Self - the only hope

2008-01-18 14:37

this world seems like a cemetery.
dead people walking around, going about their own ways, pretending to be alive. pretending to be happy or sad.

what is this?

Do most people (at this point) see the world as such, or is it just me, or is it my mind ?

i too am sleepwalking.


2008-01-20 18:16


I cannot trust or listen to the mind any longer.
It is the mind that says:
"Look, it is I who brought you to this virtuous path"
"Look it is I who brought you to the bhakti of Bhagavan"
"In fact, it is I who brought you to self-enquiry, too"
"Therefore listen to me, trust me. I will liberate you".

We don't know how we reached here. To this path, to this point in this path.

We know the way Bhagavan has pointed out. He has already pointed us to the inner guru. Once the outer guru has pointed us in, we cannot stand there forever looking at the outer guru. We have to seek out the inner guru, the Self.

The mind will come out with many excuses to prevent us from going in. And then it will agree with itself.

I don't know whether this nausea and suffocation is coincidental but it feels linked to this world trying to attract me with its trifles and promises of pleasure.

How hard is this accursed personality to beat.

Going back to silence now. Enough of thought - makes me sick.

----------------
Self - the only hope

O Self
you are the only hope
the final hope

No one knows you
no one knows how you look
and those who do (know you)
can't describe you

The one who seeks you
can't find you.
Yet he has to search, to know
you can't be found.

You are present like space
so you say
and cannot be grasped
Your saying that the mind cannot grasp you
subtler than the mind
is like saying you can be seen only in complete
darkness.
or you can be seen but not with the eyes.
or you can be seen, but only when one stops looking!

Have mercy, Self!
what directions are these
to a traveler weary and broken

The longing for one's true nature

2008-01-17 22:45

O Self,

I am constantly reminded of you, all day long, with a longing.
As one rests in silence searching the one more and more, the longing, the missing increases.

The amazing thing is that the longing is as though it is a longing for something one does not have, someone else.

But it is equally strange, that one can no longer long for anything else, other than one's own true nature. Nothing will ever have any appeal again.
There is no enchantment with this world any longer. No more fooling oneself.
The pleasures of this world appear as worthless as candy or cartoon movies to an adult.

If this is You pulling me in, then thank you. If this is the trick of the mind, then may Arunachala Ramana destroy the mind that tricks and fools me.

Arunachala, Father, bless me so that i may be drawn away more and more from the non-Self, into the Self.

Glory to You, O Self, O true nature, O reality.


2008-01-17 22:59

There is also this fear that i might leave this body without coming back to you. Again lost to you. That I may waste this life and end up old without knowing myself.

I look at old people around me, obsessed with the candy this world provides, and fear I may end up like that -- living for momentary pleasures, a life of agony in the mind.

Although the mind's capacity to disturb me, or cause me sadness is gone, yet there is a fear of it. a deep dislike hatred for it.

There are moments when suddenly something might remind me of childhood. e.g an old tune. A faint sense of nostalgia or sadness comes. That momentary faint hint is the worst the mind can do to me. But even that minuscule sense of suffering is totally unaccepatable to me now.
Even the thought os something that once gave pleasure, has a stink now. The stink of deception, of pain disguised as pleasure.
Pleasure IS pain, not the other side of the coin as some philosophers put it.

Even this world of dualities does *not* have any dualities. There is no pleasure and pain, only pain which we foolishly divide. There is only ignorance, only deception, only death or insentience (not death and birth), not sentience and insentience.

There is no ego and self here, no self and non-self here. Only ego/non-self here.

Glory to the grace that pulls us out, to the Self that draws us away, to the One who chooses us for deliverance. Wherever you are, whatever or whoever you are, Glory and love to You.

The deception of the Seeker

2008-01-16 19:13

The line between the seeker and the Self is very fine. Only when one is exceedingly earnest and truthful with oneself can one discern this distinction.

I am fighting the deception of the seeker, and have been fighting it since I embarked on this "virtuous" path.
Everything I did, everything the seeker did, was the mind keeping me away from You, O Self.

What a grand deception.

Everything other than staying away from thought, being in the Self, other than enquiring, is the deception of the seeker. Everything.

And we in our innocence, in ignorance, fell for it.

Being in silence, in self-awareness is the simplest thing. The truthful path that you give us. But we invented our own paths and asked you to endorse them.

Activities that take us away from the personality, from mental noise into silent self-awareness are good.

All other activities are the activities of the personality. Attempting to be aware or enquire during activities of the personality is like wanting to be away from the Self, and then wanting to be in the Self (while wanting to be away from it.)

One cannot run in one direction, and talk of wanting to go in the opposite direction at the same time. The mind deceives us into choosing such paths.

To put it more directly, it is wanting to play the personality game for a while, but somehow be in the Self, while playing the personality game.
We CANNOT be the personality and the Self at the same time.

The tricks of the mind get more subtle as we go along, the seeker gets more refined and spiritual, and "closer" to the Self. But the seeker is the mind, trying to prevent us from just being.

Silent self-inquiry or silent self-awareness is the only "activity" (or non-activity) the personality cannot pierce.

We must understand that all personality activities, are delaying our knowledge of our true nature, every moment not in silent self-awareness or enquiry is delaying our merger with You.

Every time we choose a non-silent activity (say, an entertainment activity), we choose against the Self, we shelve the Self, we put ourselves aside and invite the enemy in.

Urgency of a person drowning

2008-01-13 18:32

Beloved Lord,

i think i am beginning to understand what you meant when you said that Self-enquiry has to be done with the urgency of someone drowning.

How did you know, O Lord, who ceased to be a person at 16.

The mind is tired. Of itself? The mind realizes that it is suffering itself, it is the disease.

At times it is easier not to be in self-awareness, but to just be aware of breathing or of the hand, even though the body is dead and inert and insentient, for in doing so one pretends to be dead.

But somehow body-awareness pulls me back into self-awareness.

The mind is beginning to take on the stink or rot of a corpse. It is unbearable to be in the same place as it.

Existence is painful, it stinks of rot. Of life-long deceit.

You are too sweet Lord, and too loving, but you come with much difficulty. You are too hard to attain, for the weak and the weary.

O Self, my true nature, never once have you revealed yourself. What strength I would get from being my real Self for just a moment.

A letter to the Self

2008-01-09 19:11

Beloved Self,
Help me out of this fog called the mind.
Help me back into clarity, into silence.

The mind is like a quagmire, a quicksand
I keep falling in.

I know not You, O Self,
but even this momentary silence
is sweet
sweeter than anything the mind has ever given,
because in this silence
I feel an aroma of You
no matter how faint.

I have read the scriptures, I understand the words of the great sages. I am not the I, I am not the one in bondage, it is the mind in bondage, and I am not the mind.

The mind only exists when we fall into it, (Edit: or rather when imagined to exist). Otherwise, it does not exist. Even I don't exist, unless I fall into the mind.

But regardless of the above, I am still lost, in bondage, assaulted by illusion, allowed to breathe your faint scent, like a chained and blindfolded prisoner given a few moments to walk in the sun, with the constant threat of being pulled back into the dark dungeon I have lived in all along.

Self, this letter is to You. I feel You will hear this clearer than if i just think it.

I have no attachments left, I have nothing to hold onto, just some trifling distractions which mean nothing to me. Snatch me, O Self, make me Yours forever.

How long will you wait.

O Self, I am your child, waiting for you. Ever since I saw your face, and you did some magic to my mind. In that one moment, you did something, that won me over, that made me know that I belonged to You and You to me.
After entrancing me, how can you allow maya to cling on, and veil You from me.

Come, like a knight in shining armor and free me. Let the world know how the Self treats its children. Never will maya ever again cast a glance on those who call You "Father".

I want You, O Father to deal the final, fatal blow.

Sinful was I to emerge from You, to leave You. But I have finally come to my senses, I have repented, I wish to return to You, O Self.

Let not the mind wither away slowly, on its own, smite it with your glance, torch it, so it never troubles your children ever again!

You will still be there

2008-01-07 18:50

I sit in self-enquiry. Its a pretty silent world here nowadays.

But, today, strangely, my life flashes in front of me. I see the life of the personality from childhood to now, very briefly.
The personality seeking happiness in various endeavours, various interests and occupations. And then there are the few years of seeking, visiting people, ashrams, even coming to the Ramanasramam hoping for some happiness.

There was love and a feeling of sadness for that personality that sought to find happiness.

I did not know whether this is part of the giving up process, or a trick of the mind to hold onto the personality.

Its like seeing the movie of someone else in suffering. Yes, there is pain for him who sought. But there can never be a going back, can there. What's over is over, is it not.

There was a some questioning. Do i want to hold on or not, am i ready to give it up? Yes, that was a romanticised version of the personality, of course, i did not see the immense pain the person went through, and will continue to, if hung onto. It was like objectifying the story, pretending it was real, pretending that there really was someone there. Someone tangible there.

Yes, there was a misconception there, a misconception made to look real by believing it was real. A dream living itself out. Like someone suffering from an incurable disease that fictitious person needs to be laid to rest finally.

I know that there will be only one thing left, one thing surviving the death of that personality - and that is You, beloved Father Ramana.

When all is over, after ego-death, after physical death, after every kind of possible death, You will still be there.
And love will be there. Your eyes will survive all deaths. Your twinkling eyes.

Will I ever know you completely ? When i look into Your eyes, i feel there is so much more to know. Will i ever get to explore every nook and cranny of you? Know you like the back of my hand. If you are endless, how will I ever know you completely ?

Dropping the seeker

2008-01-07 19:07

Dropping the seeker

The silent self-awareness reveals the difference between the personality, and the awareness or whatever.

The personality uses "me" to live its life, its likes, dislikes, dreams, aspirations, and emotions. It wants and then enjoys when the want is fulfilled. "I" don't enjoy, it does. I am just used, and ultimately thrown away like garbage. The real "I" is just garbage for the personality - to be used and spat away.

One of the aspects of that personality is the seeker, the so-pure and great seeker who only wants to be liberated. All he wants to do is surrender or meditate and realize the Self.
Such a devious game, for the seeker only thinks of self-enquiry or being in silence. It actually never allows self-enquiry to happen. At that point, it will come up with more important things to do, stuff to read, etc.

It wants to do, but never really does.

It likes to *think of* surrendering thoughts, being in no-mind.

Thus, the seeker has to be dropped. The seeker is not us, but the personality pretending. The real I has no needs.

Dropping the seeker, or stopping seeking does not imply going back to one's earlier life, the life of the mind/personality.

Sitting in silence, self-awareness, is dropping the seeker. Just being, is dropping the search.
No more going places, visiting places, doing "spiritual" things, being a "spiritual" person, meditating on this or that, chanting mantras.

Just being.
Being what you are.