits, after all, can comfort and give emotional support. But, the nice thing about the mind is its plasticity - it gets used to thinking at simpler and subtler levels also very easily. It just needs time to relax without nagging!

NOTES

[1] A sad attempt (!) at showing arcs of concentric circles, from smaller to larger:

inside -> mind -> body -> outside.

[2] The concept of something beyond the mind, which the mind cannot and will never be able to grasp, is not considered here.

[3] At subtler and subtler or deeper and deeper levels inside, attributes and concepts become simpler, with minimal details. E.g., at the subtlest conceptual level of a principle common to everything is simple be-ing, or existence, in philosophical terms. Another example - in Advaita, Brahman is described using only three words - existence, consciousness, bliss.

[4] See brief note on Krishna and Buddha in Spiritual Illiteracy

[5] Imagine a wildlife photographer. She may have to wait for days or weeks in the jungle for the animal to show up, be visible long enough, and also when there is sufficient light to get a decent shot! Fortunately, such external circumstances are not needed in meditation.