The Scalar Power of the Vajra Fills the Ether

The main difficulty I find for the Western mind—Western ego-mind—is the paradigm shift from the belief in the ontological reality of the world as a self-standing physical reality, into which one is born, rather than realizing the world as a dream within consciousness, and the Self as an unknowable consciousness that is transcendent of the world. But once that shift has been made then there really are no further obstacles to sustaining the freedom that that paradigm shift gives, because once there is a realization that one is not the character that one is playing, then all of the character’s anxieties and emotional issues all drop away. And not only is the Self realized, but the nonduality of duality and nonduality is attained, so that the character also surrenders and realizes the Self. But it’s not the character that first realizes the Self, it’s the Self remembering that it’s not the character, because Self is always Self-realized, and the character does not reach the Self, but the Self penetrates into the character, with its revelation of itself which is the grace that is given to the character by oneself. And without that grace that you give to your character, the transfiguration and the liberation will not be attained. So it is that union of duality and nonduality that is the key to that final attainment of freedom. And if you read Sri Ramana, this is the main point that he is always emphasizing to every visitor—just make this one paradigm shift and then all the dominoes fall spontaneously; there are no other questions or doubts, or worries, or issues, because all the thoughts, all the questions, are the character’s questions, not that of the Self. And the character, being unreal, can never find its way out of the labyrinth that it is, but the Self can give the grace that expels all the thoughts and the emotions out of the character, through the presence of your Being, without doing anything. So I hope that’s clear. So if you will allow me, I was going to read a few more selections of Ramana from the Talks, and I think basically these selections reiterate the point that I was just making from Ramana. So Mr. Sastri arrived, and he had a doubt about which he said had been cleared on reading a commentary on Atma Vidya, a book by Shankara—but the doubt was: “How can the world be an imagination or a thought? Thought is a function of the mind. The mind is located in the brain. The brain is within the skull of a human being who’s only an infinitesimal part of the universe. How then could the universe be contained in the cells of the brain?” Right? So this is the current belief system, I think, of the majority of the people in the West, and you see how the educated Indians have been contaminated by it, right? Because this man was a philosophy teacher at the Madras University, right? So he was not however, an Indian philosopher, he was a Western philosopher, and I think that’s one of the results of colonialism, unfortunately. And so Sri Bhagavan had to give a very in-depth answer. But I’ll read some of it without going into all of it. He says: “So long as the mind is considered to be an entity of the kind you just described, the doubt will persist. But what is mind? Let us consider. The world is seen when you wake up from sleep. It comes after the I-thought. The head rises up, the mind becomes active. But what is the world? It is objects spread out in space. Who comprehends it? The mind. Is not the mind which comprehends space itself space?” This is a very deep point. What is your mind except the space of awareness in which those objects appear? And the space of your mind is the real space that you have projected—the mind has projected—as being outside of the body that is identified with, as if it’s the source of consciousness. And the word space in Sanskrit is akash. OK? But akash means not only space, but it also means ether. And nowadays they have rediscovered that ether is in fact a reality, right? Einstein denied ether and he was proven to be wrong, and now ether is recognized, as is the plasma state of matter, which is that state that is superconductive, electromagnetic, and is the basis of the electrical nature of the entire universe, that is interconnected through that power. And there is also another power that is underneath that, that is structural to the ether, that is referred to as scalar waves. I won’t go into all of that, but it is basically an ether-based theory. So Ramana says: “The mind is the mental level of ether, manakasha, which is the subtler level of it, which is contained in an even more subtle level, the transcendental, or chidakasha. And the mind is thus the ether principle, the akasha tattva. Being the principle of knowledge as well, gyana tattva, it is identified with ether by metaphysics. Considering it to be ether, the akash, there will be no difficulty in reconciling the apparent contradiction in your question. Pure mind, suddha manas, is akash, space, or ether.” And when it’s understood as space, it’s all-containing; when it’s understood as ether, it’s the vajra power of transmitting energy through the entire field of the cosmos, which is all interconnected and quantum entangled—meaning it doesn’t go just at the speed of light, it is instantaneously present at all points. Whatever is interconnected is immediately affected by any change in any manifestation, any node of itself. Right? So: “The dynamic, the rajas and the tamas aspects of mind, operate as the gross objects and activities and energies of the world. Thus, the whole universe is only mental.” But mental in a stepped-down way, so more and more congealed and dense aspects of the mind are referred to as material, or energetic in the rajasic level. “Again, consider a man who dreams. He goes to sleep, and he locks the door so nothing can intrude, and yet when he dreams he sees a whole world in which people live and move, and seems to be a self-standing world. But did that panorama get in through the doors? No, it was just unfolded by the mind. So how could the brain hold a vast country like appears in the dream in its tiny cells? This must explain the statement that the universe is a mere thought, or a series of thoughts.” And then a rebellious swami asked, “Yeah, but I feel a toothache. Is that only a thought?” And Ramana says, “Yes.” And then he says, “Yeah, well, why can I not think that there’s no toothache and then cure myself?” And Ramana says, “Well, look, when you’re engrossed in other thoughts, one doesn’t feel the toothache. You can actually forget about it, if you’re busy in other things, or even if you’re in deep meditation. When you sleep, the toothache isn’t felt.” And he says, “Yeah, but when I wake up, the toothache is there again.” Ramana says, “Well, such is the firm conviction you have in the reality of the world that it is not easily shaken off, but the world does not become, for that reason, any more real than you are yourself as an individual.” Right? So you are the toothache, in a sense, as Ramana is saying; because you believe you are this body that has teeth and has aches. But that’s a thought, and if you can really get rid of that thought, there won’t be any pain. That’s been discovered by hypnotists for a long time, and in fact, in India is where it was proven, the first surgery was done without anesthesia in India, because the British who were doing the surgery, you know, there was a shortage of ether, actually, is what they were using in those times, and they turned to hypnosis, and they could put people in such deep states, they could do total surgery of, of major kinds without any chemical anesthesia whatsoever. That’s still done in China with acupuncture, which puts them in the same kind of a trance state, and they do major surgery. And in the West, one of the major things that kills people in surgery is an overdose of the anesthesia. So that, you know, a little bit more than putting you to sleep will kill you, and micrograms of difference can make the difference between whether you come back from it or not. You may not care that you don’t come back from it because you’re in a blissful light in an out-of-body experience, but nonetheless, the anesthesiologist is going to get sued up the yin-yang by the relatives. So in any case, the point is, if you can do it with hypnosis, you can obviously achieve this with meditation, and if you are Self-realized, there’s going to be less and less concern with pain, and even if it’s there, it’s there without it being traumatic. And then the guy asked a question, “Well, there’s a Sino-Japanese war going on right now, and if that’s only an imagination, could Sri Bhagavan imagine the contrary and put an end to the war for us? And Ramana says, “Well, the Bhagavan of the questioner…”