Ci "Arunachala! Thou dost root out the ego of those who meditate on Thee in the heart. Oh Arunachala!" — The Marital Garland of Letters, verse 1 December 1993 Jayanthi Issue Vol 30 Nos. 3 & 4 105 The Onlooker's View — Editorial 111 Sivananda: "Serve, Love, Meditate, Realise" by Susunaga Weeraperuma EDITOR: 121 Sage of Hearts by Wolter Keers V. Canesan PUBLISHER: 131 The Embodiment of Advaita by Swami Madhavtirtha Sri. T.N. Venkataraman 144 The Various Texts of 'Who am I?' — 1 by Michael James Letters and remittances should be sent to: 149 My Beloved Papa, Swami Ramdas The Publisher, "THE MOUNTAIN PATH" by Swami Satchidananda Sri Ramanasramam P.O. Tiruvannamalai 606 603. S. India. 157 Narayana Guru 167 T.K. Sundaresa Iyer — A Lifetime with Bhagavan by A.R. Natarajan 173 Dada Vaswani 180 God and the Godhead by David Godman 185 Yogi Ramsuratkumar Remembers 187 Book Reviews This issue is subsidised by: Sri H.R. 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No payment is made for con• tributions published. Annual Subscription Contributions are accepted only INDIA Rs. 30 on condition that they do not FOREIGN £7.50 or $15 appear elsewhere before being Life Subscription published in The Mountain Path. They can be published later else• Rs.500 £ 125.00 $250 where but only with acknowledge• ment to The Mountain Path. If despatch by AIR MAIL is desired the following additionaf annual amount should be remitted. THE MOUNTAIN PATH is dedicated to AIR-MAIL SURCHARGE Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi £ 5.00 or $ 10.00 per annum in addition to the annual subscription. JAYANTHI ISSUE DECEMBER 1993 Editorial Vol. 30 Nos. 3 & 4 L i — —— / I'• /1 Mppw Li LL _\_ The Onlooker's View Enquiring within, 'Who is the seer?' I saw the seer disappear leaving That alone which stands forever. No thought arose to say 'I saw'. How then could the thought arise to say 'I did not see? — Arunachala Ashtakam, verse 2 y^hat is the hallmark of jnana? What is the Various objects has been destroyed, sign of true and full Self-realisation? Sri This is the purest bliss serene. Bhagavan in the introductory verse defines this The differing perspectives of the jnani and state as being the one in which the T-thought, the a jnani are clearly brought out in these two the sense of being an individual person, has been verses. The jnani, abiding as the Self, 'the purest permanently eradicated. One consequence of bliss serene', is not aware of anything other than this eradication is both radical and surprising: his own Self. For him, names and forms are not the world-picture, which was only a projection merely unreal, they have no existence at all. The of that T-thought, disappears along with the T ajnani, on the other hand, moves around in a which used to see it, leaving only the formless wholly unreal world of his own making, thinking Self. In that final state there is no one who sees that the T who sees the world is moving around and nothing to be seen. Bhagavan summed up in that same world. The jnanifs perspective, if this perspective when he said, in Guru Vachaka one can call it a perspective, is the real one, Kovai, verse 1005: whereas the ajnani's perspective has one unreal The state in which no "other" is seen, entity observing another, which is equally unreal. No "other" heard, no "other" known, Know that this and this alone This distinction should be borne in mind Is Cosmic Consciousness [Bhuma]. whenever one addresses the perennial question of 'Who is a jnani? or 'Who is not a jnani?. In describing Self-realisation in this way, 'Only a jnani can recognise a jnani,1 says Bhagavan was endorsing a similar Upanishadic Bhagavan (Day by Day, p. 19). The ajnani does definition which can be found in the Chandogya not have this ability because his T can only Upanishad (7:24:1): recognise unreal names and forms. While that T That in which one does not see what-is-other still exists, there is no functioning faculty in him [anya], does not hear what-is-other and does which can register or experience the jnana which not know what-is-other, is the infinite underlies them. Anything which the ajnani sees [bhuma], whereas the state in which one sees is therefore unreal, and, consequently, any con• what-is-other, hears what-is-other, and knows clusion he comes to which depends on this un• what-is-other, is finite [alpa]. That which is real visual evidence must necessarily be untrue. infinite alone is immortal, whereas that which That is why the ajnani can never evaluate the is finite is mortal. state or greatness of a jnani by watching how he The observer and the observed, the T and behaves or by listening to what he says. the world, only arise, says Bhagavan, when one Bhagavan has said that our fundamental mis• forgets one's own Self, one's own real nature. take lies in identifying ourselves with our bodies. Conversely, when one abides as the Self, with• Having made that error, we then move on quite out ever losing awareness of it, the world and its naturally to the erroneous conclusion that the observer never arise. This was confirmed by jnani is also someone who lives in and functions Bhagavan in the next verse of Guru Vachaka through a body. Kovai (1006), a verse which also develops a theme from the Chandogya Upanishad: An ajnani sees someone as a jnani and iden• Non-dual infinite Awareness tifies him with the body. Because he [the Where the error of seeing, hearing, ajnani] does not know the Self and mistakes knowing his [own] body for the Self, he extends the 1993 THE ONLOOKER'S VIEW 107 same mistake to the state of the jnani. The that the jnani is like a child who is fed while it jnani is therefore considered to be the physi• is half asleep, and who remembers nothing about cal frame. it the next morning. Yhe idea of such analogies is that the onlooker sees an action and assumes Again, since the ajnani, though he is not the that someone is doing it, and is aware of doing doer, still imagines himself to be the doer and it. In fact, in each case, there is no one on the considers the actions of the body his own, he "inside* who is aware of what is going orv. thinks the jnani to be similarly acting when his body is active. But the jnani himself knows Bhagavan would sometimes add that all these the truth [that he never performs actions] and explanations were only given to satisfy the con• is not confounded. The state of the jnani fused minds of 'onlookers' who found it hard to cannot be determined by the ajnani and assimilate the truth that the jnani is not the therefore the question troubles only the ajnani body and does not function within it or through and never does it arise for the jnani. (Talks, it. His memorable phrase, 'There are no jnanis, no. 499) there is only jnana,* attempts to convey this same idea: that realisation is not a localised phe• The ajnani likes to think that jnana will some• nomenon that has occurred in some bodies but how shine through in the behaviour, the atti• not in others. Jnana arises non-temporally and tudes and the words of the person who is taken non-spatially as soon as the 'onlooker's view• to be a jnani, and that one can therefore judge point' is destroyed. whether a person is realised or not on the basis of his speech, demeanour, etc.