The Discovered Self - K.M.Chandrashekaran The great sage of Tiruvannamalai - Ramana Maharshi - used to say that there are two ways to Self Realization - there is the path of Bhakti Yoga and there is the path of Jnana Yoga. Of course, just like paths up the mountain lead to the same peak, these paths of devotion and enquiry lead to the same goal. The choice between the paths is yours to make or is made for you, some would say, by force of circumstances, or karma. The path of devotion - Bhakti Yoga - appears easy to the person who has faith in a deity. All one has to do, consciously, and all the time, is to “surrender” everything - everything that one feels, thinks or says or acts - to this deity. The difficulty,of course, lies in the act of conscious surrender. When circumstances squeeze you from every side - when you are jobless and without hope, when you are told that you are suffering from an incurable disease, when you are witness to violence over which you have no control - then the act of surrender in involuntary and effortless. The trick of the great Bhakti yogis is to cultivate this act of surrender in every day life, and not just in extremely difficult situations. Jnana Yoga - or the Yoga of enquiry - on the other hand, appeals to the person accustomed to rational discourse and unwilling to accept on faith, the existence of a Deity. The nature of this quest is simple, and this was Ramana Maharishi’s Brahma Astra - always ask yourself the question: “who or what am I?” The quest needs to pursued with endless energy, not just idle curiosity, and then there could be something discovered that may be of profound significance. If I were to ask you to look at this pen on the table, you do it without hesitation. Your eyes move and pick out the pen, effortlessly. If I ask you to do something a little more complicated - for instance, to close your eyes and focus on the spot between your eyebrows - you take some time, and you need to practice a bit, to keep your attention fixed on that spot. You need to gather yourself, pick up the bits and pieces of your being, as it were, and then you get the hang of it and then fixing your attention at various positions, within or outside the body, becomes easier. Once you have tried out these practices, you need to ask yourself one key question: what is it that moves, when your attention shifts? What is it that gathers up, and what is it that is gathered, as we bring attention to bear on an object or person or thought ? To give this entity a name -the self, or I or attention or awareness - which is what we inevitably do, is to miss out on experiential discovery. Let us presume, therefore, that we avoid this pitfall and refuse to name this entity that moves within ourselves. And then, we again face the question that was raised: what is it that moves ? This time around, if we have avoided the naming pitfall, we become uncomfortable, restless. There is nothing within us, or outside of us, to which we can point a finger, and say, "This is it!" That entity to which we had earlier quickly given a name does not seem to have a form, or a shape or a size. And yet we are acutely conscious of this something, when we focus attention, move awareness from spot to spot.And to press our enquiry a little further, we need to ask some supplementary questions: where, in actual space and time, was this entity before we decided to concentrate on a particular spot? Where, if anywhere, does this being reside ? And once we are finished with this effort at concentration, what happens to the energy (to use a relatively neutral word) that had been concentrated? Does the energy get dissipated, diffused? And to gather it all up again, do we need to once again exert ourselves? Was this being trapped within the confines of the body, or is this merely our fancy, and does this being, pervade all Life? If you asked yourself these questions, and realized the futility of any answer that your mind might bring forth - not because they are incorrect or foolish , but because the questions themselves, although of great import, permit of no answer - then, what is the state of your mind? Not the answer that is expressed, but the quality of the mind. Is there then a certain feeling of relief, of silence?
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 09:56:33 +0000