December 2003

Tuesday December 30, 2003 10:49

From: Sat Darshan

As in a well of water deep,
Dive deep with Reason cleaving sharp.
With speech, mind and breath restrained,
Exploring thus mayest thou discover
the real source of ego-self.
The mind through calm in deep plunge enquires.
That alone is real quest for the self

Ramana Maharshi
(trans Kapali Sastry)

Saturday December 27, 2003 1:07 PM

In 1903 there came to Tiruvannamalai a great Samskrit scholar and savant, Ganapati Sastri known also as Ganapati Muni because of the austerities he had been observing.

He had the title Kavya-kantha (one who had poetry at his throat), and his disciples addressed him as nayana (father).

He was a specialist in the worship of the Divine Mother.

He visited Ramana in the Virupaksa cave quite a few times.

Once in 1907 he was assailed by doubts regarding his own spiritual practices. He went up the hill, saw Ramana sitting alone in the cave, and expressed himself thus : "All that has to be read I have read; even Vedanta sastra I have fully understood; I have done japa to my heart's content; yet I have not up to this time understood what tapas is.

Therefore I have sought refuge at your feet.

Pray enlighten me as to the nature of tapas." Ramana replied, now speaking, "If one watches whence the notion 'I' arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas. When a mantra is repeated, if one watches whence that mantra sound arises, the mind gets absorbed there; that is tapas." To the scholar this came as a revelation; he felt the grace of the sage enveloping him.

From: Maharishi

Friday December 26, 2003 11:26 AM

The search for some understanding of what our lives are about takes one deeper and deeper into the depths of our being to ask the very root, our most sincere questions. A naturally sustained inner silence is necessary.

Q: Will there not be realization of the Self even while the world is there taken as real?

Ramana Maharshi: There will not be.

Q: Why?

Ramana Maharshi:The seer and the object seen are like the rope and the snake.

Just as the knowledge of the rope which is the substrate will not arise unless the false knowledge of the illusory serpent goes, so the realization of the Self which is the substrate will not be gained unless the belief that the world is real is removed.

Q: When will the world which is the object seen be removed?

Ramana Maharshi: When the mind, which is the cause of all cognition's and of all actions, becomes quiescent, the world will disappear.

From: Ramana Maharshi - Who am I?

Thursday December 25, 2003 6:39

Poem 9211

Krishna, Buddha and Christ:
All three
Came from the Highest Plane
Of Consciousness-Light-Bliss-
Like real brothers of one Family.

Sri Chinmoy

From:Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, Part 93

*

"I wrote the following song in India about fifteen years ago. It calls upon the soul to awaken and lead the entire being towards God-Realisation."

Arise, awake, O friend of my dream.
Arise, awake, O breath of my life.
Arise, awake, O light of my eyes.
O seer-poet in me,
Do manifest yourself in me and through me.
Arise, awake, O vast heart within me.
Arise, awake, O consciousness of mine,
which is always transcending the universe
and its own life of the Beyond.
Arise, awake, O form of my meditation
transcendental.
Arise, awake, O bound divinity in humanity.
Arise, awake, O my heart's Liberator, Shiva,
and free mankind from its ignorance-sleep.

The Bengali:

Jago amar swapan sathi
Jago amar praner pran
Jago amar chokher jyoti
Rishi kabi murtiman
Jago, jago, jago
Jago amar bishwal hiya
Byapta jaha hiranwamoy
Jago amar sei chetana
Bishwatite shesh ja noy
Jago, jago, jago
Jago amar dhyani-swarup
Jago amar baddhwa jib
Sarba jiber tandra tuti
Jago amar mukta shib
Jago, jago, jago

Sri Chinmoy
Excerpt from: Eternity's Breath

                                                             Avebury, Wiltshire

Monday December 22, 2003 11:25

I would like to wish everybody a joyful and peaceful holiday, full of fun and love

"The Ecstasy of a New Promise
shall unmistakably blossom."

Sunday December 21, 2003 9:03

Since the object of all contemplation is the production of that state of intimate communion in which the mystics declare that the self is "in God and God is in her," it might be supposed that the orison of union represented the end of mystical activity, in so far as it is concerned with the attainment of a transitory but exalted consciousness of "oneness with the Absolute." Nearly all the great contemplatives, however, describe as a distinct, and regard as a more advanced phase of the spiritual consciousness, the group of definitely ecstatic states in which the concentration of interest on the Transcendent is so complete, the gathering up and pouring out of life on this one point so intense, that the subject is more or less entranced, and becomes, for the time of the ecstasy, unconscious of the external world. In ordinary contemplation he refused to attend to that external world: it was there, a blurred image, at the fringe of his conscious field, but he deliberately left it on one side. In ecstasy he cannot attend to it. None of its messages reach him: not even those most insistent of all messages which are translated into the terms of bodily pain. From: Mysticism

Sunday December 14, 2003 4:21

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
Albert Einstein

Wednesday December 10, 2003 7:31

We are what we think

Sri Chinmoy: Why not? One grows into one's own thought, you know, when one is aspiring. One of our greatest spiritual Masters, named Sri Ramakrishna, used to say, "If you say 'I am a sinner, I have committed so many sins, I must be a sinner", then you will always feel like a sinner and you will always be a sinner. You will be earthbound. But if you say, 'My Father is God; I am free, eternally free," then you will become free. Continued

Monday December 8, 2003 18:53

Separateness

here on earth would we find a boundary between us?
Would it be the air between us that we both breathe?
Would it be the skin on my body that is participating
in the exact same atmosphere as the skin on your body?

The idea of separateness is something we have to make
up, so we say everything that connects us doesn't count
because we can't see it. Of course, if the air weren't
there all of a sudden, it would become important in a
hurry. But for right now, we choose not to pay attention
to it.

Look and see how you make up separateness within yourself.
Look for your sense of "self' and "other." Notice how within
yourself, there are many selves. Inside or outside yourself,
see if you can find a boundary.

Sunday December 7, 2003 10:35

Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally
inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the
greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.
Alan Watts

Question: Could you please speak briefly about the different states of consciousness.

Sri Chinmoy: There are three main states of consciousness: jagriti, swapna and sushupti. Jagriti is the waking state, swapna is the dream state and sushupti is the state of deep sleep. When we are in the waking state, our consciousness is focused outward; when we are in the dream state, our consciousness is turned inward; when we are in the state of deep sleep, our consciousness is roaming in the Beyond. Continued

Tuesday December 2, 2003 8:58

Those who know this truth, whose consciousness
is unified, think always, "I am not the doer."
While seeing or hearing, touching or smelling;
eating, moving about, or sleeping; breathing or
speaking,letting go or holding on, even opening
or closing the eyes, they understand that these
are only the movements of the senses among sense
objects.

Bhagavad Gita 5:8-9

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