sandananda giri

Here is my translation of a Malayalam article from ‘JANMABHOOMI’ which I thought is worth publishing here :-

Divinity is untouched by thought – by Santhananda Giri

Experience the Absolute Truth in the denial of the ‘I’ awareness. It is all the imagined differences joined together that has perpetuated and maintained the ‘I’ throughout the ages and rebirths. When that is removed the quest as to ‘who am I?’ ends. The doubt as to what is that I see around also ends. Because the apprehension of everything is one single unity; then how can one see a second? To evaluate what you see and to elaborate it, the mind is ever ready; but where the mind has vacated what elaboration can exist? Unity is where no two things exist for comparison. Everything ideologically or conceptually habituated end there. Before the existence of One Truth nothing second remains to be talked about. That is the joy of divinity.
Right, wrong, good, bad, blessing, sin, duty, idling, etc. or the interpretation of language to conceptualize the meaning of a thing and its shape, its memory and experience, nothing of these are there in divine experience. Divinity is untouched by thought.
Our decision on any subject is always likely to be wrong. That is because, what we know is about a thing or subject that changes. On things that we know, we decide that it is such and such, but it should have been so and so, that it is beautiful or ugly, and that it is useful or useless etc. They are all ideas that get changed. Life and death are just two concepts. And soul is divine experience. It is very difficult to understand. If life is the continuance of the present, death is an interval. Again it has to continue. The entity that remains throughout the changing experiences is the Truth.
Our conclusions about a subject are most likely to be wrong. Because, what we know are about changing things. And on those changing things we decide what we know as beautiful, ugly, good, bad, useful, useless, essential, unnecessary etc.etc. The ideas are all subject to change. Life and death are just two ideas. And Atma is an experience. It is difficult to understand this. If life is a continuation of the present, its stand-still interval is death. It has no alternative but to repeat itself. That which continues through all these changes of experiences is The Truth. That is the essence of divinity. It is to that entity that has no birth or death. It is beyond time. It is not something that has come into being. Therefore it has no death. Only when one goes beyond the mind it will get revealed. There is neither space nor time there. Therefore God does not engage himself in the work of completing your imaginary aspirations of the future. What is the role of God in life? It exists ever luminous throughout, at the root of all, enlightening everything and every experience, omnipresent, while you conceive and execute every action of yours. Once you understand that God does not undertake the work of making changes in the day to day transactions in the life of man as per man’s wishes, you will not feel cheated.
The reason for all tragedies, all untoward happenings and all sorrows is because of seeing things through the narrow gap of the senses and mind constricted by the feeling of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Once you know the basics of ‘I’, all problems end. The first thing to understand is that the experiences of the senses are not truth. And firmly establish in your mind that the world around you is not as you see around.
Athma is essentially in the nature of bliss. Therefore whatever you understand in Atma is blissful. Bliss is right. All else is wrong. When does a thing create sorrow? It is when you separate what you see through names and boundaries and considering them as different from you that something becomes the cause for sorrow. Know that all experiences are within yourself. Without the presence of Atma nothing exists here. To know anything ever there must be first a person to know. While knowing as well as after knowing he is there. Therefore without the presence of an ‘I’ it is not possible to know or experience this world. Before experiencing the world there is no sound. Where all the sounds terminate there is the real form. Atma in the form of knowledge is the self; that is the fact and all else is false. There is no ‘knowing’ there. What one knows is of things imagined or conceived in one’s mind due to ignorance. One who knows that what is known in imagination when the energy of Grace is reflected and present, is different from Atma, is the greatest among the spiritual masters. There is no doubt about that. See the world bereft of conceptual imaginations. Don’t doubt whether that is possible. To see our body we do not need imagination, is it not so? Like that see all bodies. That is the way or trick to experience ultimately the divinity in its entirety. In all that you consider as universe, you can experience the essence of divinity. ‘All this in its entirety is divinity of God!’ “Isavasya midam sarvam”, understanding that should be without the interference of the mind.
The duality perceptions of one who sinks into the depths of his visions in the heart gets annihilated. When sights are annihilated the ‘se-er’ is left. The illumination and brightness of the seer is not imaginary or a guess-work. That is Truth. You cannot take it and present it to somebody as you give a physical object. It is not possible to take is as something that can be argued about and won over. It is beyond words. The Atma entity cannot be shown by any demonstration. Those who say that they can show God is misleading you. A real Guru is one who shows you that ‘God Is’ behind the process of your seeing. Not the one who undertakes to save you in the name of God and cheats you.
Words, mind and intellect have no reach there. Then how can it be shared? How can it be shown? There is no other way but to sink into one’s own self. Existence is infinite. Everywhere it is complete. Therefore by perceptions in depth inside it does not become non-existent there. That is how its ‘is-ness’ is to be experienced.
Dry leaf has no individuality in the wind; likewise fly for the sake of Truth in complete renunciation. In that you surrender everything. Let detachment come with a passion. This Absolute Truth is not far off. It is because of burying one’s heart in darkness without appreciating the greatness of human life that we fail to know it. Keeping the mind silent turn your attention towards its depth. It is there, for sure.

I AND MY BOREDOM

I and my boredom
Who am I?
Of course, I am surely the entity that feels the pain when this body is pinched.
No doubt about that. Is that your body that feels the pain or the mind behind it?
The body feels the pain and the mind recognises it.
Then who are you?
The body-mind-complex, or the body-mind system as a whole.
But what is the mind?
Running thoughts, memory, and memory retrieval mechanism (and the running commentator?) constitute the mind.
What about the sense organs and attention? Are they not part of the mind?
No, sense organs just feed the attention at the moment, and the memory storage. Attention seems to be focussed awareness, a part of the vast awareness that powers everything.
Then where comes the feeling of ‘I’ or the ‘ego’ as it is referred to?
‘I’ seems to be a mental construction of an image from various memory factors for purposes of identity, self perceived security, and self importance.
In this set up, who is bored? The body cannot be bored. There is no reason for the memory, or running thoughts to be bored. Awareness, while supplying power, is a passive witness, never bothered about boredom. Then who gets bored?
The mental construction that is ego, who is selfish and wants some pleasure all the time, coaxes the attention to jump from one thing to the other searching for pleasure or at least some engagement of the attention so that it can ride on it and enjoy. Otherwise it is afraid that it will be burdened with suppressed fears, discomforts or aches of the body highlighted, and other unpleasant experiences. That could be the only reason to be bored. It is this ego, a fictitious element that is getting bored.
There is that great saying Tat Twam Asi ‘that thou art’. What is ‘that’ and what is ‘thou’? ‘that’ seems to refer to the Ultimate reality, and ‘thou’ to ‘you’. How can the ultimate reality be the miserable ’you’?
'THAT', of course, refers to the Ultimate Reality, which is the same entity as the Pure Awareness that powers man including his universe. Or it could be what is virtually beyond and behind the Awareness in the quantum domain. There is no way of knowing.
And ‘thou’ here does not refer to the miserable ‘you’ or the ego. It refers to the entity that is beyond and behind the body-mind complex, powering it as well as everything else. It cannot be ‘you’ in the sense that the limited ego or ‘I- feeling’ cannot be the vast immeasurable Infinity that is the ultimate reality. The profound statement if thus interpreted would seem to be nothing but a tautology saying ‘ultimate reality is ultimate reality’. It may look absurd, but It means that the ultimate principle of the universe is the same as the ultimate reality lying within you. That is to say that you need not look elsewhere to find the Truth but within yourself.

Knowledge Vs Devotion
We often hear the expression ‘god-fearing’ attributed to virtuous persons with a sense of approval. A god-fearing person is supposed to be an upright, honest, reliable and generally good person. I was brought up in a society having these sort of values, in which I had the fortune to be recognized a god-fearing boy. And I always felt guilty whenever I felt that I did some thing wrong or something against my conscience.
But now I feel and understand that the basic emotion underlying the need to be god-fearing is only pure fear, and not the desire to be good. What is actually required is not fear of God, but love of God, pure devotion or divine Love. Fearing God is just fear of one’s own conscience. Of course it has its own virtue for making one desist from doing things considered wrong or ‘sinful’.
One may ask why the love of God or devotion is more important than fear of God? Because, while fear of god helps keep a person pure in mind without the feeling of guilt, and prepare him ready to seek spiritual blessings, it does not help one to experience the Ultimate. Even intellectual knowledge of the Absolute is useless without devotion. Intellectual knowledge separates the knowledge from the known. To know reality, knowledge and the known has to merge and be one with the knower. That would be possible only with utmost devotion where the knower merges with the absolute. To know God one has to be God. Only in divine love oneness happens. That is why it is said, ‘Surrender to the Infinite, the Ultimate Reality that is God’.
But is the other way around true, meaning, does knowledge of the absolute come from devotion alone without any effort to know? The logical answer is, of course, having known God everything else is automatically known. Nothing is left to be known.

talk in seminar at current books, Tellicherry

The subject today, 'Ageless body and Timeless mind’ is a very tough subject. It would have been very vague and intangible also but for the book by the same title of Deepak Chopra, a doctor and an endocrinologist. It is one of the best sellers, a wonderful book much appreciated in US as well as in India.
Deepak Chopra’s main point is that aging is a matter of choice or is optional, and not mandatory or inevitable. How the choice is exercised is a big question. It is exercised through belief. Aging happens because from birth onwards we believe that we have to age and die. We see also that others as well as animals and plants age and die. This belief has to be reversed. And the belief that aging is not inevitable has to be so rooted that it has to come from beyond the mind from the quantum field or domain. Deepak Chopra tries to prove through the latest findings in quantum physics that aging can actually be avoided. He approaches the source deep within all of through three different paths, through body that is matter, through mind which is the transition level, and time.
Body is made of material. But what is this material? If you go to the ultimate ingredients we find the individual cells and then the genetically coded DNA consisting of Nucleotides and then Amino Acids, Sugars etc. Material means cluster of energy. DNA contains information and energy. All the information for the functioning of the body is contained or coded in the DNA. But if you analyze the DNA we come across amino acids, sugars etc which are nothing but molecules and atoms. Atoms consist of quarks, neutrinos and electrons, all of which are photons in vibration. The material part ends at the atom. Beyond it, the quarks, leptons etc are energy photons in vibration with vast spaces in between. This is the quantum field or domain. There is tremendous intelligence functioning in the body for all the organs working in unison. Where is then this intelligence lying? Not in the material body. In between the neutrinos and electrons there is only vast space. In fact 99.9 per cent of material is space. There is intelligence and information functioning, directing, manipulating, guiding these constituents of the body to act in a particular manner in these quantum space or quantum field. It sees and supervises that a cell does not grow as a nail in the liver. Tremendous intelligence is at work without our conscious participation. The seat of this intelligence, the source of this information we cannot find in the cells or in the DNA. The coded information in the DNA functions alright but what intelligence creates it and makes it function we cannot fathom. The quantum field, the non-material mental stage, as already mentioned is composed of concentrations of energy waves and vast empty space. Therefore we can say that the whole universe is composed of empty space and energy, fluid energy. Energy and matter are convertible at quantum level. This is therefore the transition stage between mind and matter. Our body is mainly empty space at the quantum level. The intelligence, the source has to lie in that empty space at the quantum field level or beyond it at the virtual level. How to access that intelligence to stop ageing or slow down aging is the question.
Human thought happens when the neurons in the brain fires. Thought is thus matter. Memory is stored impressions of thought. But no storage device is found anywhere in the body or brain. The brain is all mainly liquid. Only thing I have left is my awareness, pure awareness. All the intelligence, all the information that the body needs must therefore be coming from the awareness or through the awareness. That must be the source and that must be the creator and the controller of the DNA and the very atom. Its seat need not be anywhere in particular. In the quantum field or beyond space and time has no meaning. The source can be anywhere or everywhere. The gap, the chink in the quantum world through which the access to intelligence is possible is the awareness. It is the window.
We know from modern science that billions of cells are dying in our body every day and billions are being replaced. Yet we all look and function as if the body is the same. That is to say that repair and replacements are happening every day, and by the time a year is out we have a completely new body. Then why should we age? It must be because the replacing mechanism does not function fully. Replacing and repairing or healing will work perfectly if the underlying intelligence of the awareness is taken recourse to without interference by thought. The thought has to be quiet, still. Attention and intention of pure awareness can do the trick says Deepak Chopra.
According to Einstein’s theory time is not absolute. That is, time is a make believe, an illusion. It is relative. We have chronological time, psychological time and biological time. While my chronological time is eighty-two, my biological or physiological time may be only seventy and my psychological time only fifty-five. Chronological time is because of earth’s change of position or rotation relative to the sun, our light. The duration is divided into twenty four hours etc. imagine a person in empty outer space far away from the sun. What is time for him? There may be changes in his position or bodily functions. But there is no time. There are only changes in the universe. And memory creates past and future. We metabolize time by thinking. But if we metabolize it by observing, perceiving, witnessing then we find that time stands still in the present. A timeless mind, a timeless awareness creates an ageless body. Natural rebuilding and replacing of the body happens and aging slows down. Even the bio-chemistry of the body actually arises from the awareness. ( Note: in short, what Deepak Chopra has done is to give us a solid scientific basis for the spiritual experience through quantum )physics and biochemistry.)

the restless mind

I am awake for about sixteen hours every day. All this time my mind is engaged with something or other. There seems no alternative; it will anyway be engaged with something automatically whether I like it or not. If it is not engaged in work, pleasure, reading or day dreaming, it will get uneasy inviting some disturbing thoughts. That is why when there is nothing interesting for the mind to do it is called boredom. When one is bored, disturbing thoughts nag and push for entry into the mind.
Not having anything to do is not boredom. Having nothing interesting to do, or be engaged in, is boredom. Having nothing at all to do, nothing interesting or nothing uninteresting to be engaged in, can actually be a pleasant silence, a calm quietude. Interest in something keeps the mind occupied so as to avoid unwanted disturbances and uneasiness. If I keep the mind engaged in observing the mind itself, that is to say that if I am aware and attentive to the very movements of the mind, then, I am never bored. Slowly pleasant silence also quietly enters in.
Why the mind is normally engaged in something or other incessantly? There is no respite even for a moment unless one is asleep. Sometimes the thoughts are pleasant, other times compulsorily unpleasant. There are anxieties over anticipated pain. There are pleasures to look forward. Most of the time the mind is engaged with something in the present. And it gets absorbed in the incoming sense impressions. Why can’t the mind be still without being hooked on to senses or thoughts?
Is it because that is its intrinsic nature? Or is it because it is a habit acquired from birth? Or, is it to avoid things unpleasant and painful from coming in uninvited. I think it could be the last. Of course when it is engaged with known things pleasant or even unpleasant, no unknown fears can come in.
I find that in my case it is clearly to avoid the onslaught of fears or the fear that barges in as soon as the mind is empty. Can grace come in instead of fears if one cultivates some suitable habit? There is no time left!

staying with emotions

When I am angry, I am anger. I stay with anger. I become aware of anger. Anger then loses it’s strength.
I am afraid. I am fear. I stay with fear. I am aware of fear. I perceive it and become bold enough to play with it. The fear fades and subsides.
If I stay with the mood, with the emotion, the emotion does not erupt into thoughts that reinforce the mood to sustain it. It is thought that helps the continuation of a mood or emotion.
But, if the mood is a pleasant one, like say, a feeling of elation, that also fades and vanishes on being aware of it. Naturally I want to retain the pleasant ones and avoid the unpleasant moods. The trick is to allow thoughts arising from pleasant emotions to go on. It has of course, the risk of allowing thoughts to become a habit, thereby bringing in unpleasant thoughts also by force of the habit. After all, mind is a complicated, intricate maze!
I am told by a friend that my Radio Talk on ‘Aging Gracefully’ was very good, and he congratulated me on that. I feel happy and elated. I stay with the happy mood and observe it. Slowly it starts fading. But if I go on thinking about it the elation gets continued for some more time. Even after it is completely faded, the happiness can be revived for small intervals by thinking about it. If it had been an unpleasant incident like a derogatory remark, I would have tried to avoid thinking about it, and failed in the attempt. The unpleasant emotions attached to derogatory remarks are much more powerful and do persist. Complete conscious awareness can however eliminate all of them. The mechanics of how emotions erupt are to be understood.
I have to be aware of the whole process working within me. If I allow the thoughts to erupt and continue without being aware or conscious of the process, then I am either being miserable or indulging in pleasure, as the case may be. In pleasure or misery, one is not consciously aware. But in pure joy, one is fully aware.
In sexual pleasure with an element of guilt, it is the lack of conscious awareness that makes it mechanical indulgence and not joy. In the union of love there is awareness and joy.

infinite nothingness

Nothingness!
There is nothing; not even space – or time.
Reality is of the size one divided by infinity (1/∞).

The nothingness, pregnant with infinite energy,
Self suppressed,
Burst out vibrant,
Forward and backward; up and down, inside and outside.

The vibrating explosion of energy was electro-magnetic,
Of the order of lightening
Let there be light; there was light.
The Light was Life.

Light condensed itself into everything.
Nothing has become everything.
And it goes on becoming everything.
It has to finally go back into Nothing!

I too will go back to Nothing,
That pregnant, dynamic NOTHINGNESS!