What Ramana Maharshi could teach Mick Jagger about dancing.....

I read somewhere once, a long time ago, the record of a conversation between Ramana Maharshi and a visiting seeker. Ramana's message was simple to the point of curtness: 'Simply be yourself.'

Reading this, I felt a twinge of sympathy with the weary pilgrim who had perhaps travelled a long way seeking profundity from the master, to be greeted with those three simple words. 'Simply be yourself.' It seemed a cop out somehow, or a remark which wasn't going to help the seeker get where they needed to be.

Years later, these words come into my mind again. And I smile. What a beautiful expression of the teachings. Those three words have a wholly different resonance now. I was staring at the whole truth in the face and I never saw it.

Simply be yourself. It brings to mind a story from Keith Richards autobiography I read recently. He says that after the Stones got successful, about the time that he and Mick had their big falling out, Mick Jagger started to have dancing lessons  Keith was perplexed by this. Why would would Jagger, one of the greatest dancers ever, with his own inimitable style, need dancing lessons! It was as if, Keith writes, Jagger was trying to learn how to be himself.

Hardly surprising, I suppose, with fame on that level. The character Mick Jagger must be a hard one to live up to. For Mick himself, clearly, it was something he felt he could do better by having dancing lessons. With an end result, according to Keith, that he started to dance without any of the magic he had before.

So I guess that's a roundabout way of saying we can't learn how to be ourselves.

We can't strategise about it, plan for it, practice it. No matter how much we may aspire to what someone else has, and do our best to mimic it, we will only ever end up doing our second hand version. And we will be living an inauthentic life.

It seems to me that many of the people we admire in our lives - the visionaries, creative geniuses, trailblazers in any field - are the ones with the courage to live on their own terms, without compromise, or conformity to the expectations of the world. By simply living from the 'heart', to use a well worn spiritual expression, they draw close to flowing with the Tao. Living from their own authentic selves, they exude a bright light. Without any kind of spiritual practice, certain people seem to shine, seemingly in touch with some inner fire the rest of us have no access to.

They're just simply being themselves.

As Ramana says elsewhere 'Do not think yourself to be this, that or anything, to be so and so, or to be such and such. Only leave off the falsity. Reality will reveal itself. '

Still Point in a turning world

There is no centre. That's the basic realization. The focal point through which this universe has appeared to be functioning is in fact the totality itself. Asked, if a tree falls in the forest is there anyone there to hear it, the answer is no. Without someone there, there is no tree, no forest, no world. We are actualizing this world by our very presence. Presence and world are not two things.

Quantum physicists talk about a many worlds theory. Typically, science has perceived reality as a single unfolding history, in time and space. The many worlds theory suggests reality is a many branched tree, where every possible quantum outcome is realized. Meeting someone we find unusual we may say: 'that guy lives in his own world.' The truth of the matter is he does. Only, there is no guy and world, but only one thing. There's just consciousness. The consciousness over there is no different from the consciousness here.

This presence is exploring form and function, creation and destruction. In the world of duality, perspective is an illusion. Consciousness plays the warrior slicing his sword on a helpless child and the child being felled by a sword. One feels righteousness, one feels despair. One might also say, The One feels righteousness, The One feels despair. Both of those sensations are witnessed on an eternal field of unchanging awareness. This substratum is like the sheet from Wayang Kulit, the shadow puppetry one finds in Indonesia. Forms appear and dance, stories are told, and the sheet appears to change. But the sheet is the sheet, regardless of what is happening in the play. It is eternal.

Within this realization  the body/mind continues to act out in its usual manner. There's nothing wrong with it, nothing at all. It is doing its thing, the mind moving, the cells in the body dying and regenerating themselves. Reactivity happens just as it always has, the conditioned responses sending the adrenaline soaring, the mind into chaos. This is like waves forming in response to a low pressure system in the deep ocean. Energy transference from the storm causes swell lines to form which, hitting shallow water, become waves. The only thing wrong with this is the voice which says it is wrong. Then there is an attempt to change something, an engagement with story. And we are back in duality. We are back in 'there is problem with can be fixed. I can fix it.' An attempt to do so is to step further into the illusion.

Realising there is no centre, and living from that place are two extraordinarily different things. Or at least it seems so to me. Really seeing the storms which pass through these body minds as storms, allowing them to pass through, without attempting to change them, takes everything. It's like we're in constant free-fall  and there's the appearance of a rope right in front of us. The hands keep reaching out and grabbing to the idea of individuality, getting burnt and retracting, then reaching out again. The burning is the residual personality clinging. And clinging causes suffering which snaps back the realization that we are perpetuating an illusion. It's the only game in town, but the hands ache sometimes...

"What is Yoga? "

I hope Ellen Davis will not mind me reposting her wonderful piece... see the end of the article for link through to her site.

"What is Yoga? " 

In the deep dance of this experience I find that yoga is consciousness totally surrendered and awake to itself in the present moment allowing its breath of being to dance itself into becoming.  It is the relaxed being of awareness that within this present moment becomes awake to itself.  All division collapses in the light of unity and in an instant, the apparent two that have become one are seen to have never been separate or real in the first place.

Yoga bridges science and spirituality, bringing  a wider inquiry, heart and mystery to science, and deconstructing the myths, allegories, confabulations, and dogmas out of spirituality to its bare bones truth.

I come here [to this Yoga Teacher Training Course in Rishikesh] with the lived understanding (as influenced by Sri Aurobindo) that "All of life is yoga".  I find that our lives are like our yoga mats, where we face ourselves and whatever doesn't know itself as peace. Silence breathes our eternity into time and we dance to the rhythm of our breath. Peace embraces what doesn't know itself, so that it can know itself. Love embraces what doesn't know itself, so that it can know itself.

Yoga is defined through its etymology as "union", "joining" or "yoking".  I find it is where the apparent two come together, or are unveiled as one.   In that sense its realization seems to deconstruct its meaning.   "Yoga" as a term, is a prayer of aspiration towards realization, speaking in the language of that which has not realized its always and already reality.  It is the union of body, mind, and spirit; it is polar aspects  or appearances disappearing in oneness.  It is where stillness, the immutable and never changing breathe the ever-changing, and the ever-changing invites awareness of the unchanging ground from which it is born.    It is where there is both only breath and the breath disappears; where the inhale and the exhale that have appeared like two disappear into the continuity of one.  In yoga, the story that "I cannot do this" dissolves into a presence and allowance with what is here and happening.  In yoga the stories are embraced and seen for what they are, and pe
 rceived opposites melt into a union where the seer is seen by itself and can experience beyond identification to, through, and with thoughts and the senses.

In yoga, there is no "effort", there is focused release. Yoga is relaxation.  The relaxation I am talking about is active, it is not passive. It is antecedent to and part and parcel of wakeful awareness or consciousness. The tension behind effort obfuscates awareness. An insight that I brought here with me is that flexibility of the body is directly corollary to flexibility of consciousness.  And flexibility of consciousness has to do with being right here and right now and not resisting what is. We can only transcend something by fully embracing it and seeing it in the light of Truth. Yoga is the willingness to be honest, be with things as they are, and to see things in Truth.

I have learned that the purpose for all of the yoga sadhana is preparation for meditation or to learn to "sit" and free ourselves from the habits that would inhibit that.  I take that to mean that it is all of the disciplines that will enable a surrender through stillness to Silence where we are lived and breathed by and through our true, unborn, undivided nature and the freedom and truth consciousness that is prior to our conditioning and beyond our pre-conceptions or anything that mind can hold; where meditation is a spontaneous arising of stillness that pervades our waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.

Yoga asanas as well as feeling all the senses, are an invitation to witness consciousness.  It would seem otherwise and that this is paradoxical because we tend to get pulled into the senses and identify through them.  The sense of "I" and "me" are tension.  Yoga releases that because in trusting, accepting, and surrendering to the divine creative will and relaxing into it,  arising sensations become about "the body" rather than "me".  The key is always in the apparent obstacle.

The word "practice" is used a lot in the context of yoga and I have been inquiring into its meaning. "Practicing" feels like what we do to achieve something. In that light, "Practicing yoga" appears to me to be oxymoronic.  I am seeing this term "practice" used to point to a means to an end. If we know the "end achievement" as what we always and are already are, then it is more like a living of that than a practicing of it.  If practice is thought to be what we do to achieve something that we are not, we can end up reinforcing our perceived separation from it and concretizing our efforts towards an illusion.  In that light, I find that there is not the practicing of yoga - there is yoga yoga-ing. ;-)  Or there is living yoga. In my own field I find that the only way to be a dancer is to be a dancer now (at whatever level).  One cannot try to be a dancer. So the only way to do yoga is to be yoga, to be the breath of that union of body, mind and spirit. And in the light of "achievement
 ", there is no one 'doing' yoga.  There is only yoga and the emptiness in which it arises.

All of that being said, I see the value of our focused and disciplined intent, of discovering, exploring, experiencing, invoking, and unveiling the truth of being. And each step can be useful in developing the understanding that will perhaps one day find those very same steps or their understandings as bars to further realization.

Yoga is love.  Love loving, experiencing, and realizing itself through life and all the stories we weave, no matter what the appearances.

Yoga is relaxation and finding it through all conditions.
Yoga is awareness waking up to itself.
Yoga is non-attachment, where true connection and intimacy can be Known.
Yoga is allowance and self-acceptance, where we find presence and the ability to rest in where we are, wherever that might be.
Yoga is peace.  This is where yoga has its realization.

Yoga is Silence, where all inspiration and the knowing that is beyond our preconceptions are born and can breathe, sing, and dance.
Yoga is stillness, from which all movement springs.
Yoga is the immeasurable, which is known, along with stillness, when measuring stops.
Yoga is eternity, or 'now', where true presence is known.  Time is a medium of the play of timelessness, and future and past are simply stories that we tell ourselves as we are looking forward or backward.

Yoga is that thoughts are not reality, they are just thoughts; but believed, can powerfully inform our experience and the way we respond to and through it, and the way life responds to us. Everything, including our thoughts, energetically play into the totality of all of our conditions.
Yoga is where science and spirituality meet; where effort and effortlessness meet; where that which is conditioned and unconditioned meet; where deep relationship with self and all meets.

Yoga is the impersonal finding itself through the personal, and all conditions.
Yoga is permanence, Brahman, the eternal unchanging infinite, and that which can never come or go finding or remembering itself through impermanence.

Yoga is the One coming to know itself as the many and the many coming to know themselves as the One.
Yoga is wu wei; spontaneous action that from the perspective of a self-perceived "doer" could seem like nonaction; it is the creative will breathing itself as trans-volitional action without a self-perceived doer.

Yoga is the resolution of paradox in form.
Yoga is the continuity of one movement flowing into the next and never stopping, and yoga is all stopping to utter stillness.
Yoga is balance, is health, is life.  Yoga is also the art of death.

Yoga is consciousness turned towards its most divine, disciplined, refined, and free expression.
Yoga is the Divine, as and through us, coming to know itself in its infinite diversity.
Yoga is materializing the spiritual, and 'spiritualizing' the material; spirit waking up to itself in the material.
Yoga is liberation, where freedom can breathe its eternity in time.

Yoga is one, or nottwo, the sum of which all additions, subtractions, multiplications or divisions add up.
Yoga and all stories are born from Self's delight with itself.
Yoga is bliss tasting its rasa through all appearances.

Yoga is Truth, where the truth consciousness finds itself through and behind every appearance.
Yoga is undivided awareness where we can move from, to, and through peace and our true nature.
Yoga is unconditional love breathing its ever-expanding heart through its care and tenderness of this moment.
Yoga is our true, unborn, unconditioned, undivided nature coming to know and experience itself.

Yoga is the unknown, where mystery is the medium for true Self-discovery, experience, and Knowledge, and the Divine Truth Consciousness can dance its fulfillment, freedom, and Known, through manifestation.
Yoga is the Grace that pulls all of these things within the totality of all conditions together.
Yoga is Self coming to Know Self.

"I the Self reveal Self by Self in Self."  Liberated by this knowledge, one enjoys the play."  Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo's Upanishads

Yoga is satchidananda.
Yoga is emptiness, the space in which all (stories) arise.

Yoga is this.

-Ellen Davis 10/2010
http://www.ellendavis.org/

Man's life does not fill one hundred;
Yes he harbours the grief of a thousand years.

Though for yourself, your illness might start to improve;
In addition, you must fret for your sons and grandsons aswell.

Below - examine the bottoms of the roots of the grain;
Above - look to the tops of the mulberry trees.

When the balance finally drops into the Eastern sea,
You will finally begin to know where you can rest

                           Han Shan - T'Ang Dynasty Recluse

The Myth of Free Will

"If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Carl Sagan

I had an interesting debate with someone this week into which I gently interjected the idea that there might not be free will. The response was....shall we say, somewhat hostile. And it made me reflect on the hilarity of the whole situation. Consciousness appearing to enjoy the forgetting of itself. The illusion so tightly veiled that we simply cannot see. Also, the pain of waking up. 

It also occurred to me that our society, as it has evolved, simply could not function without the mutual agreement that free will exists.

How could you hold someone responsible for a crime? How could there be structured societies based on freedom, if freedom does not exist?

From the perspective of yoga, we hit some particularly ripe territory. For here is perhaps the world's most ancient practice designed to uncover the absence of doership, and in our modern world it has evolved into the brashest of 'self' improvement tools. After a few years on the mat people cease becoming people, they become 'yogis' and 'yoginis'. A quiet moment of response is no longer chilling out it's 'pratyahara'. Most peculiar is the arrival of 'yoga championships', in which contestants battle out.... well I'm not sure exactly how that works... 

In short, the individual seeking freedom finds ever more complex webs of identity spinning out around them, particularly dense webs at that.  The 'spiritual seeker' is one of the last refuges of the ego, and it's a veritable Hitler's bunker.

And at the heart of it all, there is simply no one home. Consciousness is dancing a jig of difference. Playing at individuality. Exploring form, enjoying form, enjoying the masks, enjoying difference. In perfect emptiness....Astonishing!

• Put simply, the myth of free will depends on there being an individual.
• Yoga is the practice of discovering there is no individual, either as a body, or a mind.
• Union is the discovery of what lies before this body/mind

When it is seen that thoughts simply appear, we cease to feel responsible for them. What a relief!

When it is seen that we have no control over thoughts, except as whether or not we choose to take delivery of them, what a relief!

When it is seen that we are the pure awareness in which, not merely thoughts, but the body and the entire manifest world appear, there can only be astonishment, utter wonder, tears streaming. 

Burt Harding put this perfectly when he said: 'The movie of our life is being replayed like a movie-video, however, with one exception, we can either accept it or reject it as it is being replayed. Do you see the simplicity of it? When the ego, through ignorance, rejects the movie then we have suffering. If we accept the movie, we have enlightenment."

Lovely stuff....

We think that there is something hiding our
reality and that it must be destroyed before the
reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn
when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts.
That which will be on the day you laugh is also
here and now.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi

The Razor's Edge by Colin Drake

I hope NonDuality highlights will forgive me for reposting this superb article by Colin Drake. Fantastically well put. So simple any 'one' could get it!

The Razor's Edge by Colin Drake

It has long been held that following the spiritual life to its goal, complete awakening, is very difficult, like walking along a razor's edge. This article addresses this and attempts to show that, whilst experiencing the first awakening is very simple and easy, to live this awakening requires great vigilance like walking a tight rope.



Let the wise merge the speech in the mind, and the mind into intelligence (philosophical reason); let him merge intelligence in the great self (pure awareness), and that great self into peace.

Katha Upanishad - 1.3.13



This signifies recognizing that thoughts (mind) and sensations (speech in this case) appear in (and are seen by) awareness i.e. are merged in that. This is to be discovered by 'direct seeing' which is informed by intelligence. Then by the same process one can discover that awareness, being always totally still and utterly silent, is always completely at peace. This is all fairly straightforward and easy to 'see' as the appendix, from Beyond the Separate Self (and A Light Unto Your Self) attempts to show.



Arise, awake, enlighten yourself by resorting to the great (teachers), for that path is sharp as a razor's, difficult to tread and hard to go by, say the wise.

Katha Upanishad - 1.3.14



This next verse says that the path of 'direct seeing' is sharp as a razor's edge and thus we should abandon this and resort to the great teachers. However, this advice itself is very difficult to follow for the modern sceptical Western mind which does not trust anything that lies outside its own experience or 'direct seeing'. Also the teachings of the great are often difficult to follow being somewhat cryptic and needing interpretation. resulting in different opinions leading to schisms and the formation of sects. From this also comes tribalism based on 'our teacher is the best' or 'our interpretation is the correct one' and the whole sorry saga of division and competition is perpetuated!



So based on this I think, on balance, we are better off following Buddha's final teaching which was that one is to become 'a light unto yourself'. This can be achieved by the 'direct seeing' of our essential nature by self-inquiry or 'investigation of our moment to moment experience' - see the appendix.



This results in an 'awakened moment' when one sees that deeper than thoughts (mind) and body (mind) one is pure awareness and the ramifications of this seeing can be amazing. However, due to our habitual identification with the body/mind one soon 'drops off' again requiring a further awakening by self-inquiry or investigation of experience. So to become 'totally awake' requires absolute vigilance and commitment, akin to walking a razor's edge.



However, this is not a problem, for as the periods of 'wakefulness' (which are totally carefree) increase so will the commitment to identifying with the level of pure awareness. This will lead to more reflection and investigation, resulting in further awakenings which will continue the process. To call it a process may seem a misnomer for when one is 'awake' there's no process going on, but the continual naps keep the whole thing running.



This does require us to be more interested in being awake than in our own 'personal story', and to prefer peace to mental suffering. It is amazing how many people identify with these and seem to actually enjoy them in a masochistic fashion. Assuming that this is not the case one can use mental suffering to be a wake up call that one has 'nodded' off again and return one to 'awareness of awareness'. So although staying awake is like walking a razor's edge it is very easy to see when one has slipped off this and to hop back on again!



There is another danger for those that feel that they have 'awakened' and that is spiritual pride based on the thought that "now I've really got it" and thus cannot fall off the edge. It is easy to see that this thought "now I've really got it" is dualistic involving a 'me' that's got something (else). This is the difference between thinking 'now I've really got awareness' and directly seeing that one is awareness itself. Any thought that objectifies the 'I' is to be avoided, for awareness is not an object but the constant conscious subjective presence. Once again vigilance is the key .



Thirdly for those of us who attempt, in our own feeble way, to point to awakening there is another greater danger, which is believing that we are (separate individuals) pointing . This belief can easily be strengthened by the appreciation that we receive by those who experience awakened moments based on this pointing. As 'awakening' is the most profound seeing that can occur, often with momentous implications, the gratitude expressed is often of the most lavish proportions. So we need to 'walk the walk' by continually realizing that we are ephemeral manifestations of That (consciousness), through which pointing is taking place, and that no separate 'pointer' exists!



In conclusion, 'awakening' is straightforward and available to all but is quickly countered by nodding off again. So we need to constantly reawaken by becoming aware of, and identified with, awareness itself. In this respect it is like walking a razor's edge, but it is not painful and hopping back on again is simplicity itself, by the relevant shifting of attention from thoughts/sensations to the awareness that sees these.



Appendix



Below follows a simple method to investigate the nature of reality starting with one's day-to-day experience. Each step should be considered until one experiences, or 'sees', its validity before moving on to the following step. If you reach a step where you do not find this possible, continue on regardless in the same way, and hopefully the flow of the investigation will make this step clear. By all means examine each step critically but with an open mind, for if you only look for 'holes' that's all you will find!



1. Consider the following statement: 'Life, for each of us, is just a series of moment-to-moment experiences'. These experiences start when we are born and continue until we die, rushing headlong after each other, so that they seem to merge into a whole that we call 'my life'. However, if we stop to look we can readily see that, for each of us, every moment is just an experience.



2. Any moment of experience has only three elements: thoughts (including all mental images), sensations (everything sensed by the body and its sense organs) and awareness of these thoughts and sensations. Emotions and feelings are a combination of thought and sensation.



3. Thoughts and sensations are ephemeral, that is they come and go, and are objects, i.e. 'things' that are perceived.



4. Awareness is the constant subject, the 'perceiver' of thoughts and sensations and that which is always present. Even during sleep there is awareness of dreams and of the quality of that sleep; and there is also awareness of sensations; if a sensation becomes strong enough, such as a sound or uncomfortable sensation, one will wake up.



5. All thoughts and sensations appear in awareness, exist in awareness, and subside back into awareness. Before any particular thought or sensation there is effortless awareness of 'what is': the sum of all thoughts and sensations occurring at any given instant. During the thought or sensation in question there is effortless awareness of it within 'what is'. Then when it has gone there is still effortless awareness of 'what is'.



6. So the body/mind is experienced as a flow of ephemeral objects appearing in this awareness, the ever present subject. For each of us any external object or thing is experienced as a combination of thought and sensation, i.e. you may see it, touch it, know what it is called, and so on. The point is that for us to be aware of anything, real or imaginary, requires thought about and/or sensation of that thing and it is awareness of these thoughts and sensations that constitutes our experience.



7. Therefore this awareness is the constant substratum in which all things appear to arise, exist and subside. In addition, all living things rely on awareness of their environment to exist and their behaviour is directly affected by this. At the level of living cells and above this is self-evident, but it has been shown that even electrons change their behaviour when (aware of) being observed! Thus this awareness exists at a deeper level than body/mind (and matter/energy[1]) and we are this awareness!



8. This does not mean that at a surface level we are not the mind and body, for they arise in, are perceived by and subside back into awareness, which is the deepest and most fundamental level of our being. However, if we choose to identify with this deepest level - awareness - (the perceiver) rather than the surface level, mind/body (the perceived), then thoughts and sensations are seen for what they truly are, just ephemeral objects which come and go, leaving awareness itself totally unaffected.



9. Next investigate this awareness itself to see whether its properties can be determined.

Firstly what is apparent is that this awareness is effortlessly present and effortlessly aware. It requires no effort by the mind/body and thoughts and sensations cannot make it vanish however hard they try.



10. Next, this awareness is choicelessly present and choicelessly aware. Once again it requires no choice of the mind/body and they cannot block it however they try. For example, if you have a toothache there is effortless awareness of it and the mind/body cannot choose for this not to be the case. You may think that this is bad news but it is not so: can you imagine if you had to make a choice whether you would like to be aware of every sensation that the body experiences? In fact be grateful that there is no effort or choice involved for awareness just to be - such ease and simplicity - which is not surprising for you are this awareness!



11. It can be seen then, that for each of us this awareness is omnipresent; we never experiences a time or place when it is not present. Once again be grateful that the mind/body is never required to search for this awareness; it is just always there, which of course is not surprising for at the deepest level we are this awareness.



12. Next, notice that this awareness is absolutely still for it is aware of the slightest movement of body or mind. For example, we all know that to be completely aware of what is going on around us in a busy environment we have to be completely still, just witnessing the activity.



13. In the same vein this awareness is totally silent as it is aware of the slightest sound and the smallest thought. Therefore awareness is always completely at peace as to be absolutely still and totally silent is to be completely at peace.



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[1] The theory of relativity, and string theory, show that matter and energy are synonymous.







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Colin Drake's books are published by Jerry Katz's Nonduality Publications:




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