The impersonal personal

'Sri Ramakrishna's Naren, Naren's Sri Ramakrishna' is the title of this lovely small booklet written by Swami Budhananda, the ideas in which captivate me, inspire me. This train of thoughts is written in inspiration from those ideas.

'This is a peculiarity which we have to understand — that our religion preaches an Impersonal Personal God' - this is one of the most memorable of the words that Swami Vivekananda spoke (in the talk titled 'The Sages of India' in Lectures from Colombo to Almora, Vol 3 of the Complete works of Swami Vivekananda)

Indeed, this is the peculiarity, or rather the difficulty in understanding, appreciating and applying the Truth that Hindu philosophy drives home quite convincingly and rationally. We arrive at this conclusion by rigorous analysis- and that is the difficulty- how do we apply it? Because our everyday experience is mostly carried out on the personal level. This world is a personal world to which the person who denies the 'I' and the 'mine' is a person who is non-existent. But reaching that conclusion, we still have to live here. Impersonal though we are, our personal lives cannot be given up.

This is where I think the great avatAras provide such a great guidance. Their lives are spent on the border between the personal and the impersonal. The greatest of the avatAras I have had the chance or rather the blessing to study, the avatAra-varishTa, rAmakRShna, infact coined an entirely new term , bhavamukha for this borderline existence, and was the exemplar of it. This moment he lived in that all-pervading consciousness, spraying flowers around in every direction, worshipping 'Mother you are everywhere', feeding the cat with the offerings meant for Mother Kali, laughing at a butterfly 'O Rama now you have injured yourself' and the next, he lived in this world, breaking his arm, weeping for the suffering of fellow man, worrying about the welfare of unrelated men. This moment He would be lost in 'samadhi' and the next, he would go uninvited into the homes of unacquainted men to convey to them, The Divine Mother's love.

This is the discontent that stalks the heart. Is it enough to know that the Truth, the absolute consciousness, witnesses our every act amd hears our every prayer? Is it enough to know that It is bliss absolute? This entire universe is projected by its Power - it does not seem irrational that it also projects its essence - to answer that discontent in man's heart, the discontent of a personality for a personal response from the Truth. That the Self is always with us, that It is the source of the greatest strength amidst the strongest of adversities, is a definite conclusion of analysis. Yet until that is firmly ascertained by a personal grasp of the 'I am'ness or maybe who knows, even after that, the heart longs after a personal assurance of abhaya.

that abhaya this avatAra conveys personally, knocking at the door, saying 'Girish, it is me'. This Girish is the personality, the personality which has torn itself away from its impersonal soil, which goes about like a ghost from life to life, trying to taste the sweetness of nectar in one ditch after another. Himself established in the many-splendoured grandeur of Truth, the impersonal-personal God, the avatAra conveys to the 'beings', the 'becoming' of his bliss-nature. Bliss is the nature of Truth. Its becoming is the fear-destroying love. In this love, there is pure bliss, pure joy. This I think is what the avatAra conveys. and brings back the prodigal sons and daughters, the personalities wrenched away from their Self, by the power of tidal waves of this love.

I shut the door of my house and was ringing the bell
in my prayer room; I was shouting and screaming
and was singing as well, in my prayer room;
Without lighting the lamp of longing, I shut the door
to my prayer room, and was my animal self again
undoing what I sought, in my prayer room;
so continued life: one out, another inside, I wept
in my prayer room. And what do I discover, Master,
You are standing outside my house waiting for me
to open the door! You sought me and not I, You!
what more do I want, my Master? I fling everything,
everything, everything away - and ask you this:
just make me your own, your own, your very own!

philosophical knots

admittedly, as Swami Vivekananda says in one of his lectures on jnana yoga, all philosophical systems are ultimately mental constructions and thus every system will have its limitations. to use one of Ram Swarups expressions, some of these systems (shall I say those which are more theologies or opinions rather than philosophies), even appear to be contradictory and revolting to man's higher or larger synthetic reason. but even among systems that do appeal to this inner reason, there is room for difference and confusion.

for me personally, and perhaps many of the modern students of the Hindu philosophy who are self-schooled in the texts of its different sects, this is a big problem. I have always found the logic of Advaita Vedanta quite complelling and appealing. But I have often had difficulty reconciling its ultimate conclusions with other reasonable ones. For example, if ultimately the Truth is pure consciousness, it would appear as being a passive witness. But then where do the objects it witnesses come from? So it seems reasonable that the ultimate Truth is rather a pure consciousness+power. A sort of playful power should inhere in it. But this was my conjecture- the Advaita vedanta schools that are current would rather describe this phenomenon as the mysterious and unexplainable Maya which both exists and doesnt exist within Brahman.

Being devoted to Ramakrishna however, I would accept that beyond these conceptions, Brahman and Sakti or power, are one and the same, rather like fire and its burning power. Also as Sri Aurobindo explained, this sort of dual power, of being the witness as well as the projector, is of the very nature of the ultimate and this cannot be understood by the ordinary mind. He calls it consciousness-force. I just called it Advaita Ishwara-vada (or Ishwari-vada maybe ?) and was content at accepting it that way. So I thought, that should be left to experience.

It seems however, that this position which appeals to me, that of 'Sat-ChitShakti-Ananda' as the ultimate triurne, rather than just 'Sat-Chit-Ananda' is that of tantra too. More significantly it is also that of Tripura Rahasya, a text held highly by one of modern day Advaita greats, Ramana maharshi. I have had occasion to read from this beautiful text and it has captivated me.

Here is an article which elucidates this Tantric position and compares it with that of modern Advaita Vedanta. An excerpt:

To the Vedantist the world appears as such to the ignorant owing to his ignorance and in the last analysis it is resolved into Maya which is not identical with Brahman and is material; but to a Tantrist the world is real and is expression of the Chit Sakti or Free Will of the Lord and is really spiritual in essence like the Lord Himself. In the last resort it turns back into the Chit Sakti which is never withdrawn, for the Will (svAtantrya) remains, even after the world has disappeared. The Vedanta system has had to fall back on the doctrine of Vivarta, because it denies in a sense svAtantrya to Pure Chaitanya.