SELF-KNOWLEDGE

The Nature of the Upanishads

2011-11-11T01:26:00.001-08:00

The Nature of the Upanishads by Kenneth Shouler, Ph.D. and Susai Anthony

The Upanishads are more philosophical and mystical in character than the Vedas. In the Upanishads, scholars observe for the first time a concept of a single, supreme God (Brahman) who is knowable by the human self (atman).
Another school of thought disagrees, saying that polytheism pervades the earlier Vedic material, with its stress on the proper manner of worshipping many gods. By way of contrast, the Upanishads are monistic; that is, all reality is one, not many. This reality is an impersonal being known as Brahman. All other entities that exist in nature — and even beyond nature — are a manifestation of this omnipresent Brahman. Trees, sky, Earth, water, spiritual entities — all things material and immaterial are not diverse, but express a single reality: Brahman.
This philosophical monism of the Upanishads is not only an exercise in metaphysics — that branch of philosophy that studies the true nature of reality — but epistemology, too. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that involves the study of knowledge. In the way of knowing that pertains to Brahman, the highest kind of knowledge is to recognize that only Brahman is real. By logical implication, all that is not Brahman is unreal.
Here, the concept of maya rears its head. To be in maya is to be laboring under an illusion, the illusion that Brahman and the rest of reality are separate. No object, not even our own selves, is separate from Brahman. The greatest illusion is not understanding that.
This emphasis on philosophy, in this case monism, sets the Upanishads apart from the Vedas. In the Vedas, the stress was on how to worship the various Aryan gods by means of sacrifice, but the Upanishads emphasize dispassionate meditation on the ultimate nature of reality.

According to the Upanishads, the proper diagnosis of our human illness is that we live in ignorance (avidya) of the true nature of reality, which is but another way of saying that we live and breathe in maya, or illusionThe prescription for this philosophical illness is to arrive at true knowledge. In Hinduism, liberation only comes with right thinking.

Much of this philosophy is a metaphysical search for Brahman, the absolute ground of all being. “Brahman” is a Sanskrit word meaning “the eternal, imperishable, absolute.” This being is also unknowable and has no past, present, or future. Brahman is also impersonal, not completely unlike the god of the deists at the time of the European Enlightenment. In fact, “Brahman” also means “ever growing.”
To illustrate the idea that all is Brahman, consider this verse from the Shvetashvatara Upanishad:

All this is full. All that is full.
From fullness, fullness comes.
When fullness is taken from fullness,
Fullness still remains.

In short, if we remove all the materials and living things from the universe, strip away all its furniture, and empty it of all being, fullness will still be left behind. That is because even without material objects, there will always be Brahman.

Vedanta: The End of the Vedas by Kenneth Shouler, Ph.D. and Susai Anthony

2011-11-11T01:23:00.001-08:00

Vedanta: The End of the Vedas by Kenneth Shouler, Ph.D. and Susai Anthony

There are reasons for the transition from the Vedas to the Upanishads. During the Vedic period, the rituals consisted of sacrifices; they became so elaborate that only rich people could afford them. As Sanskrit (the refined language) was not used or understood by the masses, the Vedic religion became the exclusive milieu of the rich and priestly class of people, thus losing the following of the masses. The priestly class made the rituals too cumbersome and used the legal system — Manusmrti — to regulate society; Brahmanism replaced the Vedic religion, and the masses were excluded from the Vedic gods and the sacrifices. As a result of these two problems, the common people lost their connection to the religion.

There are about 200 Upanishads, ranging in length from one to fifty pages. About fourteen, or less than 10 percent, of these are known as principal Upanishads. The earliest likely originated in the ninth century B.C.E.

Opposition to the Vedic religion came from two directions. The common people did not like the hierarchical structure of the society — the caste system — imposed on them; they also opposed the hold the priestly class had on the religion. This social unrest resulted in the rise of Buddhism and Jainism during the lifetimes of Gautama Buddha and Mahavira.
Buddha's doctrine of universal charity, liberty, equality, and fraternity was increasingly attractive to the masses. Buddhism and Jainism assailed the very core of Vedic religion, and Brahmanism was faced with the difficult dilemma of recognizing and assimilating the current popular cults and creeds or facing extinction. To survive, Brahmanism had to expand; otherwise, it risked shrinking numbers of adherents, and eventual death.
The designation of Upanishads (Approaches) as the end of Veda (also Vedanta), indicates both their place in the sequence of Vedic literature and their position in the canon of Hindu scriptures. In a sense, Vedanta is the summary of Vedic religion. There is an important principle that atman and Brahman are identical and undifferentiated. The principle contained in the Upanishads is encapsulated in the formula “that art thou.” “That” stands for universal Brahman, and “thou” stands for individual atman.
The following are the main ideas of Vedanta:

God is one, without a second, absolute and indivisible. God assumes various personal forms to reveal itself to us.

All of the incarnations (manifestations of God on Earth) are actual embodiments of Divinity.

There are no accidents in the cosmic universe; human destiny is governed by the law of cause and effect.

We are born on Earth repeatedly to finish the unfinished work of realizing our divinity.

There is a higher state of consciousness that can be achieved in this human birth.

There are many ways to achieve union with God: through the intellect, emotions, actions, and the will.

A special type of Vedanta, Adavaita Vedanta, needs some more explanation.

Advaita Vedanta

This Vedantic nondualism is a subschool of the Vedanta. The word “Advaita” essentially refers to the identity of the self (atman) and the whole (Brahman). The key source texts for all schools of Vedanta are the Prast-hanatrayi, the canonical texts consisting of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras. The first person to consolidate the principles of Advaita was Adi Shankara (or Sankara), and the first historical proponent was Gaudapada, the guru of Shankara's guru Bhagavatpada.
Vedanta is considered the summary of the Vedas or an appendix to the Vedas; it did not bring about an end to Hinduism, but acted as a bridge between the Vedic and modern Hindu traditions. The developments that followed Vedanta were Puranas, Agamas, and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Agama literature was the most suitable for making images.
Although this assertion of the ultimate identity of Brahman and atman seems to be the dominating theme of the Upanishads, there are other ways to interpret the relationship between the two principles. One of the Upanishads, Svetasvatara, speaks of Brahman as God, making a distinction between this and the external world. In addition to this theistic interpretation, there is also a movement toward pantheism, a tendency to think of the natural universe and the individual soul as God.

Myth, Ritual, and Religion Volume I by Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

2011-11-11T01:21:00.001-08:00

Myth, Ritual, and Religion Volume I by Andrew Lang
(1844-1912)

Table of Contents | Chapters: Preface | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |

Chapter 7
INDO-ARYAN MYTHS--SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
Authorities--Vedas--Brahmanas--Social condition of Vedic India-- Arts--Ranks--War--Vedic fetishism--Ancestor worship--Date of Rig- Veda Hymns doubtful--Obscurity of the Hymns--Difficulty of interpreting the real character of Veda--Not primitive but sacerdotal--The moral purity not innocence but refinement.
Before examining the myths of the Aryans of India, it is necessary to have a clear notion of the nature of the evidence from which we derive our knowledge of the subject. That evidence is found in a large and incongruous mass of literary documents, the heritage of the Indian people. In this mass are extremely ancient texts (the Rig-Veda, and the Atharva-Veda), expository comments of a date so much later that the original meaning of the older documents was sometimes lost (the Brahmanas), and poems and legendary collections of a period later still, a period when the whole character of religious thought had sensibly altered. In this literature there is indeed a certain continuity; the names of several gods of the earliest time are preserved in the legends of the latest. But the influences of many centuries of change, of contending philosophies, of periods of national growth and advance, and of national decadence and decay, have been at work on the mythology of India. Here we have myths that were perhaps originally popular tales, and are probably old; here again, we have later legends that certainly were conceived in the narrow minds of a pedantic and ceremonious priesthood. It is not possible, of course, to analyse in this place all the myths of all the periods; we must be content to point out some which seem to be typical examples of the working of the human intellect in its earlier or its later childhood, in its distant hours of barbaric beginnings, or in the senility of its sacerdotage.
The documents which contain Indian mythology may be divided, broadly speaking, into four classes. First, and most ancient in date of composition, are the collections of hymns known as the Vedas. Next, and (as far as date of collection goes) far less ancient, are the expository texts called the Brahmanas. Later still, come other manuals of devotion and of sacred learning, called Sutras and Upanishads; and last are the epic poems (Itihasas), and the books of legends called Puranas. We are chiefly concerned here with the Vedas and Brahmanas. A gulf of time, a period of social and literary change, separates the Brahmanas from the Vedas. But the epics and Puranas differ perhaps even still more from the Brahmanas, on account of vast religious changes which brought new gods into the Indian Olympus, or elevated to the highest place old gods formerly of low degree. From the composition of the first Vedic hymn to the compilation of the latest Purana, religious and mythopoeic fancy was never at rest.
Various motives induced various poets to assign, on various occasions the highest powers to this or the other god. The most antique legends were probably omitted or softened by some early Vedic bard (Rishi) of noble genius, or again impure myths were brought from the obscurity of oral circulation and foisted into literature by some poet less divinely inspired. Old deities were half-forgotten, and forgotten deities were resuscitated. Sages shook off superstitious bonds, priests forged new fetters on ancient patterns for themselves and their flocks. Philosophy explained away the more degrading myths; myths as degrading were suggested to dark and servile hearts by unscientific etymologies. Over the whole mass of ancient mythology the new mythology of a debased Brahmanic ritualism grew like some luxurious and baneful parasite. It is enough for our purpose if we can show that even in the purest and most antique mythology of India the element of traditional savagery survived and played its part, and that the irrational legends of the Vedas and Brahmanas can often be explained as relics of savage philosophy or faith, or as novelties planned on the ancient savage model, whether borrowed or native to the race.
The oldest documents of Indian mythology are the Vedas, usually reckoned as four in number. The oldest, again, of the four, is the Sanhita ("collection") of the Rig-Veda. It is a purely lyrical assortment of the songs "which the Hindus brought with them from their ancient homes on the banks of the Indus". In the manuscripts, the hymns are classified according to the families of poets to whom they are ascribed. Though composed on the banks of the Indus by sacred bards, the hymns were compiled and arranged in India proper. At what date the oldest hymns of which this collection is made up were first chanted it is impossible to say with even approximate certainty. Opinions differ, or have differed, between 2400 B.C. and 1400 B.C. as the period when the earliest sacred lyrics of the Veda may first have been listened by gods and men. In addition to the Rig-Veda we have the Sanhita of the Sama-Veda, "an anthology taken from the Rik-Samhita, comprising those of its verses which were intended to be chanted at the ceremonies of the soma sacrifice".[1] It is conjectured that the hymns of the Sama-Veda were borrowed from the Rig-Veda before the latter had been edited and stereotyped into its present form. Next comes the Yajur-Veda, "which contains the formulas for the entire sacrificial ceremonial, and indeed forms its proper foundations," the other Vedas being devoted to the soma sacrifice.[2] The Yajur- Veda has two divisions, known as the Black and the White Yajur, which have common matter, but differ in arrangement. The Black Yajur-Veda is also called the Taittirya, and it is described as "a motley undigested jumble of different pieces".[3] Last comes Atharva-Veda, not always regarded as a Veda properly speaking. It derives its name from an old semi-mythical priestly family, the Atharvans, and is full of magical formulae, imprecations, folk-lore and spells. There are good reasons for thinking this late as a collection, however early may be the magical ideas expressed in itscontents.[4]
[1] Weber, History of Indian Literature, Eng. transl., p. 63.
[2] Ibid., p. 86.
[3] Ibid, p. 87. The name Taittirya is derived from a partridge, or from a Rishi named Partridge in Sanskrit. There is a story that the pupils of a sage were turned into partridges, to pick up sacred texts.
[4] Barth (Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 6) thinks that the existence of such a collection as the Atharva-Veda is implied, perhaps, in a text of the Rig-Veda, x. 90, 9.
Between the Vedas, or, at all events, between the oldest of the Vedas, and the compilation of the Brahmanas, these "canonised explanations of a canonised text,"[1] it is probable that somecenturies and many social changes intervened.[2]
[1] Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic studies, First Series, p. 4.
[2] Max Muller, Biographical Essays, p. 20. "The prose portions presuppose the hymns, and, to judge from the utter inability of the authors of the Brahmanas to understand the antiquated language of the hymns, these Brahmanas must be ascribed to a much later period than that which gave birth to the hymns."
If we would criticise the documents for Indian mythology in a scientific manner, it is now necessary that we should try to discover, as far as possible, the social and religious condition of the people among whom the Vedas took shape. Were they in any sense "primitive," or were they civilised? Was their religion in its obscure beginnings or was it already a special and peculiar development, the fruit of many ages of thought? Now it is an unfortunate thing that scholars have constantly, and as it were involuntarily, drifted into the error of regarding the Vedas as if they were "primitive," as if they exhibited to us the "germs" and"genesis" of religion and mythology, as if they contained the simple though strange utterances of PRIMITIVE thought.[1] Thus Mr. Whitney declares, in his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, "that the Vedas exhibit to us the very earliest germs of the Hindu culture". Mr. Max Muller avers that "no country can be compared to India as offering opportunities for a real study of the genesis and growth of religion".[2] Yet the same scholar observes that "even the earliest specimens of Vedic poetry belong to the modern history of the race, and that the early period of the historical growth of religion had passed away before the Rishis (bards) could have worshipped their Devas or bright beings with sacred hymns and invocations". Though this is manifestly true, the sacred hymns and invocations of the Rishis are constantly used as testimony bearing on the beginning of the historical growth of religion. Nay, more; these remains of "the modern history of the race" are supposed to exhibit mythology in the process of making, as if the race had possessed no mythology before it reached a comparatively modern period, the Vedic age. In the same spirit, Dr. Muir, the learned editor of Sanskrit Texts, speaks in one place as if the Vedic hymns"illustrated the natural workings of the human mind in the period of its infancy".[3] A brief examination of the social and political and religious condition of man, as described by the poets of the Vedas, will prove that his infancy had long been left behindhim when the first Vedic hymns were chanted.
[1] Ibid., Rig-Veda Sanhita, p. vii.
[2] Hibbert Lectures, p. 131.
[3] Nothing can prove more absolutely and more briefly the late character of Vedic faith than the fact that the faith had already to be defended against the attacks of sceptics. The impious denied the existence of Indra because he was invisible. Rig-Veda, ii. 12, 5; viii. 89, 3; v. 30, 1-2; vi. 27, 3. Bergaigne, ii. 167. "Es gibt keinen Indra, so hat der eine und der ander gesagt" (Ludwig'sversion).
As Barth observes, the very ideas which permeate the Veda, the idea of the mystic efficacy of sacrifice, of brahma, prove that the poems are profoundly sacerdotal; and this should have given pause to the writers who have persisted in representing the hymns as the work of primitive shepherds praising their gods as they feed their flocks.[1] In the Vedic age the ranks of society are already at least as clearly defined as in Homeric Greece. "We men," says a poet of the Rig-Veda,[2] "have all our different imaginations and designs. The carpenter seeks something that is broken, the doctor a patient, the priest some one who will offer libations. . . . The artisan continually seeks after a man with plenty of gold. . . . I am a poet, my father is a doctor, and my mother is a grinder of corn." Chariots and the art of the chariot-builder are as frequently spoken of as in the Iliad. Spears, swords, axes and coats of mail were in common use. The art of boat-building or of ship-building was well known. Kine and horses, sheep and dogs, had long been domesticated. The bow was a favourite weapon, and warriors fought in chariots, like the Homeric Greeks and the Egyptians. Weaving was commonly practised. The people probably lived, as a rule, in village settlements, but cities or fortified places were by no means unknown.[3] As for political society,"kings are frequently mentioned in the hymns," and "it was regarded as eminently beneficial for a king to entertain a family priest," on whom he was expected to confer thousands of kine, lovely slaves and lumps of gold. In the family polygamy existed, probably as the exception. There is reason to suppose that the brother-in-law was permitted, if not expected, to "raise up seed" to his dead brother, as among the Hebrews.[4] As to literature, the very structure of the hymns proves that it was elaborate and consciously artistic. M. Barth writes: "It would be a great mistake to speak of the primitive naivete of the Vedic poetry and religion".[5] Both the poetry and the religion, on the other hand, display in the highest degree the mark of the sacerdotal spirit. The myths, though originally derived from nature-worship, in an infinite majority of cases only reflect natural phenomena through a veil of ritualistic corruptions.[6] The rigid division of castes is seldom recognised in the Rig-Veda. We seem to see caste in the making.[7] The Rishis and priests of the princely families were on their way to becoming the all-powerful Brahmans. The kings and princes were on their way to becoming the caste of Kshatriyas or warriors. The mass of the people was soon to sink into the caste of Vaisyas and broken men. Non-Aryan aborigines and others were possibly developing into the caste of Sudras. Thus the spirit of division and of ceremonialism had still some of its conquests to achieve. But the extraordinary attention given and the immense importance assigned to the details of sacrifice, and the supernatural efficacy constantly attributed to a sort of magical asceticism (tapas, austere fervour), prove that the worst and most foolish elements of later Indian society and thought were in the Vedic age already inpowerful existence.
[1] Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 27.
[2] ix. 112.
[3] Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii. 203. The burgs were fortified with wooden palisades, capable of being destroyed by fire. "Cities" may be too magnificent a word for what perhaps were more like pahs. But compare Kaegi, The Rig-Veda, note 42, Engl. transl. Kaegi's book (translated by Dr. Arrowsmith, Boston, U.S., 1886) is probably the best short manual of the subject.
[4] Deut. xxv. 5; Matt. xxii. 24.
[5] Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, i. 245.
[6] Ludwig, iii. 262.
[7] On this subject see Muir, i. 192, with the remarks of Haug. "From all we know, the real origin of caste seems to go back to a time anterior to the composition of the Vedic hymns, though its development into a regular system with insurmountable barriers can be referred only to the later period of the Vedic times." Roth approaches the subject from the word brahm, that is, prayer with a mystical efficacy, as his starting-point. From brahm, prayer, came brahma, he who pronounces the prayers and performs the rite. This celebrant developed into a priest, whom to entertain brought blessings on kings. This domestic chaplaincy (conferring peculiar and even supernatural benefits) became hereditary in families, and these, united by common interests, exalted themselves into the Brahman caste. But in the Vedic age gifts of prayer and poetry alone marked out the purohitas, or men put forward to mediatebetween gods and mortals. Compare Ludwig, iii. 221.
Thus it is self-evident that the society in which the Vedic poets lived was so far from being PRIMITIVE that it was even superior to the higher barbarisms (such as that of the Scythians of Herodotus and Germans of Tacitus), and might be regarded as safely arrived at the threshold of civilisation. Society possessed kings, though they may have been kings of small communities, like those who warred with Joshua or fought under the walls of Thebes or Troy. Poets were better paid than they seem to have been at the courts of Homer or are at the present time. For the tribal festivals special priests were appointed, "who distinguished themselves by their comprehensive knowledge of the requisite rites and by their learning, and amongst whom a sort of rivalry is gradually developed, according as one tribe or another is supposed to have more or less prospered by its sacrifices".[1] In the family marriage is sacred, and traces of polyandry and of the levirate, surviving as late as the epic poems, were regarded as things that need to be explained away. Perhaps the most barbaric feature in Vedic society, the most singular relic of a distant past, is the survival, even in a modified and symbolic form, of humansacrifice.[2]
[1] Weber, p. 37.
[2] Wilson, Rig-Veda, i. p. 59-63; Muir, i. ii.; Wilson, Rig-Veda i. p. xxiv., ii. 8 (ii. 90); Aitareya Brahmana, Haug's version, vol. ii. pp. 462, 469.
As to the religious condition of the Vedic Aryans, we must steadily remember that in the Vedas we have the views of the Rishis only, that is, of sacred poets on their way to becoming a sacred caste. Necessarily they no more represent the POPULAR creeds than the psalmists and prophets, with their lofty monotheistic morality, represent the popular creeds of Israel. The faith of the Rishis, as will be shown later, like that of the psalmists, has a noble moral aspect. Yet certain elements of this higher creed are already found in the faiths of the lowest savages. The Rishis probably did not actually INVENT them. Consciousness of sin, of imperfection in the sight of divine beings, has been developed (as it has even in Australia) and is often confessed. But on the whole the religion of the Rishis is practical--it might almost be said, is magical. They desire temporal blessings, rain, sunshine, long life, power, wealth in flocks and herds. The whole purpose of the sacrifices which occupy so much of their time and thought is to obtain these good things. The sacrifice and the sacrificer come between gods and men. On the man's side is faith, munificence, a compelling force of prayer and of intentness of will. The sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will of the sacrificer; it is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven as well as on earth--the gods are always sacrificing. Often (as when rain is wanted) the sacrifice imitates the end which it is desirable to gain.[1] In all these matters a minute ritual is already observed. The mystic word brahma, in the sense of hymn or prayer of a compelling and magical efficacy, has already come into use. The brahma answers almost to the Maori karakia or incantation and charm. "This brahma of Visvamitra protects the tribe of Bharata.""Atri with the fourth prayer discovered the sun concealed by unholy darkness."[2] The complicated ritual, in which prayer and sacrifice were supposed to exert a constraining influence on the supernatural powers, already existed, Haug thinks, in the time ofthe chief Rishis or hymnists of the Rig-Veda.[3]
[1] Compare "The Prayers of Savages" in J. A. Farrer's Primitive Manners, and Ludwig, iii. 262-296, and see Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, vol. i. p. 121.
[2] See texts in Muir, i. 242.
[3] Preface to translation of Aitareya Brahmana, p. 36.
In many respects the nature of the idea of the divine, as entertained by the Rishis of the Rig-Veda, is still matter for discussion. In the chapter on Vedic gods such particulars as can be ascertained will be given. Roughly speaking, the religion is mainly, though not wholly, a cult of departmental gods, originally, in certain cases, forces of Nature, but endowed with moral earnestness. As to fetishism in the Vedas the opinions of the learned are divided. M. Bergaigne[1] looks on the whole ritual as, practically, an organised fetishism, employed to influence gods of a far higher and purer character. Mr. Max Muller remarks, "that stones, bones, shells, herbs and all the other so-called fetishes, are simply absent in the old hymns, though they appear in more modern hymns, particularly those of the Atharva-Veda. When artificial objects are mentioned and celebrated in the Rig-Veda, they are only such as might be praised even by Wordsworth or Tennyson--chariots, bows, quivers, axes, drums, sacrificial vessels and similar objects. They never assume any individual character; they are simply mentioned as useful or precious, it may be assacred."[2]
[1] La Religion Vedique, vol. i. p. 123. "Le culte est assimilable dans une certaine mesure aux incantations, aux pratiques magiques."
[2] Hibbert Lectures, p. 198.
When the existence of fetish "herbs" is denied by Mr. Max Muller, he does not, of course, forget Soma, that divine juice. It is also to be noted that in modern India, as Mr. Max Muller himself observes, Sir Alfred Lyall finds that "the husbandman prays to his plough and the fisher to his net," these objects being, at present, fetishes. In opposition to Mr. Max Muller, Barth avers that the same kind of fetishism which flourishes to-day flourishes in the Rig-Veda. "Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, herbs are invoked as so many powers. The beasts which live with man--the horse, the cow, the dog, the bird and the animals which imperil his existence-- receive a cult of praise and prayer. Among the instruments of ritual, some objects are more than things consecrated--they are divinities; and the war-chariot, the weapons of defence and offence, the plough, are the objects not only of benedictions but of prayers."[1] These absolute contradictions on matters of fact add, of course, to the difficulty of understanding the early Indo- Aryan religion. One authority says that the Vedic people werefetish-worshippers; another authority denies it.
[1] Barth, Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 7, with the Vedic texts.
Were the Rishis ancestor-worshippers? Barth has no doubt whatever that they were. In the pitris or fathers he recognises ancestral spirits, now "companions of the gods, and gods themselves. At their head appear the earliest celebrants of the sacrifice, Atharvan, the Angiras, the Kavis (the pitris, par excellence) equals of the greatest gods, spirits who, BY DINT OF SACRIFICE, drew forth the world from chaos, gave birth to the sun and lighted the stars,"--cosmical feats which, as we have seen, are sometimes attributed by the lower races to their idealised mythic ancestors, the "old, old ones" of Australians and Ovahereroes.
A few examples of invocations of the ancestral spirits may not be out of place.[1] "May the Fathers protect me in my invocation of the gods." Here is a curious case, especially when we remember how the wolf, in the North American myth, scattered the stars like spangles over the sky: "The fathers have adorned the sky withstars".[2]
[1] Rig-Veda, vi. 52,4.
[2] Ibid., x. 68, xi.
Mr. Whitney (Oriental and Linguistic Studies, First Series, p. 59) gives examples of the ceremony of feeding the Aryan ghosts. "The fathers are supposed to assemble, upon due invocation, about the altar of him who would pay them homage, to seat themselves upon the straw or matting spread for each of the guests invited, and to partake of the offerings set before them." The food seems chieflyto consist of rice, sesame and honey.
Important as is the element of ancestor-worship in the evolution of religion, Mr. Max Muller, in his Hibbert Lectures, merely remarks that thoughts and feelings about the dead "supplied some of the earliest and most important elements of religion"; but how these earliest elements affect his system does not appear. On a general view, then, the religion of the Vedic poets contained a vast number of elements in solution--elements such as meet us in every quarter of the globe. The belief in ancestral ghosts, the adoration of fetishes, the devotion to a moral ideal, contemplated in the persons of various deities, some of whom at least have been, and partly remain, personal natural forces, are all mingled, and all are drifting towards a kind of pantheism, in which, while everything is divine, and gods are reckoned by millions, the worshipper has glimpses of one single divine essence. The ritual, as we have seen, is more or less magical in character. The general elements of the beliefs are found, in various proportions, everywhere; the pantheistic mysticism is almost peculiar to India. It is, perhaps, needless to repeat that a faith so very composite, and already so strongly differentiated, cannot possibly be"primitive," and that the beliefs and practices of a race so highly organised in society and so well equipped in material civilisation as the Vedic Aryans cannot possibly be "near the beginning". Far from expecting to find in the Veda the primitive myths of the Aryans, we must remember that myth had already, when these hymns were sung, become obnoxious to the religious sentiment. "Thus," writes Barth, "the authors of the hymns have expurgated, or at least left in the shade, a vast number of legends older than their time; such, for example, as the identity of soma with the moon, as the account of the divine families, of the parricide of Indra, and a long list might be made of the reticences of the Veda. . . . It would be difficult to extract from the hymns a chapter on the loves of the gods. The goddesses are veiled, the adventures of the gods are scarcely touched on in passing. . . . We must allow for the moral delicacy of the singers, and for their dislike of speaking too precisely about the gods. Sometimes it seems as if their chief object was to avoid plain speaking. . . . But often there is nothing save jargon and indolence of mind in this voluntary obscurity, for already in the Veda the Indian intellect is deeply smitten with its inveterate malady of affecting mystery the more, the more it has nothing to conceal; the mania for scattering symbols which symbolise no reality, and for sporting with riddles which it is not worth while to divine."[1] Barth, however, also recognises amidst these confusions, "the inquietude of a heart deeply stirred, which seeks truth and redemption in prayer". Such is the natural judgment of the clear French intellect on thewilfully obscure, tormented and evasive intellect of India.
[1] Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 21.
It would be interesting were it possible to illuminate the criticism of Vedic religion by ascertaining which hymns in the Rig- Veda are the most ancient, and which are later. Could we do this, we might draw inferences as to the comparative antiquity of the religious ideas in the poems. But no such discrimination of relative antiquity seems to be within the reach of critics. M. Bergaigne thinks it impossible at present to determine the relative age of the hymns by any philological test. The ideas expressed are not more easily arrayed in order of date. We might think that the poems which contain most ceremonial allusions were the latest. But Mr. Max Muller says that "even the earliest hymns have sentimentsworthy of the most advanced ceremonialists".[1]
[1] History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 556.
The first and oldest source of our knowledge of Indo-Aryan myths is the Rig-Veda, whose nature and character have been described. The second source is the Atharva-Veda with the Brahmanas. The peculiarity of the Atharva is its collection of magical incantations spells and fragments of folklore. These are often, doubtless, of the highest antiquity. Sorcery and the arts of medicine-men are earlier in the course of evolution than priesthood. We meet them everywhere among races who have not developed the institution of an order of priests serving national gods. As a collection, the Atharva-Veda is later than the Rig-Veda, but we need not therefore conclude that the IDEAS of the Atharva are "a later development of the more primitive ideas of the Rig-Veda". Magic is quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; the ideas of the Atharva-Veda are everywhere; the peculiar notions of the Rig-Veda are the special property of an advanced and highly differentiated people. Even in the present collected shape, M. Barth thinks that many hymns of the Atharva are not much later than those of the Rig-Veda. Mr. Whitney, admitting the lateness of the Atharva as a collection, says, "This would not necessarily imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns were not already in existence when the compilation of the Rig-Veda took place".[1] The Atharva refers to some poets of the Rig (as certain hymnists in the Rig also do) as earlier men. If in the Rig (as Weber says) "there breathes a lively natural feeling, a warm love of nature, while in the Atharva, on the contrary, there predominates an anxious apprehension of evil spirits and their magical powers," it by no means follows that this apprehension is of later origin than the lively feeling for Nature. Rather the reverse. There appears to be no doubt[2] that the style and language of the Atharva are later than those of the Rig. Roth, who recognises the change, in language and style, yet considers the Atharva "part of the old literature".[3] He concludes that the Atharva contains many pieces which, "both by their style and ideas, are shown to be contemporary with the older hymns of the Rig-Veda". In religion, according to Muir,[4] the Atharva shows progress in the direction of monotheism in its celebration of Brahman, but it alsointroduces serpent-worship.
[1] Journal of the American Oriental Society. iv. 253.
[2] Muir, ii. 446.
[3] Ibid., ii. 448.
[4] Ibid., ii. 451.
As to the Atharva, then, we are free to suppose, if we like, that the dark magic, the evil spirits, the incantations, are old parts of Indian, as of all other popular beliefs, though they come later into literature than the poetry about Ushas and the morality of Varuna. The same remarks apply to our third source of information, the Brahmanas. These are indubitably comments on the sacred texts very much more modern in form than the texts themselves. But it does not follow, and this is most important for our purpose, that the myths in the Brahmanas are all later than the Vedic myths or corruptions of the Veda. Muir remarks,[1] "The Rig-Veda, though the oldest collection, does not necessarily contain everything that is of the greatest age in Indian thought or tradition. We know, for example, that certain legends, bearing the impress of the highest antiquity, such as that of the deluge, appear first in the Brahmanas." We are especially interested in this criticism, because most of the myths which we profess to explain as survivals of savagery are narrated in the Brahmanas. If these are necessarily late corruptions of Vedic ideas, because the collection of the Brahmanas is far more modern than that of the Veda, our argument is instantly disproved. But if ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the Vedic stratum may appear in a later collection, as ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the Homeric appear in poetry and prose far later than Homer, then our contention is legitimate. It will be shown in effect that a number of myths of the Brahmanas correspond in character and incident with the myths of savages, such as Cahrocs and Ahts. Our explanation is, that these tales partly survived, in the minds perhaps of conservative local priesthoods, from the savage stage of thought, or were borrowed from aborigines in that stage, or were moulded inmore recent times on surviving examples of that wild early fancy.
[1] Muir, iv. 450.
In the age of the Brahmanas the people have spread southwards from the basin of the Indus to that of the Ganges. The old sacred texts have begun to be scarcely comprehensible. The priesthood has become much more strictly defined and more rigorously constituted. Absurd as it may seem, the Vedic metres, like the Gayatri, have been personified, and appear as active heroines of stories presumably older than this personification. The Asuras have descended from the rank of gods to that of the heavenly opposition to Indra's government; they are now a kind of fiends, and the Brahmanas are occupied with long stories about the war in heaven, itself a very ancient conception. Varuna becomes cruel on occasion, and hostile. Prajapati becomes the great mythical hero, and inherits the wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and birds.
The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and the rivers run this way or that.
The study of Indian myth is obstructed, as has been shown, by the difficulty of determining the relative dates of the various legends, but there are a myriad of other obstacles to the study of Indian mythology. A poet of the Vedas says, "The chanters of hymns go about enveloped in mist, and unsatisfied with idle talk".[1] The ancient hymns are still "enveloped in mist," owing to the difficulty of their language and the variety of modern renderings and interpretations. The heretics of Vedic religion, the opponents of the orthodox commentators in ages comparatively recent, used to complain that the Vedas were simply nonsense, and their authors"knaves and buffoons". There are moments when the modern student of Vedic myths is inclined to echo this petulant complaint. For example, it is difficult enough to find in the Rig-Veda anything like a categoric account of the gods, and a description of their personal appearance. But in Rig-Veda, viii. 29, 1, we read of one god, "a youth, brown, now hostile, now friendly; a golden lustre invests him". Who is this youth? "Soma as the moon," according to the commentators. M. Langlois thinks the sun is meant. Dr. Aufrecht thinks the troop of Maruts (spirits of the storm), to whom, he remarks, the epithet "dark-brown, tawny" is as applicable as it is to their master, Rudra. This is rather confusing, and a mythological inquirer would like to know for certain whether he isreading about the sun or soma, the moon, or the winds.
[1] Rig-Veda, x. 82, 7, but compare Bergaigne, op. cit., iii. 72, "enveloppes de nuees et de murmures".
To take another example; we open Mr. Max Muller's translation of the Rig-Veda at random, say at page 49. In the second verse of the hymn to the Maruts, Mr. Muller translates, "They who were born together, self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the spears, the daggers, the glittering ornaments. I hear their whips almost close by, as they crack them in their hands; they gain splendour on their way." Now Wilson translates this passage, "Who, borne by spotted deer, were born self-luminous, with weapons, war- cries and decorations. I hear the cracking of their whips in their hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in the fight." Benfey has,"Who with stags and spears, and with thunder and lightning, self- luminous, were born. Hard by rings the crack of their whip as it sounds in their hands; bright fare they down in storm." Langlois translates, "Just born are they, self-luminous. Mark ye their arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer? Hear ye their clamour? Listen! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their hands, the sound that stirs up courage in the battle." This is an ordinary example of the diversities of Vedic translation. It is sufficiently puzzling, nor is the matter made more transparent by the variety of opinion as to the meaning of the "deer" along with which the Maruts are said (by some of the translators) to have been born. This is just the sort of passage on which a controversy affecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological ideas might be raised. According to a text in the Yajur Veda, gods, and men, and beasts, and other matters were created from various portions of the frame of a divine being named Prajapati.[1] The god Agni, Brahmans and the goat were born from the mouth of Prajapati. From his breast and arms came the god Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram), the sheep, and of men the Rajanya. Cows and gods called Visvadevas were born together from his middle. Are we to understand the words"they who were born together with the spotted deer" to refer to a myth of this kind--a myth representing the Maruts and deer as having been born at the same birth, as Agni came with the goat, and Indra with the sheep? This is just the point on which the Indian commentators were divided.[2] Sayana, the old commentator, says,"The legendary school takes them for deer with white spots; the etymological school, for the many-coloured lines of clouds". The modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or philological) students of mythology are often as much at variancein their attempts to interpret the traditions of India.
[1] Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 16.
[2] Max Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59.
Another famous, and almost comic, example of the difficulty of Vedic interpretation is well known. In Rig-Veda, x. 16, 4, there is a funeral hymn. Agni, the fire-god, is supplicated either to roast a goat or to warm the soul of the dead and convey it to paradise. Whether the soul is to be thus comforted or the goat is to be grilled, is a question that has mightily puzzled Vedic doctors.[1] Professor Muller and M. Langlois are all for "the immortal soul", the goat has advocates, or had advocates, in Aufrecht, Ludwig and Roth. More important difficulties of interpretation are illustrated by the attitude of M. Bergaigne in La Religion Vedique, and his controversy with the great German lexicographers. The study of mythology at one time made the Vedas its starting-point. But perhaps it would be wise to begin from something more intelligible, something less perplexed bydifficulties of language and diversities of interpretation.
[1] Muir, v. 217.
In attempting to criticise the various Aryan myths, we shall be guided, on the whole, by the character of the myths themselves. Pure and elevated conceptions we shall be inclined to assign to a pure and elevated condition of thought (though such conceptions do, recognisably, occur in the lowest known religious strata), and we shall make no difficulty about believing that Rishis and singers capable of noble conceptions existed in an age very remote in time, in a society which had many of the features of a lofty and simple civilisation. But we shall not, therefore, assume that the hymns of these Rishis are in any sense "primitive," or throw much light on the infancy of the human mind, or on the "origin" of religious and heroic myths. Impure, childish and barbaric conceptions, on the other hand, we shall be inclined to attribute to an impure, childish, and barbaric condition of thought; and we shall again make no difficulty about believing that ideas originally conceived when that stage of thought was general have been retained and handed down to a far later period. This view of the possible, or rather probable, antiquity of many of the myths preserved in the Brahmanas is strengthened, if it needed strengthening, by the opinion of Dr. Weber.[1] "We must indeed assume generally with regard to many of those legends (in the Brahmanas of the Rig-Veda) that they had already gained a rounded independent shape in tradition before they were incorporated into the Brahmanas; and of this we have frequent evidence in the DISTINCTLY ARCHAIC CHARACTER OF THEIR LANGUAGE, compared with that of the rest of the text."
[1] History of Indian Literature, English trans., p. 47.
We have now briefly stated the nature and probable relative antiquity of the evidence which is at the disposal of Vedic mythologists. The chief lesson we would enforce is the necessity of suspending the judgment when the Vedas are represented as examples of primitive and comparatively pure and simple natural religion. They are not primitive; they are highly differentiated, highly complex, extremely enigmatic expressions of fairly advanced and very peculiar religious thought. They are not morally so very pure as has been maintained, and their purity, such as it is, seems the result of conscious reticence and wary selection rather than of primeval innocence. Yet the bards or editors have by no means wholly excluded very ancient myths of a thoroughly savage character. These will be chiefly exposed in the chapter on "Indo- Aryan Myths of the Beginnings of Things," which follows.

OSHO ON Ashtavakra: The Purest Expression of Truth

2011-11-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

OSHO ON Ashtavakra: The Purest Expression of Truth

[NOTE: This discourse is in the process of being edited for publication. It is for reference use only.]

JANAK ASKED:

"OH LORD, HOW DOES ONE ATTAIN WISDOM? AND HOW DOES LIBERATION HAPPEN? AND
HOW IS NONATTACHMENT ATTAINED? PLEASE TELL ME THIS."

ASHTAVAKRA REPLIED:

"OH BELOVED, IF YOU WANT LIBERATION THEN RENOUNCE THE VISHAYAS, THE PASSIONS
AS VISHA, POISON, AND TAKE FORGIVENESS, INNOCENCE, COMPASSION, CONTENTMENT,
AND TRUTH AS NECTAR. YOU ARE NEITHER EARTH, NOR AIR, NOR FIRE, NOR WATER, NOR
ETHER. TO ATTAIN LIBERATION, KNOW YOURSELF AS THE WITNESS, CONSCIOUS OF ALL
THESE.

"IF YOU CAN SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM THE PHYSICAL BODY, AND REST IN
CONSCIOUSNESS, THEN THIS VERY MOMENT YOU WILL BE HAPPY, AT PEACE, AND FREE
OF BONDAGE.

"YOU ARE NOT A BRAHMIN OR OTHER CASTE, YOU ARE NOT IN ANY OF THE FOUR STAGES
OF LIFE, YOU ARE NOT PERCEIVED BY THE EYES OR OTHER SENSES. UNATTACHED AND
WITHOUT FORM, YOU ARE THE WITNESS OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE. KNOW THIS AND BE
HAPPY.

"OH EXPANSIVE ONE, RELIGION AND ATHEISM, HAPPINESS AND MISERY - ALL ARE OF THE
MIND, THEY ARE NOT FOR YOU. YOU ARE NOT THE DOER NOR THE ENJOYER. YOU HAVE
ALWAYS BEEN LIBERATED."

We are embarking on a rare journey. Man has many scriptures, but none comparable to the Gita ofAshtavakra. Before it the Vedas pale, the Upanishads speak with a weak voice. Even the BhagavadGita does not have the majesty found in the Ashtavakra Samhita - it is simply unparalleled.

The most important thing is that neither society nor politics nor any other institution of humanlife has had any influence on the sayings of Ashtavakra. They are such a pure expression -transcending emotion, transcending time and death - there is nothing comparable. Perhaps thisis why Ashtavakra's Gita, the ASHTAVAKRA SAMHITA, has not had much impact.

Krishna's Bhagavad Gita has been very influential. The first reason is that Krishna's Gita is asynthesis. He is more concerned with synthesis than with truth. The desire for synthesis is sostrong that if necessary Krishna doesn't mind sacrificing the truth a little.

Krishna's Gita is a hodgepodge containing everything; hence it suits everyone, because there issomething in it for everyone. It is difficult to find any tradition whose voice is not found in the Gita. Itis difficult to find anyone who does not take solace from the Gita. But for such people Ashtavakra'sGita will prove very difficult.

Ashtavakra is not for synthesis - he is a man of truth. He speaks the truth just as it is, without anyartifice or coloring. He is not concerned about the listener, he does not care whether his listener willunderstand or not. Such a pure expression of truth has never happened anywhere before, nor hasit ever happened again.

People love Krishna's Gita because it is very easy to extract one's own meaning from it. Krishna'sGita is poetic: in it two plus two can equal five, two plus two can also equal three. No such tricksare possible with Ashtavakra. With him two plus two are exactly four. Ashtavakra's statements arestatements of pure mathematics. There isn't the least possibility for poetic licence here. He saysthings as they are, without any sort of compromise.

Reading Krishna's Gita a devotee extracts something of which he can make a belief, becauseKrishna spoke on bhakti, devotion. The karma yogi extracts his belief because Krishna has spokenon karma yoga, the Yoga of action. The believer in knowledge finds what he wants because Krishnahas spoken on knowledge as well. Somewhere Krishna calls bhakti the ultimate, somewhere elsehe calls knowledge the ultimate, again elsewhere he calls karma yoga the ultimate.

Krishna's statements are very political. He was a politician, a perfect politician. Just to say hewas a politician is not right; he was a shrewd politician, a real diplomat. In his statements heconsidered and included many things. This is why the Gita suits everyone, why there are thousandsof commentaries on the Gita. No one is concerned with Ashtavakra, because to accept Ashtavakrayou are going to have to drop yourself - unconditionally. You cannot bring yourself along. Only ifyou stay behind can you come near him. With Krishna you can bring yourself along. With Krishnathere is no need to transform yourself. With Krishna you can fit just as you are.

Hence the founders of each tradition have written commentaries on Krishna's Gita - Shankara,Ramanuja, Nimbarak, Vallabha - everyone. Each has extracted his own meaning. Krishna has saidthings in such a way as to allow multiple meanings; hence I call his Gita poetic. You can draw outany meaning you like from a poem.

Krishna's statements are like clouds surrounding you in the rainy season: you see in them whateveryou want. Someone may see an elephant's trunk, someone sees the whole body of Ganesha, theelephant god. Someone may not see anything. He will say, "What nonsense you talk! They areclouds, vapor - how is it you see forms in them?"

In the West, psychoanalysts use the ink blot test: just pour an ink stain onto blotting paper and askthe person to say what he sees in it. The person looks carefully and sees something or other. Thereis nothing there, only an ink stain on blotting paper - randomly thrown, not thrown with any design,just poured from the bottle. But the person looking at it finds something or other. What he finds is inhis mind, he has projected it.

You must have seen lines made by rain falling on a wall. Sometimes a man's face is seen, sometimesa horse's face is seen. You project onto it what you want to see. In the dark of night, clothes hangingon a line seem like ghosts.

Krishna's Gita is just like this - you will be able to see whatever is in your mind. So Shankara seesknowledge, Ramanuja sees bhakti, Tilak sees action - and each returns home in a cheerful moodthinking that what Krishna says is the same as his belief.

Emerson has written that once a neighbor came and borrowed the works of Plato from him. Platolived two thousand years ago and is one of the world's rare, unique thinkers. Weeks later Emersonreminded him, "If you've read the books please return them." When the neighbor returned themEmerson asked, "How did you like them?"

The man said, "This man Plato's thoughts are in complete agreement with mine. I felt many times:

how has this man come to know my thoughts?" Plato lived two thousand years earlier and this fellowsuspects that Plato has stolen his thoughts!

This kind of suspicion often arises with Krishna too. Centuries have passed and commentaries onKrishna keep on coming. Each century finds its own meaning, each person finds his own meaning.

Krishna's Gita is like an ink blot... it is the statement of the perfect politician.

You cannot extract any beliefs from Ashtavakra's Gita. Only if you drop yourself as you move into it,will Ashtavakra's Gita become clear to you.

Ashtavakra's message is crystal clear. You won't be able to add even a small bit of your owninterpretation to it. Hence people have not written commentaries on Ashtavakra's Gita. There is noscope for writing a commentary; there is no way to distort or twist it. Your mind has no chance toadd anything. Ashtavakra has given such an expression that no one has been able to add or takeanything from it, even though centuries have passed. It is not easy to give such a perfect expression.

Such skill with words is very difficult to come by.

This is why I say we are starting off on a rare journey.

Politicians have no interest in Ashtavakra. Not Tilak, not Aurobindo, not Gandhi, not Vinoba: none ofthem has any interest, because with Astavakra they cannot go on playing their own games. Tilak'sinterest was to inspire nationalism. He wanted the whole country to get involved in action - andKrishna's Gita was helpful. Krishna is ready to lend a shoulder to anyone. Whosoever wants tosteady themselves on his shoulder and shoot their bullets - Krishna is ready. The shoulder is his,you can take the opportunity to hide behind it. And shooting from behind his shoulder makes evenbullets appear significant.

Ashtavakra doesn't allow anyone to even rest their hand on his shoulder. So Gandhi is not interested,Tilak is not interested, Aurobindo, Vinoba have nothing to do with him, because they cannot imposeanything. There is no room for politics - Ashtavakra is not a political being.

This is the first thing you need to keep in mind... such crystal clarity, an expression like an open skywith no cloud in sight, you cannot see any forms. Only when you drop all forms, become disidentifiedwith all forms and get connected with the formless, will you be able to comprehend Ashtavakra. Ifyou really want to understand Ashtavakra you will have to descend into the depths of meditation. Nocommentary, no interpretation will be of any help.

And for meditation Ashtavakra does not ask us to sit and chant "Ram, Ram." He says that anythingyou do will not be meditation. How can there be meditation when there is a doer? As long asthere is doing, there is illusion. As long as the doer is present, the ego is present. Ashtavakra saysbecoming a witness is meditation. Then the doer disappears; you remain only as watcher, nothingbut the observer. When you are nothing but the observer then only is there darshan, seeing; thenonly is there meditation, then only is there wisdom.

Before we enter the sutras, it is necessary to understand a few things about Ashtavakra. Not muchis known as he was neither a social nor political man, so no historical record exists. Only a fewincidents are known - and they are just wondrous, hardly believable. But if you understand themdeeply the significance will be revealed.

The first incident happened before Ashtavakra was born. Nothing is known of what came afterwardsbut this is an incident while he was still in the womb. His father, who was a great scholar, wouldrecite the Vedas every day while Ashtavakra listened from the womb. One day a voice came fromthe womb saying, "Stop it! This is all nonsense. There is no wisdom whatsoever in this. Mere words- just a collection of words. Is wisdom found in scriptures? Wisdom is within oneself. Is truth foundin words? Truth is within oneself."

Naturally his father was enraged. First of all he was a father and on top of that a scholar. And hisson hidden in the womb was saying such things! Not even born yet! He exploded in anger, becameengulfed in fire: The father's ego had been hit. And a scholar's ego... he was a great pundit, a greatdebater, knowledgeable in scriptures....

In anger he uttered a curse: When born, the boy would be deformed; his limbs would be bent ineight parts. Hence his name: Ashtavakra means one whose body has eight bends. He was borncrippled in eight places; eight places hunchbacked like a camel. In a rage his father deformed hisson's body.

There are other stories like this....

It is said that Buddha was born standing up. His mother was standing under a tree; she gavebirth standing and he was born standing up. He didn't fall to the ground but started walking! Hetook seven paces and on the eighth he stopped and proclaimed the four noble truths - that life issuffering....! He took just seven steps on earth and proclaimed that life is suffering, that it is possibleto be free from suffering, that there is a way to become free of suffering, that there is a state free ofsuffering - the state of nirvana.

About Lao Tzu the story is that he was born old, that he was born eighty years old, that he remainedin the womb eighty years. Since he had no desire to do anything, he had no desire to leave thewomb. Since he had no wants, he didn't want to come into the world either. When he was born hehad white hair, an old man of eighty years!

Zarathustra's story is that he burst out laughing as soon as he was born.

But Ashtavakra has defeated them all. These are all events after birth; Ashtavakra made his fullstatement before he was even born!

These stories are significant. These stories contain the essence, the essential treasure of the life ofthese masters.

Buddha's story contains the essence of what he taught his whole life.... Buddha taught the eightfoldpath, so he took seven steps and stopped on the eighth. There are eight parts in all; the last stepis that of right samadhi, and only in that state of samadhi is the whole truth of life known. So heproclaimed the four noble truths.

Lao Tzu was born old. People live eighty years, still they don't have the understanding Lao Tzuhad at birth. Do you see people becoming intelligent just by getting old? Getting old and becomingintelligent are not synonymous. At a ripe old age even hair can ripen to pure white.

Lao Tzu's story simply says that if there is urgency, intensity in one's life, then what might take eightyyears can happen in one moment. If one's understanding is intense it can happen in one momentand without pure intelligence it does not happen even in eighty years.

Zarathustra laughed right at birth. Zarathustra's religion is the only religion in the world that can becalled a laughing religion... very earthy, a religion of the earth. That is why people of other religionsdon't see Parsees as being religious. They see them dancing, singing, happy - Zarathustra's religionis a laughing religion, a life-affirming religion, not life negative. There is no place for renunciationin it. Have you ever seen a Parsi sadhu? - stark naked, having renounced all, standing in the hotsun, sitting facing a fire like a Hindu sannyasin? No, the Parsee religion has no interest in torturingand causing trouble to the body. Zarathustra's whole message is this: if you can realize godlinessthrough laughing, then why realize it crying? When you can reach to the temple dancing, whyunnecessarily sow thorns on your path? When you can go with flowers, then why follow ways ofpain and misery? It is right, the legend is right, that at birth Zarathustra was laughing.

Don't look for historical facts in these stories. It is not that they happened this way - but there is avery profound meaning in these stories.

You have a seed: when you look at the seed you can find no indication of the flowers that will growfrom it. There is not even a clue of what it can be. Will it be a lotus - blossoming in the water butremaining untouched by it, dancing in the rays of the sun? And the sun too may become jealous,of its beauty, of its tenderness, of its incomparable glory and grace. Its perfume will fly into the sky.

Looking at the seed this cannot be known. Looking at the seed one cannot even imagine, cannoteven guess. But one day it happens.

So we can think in two ways. Either we can hold tight to the seed and say, "What is not visible in theseed cannot happen in the lotus either. It is an illusion, it is a trick, it is a lie." This is the standpointof those we call rational, skeptics. They say what is not visible in the seed cannot be present in theflower - something is wrong. Hence a skeptical person cannot believe a Buddha, cannot accept aMahavir, cannot embrace a Jesus, because he says he already knows them.

When Jesus came to his village he was very surprised - the people of the village didn't bother abouthim at all. Jesus has said a prophet is never respected in his own country. What is the reason? Whywon't the village respect its prophet? The village people have seen him as the son of the carpenterJoseph, saw him carrying wood, saw him planing wood, saw him sawing wood, saw him bathed insweat, saw him playing and fighting in the streets. The people of the village have known him sincechildhood, have seen him there as a seed. How is it possible that he suddenly becomes the son ofGod! No, those who saw the seed cannot accept the flower. They say there must be some fraud,some cheating; this man is a hypocrite.

Buddha returned to his village. And the father - what the whole world could see, the father couldnot see. The world was experiencing an illumination, the news was spreading far and wide, peoplebegan coming from distant countries. But when Buddha came back to his home after twelve years,his father said, "I can still forgive you. Though what you did was wrong, you tormented us, you havecertainly done a crime, I have a father's heart - I will forgive you. The doors are open for you. Throwaway this begging bowl, remove these monk's clothes. None of this will do here. Come back - thiskingdom is yours. I have become old; who is going to look after it? Much childishness has gone on,now stop all this play!"

Buddha said, "Please look at me. The one who left has not returned. Someone else has come, theone who was born in your house has not come back. Someone else is here, the seed has returnedas a flower. Look deeply."

The father said, "You are going to teach me? I have known you since the day you were born! Goand deceive others; go and lecture other people and delude them - you cannot deceive me. I repeatagain, I know you perfectly well - don't try to teach me. I am willing to forgive you."

Buddha said, "You say you know me? I didn't even know myself before. Only recently have the raysof light descended and I have come to know myself. Excuse me, but I have to say that the one yousaw is not me. Whatever you saw is not me. You saw the outer shell, but did you look inside me? Iwas born out of you but you did not create me. I came via you as traveller comes via a certain route,but what do the traveller and the road have to do with each other? Suppose that tomorrow the roadsays 'I know you, your being has come from me' - just as you are saying.

"I existed before you. I have been on this journey for many lives. I certainly passed through you, as Ihave passed through others. Others too have been my father, others too have been my mother. Butmy being is completely separate."

It is very difficult, extremely difficult: If you saw the seed you cannot believe the flower is in front ofyou.

One way of looking is that of the distrustful, the rational, the skeptical. They say, "We know the seedso this flower is not possible. We know the mud: how can a lotus come from it? It is all false -a dream, an illusion. He must have fallen into a kind of hypnosis. Someone deceived him; somemagic, some spell...."

This is one way. The other is the way of trust - of the lover, the devotee, of the heart filled withempathy. He sees the flower and from the flower begins traveling backwards. He says, "When theflower has become so fragrant, when such radiance appears in the flower, when there is such beautyin the flower, when such fresh innocence is seen in the flower, then certainly it must also have beenpresent in the seed - because it is not possible that what is present in the flower was not already inthe seed."

It is not that these stories actually happened. Those who saw flowers bloom in Ashtavakra concludedthat what has happened today must have also been present yesterday - it was hidden, screened,behind a veil. What is here in the end, must have been present at the beginning also. What is seenat the moment of death must also have been present at the moment of birth; otherwise how could itarise?

So one way is to look backwards from the flower, and the other is to look forward from the seed. Ifyou look carefully their essence is the same, their foundation is the same, but what a difference: likebetween earth and sky! The one who knows the seed says, "How can what is not in the seed bein the flower?" This is his argument. The one who knows the flower says the same thing. He says,"What is in the flower should be in the seed too." They have the same argument. But each has adifferent way of looking.

It is a great hindrance. I have been asked, "In your childhood many people studied with you - inschool, in college - but they are not to be seen here." How can they be? - it is a great hindrance forthem. They cannot believe what they see, it is tremendously difficult for them.

Just yesterday somebody sent me a newspaper from Raipur. Shri Harishankar Parsai has written anarticle against me. He knows me, knows me from my college days. He is the leading Hindi satiricalwriter. I respect his writing. In the article he writes, "There must be some wrong with the atmosphereof Jabalpur. Here only swindlers and charlatans are born - like Osho, Mahesh Yogi and Mundra."

He listed three names. I must thank him that at least I am number one on his list! He considers methis worthy. He didn't completely push me out of his mind. It is not that he has completely forgottenme. But his difficulty is natural, clear and simple. I can understand his point. It is impossible - hesaw the seed; how can he trust the flower? And those who have seen the flower have difficultytrusting in the seed.

So the life story of all great men can be written from two angles. Those who are against him beginthe journey from his childhood. Those who are for him begin the journey from the end and gobackwards to childhood. Both are in a way right. But those who start with childhood and movetowards the end will miss the truth. Their right approach is suicidal. Those who travel from the endand move backwards are blessed. They will get much with no effort... much that those thinking thefirst, the skeptics way, will not get.

Now not only am I wrong, but because of me the very air of Jabalpur is wrong! There must besomething wrong in the environment. But I want to tell him that Jabalpur has no power over me,whether the environment is good or bad. I don't have much connection with Jabalpur; I was onlythere for a few years. Mahesh Yogi was also there a few years; he also has no connection.

Both of us are connected with another place. The people of that place are so sleepy that even nowthey don't know anything about us. Mahesh Yogi and my places of birth are very near to each other;Both of us were born near Gadarvada. He was born in Chichli, I was born in Kuchwada. If theenvironment is bad, it must be there. Gadarvada should be suffering for it, or receiving the blessing- Jabalpur should not be dragged into this.

But what arguments the mind creates!

Whoever hears Ashtavakra's story will immediately cry "False, impossible!" Of course those whowrote this story know that no one ever speaks from the womb. They are only saying that what finallyappears must have been present in the womb. The voice that later blossomed must have beenpresent in some deep place in the womb; otherwise from where did it blossom, from where did itcome? Do things just come out of the void?

There is a reason behind everything. We may not be able to see it but it must have been present.

All these stories indicate this.

The second incident known about Ashtavakra happened when he was twelve years old. Only thesetwo incidents are known. The third is his Ashtavakra Gita, or as some call it, the Ashtavakra Samhita.

When Ashtavakra was twelve years old, Janak hosted a huge debating conference. Janak was anemperor, and he invited the pundits of the whole country to debate on the scriptures. He hadone thousand cows placed at the palace gate and had the horns of the cows plated with gold anddecorated with jewels. He proclaimed, "Whoever is victorious, shall take possession of these cows."

It was a great debate. Ashtavakra's father also participated. As dusk was falling, the message cameto Ashtavakra that his father was losing. He had already defeated all the others, but he was aboutto be defeated by a pundit named Vandin. Receiving this message Ashtavakra went to the palace.

The hall was decorated. The debate was in its final stage and the decisive moment was fastapproaching. His father's defeat was a complete forgone conclusion - he was on the very edgeof defeat.

The pundits saw Ashtavakra as he entered the royal court. They were all learned scholars. His bodywas bent and deformed in eight places: he had just to move and anyone would start laughing. Hisvery movement was a laughing matter.

The whole meeting broke into laughter. Ashtavakra also roared with laughter. Janak asked,"Everyone else is laughing. I can understand why they laugh, but why did you laugh, my son?"

Ashtavakra said, "I am laughing because truth is being decided in this conference of butchers" - theman must have been extraordinary. "What are all these skinners doing here?"

A deep silence fell over the meeting. Butchers? Skinners?

The king asked, "What do you mean?"

Ashtavakra said, "It is simple and straightforward: They only see skin, they don't see me. It is difficultto find a man more pure and simple than me, but they don't see this; they see a bent and deformedbody. They are skinners, they judge by the skin. Your Majesty, in the curve of a temple is the skycurved? When a pot is smashed, is the sky smashed? The sky is beyond change. My body istwisted, but I am not. Look at the one within. You can't find anything more straight and pure."

It was a very startling declaration. There must have been pin-drop silence. Janak was impressed,astounded: "Absolutely right, why had he gathered a crowd of skinners there?" He becamerepentant, he felt guilty that he too had laughed.

That day the king couldn't manage to say anything, but the following day when he was out on hismorning ride he saw Ashtavakra on the way. Janak dismounted from his horse and fell at his feet.

The day before, in front of everyone, he couldn't find the courage. The day before he had said, "Whydo you laugh, my son?" Ashtavakra was a boy of twelve years, and Janak had considered his age.

This day he didn't notice the age. This day he got down from his horse and fell at Ashtavakra's feet,spread-eagled in prostration.

He said, "Please visit the palace, and satisfy my eagerness for the truth. Oh lord, be so graciousas to come to my home. I have understood! I couldn't sleep the whole night. You spoke truly: whatdepth of understanding have those who recognize only the body? They are debating the being, butattraction and repulsion for the body still arise; hate and attraction still arise. They are looking atdeath while talking of the deathless! I'm blessed that you came and disturbed me, that you brokemy sleep. Please come to the palace!"

Janak had the palace decorated magnificently. He welcomed Ashtavakra and seated him on agolden throne - this twelve year old Ashtavakra. Then he put his questions to him. The first sutrais Janak's inquiry. Janak asked and Ashtavakra explained. Beyond this, nothing is known aboutAshtavakra. And there is no need to know more, it is more than enough! Diamonds are not many;only pebbles and rocks are so common. A single diamond is enough.

These are two small incidents. One before birth: a voice from the womb with the proclamation,"What madness have you fallen into? Confused by scriptures... by words? Wake up! This is notwisdom, this is all borrowed. It is all snares of the mind, not experience. There isn't the slightest bitof reality in it. How long are you going to delude yourself?"

And the second incident: the pundits in the palace laughing and Ashtavakra's saying that in life thereare two visions: one is to see being and the other is to see skin.

Butchers see skin, the wise see being.

Have you noticed? A shoemaker doesn't look at your face, he sees only your shoes. Actuallya shoemaker can know everything about you just by looking at your shoes: How your economicsituation is, if you are successful or a failure; how your luck is.... The condition of the shoes tells him.

Your autobiography is written on your shoes - the shoemaker can read it. If the shoes are shiny,if the shoes are clean and new, the shoemaker is happy to meet you. For him your shoes are theproof of your being. A tailor looks at clothes. Seeing how you dress he understands your situation.

All have their own narrow vision.

Only one full of his own being sees being. He has no fixed vision. He has only seeing, darshan.

One more small incident - it is not about Ashtavakra but about Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, butAshtavakra is involved in it.... After this we will enter the sutras.

When Vivekananda came to Ramakrishna his name was still Narendranath - later on Ramakrishnanamed him Vivekananda. When he came to Ramakrishna he was extremely argumentative, anatheist, a rationalist. He wanted proof for everything.

There are some things that have no proof - it cannot be helped. There is no proof for godliness: itis, and yet there is no proof. There is no proof for love. It is, and yet there is no proof. There is noproof for beauty. It is, and yet there is no proof.

If I say, "Look how beautiful these ironwood trees are," and you say, "I don't see any beauty - Treesare just trees. Prove it!," it will be difficult. How can one prove they are beautiful? To be beautiful youneed a sense of beauty - there is no other way. You need eyes - there is no other way. It is reportedthat Majnu said, "To know Laila you will need the eyes of Majnu." It is true; to see Laila there is noother way.

The king of his area called Majnu and said. "You are mad! I know your Laila - an ordinary girl, jetblack - nothing special. I feel sorry for you, so here are twelve girls from my palace - they are themost beautiful women of the country. You can chose any one you like. Seeing you cry, my heartalso cries. "

Majnu looked at them and said, "There is no Laila among them. They cannot even be compared toLaila, they are not even worth the dust of her feet."

The king said, "Majnu, you are mad...!"

Majnu said, "That may be so, but I must tell you one thing: to see Laila you will need the eyes ofMajnu."

Majnu is right. To see the beauty of trees you need an eye for art - there is no other proof. If onewants to know love, one will need the heart of a lover - there is no other proof. And godliness is thecollective name of all the beauty, all the love and all the truth of this universe. For it an unwaveringconsciousness is needed, a witnessing is needed... where no word remains, no thought remains,no wave arises... where no mental dust remains and the mirror of consciousness is perfectly pure.

What proof?

Vivekananda told Ramakrishna, "I want proof. If God exists then prove it!"

Ramakrishna looked at Vivekananda. This youth had great promise, great potential; much wasready to happen within him. There was a great treasure with which Vivekananda was unacquainted.

Ramakrishna looked into, peered into, the past lives of this youth. Vivekananda had come carryinga great treasure, a great treasure of integrity, but it was suppressed under his logic. Seeing this, acry of anguish and compassion must have risen from Ramakrishna's heart. He said, "Forget all this.

We'll talk about proof and such things later on. I have become a little old, I have difficulty reading;you are young, you eyes are still strong - read from the book lying there." It was the Ashtavakra Gita.

"Read a little out loud to me."

It is said that Vivekananda saw nothing wrong in this, this fellow was not requesting anything special.

He read three or four sutras and every cell began trembling. He started to panic and he said, "Icannot read on."

Ramakrishna insisted, " Go ahead and read. What harm can there be in it? How can this book hurtyou? You are young, your eyes are still fresh, and I am old, it is hard for me to read. I must hear thisbook - read it out to me."

It is said that Vivekananda kept on reading aloud from the book - and disappeared in meditation.

Ramakrishna had seen great potential in this youth, a very promising potential, like that of abodhisattva who one day or other is destined to become a buddha. Sooner or later, no matterhow much he wanders, he is approaching buddhahood.

Why did Ramakrishna ask that he read the Ashtavakra Gita out loud to him? Because there is nopurer statement of truth.

If these words penetrate you, they will start awakening your sleeping soul.

These words will thrill you. These words will fill you with ecstasy. These words will shock you.

With these words the revolution can take place.

I have not chosen the Ashtavakra Gita just like that. Nor could I have chosen it earlier - I havechosen it after a long wait, after much consideration. There was a time when I talked on Krishna'sGita because there was a crowd around me. For a crowd the Ashtavakra Gita has no meaning. Withgreat effort I have got rid of the crowd.

Now there are a few Vivekanandas here.

Now I want to talk to those who have great potential.

I will work with those few on whom work can bring results. Now I will cut diamonds. This chisel is notto be destroyed on pebbles and stones. This why I have chosen the Ashtavakra Gita: I have chosenit because you are ready.

The first sutra....

Janak asked: "Oh lord, how does one attain wisdom? And how does liberation happen? And how isnonattachment attained? Please tell me this."

Tell me, Oh lord! Explain it to me.

To a boy of twelve King Janak says, "Oh lord! Bhagwan! Please explain! Give some understandingto an unknowing person like me! Awaken an ignorant person like me."

Three questions are asked....

"How does one attain wisdom?" Naturally, we might wonder: Why does he need to ask? There arebooks filled with these things. Janak also knew this.

What books are filled with is not wisdom. It is simply the dust wisdom leaves behind - ash. Whenthe flame of wisdom burns, ash is left behind. Ash goes on accumulating, and it becomes scripture.

The Vedas are ash; once they were burning coals. Vedic sages burnt them in their souls and ashwas left behind. Then the ashes were collected, compiled and systematically organized.

It is like people collecting the ashes and bones when a man's body has been burnt. They call these"flowers." People are very strange! They never called the man a flower when he was alive, but afterburning him they collect his bones saying that they have collected the flowers. Then they preservethem, keep them in a casket. While the man was living they never respected him as a flower; whilehe was living they never even looked at him as a flower. When he dies - man is insane! - they callhis bones, his ashes, flowers.

In the same way when a Buddha is alive you do not listen. When a Mahavir walks among you, youget angry. It seems that this man is destroying your dreams or is interfering with your sleep: "Is thisany time to be woken up? Just as my dreams have started coming true, just as success is enteringmy life, just as my chances are getting better, as the arrow is hitting the target - now this fellowcomes and says everything is meaningless! Just as I win the elections and the way is open to getinto power, this great man comes along, and says it is all a dream, it has no meaning, that death willcome and take everything. Don't talk like this! When death comes we will see, but don't even bringup such things now."

But when Mahavir dies or Buddha dies we collect all their ashes. We create the Dhammapada, wecreate the Vedas, out of them, and then we offer flowers of worship.

Janak also knew that the scriptures are filled just with information. But he asked, "How does oneattain wisdom?" - because no matter how much you know, wisdom is not attained. You can goon gathering more and more knowledge, learn the scriptures by heart, become parrots, memorizeeach and every sutra, let the complete Vedas be imprinted in your memory - but still there will beno wisdom.

"How does one attain wisdom? How does liberation happen?" He asks because what you callwisdom, knowledge, binds you instead - how can this be liberation? Wisdom is that which liberatesyou. Jesus has said, "The truth shall make you free." Wisdom is that which liberates you - this is thecriterion of truth. Pundits don't appear to be liberated, they look enslaved. They talk about liberationbut they don't look free. They seem to be bound with a thousand fetters.

Have you ever observed: your so-called religious people seem to be more enslaved than you. Youmay have a little freedom, but your saints are more stuck than you. They are just blind followers oftradition. They cannot move freely, they cannot sit freely, they cannot live freely.

A few days ago a message came to me from some Jaina sadhvis, Jaina nuns, saying they want tomeet me, but their disciples do not allow them to come. This is a very strange situation! A sadhvimeans one who no longer bothers about society, one who has started a journey into the unknownwilderness, one who has said, "Now I have no need of either your respect or your honor." But thenuns and monks say, "The disciples do not allow us to come." They say, "Don't even think of goingthere. If you go there we will close our doors on you." What kind of seeker are they? This is justdependency, slavery. This is completely backwards. It means that instead of the sadvi transformingthe disciple, the disciple is transforming the sadvi.

A friend came and told me that a Jaina sadhvi reads my books, but only in secret. She also tries tolisten to my tapes, but again secretly. And if by chance anyone mentions my name in her presence,she sits there pretending she has never heard of me. Is this liberation?

Janak asked, "How does liberation happen? What is liberation? Explain to me the wisdom whichliberates."

Freedom is man's most important longing. Achieve everything, but if you are still unfree, it hurts.

Attain everything, but if freedom is not attained, you have not attained anything. Man wants the opensky, unbounded. This is man's innermost longing, most secret longing - for a space where there areno limits, no barriers. You may call it the longing to become divine or call it the longing for moksha,liberation.

In Sanskrit we have chosen the right word, moksha. Such a lovely word does not exist in any otherlanguage. There are words like heaven, paradise, but those words don't have the melody of moksha.

Moksha has a unique music. It simply means a freedom so ultimate that it has no barrier; a freedomso pure it is unlimited.

Janak asked, "And how does liberation happen? And how is nonattachment attained? Oh lord,please tell me this."

Ashtavakra must have looked carefully at Janak - because this is the first thing a master does whensomeone inquires. He observes attentively: from what source is this inquiry arising? Why has thequestioner asked something? The master's answer can be significant only if he understands clearlywhy the question is asked.

Remember, a person who has attained truth - a master - does not answer your question. Heanswers you.

He doesn't bother much about what you ask, he is more concerned with why you have asked, whatis behind the question, the complex hidden in the unconscious, what desire is actually hiding behindthe screen of your question.

There are four types of people in the world: the wise, the seeker, the ignorant, the idiot. And thereare four types of inquiry. The first inquiry is wordless - the inquiry of the wise, the gyani, the onewho knows. Actually the inquiry of the wise is not an inquiry at all. He knows - nothing is left to beknown. He has reached; the mind has become clear, become calm. He has come home, he hascome to a state of relaxation.

So a gyani's inquiry is not an inquiry at all. This does not mean that a gyani is not ready to learn.

A gyani becomes simple, like a small child - he is always ready to learn. The more you learn, themore readiness to learn increases. The more you become simple and innocent, the more you opento learning. Winds come and find your doors open. The sun comes and doesn't need to knock onyour door. Existence comes and finds you always available.

A gyani does not collect knowledge, he simply has the capacity to know. Understand this well,because it will be useful for you. Gyani simply means one who is open totally to learning, who hasno prejudice, who has no buffers against learning, who has no pre-planned system or structure forknowing. A gyani means a dhyani, one who is meditative.

Ashtavakra must have observed carefully, looked into Janak and seen this person is not a gyani, hehas not attained meditation; otherwise his inquiry would be silent, there would be no words in it.

There is an incident in Buddha's life.... A fakir came to meet him; a lone ascetic came to see him, awanderer. He came and said to Buddha: "I have no words capable of asking, I have no skill to bringwhat I want to ask into words. You know it already. Understand and say whatever is right for me."

This is the inquiry of one who knows.

Buddha was sitting silently. He didn't say a thing. After a short time it seemed as if somethinghappened! The man had been looking at Buddha, and now his eyes started overflowing with tears.

He bowed at Buddha's feet and said, "Thank you! I am really fortunate - you gave me what I camehere for." He got up and left. His face was radiating an aura of unique splendor. He went dancing.

The disciples around Buddha were confused. Ananda asked, "Bante, Bhagwan! It is a mystery. Firstthis man says, 'I don't know how to ask, I don't know in which words to ask, I don't even know whatI have come to ask. But you know everything. Look at me, say whatever is needed for me.' First,this man is a mystery. Is this any way to inquire? If you don't know what to ask, then why ask at all?

How can you ask? Incredible!

"But the matter doesn't end here. You were sitting silently, and you went on sitting silently. We havenever seen you sit so mute. If someone asks, you answer. Sometimes it happens that someonedoesn't ask and still you answer. Your compassion is always flowing. What happened that suddenlyyou were silent and your eyes closed? And then what alchemy happened that the man began beingtransformed? We saw him changing. We saw him undergoing a complete mutation. We saw ecstasycoming over him. He has gone dancing, flowing with tears, overwhelmed, ecstatic. He bowed atyour feet. His fragrance has touched us too. What has happened? You didn't utter a word; how didhe hear? And we are with you for so many days, for years. Is your compassion less towards us?

Why don't we receive the grace you gave him?"

But remember, you get as much as you are able to receive.

Buddha said, "Listen. Horses. . .." He talks to Ananda about horses, because Ananda was a warrior.

He was a cousin of Buddha and from an early age was very fond of horses. He was a rider. He wasa famous rider, a great competitor.

"Listen, Ananda," Buddha said, "There are four types of horses. One type will not budge an inch evenif you whip it - the most worthless of all horses. The more you whip them the more they stubbornlyresist. They stand still - as stubborn as a hatha yogi. If you whip them, you only provoke resistance.

"Then there is a second type of horse. If you whip them they move. If you don't whip them they won'tmove. At least they are better than the first.

"And there is a third type of horse. Just crack the whip - to strike them is not necessary. Just crackthe whip, the sound is enough. They are more aristocratic - and better than the second kind.

"Then, Ananda, you must know those horses which run just by seeing the shadow of the whip. Youdon't even need to crack it. That man was that kind of horse: the shadow was enough."

Ashtavakra must have looked carefully.

When you come to ask me something, you yourself are a question, more important than what youask. Sometimes you may also feel that I have answered a question you didn't ask. And perhaps youmay even feel I have avoided your question, side stepped it and answered something else. But forme your inner need is always more important, what you ask is not important - because you yourselfdon't really know what you are asking, why you are asking. The answer is being given only for yourneed; nothing of the answer is decided by your question.

Ashtavakra must have seen that Janak is not a gyani. Is he ignorant then? No, he is not ignoranteither... because the ignorant person is arrogant, he stands proudly erect. He doesn't even knowhow to bow down - and this man has bowed at his feet, stretched himself full length at the feet of atwelve year old boy. This is impossible for the ignorant. The ignorant thinks he already knows - whois going to explain anything to him? If an ignorant person does ask, he asks just to prove you wrong,because the ignorant presumes he already knows and wants to see whether you know or not. Theignorant person asks to test you.

Ashtavakra must have thought, "No, Janak's eyes are very clear. Even though he's an emperor heasked me, an unknown, unfamiliar boy of twelve years, 'Oh lord! Please explain to me....' No he ishumble, he is not ignorant. Is he an idiot then? Idiots never ask. Idiots don't have any idea that thereare any problems in life."

There is a similarity between idiots and enlightened ones. For the enlightened ones no problemremains; for idiots no problem has yet arisen. Enlightened ones have gone beyond problems; theidiots have not yet entered them. Idiots are so unconscious, how can they ask questions? Willan idiot ask, What is wisdom? Will an idiot ask, What is liberation? Will an idiot ask, What isnonattachment? Impossible.

And if an idiot does ask, he will ask how to fulfill his passions. If an idiot asks, he will ask how to livehere a few more days. Liberation? No, an idiot asks how to make his chains golden, how to inlay hischains with diamonds. If an idiot asks, he will ask such things. Wisdom? An idiot does not imaginethat wisdom can exist. He cannot accept even the possibility. He will say, "What is wisdom?" An idiotlives like a beast.

No, Janak is not an idiot either. He is a mumukshu, a seeker of truth. The word mumukshu needsto be understood. Mumukshu is the desire for liberation, the desire for moksha.

Still he has not reached liberation: he is not a gyani. He is not standing with his back towardsliberation: he is not an idiot. He is not sitting stuck to any traditional ideas about liberation: he is notignorant either. He is a mumukshu. Mumukshu means that his inquiry is simple and straightforward.

It is neither corrupted by idiocy nor twisted by ignorant preconceptions. His inquiry is pure - he askswith an innocent mind.

Ashtavakra replied, "Oh Beloved, if you want liberation then renounce the vishayas the passions asvisha, poison and take forgiveness, innocence, compassion, contentment and truth as nectar."

"If you want liberation then renounce the vishayas, the passions as visha, poison." The word vishayais very meaningful. It is derived from visha, poison. The meaning of visha is a substance which, ifone eats it, one will die. The meaning of vishaya is that which, if we consume it, we die again andagain. With passions we die again and again. With food we die again and again; with ambitions,anger, hatred, burning jealousy - consuming these, we go on dying again and again. We have diedagain and again because of these.

Up until now, have we known living in life? We have known only death. Our life until now... whereis the flaming torch of life? There is only the smoke of death. From birth to death we are graduallydying. Are we living? We die every single day. What we call life is a continual process of dying.

We don't know life yet: how can we live? The body goes on weakening every day, strength goes ondecreasing every day. Enjoyment and passion go on sucking our energy every day, go on aging us.

Passions and desires are like holes, and our energy, our being, goes on flowing out through them.

In the end our pail is empty - this is what we call death.

Have you ever seen? - if you throw a bucket full of holes into a well, as long as it is submergedin water it seems to be full. Pull on the rope and lift it out of the water and already it has startedemptying. It creates a great noise. Is this what you call life? Falling streams of water - is this whatyou call life? And as the bucket draws closer to your hands, it becomes more and more empty.

When it reaches your hands it is empty... not a single drop of water. This is how our life is.

When a child is not born yet, he seems to be full. Just born, he starts emptying. The first day of birthis the first day of his dying. He starts emptying: one day dead, two days dead, three days dead.

What you call your birthday would be better called your deathday - it would be nearer the truth. Youhave been dying for one year and you say a birthday has come. You have been dying for fifty yearsand you say you have lived for fifty years: "Let's celebrate my golden anniversary." But you died forfifty years. Death is drawing nearer and life is receding further and further: the bucket is emptying.

Do you base your thinking about life on what is receding or do you base it on what is drawing nearer?

What kind of inverted arithmetic is this? We are dying every day, death keeps creeping closer.

Ashtavakra says passions are poisonous, because by indulging them we simply die. We never getany life from them.

"Oh Beloved, if you want liberation then renounce the vishayas, the passions as visha, poison, andtake forgiveness, innocence, compassion, contentment and truth as nectar."

Nectar means that which gives life, that which gives immortality, ambrosia - when one has found it,one will never die again.

Then forgiveness. Anger is poison - forgiveness is ambrosia.

Innocence. Deviousness is poison. Simplicity - innocence is nectar.

Compassion. Hardheartedness, cruelty, is poison - kindness, compassion, is nectar.

Contentment. The worm of discontent goes on eating up everything. The worm of discontent sits inthe heart like a cancer. It goes on penetrating into it, it goes on spreading poison.

Contentment. Satisfaction with what is, no desire for what is not. What is, is more than enough.

That it is, is more than enough. Open your eyes a little and see.

No one need impose contentment upon life. If you look attentively you will find that what you get isalways more than what you need. You go on receiving what you want, you have always got what youwant. If you wanted unhappiness you got unhappiness. If you wanted happiness you got happiness.

If you wanted something wrong you got something wrong. Your desires have shaped your life.

Desire is the seed, and life is its harvest.

For life after life you have been getting what you desire. Many times you think you desire one thingbut receive something else. Then the error is not in what you desire, you have only chosen a wrongword for what you desire. For example, you want success and get failure. You say you failed becausewhat you wanted was success. But he who desired success had already accepted failure. Within,he has become afraid of failure. Because of failure he desires success. And whenever he wishesfor success, the idea of failure comes; the idea of failure goes on becoming stronger. Sometimeshe succeeds, but he is certain to spend his journey through life in failure after failure. The mood offailure goes on deepening. It deepens so much that one day it manifests. Then you complain thatyou wanted success. But in wanting success, you have wished for failure.

Lao Tzu has said, "Wish for success and you will fail. If you really want success, never wish for it.

Then no one can make you a failure."

You say you wanted respect, but you are getting insults. A person who wants respect has no respectfor himself, yet he wants respect from others. He who has no respect for himself wants others tocover it, to hide his lack of respect. This desire for respect is the sign that within, you feel disrespectfor yourself. You have the feeling that you are nothing. Others should make you into something,should put you on a throne, should raise banners for you, should hoist flags in your name - othersshould do something! You are a beggar. You have already insulted yourself when you wantedrespect. And this insult goes on deepening.

Lao Tzu says, "No one can insult me because I don't want respect." This is what receiving respectis.

Lao Tzu says, "No one can defeat me because I have dropped the very idea of winning. How canyou defeat me? You can only defeat one who wants to win." It is a strange fact.

In this world those who do not desire respect receive it. Those who do not want success get it,because those who do not want success already accept that they are successful: what more successdo you want? You are already honored by the being within you: what more do you want? Existencehas already given you respect by giving birth to you: who else's respect do you want? Existencehas given you enough glory. It gave you life. It has blessed you with eyes - open them and seethese green trees, the flowers, the birds. It has given you ears - listen to music, to the splashing ofa water fall. It has given awareness so you can become a buddha: what more do you want? Youhave already been honored. Existence has certified you: who are you asking, like a beggar, for acertificate? Those who beg a certificate from you?

It is a very hilarious situation, two beggars face to face begging from each other. How can you getanything? Both are beggars. From who are you asking respect? Who are you standing in front of?

You are insulting yourself this way. And the insult will deepen.

Contentment means: Look at what you have!

Open your eyes a little and see what you've already got.

This is an extremely valuable key Ashtavakra is giving. It will slowly become clear to you.

Ashtavakra's view is very revolutionary, very unique. His revolution is from the very root.

"Take contentment and truth as nectar" - because one who lives in falsehood will go on becomingmore false. One who tells lies, lives in lies, will naturally be surrounded by lies. His connection to lifewill be shattered, his roots will be cut.

Do you want roots in existence? Those roots are possible only through truth. You can be linkedto existence only through authenticity and truth. Do you want to be cut off from existence? Thencreate a smoke screen of lies, make great clouds of lies around you. The more you become falsethe farther away you will be from existence.

"You are neither earth, nor air, nor fire, nor water, nor ether. To attain liberation, know yourself asthe witness, conscious of all these."

These statements are so immediate, not even an introduction. Ashtavakra has hardly uttered twosentences and meditation comes in; he begins to talk about samadhi, about deep meditation. Onewho knows has nothing except samadhi to share. He said two sentences first because if he hadimmediately started talking about samadhi, perhaps you would have been too startled to understand.

But two sentences - and immediately he is talking about samadhi.

Ashtavakra does not even take seven steps. Buddha took seven steps and on the eighth step,samadhi. Ashtavakra brings up samadhi on the very first step.

"You are neither earth, nor air, nor fire, nor water, nor ether." Let yourself relax into this truth. "Toattain liberation, know yourself as the witness, conscious of all these."

The witness is the key.

There is no more valuable key than this.

Be the observer. Whatever happens, let it happen. There is no need to interfere with it. The body iscomposed of earth, air, fire, water and ether. You are the lamp within by which all these - earth, airfire, water, ether - are illuminated. You are the observer. Go deeply into this.

"Know yourself as the witness."

This is the most important sutra in existence. Be a witness. Wisdom will happen through it.

Nonattachment will happen through it. Liberation will happen through it. The questions were threebut the answer is one.

"If you can separate yourself from the physical body, and rest in consciousness, then this verymoment you will be happy, at peace, and free of bondage."

"This very moment"! This is why I say it is a revolution from the very roots. Patanjali is not socourageous as to say, "This very moment." Patanjali says, "Practice discipline within and without.

Practice control of breathing, turning inwards and yoga postures. Purify. This will take innumerablelives - then enlightenment...."

Mahavir says, "Practice the five great vows. And when innumerable lives have passed,deconditioning will happen, purification will happen. Then one will cut the bonds of karma."

Listen to Ashtavakra: "If you can separate yourself from the physical body, and rest inconsciousness, then this very moment you will be happy, at peace, and free of bondage."

Right here, right now, this very moment. "If you can separate yourself from the physical body, andrest in consciousness." If you begin to see the fact, "I am not the body, I am not the doer and enjoyer:

I am that one hidden within me who sees all.... When childhood came it saw childhood, when youthcame it saw youth, when old age came it saw old age. Childhood did not stay, so I cannot bechildhood. It came and passed, still I am. Youth did not stay, so I cannot be youth. It came andpassed, still I am. Old age came, and it is also going, so I cannot be old age. How can I be thatwhich comes and goes? I am always. The one to whom childhood comes, to whom youth comes, towhom old age comes... to whom thousands of things have come and gone. I am that one eternal,everlasting."

Like railway stations they go on changing: childhood, youth, old age, birth. The traveller keepsmoving. You never think you have become one with train stations. Coming to Poona station you donot think you are Poona. When you reach Manmad you don't think you are Manmad. You know thatPoona has come and gone, Manmad has come and gone. You are a traveller. You are the observerthat saw Poona: Poona came; who saw Manmad: Manmad came. You are the one who sees.

The first thing, separate what is happening from the observer.

"... separate yourself from the physical body, and rest in consciousness..." There is nothing elseworth doing. Just as Lao Tzu's key sutra is surrender, Ashtavakra's key sutra is rest, relaxation.

There is nothing to do.

People come to me and ask how to do meditation. The very question they ask is wrong. They ask awrong question so I tell them just to do it. What should I do? I tell them, "Do - something or otherhas to be done." You are itching to do something; that itch needs to be satisfied. If it itches, whatto do? - it can't be left unscratched. But gradually, just keeping them busy doing, I tire them out.

Then they say, "Relieve us of this. How long are we to go on doing this?" I say, "I was ready from thebeginning, but you needed time to understand. Now relax!"

The ultimate meaning of meditation is rest.

"... rest in consciousness...." He who lets his consciousness stop in relaxation, he who rests onlyin being.... There is nothing to do because you already have what you are seeking, because youhave never lost what you are seeking. It is not possible to lose it - it is your very nature. You areBrahma. Analhaq - you are truth. What place are you seeking, where are you running to? In searchof yourself, where are you running? Stop. Relax. Godliness is not attained by running, because itis hidden inside the runner. Godliness is not attained by doing anything, because it is hidden in thedoer. To experience godliness nothing needs to be done - you are it.

Hence Ashtavakra says "Rest in consciousness." Relax, let yourself unwind. Let go of this tension.

Where are you going? There is nowhere to go, there is nowhere to reach to. "... and rest inconsciousness," then right now, "this very moment you will be happy, at peace, and free of bondage."

The statement is unique. There is no other scripture comparable to it.

"You are not a brahmin or other caste, you are not in any of the four stages of life, you are notperceived by the eyes or other senses. Unattached and without form, you are the witness of thewhole universe. Know this and be happy."

How can a brahmin write a commentary on this? "You are not a brahmin or other caste..." How can aHindu take this scripture to heart? His whole religion is based on caste and stages of life. And fromthe very beginning Ashtavakra is cutting the roots of these beliefs. He says you are not a brahmin,not a low caste sudra, not a kshatriya warrior - this is all nonsense. These are all projections. Thisis all the play of politics and society. You are simply Brahma, not a brahmin, not a kshatriya, not asudra. "You are not a brahmin or other caste, you are not in any of the four stages of life...." And youare not a brahmacharya student, or a householder, or at the stage before sannyas - you are not inany of the four stages of life. You are the observer, the witness who is inside passing through allthese situations.

The Hindus cannot claim the Ashtavakra Gita as theirs, the Ashtavakra Gita is everyone's. If therewere Muslims, Hindus and Christians in Ashtavakra's time, he would have said, "You are not aHindu, not a Christian, not a Muslim." Who will build a temple for Ashtavakra? Who will championhis scripture? Who will claim him?... because he is denying everyone. It is a direct declaration oftruth.

"Unattached and without form, you are the witness of the whole universe. Know this and be happy."

Ashtavakra does not say after you have known this you will become happy. Listen to the statementcarefully. Ashtavakra says, "Know this and be happy."

Be happy. Be happy right now. Janak asks: How can one be happy? How can liberation happen?

How can wisdom happen?

Ashtavakra says it can happen right now. There is no need to delay even a single moment. Thereis no reason to leave it for tomorrow, no need to postpone it. This happening does not occur in thefuture, it happens now or never. When it happens it happens right now, because there is no timeexcept now. Where is the future? When it comes, it comes as now.

So those who have become enlightened, have become enlightened in the now. Do not leave it forsome other time - that is the cunning of the mind. The mind argues: "How can it happen so fast?

Get ready first."

People come to meet me and they say, "We will take sannyas. We'll take it some day." Some day!

They will never take it. If it is put off, it is put off forever. "Some day" never comes. If you are goingto take it, take it now. There is no other time than now. Life is now, liberation is now. Ignorance isnow, knowing is now. Sleep is now, awakening can happen now. Why some day?

It is difficult for the mind, the mind says, you will have to make preparations. The mind argues, "Howcan anything happen without preparations? When a person wants a certificate from the university, ittakes years. For a doctorate it takes twenty to twenty-five years. Working year after year finally oneattains his doctorate. How can it happen right now?"

Ashtavakra knows this. If you want to have a store, you can't open it right now. You will have tocollect everything, arrange things, bring the goods, construct the store, attract customers, send outadvertising - it will take years! In this world nothing happens right now. It happens in orderly steps,and this is good. Ashtavakra knows this, I know it too. But there is one phenomenon in this worldwhich takes place right now. It is godliness. Godliness is not your shop, nor your examination hall,not your university. Godliness does not happen in steps, it has already happened. It is merely aquestion of opening your eyes. The sun has already emerged. The sun is not waiting for your eyes,saying that until your eyes open he won't come out. The sun is already out. Light is spread allover. His music is resounding day and night. The sound of "AUM" is vibrating in all directions. Theunstruck music is echoing everywhere. Open your ears! Open your eyes!

How much time does it take to open your eyes? It takes even less time to attain godliness. It takesa moment for the eyelid to blink. The Hindi word for moment means the time it takes to blink an eye.

But it does not take even that much time to attain godliness.

"... you are the witness of the whole universe. Know this and be happy." Be happy right now.

Ashtavakra's religion is not by installments. It is cash in hand, hard cash.

"Oh expansive one, religion and atheism, happiness and misery, all are of the mind, they are not foryou. You are not the doer nor the enjoyer. You have always been liberated."

Enlightenment is our inherent nature. Wisdom is our inner nature. Godliness is our way of being. Itis our center. It is the fragrance of our life, our being.

Ashtavakra says, "Oh expansive one, oh bringer of joy, oh luxurious magnificence, religion andatheism, happiness and misery, all are of the mind. These are all waves of thought." You have doneevil or good, committed sin or done good deeds, built a temple or given alms - all this is of the mind.

"You are not the doer nor the enjoyer. You have always been liberated."

You are eternally free, you have always been free.

Liberation is not a happening which we have to work for.

Liberation has already happened in our being.

The whole existence is made of freedom. Every particle of it, every pore of it is made of liberation.

Freedom is the material from which the whole existence is produced. Freedom is its very nature.

This declaration - just understand it and the transformation takes place. There is nothing to doexcept understand it. If it descends into you, if you listen with your whole mind, it is enough.

I would like to say "Enough for today." Make a total effort to understand Ashtavakra. In Ashtavakrathere is no place for doing. So don't think some method which you can do is going to emerge.

Ashtavakra does not suggest anything to do. Listen in repose. Nothing is going to happen by doing.

So don't bring a scratch pad or book to take notes in when a sutra comes. Don't write it down to dolater. Doing doesn't work here. Listen with no concern for the future. Just listen. Just sit quietly withme and listen. Listen to me in relaxation. Just listening... listening, you can become enlightened.

This is why Mahavir said that a shravaka is a seeker who can be enlightened just by listening! Ashravaka means one who becomes liberated just by listening. A sadhu means one who cannotbecome liberated by listening. He is a little less intelligent - he has to practice something. Theshadow of the whip is not enough for him. This horse belongs to a slightly lower class: the whipcracks, then it moves a little. Or beat it and it moves a little.

The shadow is enough.

Listen - the shadow of the whip will become apparent.

With Ashtavakra one thing has to be remembered: There is nothing to do. You can listen joyfully. Youdon't have to extract anything from it to try out later. Whatever happens will happen from listening.

Right listening is the key.

"This very moment you will be happy, at peace and free of bondage."

Be liberated right now. Be enlightened this very moment. Nobody is stopping you, nothing ispreventing you. There is no need to budge an inch. Be enlightened right where you are, becauseyou are free already. Awaken and be enlightened.

"Unattached and without form, you are the witness of the whole universe. Know this and be happy."

Be happy. There is no need to wait a single moment. It is a leap, a quantum leap. With Ashtavakrathere are no steps. It is not a gradual evolution but sudden. It can happen this very moment.

Hari Om Tat Sat.

Enough for today.

Jung’s References to the Self

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Jung’s References to theSelf

Jung refers to theself in ways that are very similar to Ramana's teaching of Self Enquiry. Jungsays:

An Indian guru canexplain everything and you can imitate everything. But do you know who isapplying the yoga? In other words, do you know who you are and how you areconstituted?

And we must need to revise our somewhatold-fashioned prejudice that man is nothing but his consciousness. This naïveassumption must be confronted at once with the critical question: Whoseconsciousness?

And a rare philosophicpassion is needed to compel the attempt to get beyond intellect and breakthrough to“knowledge of the knower.” Such a passion is practicallyindistinguishable from the driving force of religion; consequently this wholeproblem belongs to the religious transformation process, which is incommensurablewith intellect. [Beyond our concepts]

[Foreword to DTSuzuki’s Introductionto Zen Buddhism and in the same Foreword to DT Suzuki, Jung says, “Find himwho seeks.”

Now these statementsby Jung sound sound surprisingly like Ramana. Is it possible that Jung knew ofRamana? It is not only possible, it is certain. Jung was aware of Ramana and ofRamana’s teachings. He obtained this knowledge from Paul Brunton and from HeinrichZimmer. Let us look at Brunton and Zimmer.

Jung and Paul Brunton (See chart ofrelationships)

Paul Brunton was anEnglish writer on Yoga and related subjects. Brunton kept details of his ownpast as something of a mystery. We know that Brunton’s original name was RaphaelHurst. He was a bookseller and journalist. Brunton wrote under various pseudonyms,including Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte. He changed his name when hevisited India and decided to write on spiritual matters. At first he chose thepen name Brunton Paul. He later changed this to Paul Brunton.

Brunton was the onewho made Ramana well-known to the western world. Brunton met Ramana in 1931 [6years before his meeting with Jung], and in 1934, he published a bookabout hismeeting with Ramana.

The book was called A Search in SecretIndia Even Indian writers refer to Brunton’s works.For example, Yogananda visited Ramana in 1935 after reading Brunton’s books. Hemet Brunton at Ramana's ashram, and he praisedBrunton's writing. There are several reference to Brunton’s book by Ramana.Ramana expressly says that Brunton's book is useful for Indians I have already referred to Jung's meeting withBrunton in 1937. In 1937, Jung met Brunton, together with V. Subrahmanya Iyer,who represented India at the International Congress of Philosophy at theSorbonne. Jung invited Iyer and Brunton to Küsnacht, where they discussedproblems of Indian philosophy. It was at this meeting that Jung told Bruntonthat he was a mystic but that he could not acknowledge this because he hadtoprotect his scientific reputation.

Jung and Zimmer (See chart ofrelationships)

Jung was also madeaware of Ramana through the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer. Jung met Zimmer in the1930’s when Zimmer was Professor of Sanskrit at Heidelberg.

Zimmer attended someof the meetings at Eranos. Most importantly, Zimmer translated some of Ramana'swritings into German, in a book entitled Der Weg zum Selbst [the Way to the Self].The book was published in 1954, and Jung wrote an introduction to it. In 1946,the book came to the attention of Ramana Maharshi. Dr. B.K. Roy reviewed Zimmer'sbook and advised Ramana it was only a translation.

Jung's Introduction toZimmer's book is included in Jung's Collected Works as "The Holy

Men of India."(CW volume 9). The introduction makes it clear that Jung had read the translatedideas of Ramana. Zimmer urged Jung to visit Ramana on his trip to India.

Zimmer was greatly disappointed when Jung didnot do so. Clarke speculates why Jung did not see Ramana: It may be that Jung,in order to maintain his stance of independence, felt it necessary to avoid aman who, by repute, may well have been able to penetrate his defences, for justas he had since his boyhood refused to bend his knee to the Christian way offaith, so with regard to Eastern spirituality his attitude remained one ofguarded objectivity. He could not, as he expressed it, “accept from others whatI could not attain on my own, or make any borrowings from the East, but mustshape my life out of myself'.”

Zimmer himself never traveled to India. Jung’sfailure to meet Ramana greatly disappointed Zimmer. Jung says: Heinrich Zimmerhad been interested for years in the Maharshi of Tiruvannamalai, and the firstquestion he asked on my return from India [in 1939] concerned this latest holyand wise man from southern India.

In a letter toGualthernus H. Mees, a Dutch sociologist whom Jung had met in India, and whowas a disciple of Ramana, Jung comments on Zimmer's book: Concerning Zimmer'sbook I must say that I had no hand in its publication except that I took it inhand to be published by my Swiss publisher. Thus I was fully unaware of how thetext came into existence or what its defects 17are. I had to leave the entireresponsibility to my friend Zimmer who was a great admirer of the Maharshi Jung’sintroduction to Zimmer’s book is still referred to today. Parts of it have beenreprinted as an introduction to Ramana’s teachings. The book The SpiritualTeachings of Ramana Maharshi includesexcerpts of Jung's introduction.

But it leaves out manypassages expressing criticism of Ramana. Jung's introduction to Zimmer's bookis reproduced in the Collected Works as "Holy Men ofIndia." In his introduction, Jung says that Ramana's thoughts are "certainlybeautiful to read" ("Holy Men" para. 955). He compares Ramana'smethod to that ofWestern mysticism, where there is a shift from the ego to theself:The goal of Eastern religious practice is the same as that of Western mysticism:the shifting of the center of gravity from the ego to the self, from man toGod. This means that the ego disappears in the self, and man in God. It isevident that Shri Ramana has either really been more or less absorbed by theself, or has at least struggled earnestly all his life to extinguish his ego init.

Jung refers toRamana's ideas about the self: The Maharshi also calls the atman the 'ego-ego'--significantly enough, for the selfis indeed experienced as the subject of the subject, as the true source and controllerof the ego, whose (mistaken) strivings are continually directed towardsappropriating the very autonomy which is intimated to it by the self. Thisconflict is not unknown to the Westerner: for him it is the relationship of manto God ("Holy Men" para. 955-56).

Jung says that Ramanaequates Self and God, and that although this may seem shocking to Europeans, infact psychology cannot distinguish them:

The equation self=Godis shocking to the Europeans. As Shri Ramana's statements and many others show,it is a specifically Eastern insight, towhich psychology has nothing further tosay except that it is not within itscompetence to differentiate between thetwo.

Psychology cans only establish that theempiricism of the 'self' exhibits a religious symptomatology, just as does thatcategory of assertions associated with the term 'God'

now these quotationsmake it seem like Jung and Ramana's ideas about the self are very similar. Butdevotees of Ramana will be surprised to learn that these excerpts from theintroduction by Jung do not tell the whole story. In fact, Jung was verycritical of Ramana. Jung disagreed with what he saw as the message of Ramana.Jung says that Ramana is by no means unique: For the fact is, I doubt his[Ramana’s] uniqueness; he is of a type which always was and will be. Thereforeit was not necessary to seek him out. Isaw him all over India, in the picturesof Ramakrishna, in Ramakrishna’s disciples, in Buddhist monks, in innumerableother figures of the daily Indian scene, and the words of his wisdom are the sous-entendu of India’s spirituallife. ("Holy Men" para. 952). andBut in India he is merely thewhitest spot on a white surface (whose whiteness is mentioned only becausethere are so many surfaces that are just as black. ("Holy Men" para.952).

Jung says that thislonging for complete simplicity can be found in any Upanishad or any discourse ofthe Buddha. The goal of that kind of spirituality is the extinction and dissolutionof the ego: "the ego struggles for its own abolition, drowning the worldof multiplicity in the All and All-Oneness of Universal Being.” Ramana was justchiming in with this melody of extinction. And the consequence of this kind ofspirituality is “the depreciation and abolition of the physical and psychic man(the living body and ahamkara) in favour of the pneumatic man.”

Jung disagrees withthis a cosmic kind of spirituality. He says that without the ego or ahamkara,there is nothing to register what is happening. He is not interested in this kindof spirituality: The man who is only wise and only holy interests me about asmuch as the skeleton of a rare saurian” [lizard, dinosaur] ("HolyMen" para. 953).and Unadulterated wisdom and unadulterated holiness, Ifear are seen to best advantage in literature, where their reputation remainsundisputed.("HolyMen" para. 954).

Jung says that he raninto a disciple of Ramana in Trivandrum [actually it was a disciple ofRamakrishna]. Jung says this disciple was an unassuming little man, a primaryschoolteacher, with innumerable children to feed. But he goes on to say, Bethat as it may, in this modest, kindly, devout, and childlike spirit I encountereda man who had absorbed the wisdom of the Maharshi with utter devotion, and atthe same time had surpassed his master because, notwithstanding his clevernessand holiness, he had “eaten” the world.("Holy Men" para. 953).

Jung refers to thisdisciple as "an example of how wisdom, holiness and humanity can dwelltogether in harmony, richly, pleasantly, sweetly, peacefully, and patiently, withoutlimiting one another…"In his letter to Mees, Jung refers to this man,Raman Pillai, who was living so harmoniously in the world. Jung says,

I'm sorry that I wasunder the impression when we met in Trivandrum that you introduced your friendRaman Pillai [referred to in intro to Holy Men of India] as a remote pupil ofShri Ramana. This however doesn't matter very much, since the basic coincidenceof most of the Indian teaching is so overwhelmingly great that it means littlewhether the author is called Ramakrishna or Vivekananda or Shri Aurobindo, etc.Jung seems to be saying "If you have seen one Indian holy man, you haveseen them all."

That kind of arrogantgeneralization shows a distressing lack of knowledge on Jung's part, andreveals an impatience in him that is not at all in keeping with thepsychological method of investigation, of circling around a theme withoutcoming to any preconceived judgments about what it might mean.

Jung says that the Indian lacks the epistemological standpoint

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In his introduction to Zimmer's book, Jung refers to acontradiction between the Hindu

longing to escape the earth for the cosmic Self, and thedesire to be a part of the earth:

The insane contradiction, on the other hand, between existencebeyond Maya in the cosmic Self and that amiable human weakness which fruitfullysinks many roots into the black earth, repeating for all eternity the weavingand rending of the veil as the ageless melody of India—this contradictionfascinates me; for how else can one perceive the lightwithout the shadow?("Holy Men" para. 953).

Jung says that the Indian lacks the epistemologicalstandpoint; he is still pre-Kantian,

with no psychology: To the Indian it is clear that the self asthe originating ground of the

psyche is not different from God, and that, so far as a man isin the self, he

is not only contained in God but actually is God. Shri Ramanais quite

explicit on this point. No doubt this equation, too, is an'interpretation."

("Holy Men" para. 957).

Jung says that Ramana's desire to escape the ego isself-contradictory, because withoutthe Maharshi’s personal ego, there would beno Shri Ramana at all ("Holy Men" para.

959). There must be a balance between the goal of self asfinal goal (entelechy of the

self) and the ego.

The entelechy of the self consists in a succession of endlesscompromises,

ego and self laboriously keeping the scales balanced if all isto go well.

("Holy Men" para. 959).

Jung believes that Ramakrishna had a more tolerant attitudetowards the world:

Whereas Shri Ramana displays a 'sympathetic' tolerance towardsthe worldly callings of his disciples, while yet exalting the extinction of theego as the real goal of spiritual exertion, Ramakrishna shows a rather more hesitantattitude in this respect. He says: 'So long as ego-seeking exists, neitherknowledge (jñana) nor liberation (mukti) is possible, and to births and deathsthere is no end. All the same, he has to admit the fatal tenacity of ahamkara(the 'I-maker'):; "Very few can get rid of the sense of "I" throughSamadhi “We may discriminate a thousand times, but the sense of "I"is bound to return again and again” “If this sense of "I" will notleave, then let it stay on as the servant of God." ("Holy Men"para. 958).

Jung quotes Angelus Silesius: I know that without me

God can no moment live; Were I to die, then he

No longer could survive ("Holy Men" para. 959).

Jung disagrees with the practice of meditation divorced fromtemporal life: "reflection as an end in itself is nothing but a limitationif it cannot stand firm in the turmoil of chaotic

extremes…" ("Holy Men" para. 961).

Brunton’s Criticisms of Ramana

Now it is interesting that Brunton had very similar criticismsof Ramana. Excerpts of

Brunton’s book ASearch in Secret India arestill published and distributed by Ramana's

ashram. What the ashramdoes not say is that Brunton had aprofound disagreement.

Brunton says that there were threats of violence against him.In fact, he says he felt

forced to leave the ashram. He says he left “abruptly" [32].

Brunton says that he did not see Ramana at all in the 12 yearsbefore Ramanaˆa’s death, even though he passed within a few miles of the ashram [33]. In a book written in 1941,

The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga, Brunton refers to “threats ofphysical violence” and

"malicious lying ignorance." He speaks of being“harshly separated by the ill-will of certain men.” He speaks of “hate” and“low manners”, which he attributes to jealousy

over his success The main problems were:

1. In March, 1939, Brunton arrived at Tiruvannamalai, where hestayed at Ramana's

ashram, not for the expected three months, but for three weeks.Brunton describes the

situation at the ashramas: ... a highly deplorable situation inthe Ramana ashram which represents the culminating crisis of a degenerationwhich has been going on and

worsening during the last three years. And he complains thatRamana was not exercising any control over the ashram: But during my last twovisits to India it had become painfully evident that the institution known asthe Ashram which had grown around him during the past few years, and over whichhis ascetic indifference to the world rendered him temperamentally disinclinedto exercise the slightest control,

could only greatly hinder and not help my own struggles toattain the highest goal, so I had no alternative but to bid it an abrupt andfinal farewell (HiddenTeaching, p. 18)

2. It is clear that there were disagreements between Bruntonand Ramana's brother, who was in charge of the ashram. Masson says that Bruntonhad given interviews in the

Indian papers about Ramana which the brother had not foundsatisfactory. Were

these disagreements even earlier than 1939? Brunton had notbeen at the ashram since

early 1936. In September, 1936, Ramana was asked about"some disagreeable statements by a man well known to Maharshi."Ramana replied, I permit him to do so. I have permitted him already. Let him doso even more. Let others follow suit. Only let them leave me alone. If becauseof these reports no one comes to me, I shall consider it a great service doneto me. Moreover, if he cares to publish books containing scandals of me, and ifhe makes money by their sale, it is really good. Such books will sell even morequickly and in larger numbers than the others […] He is doing me a very goodturn. [36B].

Now Brunton is not specifically identified here. But the datesfit with Brunton leaving for the Himalayas "in exile."

3. A legal action had been commenced for control of theashram. Some people said that

Brunton was involved. Brunton felt he had to deny thisallegation.

4. Brunton complained that Ramana didn’t impart to him theguidance that he was

seeking (HiddenTeaching, p. 15). Now what did Brunton want? Hecertainly had

Ramana's instruction of the method of self-enquiry. It seemsthat perhaps he wanted the

magical powers or siddhisassociated with yoga. Examples are the power of telepathy or of foreseeing thefuture. We know that Brunton was interested in such powers. And he refers tothe "higher mysteries of yoga." It seems he wanted some kind ofinitiation from Ramana. But Ramana never initiated anyone. And although suchpowers may arise in the course of enlightenment, the Hindu traditions statethat it is a mistake to seek these powers in themselves. Interestingly enough,Brunton himself was criticized by his own followers for not following throughon his promises. Brunton told his own young disciple Jeffrey Masson about hispowers. Masson says that Brunton always carried a magic wand or glass rod.Masson was disappointed that he did not get these powers.

4. Brunton says that meditation apart from experience is“inevitably empty” (Hidden

Teaching, p. 19). The illuminations gained by yoga or by trance states are always

temporary ones. Although a trance may produce a feeling ofexaltation, this feeling goes

away and one must repeat the experience daily. He cites theHindu philosopher/sage

Aurobindo:

Trance is a way of escape–the body is made quiet, the physicalmind is in

a state of torpor, the inner consciousness is left free to goon with its

experience. The disadvantage is that trance becomesindispensable and

that the problem of the waking consciousness is not solved, itremains

imperfect. (HiddenTeaching, p. 27).

Brunton refers to the “sheer shrivelled complacency” of someof Ramana's followers, and their “hidden superiority complex.” He refers tothis mystical attitude as a “holier than thou attitude,” and an assumption thattotal knowledge had been reached when in fact it was only a partial knowledge (Hidden Teaching, p. 16). He says that without thehealthy opposition of active participation in the world’s affairs, they[mystics] have no means of knowing whether they were living in a realm ofsterilized self-hallucination or not(Hidden Teaching, p. 19).

5. Brunton had ethical disagreements with Ramana. For Brunton,it was not sufficient for

a realized person to meditate. Interaction and involvementwith the outside world is

necessary. He felt that Ramana took no stand on issues likethe coming war. Brunton

seems particularly upset by an incident when news was broughtto the ashram that Italian planes had gunned undefended citizens on the streetsof Ethiopia (the Italians invaded Ethiopia in October, 1935). Brunton reportsthat Ramana said:

The sage who knows the truth that the Self is indestructiblewill remain unaffected even if five million people are killed in his presence.

Remember the advice of Krishna to Arjuna on the battlefieldwhen disheartened by the thought of the impending slaughter of relatives on theopposing side [38]

Now I believe that Brunton's criticism of Ramana is correct,at least with respect to ethics. Ken Wilber also says that, however realizedRamana was, he had ethical shortcomings [39]. I see the problem as aninconsistency in Ramana's teachings between different views of the self. On theone hand, the self is seen as static and unmoving, uninvolved in the world. Onthe other hand, there is the view of the self as dynamic and participating inthe world. Brunton says that the field of human activity is meant to be not inthe trance-world, but in the external world, this “time-fronted andspace-backed world.”

6. Brunton's previous experiences of yoga and meditation. In Hidden Teaching, Brunton

says that he still regards Ramana as “the most eminent SouthIndian yogi.” But he also

says something quite surprising: that he had known aboutmeditation and yoga before he came to Ramana's ashram, and that his experience with Ramana was no new experience.

He makes the “confession” that when he first came to India, hewas no novice in the practice of yoga. Even as a teenager …the ineffableexstasis of mystical trance had become a daily occurrence in the calendar oflife, the abnormal mental phenomena which attend the earlier experience of yogawas commonplace and familiar, whilst the dry labours of meditation haddisappeared into effortless ease (Hidden Teaching, p. 23).

Brunton claims that he not only had practiced yoga, but that he had experienced the

abnormal phenomena, or siddhis. He refers to the experience of being seemingly

extended in space, an incorporeal being. What I omitted tostate and now reveal was that it was no new experiencebecause many years beforeI had met the saintly yogi of Arunachala, I had enjoyed precisely similarecstasies, inward repose and luminous intuitions during self-training inmeditation (HiddenTeaching, p. 25).

Brunton says that Ramana only confirmed his earlierexperiences: When later, I came across translations of Indian books onmysticism, I found to my astonishment that the archaic accents of theirphraseology formed familiar descriptions of my own central and cardinal experiences…(Hidden Teaching, p. 23).

This last statement is almost exactly what Ramana claimed forhimself–that his

experience was direct, and that the later books that he readwere only "analyzing and

naming what I had felt intuitively without analysis orname." Is Brunton being honest here? Or has he invented this story ofprevious experience in view of his disenchantment with Ramana? Surprisingly,the independent record seems to

show that Brunton may be telling the truth. There is evidencethat Brunton had had earlier experiences. A 1931 report of his first meetingwith Ramana reports Brunton (then known as Hurst) as telling Ramana that he hadearlier experienced moments of bliss. [41]

Brunton says that his experiences with Ramana brought backthese earlier experiences.

This may be true, but what Brunton says about his first book, A Search in Secret India,

must give cause for great concern insofar as it relates to therecord of Ramana. Brunton

says that he used the story of Ramana as a “peg” on which tohang his own theories of

meditation:

It will therefore be clear to perspicacious readers that Iused his name and attainments as a convenient peg upon which to hang an accountof what meditation meant to me. The principal reason for this procedure wasthat it constituted a convenient literary device to secure the attention andhold the interest of western readers, who would naturally give more serious considerationto such a report of the “conversion” of a seemingly hard headedcritically-minded Western journalist to yoga (Hidden Teaching,

7. God as an illusion. Brunton also criticizes Ramana’s viewthat even God is an illusion:

The final declaration which really put me, as a Westernenquirer, off Advaita came later: it was that God too was an illusion, quiteunreal. Had they not left it at that but taken the trouble to explain how andwhy this all was so, I might have been convinced from the start. But no onedid. I had to wait until I met V. Subrahmanya Iyer for the answer.

This is a rather strange criticism, and reflects a rathernaïve view of Vedanta. Brunton’s own later teaching moves from a personal to animpersonal Absolute.

8. Finally, Brunton seems to criticize Ramana for a lack oforiginality. He says, "some

years after I met Maharshi I discovered in an old Sanskrittext the same Who Am I

method." Part2 of Lecture

As we have seen, Jung met V. Subrahmanya Iyer and Paul Bruntonin 1937. Brunton

himself had met Iyer that same year, when he stayed with theMaharajah of Mysore. Iyer was the guru of the Maharajah, and Iyer soon replacedRamana as Brunton's guru. What were Iyer's teachings that so attracted Brunton?

Iyer's main difference from Ramana was that he emphasizedpractical ethics. Iyer was a

follower of Vivekananda (1863-1902). Vivekananda was an Indianphilosopher who was

a also disciple of the Indian holy man Ramakrishna(1836-1886). But Vivekananda was

also influenced by western thought. Hacker and Halbfasstherefore refer to him as a

"neo-Hindu"–a Hindu influenced by western teaching[44]. Vivekananda wrote the book

Practical Vedanta, in which he argued that Vedanta had ethicalimplications[45].

Ramakrishna's disciples set up the Ramakrishna Missions, whichemulated Christian

missions in India with their emphasis on service to humanityand social involvement.

And we have already seen how Jung was familiar with Ramakrishna,and makes

reference to his ideas of involvement with the world.

Iyer also presented Shankara as a rationalist philosopher, incontrast to the more

traditional image of him as a theologian: [Shankara's systemof Advaita] is not even a philosophical dish cooked to suit exclusively thepalate of the Hindu. It is like the air and the water, the common food of allmen in all countries. It is ... an attempt ... at

constructing a "Science of Truth," nay, in fact, itis the only attempt yet made at such a science. Thus Iyer interpretedShankara's teaching as food for all humanity, the universal teaching parexcellence; it is not just a religion, but the religion; not a philosophy, but the

philosophy; not a science, but the Science of Truth; not a soteriology, but the path to

spiritual liberation par excellence, wide and deep as the ocean whichcontains virtually all the water of the world and in which all particular formsultimately dissolve.

It is unclear whether Brunton realized that in following Iyer,he was accepting a more

western outlook on life. But it is interesting that Bruntonfound Iyer's emphasis on ethics

to be too one-sided. Iyer rejected mystical experience andmystical feeling. For him,

intellect alone was important.

Prior to going to India, Jung wrote to Iyer [47]. When hevisited India, Jung also visited

the Maharaja and Iyer in Mysore (at that time a separateprincely state). Jung refers to

this visit with the Maharaja and Iyer in Memories, Dreams, Reflections [48].

After his visit to India, Jung continued to correspond withIyer. I know it is a special feature of Indian thought that consciousness is assumedto have a metaphysical and prehuman existence. We are convinced that only whatwe call the unconscious mind, which is per definitionema psyche not conscious to anybody, hasprehuman and preconscious existence. What we call the unconscious is an exactreplica of the Indian concept of super- or supreme consciousness. As far as my knowledgegoes, however, we have no evidence at all in favour of the hypothesis that aprehuman and preconscious psyche is conscious to anybody and therefore aconsciousness.

Concerning your last question I want to say that I quite agreethat there is nothing in or of the material world that is not a projection ofthe human mind, since anything we experience and are able to express through thoughtis alien to our mind. Through experience and mental assimilation it has becomepart of our mind and thus it has become essential psychic. Inasmuch as amaterial thing does not enter our consciousness it is not experienced and wecannot say for certain that it does exist. Whatever we touch or come in contactwith immediately changes into a psychic content,

so we are enclosed by a world of psychic images, some of whichbear the label "of material origin: others the label "of spiritualorigin." But how those things look as material things in themselves or asspiritual things in themselves we do not know, since we can experience themonly as psychic contents and nothing else. But I cannot say that materialthings or spiritual things in themselves are of psychic nature, although it maybe that there is no other kind of existence but a psychic one. If that is thecase, then matter would be nothing but a definiteness of divine thought, asTantrism suggests. I have no objection to such an hypothesis, but the Westernmind has renounced metaphysical assertions which are per definitionem not verifiable, if only recently soIndia, it seems to me, is still convinced of the possibility of metaphysicalassertions. Perhaps she is right and perhaps not. [49]

Jung in India

In 1938, a year after meeting Brunton and Iyer in Küsnacht,Jung made an expedition to

India. Jung had the chance to meet Ramana at that time. As wehave seen, he had been urged to meet Ramana by the German scholar HeinrichZimmer, who was translating Ramana’s teachings. But Jung chose not to meetRamana, although Jung was in Madras, quite close to Ramana's ashram. Thiscertainly disappointed Zimmer. Some have wondered whether Jung was afraid tomeet a spiritual master [50]. In Memories,Dreams, Reflections, Jung gives this explanation, that he could not “accept fromothers what I could not attain on my own, or make any borrowings from the East,but must shape my life out of myself."

But that does not seem to be a full explanation. After all,Jung had borrowed the very

idea of the Self from Indian philosophy. And when Jung went toIndia, he visited Iyer at

the Maharajah's palace in Mysore. Jung says that they had"searching talks" with Iyer

(But not with Brunton, who was not in India in 1938). But Jungdid not visit Ramana,

even though he had the chance. Why did Jung visit Iyer and notRamana? The answer

must be that Jung was influenced by his meeting with Iyer andBrunton, and was

influenced by Brunton's appreciation of Iyer's ethical stanceas opposed to Ramana's

ethical indifference.

Jung's Further Criticism of Ramana

We have already seen some of Jung's criticism of Ramana,contained in his introduction

to Zimmer's book. And as I have mentioned some of thesecriticisms are not included in

excerpts of that introduction that are included in book The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi(Boston: Shambhala, 1988), giving theimpression that Jung agreed withRamana. And we have seen that Jung didnot agree with the practice of meditation

divorced from practical life.

Jung's letters provide more information about his oppositionto this kind of meditation.

1. Jung criticizes Ramana’s emphasis on trance and pureconsciousness. Jung says that some ego, some consciousness, and someunconsciousness must always remain. He wrote to W.Y Evans-Wentz, a scholar ofTibetan religion from Oxford, who had visitedRamana in 1935 [51]:

I quite agree with him [Mr. Sturdy] that there are states of intensifiedconsciousness which deserve the name "super-consciousness." No matterhow far that "super-consciousness" reaches, I'm unable to imagine a conditionwhere it would be completely all-embracing, i.e., where there would not besomething unconscious left over. In this letter, Jung refers for support to theaccount of the Apostle Paul's conversion. He says that in his ekstasis, Paul assures us that an "I" has seen (Acts 26:13):

Now if his [Paul's] ego had been completely dissolved andabolished, he

never could have said "I have seen," he might havesaid "God has seen”,

or rather he would not have been able to tell us even aboutthe fact that

something had been seen at all. So no matter how far anekstasis goes or

how far consciousness can be extended, there is still thecontinuity of the

apperceiving ego which is essential to all forms ofconsciousness.

In the same letter, Jung says that it is impossible to knowwithout a temporal ego:

Thus it is absolutely impossible to know what I wouldexperience when

that "I" which could experience didn't exist anymore. One calls this a

contradictio in adjecto. To experience Sunyata [Buddhist emptiness] is

therefore an impossible experience by definition, as Iexplained above, and

it is also impossible to experience consciousness in a fieldof which I

know nothing.

Jung wrote an introduction to Evans-Wentz's translation of The Tibetan Book of the Great

The Eastern mind, however, has no difficulty in conceiving ofa

consciousness without an ego. Consciousness is deemed capableof

transcending its ego condition; indeed, in its"higher" forms, the ego

disappears altogether. Such an ego-less mental condition canonly be

unconscious to us, for the simple reason that there would benobody to

witness it. I do not doubt the existence of mental statestranscending

consciousness. But they lose their consciousness to exactlythe same

degree that they transcend consciousness. [53]

2. In a letter to Iyer, Jung says that to truly live beyond theopposites you would have to

be unconscious or dead:

It is certainly desirable to liberate oneself from theoperation of opposites

but one can only do it to a certain extent, because no soonerdo you get out

of the conflict than you get out of life altogether. So thatliberation can be

only a very partial one. It can be the construction of aconsciousness just

beyond the opposites. Your head may be liberated, your feetremain

entangled. Complete liberation means death. What I call‘consciousness’

would coincide with what you call ‘mind.’ […]

If you eradicate the ego completely, there is nobody left thatwould

consciously experience. Too much ego always leads to a stateof conflict,

therefore it ought to be abolished. But it is the same thingas with the

pairs of opposites: if you abolish the ego altogether, thenyou create

unconsciousness. One assumes however that there is aconsciousness

without ego, a sort of consciousness of the atman. I'm afraid this supreme

consciousness is at least not one we could possess. Inasmuchas it exists,

we do not exist.[54]

3. In his letter to Mees, Jung disagrees with the idea oftrying to live a life in perfect

balance:

I consider a man's life lived for 65 years in perfect balanceas most

unfortunate. I'm glad that I haven't chosen to live such amiracle. It is so

utterly inhuman that I can't see for the life of me any fun init. It is surely

very wonderful but think of being wonderful year in year out!Moreover I

think it is generally much more advisable not to identify withthe self. I

quite appreciate the fact that such a model is of highpaedagogical value to

India.[54]

Why does Jung oppose balance? This seems to conflict with hisadmiration for the

disciple of Ramakrishna, Raman Pillai, whom Jung praised forliving so harmoniously.

Instead of opposing balance, would it not be better to saythat Ramana was in fact not

living a balanced life? As we have seen, that is Ken Wilber'scriticism of Ramana.

4. Jung criticizes the assumption that the world is anillusion. Jung becomes quite

sarcastic in his letter to Mees. He refers to Ramana’senlightenment experience as a

child: I wonder wherein his self-realization consists and whathe actually did do.

We know this running away business from parents etc. with oursaints,

too! But some of them have done something tangible–if it wasonly a

crusade or something like a book or the Canto di Sole. I had a chance,

when I was in Madras, to see the Maharshi, but by that time Iwas so

imbued with the overwhelming Indian atmosphere of irrelevantwisdom

and with the obvious Maya of this world that I didn't care anymore if

there had been twelve Maharshis on top of each other. I wasprofoundly

overawed and the black pagoda of Bhuvaneshvara took all theair out of

me. India is marvelous, unique, and I wish I could stand oncemore on

Cape Cormorin [far southern point] and know once more thatthis world is

an incurable illusion. This is a very helpful and salutaryinsight, when you

must not live daily in this damn machinery and theseundeniable realities

which behave exactly like they are real. [55]

Maya and Illusion

Jung's criticism of Hinduism depends on a very widespread viewof Hindu thought. In

this view, our true Self is ultimately identical with Brahman,and the world is illusion,

maya. The goal is to be identical with Brahman. According to thisview, meditation

means a loss of individual consciousness and a kind of trance,the seeking a pure

consciousness. Advocates of this view believe that meditationis seeking union with

God, or Brahman, and that the world is to be left behind, orrecognized as an illusion.

See the following diagram:

This doubt and confusion exists only for those who believe external world exists as real and who think their physical body also exists as real

2011-09-16T02:46:00.000-07:00

v How to think the world ceases toexist when asleep?

This doubt and confusion exists only for those who believe external world exists as real and who think their physical body alsoexists as real. For person who is awareof the fact that he and his world exists only in waking experience, and wakingis unreal. When one sees their unreality the problem collapses.

v What is grief/suffering due to?

One not being able to get what is wanted or tolose what is had. But if he knows that the waking experience is mere mirage,and that all the wealth, women and luxuries he had, and which was lost has goneback to Consciousness, the true self, therefore how can he feel sorry. If onegrieves it is because he wrongly felt it has gone into somebody else.

The idea of loss, the object orperson lost, all go back into the soul. Hence a Gnani does not grieve. This isfoolishly applied to practical life, when people have an idea, that I am aseparate being from others; only for a Gnani is loss not realloss. Unless one has realized, one should be practical in viewing loss. When oneforgets everything, he doesn’t grieve over it. When one know that memory is anidea, and then the misery it may bring him is nullified.

All unhappiness brought by thememory of the past, is found in the mind; Gnani evacuates it as idea and is notmoved. When one knows Consciousness/soulto be all-pervading, he becomes aware of the fact that consciousness alone is real allelse is mirage.

So long as there is waking, thereis thinking. Think always of the fact that everything in past, present andfuture is created out of Consciousness. Imagination of past and future appearsas real to unenlightened until they awaken. Then they see it is all imagination. To ignorant waking experience seemsreal, to Gnani the waking is mere mirage.

The "three states" is the totality of man's experience, which gives one the dual and non dual experiences

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Anyone puts their hand in fire it is the universalexperience that, the nature of the fireis hot, and that even if a man says it is cold, the fact of heat remains. Sameway the one who is aware of the three states in waking is aware of theawareness of the three states.

The "three states" is thetotality of man's experience, which gives one the dual and non dual experiences.Waking experience is converted into idea. People do not want to go deeper. They do not want to know what an idea is.Where has the deep sleep gone? It disappears as Consciousness when waking takesplace. The whole experience of diversity[waking experience] disappears as Consciousness. That is the point. That Consciousnessis what the seeker of truth has to get at.

v What is experience?

It implies asecond thing, i.e. duality. Unless one rise to a unity, he has no peace.

v Why does man have wants, peace?

Because, he has sense of duality.

Absenceof experience, then whole experience of duality is converted into feeling ofnon-duality. When one knows that all the three states is merged into thesoul/self, and then there is noting to experience because there is no secondthing other then Consciousness.

Consciousness creates and in which thecreator is dissolved. "Awareness is self”. The three states are dissolvedin Consciousness. The waking/dream is a mirage; the waking/dream gets merged in Consciousnessin sleep.

The whole waking/dream is merged in Consciousness in sleep, and then one gets the same position as soul/selfunconsciously in deep sleep. Butconsciously becoming aware of the Consciousness in the midst of the wakingexperience is non dual wisdom.

Those that want to prove existence of formless witness; it is only in its presence, for it is awareness, that proof can be given

2011-09-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

Those that want to prove existence of formless witness;it is only in its presence, for it is awareness, that proof can be given. It isa pre-condition without which one cannot talk of proof. The formless witness is the substance andwitness of the waking experience, which contains man, and his experience of theworld. Without the waking experience manand his experience are absent. The three states are transient in nature. Thus there must be a knower of the threestates which appear and disappear in succession.

Only through deeper analysis the three states,one becomes aware of the formless witness.

v How does one see the dream?

The dream iswitnessed without the physical eyes. Soit was not the waking entity, which witnessed the dream. The waking entity andthe waking world was absent in the dream. If the dream world were without the witness,it is impossible to witness the dream. Therefore there must be a witness of thedream. This same witness is witnesses the waking experience as a whole. Andalso the deep sleep. Thus the formless witnesshas to be mentally grasped by constant reflecting on the subject.

The gross waking experience is merged into the mental experiencein the sense that when it is analyzed, it is found to exist inseparably in andas the mind alone. All"spiritual" planes are really mental.

The existence of the three states is the proof of the Formless witness. The moment one becomesaware of the witness of the dream is not the waking entity, then he becomesaware of the formless witness of the three states, which is apart from thethree states.

By Gazing at nose-tip one cannot acquire non dual wisdom because a man is false entity within the false experience.

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The goal of the seeker after truth isnot the same of the yogi. The truth seekers goal is to acquire non dual wisdom, whereas the yogis goal is to attain Samadhi. This non dual wisdom is to know all thethree states are erupted out of the soul, which is in the form of Consciousnesssustained by Consciousness finally they, dissolve as Consciousness.

All the three states are an objectto the Consciousness, which is the witness of the three states. When one has no idea of being separated fromthe three states, then there is no idea of space, time and form.

By Gazing at nose-tip one cannot acquire non dual wisdombecause a man is false entity within the false experience. When the self is notthe form but the self is formless then what is the use of doing practice on thebase of the form, which is the false entity. Pursuit of truth is to know whattruth is and what is false and realize and establish in the truth. If one wants wisdom then he must look oneverything as consciousness. He must havefirm conviction that, —everything is Consciousness.

All the three states disappear back to the soul. All the three states are mere mirage createdout of consciousness. All the names and forms are part of the mirage. Themirage appears as waking or dream [duality] and disappears as deep sleep[non-duality] thus the universe, appears as Mind. And mind appears as waking ordream. Thus mind is also Consciousness because it is created out ofconsciousness. If one knows whole world is dream, or is mental, when all thestates go, it becomes Consciousness [soul]. Hence he who becomes a sage is ableto know his- self as Consciousness. This is the meaning of non-causality. Mindseemed to be the cause of duality, but its elimination shows clearly that theyare non-different from it.

The three divisions of time--past present and future--are within the waking or dream or illusion

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Just as a stone, atree, a straw, grain, a mat, a cloth, a pot, and so on, when burned, arereduced to earth (from which they came), so the body and its sense organs, onbeing burned in the fire of Knowledge, become Knowledge and are absorbed inBrahman, like darkness in the light of the sun.

Sri- Sankara

All the three states are made ofthe same substance, whether it is dreams, deep sleep or waking. All the objectand sense perception is of the same substance. This is the great lesson to belearnt by the seekers of truth.

The three divisions of time--pastpresent and future--are within the waking or dream or illusion. It becomes necessary to analyze the threestates. Whatever may come in the future,whatever objects existed in the past, whatever thing one can think of in thepresent--all these are possible only in waking experience. Waking or dreamconsists of names and forms.” All names are but words. The waking is parallel dream and dream isparallel waking. The formless knower ofthe three states, which comes and goes, is within the three states but it isapart from the three states. It is within the three states as their formlesssubstance and it is apart from the three states as their formless witness. Thus judging and reasoning the truth on thewaking entity is erroneous because the self is neither the waking entity northe dream entity. Thus the self is not the form but formless consciousness, whichpervades all the three states.

All the three states are got fromthe Consciousness[soul], corresponding to formlessness. One has to mentallymerge waking into dreams, then merge dream into deep sleep. And finally he hasto merge into Consciousness.

Any experience,is part of the mirage, and hence a superimposition. Consciousness is thesubstratum of the experience of all the three states.

Sankara wrote Bhashyas or commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the Upanishads and the Gita.

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Sankara wrote Bhashyas or commentaries on the BrahmaSutras, the Upanishads and the Gita. The Bhashya on the Brahma Sutras is calledSareerik Bhasya. Sankara wrotecommentaries on Sanat Sujatiyaand Sahasranama Adhyaya. It isusually said, “For learning logic and metaphysics, go to Sankara'scommentaries; for gaining practical knowledge, which unfolds and strengthensdevotion, go to his works such as VivekaChudamani, Atma Bodha, Aparoksha Anubhuti, Ananda Lahari, Atma-Anatma Viveka,Drik-Drishya Viveka and UpadesaSahasri”. Sankara wrote innumerable original works in verses which arematchless in sweetness, melody and thought.

Sankara’s supreme Ataman is Attriubuteless (without theGunas), Nirakara (formless), Nirvisesha (without attributes) and Akarta(non-agent). He is above all needs and desires. Sankara says, "This Atamanis self-evident. This Ataman or Self is not established by proofs of theexistence of the Self. It is not possible to deny this Ataman, for it is thevery essence of he who denies it. The Ataman is the basis of all kinds ofknowledge. The Self is within, the Self is without, the Self is before and theSelf is behind. The Self is on the right hand, the Self is on the left, theSelf is above and the Self is below".

Satyam-Jnanam-Anantam-Anandam are not separateattributes. They form the very essence of Ataman. Ataman cannot be described,because description implies distinction. Ataman cannot be distinguished fromany other than He.

The objective world-the world of names and forms-has noindependent existence. The Ataman alone has real existence. The world is onlyVyavaharika or phenomenal.

Sankara was the exponent of the Kevala Advaita philosophy.His teachings can be summed up in the following words:

Brahma Satyam Jagat Mithya,
Jeevo Brahmaiva Na Aparah

Ataman alone is real, this world is unreal; the Jiva isidentical with Ataman.

Sankara preached Vivarta Vada. Just as the snake issuperimposed on the rope, this world and this body are superimposed on Atamanor the Supreme Self. If you get a knowledge of the rope, the illusion of thesnake will vanish. Even so, if you get a knowledge of Ataman, the illusion ofthe body and the world will vanish.

Sankara is the foremost among the master-minds and thegiant souls which Mother India has produced. He was the expounder of theAdvaita philosophy. Sankara was a giant metaphysician, a practical philosopher,an infallible logician, a dynamic personality and a stupendous moral andspiritual force. His grasping and elucidating powers knew no bounds. He was afully developed Yogi, Jnani and Bhakta. He was a Karma Yogin of no mean order.He was a powerful magnet.

There is not one branch of knowledge which Sankara has leftunexplored and which has not received the touch, polish and finish of hissuperhuman intellect. For Sankara and his works, we have a very high reverence.The loftiness, calmness and firmness of his mind, the impartiality with whichhe deals with various questions, his clearness of expression-all these make usrevere the philosopher more and more. His teachings will continue to live aslong as the sun shines.

Sankara's scholarly erudition and his masterly way ofexposition of intricate philosophical problems have won the admiration of allthe philosophical schools of the world at the present moment. Sankara was anintellectual genius, a profound philosopher, an able propagandist, a matchlesspreacher, a gifted poet and a great religious reformer. Perhaps, never in thehistory of any literature, a stupendous writer like him has been found. Eventhe Western scholars of the present day pay their homage and respects to him.Of all the ancient systems, that of Sankaracharya will be found to be the mostcongenial and the most easy of acceptance to the modern mind set.

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Some people claim that in Adi Shankara's philosophy, there is no placefor a personal God (Ishvara), because Ishvara is also described as"false". He appears as Ishvara because of the curtain of Maya.However, as described earlier, just as the world is true in the pragmaticlevel, similarly, Ishvara is also pragmatically true. Just as the world is notabsolutely false, Ishvara is also not absolutely false. He is the distributorof the fruits of one's Karma. In order to make the pragmatic life successful,it is very important to believe in God and worship him. In the pragmatic level,whenever we talk about Ataman, we are in fact talking about God. God is thehighest knowledge theoretically possible in that level. Devotion (Bhakti) willcancel the effects of bad Karma and will make a person closer to the true knowledge by purifying his mind. Slowly, the difference betweenthe worshippe Teachings of Atmananda Krishna Menon:
The knowledge of one object implies the ignorance of all objects other thanthat particular object. The ignorance of all objects in deep sleep means reallythe positive knowledge of the self, which shines as happiness there.Consequently, the ignorance of the ordinary man in deep sleep is really theknowledge

Osho on Sage Ashtavakra and Yagnavalkya

2011-07-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

Osho – The inner is tremendously powerful, the outer is very weak. The inner is eternal, the outer is very temporary. How many years do you remain young? And as youth fades away you start feeling that you are becoming ugly, unless your inner being is also growing with your age.

Then even in your old age you will have a beauty that the youth may feel jealous of. Remember, from the inner the change to the outer happens, but I am not making it inevitable. Most often it happens, but sometimes the outer is in such a rotten state that even the inner radiation cannot change it.

There have been cases on record: one very great mystic of India – I have spoken on him for almost half a year continuously. His name was Ashtavakra. And what he has written is tremendously important; each sentence has so many dimensions to be explored, but the man himself was in a very difficult situation.

Ashtavakra – the name was given to him, because he was almost like a camel. In eight places he was distorted in the body – one leg was longer, one arm was shorter, his back was bent – in eight places he was distorted. That’s how he was born, with a crippled, distorted body. But even in a crippled and distorted body the soul is as beautiful as in the most beautiful body.

He became enlightened, but his body was too rigid to change with his inner change. His eyes started showing something of the beauty, but the whole body was in such a mess. The story is that the emperor of India in those days was Janak and he was very much interested in philosophical discussions. Each year he used to call a big conference of all the scholars, philosophers, theologians or whoever wanted to participate.

It was a championship competition. One very famous philosopher, Yagnavalkya came a little late. The conference had started and he saw standing outside one thousand beautiful cows. Their horns were covered with gold and diamonds. This was going to be the prize for the champion. It was a hot day and the cows were perspiring.

He told his disciples, ”You take these cows. As far as winning the competition is concerned, I am certain. Why should the cows suffer here? You take them to our place.” They had their own place in the forest. Even Janak could not prevent him, because he knew that he had been the champion continuously for five years, and he would be the champion this time, because there was nobody else who could defeat him.

It is not right to take the reward before you have won, but his victory was so certain to everybody that nobody objected. And his disciples took away all the cows. While Yagnavalkya was discussing, a very unknown scholar was also present in the conference. Ashtavakra was this unknown philosopher’s son.

His mother was waiting for her husband to come home. It was getting late and the meal was getting cold. So she sent Ashtavakra to bring his father home, because he could not win the competition. Why should he unnecessarily waste his time? He was a poor scholar and there were great scholars there. Ashtavakra went. There were at least one thousand people in the conference, the highly cultured and sophisticated scholars of the country.

As Ashtavakra entered, looking at his distorted body they all started laughing. But Ashtavakra was a man of tremendous integrity. As they started laughing, he laughed even louder. Because of his loud laugh they stopped. They could not believe that he was laughing. Janak asked him, ”I can understand why they are laughing – because of your body; but I cannot understand why you are laughing.

And you stopped all their laughing with your laughter.” A single man stopped one thousand people’s laughter.

Ashtavakra said to Janak, ”I thought this conference was for scholars and philosophers, but these are all shoemakers. They can understand only the skin. They cannot see the inner, they can only see the outer.”

There was a great silence. What he was saying had a great truth in it. Janak dissolved the conference and said, ”Now I would like to inquire of Ashtavakra only. He has defeated you all just by his laughter and his statement that, ‘You can’t see the inner, you can only see the outer; you are all shoemakers.’

Shoemakers work with the skin of different animals. I dissolve the conference and Yagnavalka, return those one thousand cows, because you also laughed. And when Ashtavakra laughed, you also stopped!”

It was a very strange situation; it had never happened before. And then began the long inquiry of Janak, the emperor. He asked questions and Ashtavakra answered them. Each answer in itself carried so much meaning and significance.

Because his body was in such a bad shape he could not get identified with it. Sometimes blessings come in such disguise. He could not go out, because wherever he went people would laugh, ”Look at that man! Have you seen anything uglier than this?”

So most of the time he was in the house, meditating, figuring out, ”Who am I? Certainly I am not this body, because I can be aware of this body, I can observe this body from within. Certainly that awareness has to be different from the body.”

Because of his crippled body he experienced enlightenment. The only barrier is identification with the body. But he could not identify, the body was so ugly. He never looked in a mirror; it would have been such a shock.

But Yagnavalkya had to return those one thousand cows to Ashtavakra’s house. He was young and he defeated one thousand old philosophers, well-versed in the ancient scriptures. It is one of the strangest things in this country that on every book written by any prominent mystic there have been hundreds of commentaries, but nobody has commented before me on Ashtavakra.

And he must be at least five thousand years old. For five thousand years nobody has bothered to look into his statements, which are so significant. But his inner enlightenment, his inner understanding could not change his outer appearance. And yet for those who are going deeper into themselves, the outer does not matter. They would have seen even in Ashtavakra tremendous beauty, but it would not have been of the outer circumference, but of the center.