From the prison of Humiliation to total freedom

 Dear Reader, 

If you have ever suffered insult / humiliation for no fault of yours , if you have complained to God ever as to why such things should happen to you , then , this talk is a must for you to listen and experience total freedom !!!!

Love

Vivekachudamani-Post 69

Without eliminating his enemies and without bringing the entire land of his kingdom under his sway, by merely repeating I am the emperor ', one cannot become an emperor. (64)

Even God is transferring the self-knowledge to us only by one method; what is that; the upaṇiṣadic words. And therefore remember, words are extremely important; but what Sankara says is words are important as a means but words are not ends in themselves. 

Therefore do not hang on to words; do not hang on to books which are only containers of words; and what should you do? Give sufficient importance to the words as a means but do not give it more importance than that. From the words you have to come to what; from the śabda, the sādhanām, you will have to come to the artha, which is the sādhyam.

But generally what happens? in the case of seekers is: there are two extremes. One extreme is a person says knowledge is important, words are not important; so they do not study the śāstra itself. This is one extreme. Those who claim knowledge is important, words are not going to give liberation; therefore I would not go a guru; I would not study scriptures, etc. and I would do meditation; this is one idiot.

So without words coming from the guru; if the means is not there; how can a person get the knowledge? Therefore one extreme is what; those people who reject the words totally.

And there is another extreme group; those who hang on the words and words and words, study the upaṇiṣads by heart; bhāṣyams by heart; there are people who tudy the sub-commentaries byheart; all that is not necessary; but they hang on to the words and continue to be a samsāri; that means what; another extreme hanging on to words.

Who is the right person? The one who does not totally reject the scriptures and the one who does not hang on to the words of the scriptures, but the one who uses the word, grasps the meaning and drops the words.

In this verse, the Acharya is throwing a flood of light on the previous declaration. By an apt example, he is trying to make us understand that by mere verbal repetition nothing will be accomplished. A fool who, without annihilating his enemies and without bringing with his own might and power, all the provinces under his sway, just repeats that he is the emperor, can never become one for all his loud claims. 

Certain necessary conditions must be fulfilled before he can hope to gain the scepter and the crown and be recognized as the emperor. An emperor has no enemies within his own empire and everyone living in his empire is directly under his will and command. If these conditions are accomplished, he need not even announce or declare that he is the emperor, the world will do it for him. 

Similarly, if a seeker has successfully destroyed all his inner enemies of desires and thoughts, physical demands, mental appetites and intellectual wanderings and if he has established mastery over the vast province of the  waking, dream and deep sleep states of consciousness, he need not thereafter repeat 'I am Brahman'. For every cell in him, every  thought and every idea that rises in him will sing in chorus his sovereignty overall, always and in all conditions. 

The idea that man's self-effort in the right direction alone can make him rediscover for himself the spiritual essence in him to be  divine and all-powerful, is vividly brought out by the following exquisite verse, pregnant with suggestion, rich in melody, perfect  in flow and rhythm. 

Love

Vivekachudamani-Post 68

Without achieving the disappearance of the entire pluralistic world and without realizing the real nature of the Self how can one achieve full Liberation by a mere repetition of the word, 'Brahman'? Surely, it will end only in a wasteful effort of speech. (63)

The conditions preceding the full state of Liberation are  explained here. In the white heat of intense meditation, when  the mental rays of the individual have been made single  pointed and turned completely inwards to recognise the  Self within, the world of perceptions gets eliminated in the  experience; just as the world of the dream naturally rolls away  from the waker's comprehension. 

We perceive the pluralistic world from the levels of the body, the plains of the mind and the peaks of the intellect. With the body, we recognize the waking state world of names and forms; with the mind we perceive the world of feelings and emotions and with the intellect 

we recognize and experience our world of ideas which has no declared boundary.  

Let us get deeper into the initial line of today’s verse- “Without achieving the disappearance of the entire pluralistic world”

The appearance and disappearance of pluralistic world is analyzed with reference to “dream state” in almost all Advaita treatise.

A verse from panchadasi says, “This world of duality is like a magical creation, with its cause incomprehensible. What matters it to the wise man who does not forget this, if the past actions produce their results in him?”

As a daily practice one ought to recall to the mind the dream one has experienced and analyze the dream.  Questioning the reality of the objects experienced there in dream one arrives at their unreal nature.  

This questioning involves considering how the dream objects and events appeared ‘so real’ but only vanished, ended, when the waking occurred.  They were ‘as real’ as the waking objects and events; their reality was never questioned, doubted, then.  Yet, upon waking, they all ended.    

Now, let us connect the two lines of the verse –“ Without achieving the disappearance of the entire pluralistic world and without realizing the real nature of the Self how can one achieve full Liberation……”

Let us see what Sri Ramana has to say on these lines exactly, which is a revelation itself from the Maharishi

Bhagavan said, “It is said that Brahman is real, and world an illusion; again it is said that the whole universe is an image of Brahman. The question arises: how are these two statements to be reconciled? 

In the sadhana stage, you have got to say that the world is an illusion. There is no other way, because when a man forgets that he is the Brahman, who is real, permanent and omnipresent, and deludes himself into thinking that he is a body in the universe which is filled with bodies that are transitory, and labors under that delusion, you have got to remind him that the world is unreal and a delusion. 

Why? 

Because his vision which has forgotten its own Self, is dwelling in the external material universe and will not turn inward to introspection unless you impress on him that all this external, material universe is unreal. 

So long as a man does not see his own Self which is the origin of all, but looks only at the external world as real and permanent, you have to tell him that all this external universe is an illusion. 

However, When once he realizes his own Self, and also that there is nothing other than his own Self, he will come to look upon the whole universe as Brahman.  There is no universe without his Self.” 

Regarding the wastefulness of merely repeating “Brahman” in speech/ talks, we have already dealt with the same in the previous 2 verses and hence, we wont get into detail of the same.

Love