IT's Even Simpler Than This!

[egodust]

The *ordinary* feeling of Self is Itself nothing less
than the very source and essence of Self-realization.
The idea that it is something exotic and mysterious is a gross fallacy.
The reason people don't recognize this *ordinary* state of Self-feeling
to be Self-realization is due to the interfering-mechanism of the Mind:
which assails them with the apparent neverending river of judgements.
This is what needs to be transmuted.
Done through a click in the heart.

shaanthi
>From ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU Thu Aug  1 10:46:32 1996
Message-Id: <THU.1.AUG.1996.104632.0200.ADVAITAL at TAMU.EDU>
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 10:46:32 +0200
Reply-To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Charles Wikner <WIKNER at NACDH4.NAC.AC.ZA>
Subject: Re: Deep Sleep Discussions
Comments: To: ADVAITA at TAMU.EDU
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In the absence of response from Sadananda (perhaps on leave?), may I
contribute to some points raised by Dennis Waite (dwaite at ALADDIN.CO.UK)?

> You say that the deep sleep state is 'an experience of absence of everything
> including the feeler, thinker "I"'. I have difficulty with this statement,
> both from a semantic and a personal experience point of view. Waking up and
> not being aware at all of the period of deep sleep does not seem logically,
> or feel actually, the same as experiencing an absence. Perhaps the question
> is wrongly phrased. Rather than "Who is the experiencer of the deep sleep?",
> perhaps we should ask "Where is the 'I' during deep sleep?". If deep sleep
> is not really an experience, then there does not need to be an 'experiencer'.

It is possible to be fully aware in deep sleep: it is like a white-out
(the opposite of a black-out). Imagine being in very thick mist or cloud,
which scatters the light of the sun, so that wherever you look there is
only uniformly scattered white light -- there is no other object to be
distinguished in this mist, it is all uniform and very bright (unlike
a black-out). This is a rough analogy. So here the mist is the object:
it is the aavara.na (covering) aspect of maayaa without the vik.sepa
(projecting) aspect; the subject is pure aham. Normally the memory of
deep sleep is effectively hidden by aha.mkaara, primarily because it
is not present; and the reason for aha.mkaara's absence is the lack of
limitation or movement (kaara) with which the aham could identify.

> You note that we get up in the morning and say "I slept well". True, but
> isn't this just colloquial? What we mean is not that I remember in some way
> the enjoyment of the sleep period in the past but that I feel refreshed
> *now* and deduce that the sleep was 'good'. My experience is not that "I do
> not know anything" but that I do not seem to have had any experience.

Indeed, aha.mkaara had no experience to recall, so it _infers_ that
the sleep was good from the present experience of feeling refreshed,
as compared with the memory of tiredness before sleep.

> I am not completely happy about the idea that the ego cannot exist in the
> present. I have heard this elsewhere and it does seem reasonable that at the
> precise moment of action there is only the unity of the
> subject-action-object. I understand that the ego has no existence at all in
> reality (c.f. the onion-skin analogy given by Ramakrishna) but doesn't
> identification take place in the present?

There is only the present: the past is a memory, and the future an
expectation (i.e. a projection of the past). The ego _appears_ to
exist due to the mutual superimposition of the Self and a _limited_
object. This activity of superimposition -- as with all activity --
can only take place in the present, but due to the marked attenuation
of activity and diversity in deep sleep, there is no superimposition.

> I wondered at this point whether it would not be
> simpler to argue that the ego is a mistake and doesn't really exist.

It _appears_ to exist: rather like stepping into a TV soap-opera by
identifying with one of the characters. Nowadays there is the very
descriptive term "virtual reality" :-)

> I thought it was the guna which act and that the Self was always
> only the observer.

So much for thinking! This is an a-dvaita list, remember? The gu.naa.h
are the lower nature of Brahman, as it were: the apparent distinction
is between Sagu.na Brahman and Nirgu.na Brahman, but they are not two.
It is a movement and a rest -- both at once.

> Isn't *everything* the Self?

Yes, of course. And nothing, too! That's what you want to realize :-)

> (In which case there is nothing to reject.)

How about _ideas_ that the transient is real? Or identification
with the limited? In fact, it's a question of letting go, of
surrender, of de-tachment, rather than rejection.

> Is there then *no* doer since it
> is neither the ego nor OM?

The creation is an illusion, a mirage, a trick of the light, a play of
the gu.naa.h, call it what you will. Since there is no "doing", there
is no "doer". Yet the activity is not arbitrary, else the rules could
not be discerned by observation and experiment.

> If 'I' am the subject who is neither, what am I
> the subject of (i.e. what is the verb and the object)?

"Witnessing" and "prak.rti" respectively. But the truth is beyond the
realm of words, beyond any concept of the mind: to raise the idea
"object" for example, is to raise the idea of "other". The practical
utility of the concept "subject" is simply that the subject cannot be
the object as well, i.e. whatever you observe as an object is limited,
and you are not that _limitation_, hence "neti neti" and "What am I?".

> Your 'note added' re Sastra pramana. I'm afraid my knowledge of some of the
> specific terminology in Hinduism and of Sanskrit in general is rudimentary.

_"saastra pramaana_ = _authority of the scriptures_ -- versus sensory
experience, inference, or other means of valid knowledge.

> In conclusion therefore, I accept the sort of extreme Advaita statements
> made in, for example, the Astavakra Samhita, in principle and recognise
> there *is* nothing other than the Self.

The ego can only accept some _limited_ idea, because of its own
limitation. The statements are valid: they are given to engender
faith -- the faith to let go of the limited.

> In practice, however, the feeble
> intellect (or more accurately the feeble Manas) trying to 'understand' the
> ideas is still having problems!

The mind _cannot_ understand it. You, however, as the Self,
can and do "stand under" it, supporting the whole soap opera.


Dennis, old chap, do stop trying to limit the unlimited, in order
to squeeze it into your tiny mind; rather drop all the theoretical
speculation and discover by your own direct experience -- a practical
step in this direction would be to immerse the mind in the scriptures
at the Sanskrit Week.

Regards,
Charles Wikner.
wikner at nacdh4.nac.ac.za