Grace as Mother

"It is impossible for anyone to get established in the experience of reality, being-consciousness, except through the power of grace, the Mother [chit-para-sakti]. Other than through grace, the Mother, no one can attain reality, the experience of Sivam, which is truth. Except through that exalted light, which is the grace of consciousness, the supreme power, it is impossible to transcend the conceptualizing power of the mind. The ego can only be destroyed by the power of grace, not by the dark, perverted knowledge [suttarivu]."

~ Padamalai, Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi Recorded by Muruganar

The Hymn of the Pearl

At once, as soon as I saw it,
The Glory looked like my own self.
I saw it in all of me,
And saw me all in all of it,
That we were two in distinction,
And yet again one in one likeness.

- Gnostic, The Hymn of the Pearl

Lippi

The Pearl is a symbol of the Sahasrara Chakra,

at the crown of the head,
where Self-realisation is attained.

Religion

According to Yoga philosophy, Dharma (sometimes translated as 'religion' but by no means the same thing) is an innate sense of morality, it is something built into human beings. It cannot be abolished without abolishing humanity itself. It is a huge part of what makes individuals and societies human.

It is easy to sympathise with Richard Dawkins and other scientists who are justifiably fed up with the irrational bigotry and deluded literalism peddled by most religious organisations. But perhaps rather than trying to abolish religion, Science should strive to discriminate that which is innate in religion from that which is an accretion of prejudices, that which has its origin in the Self from that which has been imposed on it. If scientists want to proscribe belief altogether they should practise what they preach and take doubt to it's logical conclusion, they should practise vichara (the yoga practice of stripping away everything that is not the Self through doubt/rejection of sense impressions/thoughts). There are so many fundamental things we all take on faith without evidence - eg. that individual selves exist, that time and space exist.

Perhaps there are good arguments for scrapping religion altogether and starting from scratch to discover our innate morality, but are we going to give up the culture which is intertwined inextricably with it? Are we going to toss out the baby of Bach, Michelangelo, or Blake, with the bathwater of the inquisitions, crusades, etc? These artists - prolific generators of culture - may have disagreed with the prevailing religious attitudes of their times but they were also deeply devoted to God (to the ideal of universal Selfhood).

Shirdi Sai Nath

Shirdi Sai (or Sai Nath) was a completely Self-realised saint who lived in Shirdi, India, in the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th. Shirdi Sai (a name which just means 'Saint of the town of Shirdi') is widely considered in India to have been an Avatara (Incarnation) of Paramatman (the Supreme Self).

When William Blake was asked if he thought Jesus was an Incarnation of God, he said something like: "Yes, but so are you, and so am I", i.e. on one level everyone is an Incarnation of the single Self - a consequence of the Non-duality of Being.

Sai never said "I am God", preferring to describe himself as a humble servant of God. He always said- "Allah Malik" (God is the sole Proprietor or Owner). In the following quotation; however, He speaks as the Supreme Self - something only an utterly egoless person can do:

"Be wherever you like, do whatever you choose, remember this well that all that you do is known to Me. I am the Inner Ruler of all and seated in their hearts. I envelope all creatures. I am the Controller - the wire-puller of the show of this Universe. I am the Mother - origin of all beings - the harmony of the three gunas (attributes), the propeller of all senses, the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. Nothing will harm who turns his attention towards Me,
but Maya (Illusion) will lash him who forgets Me. All the insects, ants, the visible, movable and immovable world is My body or form."

"You need not go far, or anywhere in search of Me. Barring your name and form, there exists in you, as well as in all beings, a sense of Being or Consciousness of Existence. That is Myself. Knowing this, you see Me inside yourself as well as in all beings. If you practise this, you will realize all pervasiveness and thus attain oneness with Me."

Oneness

When such dualities cease to exist

Oneness itself cannot exist.

.

- The Third Zen Patriarch

Even the idea of a single Self is a mental concept.

It is neither true nor untrue.

Drops and Oceans

"Know that the world is a mirror from head to foot,
In every atom are a hundred blazing suns,
If you cleave the heart of one drop of water,
A hundred pure oceans emerge from it."
- Mahmud Shabistari

In this poem of Shabistari we see that the world is a mirror of the Universal Self. There is nowhere It can look without seeing Itself. It also recalls Kabir's saying about the the drop (the individual self) falling into the ocean (Supreme Self) - the ocean also falls into the drop. Thus ego annihilation/Self-realisation is not just an experience of loss, but of immense fullness.

Mahmud Shabistari (1288 – 1320s) is one of the most celebrated Persian Sufi poets of the 14th century. He was born in Tabriz in 1288 (687 AH), where he received his education. He became deeply versed in the symbolic terminology of Ibn Arabi. He wrote during a period of Mongol invasions. His most famous work is a mystic text called "The Secret Rose Garden" (Gulshan-i Rāz) written about 1311 in rhyming couplets.

"When the Quran asserts, 'Everything perisheth save His Face', the Sufis understand this truth as referring not to some future eschatological event but to the here and now. At this very moment, which is also the eternal now, everything is non-existent and has perished in itself save the the Face of God, and right now in whichever direction one turns there is His Face, if one could only see. To understand this reality is to realise the meaning of the oneness of Being."

-Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth

Jung drops the bundle

While recovering from an illness in 1944, Carl Jung had the following experience of ego annihilation:

"...a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of Earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me - an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained: it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: that is what I am. 'I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.' This experience gave me the a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence. Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a fait accompli, without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything."

- Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Huang Po

"Only awake to the One Mind
and there is nothing whatever to be attained."
- Huang Po

Ibn al-Arabi

The Self is without attributes or qualities
It is one without the the quality of oneness
It is many without the attribute of multiplicity

By Itself the Self seeks Itself
By Itself the Self realises Itself
By Itself the Self adores Itself

There is no other
and there is no existence for any other than the Self.
There is no existence save Its existence.

Self and world are one and the same
Revile not the world
for you are the world.

Your actions are not your actions,
they are the actions of the world.
Your thoughts are not your thoughts
they are the thoughts of the world.
Your self is not your self
but the Self of the World

Withersoever thou turnest
thou seest the face of thyself.
Nothing that seems to perish perishes,
for all things appear only in the face of the
Imperishable Self.

You are unborn and deathless,
You gave birth to birth itself,
and you are the death of death itself

Know thyself and thou knowest God.


Inspired by a reading of Ibn al-Arabi

Attention

"[Iris] Murdoch's ethical vision was based upon a concept which she, after Simone Weil, called attention. Attention, Murdoch proposed, is an especially vigilant kind of looking. When we exercise a care of attention towards a person, we note their gestures, their tones of voice, their facial expressions, their turns of phrase and thought. In this way, by interpreting these signs, we proceed an important distance towards understanding the hopes, wishes and needs of that person. This attention, Murdoch noted, is the most basic and indispensable form of moral work. It is effortful, but its rewards are immense. For this attention, she memorably wrote, 'teaches us how real things can be looked at and loved without being seized and used, without being appropriated into the greedy organism of the self'. Murdoch's ideal of attention, of a compelling particularity of vision, obtains to landscapes as well as to people. It is harder to dispose of anything, or to act selfishly towards it, once one has paid attention to its details. This is an environmentalist's truth, as well as a humanist's."

- Robert Macfarlane

Paying attention is, in itself a moral act. The purest form of attention is to attend to the Self beyond ego and conditioning.
In Indian philosophy this capacity is called Chitta, and is considered one of the three most important aspects of the supreme Self: Sat (truth) Chit (attention, awareness) and Anand (joy). Chitta is intrinsic to Selfhood.
One of the negatives of consumerist society is that the attention is continually being dragged away from the Self, towards objects of consumption. Western society prides itself in being a theatre for self-actualisation, but in many respects it is becoming increasingly destructive to the pure attention without which Self-realisation is impossible.
Imagine a man who has fallen into an underground granary with no ladder to get back out. He sees that there is still some grain scattered about on the floor of the granary. If he gathers this grain together and puts it into sacks, he finds he can pile up the sacks and use them to climb out. Attention is like this - concentrated, it is a means of ascent; scattered, it is useless.
Attention deficiency disorder affects adults as well as children. We could be heading for a world in which most kids have some degree of ADHD and never grow out of it.

"Saccidānanda or Sat-cit-ānanda (Sanskrit: सच्चिदानंद) is a compound of three Sanskrit words, Sat (सत्), Cit (चित्), and Ānanda (आनंद) (the ā is of longer vocal length), meaning True Being, Pure Consciousness and Bliss respectively. The expression is used in Yoga and other schools of Indian philosophy to describe the nature of Brahman as experienced by a fully liberated yogin. Orthography may differ depending on whether the word is treated in its compound form and therefore subject to sandhi: saccidānanda, or split into its elements: sat-cit-ananda, sac chid ananda, etc. The compound always sounds like: Sach-chid-ānanda, regardless of spelling. Saccidānanda may be understood as the energetic state and 'stuff' of non-duality, a manifestation of our spiritually natural, primordial and authentic state (sahaj or compare nirmanakaya) which is comparable in quality to that of deity."

- Wikipedia

The great music educator Nadia Boulanger said of her mother: "There was one thing she could not tolerate: lack of attention." "From the first I grew up with this absolute attentiveness, which is vital to self-awareness. People often seem to lack it now, yet it's essentially a form of character."

"It seems to me that attention is the state of mind which allows us to perceive what has to be. It is a form of the vision experienced by the great mystics, on days when they were granted a profound concentration... I believe that everything depends on attention. I only see you if I pay attention. I only exist if I pay attention to myself."

- Conversations with Nadia Boulanger, by Bruno Monsaingeon.

"All religions first postulate three principles, the world, the soul and God. To say that one principle alone appears as the three principles or that the three principles are always three principles is possible only as long as the ego exists."
-Shri Ramana Maharshi

Bladerunner and Cartesian Selfhood

A dystopian vision - a future Los Angeles reflected in an eye.

I saw Bladerunner The Final Cut recently, with two old friends -Artneuro and GJ, at a packed cinema theatre. It's a film packed with symbolism.

A major motif is that of the eye and the act of seeing or being seen.

In the opening scene, LA of 2019 is seen reflected in a human (or replicant) eye. Chew, the maker of artificial eyes, hopes the rogue androids will leave him alone when he insists that he knows nothing about how to get them into the Tyrell corporation - "I only do eyes". Recognising that Roy Batty is a Nexus Six replicant, Chew tells him that he has made his eyes. Roy responds, "If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes", while Leon intimidates the poor man by festooning him with spare part eyes. Roy appeals to Cartesian optics in his claim to selfhood. "From the Cartesian perspective, what I see is my property; I own it in the sense that I experience it personally in the privileged realm of the interiority of the subject. Lacan will invert the Cartesian triangle and in doing so show how the subject is dependent upon the outside for his/her sense of self."

"Rachel wants to discuss the possibility of being a replicant since Tyrell refuses to see her. She shows Deckard a photo and says, 'Look it's me with my mother.' Deckard explains the memory implants from Tyrell's niece. Photo-sight-memory-subjectivity all work into Rachel's claim to being human and having a 'person' or self. This self includes a privileged interior - memories that no one else has access to."

Later on in Sebastian's apartment, Pris applies spray-on makeup to her eyes, and Roy clowns around by holding toy eyes over his own. After discovering that there is no way of reversing the use by date built into him, Roy gouges out the eyes of his creator - Tyrrel. (Leon is about to do the same to Deckard when he is shot by Rachel)

Again at the end of the film, Roy refers to his eyes and the wonders he has seen with them off-world. Other eye images are the pupil dilation test and the owl in Tyrell's apartment, also Tyrell's conspicuous glasses. The Geisha on the advertising blimp gazes down through the skylight of the derelict building where Sebastian has made his home. Pris and Zhora alter their appearance, the way others see them. "Being seen and who is doing the seeing affects the 'selfhood' or human-ness of the replicants."

Roy is offended by Sebastian's request that the replicants demonstrate some of their superhuman abilities. Roy seems to consider this an insult to his sense of being a self, not a machine. "We're not computers." Then, to Roy's approval, Pris invokes the Cartesian conception of self in terms of cognition - "I think therefore I am". But Roy does not achieve selfhood through thinking; if he does, it is by overriding his inbuilt combat programming and saving Deckard's life at the end of the film.

Gibran on the Singularity of Self

"Should you really open your eyes and see,

you would behold your image in all images.

And should you open your ears and listen,

you would hear your own voice in all voices."
- Kahlil Gibran

Macondo

Fundamentalism

“Fundamentalism is an attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world. What really lies behind it is fear and profound insecurity. Aggression is always a sign of insecurity, and insecurity is always, at bottom, a lack of faith, not the presence of it.”

-Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Fade I

"Fade I unto Divinity"
-Emily Dickinson

"May our 'I' consciousness fade away"
- Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
(From a letter in Marathi)

Astonishing the Gods

"...very small and humble, and yet encompassing the world with divinity, was the quiet figure of the great mother." p.91

"the hall was suddenly abolished, its walls rendered invisible, and the new space was radiant with the appearance of a summoned being, the tender presence of the great mother, protectress of the island and its secret ways. The swirling energies of this being were everywhere, making the spaces alive with something akin to the electrification of the spirit, and a mighty collective hum of praise now seemed to have lifted off into the air, and the city seemed in flight. Such a splendid weightlessness pervaded everything, and all those in the great hall seemed to be afloat on a silver cloud, spiralling into the sublimity of the great mother. It wasn't long before he felt that something about him had changed forever in that celestial mood."
p.142
-Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods

Ben Okri won the Booker prize for The Famished Road.

Astonishing the Gods is a fable exploring deep metaphysical ideas.

Essentially Okri has written a new creation myth. The book relates the story of the soul's pilgrimage towards new levels of Self-realisation, the false conceptions which must be lost on the way and the guidance which is available to the seeker.

Guidance

The protagonist is assisted on his path through the magical world by three guides who, though invisible, have distinct qualities: the first is a fatherly being who presents him with challenges to overcome and difficult concepts to grasp, the second guide is a child who instructs him through the medium of silence and imparts a sense of the wonderousness of the world when seen through the eyes of innocence, the gentle and compassionate third guide is feminine and leads him to a place where he can bathe and purify himself before entering - if he wishes - a palace in which exists a state of utter silence, a complete absence of sensory experience. A state akin to the non-experiential states reached in deep meditation

The three guides recall the Gnostic Trinity of Father, Son and Mother Holy Spirit; analogous to the Hindu Holy family: Shiva, Ganesha and Parvati. To the seeker these universal archetypes represent the qualities of Self-awareness, Innocence and Grace, without which he cannot reach the goal.

Invisibility and Egolessness

The hero becomes aware of an invisible spiritual world of which he is also a part. This invisibility is associated with an erosion of identity, not so much in the negative sense of self-abandonment, but in the positive sense of release from the limiting ego. He finds himself on an enchanted island - a symbol of the psyche in many mythologies and a favourite abode of Lord Shiva, who represents the Self. He discovers that there are gradations of invisibility or egolessness that 'shaded into the eternal, the infinite' and the more 'insubstantial' the sense of 'I'ness, the 'mightier; a being becomes. However, the ego resists the threat to its own existence posed by the unknown of apparent oblivion beyond itself. This is illustrated in the book by the ordeal of the bridge across the bottomless abyss which one must cross despite the fact that it appears to be made of thin air, and the faster one tries to cross the bridge the less distance is covered. In a similar manner, the ego resists our attempts to overcome it, becoming stronger the harder we try.

The perils of failing to become what one can become

The first of the guides warns the hero of the dangers of ignoring the Self, telling him: "You will become the statue of your worst and weakest self". The words of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas convey a similar sense of the urgency of Self-realisation at the present stage of evolution; it is not something we can take or leave: "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you".

The Self is blissful to those who surrender to it, but terrifying to those who cling to the ego. Shiva, the Supreme Self, is all-compassionate, but also takes the form known as Rudra, the destructive aspect of the Divine. His pleasant consort Parvati may take the terrific form of the goddess Kali.

The Eternal

The first guide introduces a new concept of time as something which appears to the human mind to move but remains still. We learn that the civilisation of the invisible inhabitants of the island is founded upon "a permanent sense of wonder at the stillness of time". The anthropologist Joseph Campbell once said that, according to Eastern philosophy, Eternity is not distant in time and space, in fact it has nothing to do with our notions of time and space. The one who achieves a state of Self-realisation is beyond time and space.

First Person Personal Pronouns and their Psychic Referents

"Then Moses said to God, 'If they … ask me, "What is his name?" what shall I say to them?' God said to Moses, 'I am who I am' (Exodus, 3, 13-14).

Para vivir no quiero islas, palacios, torres. !Que alegría más alta: vivir en los pronombres! Quítate ya los trajes las señas, los retratos; yo no te quiero así, disfrazada de otra, hija siempre de algo. Te quiero pura, libre, irreductible: tú. Sé que cuando te llame entre todas las gentes del mundo sólo tú serás tú Y cuando me preguntes quién es el que te llama, el que te quiere suya, enterraré los nombres, los rótulos, la historia. Iré rompiendo todo lo que encima me echaron desde antes de nacer. Y vuelto ya al anónimo eterno del desnudo, de la piedra, del mundo, te diré: 'yo te quiero, soy yo.' "

Ana-Maria Rizzuto


From Wikipedia:

"I am that I am" (Hebrew: אהיה אשר אהיה, pronounced Ehyeh asher ehyeh) is one English translation of the response God used in the Bible when Moses asked for His name (Exodus 3:14). It is one of the most famous verses in the Torah. Hayah means "existed" or "was" in Hebrew; ehyeh is the first person singular present/future form. Ehyeh asher ehyeh is generally interpreted to mean "I am that I am" (King James Bible and others), yet, is most literally translated as "I-shall-be that I-shall-be."
The word "Ehyeh" is used a total of 43 places in the Old Testament, where it is usually translated as "I will be" or "I shall be," as is the case for its final occurrence in Zechariah 8:8. It stems from the Hebrew conception of monotheism that God exists within each and everyone and by Himself, the uncreated Creator who does not depend on anything or anyone; therefore "I am who I am".

Theologians have many different explanations for the meaning behind this phrase. Many theologians explain that "I am that I am" is better translated to "I be that I be". The ancient Hebrew language does not have a past, present, or future tense. Instead, it has an imperfective aspect and perfective aspect as indicators of time, with no actual determined time.
Perfective aspect is something that is completed, or will be definitely completed. Imperfective is something that has not been completed, might be completed or might be completed in the future (there is no definite).
"Ehyeh" is in the imperfective aspect, and can be understood as God saying that He is "in the process of being", a reference saying that He exists in all times, constantly, eternally.

According to traditional Christian interpretation, the New Testament testifies that Jesus Christ declared He is the great “I Am” (the Self) of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible).

The revelation of the ineffable name "I AM WHO AM" contains then the truth that God (the Self) alone IS. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures understood the divine name in this sense: God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from Him; but He alone is His very being, and He is of himself everything that He is.

In Advaita Vedanta, the "I am" is an abstraction in the mind of the Stateless State, of the Absolute, or the Supreme Reality, called Parabrahman. It is pure awareness, prior to thoughts, free from perceptions, associations, memories.

The term 'I am' has no meaning by itself

Some philosophers deny that the concept of "being" has any meaning at all, since we only define an object's existence by its relation to other objects, and actions it undertakes. The term "I am" has no meaning by itself; it must have an action or relation appended to it. This in turn has led to the thought that "being" and nothingness are closely related, developed in existential philosophy.
- Wikipedia

Ownership of Identity

Jean-Luc Nancy believes that the in-between moment is not about what lays between subjects, as a subject of the ego, which for Nancy does not exist. Having intersubjectivity without subjects is important for Nancy because it points to a concept of self that is prior to a self that contains the property of an ego. The ‘as’ structures of self, by Nancy’s account, is not about ownership of identity, neither that of one’s own nor that of the other. Through the ‘as such’ structure of self, the ‘I’ as a self that owns an ego, gets displaced as follows: Ego sum=ego cum, being-with=thinking-with. As such, one’s presentation of self is exposed through a community, in being with others. This is in essence what Nancy is trying to do in revising the Cartesian logos as “Cogito Ergo Sum”, “I think, therefore I am”, which changes the gaze of one’s in accordance to rule following and execution of order. So if “order of thought” is what determines “order of execution”, then multiplicity of meaning encased in one’s experiences of the different as “praxis of meaning”, requires a non-subject-descriptor of the in-between that makes certain notions of behavior less mechanical while at the same time, less mysterious.

Electric Sheep

Electric Sheep by Sakura Graphics

Egolessness does not mean becoming a sheep, or an android - an apparently autonomous organism that is really no more than a lifeless circuit in a vast machine.
Self-realisation gives a person initiative, drive, originality, intelligence, leadership qualities, an assertiveness which achieves results without dominating 'others', indomitability, freedom (all the qualities associated with being a strong individual)
These are all qualities of the single Self, which express themselves after Self-realisation.
Ego is not the source of strong individuals, it is pathological, and ultimately weakening.
It is not the free expression of Selfhood, rather it is a symptom of possessiveness.
Non-possessiveness is not incompatible with being a strong individual, in fact it is the prerequisite for being a strong individual.

the One

"I am the One who alone exists"

-Gnostic wisdom
The Thunder, Perfect Mind

The Kundalini as Spiritus Sanctus

From the Chants of Hildegard von Bingen:

Spiritus Sanctus vivificans vita,
movens omnia, et radix est in omni creatura,
ac omnia de immunditia abluit,
tergens crimina, ac ungit vulnera,
et sic est fulgens ac laudabilis vita,
suscitans et resuscitans omnia.

English Translation:

Holy Spirit, bestowing life unto life,
moving in All.
You are the root of all creatures,
washing away all impurity,
scouring guilt, and anointing wounds.
Thus you are luminous and praiseworthy,
Life, awakening, and re-awakening all that is.

According to yoga knowledge, the Kundalini is the Root of the Tree of Life (the Subtle System of Chakras)

In Sahaja yoga the Kundalini is experienced as a cool breeze - the Divine Breath (Ruach):

"I am the breeze that nourishes all things green,
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life."

- Hildegard Von Bingen, medieval abbess, mystic and upbraider of popes, quoting the Holy Spirit

Self and Imagination. The imaginary self

"The natural scientific thought is that the identity of a human being is just that of a large mammal undergoing the natural process of birth, aging and eventual death. The real enemy of this thought is our imagination, which enables us to envisage ourselves born to a different body at a different time, or even floating free of our present reincarnation and surviving as heaven-knows-what.

....The first serious opponent of the notion that imagination can help define identity in western philosophy was David Hume.

Literary and narrative conceptions of the self that have been prominent since the late 20th century, which have us constantly telling and retelling ourselves who we are, thereby constructing our identities in something like the way an author constructs a character. Selves become useful fictions, a notion that has appealed to some neurophysiologists anxious to find a unifying function that ties together the otherwise heterogeneous structures or 'modules' responsible for how we respond to the world.

The awkward, lurking question of who is the author (and who the audience) of these stories is best left a little vague."

New Scientist, August 2006.

After Self-realisation, the faculty of the human imagination becomes one with the Imagination of the Universal Self. The Self imagines itself however it pleases, and that imagining is reality.

Names

Ludwig Wittgenstein, at an early age, already caught up by deep philosophical problems.

Wittgenstein's anti-Cartesianism is evident in the Blue Book "where he writes, first, that our language creates the illusion that the word 'I' refers to 'something bodiless, which, however, has its seat in our body," and then concludes: 'In fact this seems to be the real ego, the one of which it was said, "Cogito, ergo sum".'
he returns to the theme once again in the Philosophical Investigations where he writes: " 'I' is not the name of a person, nor 'here' of a place, and 'this' is not a name. But they are connected with names.
Names are explained by means of them. It is also true that it is characteristic of physics not to use these words." (P.I.,410)
In the Tractatus he states that "there is no such thing as the soul" (TLP5.5422)
He uses the words 'soul' and 'subject' interchangeably, so what he was really getting at was that the subject (self) does not exist as an object. He considered the self, the 'I', to be a mystery inaccessible to thought, which is based on language.
"language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it."
It became apparent to Wittgenstein that the subject cannot be conceived of in Cartesian terms as both simple and representing (ie. thinking, believing, judging, etc.) These two characteristics, which the classical modern tradition from Descartes to Leibniz to Russel has taken to be compatible, are, in fact, not so. And with this observation he cuts through the Gordian knot of the modern conception of the subject. The idea that a simple self could also be a representing self is indeed absurd.
Wittgenstein rejects the idea of a composite subject: "a composite soul would no longer be a soul."

Chakras and the Zodiac

Here is a TENTATIVE, SPECULATIVE, suggested correspondence between the parts of the subtle system (seven Chakras, Kundalini and Void) and the twelve signs of the zodiac. And also the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.

Notice that we are ascending in a serpentine fashion, oscillating from left to right and back again.

This is the way the Kundalini moves.

CAPRICORN - Earth - Chakra = Left Mooladhara and Left/Back Agyna,
Presiding Deity = Shri Ganesha,
Archetype = (The Child), Quality = overcoming obstacles

AQUARIUS - Air - The Kundalini, the Divine Breath, The Cool Breeze of the Holy Spirit.
Note: the Kundalini is not a chakra, but the source of the energy that nourishes them.

PISCES - Water - Void
(The Ocean of Illusion, and the Wise old man or woman/Guru that takes one across it)

ARIES - Fire - Right Mooladhara and Right/Front Agnya, Shri Kartikeya
(The Warrior) destroying negativity.
Note Shri Kartikeya is a warrior child, and the sign Aries fits that description better than any other.

TAURUS - Earth- Left Swadisthana?

GEMINI - Air - Right Swadisthana, Shri Hanumana, Mercury
(The Trickster)

CANCER - Water - Left Nabhi -Left heart
(The Housewife), motherliness, food

LEO - Fire - Right Heart, Shri Rama,
(The Solar Hero)
Note: the right nabhi chakra is associated with royal dignity, so perhaps it is also ruled by Leo.

VIRGO - Earth - Left Visshuddhi, Shri Vishnumaya
(The Virgin)

LIBRA - Air - Right Visshuddhi?
Note: the quality of the right visshuddhi is diplomacy. In Astrology Libra is associated with that.

SCORPIO - Water - Left Sahasrara, Brahmarandhra, rebirth/death of ego

SAGITTARIUS - Fire - Right Sahasrara, Shri Kalki (Horse-headed deity)
moksha/freedom








Note: in the Indian calendar the year starts with the sign Capricorn,
and it is an alternative to Aries as the first sign of the zodiac.
Each of the seven chakras has a left and a right aspect.
The left aspects are of the Yin elements (earth and water) while the right side is Yang (fire and air).
There is a strong link between the Mooladhara and Agnya chakras.
HH Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi has mentioned the correspondence between several of the signs and chakras,
and I have based the above on these insights.
To my knowledge Shri Mataji hasn't physically drawn a chart like this but has referred to the signs and their chakra in different talks. I merely did the chart as a summary of that
and tried to fill in the gaps in a speculative but logical manner.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"So when the great word ‘Mother!’ rang once more,
I saw at last its meaning and its place;
Not the blind passion of the brooding past,
But Mother - the World's Mother - come at last,
To love as she had never loved before
-To feed and guard and teach the human race."

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
American writer, artist and social reformer.

Sahasrara

When the Kundalini energy reaches the 7th subtle centre in the body, at the crown of the head, the yogi realises the single Self, and knows that individual selves are an illusion. This chakra is the Sahasrara - the Lotus of a Thousand Petals. The medieval Italian poet Dante saw it in mystic vision as the Sempiternal Rose, "its petals rising in more than a thousand tiers are the thrones of the blessed."

The Kundalini emerges through a subtle opening known as the Brahmarandhra - the Aperture of Brahma. Sanskrit 'randhra' = a slit, split, opening, aperture, hole, chasm, fissure, cavity. (probably related to the English word 'rend' - to split)

This subtle opening also manifests on the physical level - in infants the bones forming the skull are not completely fused and there is an opening called the fontanelle - a word suggestive of the emergence of the fountain-like, upward-springing Kundalini from the top of the head.

Who is troubled?

From both science and (so-called) mysticism
we know intellectually that the ego-self

can not possibly exist,
yet we still feel troubled by a sense

of being an owner of a body and a life,

an owner who fears suffering and desires pleasure.
These fears and desires trouble us,
and we try to rid ourselves of this
illusory sense of ownership,
but rather than trying to wish it away mentally,
one should ask the question:

"Who is being troubled?".

Through inquiry into the source of this illusion
it disappears by itself, just as a weed is destroyed

by finding it's root and cutting it off.

- Paraphrase of Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

Interior Origin

De-authentication. A more subtle mode of self-erosion also results from the increasing inundation of images, stories, and information. Consider those confirmatory moments of individual authorship, moments in which the sense of authentic action becomes most fully transparent. Given the Western tradition of individualism, these are typically moments in which we apprehend our actions as unique, in which we are not merely duplicating models, obeying orders, or following convention. Rather, in the innovative act we locate a guarantee of self as originative source, a creative agent. Yet, in a world in which technologies facilitate an enormous sophistication about cultural conventions, such moments become increasingly rare. How is it, for example, that a young couple, each of whom has been inundated for twenty-some years by romance narratives - on television and radio, in film, magazines, and books - can utter a sweet word of endearment without a haunting sense of cliché? Or in Umberto Eco's terms, how can a man who loves a cultivated woman say to her, "'I love you madly," when "he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland?" In what sense can one stand out from the crowd in a singular display of moral fortitude, and not hear the voice of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or Harrison Ford over one's shoulder?
Commodification of the self. These arguments are closely tied to a final, technology-induced shift in cultural understanding. Because the technologies of sociation enable information to be disseminated widely at low cost, popular entertainment has become a major industry. Critical to the entertainment industry are individual performers -individuals who, because they are entertaining, command a broad audience and vast remuneration. In effect, the "self" becomes available as a saleable commodity. Individual performers may take on new names, spouses, and lifestyles in order to increase their fame and income. As the entertainment industry expands, and as television channels become more numerous, the demand for "characters" becomes ever wider. Increasingly, the common person - owing to a peculiar passion, unique story, act of heroism or stupidity, or possession of inside information - becomes a potential candidate for fame and fortune. Consequently, there is a growing consciousness of the self as a commodity. Being true to one's self, possessing depth of character, and searching for one's identity all become old-fashioned phrases; they are nicely suited to earlier times but no longer profitable.
Each of these tendencies--toward polyvocality, plasticity, de-authentication and commodification of self--undermines the long-standing importance placed on the integral self, that core to which one's actions should be true. Although this erosion is lamentable in significant respects, it is also important to take note of growing criticism of the Western, traditional concept of individual selves.
On the conceptual level, the problem is not simply that the conception of a private mind carries with it all the thorny problems of epistemological dualism (subject vs. object, mind vs. body, minds knowing other minds), but also that the very idea of an independent decisionmaker proves uncompelling. How, it is asked, could mental deliberation take place except within the categories supplied by the culture? If we were to subtract the entire vocabulary of the culture from individual subjectivity, how could the individual form questions about justice, duty, rights, or moral good? In Michael Sandel's terms, "to imagine a person incapable of constitutive attachments ... is not to conceive an ideally free and rational agent, but to imagine a person wholly without character, without moral depth."
These conceptual problems are conjoined with a widespread ideological critique. Alexis de Tocqueville's observations of nineteenth-century U.S. life set the stage: "Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows ... he gladly leaves the greater society to look after himself." In recent decades these views have been echoed and amplified by many scholars. Christopher Lasch has traced the close association between individualist presumptions and cultural tendencies toward "me-first" narcissism; R. N. Bellah and his colleagues argue that modern individualism works against the possibility of committed relationships and dedication to community; for Edward Sampson, the presumption of a self-contained individual leads to social division and insensitivity to minority voices.
Ultimately, the concept of an interior origin of action defines the society in terms of unbreachable isolation. If what is most central to our existence is hidden from others, and vice versa, we are forever left with a sense of profound isolation, an inability to ever know what lies behind another's mask. With strong belief in an interior self, we inevitably create the Other to whom we shall forever remain alien.

-Kenneth J. Gergen

There is only one mind

"There is only one light of the sun,

though it is intercepted by walls and mountains

and thousands of other objects.

There is only one common substance of the whole world,

though it is restrained in an infinite number

of different forms or bodies.

There is only one common soul,

though it is divided into innumerable

particular essences and natures.

There is only one mind,

though it seems to be divided..."

-Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome.

A mythical being is indestructible

That which is not real cannot be destroyed.

A flying pig is invulnerable.
A fairytale cannot be contradicted.
A myth cannot be unmade,
only forgotten.

Rather than trying to destroy the ego,
one should witness it.

"…we have become so desperate for the need to authenticate all aspects of our life as property that we cannot accept that stories are different, that they belong neither to our own experience nor to others…"
-Richard Flanagan

Religion and Morality

Intrinsic religiosity - belief in God and collective worship as an end in itself.
Extrinsic religiosity - religion and collective worship are seen as primarily social activities, often undertaken for personal gain.

A specialist in cultural evolution, Peter Richardson, and a human ecologist, Brian Paciotti, both from the University of California, used games to test groups of people for altruistic qualities such as generosity, trust and fairness. They found that there was a difference between secular and religious people. Religious people did give more; however, the team found that "only people with intrinsic or questing religiosity were more generous and trusting, and less likely to punish unfairly. Extrinsically religious people were actually less altruistic than the non-religious."

Paciotti believes that the findings support the idea that humans are hard-wired to be moral and cooperative (like other primates who live in groups), with religion serving to define the nature and scope of that moral behaviour and influence with whom we cooperate.

"We do not need religion to live moral lives, but without it morality might never have evolved." writes Helen Phillips.

-New Scientist, 15 September 2007.

.

Yoga philosophy also states that dharma (morality) is innate. In Ayurveda, Indian traditional medicine, adharma (immorality) is seen as a cause of disease because it goes against the dharma which regulates not only the community but the body itself. No amount of herbs and cleansing practices will cure a disease if the sick person continues to transgress their in-born moral structure.

The Unsteady Mind

"Little by little, he should come to rest,
With the intellect firmly held.
His mind having been established in the Self,
He should not think of anything.
Whenever the unsteady mind,
Moving to and fro, wanders away,
He should restrain it
And control it in the Self."

Bhagavad Gita 6.25–26. From Winthrop Sargeant, tr., The Bhagavad Gita (State University of New York Press: New York, 1994) 296–97.

One with the Universe

What did the Buddhist say at the hot dog stand?
- Make me one with the universe.

"Take the common hallucinogenic experience of losing our separate self, or becoming one with the universe. This may seem, to some, like mystical hogwash, but in fact it fits far better with a scientific understanding of the world than our normal dualist view. Most of us feel, most of the time, that we are some kind of separate self who inhabits our body like a driver in a car or a pilot in a plane.

Driverless truck in the movie Duel.

Throughout history many people have believed in a soul or a spirit. Yet science has long known that this cannot be so. There is just a brain that is made of the same stuff as the the world around it. We really are one with the universe.
This means that the psychedelic sense of self may actually be truer than the dualistic view. So although our normal state is better for surviving and reproducing, it may not always be best for understanding who and what we are..."
- Helen Phillips & Graham Lawton, New Scientist November 2004.


Self-inquiry reveals that there is a self, but it is not particulate or separate from world stuff. Some would call that a 'spirit' or 'soul' but these words suggest something different from the world - dualistic thinking.

Hallucinogenics may suspend the ego self temporarily and so give a sense of being one with the universe;
however, they shift awareness into the superego, a state as far from reality as the ego.

Desires

"How can people know when their desires are authentically their own, conditioned as they are by identity, habit, culture, and all of what Haskell calls 'the numb, repetitive past'?"
TLS June 2, 06

To have or to be?

"The fear of death comes
from the idea of owning life,
of experiencing it as a possession."

"The mode of being exists
only in the here and now...
the mode of having exists only in time:
past, present and future.
In the having mode we are bound
to what we have amassed in the past:
money, land, fame, social status,
knowledge, children, memories."

-Erich Fromm
Fromm was a German-Jewish-American social psychologist whose brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanizing and bureaucratic social structures that resulted in a virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation. He became one of the founders of socialist humanism, promoting the early writings of Karl Marx

[the having mode also drags awareness
into the not-yet-existing future
in which we aspire to have these things.
By dwelling in the not-yet-existent
we become ourselves non-existent.
We defer the being we could enjoy
in the here and now.]
-Jeronimus

Personhood

People generally believe that without ownership of mind a person would cease to be a person, but personhood is not destroyed when the acquisitive ego is dispelled. Analogously, space is not destroyed when a pot is smashed.

According to the writers of the Upanishads and other Sanskrit texts, the universe does not just feature personhood, but it is a person, called Purusa or Purusha (the words 'person' and 'purusa' are very similar. I wonder if they have a common Proto Indo-European origin). In the Svetasvatara Upanisad, Purusa is described as being "everything in existence, everything that was and everything that will be". The human mind has forgotten that this is its true source of personhood.

The Impersonal or Transpersonal

Charles Upton has commented that, to the Western mind, the idea of an Absolute Self beyond individual 'persons' is difficult to accept. The term 'impersonal' denotes something inferior to personhood. He prefers to describe the Absolute Self as 'transpersonal'.

"God is indeed a Person, but if we say He is only personal, we are in danger of implying that He is no more than we conceive Him to be, of imprisoning Him on our human level of understanding, of denying that He opens out 'behind', onto the Infinite. But of course we do the same thing in our habitual ways of seeing other people, and ourselves; we treat others as if they were no more than our ideas of them, and ourselves as if we were limited to our own shifting self-images. We forget that all persons are, precisely, personal faces of the Transpersonal Absolute: if, like God, we were not also more than persons, we would not be persons at all."

- Charles Upton, Parabola, Summer 2008

Self-ownership

Cohen states that if “ownership requires separability of what owns from what is owned, then self-ownership is impossible”. His interpretation of the “self” invoked by the thesis of self-ownership is that the term is reflexive; the “self” signifies that “what owns and what is owned are one and the same, namely, the whole person”. Thus to say that “A enjoys self-ownership is just to say that A owns A”. There is no “deeply inner thing” that is owned. If “self-ownership” refers to a whole person in the sense that there is no distinction between the owner and his property, so that what is owned cannot be separated from the owner, it follows that the property cannot be alienated.

The Amesha Spentas

Zoroaster, detail, The School of Athens by Raphael

Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, the prophet and poet of ancient Persia, is now almost universally accepted by Iranists to have lived in the 9th/10th century BCE. His message of a single beneficent God called Ahura Mazda, probably influenced Judaism, and echoes the idea of a single, otherless Self, found in the Upanishads of India.

The monotheistic teachers have striven to draw the attention of humanity to the central truth of existence - that there is only one Self. They recognised that it was difficult for people to grasp the concept that the gods they worshipped were aspects of a single Self within. Multiplicity was distracting people from the path of realising this single Self.

However, Zoroaster's One God is not a dull monolith, but has different aspects responsible for the unfolding of different areas of Manifestation. He called them the Amesha Spentas (beneficent immortals) and they are comparable to the archangels of Creation in Judaism. In common with the system of seven Chakras, each with a presiding deity, found in ancient Indian Yoga philosophy, there are seven Amesha Spentas (six emanations plus their origin - Ahura Mazda - making a heptad)

There are similarities between the qualities of the Amesha Spentas and those of the deities of the Chakras. In praise of these aspects of the Divine, Zarathustra wrote a collection of hymns called the Gathas, an old Persian word closely related to the Sanskrit 'gita', meaning 'song'.

The qualities of the Chakras according to Sahaja Yoga are:

1)Mooladhara (Base) Chakra - earth, innocence, wisdom
2)Swadisthana (Pelvic) Chakra - fire, creativity
3)Nabhi (Navel) Chakra - water, sustenance, balance, prosperity
4)Anahata (Heart) Chakra - air, love, security.
5)Visshuddhi (Throat) Chakra, - ether/sky, communication
6)Agnya (Brow) Chakra - light, forgiveness, mind.
7)Sahasrara (Crown) Chakra - integration, union.

The Zoroastrian Amesha Spentas are:
1)Ameretat ("not dying") Rules over Plants. Personification of immortality.

2)Asha vahishta ("excellent order") Fire element. Personification of the 'best truth' and protector of the physical and moral order on earth.

3)Haurvatat ("wholeness"). Water element. Personification of perfection. She brings prosperity and health.

4)Aramaiti ("devotion") Earth element. Personification of holy devotion.

5)Khshathra vairya ("desirable dominion") sky/metal. A warrior.

6)Vohu Manah ("good mind") Personification of wisdom.

7)Ahura Mazda The Supreme Self

"In the context of the Zoroastrian view of creation, the group of the Amesha Spenta is extended to include Ahura Mazda, together with (or represented by) Spenta Mainyu. However, in most scholastic texts, an unqualified referral to the "Amesha Spenta" is usually understood to include only great six. In Yasna 44.7, 31.3, and 51.7, Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu is the instrument or "active principle" of the act of creation. It is also through this 'Bounteous Force', 'Creative Emanation' or 'Holy Spirit' that Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind (Yasna 33.6), and how the Creator interacts with the world (Yasna 43.6).
The doctrine also has a physical dimension, in that each of the heptad is linked to one of the seven creations, which in ancient philosophy were the foundation of the universe. These physical associations are only alluded to in the Gathas, and then so subtly that they are usually lost in translation.
A systematic association is only present in later middle Persian texts, where each of the seven is listed with its 'special domain':"

Free Will

Using electroencephalograms scientists can measure the brain activity that occurs milliseconds before a person 'spontaneously' decides to act of their 'own free will'. They can predict when a person is going to have an urge to act, before the person is conscious of that urge.

"It is our brains that cause our actions. Our minds just come along for the ride".

"our most important way of classifying the world is into people (or agents) and things. If I don't have free will then I am not a person. But for scientists to prove that free will is not an illusion, they will have to solve the hard problem of exactly how a desire in the mental realm can cross into the physical world and cause something to happen. To date they are rather a long way from doing this."

-Chris Frith,

New Scientist, 11 August 2007

The brain is real, not the illusory ego that claims to have free will to act. If there is free will, it belongs to the universe, it is not the property of individual egos. This does not imply that we live in an amoral universe.

Like free will and spontaneity, morality, or Dharma, is a property of the universe, not a property of the individual mind.

Superimposition of the unreal onto the Real

It is a matter not requiring any proof that the object and the subject whose respective spheres are the notion of the 'Thou' (the Non-Ego) and the 'Ego,' and which are opposed to each other as much as darkness and light are, cannot be identified. All the less can their respective attributes be identified. Hence it follows that it is wrong to superimpose upon the subject - whose Self is intelligence, and which has for its sphere the notion of the Ego - the object whose sphere is the notion of the Non-Ego, and the attributes of the object, and vice versa to superimpose the subject and the attributes of the subject on the object. In spite of this it is on the part of man a natural procedure - which has its cause in wrong knowledge - not to distinguish the two entities (object and subject) and their respective attributes, although they are absolutely distinct, but to superimpose upon each the characteristic nature and the attributes of the other, and thus, coupling the Real and the Unreal, to make use of expressions such as 'That am I,' 'That is mine.' - But what have we to understand by the term 'superimposition?' - The apparent presentation, in the form of remembrance, to consciousness of something previously observed, in some other thing.

Shri Adi Sankaracharya,

Introduction to the Brahma Sutras

Ādi Śankarācārya ("the first Shankara in his lineage") was the first philosopher to consolidate the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta. His teachings are based on the unity of the soul and Brahman, in which Brahman is viewed as without attributes. In the Smārta tradition, Adi Shankara is regarded as an incarnation of Shiva. There is debate over the date of his birth; some place it as early as the 9th century CE.

Trimurthi Elephanta Restoration

Here is a digital restoration I made from

a photograph of the damaged sculpture of Trimurthy

(Triple aspect of Supreme Being -

Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer)

at Elephanta Island near Mumbai.

The original looks like this:

The Song of Ribhu

Abide as That, on realizing which to be oneself, there is nothing else to be known, everything becomes already known and every purpose accomplished - and be always happy, without the least trace of thought.

Abide as That which is attained easily when one is convinced that one is not different from the Supreme Absolute, That which results, when that conviction becomes firm, in the experience of the Supreme Bliss of the Real, That which produces a sense of incomparable and complete satisfaction when the mind is absorbed in It - and be always happy, without the least trace of thought.

Abide as That which leads to the complete cessation of misery when the mind is absorbed in It, and the extinction of all ideas of “I”, “you” and “another,” and the disappearance of all differences - and be always happy, without the least trace of thought.

-The Song of Ribhu

The Zen of Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

It is no coincidence that D.T. Suzuki quotes the very same passage in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, to demonstrate the fullness of Zen experience. The world is able to be perceived in a grain of sand because the self, having its center everywhere, can identify itself in the "Minute Particulars"of our world. Every encounter becomes a potential for enlightenment. The self no longer stands against the other, but rather becomes the other. That is why, for Blake,'The most sublime act is to set other before you." Further, this experience (Prajna or The Divine Vision) makes possible an identification with the most ordinary of things. In Songs of Experience (1794) it is a common fly that Blake identifies with:

Am not I
a fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

Mark Ferrara