While there is much discussion regarding self-inquiry taught by Ramana Maharshi, nevertheless, Ramana Maharshi often said that the technique was for ripe souls.
"Self-Inquiry is for stopping all thoughts as they arise, or even before. The mind actually rises out of the Self, like a wave rises out of a calm sea, and takes one's attention away from the Self, causing you to identify with subjective ideas or outer objects, and thoughts pertaining to the past and future. All this, when identified with, gives rise to the false belief that you are the body-mind, living in time-space, and not the Self. This is the erroneous or false notion you are always trying to transcend in order to abide in the Self, which you are. Since this is the sole end to be attained, why not achieve this one end Now, from the very beginning? Self-Inquiry achieves this, for it takes you immediately or directly to the Source, or truth of your Being." – A. Ramana
Naturally, in his presence, including those that could connect with him, so to speak, on the etheric plane of consciousness, similar to those that connect to Christ, Rama, Krishna, the Sikh Gurus and others, the purity of that consciousness imbues the aspirant from within so that the experience of contracted consciousness to the body is outshined by the pervasive consciousness of True Being at each one's core, i.e., the Spiritual Heart (Hrdayam) which lights the body and piercing is discovered to be the light that is the Light and Life of the Universe in all its planes and dimensions.
In Vedanta, Buddhism, Sikhism and Christianity, and the yogas, such as Raja Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Surat Shabad Yoga and others, the constant refrain is that there are 3 elements necessary to grasping or "groking" the Truth, to the firm realization and grounded experience of "I am the Truth" "I am Consciousness Itself" and "I am Life" (Sat Chit Ananda).
This starts with "hearing" (sravana), in which something inside you, which pervaded in and through the body draws the mind inwards to consider and recognize something, which is so gravitational in force that it stops the mind's racing and pauses to glean in a silence that is beyond silence, some singularity that is felt as Truth. This continues with a continuous flow of "consideration, reflection, and recollection" (smanana) which is like the experience of an amnesiac, having notices and understood certain words, phases, pictures, images and texts suddenly coming out of a fog into a sense of utter clarity of who they are and holding firmly that remembrance with a powerful fascination. Finally comes continuous "abiding" (niddihyasana), where one experiences one's sense of Self as the field of consciousness within which the mind and body appear, which abiding eventually impacts the all-pervasive Universal Consciousness that gives the sense of identity and being, light and life to the body.
These 3 are actually one, with the moment of "hearing" being the Birth into the awareness of the Spirit, one's True Self.
In Advaita Kundalini Yoga (One Star Spirituality) of Yogi Bhajan, the term, where "hearing" is first experienced, is Pradupati, and results from practices through which the several systems in the body begin to radiate with sufficient brightness that our identities with the body, mind and subject object predilection recede and we experience ourselves as a field of consciousness, what Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita calls the "body field," which is also the Atman, where seeing is single and pervasive and no longer contracted along the subject object routing.
In Tibetan Buddhism this experience is called Mahamudra and all practices are intended to gain this experience and once gained to continue to abide in it through all practices, as the energy consciousness experienced becomes grounded, recalled, deepens and expands as long as one abides as the seer disregarding the radiance released. Basically, through the practice related to the different systems outlined below, the experience of dimness emanating through the body becomes bright. As the body becomes bright, the perception that we see in a subject object manner recedes becomes useless to seeing and knowing. Suddenly, the amperes of voltage of individual field of consciousness (Atman) impacts the voltage of the Universal Consciousness (Brahman), and attention to the mind is radically relinquished.
Because of the dimness of life force within the body, partly due to the encoding of vasanas, i.e., images and impressions throughout the body, we do not see that the mind emerges with thoughts from the heart which the brain projects holographically giving the impression of separateness and contraction of self within the body. When one leans to work with the body systems to generate radiance, the dimness recedes and we begin to experience ourselves, our Atman, in its satvic (pure) aspect versus its tamasic (demonic) aspect. Our nature becomes naturally virtuous; we become conscious of virtue, compassion, and reacquire our innate conscience, which already knows intrinsically the Ten Commandments, the yoga yamas and niyamas, dwells in goodness. The qualities of non-judgment, of being a non-doer arise within us automatically decontracting the tension in the body. Light emanates in, around and through the body field and through all the pores of the feet, legs, torso, arms, neck and head, which one can feel to some distance, called the Radiant Body. Then suddenly this satvic experience of imageless self impacts the Universal Self, and the notion of 2 dissolves as meaningless.
The body is equipped with numerous interrelated systems, each and all of which worked on in a Sadhana practice lead back to "impact" with the pervasive awareness in the Spiritual Heart, the seat of Consciouness (Hrdayam not the Anahata chakra), in which there is no subject object , as without the Heart there is neither energy nor consciousness of these systems or the One Universe which has been created by the Creator, whose name is True Being, Consciousness and Life (Sat Chit Ananda).
Some "ripe souls" will read spiritual texts or the lives of Saviors and Saints and immediately recollect and awaken to their inherent and embedded archetypal Truth, i.e., the contraction of consciousness releasing spontaneously, they abide as single, all-pervasive consciousness.
Many others, unable to "hear" the Truth, which would set them free, become seekers. Because of the body and mind being in the image of the Archetype, there is the inherent knowledge of the Self within each of us, an innate Intelligence that knows Itself and recognizes and recollects Itself when hearing or reading scripture. As seekers, one way or the other, they come upon these different systems, the yogas, practices and religions emerged from these systems, all ultimately describing the same Singularity of Truth they emanate from. And so we have a world where there is the idea that one or another system or religion is True, when most of them are inherently true.
Such systems include
1. Meditation on the chakras or practices through which life force and light can be brought to manifest, each chakra having its own perception within consciousness, where some practices meditate on the sacral plexus, others at the navel or behind the navel at the Kandal, others in the heart, throat, ajna or crown (Sahasrara).
2. Meditation including pranayamas on the ida and pingala nadis, the systems to the left and right of the spine coming over the top of the head to the ajna chakra (pituitary) and down through the nadis to the Sacral Plexus representing the enteric autonomic nervous system, i.e., the pelvic / abdominal brain, where extended periods of such pranayama, eventually (i) open the left and right hemispheres of the brain fill the body with a force of singular reflective Intelligence, which in turn reflect the Hrdayam from above and (ii) open the pelvic brain centered in the kandal, which reflects the hrdayam from below . The term Parmahansa, meaning the swan form of the 2 hemespheres of the brain comes from this experience. (Yogananda: Autobiography of a Yogi) The ida and pingala represent the autonomic nervous system. namely: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
3. The meditation and practices (kriyas) related to surat Shabad yoga, the listening to the electric sound current, which is what yogis call the gold cord between the ajna chakra and Sahasrara (the crown) or 10th door. The chakras along the gold cord are said to relate directly to the chakras along the spine – the silver cord. So that when one meditates on these, the chakras along the spine open automatically. Ramana Maharshi mentions that Sri Rama (Ramayana) taught this yoga, as preferred, but that one needed to always ask, who is having the experiences related to the astral sights, such as stars, a moon, sun, etc., and astral sounds, such as a bell, thunder, cymbal, flute, etc., astral planes, causal plains along the gold cord.
4. Meditation on the Hrdayam (2 digest to the right of the sternum, the location of the wise man's heart per Ecclesiastics 10:2 www.biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/10-2.htm . The seer is not in the brain, as it may seem. Initially one is say looking at an object or mental image in a way that they recognize seeing, then releasing attention to the object extrapolates such mode of seeing back to where the seeing originates, which initially seems to be someplace in the brain, because the energy of consciousness, which is of the nature of seeing, is strongest in the brain, due to the activities of thinking, etc.. However, the vasanas or encoding that contracts perception along the lines of images we have identified with are located throughout the body chakras, and systems.
a. The body actually constitutes the whole brain imaging system through which we experience. But, as we enquire, especially with a still mind, achieved by almost any natural means (yoga, sport, meditation, pure diet), the residual energy of the body field no longer flashing to one or another emoted image, the melodrama "takes" we project into who and what we think we and the world are, and instead pervades the body so that the entire body fills with still radiance, pureness and becomes engulfed in the experience of pervading "goodness." The seer is then discovered to he not in the brain but in the Hrdayam. Initially, when meditating on the hrdayam, it seems as though the focus is coming from the brain area directing to the Heart, the Hrdayam, but because the Hrdayam is actually the source of the directed consciousness that also pervaded the body with identity, light and life, eventually there is a releasing of the brain as the seer and one experiences single pervading seeing or abiding as the single seer within which objects appear. When this happens there is a simultaneous experience is pervasive radiance, like a sun shining through the body and mind, while drawing the mind inward to the pulsing sense of "I as I" that prevents the mind from trying to give for to the formless, delineated time to the timeless, i.e., project its images (vasanas), into the pervasive field of Being, Consciousness, Life force one now experiences as the natural state of Truth. The way we actually see and know an object is like this.
b. The True Consciousness is all pervasive, so when we look at some object with our eyes, the consciousness engulfs and knows the object and simultaneously transmits its knowledge to the field of the body, which views the knowledge through its imaging system, i.e., the projection of vasanas, giving rise to opinions and judgment, inclusion and exclusion, good and acceptable, bad and rejected. But when we abide singly as the seer, the seeing/knowing is not contracted by the vasanas and is experienced as within one's own consciousness. Then, to the extent we dwell in that field, the knowledge, Intelligence, or substratum through the creation manifested, vast or infinitesimal , is revealed.
c. This is the same with anything we might imagine or idea or science we can imagine, because it's all created by the One Creator, and the sense of single concentrated Intelligence we feel when we know anything is an experience of the Intelligence of the Creator. That's why any sustained effort to create (business, art, music, sport, science, etc.) will elicit a sense of focused intelligence that pervaded the body field and invariably couples the individual's sense of intelligent knowing with a deeper knowledge of the Intelligence of the Creator we experience whenever we strive to know and create.
d. In the Chhandogya Upanishad Ch1:3 there is this question: What is it that knowing this one thing you come to know everything else. http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/chhand/ch_2.html
"At present we are conscious of ourselves as a set of adjuncts with object knowing consciousness in which our attention seemingly move away from the self towards the object with separation between knowing subject and known object. In self-enquiry we withdraw our attention from thoughts and objects so that attention rests in self without any oscillation. To posit our attention in this state is the aim of self-enquiry." – Ramana Maharshi
5. Most of the other practices and their related systems, such as watching very slow asanas movement and position, same with tai-chi, or slow pranayama, such as watching rising and falling of the diaphragm, have to do to a large extent with developing means to still the mind, so that the kinetic energy consciousness can accumulate like the sun burning away a fog to the point that eventually a clarity emerges in which one can hear and recognize one's own true being.
6. However, there are also those systems that relate directly to the practices of radiance. Within advaita kundalini yoga (One Star Spirituality) are defined the methods to open these various systems, noting that both Ramana Maharshi and Yogi Bhajan mention that the Kundalini originates from various centers, such as both the base of the spine and the solar plexus, as well as the Hrdayam, which include
a. The system along the spine from the base of the spine to the crown and ajna, which is based on the kandal or pelvic brain, which is intended to connect the pelvic brain to the cranial brain resulting in an integration of the 2 through which one experiences decontracted consciousness as it is without the subject object reference. In this system one pulls the root lock, diaphragm lock and neck lock causing the energy flow to move towards the spine. The result is that the chakras open along the spine more because the spinal nerve / nadi system links / connects / integrates to the chakra nadi (pedal) system.
b. A related system is described in the book "Kundalini" by a disciple of Ramakrishna, which one can get at the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center, which describes and names a parallel nadi and central nadi system along the front of the body versus along the spine - the ida, pingala and sushumna. This relates to the right, left and central vagus nerves. (Interesting article about the this system is http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/448/out_of_our_heads) The yoga system here involves expanding the abdominal area in what's called vase breathing while pulling the root lock. Actually, in this vase breathing, the entire frontal part of the body is expanded forward resulting in a powerful flow of radiant energy that lights the entire front of the body up through the throat and brain where the opening of the central brain comes with the experience of an expanding golden light that related to the pineal gland. Many of Yogi Bhajan's kundalini yoga sets open this frontal body radiant system. Here the crainial brain connects to the abdominal brain through vagus nerve system with the core again at the Hrdayam, where the balancing of the 2 in the Hrdayam releases the contraction of consciousness from the body.
c. Earlier is mentioned the system involving the gold cord from the ajna to the sahasrara, taught by Rama and included in the Sikh system of surat Shabad yoga – electric sound current, which when opened, also opens the spinal chakra system.
d. The meridian system that circulates along the spine and front part of the body different from the ida and pingala, which has its center in the solar plexus. In this system the center is the solar plexus, where it is said that the energy comes in from the crown and up through the sacral plexus impacts in the solar plexus from which is experienced a flashing out of pervasive consciousness. The images of Buddha with his hands in a mudra index finger to thumb, wrists joined at the solar plexus right hand fingers up facing left, left hand fingers down facing right represents this system. Another shows the Buddha with the right fist above the left fist at the solar plexus.
e. Maher Baba www.avatarmeherbaba.org, describes another aspect of the system through which he was brought to a state of enlightenment as an Avatar / Savior. In it a Saint kisses his forehead and later another taps his heart area and all his chakra systems opened. Later he gets involved in a mission to locate masts, which are beings who live entirely in the awakened plane of one chakra, typically the heart, throat, ajna or Sahasrara and are otherwise virtually oblivious to their bodies and the world, but because they are in a field of God's Consciousness whatever is asked of them manifests. In a sense, these chakras are each the base for a kundalini system. Meher Baba working with these masts both directed the consciousness of purity and goodness throughout the world during the period of WWII while opening the masts to their totality of consciousness, as all his chakra systems were open fully in all planes. In regards to the we can consider Christ's statement, "In my Father's house are many mansions" John 14:2
f. So, our body is comprised of may systems and methods to activate them, all with the intention that with such practices, the radiance through the body increases to a point where we realize ourselves as a field of consciousness upon which and within which the body manifests, and relinquishing and imaging and identity to thought (as also required in the first 2 commandments God gave to Moses), attention is relinquished, the self becomes Single and the whole body is filled with light (Luke 11:34), what Christ called the Transfiguration of the body.
g. More on One Star Spirituality and these topics in http://luthar.com/kundalini-yoga/
7. There is another system as well, which one might say was the basis for the concepts of America's Founding Fathers upon which the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were based, namely the Path of the Creator. In this system, The Christ Consciousness, as (Atman) is presented as one with the Father (Brahman) and that he is the vine and the individuals the branches and that all things are created by him and without him was nothing created. Then he says to "go first to God and all things will be added unto you." He instructs that to abiding in the seer will result in the experience of Transfiguration and continues with the parables of the sower and talents as one of the means through which to awaken to this experience. These parables have to do with the striving for goodness and excellence in all one does in life persevering through jealousies, adversaries, natural catastrophes (hurricanes, earthquakes floods) and manmade (war, power struggles, depressions) misfortunes, all obstacles which require constant effort to resolve and persevere through. To emphasize this further he instructs that if one perseveres with one's talents, abilities and opportunities more will be given, but warns that those who waste their talents, which would include those that cause such talents to be wasted, "will be thrown into the outer darkness with great suffering and gnashing of teeth. As the practice also includes non-judgment and to leave vengeance to the Creator (the force of karmic Intelligence), it means that one's focus needs to be on creating, not destruction. The result of this for the Founding Fathers of the American concept of individual enterprise, industriousness, striving for excellence, charity, with limited government restricted to the prevention of willful harm of one over another, would be the participation in the creative intelligence of the Creator, where, over time, the intuitive flashes of intelligence would prepaid the body so extensively that all of a sudden the adherent would experience that Intelligence recognizing its singleness and inexorably abiding in that experience of single pervasive consciousness. http://luthar.com/2009/11/14/maya-and-nondualism/ is about Christ as a teacher of a radical form of non-dualism, often called the "Sudden Path of the Vajra Siddhi Guru." This kind of Path is also given in the Sikh system of "work by the sweat of your brow and give to the poor."
We are born on this planet but the systems of the body and the related practices that have been discovered, are for the most part never taught, and the religions have lost and often hide the true extent of their teachings. It's like getting a new car without an instruction manual, where people sit around admiring their cars that don't move. Some figure out how to start it, and others how to drive it, while few know how to maintain it or maximize its benefit, let alone what it is actually intended for, which in the case of being born as a human being, is inexorably the consideration and recollection of the "One Creator that has created this creation." Often, when one or another system is found and people adhere to that, typically they reject knowledge of other systems inherent in their bodies, even though with eventual enlightenment "all the doors open themselves, all the lights light themselves, and darkness flies away." If one has the opportunity to learn these systems, so long as one practices them with consideration of the Truth that has created them for us, then the realization of the Truth and relinquishment of thinking about what the substratum of our being and consciousness is should be swift.
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