In The Jungle House.

A note addressed to mysel --

--

During March 23 to February 24, I lived somewhere in a house in the jungle. You can conveniently call it a farm-house as well. With me, the only round the clock companion there, was a female pitbul. She too knew well this reality, though her owner came everyday to visit her and to give her the morning and evening meals. I too shared with her a part of my meals everyday. She had learned to live and accommodate the conditions.

My another such a great companion was my mobile handset. I often write down great blogs everyday.

I had no books nor even the note-books any, available to me. 

About 11 months passed in such a way.

Then one sunny day, as it was winter in the February month of the year 24, I had to leave that place and shifted to a city, where I had earlier lived for so long. To say almost 45 years.

This time too I was living there at the mercy of those who knew not what they should do of me. They neither let me go away, nor could help me living a simple life in my own way. God knows what was on their mind.

So one fine day of August 4th I somehow managed to run away from them with a bit of acrimony, I felt they too couldn't stop me from going away.

I came up to this another Jungle-house.

Far better than the earlier one where I lived for almost eleven months. 

Here where presently the temperature is 32° in the room and 34° outside, and the electricity plays hide and seek for hours, I'm doing penance / तपस्  which I always did in the past in the extreme conditions, in the another jungle house at so many other places. Jungles too have their own pleasures and pains, troubles risks and joys and difficulties. But even then, one can live in peace and tranquility if mind if one can see that it's the way of life.

The External conditions and situations hardly matter.

If one can see the 5 modes of the mind are but the whole and entire personal life, and one is aware that sleep too is one of those 5 modes of mind, one can sit in the chair or walk in the fields or road with a mind Empty of Thoughts.

सोचो भी मत, सोओ भी मत! 

Was the only mantra I often followed in whatever external conditions might be.

There I came to see how sleep is again an activity (वृत्ति) - mode if mind where "ego" sustains.

So Either on the bed or an other place I could remember :

सोचो भी मत, सोओ भी मत! 

Don't think, and don't go to sleep!

Was what I often reminded to myself.

Even if I couldn't sleep it hardly matters.

I felt. 

The body is of no consequence any. Let the body perform its so many different and various actions. Let the mind too its own.

I didn't try to practice silence or stop the mind from chattering whenever it did.

I had earlier studied The Patanjala Yoga-Sutra and knew well theoretically and  satisfactorily what I could understand in my own way. The nirodha pariNAma, the ekAgratA pariNAma and the samAdhi pariNAma, trayamekatraM saMyamaH.

As elaborated in the four chapters :

samAdhi-sAdhana-vibhUti-kaivalya.

The many kinds of samAdhi like :

असंप्रज्ञात, संप्रज्ञात,

सविकल्प, निर्विकल्प,

सवितर्क, निर्वितर्क,

केवल निर्विकल्प, सहज निर्विकल्प

But in the jungle house I had plenty of time to contemplate about what all this really meant, and their importance. 

I understood how

त्रयमेकत्र संयमः

is to be practiced, and how it helps in attaining certain mysterious and occult powers mind.

But I had already in my mind that these Powers are as such in the waking state only  

स्वविषयासंप्रयोगे चित्तस्वरूपानुकार इवेन्द्रियाणां प्रत्याहारः।।2.54।।

व्युत्थाननिरोधसंस्कारयोरभिभवप्रादुर्भावौ निरोधक्षणचित्तान्वयो निरोधपरिणामः।।3.9।।

In this way I realized the same power that manifests as Siddhi in the waking state is latent there in the state of samAdhi, and which could be any of the kinds said earlier.

Here again all this comes to the mind when at 32° temperature, I am writing all this.

Even now, I've no books available to me any to refer to. I write with the memory.  Einstein once said :

"Time is Illusion".

J. Krishnamurti, in his earlier writings, "Poems and Parables" wrote down, 

"Time and Space exist(s) in mind only."

As Time and Space are interdependent, we could say exist or exists according to whether we believe them two distinct or one and the same. And therefore Time is illusion for the observer who too is not other than the observed.

J. Krishnamurti knew well that There is but only one and the same Reality that -- because of consciousness appears as the  observed and the observer.

Einstein had yet to ascertain and know this. 

While mind itself has no independent existence, how the Objective Reality may have any?

UpaniShad declares :

सर्वं खल्विदं ब्रह्म, एकं सत् विप्राः बहुधा वदन्ति, अयमात्मा ब्रह्म, तत्वमसि, अहं ब्रह्मास्मि, प्रज्ञानं ब्रह्म ...

***

Why I Don't Die?

P O E T R Y

--

Since How Long,

I Have Been Here? 

Isn't The Question Absurd?

For I'm Always Now,

And I'm Always Here.

Why I Don't Die? 

For, I can't Die!

Neither As The First Person,

Or As The Second Person,

Never As The Third Person. 

For I'm Never A Person.

And Just Because,

I'm Not, Someone Else,

Other Than I.

I Just Can't Objectify I, 

Nor Can Subjectify I. 

And As An Identity,

Neither Can Identify.

I may Though Appear, 

Voluntarily, Or Involuntarily,

Constantly And / Or Incessantly,

Going On And On And On, 

Deteriorating, Lost Sight Of I,

Still I Survive On, On And On! 

That's The Only Mystery, 

That's The Only Secret,

And The Truth Is :

I Wish Not, I Need Not,

And May Never Will! 

Why I Can't Die, 

Why I Don't Die!

***

Ode to the Wanderer!

P O E T R Y 

The Self,

And The Love Of The Self.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost!

--

One may wander away from God,

Just because One doesn't know God,

Or,  perhaps can't imagine or think,

Who or what exactly God may mean,

One may wander away from Truth,

Lured either by lust, desire or greed,

One may perhaps repent later on,

Wondering on how, I will be freed, 

From the sin inadverdently committed.

One may either through ignorance,

Or may negligence or Indulgence,

Might have committed a deadly sin,

Wandering away from peace and joy,

Might have regretted  for the same, 

Full of self-pity, remorse, full of shame,

For whatever reason, whatever cause,

One can never wander away from Self, 

That radiantly shines there one's heart.

Self in all its kindness, calls one back,

Forgives one for all one's mistake,

And if even once, one gives it a chance, 

Held in its Beloved's embrace, dance!

This is no wandering somewhere away, 

It's but the role and it's Self's all play, 

For all love Self, and Self loves all,

The distances all vanish in the Self! 

The two were always one and the same,

One never wandered, away from Self!

***

 

 

You may Wand

Ambiguity, Anxiety and Agony.

Thought, Thinker and Thinking. 

--

With the emergence and manifestation of Life, which is essentially non-personal knowing of life, without an individual being as the knower, the Life-form at once gets associated, attached and then ultimately identified with the same. This sense of I'm this and such a being in the world, which I'm, though apart from, is neither me nor other than me.

The ambiguity and uncertainty about me and the world that belongs to me causes conflict in me about how to stay always happy in this world.

Though happiness is inconspicuous, the ambiguity, anxiety, agony, displeasure, disappointment are so evident that can't be denied. The fear and the apprehension about the future that invariably belongs to me and is like my world that is in my perception, could never be got rid of by any or whatsoever effort on my part.

Am I wrong in my approach in dealing with this matter?

I but certainly know that there is always something like a phenomenon, where I go through an experience, say like of the ambiguity, anxiety, fear, apprehension or agony and ruminate about the same in the very next moment or later on.

I hardly question or suspect, if I really think, or it is the thought that enters my consciousness, stays there for a moment, assumes reality and is gone off in the next moment!

If I am alert and attentive about this whole phenomenon / happening, soon it would be revealed to me that I am neither the thought nor I'm thinking. In the instant I can be aware that it's only the mind that assumes the dual role of the thought and the thinking together. If I can see this, I discover I never think nor can think. I only see and it is not that I can start or stop thinking or seeing.

There is absolutely nothing that I can do about thinking or seeing.

I can neither start, continue nor stop it.

Thought and thinking happen to me, but the seeing and the knowing exist only. They are always there in the background, not as two different ways of existence but only one and the same as a single Unique Reality.

So Who I'm?

Am I the thought, thinking, the mind that assumes thinking and believes it thinks,and is the thinker!

Or, I'm the underlying principle, the seeing and the knowing only?

Having understood this, could I then again be a victim of mind, thought, thinker and thinking any more?

Could then I say or utter "I"? 

Be free of ambiguity, anxiety and agony?

***

The Category of Four.

Who Controls The World?

Just an hour ago, I was watching the P-Gurus Channel on YouTube.

The following question was put by the host Sri Aiyer before Sri Sumeet Peerji :

Who is controlling the World?

And Sri Sumeet Peerji answered :

Religion, Conflict, Interference and War-Economy.

Now I can say these Categories of Four really govern the state of World affairs.

I commented upon this citing 3 stanzas from Shrimadbhagvadgita :

नादत्ते कस्यचित्पापं सुकृतं चैव न प्रभुः

अज्ञानेनावृतं ज्ञानं तेन मुह्यन्ति जन्तवः।। 

न कर्तृत्वं न कर्माणि लोकस्य सृजति प्रभुः

न च कर्मफलसंयोगं स्वभावस्तु प्रवर्तते।। 

ज्ञानेन तु तदज्ञानं येषां नाशितं आत्मनः

तेषां आदित्यवज्ज्ञानं प्रकाशयति तत् परम्।। 

--

There exists no such a unique objective world common to all. Everyone thinks of such a world in one's own mind. There is neither anything like individual action (Karma). Karma is but an idea. Likewise the sense of doer-ship too is an idea.  The sense of "I suffer / enjoy / experience" is also again such a thought in the mind and lastly - the possessiveness and being the possessor of possessions - "I'm The Owner"  is a similar one idea only. 

So only the swabhAva / nature performs all activities through all the beings, and they wrongly become a victim of the idea "I do,  I have to do,  I must do, I will / will not do and several others like this. This is verily अज्ञान / the delusion that covers up the  ज्ञान  /  Wisdom. Really nothing what-so-ever happens and so no one is responsible for anything that takes place anywhere in the world.

***

Who Rules Over?

M A Y A

P O E T R Y

--

Did You Ever Wonder, 

Who Rules Over,

Your Body, Your Mind,

Your Breath, Your Feelings?

Did You Ever Wonder, 

When Inadvertently You Say,

My Body, My Breath, My Mind,

My Possessions, My Feelings, 

My Memory, My Cravings,

Did You Ever Wonder,

Who Cares For You, 

When You're Absent-minded,

Walking Along the Precipice, 

On The Sharp Mountain Ridge?

When Inadvertently You Claim, 

The Body, The Breath, The Mind,

The Memory And The Feelings, 

As Your Own, owned By You, 

Like Many Worldly Things!

Don't You Carelessly,

Because Of The In-attention,

Oblivious Of The Fact,

Whether There Is A Possessor,

Whether There Is The Possessed,

The Things That Are Owned, 

And The One That Is The Owner,

Exist Independently Apart And,

Different From One Another?

Where-from Arrives The Thought,

That Splits Up Itself As Me and Mine, 

Where You Are The Body And Mind?

Where You Seem To Have Control, 

And You Rule over All These Things?

Or, Maybe, There Is A Power,

Beyond All Your Knowledge,

Beyond Your Understanding,

That Alone Controls Your Body,

Your breath And Your Mind?

Could You Ever Comprehend,

Could You Ever Understand, 

That Mysterious Power,

From Where You Come,

Where-from In Existence,

You May Call It's God, 

You May Say It's Love, 

Did You Ever Wonder, 

Neither God Nor Love, 

It's But The Power Of Karma, 

Neither Your's Nor Mine,

Not Of Those Innumerable Beings,

But Only Of Totality As Whole.

Nothing Other Than Destiny,

Another Name Of MAYA.

Once You See And Know,

You Stop Finding Out, 

The Causes And The Reasons, 

For Whatever Seems To Happen, 

Because It's Just Senseless,

Meaningless And Absurd Too. 

Then You Abide In The "What Is",

Timelessly, Unaffected, In Peace,

And Become Peace Itself. 

***

 

 

The Law Of Four

About Laws and Rules :

Yesterday I wrote :

The Rule Of  Four

We know that Laws are firm and strict, inviolable, while the Rules are flexible and could adopt to different situations and conditions.

The Supreme Reality is The Intelligence Non-dual Supreme, that governs the Laws while the Manifest and the Latent Reality is The consciousness where the formal division between the subject and the object, between the subjective and the objective appears to exist.

The Supreme Power that is associated with The Supreme Reality is Itself the Law; The Manifest and The Potential Unmanifest is The indirect mode of the Nature / प्रकृति having two aspects - one, the Power Of Knowing and another Power Of Activity. Of the two, The Power Of Knowing is the static while the Power Of Activity is the dynamic aspect of this Power.

The Supreme Reality is The Awareness; The Nature / प्रकृति  is consciousness.

The consciousness has two modes :

The Mechanical or the instrumental - the Activity, and The Authoritative or the Ego - The Knowing or the Light.

The instrumental is the illuminated, the Ego is the one that illuminates. Still the Light that illuminates both is beyond the two.  

The Rule Of Four  

applies to the illuminated / instrumental and helps in conducting the activities of the material world, and also to the Ego that assumes the sense of authority over the world seen by itself in its own very limited light. We can say it is the world of the individual.

Still there is an authority that controles and regulates the functioning of both the worlds : the individual and the collective as well.

This is Mahat Prakriti / महत् प्रकृति :

मम योनिर्महद्ब्रह्म तस्मिन्गर्भं दधाम्यहम्।। 

Thus points out Gita. 

Now about The Law Of Four :

Ego the individual has two predominant attributes : One is physical and mental activity, and the another is just knowing only.

We can see that while our body and the  mind go through any activity, we say : I do, did, will do, should or shouldn't do; at the physical / bodily or even also at the mental level and when that state of body / mind is over and we perform any another activity, we assume the sense of doer-ship and claim to do,  did, will do,  should or shouldn't do. 

Obviously during all the time there is a sense of knowing that is though in-active watched the happening of the activity. The One Who knew didn't perform the activity and only saw that it was being performed.

Now we can relate this fact with :

The Rule Of Four

While in the world everything appears to happen prompted and governed by some Law unseen by us, in the individual one spontaneously and without any effort associates oneself with the sense of the doer-ship, and with the sense of having seen the happening also. Though the activities keep on changing all the time, the sense of doer-ship and the knowing remains unchanging.

Then there are physical / bodily states of "being" when one has to go through the states of childhood, adulthood, middle-age and old-age.

Not only we humans but almost every living being goes through this what we call it's "life-cycle".

So long as one is kind of an animal, one can't see this whole pattern. Only a man of intelligence can see and discriminate this whole thing.

Accordingly though the Nature / प्रकृति  itself facilitates this for all living beings only a human with evolved and mature consciousness can understand this fact.

This is verily :

The Law Of Four.

In Vedantika parlance this is called the four  आश्रम / Ashrama namely :

ब्रह्मचर्य / brahmacharya

गृहस्थ / gRahastha

वानप्रस्थ / vAnaprastha and

संन्यास / sannyAsa respectively.

Everyone has to go through these four states of "being" and "experiencing" too.

This is the Law. 

Or

The Law Of Four.

---

Next : 

The  Category  Of  Four

(संस्कृत  -- कतिगृहीय कोटिगृहीय)

***

Life Personal

Within, Without and Beyond.

--

The Better Half.

There is a life external (to me), and a life internal (to me). I'm but the composite of the two as if the two make up a whole 'I'  / me, like a couple where one is the better half the other.

I identify myself as the one who has a life external as well as a life internal. 

In both lives I come across two issues. 

One is being Related while the another is being connected.

Either I may be related with my better half but not connected. Again I may be connected but not related. Happiness in life happens when I am connected and related also at the same moment. There are chances when there is dispute over certain thing or issues.

Occasionally there are times when life is going smooth and mind is in utter peace and silence.

Then something stirs and at once follows a sense of dissatisfaction, anger, anxiety and uncertainty of the future. There is an urge as well to remove or overcome the same or to getting rid of the situation so as to restore the peace and silence that I had been enjoying a moment ago.

Where-from comes up the desire?

Is it because of the urge that there is the desire or is because of the desire that the urge arises?

Doesn't the moment I start believing in the existence of something other than this spontaneous peace and silence, this urge assumes reality and raises its head?

This may be a trivial bodily need like the hunger, thirst, sleep, body-ache or a pain somewhere in the body or something like the weather that may cause uneasiness and discomfort of the kind.

The internal life affects the external and likewise the external affects the internal. 

It's like a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole.

But why do I expect or fear about the assumed future? Why do I think of it and hope that everything would / should go in my favor? Isn't it an external factor, an element that infiltrates the mind and overpowers me?

Is really there a future? Or there is only a thought of an assumed future, like in an abstract form that soon looks like a reality to me?

Still I can see and understand that I have neither the knowledge nor experience of  what is going to happen in the coming of the next moment.

Maybe, I can guess about the things of the purely physical and material kind, how could I possibly know before-hand through what states of mind I shall go in the next moment(s)? 

Precisely this is the utter ignorance and in a way the foolishness also that I get infatuated and overwhelmed by this idea of a hypothetical future and then want to affect a change over it.

What progress can I hope from all my efforts in trying and getting involved in  such an activity?

***

The Rule Of Four.

The Four Fundamental Aspects Of The Evolution In Consciousness :

1.Mindfulness

2.Watchfulness

3.Witnessing

4.Awareness.

The Practice of meditation as a means of Spiritual Evolution of mind begins with the Mindfulness. Mind is Consciousness and Consciousness is Mind. This implies there is someone who is conscious of and about something. This someone is Mind / conscious factor, while the something is the Object which is given attention to by the Mind / consciousness.

We all know there is a multitude of the objects and at any moment only one of them is given the attention. But the one who pays attention is always one and the same. So this someone can deliberately or involuntarily shift attention to any of those many and various objects. If this happens involuntarily it means the one is in a state of where mindfulness lacks, like the animals who unmindful of their activity go on wandering from place to place. Only whenever an external force or the internal mental situation like the hunger, thirst, fear or sleep forces them, they stop or alter their activity. So they are governed by the forces of nature in a mechanical way and have no awareness any of themselves as someone other than the something.

But man is given with a sense of being someone and not a something that is driven by the forces of nature.

This is the beginning of consciousness or the Mind.

Then this Mind evolves and prospers in a state of watchfulness where it can watch itself, so as to observe how this someone behaves in various situations.

Still the sense of being someone matures even more in and as a strong sense of "I", "I'm being myself or the ego, and though there are several others like me, I am a someone far greater and important than all those others; be that a something or someone.

This sense of being myself - the ego can though desire, can never eradicate itself. It's the strong bond of the watchfulness with the consciousness that prevents it from from doing so. In the activity of watching, -the sense of being someone is there and is hardly given attention any, whatsoever.

Only a deep sense of the futility and the absurdity of the world and all the things in the world causes in it an urge to find out whether there is a way out from all this nonsense.

When and as this sense of the futility and the absurdity of the world matures and ripens enough, it falls down on its own.

Then the same watchfulness undergoes a mutation or the radical transformation of the kind where it is discovered, found out that neither something nor someone apart from and other than the light of understanding of  "What Is" really exists.

This is verily what could be called : 

The Awareness,

Where all apparent distinctions and all such differences cease to exist.

When this happens, though the world is as before seen as a multitude of names, forms, colors and appearances still all are realized as but many expressions of the one and the same Awareness.

***

  

The Insomniac

And The Somnambulist.

I had a friend. His father was a simple clerk in some government department.

He had a sister and this family of  four was living happily in a quarter alloted to them by the government.

I had one another friend. He lived in the same campus where the family of four was living. His father and mother both were serving in the same government department. That is how the two families got accomodation in the same campus. 

The daughter in the family of four was kind of somnambulist. This was known to them since when she was just a 3 or 4 year old kid. But when I knew the family, she was about the age of 18 or 19. She had joined a college and was studying in the second year of the bachelor's degree.

She would often asked me for help when she had any difficulties in her study, and I would happily try solving her problems and the difficulties.

Once her mother told me, every night  they tie her leg or hand with some immovable object such as to a chair or to the door-knob or a window. I was just  amazed.

"Why?" -  I asked.

She told their daughter would often walk in sleep and though has no problem any what-so-ever, wouldn't dash into walls or other things, yet could walk up-to 1 or 2 miles sometimes.

"Oh".

The father of another friend was kind of an insomniac. He was old and was about to retire soon, maybe in an year or two. He couldn't pass time at home turning sides in the bed. So he would walk up in the sprawling campus area. For an hour or more he would keep walking and then return to bed. 

One night when he was on his routine walk and had walked for about one and a half mile, he was surprised to see the somnambulist girl on his way. He could not understand what was wrong with her in the midnight at about 01:00 A.M.

Then he followed her from behind and heaved a sigh of relief when he saw her entering in her house.

Next day all in the campus knew this.

But since that day someone would take care and make sure that she is tied with a post while going to bed.

She was married off with the same friend who knew all this and was already well aware of this problem. But they were in love and too intimate with one another.

After some 25 year, they celebrated their marriage anniversary, all invited in the party shared this interesting story and all enjoyed too.

***