Thursday, May 31, 2012

Self Inquiry

source: http://www.livewithyoga.net/self_inquiry.htm

Self Inquiry is a meditation technique for attaining enlightenment which is associated with Sri Ramana Maharishi..

The Sanskrit name for it, atma-vicara, really means self-investigation, self-examination, self-reflection, or looking within, but self-inquiry has become the standard translation.

History of Self-Inquiry
Self-inquiry is an ancient technique that dates back at least to the Upanisads. For example, the Katha Upanishad says:

The primeval one who is hard to perceive,
wrapped in mystery, hidden in the cave,
residing within the impenetrable depth-
Regarding him as god, an insight
gained by inner contemplation,
both sorrow and joy the wise abandon.


This is a summary of Ramana Maharshi's method, although it's written in indirect language. The "primeval one" in this verse is Brahman (the Self) and the "cave" is the heart center, so the meaning is: concentrate inwardly (on the feeling of me) until the innermost self is distinguished in the heart and recognized as God.

Ramana Maharshi was aware of the method's long history, for he himself pointed out that self-inquiry is described in book six of the Bhagvad Gita:

How to Do
David Godman wrote the best description of self-inquiry. It appears in two of his books, both of which we recommend highly. Here is what David wrote:

It was Sri Ramana's basic thesis that the individual self is nothing more than a thought or an idea. He said that this thought, which he called 'I'-thought, originates from a place called the Heart-centre, which he located on the right side of the chest in the human body.

From there the 'I'-thought rises up to the brain and identifies itself with the body:

'I am this body.' It then creates the illusion that there is a mind or an individual self which inhabits the body and which controls all its thoughts and actions. The 'I'-thought accomplishes this by identifying itself with all the thoughts and perceptions that go on in the body. For example, 'I' (that is the 'I'-thought) am doing this, 'I' am thinking this, 'I' am feeling happy, etc. Thus, the idea that one is an individual person is generated and sustained by the 'I'-thought and by its habit of constantly attaching itself to all the thoughts that arise. Sri Ramana maintained that one could reverse this process by depriving the 'I'-thought of all the thoughts and perceptions that it normally identifies with. Sri Ramana taught that this 'I'-thought is actually an unreal entity, and that it only appears to exist when it identifies itself with other thoughts.

He said that if one can break the connection between the 'I'-thought and the thoughts it identifies with, then the 'I'-thought itself will subside and finally disappear. Sri Ramana suggested that holding onto the 'I' -thought, that is, the inner feeling of I 'or' I am and excluding all other thoughts, could do this. As an aid to keeping one's attention on this inner feeling of 'I', he recommended that one should constantly question oneself:

'Who am I?'
or
'Where does this "I" come from?'

He said that if one can keep one's attention on this inner feeling of 'I', and if one can exclude all other thoughts, then the 'I'-thought will start to subside into the Heart-centre.

This, according to Sri Ramana, is as much as the devotee can do by himself. When the devotee has freed his mind of all thoughts except the 'I'-thought, the power of the Self pulls the 'I'-thought back into the Heart-centre and eventually destroys it so completely that it never rises again. This is the moment of Self-realization. When this happens, the mind and the indvidual self (both of which Sri Ramama equated with the 'I'-thought) are destroyed forever. Only the Atman or the Self then remains.

A Common Misunderstanding
The key sentence in David Godman's description, quoted in the previous section, is this one:

"He [Ramana Maharshi] said that if one can keep one's attention on this inner feeling of 'I', and if one can exclude all other thoughts, then the 'I'-thought will start to subside into the Heart-centre."

As this sentence suggests, self-inquiry is basically about keeping the attention fixed on the I-thought - that is, on the feeling of me.

The word inquiry leads many people to think, wrongly, that the technique has more to do with asking questions than with focusing attention. Since the technique does involve questions, the misunderstanding is natural.

One of these questions, "Who Am I?", is the name of Ramana Maharshi's first written work. He meant to suggest that self-inquiry reveals the answer to this question, not that a seeker should ask the question over and over.

Self-inquiry also involves a second question, "To whom does this thought arise?" Ramana Maharshi advised meditators to ask this question whenever their concentration is interrupted by a thought, because the answer causes the attention to return to the feeling of me where it belongs.

Ramana Maharshi summed up his technique as follows:
What is essential in any sadhana [practice] is to try to bring back the running mind and fix it on one thing only. Why then should it not be brought back and fixed in Self-attention? That alone is Self-enquiry (atma-vicara). That is all that is to be done!

Contrast with Yoga
Ramana Maharshi often said that yoga and self-enquiry are two methods of controlling the mind, which he compared to an agitated bull. Yoga attempts to drive the bull with a stick, while self-enquiry coaxes it with green grass.

Technical Vocabulary
Two important technical terms are used with self-inquiry: I-thought and heart center. Neither is wholly original with Ramana Maharshi.

The term I-thought is the false notion that the mind (rather than the Self) is the seer or doer. (We refer to it in this article as the feeling of me because, well, that's what it feels like.) The term goes back at least as far as Sankara, the founder of Advaita Vedanta. He used several Sanskrit expressions for this idea: ahamdhi, ahampratyaya, ahamkriya, and ahamkara.

According to Sankara, "awareness of one's own Atman [i.e., the Self] is established at the time of the cessation of the 'I'-notion."7 This awareness and cessation are exactly what self-inquiry is designed to accomplish.

The second technical term, heart center, is a translation of the Sanskrit hridayam. According to Ramana Maharshi, this is where the Self is located. The I-thought rises from this location and, at the end of the process of self-inquiry, sinks back into it, causing self-realization. This idea goes back to the earliest Upanisads, where Brahman is found in the "cave of the heart".

Ramana Maharshi sometimes described the heart center as an actual object located in the right side of the chest, but at other times he said this was an oversimplification for people who couldn't understand the truth. According to H.W.L. Poonja, Ramana Maharshi told him: When I speak of the 'I' rising from the right side of the body, from a location on the right side of the chest, the information is for those people who still think that they are the body. To these people I say that the Heart is located there. But it is really not quite correct to say that the 'I' rises from and merges in the Heart on the right side of the chest. The Heart is another name for the Reality and it is neither inside nor outside the body; there can be no in or out for it, since it alone is. I do not mean by 'Heart' any physiological organ or any plexus or anything like that…

A Quotation About Self-Inquiry
"Devotee: If I go on rejecting thoughts can I call it Vichara?
"Maharshi: It may be a stepping stone. But really Vichara begins when you cling to your Self and are already off the mental movement, the thought-waves."

Jnana yoga uses our considerable mental powers to end the duping process, to know that we are even now-and have always been-free, perfect, infinite, and immortal. Realizing that, we will also recognize in others the same divinity, the same purity and perfection. No longer confined to the painful limitations of "I" and "mine," we will see the one Brahman everywhere and in everything.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Ramana Maharshi Quotations

  1. Is it the mind that wants to kill itself ? The mind cannot kill itself. So your business is to find the real nature of the mind. Then you will know that there is no mind. When the Self is sought, the mind is nowhere. Abiding in the Self, one need not worry about the mind.
  2. From where does this `I' arise? Seek for it within; it then vanishes. This is the pursuit of wisdom. When the mind unceasingly investigates its own nature, it transpires that there is no such thing as mind. This is the direct path for all. The mind is merely thoughts. Of all thoughts the thought `I' is the root. Therefore the mind is only the thought `I'.
  3. The birth of the `I'-thought is one's own birth, its death is the person's death. After the `I'-thought has arisen, the wrong identity with the body arises. Get rid of the `I'-thought. So long as `I' is alive there is grief. When `I' ceases to exist there is no grief.
  4. Seek the source of the mind, and you find the mind does not exist at all. The mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes itself the Self.
  5. The one unalterable reality is being. Until you realize that state of pure being you should pursue the enquiry. If once you are established in it there will be no further worry.
  6. Knowing the Self means being the Self.
  7. This `I' is only the ego or the `I'-thought. After the rising up of this `I'-thought, all other thoughts arise. The `I'-thought is therefore the root-thought. If the root is pulled out all others are at the same time uprooted. Therefore seek the root `I', question yourself `Who am I?'. Find out its source, and then all these other ideas will vanish and the pure Self will remain.
  8. `Who am I ?' is not a mantra. It means that you must find out where in you arises the `I'-thought which is the source of all other thoughts.
  9. Association with sages should be made because thoughts are so persistent. The sage has already overcome the mind and remains in peace. Being in his proximity helps to bring about this condition in others, otherwise there is no meaning in seeking his company. The Guru provides the needed strength for this, unseen by others.
  10. Work performed with attachment is a shackle, whereas work performed with detachment does not affect the doer. One who works like this is, even while working, in solitude.
  11. If one knows the truth that all that one gives to others is giving only to oneself, who indeed will not be a virtuous person and perform the kind act of giving to others ? Since everyone is one's own Self, whoever does whatever to whomever is doing it only to himself.

source: http://www.messagefrommasters.com/Spiritual_Quotes/Ramana_Maharshi/ramana_maharshi_quotes7.htm

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Manonasa – destruction of mind

Someone wrote to me recently saying that he thinks the use of the word ‘destruction’ in ‘destruction of mind’ (manōnāśa) is just ‘Indian hyperbole’ and should not be taken literally, because of it is obvious that Bhagavan and other jñānis think, since without thinking they could not walk or talk. I hope there are not many other people who have misunderstood Bhagavan’s teachings about manōnāśa in such a way, but since manōnāśa is the goal that he has taught us that we should aim to attain, I believe that the following adaptation of my reply to this person may be helpful to other devotees.


In order to understand what Bhagavan means by manōnāśa (the destruction, annihilation, elimination, ruin, disappearance or death of the mind), we should first consider what he means by ‘mind’ or manas. In verse 18 of Upadēśa Undiyār (the original Tamil version of Upadēśa Sāram) he says:

Mind is only thoughts. Of all thoughts, the thought called ‘I’ is the root. [Therefore] what is called ‘mind’ is [in essence just this root thought] ‘I’.
In verse 2 of Āṉma Viddai he indicates that what he means here by ‘the thought called I’ is the thought ‘I am this body’ (the illusion that the physical body is ‘I’):
Since the thought ‘this body composed of flesh is I’ alone is the one thread on which [all] the various thoughts are strung, if [one] goes within [investigating] ‘Who am I? What is [its] place [the source from which this ‘I’ has risen, and the ground on which it stands]?’ thoughts will cease, and in the cave [of one’s heart] ātma-jñāna [self-knowledge] will shine spontaneously as ‘I [am only] I’. This is silence, the one [empty] space [of consciousness], the abode of bliss.
The fact that the mind is in essence nothing but the false identification of our self, which is pure consciousness of being (sat-cit), as a physical body, which is a non-conscious (jaḍa) object, is also emphasised by Bhagavan in verse 24 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
The jaḍa [non-conscious] body does not say ‘I’ [because it does not experience itself]; sat-cit [being-consciousness] does not rise [or come into being]; [but] in between [consciousness and the body] an ‘I’ rises as the dimension of the body. Know that this [false consciousness ‘I am this body’] is cit-jaḍa-granthi [the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious], bandha [bondage], jīva [the soul or person], the subtle body, the ego, this saṁsāra [wandering, restless activity, illusion or ignorance] and manam [the mind].
Thus the mind is a confused mixture of the real and the unreal. Its real element is its sat-cit aspect, ‘I am’, and its unreal element is its jaḍa aspect, the body and all the other adjuncts that it confusedly mistakes to be ‘I’. What is destroyed in manōnāśa is only its unreal jaḍa aspect and not its real sat-cit aspect, which is eternal and hence indestructible and immutable.

Because the mind thus confuses consciousness (cit) with the non-conscious (jaḍa), it is called the cit-jaḍa-granthi, the knot (granthi) that seemingly binds consciousness to the non-conscious. In a conversation recorded in the last chapter of Maharshi’s Gospel (13th edition, 2002, page 89), Bhagavan emphasises this fact that the mind or ego is nothing but the cit-jaḍa-granthi:
[...] the ego has one and only one [relevant] characteristic. The ego functions as the knot between the Self[,] which is Pure Consciousness[,] and the physical body[,] which is ... insentient. The ego is therefore called the cit-jaḍa granthi. In your investigation into the source of aham-vṛtti [the thought ‘I’], you take the essential cit aspect of the ego; and for this reason the enquiry must lead to the realization of the pure consciousness of the Self.
Bhagavan says that this primal thought ‘I’ (the false impression ‘I am this body’) is the root of all other thoughts and the thread upon which they are strung, because it is the thinker and experiencer of them, so without it no other thought could exist. Therefore all thought or mental activity is dependent upon this delusion ‘I am this body’, which is the mind or ego.

In waking the mind mistakes itself to be this present body, and in dream it mistakes itself to be some other imaginary body. The bodies change, but the false ‘I’ that takes each of them to be itself remains essentially the same. Since our entire bodily life is just a dream that occurs in our prolonged sleep of self-ignorance, when one body dies, the mind imagines another body to be itself, and thus it undergoes a long series of bodily lives (dreams). This is why Bhagavan says in verse 25 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
Grasping form [a body], the formless ghost-ego comes into being; grasping form [a body, objects perceived through the senses of that body, and thoughts and feelings about such objects], it endures; grasping and feeding upon form [such thoughts and objects], it grows [expands or flourishes] greatly; leaving [one] form, it grasps [another] form. [However] if [one] seeks [the truth of it by investigating what it is], it takes flight. Know [thus].
Because the mind or ego has no form of its own, it seems to exist only by attending to forms (which are all products of its imagination), but if it attempts to attend to itself, it will find no form to grasp, so it will subside and disappear.

The mind seems to exist only in waking and in dream, when it has grasped a body as itself, but it subsides and disappears in sleep, because sleep is a state in which it is too exhausted to grasp any form, so it subsides in its source to recuperate its energy.

Because sleep is only a temporary state of subsidence, it is a state of manōlaya (abeyance of mind), and from it the mind will certainly rise again. Likewise death and coma are both only states of manōlaya, as also is any temporary subsidence or samādhi achieved by means of yōga and other such spiritual practices that entail attending to anything other than ‘I’.

Therefore in verse 13 of Upadēśa Undiyār Bhagavan distinguishes the two basic kinds of subsidence of mind, temporary and permanent:
Subsidence [of mind] is [of] two [kinds], laya and nāśa. That which is lying down [in laya] will rise. If [its] form dies [in nāśa], it will not rise.
In this verse Bhagavan makes clear that nāśa is distinct from any kind of laya (which are all temporary, because they are states from which the mind will sooner or later rise again), and that it is permanent, because it is a state in which the mind is dead and from which it will never rise again.

Bhagavan wrote this verse in the context of a brief outline that he gave of yōga practices such as prāṇāyāma (breath-restraint), which by themselves can only bring about manōlaya and not manōnāśa (as he explains in more detail in the eighth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?, which I quote below), so in the next verse he emphasises that the mind will be destroyed only when we practise the unique path of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra):
Only when [one] sends the mind — which subsides [only temporarily in laya] when [one] restrains the breath — on the ōr vaṙi, will its form cease [or die in nāśa].
The Tamil words ōr vaṙi have two possible literal meanings, ‘[the] one [unique or special] path’ and ‘[the] investigating [examining or knowing] path’, but whichever meaning we choose, they refer to the same path, namely the unique path of self-investigation (ātma-vicāra).

Bhagavan expresses this same truth in other words in the eighth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?):
To make the mind subside [permanently], there are no adequate means other than vicāra. If restrained by other means, the mind will remain as if subsided, [but] will emerge again. Even by prāṇāyāma [breath-restraint], the mind will subside; however, [though] the mind remains subsided so long as the breath remains subsided, when the breath emerges it will also emerge and wander under the sway of [its] vāsanas [propensities, inclinations, impulses or desires]. [...] Therefore prāṇāyāma is just an aid to restrain the mind, but will not bring about manōnāśa [the annihilation of the mind].
In the next verse of Upadēśa Undiyār (verse 15) Bhagavan describes the state of manōnāśa as follows:
When the mind-form is annihilated, for the great yōgi who is [thereby] established as the reality, there is not a single action [or doing], [because] he has attained his [true] nature [which is actionless being].
The person who wrote to me claiming that manōnāśa (destruction of mind) should not be taken literally wrote, ‘Thinking continues, even for someone like Ramana (and all the other Jnanis), otherwise how can Ramana walk to the kitchen or answer questions’, but in this verse Bhagavan emphasises that for jñānis there is no action whatsoever, which means that there is absolutely no thinking, talking or walking.

As he often explained, the bodily and mental activities of the jñāni appear to exist only in the ignorant outlook of others (ajñānis), who mistake him to be the body and mind that do such actions, because in the clear view of the jñāni all that exists is only self, which is pure non-dual being-consciousness (sat-cit). Because we mistake ourself to be a body and mind, we mistake even the jñāni to be a body and mind, but for him (or her) there is no such thing.

When Bhagavan translated this verse into Malayalam (in a metre that was longer than the metres he used in the Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu versions), he added a relative clause that describes the great ātma-yōgi as ‘who is seen as a human by outward appearance’ (vēṣattāle manuṣyanāy kāṇum), thereby indicating that the human form of the jñāni is merely an outward guise (vēṣa) that appears to be real only in the outlook of ajñānis.

This is why Bhagavan used to say (as recorded in verse 283 of Guru Vācaka Kōvai and elsewhere) that the appearance of the guru in human form is like the appearance of a lion in the dream of an elephant, the shock of seeing which causes the elephant to wake up. Though the lion is unreal, being just a creation of the elephant’s own mind, the waking that it causes is real. Likewise, the outward form of the guru is unreal, being just a creation of our own dreaming mind, but it causes us to awaken to our real self, because what we see outwardly as the human form of the guru is actually nothing but our own essential self, which always shines in our heart as ‘I am’.

The truth that Bhagavan teaches us in verse 15 of Upadēśa Undiyār is taught by him equally emphatically in verse 31 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
For those who enjoy tanmayānanda [the ‘bliss composed of that’, namely the real self], which rose [as ‘I am I’] destroying the [false] self [the mind or ego], what one [action] exists for doing? They do not know anything other than self, [so] who can [or how to] conceive their state as ‘it is such’?
In the clear, undefiled experience of a jñāni, nothing exists other than self, so there is no mind, body or world, and therefore nothing to do any action. This is a truth that Bhagavan repeatedly emphasised not only in his own writings but also in many of the conversations with him that have been recorded by others, and it is why he wrote in verses 30 to 33 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Anubandham:
Like a person who is [seemingly] listening to a story [but whose] mind has gone far away [and who therefore does not actually hear what is being said], a mind in which [all] vāsanas [propensities or desires] have been destroyed does not [actually] do [anything] even though it is [seemingly] doing. [On the other hand] a mind that is saturated with them [vāsanas] is actually doing even though it is [seemingly] not doing [anything], [just like] a person who climbs a hill and falls over a precipice in a dream, even though he is lying motionless here [in this waking world].

The [waking or dream] activity, the niṣṭhā [absorption or samādhi] and the sleep that are [seemingly occurring] to the mey-jñāni [the knower of reality], who is asleep within the fleshy body, which is [like] a cart, are similar to the cart moving, standing or the cart remaining alone [with the bullocks unyoked] to a person sleeping in the cart. [That is, these transient states of the body and mind are not experienced by the jñāni, just as the states of a cart are not experienced by a person who is sleeping in it.]

For those who experience waking, dream and sleep, waking-sleep, [which is] beyond [these three transient states], is called turīya [the ‘fourth’]. Since that turīya alone exists, [and] since the three [states of waking, dream and sleep] that appear [to exist] do not exist, be assured [that turīya is actually] turīya-v-atīta [turīyātīta, that which transcends the ‘fourth’].

Saying ‘saṁcita and āgāmya do not adhere to the jñāni [but] prārabdha does remain’ is a reply told to the questions of others. Just as [any of] the wives do not remain unwidowed when the husband has died, know that [when] the doer [has died] all the three karmas cease.
Since the experience of the jñāni is that self alone exists, and nothing else has ever existed, the mind that we now experience does not really exist but is just an illusion. Therefore the state that is called manōnāśa (destruction of mind) is not actually a state in which something that existed has been destroyed, but is just the clear knowledge that nothing other than self has ever existed. This is why in verse 17 of Upadēśa Undiyār Bhagavan says:
When [anyone] scrutinises the form of the mind without forgetting, [it will be clear that] anything as ‘mind’ does not exist. For everyone, this is the direct [straight, proper, correct or true] path.
If we see a rope lying on the ground in the dim light of dusk, we may mistake it to be a snake. Just as that snake does not really exist but is just an imagination, this mind does not really exist but is just an imagination. And just as the sole reality underlying the appearance of the snake is only a rope, so the sole reality underlying the appearance of this mind is only self, which is absolutely non-dual being-consciousness, and therefore completely devoid of all thoughts, perceptions and differences.

In other words, what we now experience as our finite mind is in fact nothing but our infinite self, and if we experience as it really is, it will no longer appear to be this finite mind, which thinks thoughts and experiences things that appear to be other than it.

Therefore, saying that the mind is destroyed by our recognising that it is actually nothing other than self is like saying that the snake is destroyed by our recognising that it is actually just a rope. Such statements are not intended to imply that either the mind or the snake ever really existed as such, because what is destroyed is not their actual existence but only the illusion that they existed.

When the mind is thus destroyed, the cit-jaḍa-granthi (the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious) is cut asunder, which means that its jaḍa (non-conscious) portion (namely the body and all the other adjuncts that we identify as ‘I’) disappears, and only its cit (consciousness) portion, ‘I am’, remains, because it is the sole reality.

Because this knot is a wrong knowledge of ourself, it can be destroyed only by true self-knowledge, and the only means by we can experience true self-knowledge is ātma-vicāra, because we cannot experience what we really are unless we keenly and vigilantly attend to ourself, withdrawing our power of attention entirely from all other things. This is the truth that Bhagavan teaches us in verse 16 of Upadēśa Undiyār:
Having given up [knowing] external viṣayas [objects, affairs, states, events or experiences], the mind knowing its own form of light alone is true knowledge [or knowledge of reality].
In states of manōlaya such as sleep, coma, death or yōga-nidrā (which is a term that Bhagavan is recorded as having sometimes used to describe any state of samādhi that is brought about by any means of than self-attentiveness), the mind has subsided because it has ceased experiencing any external viṣayas, but its subsidence is only temporary, because it has subsided without clearly knowing ‘its own form of light’ — its essential form of pure consciousness. In order to be destroyed, the mind must not only cease experiencing any external viṣayas, but must also clearly experience ‘its own form of light’ (which is ‘the essential cit [consciousness] aspect of the ego [the mind or cit-jaḍa granthi]’ that Bhagavan referred to in the portion of the conversation recorded in the last chapter of Maharshi’s Gospel that I referred to earlier).

The mind cannot experience ‘its own form of light’ with absolute clarity unless it has completely given up experiencing any external viṣayas even to the slightest extent, but it can completely give up experiencing any external viṣayas without clearly experiencing ‘its own form of light’, as it does in sleep and other states of manōlaya. This is why in this verse Bhagavan places the emphasis on ‘the mind knowing its own form of light’ by making it the subject of the sentence, and relegates ‘having given up external viṣayas’ to a subsidiary position by making it a participle clause.

That is, giving up experiencing external viṣayas is a necessary condition for manōnāśa, but not a sufficient condition, whereas the mind knowing its own form of light is not only a necessary condition but also a sufficient condition for manōnāśa. Therefore, what Bhagavan teaches us in this extremely important verse — the central gem of Upadēśa Undiyār — is that in order to experience true self-knowledge, which alone can destroy the mind, we must not only give up experiencing external viṣayas but must also experience our own ‘form of light’ — our real nature, which is the absolutely clear light of pure (content-free) consciousness.

In different states of manōlaya there may be differing degrees of clarity of self-consciousness, but because it is not a complete clarity it does not destroy the mind, and hence the mind will rise again. Moreover, because we can make no effort in such a state, we cannot increase the degree of clarity until we come out of that state. Only when the mind has risen out of laya can it make the necessary effort to focus its attention keenly and exclusively upon ‘its own form of light’.

This is why Bhagavan repeatedly emphasised that when practising ātma-vicāra we should not only avoid being carried away by any thoughts but should also avoid subsiding into any form of manōlaya, and that the only means by which we can thus remain firmly established in our natural state of self-abidance or ātma-niṣṭhā (in which our power of attention stands steadily balanced in the central point between its two customary states of thinking and laya) is by keenly and vigilantly attending to our own ‘form of light’ — the ‘essential cit aspect’ of our mind.

The power of māyā or self-deception that prevents us from knowing ourself as we really are has two forms, which are called āvaraṇa śakti (the power of covering, veiling, concealing or obscuration) and vikṣēpa śakti (the power of projection, dispersion or dissipation). The former is the fundamental lack of clarity of self-consciousness that forms the background darkness that enables the latter to project thoughts (some of which seem to exist outside the mind as the objects, states and events of the physical world), just as the darkness in a cinema enables pictures to be projected upon the screen. In waking and dream these two forms of māyā are both functioning, whereas in manōlaya the vikṣēpa śakti has ceased to function and only the āvaraṇa śakti persists.

When we give up experiencing external viṣayas (which include all thoughts, both those that seem to exist only in our mind and those that seem to exist outside our mind as the objects and events of the physical world), we are temporarily suspending the functioning of vikṣēpa śakti, and thus we subside in manōlaya, in which we remain enveloped in āvaraṇa, the veil of self-ignorance. Therefore, to know ourself as we really are, we must not only give up experiencing external viṣayas but must also strive to experience our own ‘form of light’, because only by experiencing this will we be able to pierce through this fundamental veil of self-ignorance (our lack of clarity of self-consciousness) caused by āvaraṇa śakti.

Since the mind and all its manifold creations can appear to exist only under the dark veil of āvaraṇa śakti, and since this veil can be dissolved only by the experience of absolutely clear self-consciousness, in order to destroy the fundamental cause of the illusory appearance of the mind we must strive relentlessly to experience the ‘essential cit aspect’ of our mind, devoid of all the non-conscious adjuncts (jaḍa upādhi) that we now superimpose upon it.

When we thus experience the essential cit element of our mind without any of its jaḍa adjuncts, we will split the cit-jaḍa-granthi (the knot between consciousness and the non-conscious), which is far more subtle and fundamental than any physical atom, and as Bhagavan used to say (for example, on the afternoon of 22-11-1945, as recorded in Day by Day with Bhagavan, 2002 edn, p. 49), the splitting of this mental atom will release the infinite power of jñāna, which will instantly and forever swallow the false appearance of the entire universe and anything else that may appear to be other than our essential self — our pure consciousness of being, ‘I am’.

This state, in which everything other than ‘I’ has been swallowed by the clear light of true self-knowledge (as alluded to by Sri Bhagavan in verse 27 of Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai and verse 1 of Śrī Aruṇācala Pañcaratnam), is our natural state of egoless being-consciousness (sat-cit), which is the real state denoted by the term manōnāśa, ‘destruction of mind’.

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

Experiencing the pure ‘I’ here and now

In a comment on my previous article, How to avoid creating fresh karma (āgāmya)?, an anonymous friend quoted the following passage from Lucy Cornelssen’s book Hunting the ‘I’ (5th edition, 2003, pp. 20-21):

There are other opportunities, when we could experience this pure ‘I’ consciously. One such is during the tiny gap between two thoughts, when the attention has given up its hold on one thought and not yet caught the next one. But since we never tried our attention is not trained this way, and we will hardly succeed in the attempt.

There is a better chance to catch it between sleeping and awaking. It is very important to try it, if you are serious in your hunting the ‘I’. Take care of a few conditions: Try at night just before you fall asleep to keep as the last thought your intention to catch as the first thing of all on waking in the morning the experience of your true ‘I’.
What Lucy describes here as the pure ‘I’ or true ‘I’ is simply the one and only ‘I’ as it really is — in other words, ourself as we really are. Therefore the pure ‘I’ is not something distant (in either time or space) or other than ourself, but is simply what we always actually are. It appears to be something unknown to us only because we have obscured it by confusing it with adjuncts such as a physical body and a thinking mind.

However, though it now appears to us to be obscured, it is actually the essence of what we always experience as ‘I’ — our pristine and non-dual consciousness of our own being. Therefore self-investigation (ātma-vicāra) is not really a matter of ‘hunting’ the pure ‘I’ (as if it were something distant or not now experienced) but is simply the practice of attending to and thereby being what we always truly are — our own essential self, ‘I am’.

Since this pure ‘I’ is ever-present — never removed from or distant to us in either time or space — we can experience it as it really is only here and now. Therefore we should not think of it as something that we do not experience now but will experience in future, because as soon as we anticipate experiencing it in future, we have in our imagination created a distance between it and us, as if it were something objective or other than ourself.

Therefore Lucy’s suggestion in this passage that we should try at night just before falling asleep to keep as our last thought the intention to catch as the first thing of all on waking in the morning the experience of our true ‘I’ is potentially counter-productive, because the experience of ‘I’ that we would then be anticipating catching on waking is in the future and is therefore removed from what we actually are here and now.

Therefore, rather than intending to catch some future experience, we should try to experience ourself as we actually are here and now. The intention or anticipation to experience anything in future is a thought that we are thinking now, so it is a distraction of our attention from experiencing our true ‘I’ as it is at present (which is as it always has been and always will be, if at all there is really any such thing as the past or future).

If we are to experience our true ‘I’ in the present moment — which is the only moment in which we ever can actually experience it — we should not intend to experience it at any moment other than now, at this precise present moment, because every other moment is only a thought, and every thought is a distraction from pure self-attentiveness, which is the state that we should be aiming to experience.

If our pure ‘I’ can be experienced at the moment between sleeping and awaking, as Lucy suggests, it can equally well be experienced at the moment between being awake and falling asleep. Therefore, rather than wasting that precious moment just before falling asleep trying ‘to keep as the last thought your intention to catch’ the experience of ‘I’ on waking the next morning, we should utilise it to fix our attention only on ‘I’ to the exclusion of all other thoughts.

If we fall asleep being self-attentive, we stand a better chance of waking up in a self-attentive state than if we fall asleep with the thought that we should be self-attentive when we wake up. If we fall asleep with the latter thought, we will probably wake up with the same thought, and this thought that we should be self-attentive at some time in the future is not the same as actually being self-attentive in the present moment, here and now.

Our pure ‘I’ is ever-present, so in order to experience it as it is we do not have to wait for any gap such as between two thoughts or between two states. All thoughts (including thoughts of the past or future, or of gaps between thoughts or states) and all states (such as waking, dream and sleep) appear to exist only because we attend to them, so if we ignore them by attending only to ‘I’ they will cease to exist, being mere illusions created by māyā, our own self-deceptive power of imagination.

Though Sri Ramana taught us that we experience ‘I’ in its pure state in the tiny gap between any two consecutive thoughts or between any two consecutive states, he did not expect us to wait in anticipation for such a gap at any time in future, but only urged us to attend to ‘I’ now (and at every other moment — as and when we experience it as ‘now’), because so long as we are deeply self-attentive and thereby ignoring all thoughts, states and passing times, we are truly experiencing the gap to which he was referring.

Unless we are deeply self-attentive (and thereby completely devoid of all thoughts) at this present moment, we cannot actually experience the pure ‘I’ that shines in the gap between each two consecutive thoughts or states. Therefore, without thinking of anything else whatsoever, we should here and now attend wholly and exclusively to ‘I’ alone, as Sri Ramana instructs us emphatically in the last two lines of verse 27 of Bhagavad Gītā Sāram (which is his Tamil rendering of Bhagavad Gītā 6.25):
சித்தத்தை யான்மாவிற் சேர்த்திடுக மற்றெதுவு
மித்தனையு மெண்ணிடா தே.

cittattai y-āṉmāviṯ sērttiḍuka maṯṟeduvu
m-ittaṉaiyu m-eṇṇiḍā dē.


Fix the mind [your power of attention] in ātman [your essential self]; do not think even in the least of anything else whatsoever.
What we need to experience is only one moment of absolutely thought-free and therefore perfectly clear self-attentiveness, because that alone will be sufficient to destroy forever the illusion that we are this mind or anything else other than what we really are (the pure and true ‘I’), and until we experience such a moment of pure self-attentiveness we will remain tightly bound in the grips of this illusion — and of all the troubles that it brings in its wake.

Friday, 21 January 2011

How to avoid creating fresh karma (āgāmya)?

In a reply that I wrote to one of the comments on my previous article, Second and third person objects, I wrote:

Whatever we experience in either waking or dream is determined by our destiny (prārabdha), so we have no power to alter any of it. However, though we cannot change what we are destined to experience, we can desire and make effort to change it, and by doing so we create fresh karma (āgāmya).

Since all such desire and effort to change what we are destined to experience is futile and counterproductive, we should refrain from all such extroverted desire and effort, and should make effort only to subside within by focusing our entire attention upon ourself (the first person, the experiencing subject, ‘I’) and thereby withdrawing it from everything else (every second or third person object).

By making such selfward-directed effort, we will not alter what the mind is destined to experienced, but will remove the illusion that we are this experiencing mind. This is what Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 38 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
If we are the ‘doer’ of actions, which are like seeds, we will experience the resulting ‘fruit’. [However] when we know ourself by investigating ‘who is the doer of action?’, ‘doership’ will depart and all the three karmas will slip off. This indeed is the state of liberation, which is eternal.
That is, actions (karmas), which are motivated by our desires, are like seeds, because they generate more desires to do further actions and thereby they reproduce themselves endlessly, and so long as we continue doing actions (of mind, speech or body), we will have to experience their ‘fruit’ or consequences. However, if instead of indulging in more action we investigate ‘who am I, who seem to be doing action?’, we will experience ourself only as pure non-active self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

When we thus experience ourself only as action-free being, both our sense of ‘doership’ (kartṛtva) and our sense of ‘experiencership’ (bhōktṛtva) — that is, our feeling that ‘I am doing action’ and ‘I am experiencing the result of my actions’ — will cease to exist, and thus all our three karmas (āgāmya, sañcita and prārabdha) will also cease to exist. The resulting state, which is devoid of the doer, the experiencer and his or her three karmas, is liberation (mukti), which is eternal — being without beginning, interruption or end.
Yesterday a friend wrote to me an e-mail in which he referred to the first two paragraphs from the above-quoted portion of my reply and asked:
I find your reply very helpful and inspiring. But I also wonder how to balance living and acting in the “outer” world, try to change situations that can be changed and on the other side refrain from any outward action and just directing the attention selfwards. Any outward directed action and any desire seems to create new karma.
In my reply to him I wrote as follows:

The first teaching of Sri Ramana that has been recorded is the note that he wrote for his mother in December 1898, when he was barely nineteen years old and she came to implore him to return home. What he wrote then was as follows:
According to their-their prārabdha [that is, according to the destiny of each person], he-who-is-for-that [God] being there-there [in the heart of each person] will make [him or her] act. That which is never to happen will not happen whatever effort [we] make [to make it happen]. That which is to happen will not stop whatever obstruction [or resistance] [we] do [to prevent it happening]. This indeed is certain. Therefore silently being [or being silent] is good.
Whatever outward work we are destined to do we will be made to do, so we need not concern ourself with such outward activities. If we are meant to do anything that will change any situation, we will certainly do it, whether we want to try or not; and if we are not meant to do so, no matter hard we try we will not manage to do so.

Therefore we should concentrate all our deliberate effort on turning our mind inwards (selfwards) and thereby ‘being silent’. As Bhagavan says in the thirteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?):
Being completely absorbed in ātma-niṣṭha [self-abidance], not giving even the slightest room to the rising of any other cintana [thought] except ātma-cintana [self-contemplation or self-attentiveness], alone is giving ourself to God.
By being self-attentive we are truly surrendering ourself (and hence our will, our body and our mind) to God, so how he then uses our body and mind to do whatever they are destined to do will be no concern of ours. Because we will be completely surrendered to him, attending to nothing other than self, we will not be creating any fresh karma (āgāmya), because we will not be the doer of any action.

Monday, 10 January 2011

Second and third person objects

Three significant Tamil words that Sri Ramana often used in his own writings and in his oral teachings are தன்மை (taṉmai), which literally means ‘self-ness’ (taṉ-mai) or ‘selfhood’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the first person’, முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai), which etymologically means ‘that which stands in front’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the second person’, and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), which etymologically means ‘that which has spread out’ and which is used in Tamil grammar to mean ‘the third person’.

Of these three words, the most significant is of course தன்மை (taṉmai), the first person, the subject ‘I’, but in this article I will focus more on the other two words in order to clarify their meaning in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings.

Though these words are all grammatical terms, in his teachings Sri Ramana did not use them in their usual grammatical sense but in an epistemological sense. That is, தன்மை (taṉmai), the first person, is the epistemic subject, the knower or experiencer, whereas முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai) and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), second and third persons, are epistemic objects, things that are known or experienced by the subject as other than itself.

The question then is why Sri Ramana used these two terms — instead of just one term — to describe all objects? Which objects are second person objects, and which are third person objects? These are some of the principal questions that I will consider in this article.

Because this is a long article, I have divided it into the following seventeen sections:

  1. Second and third person are thoughts that depend upon the first person, the thinking thought ‘I’
  2. The world is nothing but a series of thoughts
  3. The broad meaning of ‘thought’ as it is used by Sri Ramana
  4. Second person thoughts and third person thoughts
  5. The ‘subjective’-‘objective’ distinction
  6. The unreality of the ‘second person’-‘third person’ distinction
  7. Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 14
  8. The fundamental principle of Sri Ramana’s teachings
  9. Pramāda: the first person seems to exist only because we do not attend to it
  10. The practical application of the rope-snake analogy
  11. Sri Ramana’s teachings are a subtle refinement of advaita vēdanta
  12. Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 26
  13. Parallels between verses 14 and 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu
  14. Interpreting the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ individually
  15. Interpretation in Happiness and the Art of Being
  16. An alternative interpretation in Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana
  17. Interpretations must be appropriate to the context and the audience
Second and third person are thoughts that depend upon the first person, the thinking thought ‘I’

In the final sentences of the fifth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?) Sri Ramana wrote:
மனதில் தோன்றும் நினைவுகளெல்லாவற்றிற்கும் நானென்னும் நினைவே முதல் நினைவு. இது எழுந்த பிறகே ஏனைய நினைவுகள் எழுகின்றன. தன்மை தோன்றிய பிறகே முன்னிலை படர்க்கைகள் தோன்றுகின்றன; தன்மை யின்றி முன்னிலை படர்க்கைக ளிரா.

maṉatil tōṉḏṟum niṉaivugaḷ-ellāvaṯṟiṟkum nāṉ-eṉṉum niṉaivē mudal niṉaivu. idu eṙunda piṟahē ēṉaiya niṉaivugaḷ eṙukiṉḏṟaṉa. taṉmai tōṉḏṟiya piṟahē muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ tōṉḏṟukiṉḏṟaṉa; taṉmai y-iṉḏṟi muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ irā.

Of all the thoughts that appear [or arise] in the mind, the thought ‘I’ alone is the first thought. Only after this rises do other thoughts rise. Only after the first person appears do second and third persons appear; without the first person second and third persons do not exist.
As the juxtaposing of these sentences implies, the first person (taṉmai) is the first thought, ‘I’, whereas second and third persons (muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ) are all the other thoughts, which are thought by this first thought, ‘I’.

Sri Ramana describes the ‘I’ that thinks all other thoughts as a thought because it is not the real and original form of ‘I’, but is only a distorted form of it that rises and subsides with other thoughts. Whereas our real ‘I’ is the pure, adjunct-free consciousness of being, ‘I am’, this thought ‘I’ is an adjunct-mixed consciousness, ‘I am this body’.

Whenever we think any thought, we do so with the feeling that we are a particular body, and this feeling that ‘I am this body’ is the first thought, which is the root of all other thoughts. Without this first thought no other thought can arise.

Thinking is a process that consists of two inseparable aspects, creating (or forming) and experiencing. That is, when we think any thought, we create it and simultaneously experience it. Without experiencing it, we cannot create it, so if it is not experienced by us, it does not exist.

The thinking thought is therefore fundamentally different to all other thoughts, because the former is the conscious experiencer, whereas the latter are non-conscious objects that exist only when they are experienced by it. This is why Sri Ramana says:
Only after this [first thought] rises do other thoughts rise. [...] without the first person second and third persons do not exist.
Since all other thoughts are objects created and experienced by the first thought (the first person, ‘I’), Sri Ramana describes them collectively as ‘second and third persons’, but which thoughts are second persons, and which are third persons? By using these two terms to describe all thoughts other than ‘I’, is he indicating that there are two distinct categories of thoughts, and if so, what are these categories?

The world is nothing but a series of thoughts

Since thoughts are things that exist only in our own mind, we generally consider them to be distinct from things that appear to exist outside our mind, namely the objects that constitute the physical world. However, the world (and all the objects and events in it) is actually nothing but a series of thoughts in our own mind, as Sri Ramana repeatedly emphasised.

For example, towards the end of the fourteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? he wrote, ‘ஜகமென்பது நினைவே’ (jagam-eṉbadu niṉaivē), which means, ‘What is called the world [is] only thought’, and in the fourth paragraph he wrote even more emphatically:
[...] நினைவுகளைத் தவிர்த்து ஜகமென்றோர் பொருள் அன்னியமா யில்லை. தூக்கத்தில் நினைவுகளில்லை, ஜகமுமில்லை; ஜாக்ர சொப்பனங்களில் நினைவுகளுள, ஜகமும் உண்டு. சிலந்திப்பூச்சி எப்படித் தன்னிடமிருந்து வெளியில் நூலை நூற்று மறுபடியும் தன்னுள் இழுந்துக்கொள்ளுகிறதோ அப்படியே மனமும் தன்னிடத்திலிருந்து ஜகத்தைத் தோற்றுவித்து மறுபடியும் தன்னிடமே ஒடுக்கிக்கொள்ளுகிறது. [...]

[...] niṉaivugaḷai-t tavirttu jagam-eṉḏṟ(u)-ōr poruḷ anniyamāy illai. tūkkattil niṉaivgaḷ-illai, jagamum-illai; jāgra soppaṉaṅgaḷil niṉaivugaḷ-uḷa, jagamum uṇḍu. silandi-p-pūcci eppaḍi-t taṉṉiḍamirundu veḷiyil nūlai nūṯṟu maṟupaḍiyum taṉṉuḷ iṙundu-k-koḷḷukiṟadō, appaḍiyē maṉamum taṉṉiḍattilirundu jagattai-t tōtruvittu maṟupaḍiyum taṉṉiḍamē oḍukki-k-koḷḷukiṟadu. [...]

[...] Thoughts excluded, anything called ‘world’ does not exist separately. In sleep there are no thoughts, and there is also no world; in waking and dream there are thoughts, and there is also a world. Just as a spider spins thread out from within itself and again draws [it back] into itself, so exactly the mind creates [or projects] the world from within itself and again dissolves [it back] into itself. [...]
When we perceive the world, it appears to us that we are perceiving something that exists outside and independent of our perceiving mind, whereas in fact the seemingly external world is only a mental creation, like the world that we experience in a dream. In other words, our perceptual experiences are caused entirely by our power of imagination, and not by anything outside or independent of our mind.

The broad meaning of ‘thought’ as it is used by Sri Ramana

Everything that we experience as other than ourself is a thought of one kind or another. Though in English the word ‘thought’ is generally understood to mean only certain kinds of mental experiences, when it is used in English translations of Sri Ramana’s teachings it denotes all kinds of mental (or emotional) experiences.

Sri Ramana used various words in Tamil to denote ‘thought’ (or ‘idea’) in this broad sense, but the two words that he used most frequently in this sense were நினைவு (niṉaivu) and எண்ணம் (eṇṇam). Whenever he used these or any other words that mean ‘thought’ or ‘idea’, their meaning includes all perceptions, conceptions, ideas, imaginations, beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires, fears and anything else that we experience as other than our essential being, ‘I am’.

Second person thoughts and third person thoughts

From our perspective, all such thoughts can be divided into two distinct categories, namely those that appear to us to be things that exist only in our own mind, and those that appear to us to be things that exist outside and independent of our own mind. Therefore we can reasonably infer that the former category of thoughts are what Sri Ramana means by the term முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ), second persons, and the latter category of thoughts are what he means by the term படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ), third persons.

This interpretation of these two words in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings is also suggested by their etymology: முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai) is a compound of முன் (muṉ), which means ‘in front’, and நிலை (nilai), which means ‘standing’, ‘staying’ or ‘state’, so it means ‘that which stands in front’, ‘that which stays in front’ or ‘the state in front’, and thus in an epistemological sense it implies that which is known or experienced most closely, intimately, immediately or directly. படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), on the other hand, is a noun derived from the verb படர் (paḍar), which means to ‘spread’, ‘ramify’, ‘expand’ or ‘be diffused’, so it means ‘that which has spread out’, and thus in an epistemological sense it implies that which is known or experienced more remotely, less intimately or less directly.

Though from a gross physical perspective the objects the world that we see in front of us appear to be முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ), ‘those things that stand in front’ or ‘those things that are known most closely’, from a more subtle perspective it is clear that we know our own thoughts more closely than we know any physical objects (because the physical objects that appear to be outside ourself are known by us only indirectly through the media of our body and its five senses), so it is more appropriate for us to consider our own thoughts to be முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ) and physical objects (or events) to be படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ).

Thus what Sri Ramana describes as முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ) or ‘second persons’ are those things that are commonly described as ‘mental’ or ‘subjective’, whereas what he describes as படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ) or ‘third persons’ are those things that are commonly described as ‘physical’ or ‘objective’.

The ‘subjective’-‘objective’ distinction

In this context it is worth noting that though things that we experience only in our own mind are generally considered to be ‘subjective’, from the perspective of Sri Ramana’s teachings everything other than ‘I’ is actually objective. Mental phenomena are generally considered to be ‘subjective’ because they are — and can only be — experienced by only one subject (one person or sentient creature), whereas physical phenomena are generally considered to be ‘objective’ because they appear to be experienced (or at least potentially experienced) by many subjects (many people or sentient creatures).

When the terms ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ are used in this sense, their meaning is different to the more strict sense in which we would use them in the context of Sri Ramana’s teachings, in which we would consider the only truly subjective thing to be the actual experiencing subject — the first person, ‘I’ — and we would consider everything that this subject experiences as other than itself to be objective.

Everything that is objective in this latter sense is either a second person or a third person. If it appears to us to be a mental phenomenon, it is a second person object, and if it appears to us to be a physical phenomenon, it is a third person object.

The unreality of the ‘second person’-‘third person’ distinction

However, though Sri Ramana described everything that is objective in this latter sense as முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ) or ‘second-and-third-persons’, his intention was not to teach us that there is any real difference between mental and physical phenomena, but was only to club them all together as objects or things that are other than ‘I’, because in order to know ‘I’ as it really is, we must ignore everything else and focus our entire attention only on ‘I’, the first person.

This is why he seldom if ever spoke of முன்னிலைகள் (muṉṉilaigaḷ) and படர்க்கைகள் (paḍarkkaigaḷ) separately, but almost invariably referred to them collectively முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ) or ‘second-and-third-persons’. The reason why he used these two words rather than just one word to describe all objects was not because physical phenomena are actually distinct from mental phenomena, but was only because they seem to us to be distinct.

As he repeatedly emphasised, all things that appear to be physical are actually only mental, because everything that we experience as other than ‘I’, the first person, is only a thought or idea that is created and experienced only by our own mind. Therefore, when he taught us that we must set aside (ignore) all thoughts in order to know ourself as we really are, he intended us to understand that the term ‘thoughts’ includes everything that appears to be other than ourself.

Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 14

In verse 14 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Sri Ramana says:
[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] உடனா — னென்னுமத்
தன்மையுண்டேன் முன்னிலைப டர்க்கைக டாமுளவாந்
தன்மையி னுண்மையைத் தானாய்ந்து — தன்மையறின்
முன்னிலைப டர்க்கை முடிவுற்றொன் றாயொளிருந்
தன்மையே தன்னிலைமை தான். [...]

[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] uḍaṉā — ṉeṉṉumat
taṉmaiyuṇḍēṉ muṉṉilaipa ḍarkkaiga ḍāmuḷavān
taṉmaiyi ṉuṇmaiyait tāṉāyndu — taṉmaiyaṟiṉ
muṉṉilaipa ḍarkkai muḍivuṯṟoṉ ḏṟāyoḷirun
taṉmaiyē taṉṉilaimai tāṉ.
[...]
In Tamil verses words are fused together according to the rules of saṁdhi or conjunction and are then written divided into separate metrical feet, so to interpret a Tamil verse we first have to write a padacchēdam or ‘word-separation’ of it. The padacchēdam of this verse is as follows:
‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் தன்மை உண்டேல், முன்னிலை படர்க்கைகள் தாம் உள ஆம். தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து தன்மை அறின், முன்னிலை படர்க்கை முடிவு உற்று, ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் தன்மையே தன் நிலைமை தான்.

uḍal nāṉeṉṉum a-t-taṉmai uṇḍēl, muṉṉilai paḍarkkaigaḷ tām uḷa-v-ām. taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu taṉmai aṟiṉ, muṉṉilai paḍarkkai muḍivu uṯṟu, oṉḏṟāy oḷirum taṉmaiyē taṉ nilaimai tāṉ.
The first four words, ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் (‘uḍal nāṉ eṉṉum a-t), were added by Sri Ramana when he wrote the kaliveṇbā version of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, in which he added such words between each pair of consecutive verses in order to link all the forty plus two verses together as a single long verse.

உடல் (uḍal) means ‘body’, நான் (nāṉ) means ‘I’, and என்னும் (eṉṉum) is a quotative relative participle (formed from the verb என், eṉ, to ‘say’ or ‘express’) that means ‘which is called’ (or simply ‘called’), but that can also be represented in English by inverted commas enclosing the meaning of the preceding word or clause. Thus ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் (‘uḍal nāṉ eṉṉum) is a relative clause that means ‘which is called “body [is] I”’ or ‘called “I [am this] body”’.

This relative clause qualifies அத் தன்மை (a-t-taṉmai), which means ‘that first person’. (a) is a distal demonstrative prefix meaning ‘that’, and the letter த் (t) is appended to it to form a conjunction with தன்மை (taṉmai), which in this context means ‘first person’. உண்டேல் (uṇḍēl) is a conditional form of உண்டு (uṇḍu) and therefore means ‘if [it] exists’. Thus ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் தன்மை உண்டேல் (‘uḍal nāṉ eṉṉum a-t-taṉmai uṇḍēl) is a conditional clause that means ‘if that first person called “I [am this] body” exists’.

முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ) is a plural compound noun meaning ‘second-and-third-persons’, and தாம் (tām) is a plural form of the pronoun தான் (tāṉ) and basically means ‘they’ or ‘themselves’, but when appended to a plural noun acts as an intensifier, adding emphasis to it in the sense of either ‘themselves’ or ‘certainly’. உள (uḷa) is an infinitive form of the verb உள் (uḷ), ‘to be’ or ‘to exist’, and ஆம் (ām) is a third person future form of the verb (ā) and means ‘will come into being’, ‘will happen’, ‘will occur’ or ‘will be’, so உளவாம் (uḷa-v-ām) means ‘will happen to be’ or ‘will appear to exist’. Thus முன்னில-படர்க்கைகள்-தாம் உளவாம் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ-tām uḷa-v-ām) means ‘second and third persons will certainly appear to exist’, so the entire first sentence of this verse means:
If that first person called ‘I [am this] body’ exists, second and third persons will [also] certainly appear to exist.
தன்மையின் (taṉmaiyiṉ) is an oblique case form (acting as a genitive form) of தன்மை (taṉmai), so means ‘of the first person’; உண்மையை (uṇmaiyai) is the accusative form of உண்மை (uṇmai), which means ‘existence’, ‘reality’, ‘truth’ or ‘nature’; தான் (tāṉ) is a pronoun that means ‘one’, ‘oneself’ or ‘self’; and ஆய்ந்து (āyndu) is a participle form of the verb ஆய் (āy), which means to ‘investigate’, ‘examine’ or ‘scrutinise’, so தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து (taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu) means ‘[by] oneself examining the reality of the first person’. In this clause தன்மை (taṉmai) is a nominative used as an accusative and means ‘one’s nature’, ‘one’s essence’ or ‘one’s reality’, and அறின் (aṟiṉ) is a conditional form of the verb அறி (aṟi), so means ‘if [one] knows’ or ‘if [one] experiences’. Thus தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து தன்மை அறின் (taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu taṉmai aṟiṉ) is a conditional clause that means ‘if one knows one’s essence [by] examining the reality of the first person’.

As explained already, முன்னிலை-படர்க்கை (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkai) means ‘second-and-third-persons’; முடிவு (muḍivu) means ‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘termination’ or ‘death’, and உற்று (uṯṟu) is a participle form of the verb உறு (uṟu), which means to ‘be’, ‘happen’, ‘occur’, ‘reach’, ‘undergo’ or ‘suffer’, so முடிவற்று (muḍivuṯṟu) means ‘reaching the end’, ‘undergoing termination’ or ‘ceasing to exist’. Thus முன்னிலை படர்க்கை முடிவுற்று (muṉṉilai paḍarkkai muḍivuṯṟu) means ‘second and third persons ceasing [or having ceased] to exist’.

ஒன்றாய் (oṉḏṟāy) is an adverbial form of ஒன்று (oṉḏṟu), ‘one’, and therefore means ‘singly’ or ‘as one’, and ஒளிரும் (oḷirum) is a relative participle form of the verb ஒளிர் (oḷir), which means to ‘shine’, so ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் (oṉḏṟāy oḷirum) is a relative clause that means ‘which shines singly’ or ‘which shines as one’. தன்மையே (taṉmai-y-ē) is an intensified form of தன்மை (taṉmai), which in this context means ‘the essential reality’, and the intensifying suffix (ē) means ‘alone’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’. தன் (taṉ) is an oblique case form of தான் (tāṉ), which means ‘one’, ‘oneself’ or ‘self’, and in this context the oblique case can either represent the genitive case, ‘one’s own’, or serve to form the first part of a compound, ‘self-’; நிலைமை (nilaimai) means ‘state’, ‘nature’ or ‘reality’, so தன் நிலைமை (taṉ nilaimai) means ‘one’s own state’, ‘the self-state’ or ‘the state of self’. The final word தான் (tāṉ) acts here as an intensifier meaning ‘itself’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’. Thus ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் தன்மையே தன் நிலைமை தான் (oṉḏṟāy oḷirum taṉmaiyē taṉ nilaimai tāṉ) means ‘only the essential reality that shines as one [is] truly the state of self’ or ‘only the singly shining essence [is] truly one’s own [natural] state [or reality]’, so the final sentence of this verse means:
If one knows one’s essence [by] examining the reality of the first person, second and third persons will cease to exist, [and] only the essential reality that [then remains and] shines as one [is] truly the state of self.
Thus this entire verse means:
If that first person called ‘I [am this] body’ exists, second and third persons will [also] certainly appear to exist. If one knows one’s essence [by] examining the reality of the first person, second and third persons will cease to exist, [and] only the essential reality that [then remains and] shines as one [is] truly the state of self.
The reason why second and third persons will cease to exist if one knows one’s essential self by examining the reality of the first person is that such self-examination will expose the unreality — the non-existence — of the first person, and without the first person second and third persons cannot exist.

The fundamental principle of Sri Ramana’s teachings

This is the fundamental principle of Sri Ramana’s teachings: second and third persons appear to exist only so long as the first person appears to exist, and the first person appears to exist only so long as it does not attend to itself; if it attends to itself solely and exclusively — excluding from its attention even the slightest trace of any second or third person — it will cease to exist as the first person and will remain only as the one non-dual reality, the pristine self-conscious being ‘I am’.

The false state in which we experience ourself as a separate first person or subject that experiences second and third person objects is a state of duality or multiplicity, and it is sustained only by our diverting our attention away from ourself towards second and third persons, which appear to be other than ourself. When we cease to divert our attention away from ourself in this manner, this appearance of multiplicity will cease, and the non-dual consciousness of being that will then remain shining as the one essential reality is our natural state — the state in which we experience ourself as we really are.

Pramāda: the first person seems to exist only because we do not attend to it

Second and third persons seem to exist only because we attend to them, whereas the first person seems to exist only because we do not attend to it (or in more technical philosophical terminology, only because of pramāda or self-negligence). This is a fundamental and extremely important difference between the nature of the first person and that of second and third persons, and it is a difference that is not so clearly or emphatically expressed in any scriptural texts or in any of the surviving records of the teachings of any sage prior to Sri Ramana as it is in his written and oral teachings.

This fundamental difference between the first person and second and third persons is one of the crucial reasons why ātma-vicāra (self-investigation or self-attentiveness) is the only means by which we can experience ourself as we really are and thereby destroy the illusion that the mind (the ego or first person) is real.

The reason for this fundamental difference is that the first person is conscious whereas second and third persons are non-conscious. Because they are non-conscious, second and third persons appear to exist only when they are known by the first person, which is the only consciousness that can experience their seeming existence. And because the first person is the consciousness (the subject) that knows or experiences second and third persons (all objects), it appears to exist as such only so long as it is experiencing any of them. If it ceases to experience any of them by attending exclusively to itself, it will cease to be the first person that it now appears to be, and will remain instead as pure non-dual self-conscious being.

Therefore, if we attend to the first person, it will disappear, because it is truly non-existent as such, and when it disappears all second and third persons will disappear along with it, because their seeming existence depends upon its seeming existence.

The practical application of the rope-snake analogy

Just as the imaginary snake will disappear only if we look at it carefully and thereby recognise that it is only a rope, so the false first person will disappear only if we look at it carefully and thereby recognise that it is only the one infinite, indivisible and otherless space of pure self-conscious being, ‘I am’.

Though this analogy of the rope that appears to be a snake was used by many sages before Sri Ramana, the manner in which they applied it did not show that it can be a vital clue to the means by which we can destroy the illusion of the mind, because they generally used it to illustrate that the world (the totality of all third person objects) is illusory, like the snake, and that brahman (the absolute reality, which is our own essential self) is the underlying reality, like the rope.

Though it is true that the world is a figment of our imagination, like the snake, and that brahman is the reality underlying its false appearance, just as the rope is the reality underlying the false appearance of the snake, this application of this analogy fails if we try to extend it further by inferring that just as the snake will be found to be a rope if we look at it carefully, the world will be found to be brahman if we look at it carefully.

No matter how carefully we scrutinise the world or any other second or third person object, their illusory nature and the true nature of their underlying reality will not be revealed, because by attending to them we are sustaining and perpetuating their seeming reality. Their unreality will be revealed only if we scrutinise the first person, the ego, which is the false foundation upon which their seeming existence rests.

We can experience brahman — the ultimate reality that underlies the false appearance of both the first person and all the second and third persons that it experiences — only by looking carefully at the first person, the impostor who poses as ‘I’, which is truly the nature of brahman. Only if we look carefully at this false ‘I’ (which is a confused mixture of the true consciousness ‘I’ with a collection of non-conscious adjuncts, including a physical body and everything associated with it), will we be able to experience our real ‘I’ (which is pure consciousness of being, uncontaminated by any adjuncts).

Sri Ramana’s teachings are a subtle refinement of advaita vēdanta

Thus Sri Ramana’s teachings are a subtle refinement of the ancient philosophy of advaita vēdanta. However, though the refinement that he has given us is very subtle, it is nevertheless extremely valuable, because it enables us to understand both the efficacy and the actual practice of ātma-vicāra so much more clearly than we could by studying any of the earlier texts of advaita vēdanta.

One clear example of the subtle refinement of advaita vēdanta that Sri Ramana has given us lies in the fact that whereas in earlier texts of advaita vēdanta we were taught that everything is brahman (sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma, ‘All this indeed is brahman’, as stated in Chāndogyōpaniṣad 3.14.1), in verse 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu Sri Ramana has taught us that everything is actually the ego (அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம், ahandaiyē yāvum ām, ‘The ego indeed is everything’).

It is of course true that everything is ultimately brahman, because brahman is the fundamental reality underlying the false appearance of everything else, but though brahman is the ultimate foundation upon which the seeming reality of everything else rests, the more immediate — the intermediate — foundation upon which everything rests is only the ego, the false first person.

Everything else (all second and third persons) seems to exist only because the ego (the first person) seems to exist, so the ego is the seed, embryo, root and cause of the false appearance of everything else. In other words, the ego is the source and substance of everything else, and everything else is only an expansion of the ego. This is why Sri Ramana emphatically declared, ‘அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம்’ (ahandaiyē yāvum ām), ‘The ego indeed is everything’.

If we look carefully at this ego, we will discover that it is actually nothing other than brahman, so brahman is indeed the ultimate reality and substance of everything. But in order for us to experience this truth, it is extremely useful to appreciate the fact that the ego is the essential link — the intermediate foundation — between brahman and everything else, because we can experience brahman as it is only by carefully attending to the ego and not by attending — no matter how carefully — to anything else whatsoever.

Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu verse 26

In verse 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu, besides teaching us this important truth that ‘the ego indeed is everything’, Sri Ramana reiterates much of the same truth that he taught us in verse 14, but using other words, as follows:
[... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...] — கருவா
மகந்தையுண் டாயி னனைத்துமுண் டாகு
மகந்தையின் றேலின் றனைத்து — மகந்தையே
யாவுமா மாதலால் யாதிதென்று நாடலே
யோவுதல் யாவுமென வோர். [...]

[... ... ... ... ... ... ...] — karuvā
mahandaiyuṇ ḍāyi ṉaṉaittumuṇ ḍāhu
mahandaiyiṉ ḏṟēliṉ ḏṟaṉaittu — mahandaiyē
yāvumā mādalāl yādideṉḏṟu nādalē
yōvudal yāvumeṉa vōr.
[...]
The padacchēdam of this verse is as follows:
கரு ஆம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின், அனைத்தும் உண்டாகும்; அகந்தை இன்றேல், இன்று அனைத்தும். அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம். ஆதலால் ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் என ஓர்.

karu ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ, aṉaittum uṇḍāhum; ahandai iṉḏṟēl, iṉḏṟu aṉaittum. ahandaiyē yāvum ām. ādalālyādu idu?eṉḏṟu nādalē ōvudal yāvum eṉa ōr.
கரு (karu) is a Tamil word derived from the Sanskrit word garbha and means ‘womb’, ‘embryo’, ‘germ’, ‘seed’, ‘mould’, ‘matrix’, ‘efficient cause’, ‘substance’ or ‘foundation’; and ஆம் (ām) is here a relative participle form of the verb (ā) and means ‘which is’, so கருவாம் (karu-v-ām) is a relative clause that means ‘which is the womb [embryo, germ, seed, substance or foundation]’.

This relative clause qualifies அகந்தை (ahandai), which is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word ahaṁtā and which means ‘I-ness’ or ‘ego’. உண்டாயின் (uṇḍāyiṉ) is a conditional form of the verb உண்டா (uṇḍā), so it means ‘if [it] comes into existence’ or ‘if [it] arises’. Thus கரு ஆம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின் (karu ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ) is a conditional clause that means ‘if the ego, which is the embryo [seed, substance or foundation], comes into existence’.

அனைத்தும் (aṉaittum) means ‘all’, ‘everything’ or ‘the whole’, and உண்டாகும் (uṇḍāhum) is a third person future form of உண்டா (uṇḍā), so it literally means ‘[it] will come into existence’ or ‘[it] will arise’. However, in Tamil the future tense is often used as an habitual present tense — that is, to express an action or state that happens habitually, usually, typically or invariably — so உண்டாகும் (uṇḍāhum) can also be translated as ‘[it] comes into existence’ or ‘[it] arises’. Thus the first sentence of this verse, கரு ஆம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின், அனைத்தும் உண்டாகும் (karu ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ, aṉaittum uṇḍāhum), means:
If the ego, which is the embryo [seed, substance or foundation], comes into existence, everything comes into existence.
In the second sentence, அகந்தை இன்றேல், இன்று அனைத்தும் (ahandai iṉḏṟēl, iṉḏṟu aṉaittum), Sri Ramana states the other side of the same coin:
If the ego does not exist, everything does not exist.
In this sentence, இன்றேல் (iṉḏṟēl) is a conditional form of இன்று (iṉḏṟu), which acts as a finite verb expressing the negation of existence. Thus அகந்தை இன்றேல் (ahandai iṉḏṟēl) is a conditional clause that means ‘if the ego does not exist’, and இன்று அனைத்தும் (iṉḏṟu aṉaittum) is the main clause and means ‘everything does not exist’.

Then in the third sentence, அகந்தையே யாவும் ஆம் (ahandaiyē yāvum ām), Sri Ramana states emphatically:
The ego indeed is everything.
In this sentence the suffix (ē) that is appended to அகந்தை (ahandai) is an intensifier that means ‘alone’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’, so அகந்தையே (ahandai-y-ē) means ‘the ego indeed’. யாவும் (yāvum), like அனைத்தும் (aṉaittum), means ‘all’, ‘everything’ or ‘the whole’, and ஆம் (ām) is a third person future (or habitual present) form of the verb (ā), so in this context means ‘is’.

Finally in the fourth sentence, ஆதலால் ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் என ஓர் (ādalālyādu idu?eṉḏṟu nādalē ōvudal yāvum eṉa ōr), Sri Ramana concludes:
Therefore, know that investigating [or scrutinising] ‘what is this [ego]?’ is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything.
In this sentence ஆதலால் (ādalāl) means ‘therefore’; யாது (yādu) is an interrrogative pronoun that means ‘what’ or ‘which’; இது (idu) is the neuter singular proximal demonstrative pronoun, ‘this’ or ‘it’, and refers here to the ego; and என்று (eṉḏṟu) is a quotative verbal participle (formed from the verb என், eṉ) that means ‘saying’, ‘thus’ or ‘that’, but that can also be represented in English by inverted commas enclosing the meaning of the preceding word or clause. Thus யாது இது என்று (yādu idu eṉḏṟu) is a quotative clause that means ‘what is this [ego]?’.

நாடலே (nādal-ē) is an intensified form of நாடல் (nādal), which is a verbal noun (formed from the verb நாடு, nādu) that means ‘investigating’, ‘examining’, ‘exploring’, ‘searching’, ‘scrutinising’, ‘watching’, ‘attending to’ or ‘knowing’, and the intensifying suffix (ē) means ‘alone’, ‘only’, ‘truly’, ‘certainly’ or ‘indeed’. ஓவுதல் (ōvudal) is a verbal noun (formed from the verb ஓவு, ōvu) that means ‘giving up’ or ‘renouncing’, and யாவும் (yāvum) means ‘everything’, so ஓவுதல் யாவும் (ōvudal yāvum) means ‘giving up everything’. என (eṉa) is an infinitive form of the verb என் (eṉ), to ‘say’, that acts here as a quotative verbal participle meaning ‘that’ or ‘thus’; and ஓர் (ōr) means ‘know’.

Thus this entire verse means:
If the ego, which is the embryo [seed, substance or foundation], comes into existence, everything comes into existence. If the ego does not exist, everything does not exist. The ego indeed is everything. Therefore, know that investigating [or scrutinising] ‘what is this [ego]?’ is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything.
The reason why investigating ‘what is this ego?’ is giving up everything is that everything exists only so long as the ego exists, and the ego exists only so long as we do not carefully scrutinise it in order to know what it really is.

When we investigate and know what it really is, we will discover that it is not the finite body-bound consciousness that it now appears to be, but is only the infinite consciousness of pure being, ‘I am’, which knows nothing other than itself. When the body-bound ego is thus found to be non-existent, everything else that it appeared to know will also be found to be non-existent, and only beginningless, endless and undivided being-consciousness-bliss (anādi ananta akhaṇḍa sat-cit-ānanda) will remain as the sole reality (as Sri Ramana teaches us in verse 28 of Upadēśa Undiyār).

Parallels between verses 14 and 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu

There are clear parallels between this verse and verse 14. தன்மை (taṉmai), the first person, is அகந்தை (ahandai), the ego, and முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ), second and third persons, are அனைத்தும் (aṉaittum) or யாவும் (yāvum), everything other than the ego.

Therefore, ‘உடல் நான்’ என்னும் அத் தன்மை உண்டேல், முன்னில-படர்க்கைகள்-தாம் உளவாம் (‘uḍal nāṉ’ eṉṉum a-t-taṉmai uṇḍēl, muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ-tām uḷa-v-ām), ‘If that first person called “I [am this] body” exists, second and third persons will certainly appear to exist’, means essentially the same as கருவாம் அகந்தை உண்டாயின், அனைத்தும் உண்டாகும்; அகந்தை இன்றேல், இன்று அனைத்தும் (karu-v-ām ahandai uṇḍāyiṉ, aṉaittum uṇḍāhum; ahandai iṉḏṟēl, iṉḏṟu aṉaittum), ‘If the ego, which is the embryo, comes into existence, everything comes into existence; if the ego does not exist, everything does not exist’.

Likewise, தன்மையின் உண்மையைத் தான் ஆய்ந்து தன்மை அறின், முன்னிலை படர்க்கை முடிவுற்று [...] (taṉmaiyiṉ uṇmaiyai-t tāṉ āyndu taṉmai aṟiṉ, muṉṉilai paḍarkkai muḍivuṯṟu [...]), ‘If one knows one’s essence [by] scrutinising the reality of the first person, second and third persons ceasing to exist [...]’, implies that ‘யாது இது?’ என்று நாடலே ஓவுதல் யாவும் (‘yādu idu?’ eṉḏṟu nādalē ōvudal yāvum), ‘scrutinising “what is this [ego]?” is indeed giving up [or renouncing] everything’.

When the ego and everything else cease to exist as a result of our vigilantly scrutinising the ego, what will remain is தன் நிலைமை தான் (taṉ nilaimai tāṉ), ‘only [our real and natural] state of self’, which is ஒன்றாய் ஒளிரும் தன்மையே (oṉḏṟāy oḷirum taṉmaiyē), ‘only the essential reality that shines as [the] one [infinite and indivisible whole]’.

Interpreting the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ individually

By comparing these two verses, we should clearly understand that when Sri Ramana uses the term முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைகள் (muṉṉilai-paḍarkkaigaḷ), ‘second-and-third-persons’, he means everything that appears to be other than the first person, the ego. How we choose to interpret முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai), ‘second persons’, and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), ‘third persons’, individually is a secondary matter, and one that leaves room for flexibility, so long as whatever interpretation we choose means that together they make up the totality of everything other than ‘I’, the first person or ego.

The value of any interpretation of these two terms individually depends upon its explanatory power — that is, upon how much it helps us to understand Sri Ramana’s teachings as a whole. As I explained above, I consider that one of the most useful interpretations of them is that முன்னிலை (muṉṉilai), ‘second persons’, means everything that appears to be mental, and படர்க்கை (paḍarkkai), ‘third persons’, means everything that appears to be physical.

I consider this interpretation to be so useful because the seeming distinction between the mental and the physical appears to us to be so fundamental that we naturally divide all the objects that we experience into these two categories. Whether this distinction is true or not does not alter the fact that in our experience it appears to be true and fundamental.

This distinction appears to be so fundamental that philosophers have written countless volumes arguing whether the mental and the physical are two separate substances, whether one is merely a property of the other, whether all physical things are in fact mental, or whether all mental things are in fact physical. However, philosophers who lack the all-transcending experience of sages like Sri Ramana are unable to resolve such questions with any degree of certainty, because by its mere power of reasoning the human mind cannot know the truth that underlies the appearance of its seeming existence, so to know this truth we have to turn our mind selfwards, away from all thoughts, as taught by Sri Ramana and other self-experiencing sages.

Sri Ramana’s verdict on the question of the relationship between the mental and the physical (a verdict that, unlike the beliefs of other philosophers, is based not merely upon mental speculation or reasoning, but upon the firm evidence of his own clear self-experience) is that all physical things are actually mental (because everything that the mind experiences other than its own being, ‘I am’, is just one of its own thoughts or ideas), but that even the mental is not actually real.

So long as the mind (the first person or subject) appears to be real, all the objects (the second and third persons) that it experiences also appear to be real, and so long as it continues to experience such objects, the illusion that it is real will persist, because its seeming existence is sustained by its feeding upon objective experiences — that is, upon experiences of mental objects (which are second persons) and physical objects (which are third persons).

Therefore, in order to destroy the illusion that the mind and everything experienced by it are real, we must attend exclusively to the first person (the experiencing subject, ‘I’) and thereby cease attending to any second or third person. Whenever we do not attend to any second or third person, they cease to exist (as happens whenever we are asleep), but we cannot destroy the mind unless we focus our entire attention keenly and vigilantly upon the first person in order to experience what it really is: ‘who am I?’

Interpretation in Happiness and the Art of Being

In Happiness and the Art of Being I have interpreted the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ in much the same way that I have done here, and I have discussed this interpretation on pages 226, 230-1 and 397-403. On pages 397-403 I wrote:
[...] Sri Ramana frequently used the Tamil equivalents of the English terms ‘first person’, ‘second person’ and ‘third person’.

Since he used these terms in place of the usual philosophical terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’, he in effect divided all the objects known by us into two distinct groups. That is, he used the Tamil equivalent of the term ‘second person’ to denote all those mental objects or images that we recognise as being thoughts that exist only within our own mind, and the Tamil equivalent of the term ‘third person’ to denote all those mental objects or images that we imagine we are perceiving outside ourself through one or more of our five senses.

Whereas the ‘second person’ objects are those objects or thoughts that we recognise as existing only within the space of our own mind, the ‘third person’ objects are those objects or thoughts that we imagine we are perceiving in physical space, outside our mind. Thus the second person objects are those objects that we recognise as existing only within the field of our mental conception, while the third person objects are those objects that we imagine to exist outside the field of our mental conception, in the seemingly separate field of our sense perception.

[...] In reference to the act of knowing, the term ‘second person’ means whatever we know most directly or immediately, while the term ‘third person’ means whatever we know more indirectly or mediately.

Compared to the objects that we perceive through the media of our five senses, the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind are known by us more directly or immediately, and hence they are our ‘second person’ thoughts or objects. Since the objects that we think we perceive outside ourself are known by us not only through the primary medium of our mind but also through the secondary media of our five senses, they are a comparatively indirect or more mediate form of knowledge, and hence they are our ‘third person’ thoughts or objects.

Though in Tamil these ‘three persons’ are collectively called the ‘three places’ or mū-v-iḍam, individually they are not called the ‘first place’, ‘second place’ and ‘third place’, but are called respectively the ‘self-ness place’, the ‘place standing in front’ and the ‘place that has spread out’. The actual term used in Tamil to denote the first person is taṉmai-y-iḍam, or more commonly just taṉmai, which etymologically means ‘self-ness’ or ‘selfhood’, and which therefore denotes our sense of ‘self’, the subject or first thought ‘I’. The Tamil term for the second person is muṉṉilai, which etymologically means ‘what stands in front’, and which therefore from a philosophical viewpoint denotes our most intimate thoughts, those mental objects or images that figuratively speaking stand immediately in front of our mind’s eye, and that we therefore recognise as being thoughts that exist only within our own mind. And the Tamil term for the third person is paḍarkkai, which etymologically means ‘what spreads out, ramifies, becomes diffused, expands or pervades’, and which therefore from a philosophical viewpoint denotes those thoughts that have spread out or expanded through the channel of our five senses, and that have thereby been projected as the objects of this material world, which we seem to perceive through those five senses, and which we therefore imagine to be objects existing outside ourself.

The space of our mind is thus divided into three distinct parts, areas or fields, which we can picture as three concentric circles. The most intimate part of our mind, the innermost of these three circles, which is also their central point, is our first person thought ‘I’, our limited individual consciousness that feels ‘I am this body’, ‘I am such-and-such a person’. The next most interior or intimate part of our mind, the field or circle that most closely surrounds our first person thought ‘I’, is all our second person thoughts, the objects that we recognise as existing only within our own mind, and that we therefore consider to be the field of our mental conception. The most exterior part of our mind, the outermost field or circle surrounding our first person thought ‘I’, is all our third person thoughts, the objects that we imagine we perceive in an external physical space, and that we therefore mistake as existing outside our mind. Thus the entire external universe and the physical space in which we imagine it to be contained is just the outermost part of the space that is our own mind, the part of that space which we consider to be the field of our sense perception.

Though in our imagination we make a distinction between the thoughts that we recognise as existing within ourself and the material objects that we imagine we perceive outside ourself, this distinction is actually false, because both are in fact only thoughts that we form within our own mind by our power of imagination. Whereas we recognise some of our thoughts to be only images that we form in our mind, we wrongly imagine certain of our thoughts to be objects that actually exist outside us, and that are therefore distinct from our thoughts and our thinking mind. In fact, however, even the objects that we think we perceive outside ourself are only our own thoughts — images that we have formed within our own mind.

Nevertheless, though this distinction between our second person thoughts and our third person thoughts is illusory, in our mind it appears to be quite real. So long as we imagine that we are perceiving objects outside ourself, we will continue to imagine that there is a real distinction between those objects and the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind. Therefore this seeming distinction between our second person objects, the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind, and our third person objects, the objects that we think we perceive outside ourself, will continue to appear to be real so long as our thinking mind appears to be real.

Because it appears to us to be real, Sri Ramana allows for this seeming distinction between the second person and third person objects, but he does so only to make clear to us that the term ‘objects’ includes not only all the material objects we think we perceive outside ourself, but also all the thoughts that we recognise as existing only within our own mind. Even our most intimate thoughts or feelings are only objects known by us, and are accordingly distinct from us.

Therefore, when Sri Ramana advises us to withdraw our attention from all the ‘second persons’ and ‘third persons’ and to focus it instead on the ‘first person’, what he wants us to understand is that we should withdraw our attention from all objects — both those that we recognise as being merely our own thoughts or feelings, and those that we mistake to be objects existing outside ourself — and fix it only upon our sense of self, ‘I’, which we always experience as being here and now, in this precise present point in space and time. In other words, in order to know our real self, we should withdraw our attention from all our thoughts — both our second person thoughts, which we recognise as being thoughts, and our third person thoughts, which we imagine to be material objects existing outside ourself — and should instead focus it wholly and exclusively upon our ever-present self-consciousness, our fundamental consciousness of our own essential being, ‘I am’. [...]

Our individual ‘selfhood’ or taṉmai, which is the adjunct-mixed consciousness that feels ‘I am this body’, appears to exist only because we have failed to investigate or scrutinise the underlying truth or ‘am’-ness of it closely. If we scrutinise this false first person consciousness closely in order to know its underlying truth or reality, we will discover it to be nothing other than our non-dual consciousness of our own being, ‘I am’, which is our real and essential self, our true state of mere being.

When we thus discover that our real ‘selfhood’ is merely our non-dual self-consciousness ‘I am’, we will thereby discover that our false individual ‘selfhood’, which is our distorted and dualistic consciousness ‘I am this body’, and which by thus identifying itself with a physical body has limited itself within the bounds of time and space, is a mere apparition that has never truly existed. Just as the illusory snake, which we imagined that we saw lying on the ground, disappears as soon as we see that it is nothing but a rope, so the illusory first person will disappear as soon as we discover that it is nothing but our real non-dual self-conscious being, ‘I am’. When this illusory first person, our false individual ‘selfhood’, thus disappears, all the second and third person objects or thoughts, which were created and known only by this false first person, will disappear along with it.
An alternative interpretation in Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana

Though I interpreted the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ in this way in Happiness and the Art of Being, and though I consider this to be generally the most appropriate and useful way in which they can be interpreted, in certain contexts they can be usefully interpreted in other ways. For example, on page 2 of Part Two of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி (Śrī Ramaṇa Vaṙi), the Tamil original of The Path of Sri Ramana, Sri Sadhu Om wrote:
இந்த முப்பொருள்களில் உயிர் அல்லது ஜீவன் எனப்படுவது நாம்; அதாவது தன்மைப் பொருள். புலன்களால் நம் முன்னிலையில் நாம் காணும் (உணரும்) இவ் வுலகம் முன்னிலைப் பொருள். கடவுளும், இவ் வுலகப் பொருள்களில் நமது தற்சமயப் புலனறிவுக் கெட்டாது அப்பாலுள்ள பொருள்களும் படர்க்கைப் பொருள்க ளாகும்.

inda mu-p-poruḷgaḷil uyir alladu jīvaṉ eṉappaḍuvadu nām; adāvadu taṉmai-p poruḷ. pulaṉgaḷāl nam muṉṉilaiyil nām kāṇum (uṇarum) i-v v-ulaham muṉṉilai-p poruḷ. kaḍavuḷum, i-v v-ulaha-p poruḷgaḷil namadu taṯsamaya-p pulaṉ-aṟivu-k k-eṭṭādu appāl-uḷḷa poruḷgaḷum paḍarkkai-p poruḷgaḷ āhum.
On page 2 of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana this paragraph has been translated as follows:
Among these three entities, what is called the soul or jiva is ‘we’, the first person. This world which we perceive in front of us through the five senses is a second person object, while God and these objects of the world which we do not now directly perceive through the senses are third person objects.
However, a more accurate translation of it would be:
Among these three entities [soul, world and God], what is called the soul or jīva is ‘we’; that is, the first person entity. This world that we see (experience) in front of us by [our] senses is the second person entity. God and the objects of this world that are currently beyond the reach of our senses are third person entities.
The reason why Sri Sadhu Om thus described the portion of the world that currently appears to be ‘standing in front’ (muṉṉilai) of us as the ‘second person’ (muṉṉilai) and everything else that does not currently appear to be standing physically in front of us as the ‘third person’ (paḍarkkai) is that he wrote this at the beginning of the chapter on ‘The World and God’, so at that preliminary stage he was describing the soul, world and God as they are generally conceived to be by people who have not thought deeply about their nature.

His aim in the preliminary pages of this chapter was to make us understand that investigating (doing research on) the world and God (which are second and third person objects) without first investigating ourself (the first person) is futile, and for this purpose it was useful to interpret the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ as he did.

However, later on in the same chapter he explains very clearly that the world that appears to be in front (and outside) of us is actually only a mental projection — a figment of our own imagination — so from that point of view it does not really ‘stand in front’ of us but is only a series of thoughts, and since it appears to be outside rather than inside the mind, it can be more appropriately described as a third person than as a second person (that is, as something that is mentally ‘spread out’ rather than ‘standing in front’).

The perspective from which he explained the meaning of முன்னிலைப் பொருள்கள் (muṉṉilai-p poruḷgaḷ), ‘second person objects’, and படர்க்கைப் பொருள்கள் (paḍarkkai-p poruḷgaḷ), ‘third person objects’, in the preliminary pages of this chapter is a physical perspective — the perspective that we all normally have when we experience the physical world as if it were something that really exists outside and independent of our mind — whereas the perspective from which I have explained their meaning (both here in this article and in Happiness and the Art of Being) is a mental perspective — the perspective that we can adopt if we reflect upon the rationality of Sri Ramana’s teaching that what we call ‘the world’ is actually only our own thoughts (because it is only a series of perceptual experiences that appear in our mind due to māyā, our self-deceptive power of imagination, just like the world that we experience in a dream).

Sri Sadhu Om wrote from such a physical perspective in the preliminary pages of this chapter because this is the ‘common sense’ perspective that we all normally have when we do not consider the intrinsically mental nature of all our experience (other than our experience of our own being, ‘I am’), but after the first ten pages in Tamil (1998 edition) or the first fourteen pages in English (2006 edition) — that is, from the paragraph in which he begins by explaining that the etymological meaning of the Sanskrit word lōka, which means ‘world’, is ‘what is seen’ or ‘what is perceived’ (because it is derived from the verb lōk, which means to see, behold, perceive or know) — he begins to explain Sri Ramana’s teaching that the world is only a creation of our own mind, and he wrote the remaining eighty per cent of this chapter from such a mental (rather than physical) perspective.

Interpretations must be appropriate to the context and the audience

After I wrote Happiness and the Art of Being I wondered whether anyone would notice and ask me about the difference between my interpretation of the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ and the interpretation of them given by Sri Sadhu Om the preliminary pages of the first chapter of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana, and recently a friend did write to me asking about this. In his e-mail he quoted the paragraph on page 2 of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana referred to above and contrasted it with the following paragraph on page 226 of Happiness and the Art of Being:
When describing the dependence of all our other thoughts upon our primal thought ‘I’, Sri Ramana refers to the latter as the ‘first person’, and the former as the ‘second and third persons’. Which of our other thoughts does he refer to as ‘second persons’, and which does he refer to as ‘third persons’? Our ‘second person’ thoughts are all those thoughts that we recognise as existing only in our own mind, and which we therefore feel are most close and intimate to us, whereas our ‘third person’ thoughts are all those thoughts that we imagine to be external objects that we perceive through one or more of our five senses.
The rest of this article is adapted from the reply that I wrote to him.

Though Sri Sadhu Om often explained the meaning of muṉṉilai (second person) and paḍarkkai (third person) as he did on page 2 of Part Two of The Path of Sri Ramana, he also sometimes said that our thoughts are muṉṉilai and the objects of the world are paḍarkkai, so I once asked him about this, and he explained that the explanations he gives are always intended to be appropriate to the context and to the understanding of whoever he is talking with or writing for.

As he explained, people generally consider that our most immediate knowledge is our knowledge of whatever we are currently perceiving through our senses, and that our knowledge of other things is less immediate, and they consider thus because their minds are constantly extroverted, dwelling only on things that appear to be outside themselves. For such people it is appropriate to describe their present sensory experiences as muṉṉilai (‘that which stands in front’), and all the other things that they believe to be far away in time or space as paḍarkkai (‘that which has spread out [and become remote]’).

However, people of more subtle understanding recognise that we know our thoughts more directly and immediately than we know any object that appears to be outside ourself (though in fact such objects are not really outside ourself, but are only thoughts in our own mind), and for such people it is more appropriate to describe those thoughts that we recognise as thoughts as muṉṉilai, and all the other thoughts that appear to be external objects as paḍarkkai (as I explain in more detail on pages 397-403 of Happiness and the Art of Being, extracts from which I have quoted above).

One example of a case in which Sri Sadhu Om referred to thoughts as muṉṉilai-p-poruḷgaḷ (second person objects) and external objects as paḍarkkai-p-poruḷgaḷ (third person objects) is in chapter 7 of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி (Śrī Ramaṇa Vaṙi, the Tamil original of The Path of Sri Ramana) Part One (4th edition, 1998, pages 130-1), where he says:
முன்னிலை-படர்க்கைப் பொருள்களாகிய எண்ணங்களையும் இதரப் பொருள்களையும் பார்த்துக்கொண்டே யிருக்கும்படி எவ்வளவு காலம் இந்த மனம் அனுமதிக்கப்ப்டுகின்றதோ அதுவரை மனம் அடங்கவே அடங்காது.

muṉṉilai-paḍarkkai-p poruḷgaḷāhiya eṇṇaṅgaḷaiyum itara-p poruḷgaḷaiyum pārttu-k-koṇḍē y-irukkumpaḍi e-vv-aḷavu kālum inda maṉam aṉumatikkappaḍukiṉḏṟadō adu-varai maṉam aḍaṅgavē aḍaṅgādu.
This sentence means:
So long as this mind is allowed to continue watching [or attending to] thoughts and other objects, which are [respectively] second and third person objects, it will most certainly not subside.
(This sentence is part of one of the portions that Sri Sadhu Om added in the 1985 edition of ஸ்ரீ ரமண வழி, so unfortunately it does not appear in the current edition of The Path of Sri Ramana, which was translated before 1985.)

I once told Sri Sadhu Om that I found the latter explanation of the terms ‘second person’ and ‘third person’ to be generally more useful than the former, and I asked him which he considered more appropriate. He replied jokingly, ‘If you ask me in private, I will agree with you, but if you ask me in public, I will cast my vote with the majority in favour of the former’, because as he went on to explain, for the majority of people the objects we see in front of us appear to be known more closely than our thoughts about distant objects or God, and we should always explain subtle things in a way that can be understood by the people to whom we are explaining them.

He also sometimes joked when explaining the terms second person and third person in the former way, ‘Michael will not agree with us. His second person objects are everyone else’s third person objects, and his third person objects are everyone else’s second person objects’, and when explaining the terms second person and third person in the latter way he sometimes referred to them jokingly as ‘Michael’s second person’ and ‘Michael’s third person’.

On a more serious note, the most important point that he made clear about these terms muṉṉilai (second person) and paḍarkkai (third person) is that it does not actually matter how we interpret each of them individually so long as we understand that Sri Ramana used them collectively to encompass all objects — everything that we experience as other than ourself — that is, both those objects that we recognise as being our own thoughts and those objects that seem to exist outside and independent of our mind.

As Sri Sadhu Om explained, the reason why it does not actually matter how we interpret each of these terms individually is that all such objects are anātman (‘non-self’ or other than ourself) and must therefore be rejected or ignored by us if we wish to know ourself as we really are. As Sri Ramana said in the seventeenth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār? (Who am I?), there is no use in classifying rubbish that is all to be collectively discarded, and every object — whether it is classified as a second person object or a third person object — is to be discarded like such rubbish when we practise self-attentiveness in order to know who or what we really are.

Though Sri Ramana divided all objects into these two groups, second person objects and third person objects, he did not do so with an intention that we should believe that there is any significant distinction between them, but only with the intention that we should understand that all objects — whether they appear to be mental objects (thoughts) or objects outside our mind — must be ignored if we are to focus our entire attention upon the first person, ‘I’, and thereby experience our real nature as it truly is.