[Advaita-l] Mind and Self (was Re: On the forms of Guru)

[S Jayanarayanan]

--- On Fri, 3/5/10, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

[..]

> > What differentiates Bhagavan Ramana from all others in
> respect of the mind
> > is that He advocated 'manOnaasam'. He, in my
> conviction, spoke of it after
> > having achieved it Himself.
> 
> 
> Even the gauDapAda kArikA, written well before Sankara's
> times, has
> a verse that talks of the amanI-bhAva of the manas. 
> There have been
> innumerable teachers of advaita through the ages, who have
> described
> mano-nASa. By the same token, there have also been
> innumerable
> teachers of advaita through the ages, who have talked of
> the mind,
> its operation and control even for the jnAnI. Each position
> has to be
> understood as per context.
> 
> 

IMO, there are a couple of differences between the mind of the GYAnI (in the sense of a sthitapraGYa) and an aGYAnI:

1. In the mind of the GYAnI, the ego or "I-thought" (I-am-the-doer) does not exist, whereas the I-thought exists in the mind of the ignorant. Vide GItA 5.8-9.

2. The GYAnI's mind is *completely absorbed* in the Self, but it is not so for the aGYAnI. Here are some quotes from Ramana Maharshi's book Self-Enquiry:

"Q: What is the nature of the mind?
A: What is called ‘mind’ is a wondrous power residing in the
Self...When the mind comes out of the Self, the world appears."

The first part, "What is called ‘mind’ is a wondrous power residing in the Self", describes the state of the GYAnI, whose mind is absorbed in the Self. The second part, "When the mind comes out of the Self, the world appears", describes the state of the aGYAnI, whose mind has wandered outwards away from the Self.

That the GYAnI's mind is absorbed in the Self is again described by RM in the book Who-Am-I: "After the mind has been made to stay in the Self which is its deity, and has been rendered indifferent to empirical matters because it does not stray away from the Self, how can the mind think as mentioned..."

> Regards,
> 
> Vidyasankar
> 

Regards,
Kartik