Tag Archives: consciousness

Q. 370 – nirvikalpa samAdhi

Posted on by

Q: Should a person have compulsorily experienced nirvikalpa-samādhi in order to know that he has a mind which is prepared for jñāna? In other words, is experience of nirvikalpa-samādhi a must as a sādhana?

Responses from Venkat, Martin, Ted, Shuka and Dennis

A (Venkat): Nirvikalpa-samAdhi is an experience of the absence of objects, for a finite period of time, which the experiencer eventually exits to re-perceive the world.  As it is not permanent, it is not real.  Any temporary experience that is witnessed cannot be a pre-requisite for j~nAna – since j~nAna is the permanent dissolution of the illusory I-thought.

“Abiding permanently in any of these samadhis, either savikalpa or nirvikalpa, is sahaja. What is body consciousness? It is the insentient body plus consciousness. Both of these must lie in another consciousness which is absolute and unaffected and which remains as it always is, with or without the body consciousness. What does it matter whether the body consciousness is lost or retained, provided one is holding on to that pure consciousness? Total absence of body consciousness has the advantage of making the samadhi more intense, although it makes no difference to the knowledge of the supreme.” – Sri Ramana Maharshi Continue reading →

Vision Of Truth (sad darshanam) – Part 21

Posted on by

िये प्रकाशं परमो वितीर्य

स्वयम् धियो अन्त: प्रविभाति गुप्त: ।

धियं परावर्त्य धियो अन्तरे अत्र

संयोजनान्नेश्वर-दृष्टिरन्या ।। —२४

dhiye prakAsham paramH vitIrya

svayam dhiyo antaH pravibhAti guptaH

dhiyam parAvartya dhiyaH antare atra

sanyojanAnneshvara dRiShTiranya—24

dhiye = to the intellect; prakAsham = sentiency;  paramH = Supreme; vitIrya = lent;

svayam dhiyo antaH = Itself (being) inside the intellect;  pravibhAti guptaH = shines while being hidden; dhiyam parAvartya = having turned intellect;  dhiyaH antare – within intellect;  atra = here; sanyojanAt = by uniting; na Ishvara dRiShTiranya = Ishvara vision (takes place)not by anything else.

The supreme having lent sentiency to the intellect, shines while being hidden inside the intellect. Having turned the intellect, here, within the intellect, by uniting, Ishvara vision takes place not by anything else.

The organs and mind are material in nature, by themselves inert. The all-pervading consciousness also available in the mind, lends sentiency to them. They, by nature are extrovert.

Man, has a tendency of feeling inadequate in many ways. This makes him search for something to make him more fulfilled. He resorts to the external world through the mind and organs. This is innate to all and has to be deliberately changed.

The first step to changing is to discriminate between the real and the unreal. Coming to this stage itself takes along time. Years of conditioning has led man to believe he is getting happiness and peace from the world. He has time and again been credulous enough to believe so, never questioning it, accepting it as the norm. On the other hand, he has been incredulous at the fact that the truth is something diametrically opposite. Continue reading →

Science and Philosophy – Part III  

Posted on by

“The intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups…literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of incomprehension.”

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s? “- C.P. Snow (in the 1960s)

Continue reading →

Waking World is also Unreal

Posted on by

small_A-U-MDreams are a powerful metaphor in Advaita. The Yoga Vasishtha is perhaps the best known book to utilize them extensively but probably the earliest teacher to do so was Gaudapada in his kArikA-s on the mANDUkya upaniShad.

He effectively says that the waking state is unreal, like dreams, ‘because we experience it’. This is anvAya-vyatireka logic: we experience objects in dreams, and they turn out to be unreal; therefore the objects we experience in waking are also unreal.

This does not sound very convincing and there are various arguments that we can raise to object to the analogy. Gaudapada raises them for us, in case we can’t think of them all! Here is the third argument he puts forward. It is an extract from my forthcoming book, which will be published 25th September 2015.

Third objection to world being unreal

And this leads on to the third objection namely that, whereas the dream world is subjective, the waking world has objective reality. It is experienced as external to ourselves, whereas the dream takes place in our mind (K2.9 – 10). But this notion suffers from the same confusion as before. We only recognize that the dream world is ‘in our mind’ when we are awake; at the time of the dream, it is just as much ‘external’ as is the waking world when we are awake. We might as well say that the waking world is really non-existent since it disappears when we are in the dream or deep sleep states. At the time of the dream, I experience external objects and events in just the same manner. Their illogicality or even impossibility only becomes apparent on awakening. Continue reading →

Astavakra – dharma

Posted on by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAkartavya-taiva saMsAra na tAM pashyanti sUrayaH |
shUnyA-kArA nirA-kArA nir-vikArA nirA-mayAH || .. XVIII.57 ..

The sense of duty, indeed is the mundane world. This is not acknowledged by the Wise-one, who has realized himself as the All-pervading formless, Immutable, Untainted Self.

Of course I have a sacred duty to look after, protect, serve and help my wife and children, and also my community, that I see around me in my dream!

The dream-I while dreaming believes that the dream-world is real. In this, sense-of-Reality, are born all my duties and responsibilities. When I have awakened to the waker-I, what duties are there towards my dream-family and dream-community? The Wise-one, Liberated-in-life, is the Awakened-one. He has ‘awakened’ to the Infinite Consciousness. He cannot be touched by the laws of duties and responsibilities projected and maintained by the mind-in-disturbance. No sense-of-duty can arise without attachments; attachments cannot be unless we permit a sense-of-reality to the world-of-plurality. To the awakened, the illusory world of objects and beings are no more and therefore, he, living as the ‘All-pervading’, Formless, Immutable and untainted’ Self, has no more any sense-of-duty towards anyone.

Astavakra Gita, Swami Chinmayananda, Central Chinmaya Mission Trust
Buy from Amazon US, Buy from Amazon UK

Seven Stages of Chidabhasa

Posted on by

chidAbhAsaGuest Author – Vijay Pargaonkar
Seven Stages of Chidabhasa

Based on Panchadasi by Vidyaranya Swami

Chapter 7.0 “Trupti Deepa”(marathi translation by Pundit Vishnu Shastry Bapat (1908) and hindi translation by Pundit Ramavatar Vidyapati (1912))

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4-4-12
br4-4-12

 

 

“If a man knows the Self as “I am This” then desiring what and for whose sake will he suffer in the wake of the body.”
(The entire Trupti Deepa chapter of Panchadasi is based on this shruti mantra)

Kutastha, the pure Consciousness, is asanga (without any association) and avikari (immutable). This Kutastha is also the adhisthana (substratum) of “bhrama” (illusions- not to be confused with Brahman) of indriya-sharira (body- mind complex). When it gets associated (the association is only vyavaharic/transactional and not real) with mind through anyonya-adhyasa (mutual superimposition) it is known as Jiva. Kutastha’s reflection in mind “chidabhasa” alone cannot be the Jiva since it has no existence of its own without Kutastha – image in a mirror is not possible unless there is a face behind it. The mixture/combination of chidabhasa and Kutastha is also referred to as purusha in the the shruti above. Continue reading →

Science vs. Philosophy – Part II

Posted on by

Y – I can not parse your meaning, i.e. I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Still have no idea what you are trying to say.

X – What I’m trying to say is to point at core insights within Eastern philosophy (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism), particularly in advaita Vedanta – but also in Christianity and Islam in their highest metaphysical conceptions. If you are not interested in any of this, that’s alright.

Actually, whatever science – and its highfaluting ‘scientific method’ – is is shot through with difficulties and controversies, including the sacrosanct falsifiability principle (or dogma). Just read the Wickipedia article on this (and on rationality, etc.) and the respective positions of Khun, I. Lakatos, and P. Feyerabend among others. You must know something about all this already if you are scientifically inclined.

Y – What “core insights”?  There is nothing insightful about making up unevidenced tosh, anyone can do it and each piece of tosh has exactly equal validity, none.

And with regard to your ludicrous and unfounded “criticism” of the scientific method, I have one response, yea shall know them by their fruits.

Continue reading →

Science vs. Philosophy (in three parts) – Part I

Posted on by

[Seed of the discussion (in QUORA https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-or-any-defensible-methodology-for-finding-the-truth/answer/Alberto-Mart%C3%ADn-2): A young (so I thought) good-natured and apologetic woman made an excellent remark to a leading Question about science and consciousness, though the question was in fact as per the link above. I then tried to support her and, soon after, a rumbustious, self assured ‘pro-science’ male person (Y) entered and started the fray.]

I (X) to the woman: ‘Why did you not just stay with the unquestionable, direct experience of what you are as you stated it? Yes, it is unprovable, to others, that is, but it is truth with capital T. You touched gold, but then covered it with everything else you added’.

— “That which is the subtle essence – in that have all beings their existence. That is the truth. That is the Self. And that, O Svetaketu, THAT ART THOU.”‘ (From Chandogya Upanishad).

 

Y – ‘Entered’ and made some deprecatory remarks about the foregoing, all in defense of science and against spirituality or metaphysics (for him “making stuff up”):

“science of the spirit”.
Is that anything like engineering of the pixies?

X – Yes, that expression is puzzling and, in principle may be unconvincing, but not so in India, where the foremost philosophy (Shankara’s) is actually neither philosophy, theology, or science per se, but a combination of them all; no compartmentalization there, as is usual in the West. And it is not a blending of spirituality with (empirical) science, which I do not find satisfatory as it is recently being espoused also in the West. It is ‘science’ in a wide, comprehensive sense, definitely to do with knowledge – primarily intuitive knowledge, plus reasoning – for which one needs to be immersed during a usually long time in reading (or ‘hearing’), reflection, and ‘contemplation’. If one studies, e.g. ‘Vedanta or the Science of Reality’, by K. A. Krishnaswami Iyer, one can appreciate that it is not a joke, by any means; this book contains a comparative account of the Indian  tradition of the Upanishads and Western philosophical systems.

Y – You are playing fast and loose with the word “science”.  There is nothing, nadda, zip, zilch, zero in the philosophy of Adi Shankara related to science. it is simply more mystical woo woo.

Make a falsifiable hypothesis regarding “spirits” or regarding Nirguna Brahman or any other religious drivel, and then we’ll talk.

X – If you want to narrow your mind, despite the options it has in terms of getting an understanding of difficult matters, which can only be proven to oneself – not to others – by analysis, introspection, and meditation, it is up to you. The word ‘science’ comes from the Latin ‘scire’ – to discern, distinguish, and this is what, at least myself, am talking about. You write off mysticism because it cannot be proven in the lab or with the tools of empirical science, and put so much stock in the (provisional) notion of falsifiability… again, up to you. That is scientism or reductionism – a narrow view of what constitutes reality, which is immense, ultimately unfathomable.

Y- Your comments regarding the etymology of “science” are terrific, that is frightening, or in this case frighteningly bad.  You see the etymology or the root of a word is not its meaning.  Science has a specific modern meaning that I’m sure you are well aware of, and bastardizing that meaning in this context is self serving hoey.  The philosophy and theology of Adi Shankara has nothing whatsoever to do with science. Unless of course you redefine the word to mean whatever you want it to mean.

And I’m sorry, but the old “narrow mind” argument is simply what gets shoveled out of the male bovine pen.  Having an open mind does not mean simply accepting any old tosh simply because you like it, or because it is part of the proud tradition of my culture or some such nonsense. Being open-minded means being open to evidence.  Please provide some evidence that any mystical experience has any relevance outside the brain of the person experiencing it; if you can’t then any comment you make about it is just making stuff up, and has no more relationship to reality than any other religious rubbish. Continue reading →

Science and Vedanta (Part 2)

Posted on by

P1030150_tonemapped-2Part 2 of a 3-part essay by Dr. K. Sadananda, AchArya at Chinmaya Mission, Washington.

(read part 1)

Analysis of Objective Sciences

 An objective scientist provides a narrow definition for science as that which pertains only to the objectifiable entities using the objective tools. For example, he says that the existence of God cannot be scientifically established as His existence cannot be proved. Obviously the proof that a scientist is looking for is perceptibility, using objective tools of investigation which themselves are limited to only objectifiable entities. He presumes that God is also an object that can be precisely defined in order to differentiate Him from the rest of the objects in the universe, and is therefore quantifiable using perceptual data. If an object cannot be established by using his objective tools, then he asserts that any assumption of its existence becomes blind belief or at the most speculative.

No object can establish its own existence, since it is not a conscious entity. A chair does not say ‘I exist’; a conscious entity has to establish its existence. A scientist, who dismisses the existence of God, since it cannot be proved using his objective tools, takes his own existence for granted without questioning it. He cannot establish his own existence or that he is a conscious entity using the same objective tools that he is using to establish the existence of God. The reason is that he, as a subject knower, cannot be known since he cannot objectify the subject knower. He knows that he exists and that he is conscious entity, without even questioning the validity of his assertions. Continue reading →

More short Q and As

Posted on by

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAQ: I’ve read something in Advaita about making meaning out of meaningless events. Are there any events to which meaning can be given?

A: You need to be a bit more specific here. But you are in any case talking about the empirical level of experience, not absolute reality. Time (and hence ‘events’) is within the former; it is not absolutely real. Similarly, there are no separate ‘objects’ (or ‘people’) in reality. Whether or not an event is ‘meaningful’ is going to be a subjective opinion! If you want my subjective view, there are probably only two meaningful events: when you commit to Self-inquiry and when you realize the truth! Continue reading →