By Phillip Charles Lucas
*** Part 1 ***
KEYWORDS: Modern Advaita, Neo-Advaita, Advaita Vedanta, Ramana Maharshi, Papaji, Nisargadatta Maharaj, transnational religious movements, Satsang Network, Transcendental Meditation, North American Hindu Communities, Chinmaya Mission, James Swartz, Dennis Waite
Continue readingQ: The great masters, Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj lay no stress on the need for a guru to reach realization. Nisargadatta states flatly in ‘I Am That’ p.149 that no individual guru is needed. He stresses ‘earnestness’, and that one is able with his determination and inner strength to reach the highest. The greatest example here of course is Ramakrishna.
The ambiguity is significant when one reads the Q and A’s of Atmananda Krishna Menon. He states that a guru is of crucial importance, as does Vivekananda. To have disagreement on such a vital point by such highly attained individuals is significant. No doubt a guru would be desirable at any stage on the path but, especially in the west, the likelihood of finding one is low. The adage that when one needs a guru one will appear doesn’t give much hope.
A: It is highly desirable to have a qualified, traditional guru. There do not seem to be many of these around today and it is unlikely that you happen to have one conveniently close by! Consequently, the best you can do is to read books that reliably present material in the traditional manner (unfolding scriptural texts and Shankara commentaries) and listen to recorded talks from similarly reliable sources.
Continue readingQ: My Guru, Nisargadatta, often leads me to believe that when we die, we bring absolutely nothing with us. We will have no form, no color, no memory of our past life. And yet, thousands of people over history have claimed to enter heaven and see relatives, and see their luminous bodies as well as landscapes, etc.
Near death experiences seem to clearly oppose what the Guru teaches, and yet thousands have said how vivid, unforgettable and undeniable these experiences are. According to Nisargadatta, it seems I will only hang in space as Unknowingness and Nothingness for all eternity. I find this quite fear-producing, disturbing and wonder what feed-back you might give.
A: Advaita is a teaching that has various ‘interim’ explanations, which are given to seekers at different ‘levels’. Ideally you would ally yourself with a living, traditional teacher who would take you from the ‘beginner’ level to the ‘advanced’, probably over many years.
The final truth is that there is only Brahman (Consciousness). The world and all of the people – past, present and future – are not real in themselves; they are simply name and form of Brahman. A ‘person’ appears to exist as a separate entity because Consciousness ‘animates’ the inert body-mind. Who-you-really-are is that Consciousness and NOT the body-mind. Now and always, you are that Consciousness. It is an interim teaching that speak about karma and reincarnation.
(Note that Nisargadatta, Ramana and Vivekananda, as well as all the modern ‘satsang’ teachers who travel around giving short talks and Q&A session are not traditional teachers. They often have some good and helpful things to say but unfortunately also frequently cause confusion. You should also note that Nisargadatta uses the word ‘awareness’, when practically all other teachers use ‘Consciousness’. That, alone causes much confusion! Also, you should pay no credence to so-called NDEs. Modern science has far more reasonable explanations for them, such as flood of neurotransmitters as the brain functions fail.)
Q: I am reading your book ” Confusions in Advaita Vedanta”.
I am from India, born in the Smarta Brahmin tradition of The revered Adi Shankara.
The purport of Adi Shankara as repeatedly explained by you is that no pramana or meditation except shabda pramana, teaching of scripture expounded by qualified teacher can give jnana. And this understanding happens in the process of listening once. Repetitions don’t help.
This caused both enthusiasm and later negativity in me. I have heard scriptures being expounded by Swami Dayananda, Swami Paramarthananda, Swami Brahmananda, Swami Parthasarathy, Sri Gangolli (translator of Swami Satchidananendra) etc. But no understanding or Jnana has resulted.
Am I doomed? Or Does it mean I was not qualified enough? More yoga sadhana required for purifying my mind? Of course there can be no doubt that the teachers were qualified. So fault is mine.
The following is an interview with Swami Dayananda Saraswati, conducted by John LeKay for Nonduality Magazine. That site is no longer available and the article was submitted by Dhanya. It is in three parts.
Introduction
Swami Dayananda Saraswati is a contemporary teacher of Vedanta and a scholar in Sanskrit in the tradition of Sankara. Swamiji has been teaching Vedanta in India for more than five decades and around the world since 1976. His deep scholarship and assimilation of Vedanta combined with a subtle appreciation of contemporary problems make him that rare teacher who can reach both traditional and modern students.
A teacher of teachers, Swami Dayananda taught six resident in-depth Vedanta courses, each spanning 30 to 36 months. Four of them were conducted in India and two in the United States. Each course graduated about 60 qualified teachers, who are now teaching throughout India and abroad. Under his guidance, various centers for teaching of Vedanta have been founded around the world; among these, there are three primary centers in India at Rishikesh, Coimbatore, Nagpur and one in the U.S. at Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. There are more than one hundred centers in India and abroad that carry on the same tradition of Vedantic teaching.
Continue readingQ: In his book of talks called ‘The New Freedom’, Rajneesh (Osho) has stated that awakening disturbs the body and brain so much that a majority of people leave the body. Those who survive may suffer some severe physical deformity or inability to speak etc.
In the Gospel of Ramakrishna, Mahendranath Gupta relates how the Paramahamsa suffered on awakening. One of the changes that occurred was an enormous release of energy in the body which was unbearable. Adyashanti also states that the disturbance of the nervous system takes years to settle down. In ‘The Mystique of Enlightenment’, U. G. Krishnamurti has described at length the many drastic changes that took place in his body on account of awakening. In ‘Nothing is Everything’, a book on talks given by Nisargadatta Maharaj, the Sage is quoted as saying: “This body is on fire. Self-knowledge has a strange quality. Sometimes it is unbearable”.
What I want you to throw some light on, if possible, is the following:
Does awakening lead to drastic physical changes? Are they the same for all individuals or do these changes vary from person to person? Should one be deterred from attempting self-realization?
Steven Norquist, who claims to have awakened, told his audience in a 2010 talk available on the internet, that they should not seek awakening but should be ‘spiritual’. One of the reasons he mentioned was the bodily changes I have referred to.
I would also be obliged if you could suggest some literature on the subject, if it exists.
Continue readingQ: There is potential confusion between ‘knowing about it’ and actually ‘being it’; between ‘self-realization’ and ‘self-actualization’. ‘Knowing about it’ is in the mind, whereas ‘being it’ has nothing to do with the mind. Along these lines is why Nisargadatta always said that who-we-really are is prior to the body-mind and Consciousness and to leave them alone.
What are your thoughts about all this?
A: Basically, we are already Brahman. The problem is that we do not know it. Remove the ignorance and we realize the truth. You cannot ‘experience’ or ‘perceive’ Brahman. You can only realize that we are it. Hence, the term ‘anubhava’ is misunderstood and modern teachers have been propagating a misunderstanding of the teaching. The term ‘self-actualization’ is definitely a modern one, I think, and can mean nothing. How can you ‘make actual’ what is already the case? Continue reading
Q: My question is one I can’t seem to clarify through any book, teacher or teaching:
How do we know that the brain isn’t responsible for consciousness? While we can observe mind with all of it’s contents as objects and then say we cannot be that which we observe, how can we be sure that there is not just some part of the brain which does the observing that is giving us this ability to watch thought? How does Vedanta address this? How can we know that the brain isn’t simply the one observing all phenomena?
Side note: I lost consciousness once due to a fall and blacked out, and all I can say is that there was complete absence of being and no one there to be aware of the non-beingness. No observer nor observed. Beyond no-thing. Absolutely no experience beyond the concept of the word. Continue reading
A student of the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj who was also a friend of Jean Dunn (the editor of a number of his books) has kindly submitted a PDF of her ‘diaries’ for free download. Here is his introduction:
Jean Dunn was an American woman who lived for some years in Tiruvannamalai, India, where Ramana Maharshi’s ashram is, by the foot of the sacred mountain Arunachala. She was devoted to Ramana Maharshi and followed his teachings. In 1977, after numerous invitations to go to meet the great sage, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, (who became known through the book of dialogues titled “I Am That”), she finally made the trip from southern India to Bombay and met the man whom she recognized as her Guru.
These journals are the notes she made during the time she was with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
These are the complete journals of Jean Dunn from 1977 to 1981, in which she writes in detail of her time with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. It includes dialogues that Jean and others have had with Maharaj that have never before been published. Copies of these journals have been informally and freely circulating for decades, among those who are students and practitioners of Advaita Vedanta.
Besides being of particular interest to those who have met Nisargadatta Maharaj, (or to those who have met others in the Inchigiri Navnath tradition that Nisargadatta Maharaj belonged to, such as Ranjit Maharaj and Ramakant Maharaj), it is also of value and interest to the many who have been inspired by “I Am That”, and the three books of dialogues with Nisargadatta Maharaj, which Jean Dunn edited. Nisargadatta had the highest regard for Jean Dunn, and her devotion to him and the teachings, and their palpable impact on her, shine forth in these journals.
After Nisargadatta Maharaj’s passing, and on his authorization, Jean would meet with, and give guidance to those who would come to her, sharing the wisdom and grace that flowed through her, in her words, her silence, and her whole way of being. This edition of Jean’s Journals is complete, and unaltered. Nothing is left out from the original manuscript that has been circulating widely among students of advaita from various traditions. As in the original edition, this edition includes the article that Jean wrote on Nisargadatta Maharaj that was published in the Mountain Path magazine in the October 1978 issue, and also includes the interview with Jean done by Malcolm Tillis which was published in his book “Turning East”.
Here is the link to the download (467K).
As I have pointed out earlier, most of what is referred to as Ramana’s teaching comes from recorded talks or answers that he gave to visiting seekers. Not only were those answers aimed at the level of understanding of the questioner but the transcriptions were made by others, who may not entirely have understood the answers, and they have been translated from those transcriptions by others who may also not have been especially knowledgeable. The text known as ‘Guru Vachaka Kovai (The Garland of Guru’s Sayings)’ is a collection of his teachings recorded by Muruganar, who lived with Ramana for several years. Ramana is stated to have edited and added to the work so that we can assume it does not suffer to the same degree from those shortcomings (although it has been translated from Tamil).
In this work, Ramana specifically addressed the concept of ‘obstacles’ (pratibandha-s) in Chapter 22. It does read as though it applies mainly to the seeker rather than the j~nAnI but verse 620 refers to ‘reaching the destination’, which may then be construed as the entire ‘path’ through to final liberation (videha mukti):
“619. Just as a gem taken from a mine will not have full luster if it is not polished on the grindstone, so the real tapas, the sadhana which one is doing, will not shine well if it is not provided with trials and tribulations on its way.
620. For a big temple-chariot to go along the streets and safely reach its destination, not only the strong linchpins but also the obstructing blocks, which prevent it from dashing into anything by running to the sides of the streets, are indispensable.” (Ref. 204) Continue reading