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Investigations into Spiritual Truth
Just a reminder that my upcoming Zoom satsang is this Sunday from 9:00 - 10:30 am PST.
It will include surrender and self-inquiry practice and Q&A.
The Zoom link is:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86267404697?pwd=vwbGbHPYnIeED5P28pbXOenTz5Pyb1.1
These satsangs work by donation (Zelle to akilesh@siftingtothetruth.com or paypal.me/siftingtothetruth ).
I look forward to seeing you there.
Akilesh
Just a reminder that my upcoming Zoom satsang is this Sunday from 9:00 - 10:30 am PST.
It will include surrender and self-inquiry practice and Q&A.
The Zoom link is:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86267404697?pwd=vwbGbHPYnIeED5P28pbXOenTz5Pyb1.1
These satsangs work by donation (Zelle to akilesh@siftingtothetruth.com or paypal.me/siftingtothetruth ).
I look forward to seeing you there.
Akilesh
Just a reminder that my upcoming Zoom satsang is this Sunday from 9:00 - 10:30 am PST.
It will include surrender and self-inquiry practice and Q&A.
The Zoom link is:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86267404697?pwd=vwbGbHPYnIeED5P28pbXOenTz5Pyb1.1
These satsangs work by donation (Zelle to akilesh@siftingtothetruth.com or paypal.me/siftingtothetruth ).
I look forward to seeing you there.
Akilesh
Just a reminder that my upcoming Zoom satsang is this Sunday from 9:00 - 10:30 am PST.
It will include surrender and self-inquiry practice and Q&A.
The Zoom link is:
These satsangs will work by donation only (Zelle to akilesh@siftingtothetruth.com or paypal.me/siftingtothetruth ).
I look forward to seeing you there.
Akilesh
Over the last several months I’ve released a series of commentaries via blog on each of Maharshi’s 40 verses. Here is a full and compiled PDF version of the commentary.
Continued from Verse Thirty-Nine
Commentary: Some say liberation occurs to the mind. Some say it occurs to one beyond the mind. Some say it is something that occurs to the body and the mind while alive, but then dissolves into something infinite at the death of the body and the mind.
These are all positions taken from a conceptual, and therefore egoic, stance. The kind of liberation that is subject to that kind of debate is an egoic liberation still. The thought of liberation is the last egoic thought. It, and therefore all the forms of it that could possibly exist, have to go — only in the beyond-concepts is there true Liberation. Even formless liberation is a concept, because it is defined as a certain kind of liberation as opposed to another kind. Anything which has an opposite is a concept.
The true Liberation is no Liberation at all, because it has no opposite. It cannot be described as this or that, because it is not actually a phenomenon, not a thing, not a process of any kind. It merely an indirect description of the Truth that always has been the case, which is that the ignorant idea that there is someone who needs to be liberated, someone who suffers, someone who is limited is and always has been only a playful fiction, and not even that.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Continued from Verse Thirty-Eight
Commentary: The idea of bondage or ignorance is itself based in the egoic idea that there you are a person, a body and a mind. It is the one who believes that they are the body and mind that seeks freedom. Yet when you engage in self-inquiry, this one who believes that they are the body-mind is itself seen not to exist. What you actually are is not the body and mind, and not the one who believed they were the body and the mind, therefore you are not the one who wanted liberation. You did not really want liberation because liberation was already yours. You did not need liberation because you were never imprisoned to begin with. Ignorance is itself, and always has been, a misconception.
The idea of bondage is itself a product of dividing the world into “I” and “not-I” and the consequent identification with the I. The idea of liberation is dependent on the idea of bondage. Indeed, language itself, all concepts, and all meanings are only relevant in the context of the egoic identification. Beyond that, they so lose meaning that they cannot even be said to be meaningless; even that would be too much. Realization is the recognition that the structure of division and language is itself mute, is itself merely like strokes or gashes of color on a painting, rather than meaningful in itself. And so bondage and realization are also only abstractions, shapes in clouds as seen by a child — not actually existent.
The end result of realization will be to recognize that there was never any ignorance, and therefore never any solution to it. Realization itself is a mere concept that is destroyed along with the concept of bondage. They annihilate each other like matter and anti-matter. Realization is a ladder the seeker climbs and then tosses away once at the top.
Even as concepts, truly, ignorance and realization didn’t exist; they were misconceptions, and even the idea that they were misconceptions is a misconception, and that is a misconception too, all the way down.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Continued from Verse Thirty-Seven
Commentary: Identification with the body and the mind is the egoic mode of consciousness. In this mode, you feel like you are doing. You identify with the one who makes decisions and exerts efforts. In this mode, you also enjoy and suffer the consequences of those actions, since both doership and experiencership depend on identification with the body and the mind.
As soon as you look into who seems to be doing things, or, for that matter, who seems to be experiencing them, this identification can no longer stand. It becomes clear that one is not the body and the mind. So doership and experiencership drop away. Or, to be more precise, they are no longer identified with. They become, in Vedantic parlance, like a burnt rope — the form may seem to remain, but the structure has lost its bite.
Karma in this context simply means the actions that you take and their results.
Traditionally in Vedanta, there are said to be three types of karma: sanchita karma, which is supposedly all the karma you have accumulated over your many previous lives; prarabhda karma, which is the karma that is used to make your current body and is supposed to unfold over this particular lifetime; and agamya karma, which is the karma which you generate anew from your actions in this lifetime.
But all three karmas can only affect you so long as you believe that you are the body and the mind. If that is dropped, then only the Self remains, and the Self is beyond action and its results. Thus all karmas are burned to the enlightened one. Some in the past have claimed that the prarabhda karma remains and that only upon physical death is one “fully” liberated, but this is untrue — Realization is the recognition that one was never born. And what was never born can never die a physical death.
The Self alone always is and always has been, which means that the very idea of karma, in the final analysis, cannot be said to be true.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Continued from Verse Thirty-Six
Commentary: The story of the tenth man is one where someone in a group knows there are ten people but keeps counting only nine. He wonders where the last one is. It turns out he’s been forgetting to count himself the whole time.
This kind of simple recognition of what is stunningly obvious is akin to the insight of Self-realization; it is the penetration of the usual forgetfulness of what is right in front of our eyes.
Yet this forgetfulness is not real. It’s just a thought. It’s not the case that the tenth man was somehow not the tenth man until he remembered it. He was always the tenth man.
Similarly, it’s not the case that the seeker is truly ignorant until realization. He is the Self at all times, in fact. Duality is false not just before realization but at all times.
But duality seems true to seekers. So it seems, but the end of realization will be to see that that seeming is itself untrue, and always was. Note: what this really means is that not only was the tenth man the tenth man the whole time — but that, in fact, never was it not the case that he did not know it!
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
Continued from Verse Thirty-Five
Commentary: Some texts on non-duality emphasize repeating to yourself that you are not the mind and the body and that you are the Self. This is only of temporary use.
The egoic first thought — “I am” — causes separation. It implies the “not-I” and is ultimately connected with the idea that “I am the body,” and then connects to the mind, other relationships, your personal history, etc. It is only if you first buy this “I am” that implies that you are a separate, individual self that you need to continuously remind yourself what you are and are not.
But that’s tiresome. We need a way of cutting to the root of things. If we look into the egoic first thought, we see that it is not what it seems to be. When this is seen, there is then no need to keep asserting over and over what we are and are not. We’ll simply stop crediting — identifying with — the idea that we are anything other than the Self. Indeed, in some profound sense, we’ll stop crediting ideas at all.
At any time, see all the forty verses posts that I have published so far here.
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