22nd. December 2004
Sandeep would you like
to say something on this dialogue.
Maalok: You have mentioned that final Self-realization is when the mind actually
'dies' irreversibly in the Self.
While
dies has been put in " ..", it is really not a death of an existential
something labeled as the "mind" into another separated existential
something labeled the Self.
The self-hypnosis which enabled the belief in the particular, as a particular
body-mind object to be one's identification .....
.....that has ended.
In that ending is also the ending that there was erstwhile something.........
which has now ended.
You have also mentioned
how Papaji used to sometimes give an account of his life based on memory of
his earlier narration. The idea of memories and a dead mind
seem contradictory. Could you please clarify this?
The confuson
arises because a dead mind has an existential reality.
Something is dead now infers the reality of it having been alive at some time,
isn't it?
That which has never existed, ...............can either the term "alive"
or "dead"........ be applicable?
David: Many people are
puzzled by this apparent conundrum. A dead mind is one in which there is no
thinker of thoughts, no perceiver of
perceptions, no rememberer of memories. The thoughts, the perceptions and
the memories can still be there, but there is no one who
believes, 'I am remembering this incident,' and so on. These thoughts and
memories can exist quite happily in the Self, but what is completely
absent is the idea that there is a person who experiences or owns them.
Let's put
in a different way.
There is a movie going on.
You are in the audience seeing the movie being played on the wide 70 mm screen.
One of the characters of the movie-drama is so appealing, so identifiable,
"so -meeeee" that you forget you are the one sitting on a seat with
popcorn in your hand,
and you are totally convinced that the character which is going through the
travails of the drama getting enacted on the screen....
... is you.
Hence you(=movie-character) laugh, you(=movie-character) cry copious tears
of grief lamenting the loss of a loved one,
you(=movie-character) lust, ......
.......you leer, you anger against villany, against the injustices to bushmen
in Kalahari desert,
you plan to achieve this and that,
you succeed in achieving this or that,
you fail in achieving this and that.
In all this, the character thinks, decides, emotes, acts, behaves, cognizes
others as loved ones, unloved ones, praises peace moves , rants against tyrants,
villans in the world he occupies.
And in that thinking, in that acting..........in the success, in the failures............
it believes it exists.
And you are so identified with that character in the drama on the screen,
you have completely forgotten about that popcorn in your hand.
While the cinema is running .....
.....while the drama is going on, on the screen.....
....while that entire ethos, pathos is getting enacted, ......
.....the pheromones of the popcorn reaches you and you awaken to the truth
of the situation.
And you know.....................WHILE... the drama continues.
Now, as far as the character on that sceen is concerned ........is he the
thinker of his thoughts, is he the perceiver of perceptions, is he the rememberer
of memories?
The character on that screen....... is he not the thinker of his thoughts,
is he not the perceiver of perceptions, is he not the rememberer of memories?
Are either of the two affirmations (negation is really an affirmation in the
reverse direction), of any relevance, as far as that character on that screen
is concerned?
You know.....................while the drama continues.
And you know the drama, in all it's infinite details, in all its infinite
nuances, all the infinite dualistic positions and poles,......
.......the drama in its entirety, cannot be apart or separate to you.
You are the drama in its entirety, you are all the characters, you are the
only one in the audience.
And you are the pop-corn vendor as well.
You, ..........as you believe your existence to be, no matter how infinitly
encompassing that defining belief...
...is a character on that screen.
You that you truly are .............there is nothing whatsoever.........which
is apart or separate to that.
Papaji once gave a nice
analogy: 'You are sitting by the side of the road and cars are speeding past
you in both directions. These are
like the thoughts, memories and desires in your head. They are nothing to
do with you, but you insist on attaching yourself to them. You
grab the bumper of a passing car and get dragged along by it until you are
forced to let go. This in itself is a stupid thing to do, but you
don't even learn from your mistake. You then proceed to grab hold of the bumper
of the next car that comes your way. This is how you all
live your lives: attaching yourself to things that are none of your business
and suffering unnecessarily as a result. Don't attach
yourself to a single thought, perception or idea and you will be happy.'
And then
(without the connotation of a sequential event in time),.......the cessation
of the idea that there is someone....... not to attach to a single thought,
perception, idea.
And the cessation of the idea that happiness being something missing in the
moment, ..........I can be happy in time..... if I somehow could stop being
a barking dog chasing running cars.
The strive for non-attachment to thoughts....... is an attachment.
To seek a causal link to happiness and to pursue to possess that link, .........is
the very source of a sense of unhappiness.
In a dead mind the 'traffic'
of mental activity may still be there, usually at a more subdued level, but
there is no one who can
grab hold of the bumper of an idea or a perception. This is the difference
between a quiet mind and no mind at all.
In the state
of no-mind, can any sense of a difference..... exist?
In the state of no-mind, can even the concept of no-mind............. exist?
When the mind is
still and quiet, the person who might attach himself or herself to the bumper
of a new idea is still there, but when there is no mind at
all, when the mind is dead, the idea that there is a person who might identify
with an object of thought has been permanently eradicated.
That is why it is called 'dead mind' or 'destroyed mind' in the Ramana literature.
It is a state in which the possibility of identification
with thoughts or ideas has definitively ended.
The existence
of the possibility of identifying with thought,...............is a thought.
That now such a possibility is no more possible/definitively ended..............is
a thought.
A thought..........is a stirring........ an undulation.........a wave
Infinite stirrings....in simultaneity....
...lo behold the drama of phenomenality on the screen.
I am the drama, ...........while simultaneously........being the muncher of
crispy popcorn.
Let me go back to Papaji
and what I said about his memories.
Papaji said in an interview he gave in 1990 to two American dentists, 'When
I speak, I never consult my memory or my past experience'. When
I asked him about this, he said that people with minds always go back to the
past in order to formulate their next sentence, whereas the
words of enlightened people are prompted by the Self in the present moment,
and are not the consequence of past memories or experiences.
Nothing
is a consequence of past memories or experiences.
The events which make up past memories and experences, were events in that
moment.
The events in this moment, are events in this moment now.
An associated sense of a personal, individual, separated self, .........and
it is only a sense,.........draws parallels with the mnemonic impressions
and constructs a linear causal link.
And believes in it's own creation of a past driving the present into the future.
Whereas, each moment is complete in itself.
Moment to moment to moment.
That is why there is no enlightened person, as separate from a person with
minds going back to the past to formulate the next sentence.
There is just the drama of the moment, in which "enlightened persons"
give interviews to molar drillers.
This is the difference
between using your mind to have a conversation and allowing the Self to put
the necessary words into your mouth
whenever it is necessary to speak. When there is no mind, words come out spontaneously,
as and when they are required.
Sound with
an attributed meaning making it into a word, ......
...a series of words constituting as speech, ......
....speech being one form of functioning through an object..........
.....the specific functioning....
..... the instrumental object and the impacted object of the functioning,......
....... all constituting the moment.......
....the moment in its entirety......is always in spontaineity.
Even the seemingly contrived, the seemingly calculated, the seemingly planned........
.......is just spontainety,............
.........as so.............in that moment.
And thus really even the term spontaineity................has no relevance.......
since there is nothing which is not spontaneous.
If those words
happen to take the form of a story from the past, one should not come to the
conclusion that there is an 'I' who is delving into past
memories and retrieving them. When we see an enlightened person do this, we
assume that this - a mind retrieving information from the
memory - is what is happening because this is the way our own minds work.
We project the mechanism of our own minds onto the enlightened
person and assume that she too must think and function in this way.
We do this because
we can't conceive of any other way that thoughts and memories can be articulated.
Just for fun, I once asked Papaji how he
managed to do his shopping without using his memory or his past experiences.
I should mention here that he was a ferocious bargain
hunter when it came to buying vegetables. He always insisted on the best quality
at the cheapest price.
'How can you do this,' I asked, 'without a memory? To know whether you are getting a bargain, you have to know what the price was yesterday or last week, and to know whether or not a carrot is in a good condition, you need to need to have a memory and a prior experience of what a good carrot looks like.'
At first he just said,
'What a stupid question!' but then he laughed and more or less summarized
what I have just explained: that there is no one who thinks, decides and chooses
while he is out shopping. The Self does all these things automatically, but
to an onlooker it appears as if there is someone inside the body making
decisions based on past experience and knowledge.
Even such
an on-looker is the Self, playing the role,........ as so.... in that moment.
In apperception..................there is no other yet to apperceive.