'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.
6 comments:
What a post! Could you clarify if this word "becoming" is a translation of "bhAva" of bhAvamukha or some other sanskrit word? Also, does one "grasp" the "I am" - because isn't the "I am" supposed to be the seed of all experience ( just idle curiosity based on stuff I've read )?
no Sandeep, 'becoming' is just meant to be the dynamic state of 'being'- or the manifest and the potential, a terminology one of my friends introduced to me and I liked a lot.
and - the 'I am all' state, it is a subjective knowledge. not sure about your point though?
Thanks.
By "I am" I don't refer to "I am all". I have read that, for instance, when someone wakes up from sleep first something called "I am" emerges and that that is the basis for all one's conscious experiences in the waking state. So is there something like "grasping" it?
I think it has to be- otherwise what is 'liberation'?
agreed that the 'I am' is the ground, the basis of all experiences, but the mind usually confuses this with the ego.
take the sentence like 'I know that I know about this issue/plan/thing'- in this the first 'I know' comes from the ' I am' - the pure sat-chit or existence-knowledge. but the second 'I know' is the limited egoistic/intellectual knowledge.
now the task is for the mind to see this separation and permanently establish itself in the former. this is what I call 'grasp'
btw do you remember we were discussing exactly this point on the night in august in Hari's room?
I remember your saying that the first "I" is the higher self and the second the lower. As for "otherwise what is liberation" - well, I don't know what liberation is! I would somehow like to get some scriptural reference/wise mens' quote regarding this grasp on "I am".
'otherwise what is liberation' was a rhetorical question- meaning that if 'I am' is the basis of all experiences anyway, what is it that causes bondage?
It is the false superimposition of limitations and the ego on the 'I am' that causes bondage. It is the confusion between the seer and the seen that causes bondage.
so though the seer is always there-as pure existence, pure witness and pure bliss, this still has to be grasped, realised, understood by a pure mind.
otherwise there wont be any spiritual life, any struggle and any realization. anyway the 'I am' is there- already pure and perfect!
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