SELF-KNOWLEDGE

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Adhyatma Yoga And Advaita Vedanta

The highest spiritual wisdom experienced by the Seers of Truth has been passed down from ancient times to the present day through a line of traditional teachers. Its metaphysical side, Advaita Vedanta, establishes by reasoning a non-dualistic explanation of the universe; its practical side, Adhyatma Yoga, gives guidance on the life of thought and action, so that the purpose of life may be fulfilled. The essential teachings are:

The universe is a phenomenal expression of the supreme Reality, which is by nature Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute.

Our innermost Self transcends the limitations of body, mind and ego, and is not other than the supreme Reality.

The purpose of life is conscious realisation of this identity, and this can be achieved while engaged in the duties of life.

Self-realisation gives unbroken peace, poise and bliss. It is the ultimate goal sought consciously or unconsciously through philosophy and religion, art and science.

The one Reality reveals and pervades all beings, and underlies the highest teachings found in the world’s religious traditions.

Shanti Sadan is a Centre of Adhyatma Yoga, founded in 1933 by the late Hari Prasad Shastri, where the teachings continue to be given and practised in the traditional way.

Information about meetings and events can be found at shantisadan.org/meetings

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Winter 2024

Vol. 75 No. 1

Contents

Just Two Words

Some Teachings from the Katha Upanishad

In What Sense is the World
Unreal in Shankara’s Philosophy?

Non-Duality and Sufism

The Challenge of Suffering

Towards Inner Freedom

The Non-Duality of Shri Shankara

Meditation and Cheerfulness

Giving Up and Letting Go

Just Two Words

‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are arguably’ the most important words in the vocabulary of any language. Like the power of the ocean, their range and application are limitless. Sometimes they slide across our conversations imperceptibly; or they may surprise and shock, vanquishing hope, or igniting new possibilities.

The infant, still imprisoned in the pram or buggy, soon learns to appropriate the ‘No’ it hears from its elders, and finds it is the perfect instrument for conveying dislike and non-cooperation; and unless those elders are prepared to be brutishly coercive, or patiently educative, the ‘no’ will gain their acquiescence, in the hope that it will be outgrown.

As experience widens, the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response remains ever present, sometimes muted by seeming contentment, but ever watchful for threats and opportunities. Our ‘yes’ ‘no’ mechanism reaches into every part of our material and intellectual or mental functioning.

This habit of reaction and response becomes increasingly complicated as life confronts us with moral imperatives, suggesting that we ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to respond in a certain way. Our instinctive ‘yes’ is now challenged by the contrary directive which tells us we should not, or ought not. Similarly, our ‘no’ has often to be overruled (by us) in the course of duty, for instance when we wake in the morning, when we know that our ‘no—I don’t want to get up yet’, has to be overruled by the need to go to work.

Thus our likes and dislikes, dominating our human consciousness, have often to be balanced by the call of duty, which requires us to say ‘yes’ to what is good, and ‘no’ to what is wrong.

But what exactly does this complex scenario lead to, and what is our true good? Can we prove to ourselves that the course we have taken is the right one? Can we shake off the sense of inadequacy that is often a secret lodger in our heart?

Relief and freedom are close at hand. We need to appreciate more clearly that all complications and conflicts relate to our state of mind, and the good news is that there is a healthy course that can help us to transform our mind and open up a level of Self that is not enmeshed in moral dilemmas or private selfishness. Paradoxically, this transformation and unveiling also has at its heart our capacity to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as regards the most fundamental aspect of life: the real nature of the Self. We don’t have to do this blindly. There is a body of teaching that is based on the innate freedom of the innermost Self. To say ‘yes’ to such statements, letting go of all limited self-ideas, will in due time prompt a realisation that the inner barriers of our experience have no ultimate reality or authority. Such an affirmation, which points to the ground of our being, runs:

Know the Self to be infinite consciousness, self-evident, beyond destruction, enlightening all bodies equally, ever shining. In it is neither day nor night.

At the same time, we are invited to say an inward ‘no’ to the uncontrolled psychological activity and our habitual sense of identity with it, by giving careful attention to what our true Self is not, and through peacefully negating that false oneness of the Self and the mind.

Such practices are intended not simply to confer on us a feel-good uplift. Their real aim is to ascertain our own true nature. This ultimate nature transcends all conditions. It has nothing to do with likes and dislikes. When realised, we awaken to the deeper reality as Self. We know directly That which is the source of all wisdom and right conduct. In the light of this new understanding, we live in peace with ourselves and with the whole universe.

Some Teachings from the Katha Upanishad

One thing that all human lives have in common is their unpredictability. There always seems to be something that escapes our control or eludes our knowledge. On the other hand, to apparently lose is to win if what happens to us prompts us to reflect on the meaning and purpose of life as a whole, and if this thirst for understanding leads us to enquire into the great wisdom traditions. Then our quest for deeper understanding and fulfilment can become clearly focused and progressive.

This is the situation of the pupil in the Katha Upanishad, who initially wants to know whether the self goes on existing after death—a question which develops into a need to realise conscious immortality through awakening to the knowledge of our ultimate Self as the sole reality of the universe. This liberating knowledge, and the inner transformation of our higher faculties, are the themes of the teaching that follows.

The higher aspect of our nature is expressed through the wise application of our intellect and our will. By intellect is meant our innate sensitivity to truth and falsehood. By will is meant our power to execute the decisions of the intellect that are in harmony with our higher purpose.

This composite faculty of intellect and will has the authority to free us from the pressure of emotional extremes, and it also has the power to guide our thoughts into enlightened channels. Thus this higher phase of our nature is essentially a ruling principle, and it is destined to play a far-reaching role in our self-training for transcendence. One of its Sanskrit names is ‘buddhi’, from the root ‘budh’, meaning to awaken.

The activities of the mind are known and evaluated at all times by the buddhi, which is subtle and inward. It is the buddhi which constantly surveys what we experience and says ‘this is true or not’ and ‘this is what should be done or not’. When impure, the buddhi asserts: ‘The world I see through the senses is real, and I am this individual mind and body, and my worldly interests are paramount.’ With wise training and guidance the buddhi begins to understand that Reality transcends the mindworld and that Self transcends individuality. And when purified, the buddhi, as the most inward and sensitive element of our psychology, may serve as a mirror in which is reflected the light of pure consciousness, and a way opens to realisation of that light as our ultimate Self and the true Being in all.

A purified buddhi is like a wise friend, ready and able to guide our steps on the path of true well-being. We need such guidance because life constantly confronts us with invitations to desire what is pleasant, as well as to follow a more selfless path involving service, collaboration and kindness. If we want to make progress in self-knowledge, we are advised to pursue the good rather than the merely pleasurable. It is the purified buddhi that will give us the insight and the strength to keep to the way of inner progress.

The non-dual teaching goes beyond psychology and imposed codes of conduct, identifying the innermost principle of our nature with the consciousness which lights up all experience. This is our true Self, which knows no limitations or divisions and is therefore the one Self in all. It is the buddhi that is most responsive to training and guidance on the path to transcendence, and where the buddhi leads, the rest of the personality will eventually follow.

What then is the true nature of the Self?

The intelligent Self is neither born nor does it die. It did not originate from anything, nor did anything originate from it. It is birthless, eternal, undecaying and ancient. It is not injured, even when the body is killed. (1.2.18)

The reason for this seemingly negative form of expression is that the Self transcends all limitations, and here too language reaches its limit and can only fall silent.

The Self is therefore different from anything experienced in the objective world and also in the realm of imagination. Speaking of it as ‘intelligent’, does not refer to the limited human intelligence, but the absolute intelligence of pure consciousness, which is the indispensable factor in all knowing.

Again it is said:

The Self that is subtler than the subtle and greater than the great, is established in the heart of every creature. One who is not oppressed by desires sees that glory of the Self through inner serenity, and thereby becomes free from sorrow. (1.2.20)

Self, as the essential reality in all, is not separate from anything. It is not reason that can bring to light this truth, but inner serenity, which allows the aspirant to grasp intuitively the fact of unity that ever supports the apparent diversity.

How do we achieve this all-important quality of inner serenity?

The answer to this question is suggested by a simile which, though its terminology belongs to the ancient world, should prove meaningful to the modern enquirer.

The human body is compared to a chariot, and the real Self is like the owner of the chariot, who is not actively engaged in steering it. That work belongs to the charioteer, or driver, who stands for the intellect, or buddhi. The horses represent the senses, and like all horses, need to be trained and managed. This is done by means of the reins, which are held by the charioteer— the reins standing for the mind. The road or track is the world of the sense objects—the good or pleasant things that require our wise selection and pursuit.

The key idea is that everything depends on the quality of insight and control shown by the charioteer—the buddhi. If the driver has a good knowledge of the roads (the sense-objects), knows how to handle with skill the reins and horses (mind and senses) then there is an excellent chance of reaching one’s destination with safety. But if the reins are held carelessly and inattentively, an accident is likely to happen before the journey’s end.

One whose charioteer is a discriminating intellect, and who has under control the reins of the mind, attains the end of the road. (1.3.9)

The simile shows how a skilled application of the intellect and will leads to the uncovering of our higher potentialities. And let us remember that the discriminating intellect is not the end of the road, which is Self-realisation—direct experience of reality.

How are we to begin to identify our true Self with the Absolute? It is not by reaching upwards to some imagined location above and beyond the world. It begins with the choice between the greater good and the lesser good, the latter tempting us with promises of unimpaired joy. The more we take our stand on the greater good, the more our inner being will become peaceful and clear enough to be guided by an illumined understanding. Then, the process is one of progressively withdrawing the sense of selfhood from all that is experienced as an object.

So our inner development goes beyond personality and leads to the realisation that the highest truth is not manifest in any individualised condition, but is the universality of consciousness that underlies all particulars and is the one Self in all. This transference of our sense of identity is both radical and reasonable. It is radical because it undermines the totality of ideas and assumptions we have relied on throughout our time as seemingly separate individuals. The same identity-shift is also reasonable and normal, once we grasp the contradiction at the root of our individualised experience.

The weak point in the seemingly impregnable edifice of personhood can be exposed if we reflect on the nature of the subject-object relationship as it seems to manifest in our experience. The apparent position established by experience is that the subject is ‘I’, and the object is everything of which the ‘I’ is aware. Superficially it appears that the mind and its thoughts are part of our subjective nature, as they seem to be interior in relation to the outer objects. But actually, whatever arises in the mind, and the mind itself, is nothing more than an inner object, revealed by a more inward light which itself never appears as an object.

There is therefore a radical difference in nature between knower and known, subject and object. The objects, mental or physical, are ever-changing, whereas the subject reveals no changeability in itself whatsoever. The objects have no revealing power—they do not reveal themselves or one another; their ‘knowable’ nature is made possible solely by the light of the conscious Self. Hence subject and object differ as much as light and darkness. And yet, the usual concept of personhood is formed by a seeming amalgamation of these contradictories. We do not feel, ‘I am the unchanging light of consciousness’. Rather, the basis of our apparent personhood is identification with the changing mental states which are in truth no more than inner objects with no life or light of their own. The solution is to discriminate between the conscious Self, and the mental objects. This is the primary task of the trained and purified buddhi. It is buddhi that can analyse experience and understand in principle what is happening. And being most subtle and inward, it is the buddhi which, when purified, reflects the light of Self without distortion.

The Self (Atman) hidden in all beings is not revealed (to all) but is seen only by those who see what is subtle through their sharp and subtle buddhi. (1.3.12)

Looked at in this way, our problem might seem to be purely intellectual, and solved simply by familiarising ourselves and agreeing with the non-dual understanding of experience. But intellectual acumen, even when supported by balanced trust in the teachings, is not sufficient to give rise to recognition of the non-dual Self as the sole reality in the universe. The foundations of inner clarity and serenity have to be laid. The choice between the good and the pleasant has to be repeatedly made in favour of the good. The mind’s habitual thirst for sense pleasures has to be regarded as a potent obstacle to the serene and subtle inner atmosphere that prepares the way for realisation.

These teachings are often conveyed with the help of metaphors. For example, there is the ‘tree’ of the world [2.3.1] with its boughs, branches and twigs, suggestive of how our own life ramifies into innumerable details, twists and entanglements. As enquirers we are advised, through calm detachment, to loosen our ties with unnecessary worldly connections, for these steal away our precious time and energy. Again, the desires that cling to the heart and determine our emotional nature, are compared to knots. [2.3.15] These knots of desire are tightened by our urge to repeat pleasant experiences, but will loosen through lack of support and eventually lose their power over the personality—as long as our quest is sincere. Our mind will discover within itself a new peace and independence, as it frees itself from the obstacles to illumination.

Eternal peace is for those who are discriminating, and who realise in their hearts that reality which is eternal amid the passing, the source of all consciousness, the inner Ruler and the one Self of all. [2.2.13]

The Self stands apart from transient phenomena, supporting all through its light and being, but bound to none. Our search is for that which never changes, decays or perishes. Only such a principle may with justification be called real. All that changes is of a lesser status, and ultimately lacks all status. And so:

One endowed with discrimination should merge speech (vāk) into thought (manas), thought into intelligence (jñāne ātmani), intelligence into higher Self (mahati ātmani), higher Self into Absolute Self (śānte ātmani). [1.3.13]

This verse points the way to the summit of Self-knowledge. First, attention should be withdrawn from speech, including the words we use internally, so that what remains is the thought which words represent and express. Then attention is turned from thoughts to the intelligence that gives rise to thoughts. That intelligence is to be stilled so that what remains is consciousness alone, the higher Self. Then, if consciousness of any object remains, that is to be withdrawn into the one without a second, called here the Self of Peace (śānti) or Absolute Self. This last term is not different from the supreme reality, or brahman, and the peace it harbours is absolute and without taint.

Thus a study of the non-dual teachings, with their constant reference to the true self, the real ‘I’, will in the end help us to throw off the limited ideas based on wrong identification. If our mind is drawn to the following affirmation, and we make it our own, the indirect knowledge it transmits will be replaced by direct experience, and the truth of the Self will be realised as the eternal Fact. We will know beyond challenge, that:

I AM THAT REALITY WHICH IS ETERNAL AMID THE PASSING,
THE SOURCE OF ALL CONSCIOUSNESS,
THE INNER RULER AND THE ONE SELF OF ALL.

B.D.

In What Sense is the World
Unreal in Shankara’s Philosophy?

CRITICS of Shri Shankara sometimes say that the practical world, with all its beauty and utility, is treated by him as an illusion, as a mere appearance, having no stuff of reality in it. They base their criticism on a statement which they imagine typifies the non-dual position: ‘Brahman (the Absolute) is real; the world is unreal and nothing but Brahman.’ Thus to many students of Shankara, the world is merely an illusion.

These critics have not understood Shankara’s true meaning. The following is the classification of objects mentioned by him in his commentaries:

The objects which are generally referred to by him as ‘the horns of a hare’, ‘a barren woman’s son’, and ‘flowers seen in the sky’. It is the objects in this category that he calls false, nonexistent, unreal (asat).

The objects such as ‘a rope appearing as a snake’, ‘mother-of-pearl appearing as silver’ and ‘the sky appearing as blue’, are sometimes denoted by him as unreal (asat).

The phenomenal objects of the world he designates nama-rupa (name and form), by which he means the changes and modifications in all their diversity which we find in the world.

Shankara says that the objects in the first category, such as ‘the horns of a hare’, have this peculiarity of their nature; they form a separate class from the other two categories. They serve no practical purpose in the world, and he calls them ‘false’, meaning that they have nothing as their substratum, no permanent ground to sustain them: ‘They have no prior cause from which they are produced; neither are these objects sustained at the present moment by any underlying cause or being; again, when these objects disappear, they have no sustaining ground into which they will merge; as they are not true, they are false.’

These conditions do not apply to the objects of the second category. Shankara says we cannot call ‘the snake in the rope’ false in the same way as we call ‘the horns of a hare’ false. He further remarks that the objects of the second category have a substratum: it is the rope which is the substratum of the snake seen in it. When, in the light of correct knowledge, the imagined snake disappears, contrary to the objects in the first category, it disappears in its substratum, the rope.

Now let us see what Shankara has to say about objects in the third category that is, the empirical objects called nama-rupa (name and form). In his commentary on the Chandogya Upanishad, he says that these objects agree in an important respect with the objects described as ‘the snake in the rope’. These changes (to Shankara all empirical phenomena are merely a series of changes), these empirical objects, have a prior cause from which they are produced; during their existence at the present moment, the same identical causal reality underlies and sustains them; and in future also, they will merge in the same underlying ground which now sustains them.

The result of the discussion is that Shankara calls the objects of the first category false and unreal; but teaches in express terms the reality of the empirical objects in relation to the first category, and their unreality in relation to Brahman (Absolute Reality). These empirical objects can neither be called real nor unreal; hence the term ‘mithya’ (inexplicable) is used to denote them. They have a semblance of reality, borrowed from their substratum (Absolute Reality). Because on several occasions Shankara has compared the experiences of our waking life with our dream experiences, many students of the Advaita (non-dualistic) system which he expounds run away with the idea that as the dream experiences are known to be without any objective reality, so the waking experiences which have been likened to them must be unreal. In refutation of this unwarranted deduction, we invite our readers’ attention to the following.

Shankara observes that when one falls asleep and happens to dream, one finds oneself, say, to be a king occupying a throne. Now the activities performed as a king and the states and feelings enjoyed are all dream experiences. Are these experiences to be taken as constituting the actual nature of the Self (Atman), or is the nature of the Self something distinct from these? Shankara holds that these experiences cannot constitute the Self, neither can the Self be resolved into and identified with them. They are not the nature of the Self. The real Self is that which experiences these things but is unaffected by them. The Self is the subject of all these objects.

The reader will observe that Shankara never says that what we experience in our dream is false; all that he says is that these experiences do not exist as the nature of the Self. The experiences of both the waking and the dreaming states cannot constitute the nature of the Self, which is their subject. The Self, therefore, is distinct from its experiences.

In his commentary on the Chandogya Upanishad there is the following significant passage: ‘but both kinds of experience must be regarded as real respectively in their own spheres’. The world of names and forms has been described by Shankara as inexplicable, that is, mithya. The reason is as follows: Brahman is the absolute reality (sat); the world is neither absolutely real (sat, i.e. Brahman), nor is it unreal (asat, i.e. something absolutely different from Brahman); it is therefore inexplicable.

So long as the world exists in Brahman in an undifferentiated condition, it is identical with Brahman; but as soon as the world is differentiated, there is some difference. In his commentary on the same Upanishad, he says that prior to its production and manifestation, the world was real as Brahman; but when the world came out of Brahman (that is, when it actually appeared), it began to be looked upon as something absolutely different from Brahman. Taken in the latter sense, the world as the aggregate of names and forms is unreal; but from the higher standpoint, it is inseparably connected with Brahman.

Hence we can see the world is neither absolutely real nor absolutely unreal; in other words, it is mithya or inexplicable. Even from the practical point of view we must look upon the world from the higher standpoint, namely that it stands inseparably connected with its cause, Brahman, the underlying Reality. It is through the world that the underlying Reality is being expressed and realised. Shankara does not deny the existence of the world as such; he only wants us to treat it as something non-different from Brahman. The world is not something self-existent or independent of Brahman.

In his commentary on the Vedanta Sutras he does not absolutely identify Brahman, the causal Reality, with its effects. The world is not to be taken as identical with Brahman or as real; the real nature of the Cause is transcendental in his system. The world is simply to be taken as the means through which the underlying nature of Brahman is being expressed or realised. Shankara remarks: ‘As a player, taking successive characters upon himself, enacts on the stage the parts of each of these characters in succession but yet retains his own distinct character; so the underlying Causal Unity, retaining its own distinct identity, realises itself successively in each of these changes produced’.

Hari Prasad Shastri

Non-Duality and Sufism

It is one of the glories of Sufism that it has never lost sight of the universality of ultimate Truth. It has not fallen into a narrow fanaticism. Jalaluddin Rumi tells in his Mathnawi how four comrades were once given a dirhem to spend between them. One of them, a Persian, said: ‘I will spend this on angur.’ The second, who was an Arab, said: ‘No, I want inab not angur.’ The third was a Turk and he said: ‘This money is mine. I don’t want inab. I want uzum.’ The fourth, a Greek, said: ‘Stop this talk. I want istafil.’ At last they were persuaded by a wise man to desist from their bickering. He pointed out that they were all calling in their own languages for a bunch of grapes. So they bought a dirhem’s worth of grapes between them and enjoyed them together.

The Truth and its realisation is like the grapes to the practising Sufis, who see the reality beyond the name, and who live the truth of the saying:

In the name of Him who has no name but who responds to whatever name you choose to call Him by.

Mohammed passed on the inner mystical teachings in private to his close disciples as well as laying the foundations of the outward creed of Islam and the procedures of public worship. These teachings were handed down through Ali, Abu Bakr and others who, in accordance with tradition, disclosed them to suitably qualified pupils who were deemed worthy of instruction. Many times in the Mathnawi, Jalaluddin Rumi begins to speak of these teachings and breaks off with the explanation that it is not permitted to say more. The truth is available to all sincere seekers who are prepared to undergo the necessary discipline under a teacher (Pir, Sheikh, or Murshid). In the same way, the masterpieces in the National Gallery can be seen by any visitor interested enough to go inside, but they are not hung at street corners to be subjected to dust and damage.

These teachings affirm the essential identity of the individual soul and God, and their seed can be traced back to verses in the Quran such as:

Wherever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.

If my servant ask thee about Me, lo, I am near! We (God) are nearer to man than his neckvein.

And in the earth are signs to those of real faith And in yourselves. What! do ye not see?

Just as St Francis returned to the Christian ideal of poverty and renunciation, the Sufis broke loose from pomp and ceremonial, and looked within themselves for religious inspiration. Shri Shankara in the similar circumstances of his day had taken a leading part in urging that the living spirit of religion is not to be found in the mechanical repetition of symbolic rituals. So also the Sufis looked back to the verse of the Quran:

Righteousness does not consist in turning to the East or West.

Rumi wrote:

The true mosque is built in a pure and holy heart. There let all men worship God, for He dwells there and not in a mosque of stone.

The first Sufis were little concerned with constructing a selfconsistent metaphysic, although this was achieved later with outstanding success by al-Ghazali. Sufism is intensely practical. It springs, says Junayd of Baghdad,

not from disputation, but from hunger and taking leave of the world, breaking familiar ties and renouncing what men deem good.

It flowered from the desire to discover God within one’s own soul. Abu Yazid (Bayazid) of Bistam, a celebrated early Sufi who extolled the path of complete submergence of the individuality in the will of God (Fana) cried:

Thirty years the high God was my mirror: now I am my own mirror.

And again:

I went from God to God until they cried from me in me:

‘O Thou I’.

In his book The Mystics of Islam, Professor Nicholson quotes a number of definitions of Sufism by Sufi teachers, among which are the following:

Sufism is to apprehend the Divine Realities.

Sufism is wholly self-discipline.

Sufism is to possess nothing and to be possessed by nothing.

Sufism is this—that God should make thee die to thyself and should make thee live in Him.

Sufism is control of the faculties and observance of the breaths.

It is Sufism to put away what thou hast in thy head, to give what thou hast in thy hand, and not to recoil from whatsoever befalls thee.

To be a Sufi means to abide continuously in God and to live at peace with men. Whoever abides and deals rightly with men, treating them with unfailing kindness, is a Sufi.

Sufis regard themselves as travellers on the path to the Rose-Garden of union with God. On this journey one passes through the successive ‘stations’ of Repentance, Abstinence, Renunciation, Poverty, Patience, Trust in God and Acquiescence in the will of God. The early part of the journey lies through the country of feelings and emotions, but later the landscape changes to the uplands of meditation and inner intuition.

In order to tread the path with any hope of success, Sufis depend on the guidance of the teacher (Pir). Small Sufi groups centred round a teacher were common before 1100 CE and from them arose in the course of time the formal orders of Dervishes, each with their fixed ‘rule’, something like the religious orders of Christianity. Dervish means ‘beggar’ and several of the orders, of which there were eventually as many as 32, were in practice mendicant. But the sense of the word was rather that the dervish was ‘poor’ because he had emptied his heart of all desires for wealth, power and other seeming advantages offered by the world. One of the most famous orders of dervishes, the Maulavis or dancing dervishes, was founded by Jalaluddin Rumi, of whom it is recorded that:

when he was drowned in the ocean of Love, he used to take hold of a pillar in his house and set himself turning round it.

The Sufis use the methods of meditation, japa (repetition of a sacred name or mantram) and kirtana (repetition accompanied by dancing or swaying), as a means of transcending body consciousness and releasing the mind upward into the region of the Spirit. Essential to successful meditation, they insist, is to create a state of calmness and relaxation in the mind which is yet not sleep but more a sort of positive expectancy. Nuri was seen meditating for hours at a time in perfect relaxation without moving a muscle. When asked about it, he said he had learned the secret by watching a cat in front of a mousehole.

Recollection (dhikr) has an important place among the practices. Dhikr is primarily repeating the name of God (Allah) or a mantram ‘until the words come forth from the lips even when asleep’. According to al-Ghazali, there are three stages of dhikr; the first is when the words are said with the tongue only, the second is when the heart is identified with the words but there are still distractions, and the third is when the words take complete possession of the heart. Finally, he says, dhikr itself disappears and that is the end sought. Professor Nicholson quotes an interesting passage from al-Ghazali on dhikr:

Let one reduce the heart to a state in which the existence of anything and its nonexistence are the same. Sitting alone, one should limit the religious duties to what is absolutely necessary... One should then see to it that nothing save God most High enters the mind. While seated in solitude, do not cease saying continuously with the tongue ‘Allah, Allah’, keeping one’s thought on it. At last, one will reach a state when the motion of the tongue will cease, and it will seem as if the word flowed from it... Still persevere until the form of the word, its letters and shape, is removed from the heart, and there remains the idea alone, as though clinging to the heart, inseparable from it. So far, all is dependent on one’s will and choice; but to bring the mercy of God does not stand in one’s will or choice. [The devotee] is now laid bare to the breathings of that mercy, and nothing remains but to await what God will open, as God has, after this manner, to prophets and saints. If we follow the above course, we may be sure that the light of the Real will shine out in our heart.

The same path is not necessarily prescribed for all. It depends on the makeup of the personality. The elements defined by Yoga as knowledge (jnana), devotion (bhakti) and service (karma), are given more or less prominence. Rabia of Basrah typified the devotional path of dependence on God. Intensely personal and poetical, borrowing expressions of the mystical states from the vocabulary of wine and love, she was an embodiment of the dying to self and living in God. A saying of Rabia is:

O God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell, and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship Thee for thine own sake, withhold not Thy everlasting beauty.

One of the earliest Sufis, Dhul Nun the Egyptian, gave a doctrine of knowledge (ma’rifat) very similar to the teaching of Shri Shankara, as two short examples will suffice to show. The first is a poetic quotation from Rumi which re-expresses the teaching of Dhul Nun:

You name His name; go, seek the Reality named by it!

Look for the moon in the sky, not in the water.

If you desire to rise above mere names and letters,

Make yourself free from self at one stroke.

Become pure from all attributes of self

That you may see your own bright essence;

Yea, see in your own heart the knowledge of the Prophet

Without book, without tutor, without perception.

The second example is the well-known Sufi image that 70,000 veils separate Allah from the world of matter and sense—not only veils of darkness, but also veils of light. This can be recognised as the fundamental non-dual teaching that the Reality in us is to be unveiled, not created anew or transplanted from outside.

Many such examples could be discovered by the student, but enough has been written to show that the spirit of non-duality underlies the humanity, the compassion and consideration for others which permeate Sufism.

W.P.H.

The Challenge of Suffering

The fact of suffering is a problem which concerns humanity at large. There is no one who is not afflicted by suffering, whether it be a vague dissatisfaction not fully understood by us, or anxiety which seems always to be with us, even when, outwardly, all is well.

Thus the time is bound to come when we ask the question: ‘Why should human beings suffer? What does it all mean?’ This is usually followed by the further question: ‘ Why does God allow such suffering and injustice—if, indeed, there is a God?’ There can be few of us who have not at some time wrestled with such doubts as these.

Hari Prasad Shastri once said that as a young man he too was tormented by this problem of suffering and at last he could bear it no longer, so he approached a Mahatma and laid his doubts and difficulties before him. The Mahatma remained silent for a few minutes, looking at him compassionately. Then he said : ‘My son, there is no easy answer. This form of speculation is futile, absolutely futile, and also very harmful to you. My advice to you is to put it aside for the time being and be creative. Purify your mind, study the truth. In this way you will not merely understand suffering, you will overcome it, and then and only then will you be able to make a real contribution to relieving the sufferings of others.’ Hari Prasad added: ‘I took the advice, and have never regretted it.’

The non-dual teaching is that suffering is not inevitable. It denotes a state of spiritual immaturity which can be outgrown and overcome in this life. This is a tremendous claim, and if it had no substance, it would never have retained its validity throughout the centuries. But the possibility of this higher understanding has been verified again and again.

And if we find this claim inconceivable, let us examine the problem of suffering in a wider context. We have to remember that we live on various levels of our own being: the emotional, rational, aesthetic, moral and also the spiritual, and our experience of life varies accordingly. It is not so much the events of life as the way we react to them which causes suffering.

Many people, whether they consider themselves religious or not, must have had the experience in great sorrow of being sustained and supported, so that for the time being the full impact of passing events does not reach them. It is as if the mind gives up the struggle. It can no longer even say: ‘Why should this happen to me?’ And then in a strange way, an inward peace is experienced in spite of the heavy shadow of outer events. But very soon the ego reasserts itself and savours its grief to the full! The moment of inner tranquillity, of stillness in the midst of storm, passes and is perhaps forgotten.

But there are those who do not forget such glimpses and who make it their supreme purpose in life to find the source of this inner strength, deep peace, and mysterious joy. To do so they have to fight a long battle with the mind, until there is an awakening or illumination. Now the whole scale of values is revolutionised, the world is seen in a new light, in which they know that in spite of appearances to the contrary, all is well and ever has been well, with themselves and with every single being.

This is a revelation which brings with it supreme joy and complete freedom which nothing can ever destroy, not even death. And so they tell us from their own experience that suffering is not inevitable. There is no completely satisfactory way of explaining it, but there is one certain means of overcoming suffering for ever by inner illumination, and this is the goal of our enquiry.

Now let us face the objections of the confirmed opponent, one with preconceived ideas of what this inner quest entails. ‘Isn’t this just a selfish way of life, seeking one’s own salvation? Does it not mean withdrawing from the world and ignoring the welfare of others—a form of escapism?’

In reply, the first point to make is that the teachings cannot be practised by anyone who does not make determined efforts to overcome narrow self-interest, and cultivate universal goodwill. This is the path to the supreme Good.

The second point is that only in special cases is it helpful to retire from the world. Indeed, the everyday events and responsibilities of life form the best testing-ground for the enquirer. Therefore no one is excluded from practising it. Those who achieve it become benefactors of humankind. They may be unknown, unrecognised by all but a few, but from them pours forth a stream of pure thought which stirs others with high ideals and the urge to find perfection and freedom.

And this brings us to an important principle which is not generally recognised. We know now that we are never really alone. We can never walk into an open space or an empty room where we can completely isolate ourselves in our own thoughts. If we had a suitable appliance to hand, we would be able to see that we are surrounded by the thoughts of others, and we would be able to connect with whatever we found most pleasing and helpful. The teachings bring to our notice that the mind itself is a much more potent receiving set than any radio or smartphone, and it is constantly tuning in to the mental atmosphere of others.

How can we be sure of receiving what is highest and best? Only by keeping our own thoughts pure. It is the quality of our thoughts which determines what we shall receive. As soon as the mind is allowed to fall to the wavelength of narrow selfish interests, criticism of others, lack of tolerance, then it is directly exposing itself to the lower influences which are abroad. Anyone who lives with a gloomy or neurotic person will know how essential it is to be vigilant in keeping our own mind on a higher level, where it cannot be infected.

But there is another side to the question also. We must look on our mind not only as a receiver but also as a transmitter and ask ourselves, what is the quality of thought which is pouring forth from it? We talk of the state of the world today, and the great challenges facing humanity, and think vaguely that something ought to be done to mend matters. But let us remember that every action that takes place, either good or evil, either individual or collective, has its origin first in thought. To try to correct action by merely physical means is futile. It is the mental atmosphere of the world which needs to be changed, and for this reason each one of us shares the responsibility. It is quite wrong to imagine that we have no active part to play. No one can remain neutral. As it is said in the Gospels: ‘One who is not for us is against us.’ Unless we are alert to the changes in the quality of our own thought, and do our best to steer it away from vulgarity, criticism of others and illwill, unless we refuse to indulge in long reveries about our own interests, and instead learn to lift the mind to a higher and purer level, then we are doing a real disservice, not only to our fellows but also to ourselves. For it is only by controlling the lower consciousness that the mind is prepared for the opening of the higher consciousness.

The disciplined mind attracts towards itself the highest and purest influences and begins to expand and reach out towards the truth. It is to such an earnest seeker that the inner teachings are given, which will lead him or her to greater and more subtle joys than our limited mind can now conceive, and eventually to a state of absolute freedom, through the revelation of the divinity within as the true nature of our own being.

M.A.

Towards Inner Freedom

The mind creates bondage and the mind can also create freedom.

Amrita-Bindu Upanishad

When we hear of some kind action, selflessly performed, we sometimes say: ‘It has restored my faith in human nature.’ This contrasts with our response to selfish and cruel behaviour, which incurs censure and regret. The wider question of whether human nature is fundamentally noble or innately flawed is one that has engaged theologians and philosophers down the ages. A single great-hearted person, by their very presence, can undermine the generalisation that we are all corrupt; yet ongoing instances of inhumanity can lead us once more into pessimism.

The yoga of self-knowledge is concerned with ascertaining the true nature of the self. It goes deeper than making judgements based on the qualities that visit, and sometimes inhabit, our mind. The mind is viewed as a complex field of energies that can express itself variously. As a totality, it includes stark contradictions. Many a good heart shelters a dark secret; many criminals believe themselves to be well-intentioned.

There can be no inner freedom while we are identified with the mind, because of the fickleness, unpredictability and changeability of its condition. We have to go beyond the limitations of the mind. And yet, inner freedom will elude our grasp unless we work on the mind to prepare it for self-transcendence. For the good-hearted, the great blessing is to know we are already on the right lines, and have only to deepen and universalise our tendency to benevolence. For those who are not so well-disposed, the prescription is to abandon hostilities, to practise inner peace, to escape from self-importance, and reflect on the inner unity of all.

There is much truth in the lines of the poet John Donne:

No man is an island

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main;

If a clod be washed away by the sea

Europe is the less...

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in Mankind;

And therefore never send to know

For whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

These lines affirm that there is something in our nature as human beings that reaches beyond self-centredness, and feels oneness with all humanity.

All expressions of greatness of heart have their root in something still greater. This root, present in each of us, is deep and indestructible. And this is what is referred to as our true Self. It is something beyond personality. Many of those who risk their lives to help others are responding from an inner centre of their being that is deeper than thought—where personal calculation has no place. They may not be conscious of the source of this prompting, but if it were not there, underlying the mind, there could be no feeling of oneness with others.

The very highest in us transcends the personal, and we are destined to realise directly and clearly that there is ultimately one Self in all. A philosophical text puts it in this way: ‘The bodies are many, the Self is one.’ If I harm another, I am harming myself. The natural expression that flows from this sentiment is peace and goodwill to all. Shakespeare caught this spirit of boundless large heartedness, when he wrote in Measure for Measure:

...the poor beetle you tread upon,

In corporal sufferance, (ie bodily suffering)

feels a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

The bodies are many, the Self is one. Another saying on these lines, by Swami Rama Tirtha, is:

One power supreme is the only one Self in each and all, and that am I.

If this is true, then it follows that there is one area of our experience that is worth special consideration and attention—the enquiry into the nature of the Self. Paradoxically, this most important matter is usually overlooked and neglected, crowded out by the personal ephemera that absorb our interest, time and attention. Our minds are too busy, too hard-pressed, perhaps too addicted to looking outwards at things, to heed the command of the Greek Oracle: ‘Know thyself’. But whether or not such a course catches our attention, the ultimate development of human nature comes when we look into ourselves and discern intuitively the nature of our being—what we truly are, without the distortions, prejudices and preconceptions interposed by the mind and its ideas.

Admittedly, old habits, including habits of thought, are hard to influence. They assume sovereignty, and when challenged, or even queried, increase their force in order to stay in charge. It is only by establishing new habits, slowly but surely, that the old tendencies will be weakened and superseded.

One skill awaiting development and habituation in us is that of tranquillising our mind. Only the conscious efforts we make towards tranquillising our mind will lead us from the limitations and instabilities that characterise the life of the mind, to the perfection, freedom and stability of the true Self.

In speaking in this way, we have changed our focus. We have moved away from reflecting on humankind and our oneness with it, and turned back to look more closely at one seemingly small area—the nature of our Self and its relationship with our mind. But the mind is of pivotal importance and its range effects and determines both our inner life and our outer life. It is like the light over a front door that is topped by a glass panel; the same light is shed on what is outside the door—and it also lights up what is inside the door. Both sides are lit.

As for our mind, it obviously sheds light on the outer world. Yet our mind is also aware of its own inwardness. We know we have a mind. We know we have something within us independent of the senses, invisible, without dimensions or physical mass, which creates all manner of feelings in us, which seems to be continuously speaking to us, and which has an endless store of pictures that it flashes before us in a way that escapes our control.

Yet our knowledge and understanding of this interior side of our being seems to be less clear and less manageable than the hold we have an outer affairs. To put it another way, we have the power to turn our attention inwards—to mind our mind, so to say—but it does not seem to be a priority. Perhaps we reject introspection—that is, we shy away from turning within—feeling it to be difficult, unnecessary and meaningless. And if we are forced to be alone with our thoughts—as when we cannot sleep—we do not necessarily regard the experience as pleasant. We would rather stop thinking and start sleeping.

Another important fact is that much of our thinking is more like the writing of fiction, as we dream and speculate about the things we hope for or fear. There is a sense in which our mind works with illusions, fictions, imaginations deeply coloured by the impressions engraved by past experience—a past which no longer abides as a reality, and survives only in our thoughts.

For all these reasons, we might feel we are better advised to leave the mind alone. But the true greatness of our mind does not lie in its routine operations and its imaginative power; its value stems from its ultimate potentiality for self-transcendence.

We observed before how habitual ways of thought tend to take charge of the personality and resist fundamental change. We also affirmed our potentiality for mind-transformation so great that our mind uncovers in its depth the sublime peace and inextinguishable light of the higher wisdom. We can call this new approach ‘taking charge of the mind’.

This assumption of authority over our own inner life usually is slow to mature. Its implications are most subtle and require a refined alertness and self-confidence that loves a challenge, and is able to apply wit as much as will to the task. For we shall be involved in consciously outwitting the mind, and beating it at its own game. That game is thinking, and part of our work will be to detect thoughts that lead nowhere, and replace them with thoughts that expand and liberate. Even before we can grasp the meaning of terms like light, peace and wisdom, everyday life provides ample opportunities to play the king or queen of our inner activities, rather than being uncritically entranced by the suggestions.

For example, even in small matters we can show the mind who is in charge. When we see our pen on the floor, and the mind says: ‘Later’, we, as monarch, ordain: ‘Now’. When, as the Katha Upanishad puts it, pleasant things actually approach us, and the mind says: ‘Look, destiny itself favours indulgence—can you resist?’, the ruler of the mind says: ‘Yes I can. No misleading thoughts!’ This principle of authority can steer our concentration and establish our role as a resolute decision-maker, forming a plan for the minute and consciously keeping to it. ‘Now I will pick up the pen from the floor wipe off that smudge, have a quick look round for the missing book, and thus engage in these tasks with the decision and awareness that are befitting for the one who is in charge.’

The aim of this psychological play is not worldly efficiency, but to develop confidence in the greatest skill of all: leading the mind to peace, light and wisdom. Before we can do this, the mind has to learn to work under obedience, even in seemingly trivial everyday happenings and situations.

At first it is the higher part of our mind that trains itself to take charge. Before we can do this, the mind has to learn to respond obediently, even in seemingly trivial everyday happenings and situations. When its authority is established, our mind becomes endowed with a natural peace and purity in which the light from our inmost Self is reflected. The light that is revealed in this way is the innate, eternal, infinite light of the Self. The final step is to awaken to the realisation of our true identity as that Self, and not as any of the finite elements in our experience.

With the mind freed from external contacts,

one finds the joy that is in the Self. (Bhagavad Gita, 5:21)

Such sayings are urging us to: ‘Turn within, learn to create order and harmony in the kingdom of your mind, and the hidden beauty and wisdom will come to light.’ The aim is truly to open a way. The light will be released within us and our proof is our own experience.

To cultivate our mind on particular lines is to adopt the sure means to inner freedom. What we are aiming for is the mind of a wise person, an enlightened person, one who knows through higher and fulfilled experience, that no man or woman is an island, that we are all in hidden unity with the All—not based on a social contract or political arrangement, but through realising that the nature of our own Self has no boundary.

A.H.C.

The Non-Duality of Shri Shankara

Further extracts from H P Shastri’s essay on the Outline of the Advaita of Shri Shankara

Contemplation (Nididhyasana)

The philosophy expounded by Shri Shankara is not rationalism like the philosophy of Descartes or Spinoza. It is a metaphysical ontology which has no peer in Western thought. The way to be established mentally in the truth of the non-dual philosophy is to reason deeply about what you have learnt from the teachings; but eventually this deeper intellectual knowledge is to be converted into experience through the process called nididhyasana or contemplation.

By reading the Upanishads and kindred texts over and over, with faith and concentrated attention, one comes to grasp their meaning. By daily reflection and meditation this meaning takes root in the intellect, and by ceaseless contemplation the subjectmatter of the Upanishads (Shruti) becomes our direct experience. The experience of the nature of Self as Sat-Chit-Ananda—existence-consciousness-bliss—is an experience of the Self and not of the mind. As Self, or Atman, is the support of all phases of experience, it follows that the experience of Self does not depend on any other thing.

The experience of Self is obtained through the Self in the Self, above the mind and the intellect. It is not subject to the realm of cause and effect, nor is this experience the result of any particular process. The product of high ethical living is converted in the end into the light of Self. The mind acquires the heat, so to say, through the ethical process of devotion and self-sacrifice, but the light of non-dual experience is above all. Mere shravana (listening) and manana (cogitation) cannot give rise to the experience of Self in the Self itself. Fire is not a modification of heat but it is the culmination of heat. The same applies to the experience of reality. The new light is created in our inner being which converts the whole conception of Self into the infinity of Sat-Chit-Ananda.

It may be noted that Shankara holds that non-dual cognition is not the direct result of a particular method or discipline. The Self is ever-achieved, but to make the ever-achieved a realised experience we need methods of meditation and discipline, which slowly remove the covering of nescience. As long as a fire is not kindled, we rub pieces of wood together, but when the fire is kindled, the process is given up. The experience of the sages, expressed in the classical writings, is that Truth is grasped through deep inner communion.

Contemplation (nididhyasana) is the central point of our consciousness in which the empirical consciousness is fully absorbed, and then follows the state called Shanti. It is in the state of Shanti that we experience reflections of the great and infinite bliss. Nididhyasana is a mode by which the intellectual knowledge of the identity of jiva (the individual soul) and Brahman (the Absolute) is turned into direct experience. Without the impressions gathered through a strict ethical discipline, as indicated in the Bhagavad Gita and elsewhere, our contemplation is not complete. ‘One who has not given up the wicked tendencies and conduct, he can never attain to the ultimate Truth’ (Katha Upanishad 1.2.24). This is the keynote of the life of contemplation according to Shankara.

Renunciation (Sanyasa)

In the philosophy of Shankara, the highest good is called Moksha, that is, freedom from all the limitations of nescience. It is experience of the Self. It is not the production of something which is not already present. It is an experience of Truth which is eternal.

Realisation is achieved through jnana (higher knowledge). Moksha is not obtained through karma (ritualistic action or action generally) because through karma we achieve a result which is absent now. Moksha is not subject to action. The eternal Truth is not subject to intellectual knowledge nor is it the result of any karma. All actions and their fruition are subject to annihilation. Karma applies to the realm of relativity but Atman is above relativity. Experience is to be obtained only through the Self and not through any mental activity.

Purification of the mind is an essential antecedent to release. This purification is not the result of actionlessness. In this preliminary state, good actions performed selflessly by way of adoration to the supreme Being and benevolence are most helpful. The real meaning of the philosophy of Shankara is renunciation in action, that is, to practise selfless service and devotion.

It is accepted that, in order to realise the ideal, we should be able if necessary to give up whatever we consider pleasant and valuable in life. All emotional ties with life, home, children and wealth have to be relaxed if they impede our progress on the path. The essential teaching is that the individual’s point of view, which gives precedence to worldly matters over the pursuit of the ideal, has to be modified and reformed. It is the reversal of our valuation of worldly matters which really counts. When we are loaded with the cares and worries of life which are caused by our attachment to external objects, we can hardly walk the path of the higher knowledge. A purely worldly life will destroy our power of right discernment and will make the realisation of the ideal an impossibility. In order to see the bright sun of the Self, which is bliss absolute and freedom transcendent, we have to keep our vision free of the clouds and dust of worldliness.

The abandonment of physical objects of desire means to assign a proper value to them from the higher point of view. For the enquirer, abandonment of desires is not like the starvation of the body or the mind, but it is like keeping a fast to create better powers of assimilation and better health.

The monastic life (sanyasa) is a high ideal but it is not essential for a knower of Truth to be a sanyasin, nor is sanyasa based on aversion for the world or personal pride. Sanyasa is a part of the discipline; it is not the metaphysical end of life. In some quarters the sages of non-duality have assigned the highest position to sanyasa. But the Shruti does not support this point of view unconditionally or absolutely. The Rishis of the Upanishads were not all monks. When sanyasa became an ideal, its object was singleminded service of mankind, unhampered by any worldly ties. Plato ordained such an order which was also to be open to women. It is true that we remain bound and our service is incomplete, unless we give up all taste for sense-objects and learn to relish the delight of devotion, study and contemplation.

Monasteries were established all over India with a view to serve the people with learning and philosophy, and not so that the monks could pass their lives in an idle way devoted to their individual good. In certain passages of Shankara’s writings the monastic life is emphasized as an essential to Self-cognition and the attainment of turiya (subject-objectless contemplation). But if we study his writings carefully, such monasticism is seen to imply not a special Order but a point of view of the inner life. It is merely a most refined feeling towards the world which negates attachment to all unreal objects. It is not necessarily renouncing the world.

The Jnani (illumined sage) can become a monk or live an active life in the world. Truth does not depend on conduct on any narrow lines. The theory of the ashramas (four stages of life culminating in sanyasa) does not imply that monastic life is an essential. One can be a spiritual renunciate while occupying a throne, as is clear from the instance of King Janaka.

Meditation and Cheerfulness

A short talk and practice session led by the Warden of Shanti Sadan

One of the qualities that can help us on our path is cheerfulness. This does not mean the temporary uplift brought about by good news, but a well-established normal state of well-being and magnanimity that extends its warmth to the whole of humankind.

For someone who knows the inner meaning of life, and has knowledge of the deeper self, cheerfulness is independent of anything external. Their cheerfulness is based on the certain knowledge that the nature of the Self is bliss.

Such cheerfulness is not exuberance, which can easily turn to despondency. In fact, the ideal state of mind is one that is no longer conditioned by the pairs of opposites and our response to them: success and failure, admiration and censure, pleasure and pain. The mental and emotional energy is conserved, and rests, as it were, at the centre of our being, and not at its vulnerable edges.

Many of us give lip service to cheerfulness. Which of us does not have occasion to turn to a subdued companion, and say: ‘Cheer up!’, or even more: ‘For goodness’ sake, cheer up!’ But how few have any understanding of precisely how we might bring about this mental uplift, or the deeper implications of such self-help. For to cheer up implies that we are the master of our mind and have the power to choose our thoughts.

It is a step forward in wisdom when we know how to give the command ‘Cheer up’ to our own mind. To do this effectively is no easy course. For we will need a clear knowledge of the trends and tendencies of our mind. And here we may discover, or come to suspect, that certain patterns of thought and feeling run counter to the cheerful spirit of magnanimity and well-being that we are encouraged to cultivate.

On the other hand, if we want to do good in this world, let us be cheerful, in the sense of fostering a calm and cheerful mind. It is not necessary to be hyperactive in order to be a helpful presence to those around us. Thoughts and feelings are never sealed up within us; they leak, and their general atmosphere passes into other minds. There is a mute eloquence that is often more effective than any outward teaching.

But how in practice are we to coax our mind to cheer up? The resourceful approach, common to several wisdom traditions, includes talking to your mind, as if it were a pupil put under your charge. Be convinced that the mind is teachable in this special way. Invent exercises in mind-management. Make decisions and stick to them. Do this in trivial matters to start with. Tell the mind: ‘After twenty steps, you will cross the road.’ Then do so, counting and crossing with concentration, and avoid corner cutting. Again, you enter a store with your list of items you need. Just for one day keep to the list, and smile at the fertility of excuses the mind makes, desperate to get you to buy more. Tell the mind: ‘That can wait until tomorrow.’ Refuse to listen to the mind’s moans about ‘missed opportunities’, or your killjoy meanness. The point to appreciate in all these instances is that you are the master of your mind, and these practices, done now and again, will reinstate your self-sovereignty and also free up the mental energy in order to bring out its higher purpose. You may, as yet, lack the alertness and will to banish instantaneously negative thoughts, but you have made a promising start.

Cheerfulness is not just a manufactured response or a piece of play-acting that lacks sincerity. Real cheerfulness is based on a deeper understanding of the unity and bliss of the true Self. As the coverings of wrong identification and erroneous ideas are removed, the reflected light of Self begins to pervade our inner life. This lightening of the mind is effected gradually, step by step. But the final realisation is not one more step, because Truth transcends all temporal, spatial and mental dimensions. The coverings are known never to have had real existence, and only the light has reality.

So there are good grounds for accepting that cheerfulness is a natural virtue of the mind, which will express itself as long as we are not smothered by the cares and complexities of life. In early childhood this joy easily surfaces, as long as the child feels secure and protected. It is based on no outer factor; and even when there are tears, these are usually soon replaced by smiles and laughter.

Life itself is characterised by a constant quest for joy, and every human being has their own idea of what, for them, will generate the happiness they long for. But difficulties and disappointments occur when we base our happiness on the acquisition of outer things, because these are never wholly under our control. A more reliable course is to learn to track down the source of happiness in our own being and to work to recover that original cheerfulness.

But we cannot leave cheerfulness to chance, nor turn the clock back to an infancy which, though lit by joy and laughter, is yet unstable. In fact no great virtue grows by itself, and if neglected, will wither. On the contrary, if we want true cheerfulness, we have to tutor our mind consciously, for in the last analysis, every mood we entertain is nothing more than the appearance and disappearance of thoughts of a particular kind.

It is through practices in mind-management, such as those mentioned before, that the inner sun of our true authority will be revealed in our own experience; then, indeed, we shall have reason to live in good cheer, as well as the inner power that allows our happiness to spread beyond our individualised nature, and be enjoyed by others.

Practices on the Theme of Cheerfulness and Bliss

Inner Preparation

For a moment, reflect consciously on the blessings you enjoy, and resolve to bear cheerfully any difficulties you are experiencing just now, and which you cannot rectify through your own efforts.

Breathing with I am Bliss

Become aware of the motion and sound of your breathing process. Slow the breathing slightly, maintaining your awareness of the breath. Then, at the end of out-breath, say to yourself: ‘I am bliss’, remembering that the home of bliss is not the fleeting thoughts, but the essential consciousness which is the underlying support of the ever-changing mind and world, and is the same reality-principle that is in us all.

Text for Meditation

JOY ETERNAL, UNBROKEN PEACE IS YOURS,

NAY, YOU ARE THAT. REALISE YOUR CENTRE,

AND BE THERE FOR EVER AND EVER.

This text applies to everybody. It is expressed in terms of ‘you’ and ‘yours’, as if the statement came from an external authority. But it can also be heard as the voice of Truth within, awakening us to the infinite and eternal reality at the core of our being. In this way the self as teacher guides the self as pupil to the highest good.

Giving Up and Letting Go

The Bhagavad Gita Chapter 18, part one.

The final chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, the eighteenth, is the culmination and summary of the whole teachings.

It is one of several chapters that begin with a question. Here the student asks, what is the precise meaning of and difference between ‘renunciation’ (sanyasa) and ‘letting go’ (tyaga)?

We might wonder why the exact distinction between two such similar words should be important to the student at this point. But there is a reason why he wants to be clear about this, which we can understand by reviewing what came before.

The Gita begins with a situation that will feel familiar to many of us. The student is facing a crisis and feels that all the options are bad. He is paralysed by indecision and thinks it would be better to live on alms than to suffer or cause suffering in his present course.

The teacher advises him not to abandon the situation in which he finds himself, because it will not solve the difficulty. The fundamental problem is not in the world situation, but in his understanding of it, and of his own nature. The real solution to the student’s problem is to know the truth of his own being, that is, the reality in all.

The truth, we are told, is that there is one universal Self-Reality, untouched by divisions, conflicts, limitations or sufferings of any kind. It is the mind and senses that create separations, vulnerabilities and suffering. The way to the liberating knowledge is not to give up the world, which is not possible because the body cannot be removed from the process of cause and effect. The right step is to mentally let go of attachment to passing phenomena and events, including the results of our own actions. Living in this way will purify the mind and establish us in knowledge of the true Self. This is the essence of the teachings given in chapter two of the Gita.

The student does not fully understand what he has been told, and chapter three begins with him asking a question: ‘If you believe that knowledge is better than action, why are you advising me to continue in this terrible worldly activity?’ (He is caught up as a combatant in war.)

It has already been taught that it is action done in the right way which leads to knowledge, but as the student has evidently not understood, the teacher gives a further explanation. He says that how we should proceed on the path to Self-knowledge depends on our current standpoint. There are, he says, two standpoints, and two paths proceeding from them.

One standpoint is that of seekers who have the indirect knowledge that Self is fundamentally distinct from all mental and physical forms and is not limited by them. Their path proceeds on this basis, and so it is called the way of knowledge, Jnana-yoga (also sometimes called ‘Samkhya’ in the Gita.)

The other standpoint is occupied by those who aspire to liberation but currently have the conviction and experience that they are individuals and are bound to act in the world and undergo the consequences of actions and events. So their path is called the way of action, Karma-yoga.

At some places in the Gita, Karma-Yoga is called simply Yoga, meaning action done as a way to make progress on the path, in contrast to Jnana-Yoga which is based on the conviction that the true Self does not act at all. And ‘Yoga’ may also refer to all or any of the methods and steps leading to Self-realisation. Whether ‘Yoga’ means Karma-Yoga or ‘all of the ways’, is usually clear from the context.

It is sometimes suggested that in the Bhagavad Gita and related teachings there is a third main form of Yoga. The idea is that Jnana-Yoga means practices appropriate for people who are intellectually-oriented, Karma-Yoga is for physically active types, and that there is also ‘Bhakti-Yoga’ or the ‘Way of devotion’, for those in whom the emotions predominate.

It is true that the Gita teaches ways of training and refining all the intellectual, emotional and active elements of human nature. But the Gita does not distinguish types of aspirants and prescribe different forms of Yoga in this way. An intellectual type who still feels him or herself to be an individual acting in the world, must necessarily practise Karma-Yoga, the way of action. A person who works with their hands, who has come through their practice to know with intuitive certainty that the true Self does not act, is a Jnana Yogi, a practicant of Knowledge-Yoga.

So in the Gita itself we do not find the teaching that there are three forms of Yoga, action, devotion and knowledge, for active, emotional, and intellectual types respectively. It would be more in keeping with the text to say that in the Gita, devotion is the way and the way is devotion. Devotion means giving all one is and has to the ideal, and the way to realisation of the ideal is to give all one is and has. In practice, this Devotion-Yoga takes one of the two forms: devotion through Knowledge for those who know the true Self to be transcendent, partless and unchanging; and devotion through action for those who feel identified with the body and mind that act in the world.

Some aspirants may be more or less consistently grounded in one of these standpoints; others may find themselves alternating between them at different times, for example when practising meditation or engaged in daily tasks. The essential point is that one cannot be simultaneously in both; we cannot be convinced that the Self is actionless, and at the same time feel that we are the one who does action and gets the results. If we are identified with our actions, the best we can do is offer them and the results to Truth. If we are convinced that our true Self transcends forms and action, then we have no actions to offer and the practice is to reinforce and maintain the sense of identity with the True Self.

Shankara, the great philosophersage, shows in his commentary how this distinction makes all the Gita teachings consistent with the principle of non-duality. Where the Gita advises some aspirants to act, and to dedicate their actions to Truth, this is not to contradict the principle of non-duality by making a real distinction between the actor and the one to whom the action is dedicated. The teaching simply recognises the level of the aspirant’s understanding, and advises what will lead to inner purification and through that to higher knowledge.

The student in the Gita has heard all these teachings and distinctions in the preceding discourses, and now, at the beginning of the last, he is evidently thinking carefully about what he needs to do. He has been told that he should not renounce the world or his situation as a soldier, but that he should dedicate himself to the supreme Truth and let go of attachment to actions and their outcomes. Apparently he notices that in the teachings on renunciation and letting go, two words have been used almost interchangeably, and now, with a sincere wish to understand clearly what is required of him, he says, ‘I want to know the truth about sanyasa and tyaga, distinctly.’ The answer given is:

Sages say that sanyasa is to give up (nyas) actions arising from desire; the learned say that tyaga is to give up (tyaga) the results of all actions. (18: 2)

This seems clear enough, but to put it into practice we have to understand what is meant by actions arising from desire. Some desires are legitimate and necessary. So what exactly are the ‘actions arising from desire’ that are to be given up? For example, should we give up acts of self-sacrifice, charity and discipline? The answer given by the teacher (Truth incarnate) is unambiguous:

Acts of self-sacrifice (yajna), giving (dāna) and discipline (tapas), should not be given up (tyaga); they are necessary, they purify the wise. But even these actions are to be done letting go (tyaga) attachment and the results. This is my firm and highest thought. (18: 5-6)

The wording makes clear that actions are to be done without attachment to the results, or to the act itself, that is, without holding on to the idea ‘I am a sacrificer’ or ‘I am a giver’.

A point worth noting is that we might expect the Gita to say in verse five that there should not be sanyasa of self-sacrifice and the rest which are not to be given up, but in fact the text uses the word tyaga again, apparently ignoring the distinction just made. In explanation it may be said that the usual reason for making sacrifices and gifts is a desire (perhaps unconscious) to gain some personal reward from them, and that this should be given up (tyaga). But the real reason (even if unknown) why acts of sacrifice, charity and discipline should be done, is that they purify, and this result cannot be given up.

Shankara says that these teachings must be intended for Karma Yogis, those who feel themselves to be individual actors in the world, and not for those established in Jnana, knowledge of the true Self as actionless. It is inconceivable, he says, that the latter could give up their duty out of delusion or pain, so this teaching cannot be addressed to them. Theirs is the highest form of giving up action, the knowledge ‘I do nothing at all’ because action is done by forms of matter and energy (the ‘gunas’), while Self, Atman, is Brahman, the transcendent Absolute.

The Gita teaches that to give up an action that belongs to one’s duties and responsibilities is renunciation based on delusion (tamas guna), and harmful consequences must follow. And if an action is given up because of the trouble or discomfort involved, then this renunciation is based on desire and aversion (rajas guna), and it will bring the practicant no closer to liberation. If an action is done simply out of need and responsibility, without attachment to the action or the fruit, then it comes from inner light and clarity (sattva guna). (18: 9)

When the mind is purified, full of light and clarity, discrimination between Self and not-Self arises. It is in this way that Karma-Yoga—fulfilling one’s responsibilities without attachment to actions or the results—leads through purity of mind to knowledge of the actionless Self. For Shankara and teachers who follow him in the nondual tradition, this is a central point in the philosophy and practice. (18: 9-12)

The teaching in this chapter so far has focused on renunciation and letting go, in response to the student’s initial question. It has been shown how all action, done as an offering, can and should be a way to purification and knowledge. So the teaching now turns to action in general.

First it is pointed out that action involves various factors, including the body, objects and motives. The Self cannot be or have any such factors, so this shows clearly that it is a mistake to think of the Self as one that acts. (18:13-17)

Actions and events are formed of matter, energy and the laws of nature, or the ‘gunas’ as they were understood when the Gita was composed. As we have seen, what is important is that our actions should be ‘sattvic’, that is, characterised by inner light, clarity and balance. The Gita goes on to further analyse the components of action, showing how they can be sattvic and thus helpful, but may also be rajasic or tamasic. The components of action include the knowledge (or at least the belief) on which it is based, the one who acts, the understanding (buddhi), will-power, and the pleasure expected from the action. (18:18-19)

Sattvic knowledge is said to be knowledge that sees the one Reality abiding in all, while rajas sees differences and the tamasic view is totally onesided. A sattvic doer is unselfish and unaffected by success and failure; the rajasic agent is passionate and pleasure-driven; the tamasic is obstinate and lazy. A right understanding of duty and freedom is sattvic; rajasic understanding is mistaken, and the tamasic understanding is perverse. Sattvic will-power controls the mind and life-energies for the way; rajasic will-power holds on to methods, pleasures and wealth for their results; tamasic will-power clings to sleep, fear, grief, desire. Sattvic pleasure involves restraint at first but is like nectar in the end and arises from purity of mind. Rajasic pleasure springs from sense-contacts, it is like nectar at first, but often turns sour afterwards. Tamas takes pleasure in delusions and laziness. (18:20-39)

The Gita goes on to say that the aptitudes and vocations of individuals also have their roots in the play of causality and natural forces that bring us into being. Constantly fulfilling one’s own responsibilities with contentment leads to success. By doing the duties that life presents to us, we give reverence to That which is the source of all, and this brings the inner purity in which Self-knowledge arises. (18: 40-46)

We are advised that it is better to fulfil the roles and responsibilities presented by our own aptitudes and circumstances, however imperfect they may seem, than to try to take on those of another, even if they look superior. Such initiatives incur unforeseen consequences and anxiety. Nothing is absolutely perfect in this world. No censure comes to us if we do our own duties as an offering. (18: 47-48)

The Gita has now explained in detail how through right renunciation—doing one’s duty as an offering without attachment to actions or the results—we can attain what is called the highest perfection (siddhi). This is the perfection of being free of action (naishkarmyasiddhi), established in the Knowledge that the true Self is totally transcendent and free of all actions, causes, effects, desires and duties. And next the Gita proceeds to teach how one who attains this perfection thus also reaches Brahman, the supreme Knowledge. (18: 49-50)

to be continued

P.H.