DEIVATHIN KURAL # 78 (Vol # 5) Dated 06 Nov 2011

DEIVATHIN KURAL # 78 (Vol # 5) Dated 06 Nov 2011

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by PeriyavaaL of Kanchi Kaamakoti Peetam, over a period of some 60 years while he was the pontiff in the earlier part of the last century. These have been published by Vanadi Padippagam, Chennai, in seven volumes of a thousand pages each as Deivathin Kural. Today we are proceeding from the last para on page No 469 of Vol 5 of the Tamil original. The readers may note that here in 'man/he' includes 'woman/she' too mostly. These e-mails are all available at http://Advaitham.blogspot.com updated constantly)
276. So, my dear Sir, the second person or being, the second entity which causes duality and multiplicity to happen, which covers the Adwaitam from being seen and understood is nobody else other than one’s own mind! All the pleasure, comfort, fear, ache, laughter and terror are all from one’s own mind. When they gave you chloroform and operated upon you, your mind was not functional. Did you feel any pain then? They had cut your body part and did invasive surgery with a scalpel and so many instruments. Did you feel any fear or pain or discomfort? Let us take the simple fact of sleep that happens every day. At that time also the mind was at a standstill. At that time all the seven billion people and ‘sthavara and jungama’ (static and moving) animate and inanimate life forms and things were very much in existence in the whole cosmos or were they? Were you affected by them in any way? Even your own bodily pain or hunger are also noticed only when your mind is active, isn’t it?
277. So, my dear sir, the second entity, the second person is none else but, your own mind. During that sleep or swoon, were you not still alive? Even though you were without the mind, you were still alive isn’t it? That life in you is the Aatma, the reality in you, me and everybody else too. As a second fictitious person, Maya has brought the mind or ego or Ahankaar. It is alright to do many things with the mind such as solving problems, doing service to mankind, being useful to the society, taking part in music, dance, drama, creating works of art, sculpture, machines and so on. But the moment it starts playing on pride, jealousy, taking unfair advantages and so on; bring it under control. By Gnaana either keep the second under strict control or get rid of it completely. When the mind is not there, no work, no urges, no speech, no comparison, no competition and so on and so on. All that created the adversities and distresses; grief and misery are no more! In fact the pulls and pressures of life will be over. There will be no more world for you. Even if you are all alone, there will be no anger, passion or any thought whatsoever! Because all these things are appearing to you because of the mind only Isn’t it? So, when the mind is annulled everything else also disappears. You can be perfectly happy as the Aatma in the Adwaita Anubhava!
278. “What? If there is nothing else, does it mean total blackout? Will it be a total zero?” If you think like that, then the thought process is still on! That means that the mind is still there. Even this question will not arise, when you are the Aatma shorn of all the addenda brought over by the mind. You will know yourself to be the Aatma as the ‘Sat – Chit – Aananda’, that is the ‘being blissfully aware’! How can that state be Sunyata? The trouble is that, the state of being devoid of mind can never be understood by the mind and it can never be made understood by words! Still the books on Adwaita try to make it possible to understand, to some extent, slightly, as I am trying to do now! What they do say is something as follows. “In sleep and under the effect of drugs or trauma, though you are the Aatma, that status of ‘sat’ (the being) is not discernible to you. In the Gnaana marga, when you do Saadhana, as and when all the imagined untruth about yourself are dropped or erased, what is left as ‘your – self’ is the uncorrupted residue of your reality the ‘sat’, which you will be experiencing in totality! All other things though appearing as real are only temporary and transient, likely to disappear some time or the other. Only this Aatma, as the basis for all the temporary, transient and transactional truths; is the only ‘sat’! You will be completely aware of being that ‘sat’. That means ‘you will be having that Gnaana of the effulgence of the ‘chit’ (awareness) and be ‘aananda’ (blissfully happy). Again it does not mean that ‘sat, chit and aananda’ are three different things but the words to describe that one and only ‘Aatma’!
279. That is, if I say that, you the ‘sat’ with the awareness of ‘chit’ are transcendentally happy by ‘aananda’, it will be a ‘double entendre’ and a ‘triple jeopardy’ for what is always single, all by itself, ‘the Aatma’ in Adwaita Anubhava! Because, if I say you the ‘sat’ with ‘chit’ is enjoying the ‘aananda’; it would mean that the one has joined the second to produce the third; leading from Adwaitam to Dwaitam and Multiplicity! Having said that Samaadhi is a state of ‘sat’, different from that if we add the knower of ‘sat’ as ‘chit’, that would be wrong isn’t it? It is not that you know the ‘sat’ with ‘chit’, but you are the ‘satchit’. Then it is not that you are in bliss, but the blissfully knowing sat and that is the ‘satchitaanand’!
280. All the problems brought in by the mind are no more! It is all now known to be unreal. The real, all free, happy, blissfully happy state known as ‘aananda maya’ instead of coming from anywhere else but from within, the undiluted, undivided, indivisibly pure bliss will be known to be you to yourself! Unaffected by anything from anywhere, beyond the relative time and the confines of space, here and now will be the bliss of Aananda of Satchitaananda, completely devoid of any conditions or attachments or dependencies! That is Samaadhi and that is Moksham and not Soonyam! How else to put it in words?
281. No Difference Between Jeevaatma and Paramaatma Either. When we say that there is no second entity or person or thing, I must mention one important fact. Many Siddhaanta-s claim that other than this Bhoo Loka (the earth) and Swarga Loka, there is a further higher world known as Moksha Loka of God’s residence. What we call Vaikundam and Kailasam are that place only. God takes you the Jeeva and keeps this Jeeva in absolute comfort there, they say. That is, even in that state of Moksham, God and Jeeva are different things. That is, we are different from God and God is always and forever different from us. Most of the religions of the world believe this. Vaishnavam and Saiva Siddhaantam, (including Christianity and Islam varyingly) contribute to this idea. Their conviction is that God is God and Man is Man. Never the twain shalt be one! Duality is forever they say. So what we call Jeevaatma (the individual man) and Paramaatma (or what we call the God, Swami, Parabrhmam, Lord, Allah and such), shall remain different entities and never be the same, they say. Including in Moksham it remains Dwaitam, they will say. The causal entity is Brhmam or Paramaatma and he is also called Easwara as the ruling, governing and reigning power.
282. But Adwaitam looks at it entirely differently. We have already seen that Jeeva when under the control of the mind or Manas that itself is the creation of Maya; only till then experiences the world with all the vacillations and once he delinks with the mind and goes beyond Maya, he is in eternal peace, isn’t it? Similarly, the world that gives him all these experiences, his mind and everybody else’s mind too; it is all the creation of god’s power of Maya only. Like our mind, Maya is God’s mind. Mind is not the real we or us. Similarly God is not only just his Maya. Or in other words Brhmam with Maya is not his true state. As Brhmam with Maya as the creating and ruling Easwara and we or us as the ruled individuals is not the true state of either the God or us. As we delink with the Manas and become the peaceful unconcerned Aatma, Brhmam also has a state of being devoid of Maya. To some extent it is wrong on my part to say, ‘that is like this’. Better to say, ‘this is like that’! Do you see my point? We the Jeevas of this world, when we delink with the Mind, we lose our individual identity totally and become or get back to our original state of being like Him without Maya! It is not correct again to say, ‘like Him’; we do not become Him, but the correct thing to say is, ‘we are Him’! This is that! Jeeva in reality is Paramaatma! Normally we do not know this. Bereft of the mind, we know that we are that Brhmam only!
283. Brhmam in the state of being without Maya and the Jeeva in the state of being without Manas; are in Parama Shaanti, total peace. Brhmam wearing the garb of Maya, having made the world; and in that world has created the man with his mind; it means that Maker, Material and the Man that is made are all one and the same! Brhmam itself is seen as the world (Jagat) and the Jeeva with the mind in it. Jeeva minus the mind is the vary material he was made out of and that is the Brhmam! Actually there are not two different entities as Jeevaatma and Paramaatma; it is all one and the same Aatma. These names are hoisted on them to enable us to comprehend and understand. All that is one Aatma also known as Brhmam!
284. Somebody as Swami, let him be the ruler of Vaikundam or Kailasa; when he takes us to those special worlds, however great it may be and however wonderful the treatment we get there; neither he nor us are in our real state. Neither of us that is, we or him, are in complete peace of quietude. We use our minds to be devoted and pray and fully integrate with him let us say. Still there is an element of untruth there because the devotee’s devotion is from the mind, still keeping himself as different from the God to whom he is devoted to. The reality in the devotee, the Aatma is the ignored commodity here! God similarly, when he sanctions whatever the prayed for Anugraha is, in a slightly unreal state of being in the garb of Maya. At this critical point in time and space; the decision could be to enable the devotee to drop his mind and himself set aside the maya; resulting in total integrity! Then there is no separate devotee who is praying and no separate God who is granting the prayer. That is the Adwaita Moksham, in other words ‘Jeeva – Brhma – Abhedam’, that is total integrity of God and Man! That is Moksham. There is no separate Moksha Loka, only Moksha Anubhava!
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.