Get Out of Your Ego’s Comfort Zone
We’ll continue with Sri Ramana’s teachings from Thus Spake Ramana. We’re on number 79.
“What is realization? Is it to see God with four hands bearing a conch, wheel, club, etc?”
I doubt any of you had that thought.
“But even if God should appear in that form,” which he might if you’re an orthodox Hindu, or if he would appear in the form of Christ, or Mother Mary, or Buddha on a lotus leaf, or Vishnu lying in an ocean of milk, or in any other form, would that be realization?
So, “Even if God should appear in any form, how is the disciple’s ignorance wiped out by such a vision?”
Would it really be of any benefit to you, other than to have something to talk about to impress other people with? Would there be any transformation from a vision like that?
“Such appearance is phenomenal and illusory. All perceptions, sensory perceptions, are indirect or secondary knowledge.”
This is very significant, because the modern age is built on the philosophy of empiricism, which says that this knowledge through the senses is primary, not secondary. There’s been an entire shift in the appreciation of the value, and even the awareness of the possibility of direct knowledge that is not through the senses, because the senses lie, and they require interpretations. They require language, they require a symbolic grid. So there are several levels of separation from the Real, through anything that is sensed—whether it is sensed as if it were a phenomenal reality or a hallucination. Would a vision of God be reality or hallucinatory? But aren’t they both hallucinatory, in the sense that they are simply projections that are emanating from the consciousness and causing a separation from the direct knowledge of the Self that is in fact the dreamer and the cause of the dream of all that appears.
So, Ramana goes on:
“The truth must be eternal realization.”
Eternal. Eternal doesn’t mean perpetual, it doesn’t mean if it lasts a long time then it’s real—if the vision doesn’t go away—no, it’s not that. Eternal is the now. It’s what takes you out of time into the Real, because time itself is a secondary phenomenon, because reality doesn’t appear in a linear succession of events—it’s all here now. And only when it’s all here now are you all here now, and that is the realization.
So, “The direct perception is ever-present experience. There must be a seer. The present superimposition of the body as the ‘I’ is so deep rooted that the vision before the eyes is considered pratyaksha.”
Meaning, as we saw before, self-evident. But not the seer himself. So, the ‘I’ is the seer, not the body through which the sensory perception of secondary phenomena are perceived.
“The seer alone is real and eternal.”
But no one knows what the seer is anymore because the seer is identified with the mechanism through which sensory perception is received. And therefore there is identification with the body. And as soon as that happens the seer is lost, the Real Self is forgotten. And once there is identification with the body—because the body is mortal, it suffers pain, it’s very hypersensitive to change—there’s anxiety, there’s fear. And then to compensate that there are defense mechanisms and a succession of layers of superimposition of buffers against the Real, because the Real is traumatic once there is identification with the body. Because the Real is—the only Real that is recognized is what we call Real 1. Real 1 is the mortal body and its world of pain. No one wants to be in that without defense mechanisms, without drugs, without cigarettes, without alcohol, without boyfriends and girlfriends—without all the bufferings of a comfort zone that keeps one from facing the truth.
So Ramana says:
“The seer alone is real and eternal. If you are not the eternal seer, you’re not the real seer, you are simply a subject.”
Meaning, subjected to the phenomenal matrix of karma that creates particular events that get seen in order to awaken you. And often it’s only pain and sickness and suffering that can awaken you. And therefore that karma becomes the engine of liberation, until one has discovered who is seer, and that you are the creator of your own karma—not the victim of it.
So, “Abiding in the Self and being the Self,”
Not seeing the Self, because the Self can’t be seen, the Self isn’t a Hindu God or a Christian God or a God of any kind that can be perceived with the eyes.
“And so it is being the Self that is realization.”
Now you know Hinduism is a very late form of what was called the Adi Sanatan Dharma. And originally they didn’t have four-armed gods and this whole panoply of gods and goddesses of different shapes, including the theriomorphic ones—the animals and the gods who would incarnate as animals or as trees or as other kinds of beings that created a kind of a pantheistic approach to reality.
But that was already a secondary metaphoric attempt to explain the fact that all is God, all is the one Self. But the original form in which God was worshipped was…
This Post Has 4 Comments
Corné
31 Jul 2021Would it be possible to be able to see the rest of this teaching?
Vajra Sat Yoga
1 Aug 2021Hi Corné,
This is an excerpt from a longer teaching posted on our Members Section with the same title. You are welcome to sign up for your free 10-day trial: https://bit.ly/3oqFcCe to view the entire archive of Shunyamurti’s teachings.
Namaste and Blessings!
Corné
8 Aug 2021Thank you Vajra, but I am already a member. But the different ‘levels’ make it a bit confusing. Does this mean I have to upgrade my membership?
Vajra Sat Yoga
9 Aug 2021Hi Corne, Thanks for clarifying. This teaching was posted on the Members section under the same title on Fri, Jul-23.If you are not able to find it, please send an email to Purusha so he can help you. You do not have to upgrade your membership to see it! In-joy it!