Some sample text from James’ New Book Existence Shining as Consciousness
Sat Darshanam – Ramana Maharshi
Forward
As many of you know, I believe that the distinction between experience and knowledge is probably responsible for the success of ShiningWorld and the growing interest in Vedanta worldwide. The idea being that liberation is not a discrete experience but is the nature of the self, that ignorance of the Self is the cause of suffering and that a valid means of knowledge is the only way to remove suffering and ensure a lasting sense of freedom.
The statement that knowledge of the Self is the only way to freedom, however, may give the impression that Vedanta is only an “intellectual” philosophy and that one’s life goes on as before once the knowledge is gained, which is true from one perspective, but not from another. In fact, one’s life is radically transformed once the knowledge is firm, if it has been gradually transformed by the consistent constant daily practice of self inquiry before. Life will never be the same once you commit to Vedanta and follow the path properly.
To properly set foot on the path of knowledge means that one should not ignore the mind, try to transcend it, or remove it but to cultivate it assiduously by gradually shifting one’s attention from the mind to the reflected sensation of Being that is simultaneously going on “behind” the mind.
The sensation of being, often translated as “the I-sense,” adds a new dimension to idea that an individual is cast in the image of God, to use Christian language, or a reflection of God to use Vedantic language. To put it simply we are always experiencing freedom. In so far as we exist, the feeling of freedom—it’s sensation—is the topic of this simple brilliant teaching of Ramana Maharshi, as unfolded by a modern mahatma, Swami Tattvavidananda, a guru brother and disciple of the late great Swami Dayananda Saraswati. One of my friends recently sent me a transcript of his talks on this important topic and I have taken the liberty to transform it into a written document that is easily accessible to a sincere inquirer committed to Vedanta.
Those who are familiar with my writings may be a little surprised by the literary style, which is not without precedent. A knower of Existence is sometimes called a rishi, a seer, and sometimes a kavi, a poet. I dedicate this work to Ramana Marharshi, whose teachings about the nature of freedom itself have been largely misunderstood by Western seekers in so far as they do not endorse the view that liberation is a discrete experience of one’s innermost self, a one-off that requires no preparation or maintenance.
Invocation
What is that Existence Principle that pervades all objects, all names and forms? Without it no experiences are possible. It pervades the experiencing subject also. It is the witnessing Consciousness Principle shining as the essence of the Mind and is called the Heart. It is the only limitless, divisionless, non-dual Principle. Because it is not an object of thought, It cannot be known by the experiencing subject. To know It is to abide in It without objectifying It.
Can there be the feeling of “I” without that which exists always!
Free from thoughts, it exists, this inner being, the Heart.How then to know that which is beyond the mind?To know it is to abide firmly in the Heart. The “I” thought is the first to die for those who have taken refuge,out of fear of death, at the feet of Shiva, the conqueror of death!
Thereafter, they are naturally immortal.Can they ever again be assailed by the fear of death?Therefore, worship Shiva
Speaking the Unspeakable
Every day I wake up and look out the window at a spectacular landscape from the top of a mountain in the Axarquia mountains in Southern Spain. I draw the curtains and pinch myself to make sure I’m awake because I feel a great sense of dreamlike wonder and gratitude that whatever moves us here and there through life daily sees fit to pleasure the eyes of an old man in his sunset years with unspeakable beauty and his ears with the equally unspeakable silence of eternity.
On the edge of a nearby ridge sits a big boxy house with perhaps a slightly more commanding view. My mind hates that house with a passion but not for long, however, because the next thought invokes a feeling of wonder akin to the sensation inspired by the panorama of granite peaks and undulating hills that accommodate a vast patchwork of almond and olive farms stretching south for thirty miles that end at the bottom of a huge mountain that obscures the view of the Mediterranean on the other side.
For reasons known only to the prime mover, my mind has been blessed, perhaps cursed is a better word, with a refined sense of aesthetics. To call the house boxy isn’t quite right because boxy implies that it may contain other more interesting features. It doesn’t. It’s a big box. I suppose when you get right down to it a box is a box is a box so you can’t say one is more or less beautiful than another, unless it is a gift box from a snobby high end retailer of chocolates, perfumes or bespoke foot ware. The mind would like to criticize the box with another negative thought but it knows better and moves to silence.
I won’t talk more about its biases. The wonder returns, invoked by the thought that this box, which passes itself off as someone’s second home, sports three postage stamp-sized windows on the down valley side, depriving the occupants, who never seem to visit and probably live in the Dickensian warren of hilly streets in the nearby working village of Colmenar, a spectacular view. A working village, a large percentage of whose population is bereft of gainful employment, is rather plain, not one of the gussied up twee hamlets dotting the mountains and favored by British tourists seeking to enjoy a boozy Andalusian life on the Costa del Sol.
This box fills me with wonder because I can’t fathom how anyone with eyes could fail to be uplifted by the obvious daily splendor of God’s glory and culpably neglect to install the generous bank of windows demanded by the view. You might say it’s vanity, but God wants to be seen. However, only the one who sees, sees what is hidden in plain sight. Gravity, for instance, glues us to the earth for neigh on eighty years but how many gravity thoughts does one have during one’s lifespan?
The existence principle that shines as consciousness is like space in so far as it pervades every one of our experiences, the variegated and limitless sentient and insentient world of names and forms that make up the world and the apparent person we have been told we are. Its nature is limitless bliss and yet, who sees it? Only the one that sees, sees. Like gravity it is as old as the hills, present everywhere and hidden in plain sight. The one non-binary thing that will make us infinitely richer than Jeff Bezos, provide pleasure more intense that football, put spring in one’s step and erase the worry wrinkles that supposedly bless us with character is unknown— for want of another kind of eye.
Itself a name and form, the mind is an eye that opens up the world of names and forms to the secret existence principle sitting silently behind it. But it is an eye that can’t keep its mouth shut. From womb to tomb It yammers and stammers, jabbers and blabbers, natters and chatters, rants and raves. It won’t shut up, yet we love it at least as much as we do our spouses and our darling bundles of juvenile joy, probably more. Not only won’t it sit still and keep its mouth shut, it is cursed with greed. It wants more, more more, better, better better, and different different different. It wants quantity, quality, variety, and novelty—and it wants it NOW! It driven by an insatiable hunger for experiences that are meant to make it feel secure, satisfied, powerful, famous, virtuous and respectable. But as Ganapathi Muni the wise Tamil poet who rendered Ramana’s text in Sanskrit says, “it is not an object of thought,” which means that experience is nothing but thoughts and feelings arising and falling in the light of existence appearing as our ordinary awareness. And therein lies the rub. We stare at the world like hypnotized zombies expecting it to deliver lasting bliss and all it can come up with is a few paltry moments of zero-sum pleasure interspersed with sometimes tediously expanded periods of suffering.
The invocation’s second verse says we’re missing the mark because we’re focused on the “I-sense,” popularly known as the ego. It is the part of you that identifies with activities. The “I-sense” or “I-notion” is not the same as the existence principle. It is a subtle seemingly conscious reflective abstraction that resembles it. Principles are not generally thought to have anything to do with daily living but this has everything to do with it. Every experience we have presupposes a prior universal I. So the “I-sense” is not the thought-free essential I, which Ramana calls the Heart. The essence of the “I-sense” is What Is, the existence principle. Since it is beyond experience and knowledge, can we know and experience it? We are never not experiencing it as I, which Ramana metaphorically calls “abiding in the Heart.”
The third verse says that if you want to stop worrying about what’s happening i.e. change, which is symbolized by the word death, the “I-sense” has to die. Fortunately it has nothing to do with you because the I, non-binary existence shining as consciousness, is immortal. The forty verses that follow unfold the science of existence shining as consciousness, or awareness, if you prefer. Pride, willful ignorance that claims ownership of things that belong to God, is a definition of ego that does not apply in this context.
Before we delve into the text we need to dismiss the clumsy ill-conceived popular notion of ego death, which is based on the notion that the I-sense prevents us from experiencing bliss of the I, which is not true. Asking an embodied being to kill itself is absurd because it would only kill itself if it thought that it would be present to enjoy the results of its actions, which it won’t if its dead. Furthermore, the “I-notion” is not actually conscious in so far as it is a notion and notions are inert, which makes them incapable of action. So on both counts, the idea comes up short. The death Ramana speaks of is the death of an idea, which is accomplished by abiding in the Heart, which will be explained as we proceed.
