Happy Birthday, Robert

Posted on January 21, 2015 by janeadamsart

Here are some “Imponderables” from the American sage Robert Adams (21 January 1928 11.30pm – 5 March 1997).

I woke up this morning, saw something on facebook, and was inspired to celebrate his birthday with these “imponderables” from transcript 85 of his satsangs. It is called “Ponder This” – some sips of rare wine to mull along the day while riding on buses and recovering from sore backs and concerned about the world situation, and so forth.

A new sketch for Robert’s birthday

“All of your desires, all of your needs, all of your wants are already within you, waiting to be fulfilled and expressed . . . Ponder this.”

“All of the masters, the teachers, the saints, the sages you worshipped all your life, whether it is Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Moses, whomever, have always been within you, waiting to be expressed . . . Ponder this.”

“The only problem you have, that does not allow these sages, your desires, your wants to be expressed for you, is your noisy mind . . . Ponder this.”

“Whatever you see in your life right now, good or bad, is a result of your thoughts and your belief. It has no other reality. It is not permanent . . . Ponder this.”

“There is absolutely nothing in this universe that can hurt you, or cause you physical harm, or cause you pain, except when your mind is trained to believe these things . . . Ponder this.”

“You have absolutely nothing to do with this world, this universe, or with others. Yet, at the same time, you are this universe. You are places and things and others . . . Ponder this.”

“No one is responsible for where you are right now, whether you like your position or you do not. This is where you are Karmically. This is where you are supposed to be, and all is well . . . Ponder this.”

Robert and Dmitri

… To be continued, over the next few days. I made these imponderables into a little book, and illustrated it, at around the time Robert passed away in Sedona, in 1997. To read my posts about meeting Robert, type Robert Adams in the search button.

Happy birthday, beloved one.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

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All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Ganapati Muni’s Science of Mantra – Part Four

Posted on November 20, 2014 by janeadamsart

In this concluding post of the series, Ganapati Muni’s commentary elucidates the forms of Skanda and Indra which bear the mantra’s sound-wave, Sabda Brahman, seeing them realised in his spiritual brother and mentor, Ramana Maharshi of Arunachala. See also the three preceding posts, and search “Puranas” on this blog for a racy account of the Skanda mythology.

Note: the god Skanda is also known as Kumara, Murugan (or Subrahmanya) and Krtikkai.

Third Chapter: The Vedic Mantra of Guha
by Ganapati Muni

We have commented upon the two Tantric Mantras of the master Ramana. Yet his Mantras are found even in the Veda. Amongst them, here is a clear cut Mantra of Bhagavan:

“Vrsa jajana vrsanam ranaya
tamu cinnari naryam sasuva.
Prayah senanir adha nrbhyo astinah
satva gavesanah sa dhrsruh.”

The seer is Vasishtha. The Deity is Indra and the metre is Trishtubh.
vrsa is “Rudra who is of the form of Sabda Brahman”. He is vrsa because “he pours down (varsati) the special knowledge”;
vrsanam “the God who showers down flames ranavya for battle”.
To wage war brings forth the meaning – vrsa jajana – (Rudra)

Tamu – the way God, u, is indeclinable (without inflexions) – suggests the loftiness of the Name with which it is closely associated

nari cit is the divine Force: cit is indeclinable, used to denote the indescribable.
If nari is derived from nara, men, then the word nari (feminine) means the Kundalini sakti hidden in man. (*)

sasuva – “is produced”. In what way ? Naryam – “born amongst men” – are the leaders, or perfected beings.

FOOTNOTE -
* Nari is feminine (nari-kundalini)

THIS IS THE TRANSLATION IN ESSENCE:

“Kundalini sakti in the body of perfected man produces for ‘battle’
Indra’s form within the fire of astra from Sabda Brahman.”

God, taking birth, “becomes the commander – senanih – of the armies of the Gods”.
The third and fourth lines of the verse conclude:

adha nrbhvo asti – “and a helper to their leaders”
inah (means) svami – “the Master”,
satva “is the possessor of sat, of Truth”
gavesanah “seeking out”
sa “the acclaimed God”
dhrsruh, “assailer of all foes.”

Arunachala, inner path

To read here that Indra is being referred to and not Subrahmanya (Skanda), presents no problem. The ‘ordinary’ name for the fire of astra is Indra, and Kumara (Skanda) is the special name.

In what way ordinary? or special? For instance, the common name for the sun is Light, but his special or personal name is Surya.

Indra denotes broadly, all ideas of multi-faceted strength.(18)

According to a thing’s true nature, each facet of it has separate specific or ‘special’ names. In the Veda and the Brahmana it is well-known that Indra is the god of strength. The fire of astra is a powerful and mighty concept, for which, combined with supreme Lordship, Indra’s name (as the ‘ordinary’) is appropriate. The commanding fire of astra is described specifically as Kumara. There exists another reason beyond all this, which we shall submit later.

FOOTNOTE:
18 Indra denotes the strong lord, as in Mahendra, Kavindra, 
Munindra, etc.

Sacred India Tarot – Indra and Garuda

WHERE ‘ITIHASA’ IS APPROPRIATE

When the world was afflicted by powerful Asuras, the Gods begged and prayed to Brahma the Creative power for relief. Brahma replied the young Kumara (Skanda) born of Rudra from Gauri would destroy the Asuras. Later Kama the god of lust was sent by the Gods to incline ascetic Rudra towards the idea of progeny. Kama was burnt up (by one look from Rudra’s third eye). Thereupon, the young Gauri did tapas. Attracted to the severity of her tapas (spiritual effort) Rudra married her. Uniting with her, he ejected his seed upwards. The seed took shelter successively in the fire, in the water and in the stalk of sara grass, and finally became the young one, Kumara.

Parvati(Gauri) and Siva with Ganapati and Skanda

Parvati(Gauri) and Siva with Bull Nandi and their children Ganapati and Skanda. Ganapati’s vehicle is the rat, and Skanda’s is the peacock.

In other words: All human means were futile to conquer the Asura race (of demons) who devastated the world by the strength of their maya. Here we should take the Asura race as a specific, or special human type; in the world of men the Kingdom of Asuras became perpetual. (A problem cannot be solved with itself; the higher octave has to be called in.) The Gods gave astra, wisdom (*) to the seers, in order to destroy the Asuras. With the destruction of the Asuras, the Kingdom of the devotees of God became once more established on earth.

This story is related by Itihasa in a covert manner. When the jiva does tapas, firstly kama, desire, is burnt by the glory of tapas. We should not forget the fact, that the state of tapas is poised in the effulgence of Sabda Brahman. Though desire is burnt up in its gross form, it prevails in the seed form, and impels the Kundalini sakti, called Gauri (or Parvati), to perform tapas. About Kundalini being called Gauri, it is said in the Upanishad: “pita bhasatyanupama.” (19) Gauri’s form of Kundalini is fairly wellknown in the Tantra. By her tapas, the Sabda Brahman manifests.

The whole purport is that the form of the Supreme Vak (pronunciation, divine speech) becomes capable of experiencing. When Kundalini herself, reunited with Sabda Brahman, performs tapas, the sound vibration (energy) manifests. It impels the energised sound in the sky, and becomes the astra.

The seed of Sabda Brahman is cultured in the fire of muladhara (root) and the nectar of the head (sahasrara) – these are said to be its consecutive sojourns in Agni and in Ganga. (20)

The manifestation in the stalk of sara grass has been described in the Second Chapter.

We have to take the Asuras as belonging to all times, not as born in a particular period. Itihasa’s aim is to propound an all time truth.

FOOTNOTES: 
* - or Awareness

19 - Gauri, lit. "of golden yellow colour." The Narayana 
Upanishad says "Yellow, like an atom, she shines."

20 - In the subtle body, the centre at the base of the spine 
is muladhara and the centre at the top of the head is 
sahasrara. Muladhara is the seat of Fire, while sahasrara 
is the seat of the moon wherefrom the nectar flows.
 
As Ganga is the celestial river, she symbolises the nectar 
in sahasrara while Agni is the element in muladhara. The seed 
of the Sabda Brahman passes from muladhara to sahasrara, and 
has its sojourn in both centres before it manifests. 

This is the meaning of the Puranic story that Skanda is 
born from Agni as well as from the Ganga.

Gauri – Parvati – being pestered by sages

WHO IS THE ASURA TARAKA?

Well, is it not to destroyTaraka that Skanda is born? Is Taraka a historical personage?

No. Yet, Tarakasura represents a truth. Taraka is death, one who (as the ferryman) takes across – tarati – all men. (20A) In both ways, Guha (in heart’s cave) conquers Death. By granting Self knowledge, he conquers death, the lack of awareness which causes samsara. By the strength of the astra, he conquers death, the desire of his foes. It is said in the Puranas that the Tripura Asuras are sons of this same Taraka. The Tripura Asuras are none other than the three bonds. (21) Their father is lack of awareness. That is, we fall from the Self into the body – into the idea (of being separate), of considering it as the self.

FOOTNOTE:
20A See also tara, goddess of time

21 The Three Bonds are the three pasas from which release is 
sought from Varuna by the Vedic Rishi. In the later Tantra, 
these take the form of the three granthi knots in the subtle 
body: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Asura Lord (Demonic)

COMMANDER OF ARMIES

How do the words commander of armies in the Mantra signify ‘commander of armies of the gods?’ Indra, the King of Gods, becomes in this context their commander. This is made clear in another Mantra:

“Indra asem neta brha spatir Let Indra be the leader. Let Brhaspati
dakshina yajnah pura etu somah           go in front, Dakshina, the sacrifice, and Soma
Devasenanam abhibhanjatinam   Let the Maruts march in the forefront
jayantinam maruto yatvagram.”    of the army of the Gods that demolish and conquer

Rig Veda X.103.8

This Mantra is mentioned in the chapter on astra. Also, the word ina in the Mantra became later on in the common parlance the word svami, (22) Master.

“Vavrajasim anadatir adabdha   He moved all round the seven mighty ones
divo yahvir avasana anagnah   of Heaven; undevouring, inviolate.
Sana yatra yuvatayah, sa yonir        neither were they clothed, nor were they naked;
Ekam garbham dadhire sapta vanih.”   here, young and eternal in one native land
the seven Voices held in their womb the one Child

Rig Veda III.1.6. (Sri Aurobindo’s translation)

Sapta vanih are the Seven metres* in Sanskrit poetry. The birth of Agni as this Mantra is nothing other than the fire of astra. This is revealed in the hymn of Agni in the sense of burning: but not with the idea of physical fire.

FOOTNOTES:
22 - Svami is one of the principle names of Skanda.

* - The seven metres represent also seven stars in the 
Pleiades constellation, the 'natural mothers' of the child 
Skanda.

Gauri Siva's bride was the daughter of the Himalaya. She is
also known as Parvati in the Puranic cycle. The river
Ganga, lit by the seven stars and the moon,"poured down"/
descended through Siva's matted dreadlocks in their love-play.
As stated earlier, neither the fire (Agni) nor the water 
(Ganga) could receive his seed. It finally came to rest
in the stalk of the mantric sara grass. From the mythology
we gain some idea of the elemental power of mantra. 
See previous post - Part Three.

Skanda as Muruganar and Krttikai (pleiades

Another version of this tale is Siva's seduction of the 
wives of seven Rishis (seers) in the forest. Entering 
the heart of the fire (Agni) to which the women came to 
warm themselves,Siva impregnated them through their hair 
follicles, causing chaos in the ashram. The seed could
not be held by them, or by fire or by water, until it 
came to rest in the grass; then Gauri's breasts filled,
and the world rejoiced, unknowing as yet where the 
divine child with six heads lay.



Ganapati Muni saw in his spiritual brother Ramana 
Maharshi, the effulgence of Skanda the warrior of light who
delivered us from Taraka. Ramana taught Self-enquiry which 
dismantles the mind and quests consciousness:  the "I ... I".
(J.A.)

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi

COMMENTARY CONTINUED: ENQUIRY INTO THE PERSONALITY

Now we must say a word about the individualised Personality of the maya (23) form of Brahman with attributes, which is known as Subrahmanya.

We say that Indra alone is Guha’s form pertaining to the Gods. This is because Agni, the energy of sound-vibration is in the middle region; and Indra is the Lord of the middle region. This is proven in the Aranyaka when, referring to Indra, it closes with the words, Subrahmanyam, Subramanyam.

Indra’s Vedic fame as the War God, lends additional support.

What is Siva’s form among the Gods? It is Indra only. If it is said, that as father and son they are one and the same, this is correct. The only difference to note, is regarding the hidden Sabda Brahman and the manifest sound vibration. The relationship of father and son is mentioned to specify Siva and Subrahmanya (Skanda).

What is Ganapati’s form among the Gods? It is Indra only. If it is said, that as brothers Ganapati and Subrahmanya are one and the same, this is correct. The only difference to note, is that regarding the perfected mantra within, and the astra Agni impelled by it. The fraternal relationship demonstrates that first the mantra is born from Sabda Brahman; then the astra Agni. Through the concept of Ganapati, we explain Brihaspati and Brahmanaspati. (24)

What is lightning’s form pertaining to the Gods? It is Indra only. Here he has a unique quality. Indra is named as the deity of Lightning.

There are other great conceptual facets in the middle region, with Indra as their deity. They are not mentioned here, as we would have to go into a lot of detail.

FOOTNOTES:
23 Maya - form - the form that we measure out of the 
immeasurable

24 Ganapati, Brihaspati and Brahmanaspati - all three names 
denote the same Godhead in the Veda of the famous Rik 
"Gananam tva ganapatim lawamake ..." 

Brishaspati - Lord of the letters; Brahmanaspati - Lord of 
the Mantras. Brahma means both letter and mantra in the veda. 
Ganapati Lord of tantra, and these two names, denote the 
same Godhead.

Doorstep chalk pattern at dawn in Tiruvannamalai

THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE DIFFERENT DESCENTS

By means of whichever portion of energy the Lord Indra descends into awareness, the descent bears that specific or personal Name.

Indra’s descent as a portion of the lightning bears his own name. His descent as a portion of Sabda Brahman is named Rudra. His descent as the force of Tantra is known by the name Ganapati, and his descent as a portion of sound vibration is called Skanda. Ganapati and Subrahmanya (Skanda) are brothers, and they are interdependent.

We have briefly interpreted the three great Mantras of the Master. We shall develop the conceptual truth of Skanda in our Devata mimamsa. (25)

FOOTNOTES
25 - Another of Vasishtha Ganapati Muni's works, where he 
unravels the significances of the Deities

Thus Ends the Third Chapter.

Thus ends the Commentary on the Mantras of the Master,
a work of Ganapati Vasishtha, son of Narasimha
and disciple of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi

The Closing Verse

“Munina srimukhe simhe dive suryendusangame
Suryoparagasamaye bhasyam etadudiritam.”

“In the month Sravana of the year Srimukha
on a new Moon day, at the time of Solar eclipse,
this Commentary was given out by the Muni.”

APPENDIX TO THE COMMENTARY

1). Subrahmanya is the one who is born of the auspicious Brahman, that is, Sabda Brahman.

2). By this we have explained the name Brahma garbha (from the womb of Brahma)

Vide Amara: “Subrahmanya brahma-garbha svami saravanodbhavah”.

3). Kumara, eternal child. He is born, finishes the work and again vanishes. Again manifests at the time of work. Therefore, he is called the eternal child. In the Veda, in the Hymn to Indra, is mentioned ‘arbhako na kumarakah‘26 . Also, ‘sadyo jajnano nirinati saturn’.27

4). By this we have explained the name sanat kumara – sanat always; kumara, young one.

5). Sanatsujatah also in the same way. sanat, always; sujatah, well born.

6). Sanandana samanah equal nandanah, son (giver of happiness) to Rudra along with Ganapati.

7). Sanakeh, eternal.

Thus these four names denote one and the same person. Perhaps because of their different manifestations, it appears they were mentioned as four (28) .

26 The youth like a little child

27 Born at once, he demolishes the foes.

28 The four disciples of Shiva as Dakshinamurti: Sanaka, 
Sanandana, Sanatkumara and Sanatsujata. Etymologically they 
have the same meaning and denote one and the same principle.
(See also Sanatanadharma)

Here the Commentary and Appendix by the Muni ends.

We express our grateful thanks to Sri K.Natesan of Ramanasramam for making this rare manuscript available to us, and for his help with the text. Ganapati Muni’s Commentary on the Mantra of the Master, was recently published by Ramanasramam, along with the first translation into English of Kapali Sastri’s sanskrit Commentary on the Ramana Gita. Material from this has been utilised for the present work.

For the benefit of English readers, the language and presentation of the Guru Mantra Bhashya text have been slightly adjusted, and translations of Vedic Mantras, that were provided as footnotes, are now incorporated in the text, for easier reference..

J.A. Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK 2002

Arunachala village children

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

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Ganapati Muni’s Science of Mantra: Part Three

Posted on November 19, 2014 by janeadamsart

CONTINUED FROM PART TWO – the “Guru Mantra Commentary” by Ganapati Muni (see previous post.)

Mantric language is cyclic, rhythmic, primordial. Whether we know any Sanskrit or not, the vibration grows through a commitment of the syllables to archetypal visual images. This passage develops the ASTRAGNI or weapon within the mantra. In my understanding, only a pure intention may access the metaphysical power of the Word: otherwise it rebounds.

In Part Two, we bowed to Guru in the heart’s cave. Here in Part Three, the repeated sounding of vacadhbu, agni, sara, sastra encircle and warm up my path of awe. I do not know. Unconfined to the mind, the resonance is received afresh; I begin again to ascend the mountain at dawn.

Second Chapter: The Enunciation of the Second Mantra

The Muni continues:
In this second chapter, we shall comment on another Tantric mantra of Bhagavan. Here is its verse of enunciation: (No English translation available)

“Sukham krsanuh kilalam
murdhanyascanunasikah
Nidra vari ca vikhyato
Namo mantro vadadbhuvah.”

The letter sa, Sukham happiness; the letter ra krsanuh, fire; the letter na kilalam, water; the letter va murdhanyah anunasikah; the letter na nidra, cerebral nasal; the letter bha vari, sleep; the letter va, water.(**)

1. Happiness sa
2. Fire ra
3. Water va
4. Cerebral nasal na
5. Sleep bha
6. Water va

When these six letters are read together they become sa ra va na bha wa. – “One who is born from the forest of sara”. As there are six letters in this Mantra also, like before, we understand by this the six faces of Skanda. (*)

FOOTNOTES - 
**- Sri Sankaranarayanan’s translation of this paragraph 
was ambiguous, and K.Natesan apparently overlooked my query 
about it. I have arranged it as best I can, and would welcome the 
advice of an educated Sanskrit reader. J.A.

*- The child Skanda (Kumara)- seed of Agni in the wives of Seven 
Rishis who warmed themselves by the fire - could not be carried 
by wives (goddesses of Krttika the Pleiades constellation) or 
Himalaya mountain or Ganga river, so it fell in a bed of reeds 
(grass). Six parts of the seed joined in this birthplace as one
six headed child; Siva's wife Parvati filled with milk and the 
universe rejoiced - for this child of Siva (through the inter-
mediary of Agni) was destined to defeat the demon of the 
reactive mind, Taraka. 
Skanda's older brother was Ganapati.

Note from Wendy O’Flaherty: ‘Siva the Erotic Ascetic’

ramana embryo

THE MEANING OF THE SECOND MANTRA: Saravanabhawa

“One who is born from the forest of sara, a kind of grass”. ASTRAGNI : (astra, missile or weapon invoked with a mantra, agni, sacred fire) – this means “fire of guided missile”. Here, a physical fire born from igniting grass, is not what is meant. If it were, it would not be vacadbhu – born out of the sound vibration (energy).

The story that the effulgent seed of Rudra placed in the stalk of grass became Kumara, has some deep truth behind it: Rudra is full of sound. His effulgent seed is the fire born by focussing the perfected astra mantra of a great yogi accomplished in the lore of the astras. It acquires the form of sara, grows, and slays its enemies.

“Vidma sarasya pitaram parjanyam – “We know the father of the SARA,
bhuridhayasam – Parjanya, liberal nourisher,
Vidmo svasya mataram – we know his mother Prithvi,
prthivim bhurivarpasam. – earth with her manifold designs.

Jyake pari nona masmanam tonvan krdhi – O, Bowstring, bend thyself around us,
Virur variyo ratirapa dvesarasya krdhi.” – make my body stone.
Firm in thy strength, drive far away malignities and hateful things.”

Aghawa Samkita II. 1. 2.

Sara described in the above two Mantras is a special kind of grass, not an arrow made of bamboo or metal. This is indicated by saying that its mother and father are the earth and the rain God. If we say that bamboo also, being a tree, can deserve to be the son of the earth and the rain God, the fourth Mantra in that same chapter, removes any doubt :

Yatha dyam ca prthivim cantas tiethati tejanam
evarogam casravam cantas tisthatu munja it.

Just as the sharp point stands
between earth and heaven,
let the munja grass stand between wellbeing and illness.

Breaking through – For the Rose and the Fire are One

Here by the word munja he deduces the aforesaid sara. Munja is a type of grass and not bamboo. How could fragile grass be capable of killing enemies without relating to astra, the fire warming the word which an accomplished Mantra fills ? (15)

“Isikam jaratim stva
tilpinjam dandanam nadam
Tamindra idhmam
krtva yamasyagvim niradadhan

He sought the grass, Isika
tilpinja, nada and dandana.
He enriched Indra’s fuel
and the fire of Yama.

Athawa Samhita XII.2.54.

Isika, Tilpivja, nada are types of grass. Dandanum might be of bamboo. Amongst them isika is a synonym for the sara grass. Here by the word Indra, the Jiva is meant. As the Veda says: “Rupam Rupam pratirupo babhuva.”16. He, the perfected Person knows the astra. He bound the isika grass into faggots, and nourished the sages around the fire of Yama, Kala, Time. This means he expanded and increased that which stood in the sky as the fire of Time.

Time is not different from sound. The sound resonates subtly in the sky and cultures everything.

FOOTNOTES 
15- ASTRA from the root AS - to throw; a missile, usually of grass
or any fragile material backed up by a powerful Mantra, 
though astra is loosely translated as an arrow.
Sastra(scriptures) is an arrow, while astra is a weapon backed up 
by the Mantra. 
Here the Mantra is significant, and not the material used as a 
weapon.

16- "He put his image in every form."

Frank Humphries, Ramana and the Muni

That is why we have said in our Indra Gita:

“Sadvyapakasaktim pranam kathayanti
Vyaktetarasabdam kalam ganayanti.” (17)

“The pervading force of Existence they call Prana ;
and they reckon as Time the unmanifest Sound.”

FOOTNOTE -
17- Indra Gita is one of the compositions of Ganapati Muni
and is included in Gitamala.

There itself it has been said that Kala, Time, is known by the name of Yama and Rudra.

“Rudram vidureka netarbahulilam
Prahur yamam anye kayam tava kalam.”

“O, Leader, some know you as Rudra of many sports ;
Others call thy body Time, Yama.”

Rudra who is the Sabda Brahman and Time factor pervades the sky. His effulgence impelled by the fire of Mantra becomes the Agni, named astra in the form of sara. This Agni is the Lord, the Commander-in-Chief of the armies, the destroyer of Asuras, the accomplisher of the Divine Purpose. The word isu is formed only from the word isika. The ancients employ the word isvastra to denote astra.

“Isvastram esam devatvam paritranam satamiva
Bhayam vai manuso bhavah parivado satamiva.”

“Their astra denoted divinity.
It bore divine protection to good people.
Fear is their human aspect to the wicked.”

By esam (*) the Kshatriyas (warriors) are covered. Also the primary name for astra is only isikastra. (See Ramayana and Mahabharata). Though the word sara meant astra, later on by derivative significance, it came to denote the arrow. The word sara is a pointer to the other “faggot bundles” (weapons) of astra. Principally, the usage is the form “from out of the forest of sara”, saravanabhava.

FOOTNOTE - 
* esam, a Sanskrit word for prowess (footnote supplied by 
K.Natesan)

THE APPROPRIATENESS OF SKANDA AS THE GURU?

If “Skanda” had these attributes alone, he would be a War God, not the Guru Causal. Yet being the God of war does not deter him from being the Guru Causal. In fact, it helps. The one who manifests the fire of astra, destroying foes, is our inner illumination. He burns away the ties that bind, and reveals the shore beyond darkness.

An effulgence of sound is inner knowing. By this alone, the Brahmin attains a vision of the Divine.

By the effulgence alone, the Kshatriya (warrior) masters the divine astra. The effulgence is the Brahmanhood of Brahman; the kingship of the Warrior caste.

And thus ends the Second Chapter.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

Ganapati Muni’s Science of Mantra – Part One

Posted on November 12, 2014 by janeadamsart

Vedic goddess

Here’s a four-part post series for scholars!

I haven’t studied the layered meanings in Sanskrit. But I learnt a few sacred Names and phrases along the way; I hear the chanting and smell the sandal paste; the syllables are long musical frequencies; from in between them, emerge the tantras. Tantra is the art of touch throughout the universe. Needing to touch base with some of my Indian and Vedic threads, I turned to Ganapati Muni’s analysis of his mantric science. I prepared this text in the 1990s from Sri K Natesan’s translation, for the Ramana Foundation Journal Self Enquiry. Sri Natesan – a “grandchild” in the Muni’s sacred lineage – checked it for mistakes.

In the text the secret known to knowers of truth is mentioned: when we truly know that we do not know – we begin.

“Guru Mantra Bhashyam” by Ganapati Muni

Introduced and Translated by S.Sankaranarayanan
Adapted for English readers by J.A., with the help of Sri K.Natesan at Ramana Ashram

The Muni

The eighteenth chapter of Sri Ramana Gita contains a series of verses which describe the characteristics of Ramana Maharshi. Amongst them, the tenth verse enunciates in the style of the Tantra, the Mantra by which the Maharshi has to be invoked.

Ganapati Vasishta Muni valued this Mantra very highly. When disciples approached Ramana Maharshi for elucidation on the Mantra, he directed them to the Muni. So Vasishta Muni decided to write a commentary on the 10th verse of the eighteenth chapter of Sri Ramana Gita for the benefit of aspirants. The Guru-mantra-Bhashyam was written in sanskrit and it was published along with the Text and Sri Kapali Shastriar’s Prakasha Bhashye (Commentary) of Sri Ramana Gita.

Considering the importance of the work and the wealth of spiritual insights it unfolds, a free translation in English of the whole commentary and Appendix to the Commentary is provided here, in four parts. Footnotes explain certain terms and concepts occurring in the commentary.

Meeting

Ramana and Ganapati were spiritual brothers – Ramana the silent jnani or Realised One and Ganapati the tantric philosopher and poet. Ramana was regarded as the embodiment of Skanda or Kumar: Ganesh and Skanda are the sons born to Siva and Parvati. When the two wild young sages sat together in the caves of Siva’s hill Arunachala, Ramana taught Ganapati that the root of the mantra and of the breath are one and the same, to dissolve into Self enquiry. Ganapati’s outpouring of verses to the Mother brought their ageless Saivite brotherhood into the 20th century.

skanda and ganapati

Some years ago, Alan Jacobs and I wrote 55 sonnets on the Ramana Gita English version; the sonnet form was chosen, to interact imaginatively with the formal Sanskrit text, and as a spiritual practice. Here below, to provide the setting, is a sonnet based on verses 8 – 11 of Chapter Eighteen, Ramana Gita (see below). It contains our interpretation of the Mantra OM VACADHBUVE RAMANA.

In Praise of Ramana: Three

FROM grasping freed, his peace
in quantum abyss unheeding
restores our alchemy. He pilots the seas.
Ganapati child at breasts of Parvati feeding,
cried “Mother’s mine!” In her lap, Kumar his brother
replied, “Never mind, for mine is Father!
I rest in his right heart, he kisses my head!”

Give glory, elephant child, to He whose lance
in Kumar’s hand pierced hill to the heart, ‘tis said.
Boon bringer, pour poem from His holy glance
by Vedic vessel whence emerges Word
by power of Fire as mystic Sword.

Without a staff, our song you uphold –
ferryman, defend everyman from demon gold!

THE VERSES FROM ‘RAMANA GITA’ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

v.8 Free from infatuation, greed, distracting thought and envy, he is ever blissful. He is ever active, helping others to cross the sea of Becoming, regardless of reward.

v.9 When Ganapati saying ‘Mother is mine’ sat on the lap of Parvati, Kumara retorted ‘Never mind, Father is mine,” and got on to Siva’s lap and was kissed by him on the head. Of this Kumara who pierced (with his lance) the Krauncha Hill, Ramana is a glorious manifestation.

v.10 He is the mystic import of the mantra ‘OM VACHADBHUVE NAMAH.

v.11 An ascetic without danda , yet is he Dandapani. He is Taraka for crossing the sea of suffering, yet is he the foe of Taraka.

NOTE - Danda is a "Staff"or wand, yet Dandapani is the staff 
holder - even one who no longer uses it.  
The word Taraka means Deliverer, but "Taraka" was also the 
great demon Taraka who almost destroyed the universe. 
These are typical Sanskrit word-plays.

Sacred India Tarot – laws of Manu as the Hierophant – Ganapati the scribe near Arunachala

THE COMMENTARY ON THE MANTRA OF THE MASTER

“Om Vacadbhuve Namah Nahasyam”-
“Salutation to the Fire of Brahman whence emerges the word”

First Chapter: Pronouncing the Mantra
VERSE TEN, Chapter 18, RAMANA GITA

Vedådi påkadamanottara kacchapesair “He is the secret sense
Yuktair dharadhara susuptyamaresvaraisca of the group of words arrived at
Suksmamrtayug amrtena saha pranatya by uttering the following Sampannasabda patalasya nahasyam artham* Om Va ca dbhu, ve and Namah”

—Vedadih “the beginning of the Veda”, or Pranama OMKARA (1)
–Pakadamanat “from the destroyer of Paka Asura”, that is, Indra bija, whose letter is la
–Uttarah the letter next to it alphabetically, that is VA ; pakadamanottara kacchapesah —the bija (2) of Rudra in His form as Lord of the tortoise Kurmesa” that is, the letter CA.
—With these letters OM   VA CA, – Dharadharah, the bija of the Mountain,
the letter DA.
—Susuptih   the sakti power of deep sleep, whose bija is the letter BHA.
–Amare-Isvarah “the Lord (Isvara) of the immortals” (Amara, deathless) – Rudra dwells in this Name, his seed-letter U ; therefore DBHU.   Yuktaih, “union” (at the beginning of the line) joins this with the letter DBHU.
–Suksmamrta, whose Sakti’s bija is the letter E ;   Yuk joined to amrtena, (nectar) whose seedletter is the watery VA, form the letter VE.
–Pranatya, (Salutation) unites with the suffix namah (3.) The Sampanna sabda patalasya group of words forms the secret of the mantra OM VACADBHUVE NAMAH NAHASYAM. This can be known only to the knowers of Truth.

(Sabda is another word for Primordial Sound, Word, the Vedas, Omkara.)

The secret (Nahasyam) of this Mantra is revealed only to knowers of Truth. To them alone can the artham or full meaning be outwardly expressed; as in the form of the king of ascetics, Bhagavan Ramana (4 ), when questioned by Amrtanatha. (Ch.18, Ramana Gita)

—Thus “OM Vacadbhuve Namah” is established as the Mantra of Bhagavan the Guru.

Sri Kapali Shastri – a disciple of the Muni – in the 1930s

Kapali Sastri’s Commentary on this verse in the Ramana Gita, states in brief:

“By joining all these letters we arrive at the group of letters OM VACADBHUVE NAMAH. This group of letters forms the Mantra. Its secret sense, known to the learned, expresses the meaning “RAMANA WHO IS THE FORM OF THE DEITY INVOKED BY THIS MANTRA”.

Who is God, expressed in this Mantra ? Subrahmanya. How so ? ‘Om Vachadbhuve Namah’ – Omkara is the supreme Brahman. The word is indeclinable, and so it will make sense with all the case endings. Vacadbhu, the field that creates, releases the Word, the Fire. The fire became the word and entered the mouth. So explains the scripture. Born from the god who presides over speech is Vacadbhu, born from Fire, Kumara. Salutation to Him.

“This is not physical fire, but the effulgence of the word. In order to drive this home, in the Mantra, Agni is denoted by the word ‘vacat’. It is the tradition of the Tantra Shastra to expound the Mantra by using words of similar sense. Following this, the Master (Ganapati Muni) has expounded the Mantra of Subrahmanya. The author of this work, our Master has been praising the Maharshi, as one born out of a portion of Kumara. And so the essence of the Mantra is said to be Ramana.”

Kapali Shastri

FOOTNOTES - PRONOUNCING THE MANTRA:
* - Sri K Natesan states: "The literal translation is given here.
In Tantra Shastra (science) the mantras are not mentioned plainly 
and directly. There is a way of symbolic expression for which a 
working knowledge of their terminology is needed."

1 - pranava the letter OM:  the primordial sound from which the 
Veda, the word of revelation, has sprung

2 - The Tantra talkes about bijakshava, SEED LETTERS which contain
in a potential form what they would be manifesting. The SEED LETTER
is fixed for each Deity.  For example Indra's SEED LETTER is la. 
By convention, each SEED LETTER is connoted by one or more names.
The Bhija-nighantu, the Dictionary of seed-letters, 
gives the corresponding names.

3 - Pranati, bowing down, which is expressed by the word namah 

4 - This verse is one of twenty four verses in praise of the
Maharshi, at the end of which the questioner Amrtanatha addresses
him.

K Natesan & Vamadeva Shastri (David Frawley)

The Detailed Commentary by Ganapati Muni now Continues :

If we are asked: is not this mantra, the famous one of Skanda, mentioned in Tantric works like Saradatilaka? we say it is only the mantra of our guru, Bhagavan. It is known that Bhagavan Ramana, the Master, is avatara, descent of effulgence from the original guru, Skanda the Godhead, another of whose names is Sanat kumara. (5)

Ramana sat in silence, then asked the Muni – “Did you write down all I spoke?”

THE BODY OF THE MANTRA

This great mantra is originally of six letters as vacadbhuve namah. It becomes a mantra of seven letters with the pranava which is usually employed by certain Tantrics at the beginning of all mantras. Just as the five-lettered namah shivayah becomes six letters with the Omkara, so also here. All godheads have four forms. One pertains to the spirit, the other to the physical, another to the gods and the last to the form of the mantra.

Elsewhere we find this vedic piece:

Vacam astapadim aham navasraktim rtasprsam “Around Indra I create the body
Indrat paritanvam name of the Word with eight steps and nine parts
close in touch with the Right Law.”

(Rig Veda VIII 65.12)

By this Rik, the Rishi says that he creates the body of Indra, in the form of mantra. The Tantrics also say this:

Derike manavabhrantim                                   “To inferno he goes who mistakes
pratimasu silamatim                                        the guru for a man,
Mantresvaksarabhuddhim                          the idol in the temple for a piece of stone
ca kurvano nirayam vrajet.                                 and the mantra for a group of letters.”

Here the popular parlance that Gayatri is the Deity of the most famous Mantra, Tat Savitah serves as evidence. (6) Gayatri is the Mantra itself alone, not ‘a woman’; (this word indicates the name of a metre – the feminine sakti as the name or vessel). What does this establish? that the body of God Guha in the form of mantra has six letters. In this view that the body is formed by the Mantra, six letters become the six faces of the Lord.

Likewise, the five letters in the Panchakshara Mantra of the Supreme Shiva — NAMAH SHIVAYA — are his five faces. This is the same as the saying of the Mimamsakas: that the Deity is formed by the Mantra.

vedic vessel

THE GENERAL MEANING OF THE MANTRA

Om to the One in the form of Brahman. As the word OM is indeclinable, it keeps the same syntax with all cases. As acclaimed in the Upanishads, the letter OM denotes Brahman.
Vacadbhuva – Vacatah “from one who speaks”, creates statements. This is derived from Agni (god of sacred fire) in whose subtle form is the inner sense of ‘word’.
Bhu born, to Him Namah, salutation. It is well known that Skanda was born from Fire, Agni.

Agni

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES: GANAPATI'S COMMENTARY CONTINUES ...
5 - Chandogya Upanishad (7:26:2) equates Sanatkumara with Skanda,
and says that he takes ashore across the (ocean of) ignorance, 
the pure soul with constant awareness.

6 - "Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dimah
Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat" -
"We meditate upon that excellent splendour
of the Lord Savitr.  May he activate our thoughts."

7 - Badarayana is the author of the Brahma sutras.  This Sutra
IV.1.5 says that symbols are to be regarded as Brahman, and 
not vice versa.  An inferior object has to be looked upon as
symbolic of the superior.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

Nilakantha and the Golden Constellation

Posted on September 5, 2014 by janeadamsart

Sacred India Tarot – Ramana as Skanda son of Siva

Tensions are imagination trapped in illusory codes. The tension appears to have the power to materialise, but it has no substance after the thought. Whenever I get through a bit of rotten concrete I turn and see how weak it is. The human lower mind is powered mostly by negative apprehensions. This is why it became embedded in our psyche and expectation, that we have no power to see above the hedges or to change direction – no power of Magic.

There is a huge gulf between general human bedtime, and the real human nature to draw together the stars and move with them consciously, joyfully. The power and the dawn and the history of Magic is simply … this! to take up my bed and walk.

The tapestry is the stars and the Great Heaven: quantum unity. This theme of the tapestry is mirrored back to me from persons I move with, this week: things they say. My tiny thread-loop in the tapestry stands in the lane at night and looks up at the sky.

Starling murmuration by jchip84

Back in history, some priests got hold of Magic and began to manipulate aspects of it with a tendency which grew and grew. For a while they had power and the passwords to re-shape people and environment beguilingly. It concealed from them, the Power. They lost sight and lived inside dark glasses to write history. Tension bred and grew, which obscures and fragments the Power. The political world is ruled by Tension, which manifests nowadays all our yesterdays. But I see the Power and I see the monster in the waves. The Power is hauling it up and out to be seen. Tension appears eternal (so does hell) but in due course it breaks and self destroys. It dismantles. It is rotten concrete whose reinforcing wires get rusted and snap.

The Tension which obscures the Power is separative. By “separative” I do not mean the sword-tip which parts the elements to live with and enhance each other, like brush strokes of colour. “Separative” is the dreary default dream-like notion that I am an isolated object, and therefore powerless, a frightened wage slave, reading only the headlines.

The Power which dissolves the Tension, is “all there is”. There is as Robert used to say – the power that knows the way. I need only turn toward it voluntarily, and see. This is metanoia: a word meaning ‘repent’, in the sense of ‘turn around to face the light’. Whenever and wherever this happens in the world, those stars come out and form a constellation linking oceans: a golden net.

http://thesunhermit.wordpress.com

http://thesunhermit.wordpress.com

I just came across this, in Katie Spero’s blog Let Yourself Learn: – together with a golden mountain and what happens when the subtle thread to your friend strengthens over the ocean:

“When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer
in his absence as the mountain to the climber
is clearer from the plain.”

Kahlil Gibran

Siva – Rudra the Wild Hunter

A Story – adapted from Alan Jacobs’ “Myths of Siva: Siva Nilakantha”

“Once upon a time the Gods in heaven and Demons in Hell formed a parliament. To create ambrosia, they planned to churn the Milky Way as if to make butter. They tore great Mount Mandarva from its roots, for a churning stick; Vasuki, snake of the world became the rope.

“As they whirled and stirred the celestial ocean, to their horror there rose to the surface, a hideous black oil-slick – Kalakuntha, the world’s poison: Time itself. The Gods and Devils in terror like smart young ladies seeing a mouse, appealed to Lord Siva.

“Siva dipped his hands in the sea. Drinking the poison to the last drop, he held it in his lily throat which – as if kissed by a serpent – turned a sinister peacock blue. Now named Nilakantha, Blue-throated One, he retired to his cave in Mount Kailas. All the sages and rishis made their pilgrimage.

kailas and manasarovar

“Ramana on Siva’s hill Arunachala says, ‘When the selfish thought returns to the Self, Self-awareness shines, distilled and pure: the elixir of health and wholeness, ever enduring.’

“Mixing too much with the world, I swallowed poisons churned up by confusing my activities, good and bad. With a deep exhalation, I cleanse my body. Drawing in fresh prana, I use that attention to dive within and find in my heart’s cave, Siva Nilakantha … ever illumining those who, from dreaded Kalakuntha, call upon His transmutation.”

Alan Jacobs 1993

“Within a cavern of man’s trackless spirit
is thrown an image so intensely fair
that the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
the splendour of its presence, and the light
penetrates their dreamlike frame
’till they become charged with the strength of flame.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Siva – Rudra Immerses

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

Love Letters with a Dancing Yeti

Posted on January 27, 2014 by janeadamsart

This wild shaggy creature fills me with joy and smiles.

Veteran readers of the Ramana Foundation journal Self Enquiry (1993-2004) may recall an exchange of letters from our very own correspondent in Tiruvannamalai. He reflected on the Guru scene, and took the plunge himself. Nowadays, tucked up in a delicious French valley – or rather, in the Yeti’s own words (which he prefers): “tucked up ‘n fukked up in his petit coin, suitably located among the desirable caves where his ancestors nibbled their fleas among the shady trees of mittel France” … while wintering in India to pedal his astral bike from Arunachala to Alaska – the poet in the Yeti sings. We just started to write to each other again.

This might be a Post without an end in sight.

16 January 2014
Dear Kev, just a word to say I loved reading ALL YOUR WORDS for Xmas and to smell India again through your descriptions, and those sadhus and bird noises, and to have a good ketchup with you generally. With much love to you, Xx Jane

Thanks Jane, good to hear from ya. Those words were rough and unvarnished as they fell through my head. Rash to dump ’em like that, but communicating sometimes gets huffy and puffy and won’t wait. Your blog is too big for me . Do you have time for owt else? Sometimes I see lovely stuff there, but to try and read it all would be like being the guy who constantly must keep up with the 24 hour surveillance camera. Life throws so much in my face that I can’t offer so much time to the inside of another head, even when it pours out gems. I look forward to a selection of the best, which I can sink into like a warm bath. A lake of dancing fresh water may gladden the eye and soul, but it’s too much to drink and I fear it’ll drown me before I get to the other side or find the bottom. Love from Kev.

17 January
Don’t let it worry you, Kev. My stuff might not be your cup of tea; you poets have your cups full with Life anyway! – as you say. And I’m glad the Great Teapot in the sky keeps pouring through you its bounteous brew. Those who settle for bread and butter with my blog find their own bits of jam here and there: maybe even a Devon cream tea with scones if they are lucky – nobody reads it all, but it is there for a large table. I’m glad you’ve sunk such rich deep roots in france, and thankful that I don’t have to cope with all them ants in India. I read about your adventures with them, with awe. Much love, Jane x

Book of IS: Mt Sandford, Alaska.

The poems inside, may step on a banana skin,
then slide, so far, within the deeps,
they meet the stars,
as they examine simple things
from bits that Darwin missed,
to mysteries like why this all exists,
or who, or what, we are.

“This cover blurb is meant to sell the book,
but if you want to check it out,
just step inside, and take a look.”

(“Is” – by Kevan Myers
published 2009 by Dancing Yeti Books)

Dear Jane, I ain’t complaining about the flavour of the tea, though must confess the details of the esoteric and symbols can be wasted on me. I love stuff I read when you reflect on this or that, and of course I have enjoyed reflections of your past, particularly where Peter comes up, but my cup runneth over fairly soon when you are pouring from your bottomless jug (s?). I am amazed by your fecundity and glad for you that it is.

When in UK I sometimes buy a saturday or sunday paper to check TV progs, and then “enjoy ” reading the bloody thing for at least the next ten days as the nesting boxes in my brains get filled with tweeting terribly fast. Thus it is very much more volume than content that leaves me peering over the vastnesses of your bloggery like stout Cortes viewing the Pacific. Like I say, I really look forward to the shortish book of selected gems unthreaded from the kilometres of golden chains where they presently dangle, so sparkling …

Much love, Kev

Dearest Kev, as I canna yet stopper the fall of tea from the sky, I leave it to you to identify and assemble a few concise leaves of best earl grey for your pot, you lazy old poet! However I am indeed delighted that you do deign to dip toe & wade a little – say from San Francisco bay area to the bridge, you know it is all pacific really – and especially that you have located and read my outpourings about my Pa, which I value. Never mind about the Hesoterick, just look at the pictures. The pictures are there for our tired old eyes to rest from all the wordzzz.

Peter now 91 and a little frail, has email at last – I hope to see him later this month, braving winter gales along the Tarka Bike Trail to Torrington, and then steep hills up and down to his piggery. He lives in elegant grandeur in The Old Piggery … (in case your cyberwhotsit breaks down.) He would love to hear from you, and definitely needs practice with his email/Ipad, and he keeps nice biscuits in his tin.
I am seeing Quince and John next month here in Blighty. Much love, xJanex

PS we have been having a lot of rain.

Gawd bless, yer, dear,
I have unloaded Peter’s edress and have good intentions to use it. Just got briefly hassled by Authorhouse, offering to print my wurkz. I took a rain cheque, but should really set them on your trail, since yo wurdz are bustin’ out all over. Are you planning to huff and puff your way to Torrington by bike path? Remember I once did it from the Grey Wen to Land’s Sakes and back, which is fine along canals and suchlike, but once confronted with steep and wiggly Devon lanes, big roads are safer and quicker, because you don’t lose downhill momentum at the bottom by savage wigglies or charging pantechnicons or harvesters suddenly blocking the whole lane.

It’s very gracious of Q and J to touch your feet in salubrious w. Hampstead, but high time you hauled your sorry backside over to see them in the gorgeous part of France where they and I offer such splendid horse-pit-alities, and where I also met your fine mama.
Anyroad, enough of this blether. You could have probably filled at least five pages of blog in the time spent soaking in these worthless sentiments.
Much love
Kev

19 January
I remember your Great Ride, Kev, and when you turned up in your dayglo cycling gear in the rain – my pa thought it was a bloke from Mars selling spin-driers, and nearly shut the door.

The trouble with canals and nice flat trails, is the winter monsoon mud in those parts. To avoid this, I shall have to turn off from the Puffing Billy at Torrington into steep cow-patted lanes; and huff up and down the wigglies amid splatter from tractors, till I reach the noble abode, hopefully before dark, & in time for tea & scotch.

Now I have a proposal for thy wurdz and mine, Kev: How about, I create a post for them, in the calm clear waters of me bloggery, like we did those years ago in SE. It may burble along quietly for as long as it likes, ever deepening the single post which stands by itself in the reflecting lake, O Sake, until we are distracted and fade away elsewhere, like sweet birds run out of twitter.

Do you agree? I would add a few snaps from the album of happy times, and a verse or two of yourn. I think I have a photo of you dancing, on that memorable night in Dorset. I can’t wait for your venerable observations, you chattersome Gemini. Love fr jane

http://www.panoramio.com, by pedro point

19 January
Into my morning space, haunted by squirmy gut, drops intrIguing offer. Most kind suggestion calls for response from this laziest of beings, when it comes to manufacture and broadcast of his emanations. I am most honoured to be thus prodded, and can happily supply you with wurkz old and new, as well as appropriate snaps, of which I posses many, so there be no need to drag forth fotos of bizarre blackmajickry under the greenwood trees of Hardy’s backyard, most particularly since I got no memory at all, of any such prancings among the yokelry.

But to be simple I dinna comprehend the meaning of this here “post” thing you proposeth, though I vizzalyze it well casting its long reflexion over your pool and impeding the crystal currents with its squat nether region. Yea I’m sure I agree, with gratitude and brass knobs on, but need a deeper understanding of how this post is approached, how it will look, and what it demands of me.

As you perceive my observations are hardly venerable yet, as my parts are presently pure, but given time they may acquire the necessary vintage and putrefact desirably.

Which brings to mind the announcement this day received that The Bard is about to imprint the holy dust of my neighbourhood with his esteeming presence, so I shall be dragged forth to receive his lofty Darshan, as he towers like some giant, scrawny monkey puzzle , eclipsing the diminutive form of the holy hill`.

Ah me! Oh yea, and the muddy lanes of Devon will no doubt “ooo arrr” as your comely person huffs with astonishing puffs between its unending hedges as combine harvesters bare their teeth and lurk round every corner, while Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, lurch their way down the steepest, bestest bit for gathering momentum, linking arms with jugs in hand and flying smocks, as the sheep stare.
Kev

O yes, you old Kevvery – don’t you remember this? That’s yo’ face yeti dancing.

20 January
Esteemed Colleague,

Delighted about your spiritual exercises by the Holy Hill – along with the squitters, a healthy antidote to chomping on the Lotus in fair France, which was bound to bind you up.

Now Kev, here is what I have in mind. A Post in a blog is simply an entry – the day’s musings or landfill – whatever. But of course it can go on and on being added to: for a Post is an ever lengthening scroll to the deep, an unbottomed and never ending Mystory.

Here is what I have in mind for me and ‘ee: to offset the rather Serious atmosphere of me Pacific Posts, methought to plant a Merrie one, to cheerieup my patient Readers. And I thought this post might be your and my plain wurdz back and forth, just as they are, beginning last week, and continuing: coz I double over with joy at yours. Each new item gets added to the bottom, dives deeper into the lake, needs just a finger-flick-fone for the curious to scroll it all …

We might get tired of it, or if it gets rather long, create its very own be-a-blog, which we both access from each side of La Manche, and put pictures in. You might take the project over completely, and make it bristle with verse… That is up to u. You might come to your senses and publish, you slothful scribe.

You asked I believe, what this yur post will look like, and where will be its squat nether end. Well vizzilize a big pond, lake or pacific bristling with wind farms – they all are posts. Here and there a noble ship sails in and out among them, piloted by Magellan or Cortez or a migrating Albatross. Our little post will extract the michael and mind its own biziniss, and may become a popular port of call, particularly if you include Mr (for gawd) Sake’s observations on the Teaching Scene, while u are in Indiar.

photo by r.nial bradshaw of posts in salt lake

I attach a draft with a few awful snaps. I might attempt a passable sketch of a yeti.

Am enchanted that you shall see and be inspired by the Bard so very soon.

dancing yeti in dorset

20 January
Thanks for sending me your sample. I shall study it extensively before conveying it to the lab for professional analysis. How dare you resurrect the nauseating name of Sake, which I never requested though it may have generated some passing amusement among the hissing cauldrons which you shared with the lofty presence, as you popped in livers of pontificating swamis. I am well aware that Self Enquiry may have been scattered with pseudonyms to disguise the authorship of many dubious passages penned by the grey eminences, in an attempt to fool the 30 subscribing miserable seekers of NW3-6 that a plethora of bespectacled academics could be counted among the contributing lunes, but I have so far braved the attention of assassins in never seeking such masks to my reality, beyond the one I have long borne, which carries the much bemyred sobriquet of Kev, and with that I am content. So awa with such as Ma Tarocardananda or the new age Elvish Delvish of the Blackdowns, whom I presently address. Your Jane will never be plain to me. However when it comes to yetis, my fondness for my shaggy leaping hide still warms all the trembly parts of my soul, as I hop skip and polka before the holy hill, so occasional appearances of the.Himalayan bigfoot would not be unwelcome.

As I said I have some excellent snaps and can certainly provide the gorgeous yeti donated by my cartoonist brother.

But I should be amazed if such correspondence raised more than the occasional rarified eyebrow, among the divers necromancers, tea-leaf readers and other exotic fruits from your private tree of life, who must comprise the bulk of your readership, already soaked as they are by your daily voluminous brilliancy.

Thus I am honoured by your offer and pleasured to concur, though noting with displeasure the many typos among my previous offerings.
Love
Kev

21 January
Dear Kev, I just happen to be up and unable to sleep – moan – but cheered by your twink. Sake was offered only as a protective hide, but the Yeti’s is much better. Well then, I await the lab results. Much love xxx Jane

I go dancing too

Self-Inquiring R.I.P.

“Self Enquiry”, Penultimate issue

It was indeed a day of infamy when that Lady Chatterbox left her lovers and other glitterati of the spiritual universe rubbing their bewildered spectacles as their deluging weeps created a nouveau Saraswati to mingle its rarified tears with the nether reaches of the less salubrious but very Kosher meanderings of the Brent.

O weep and beat your inconsolable teats, all lovers of spiritual passions and other heats, lest we forget her ladyship, unburied yet and due to rise again when her creating organ, the chief necromancer, forsakes her unending beat, that adds each day another set of rings that newly tingalings the wrinkled foreheads of the tree of life.

mandala

While Mistress Jane Attempts To Kip

Ah the wee small hours of West Hampstead,
when even the Jubilee Line slumbers,
as it meanders
the passing snores!
Where acres of cemetery
thrust monuments that grope for heavens
high as Whitestone Pond.
While worms sleep gentle sleeps
in many cloistered gardens,
well communally maintained,
beneath the central-heated walls,
well-hung with polished souvenirs,
nudging the heart from half-forgotten
terraces of long ago, before
the robberies inflicted
by more recent times,
that tower high above
the petty wounds
of self-inflicted crimes.

dive spiral arunachala

More poetry from Kevan …

Confessional-like

I really have nothing to say.
Been saying it for years,
but nobody hears
a thing

Happy Indiscretion

Ah the joy of wurdz,
where nothing makes a universe
and diamonds sprout from turdz.

mike – a very dear friend – on a visit from holland which is FLAT

As dreams go by …

23 January – From Kevan: “Here attached find yetis …”

I love ‘em. Those cuddly toys in ye mail. The Hill must be doing you good (and the wurdz). So shall I make a post at the weekend? No hurry, just when you like. Love, J

Yo, go ahead and carve yer post whenever you have a spare mo, but please check my do-dos for typos afore ye posteth as they can udderwize confyouse. Love Kev

Dunsbear Halt on the Tarka Line Trail

23 January
Yo, u Neti neti (arunachala generated), Yeti yeti, of course I willeth check yore spellings and notyets, I thought they might be done on purpose, I don’t meddle with Poet’s Purpose except I be given strikt instructions. I can’t go to Devon Oo-arr this weekend, and indeed not till February, because the railway line from Taunton to Exeter is closed for repairs and the replacement buses don’t take bikes. Love from Jane

PS Mr Sake is sacked.

Alan Jacobs and Kev, in 2004

24 January
Enough mit these excuses. Who needs train and bus when you could leap on your steed in west End Lane and start pedalling. These Adamses are a muscular lot with mighty shanks, just made for this kinda thing.

As foR typos, me deliberate unspellings are obvious, but typos confuse the head by usually missing a letter, reversing them or inside-outing them as dyslexic affect rather than failing wit-exercise. Would you like me to hi-itify some. Here comes an oldish one now: …

(and so forth.)

cows near buckland filleigh

24 January
Been delving among recent werkz and made some dubious improvements , which might lead you to chooze these newer vershuns, unless you feel advershuns, of coarse! Kev

A Trespass On Your Moments

I have undone what I oughter have done
And there is no good in me
Under the sun, but that which has sprung
Out o’ my own unhoed earth.
Do I ask for praises unsung,
Songs to be sung
To commemorate
The strainings of my birth?
Rather I say forget it
Get on with your own undoings;
Love, as you will, your screwing
And unscrewing,
Under the ungod eyes
Of the skies of mirth.

Ah men! That we have become!
Ah, the becoming of the end
Of unbirth!
The dance of life
Pours through the snores
Of the blind-eyed conveyors
Of I-pads on their endless tube run
Into the blank.

May the skies split and run
As the sewn up of everything
Comes undone.
Let’s tear off the hoods
And run.

Kevan Myers

“Back hoe” that’s a JCB in Yankspeak

Seems like “Front Hoe”
if there am, should wear
a kinda “Hiyo Silva” ‘n cut
this backward crap
cos hoeing up your backdays
seems to me to be
a little short on mileage,
even though, old Uncle Ho,
may be the ghost that lurks
at tunnel end,
if days along the furrow
trailing hoe
were lengthened out
to miles of the killing fields
of Napalmed ‘Nam.

groovin on that memorable night in dorset

Forgive my mind
that trespasses in lands
where any visitor
would once have opted for
the white stick of the blind.

I’m lost and wander off
so many tracks,
you cannot blame me
when my ankles land before my toes,
because I’ve yet to find
the way to open up
the eyeballs on my back.

Back Again

The nothing was blessèd and long… ‘til dimly aware of the soft, warm liquid, and distant muffled sounds..strange roaring and words in another tongue…

I flinch and kick, and kick. Memories of pain of body..always pain..but more ..the tearing of thorns.. the agony of wrists splintered and bored..trying to focus on love while shredded by hatred and the dumb hope of eyes not knowing what to with themselves, staring at what?

Let it be gone forever. Give me nothing, nothing, beautiful nothing.

Everything is intrusion in this nothing. Even this warm, safe pool that seems to be me.

I want no memories and no present. But this warm, liquid body of me will not obey, and now I am being forced inside out, squeezed and squeezed, driven out of myself, struggling and blinded.

Not again! Not again!

Kevan Myers

general musings

Poetry in this post is copyright (c) Kevan Myers.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

Dive into Yoga

Posted on January 7, 2014 by janeadamsart

Joy Ganesh – 7 January 1992

“Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves. The signposts have fallen, unblazed truth is before us. Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you?”

This is from an early page in Jung’s Red Book: Philemon speaks. The archetype resonates with that which moved J.Krishnamurti when he said, “Be the disciple of your own understanding” and “Truth is a pathless land.” It is the same!

I dreamt somewhere in the night – I think it was a dream, because the flavour is around – of intensely loving my child to whom I gave birth … straight into my arms as mother, that miracle feeling. It was in Finchley Road near Swiss cottage, and there was a car with the door open. In-carnation? Chariots of life.

multi tasking in 2013. That is Olivier Messiaen on my mac, playing the organ

My kitchen, a month ago. That is Olivier Messiaen on my mac, playing the organ

All day yesterday, I threw out a big pile of card, paper, old jam-jars and mountboards I will never use – reducing the congestion in my kitchen by half. There is room now I think, to store a vacuum cleaner! Dealing with the remaining old glass sheets from picture framing days, is difficult. Might take it down to the bins when they are empty, and smash the big pieces into them. The glass is old – it has drooped and no longer cuts well. The place looks only slightly different – but feels different, with stuff cleared off shelves – rehoused or junked – and room in all its cavities, to breathe.

During this I listened with great enjoyment to Rohit’s Yoga lectures on You Tube. He is an absolute cork, on the state of India nowadays. Fascinating Vedic wisdoms come bounding out of his laughter, depth and fluid gestures. He is like Ganapati Muni, in trying to restore and regenerate balanced values in society. He feels that Aurobindo is the alchemist of the new spirituality and the wide-world access to it today. I love being among Indian sages – their truth, wit and kundalini.

I don’t remember in which video he talked of the breath and so on, but here is a link to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_yiN9Nh9eY – on Siva Lingam. More can be seen in the link in last week’s post, Sacred India Tarot Archive – 5 & 6 of Arrows

I much like what Rohit says, that our spine is the axis of the Earth. And the feminine matrix of the embryo, and Mercury!

Astrology: The inner beauty of the 23 April Grand Cross is as Real as the tensions around it. My guidance is to act with it, and be patient. It is a whopper Seventh wave for me, on my Jupiter Cancer-to-13 Capricorn opposition this year; and transiting my natal chart significantly … Swim, do what is needed, enjoy and hold the surfboard firmly. Keep things simple. I feel the wave begin to swell … from the December trough.

Grand Cardinal Cross 04.14am gmt, 23 April 2014 in London. This chart has the Houses around the outer wheel, and I coloured them and the Zodiac signs in the Tarot Key spectrum (12 tones). (For more information about this method, search “Colour Wheel” in this blog.)

Hermes Trismegistus detail – caduceus ida pingala – 2003

Rohit’s main message (to me), is to remember to breathe. He said meditation and breath must combine. Meditation by itself gives a power complex to the ego, and nothing changes. The Yogi breath by itself changes nothing – so Earth and Sky must meet. Rohit does Kriyas. Kundalini requires the serpents of breath and meditation to entwine – caduceus – wand – for Her transformative expression.

Apart from my breath going slow and deep when I am writing, the rest of the time I forget about it, and it gets jerky, unconscious. Rohit said, if you breathe right, you are never breathless, however many stairs you run up. Yes I know this: when the Spirit is in me.

I have a resistance to formal hatha yoga. But I accord absolutely, that the breath rhythm regulates the thoughts and bio-pulses. That is what Ramana told the Muni. Therefore, THIS: YOGA RECALLS THE ROOT OF BREATH AND MINDFULNESS THROUGHOUT THE DAY, IN ALL THAT i DO. Another of Rohit’s themes is that Yoga isn’t restricted to asana, Yoga is the way you live and flow your life. Yoga is union. The highest teaching is to mind the breath lightly, like a horse on gentle rein.

To breathe right, is to value life. To breathe consciously is to value life.
Remember this.

I remember also, there are parallel ongoing worlds. A hundred years ago, when Europe was absorbed in its carnage, and Jung began the Red Book Medicine, Ramana Maharshi and Ganapati Muni were doing their Gita on an Indian hill. This is as powerful a generative cycle to this day, as Sarajevo. So look to that! I have an inner picture now, of them in the cave; and of the Muni composing hundreds of Sanskrit verses to the Mother, in white heat, from the power of his brother Ramana’s silence. Sky and earth around them crackle. Upon which atom do I put my money? What Reality to identify, nourish and co-create?

By the way, the concept of the Generative Cycle is old Chinese: the way it works with and through the Destructive Cycle – arrangements of the five elements – in all of life: the movement, the in and out breath of the Tao.

figure of eight – the 5 elements in their mutual conquest cycles

On the breath: when it is synchronised, the diaphragm is open and invites … like the bare wet sand invites the salty wave. There is this inbuilt opening, attuned. On the other hand, when I suddenly remember I haven’t breathed for several hours, and try to, it is “shut”! It is out of synch.

I cannot impose or order the breath – it is disrespectful to life, to expect it to conform. Love has to be here … which tingles very slightly in my shoulders and upper seaweed sacs of the lungs. The whole area is like those plants and creatures underwater, always floating and in soft movement. Relax: locating tiny tension, let it fall, like water off a duck’s feathers. Behold and be the inner floating world.

When thought is sattvic and deep and subtle, the breath – when remembered! – combines with it as the ocean … as the twined staff of Hermes. Then creativity comes.

Hermes in the sea, from the Book of Roob

Look at Hermes walking in the sea. When thought is sattvic, deep, subtle and inviting, it dwells within its savour, its own cosmic sexuality. What is sexuality? The flow of the waves into and through each other, generating exquisite pleasure: the human root of Consciousness.

Start with what you like: position your surfboard, and move with that creaming wave. If thine Eye be single, fill your body with Light.

The wave is like sound. It ripples out concentrically as Light, through all matters and dark mosaics of the world. The breath at such moments, requires no energy beyond its need. It is gentle, like a child asleep: the inner sea is calm. At such moments, I have no stress that I am the doer. I am the vessel: “not my will, but Thine”. And it is Ramana’s Self enquiry. Who?

Near Exeter in south devon – photo from the daily mail

He said to Ganapati Muni, watch the root whence breath and thought arise: this is tapas (practice). He said – and I cannot find the exact quote – he said relax and mind the breath gently, like a rider does his horse. No hassle.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

Human Landscape – on Diving and the Shroud

Posted on September 27, 2013 by janeadamsart

Diving into the heart is a practice which can be integrated with any meditation or method. According to nature and personal type, it will take different forms; the one may be disciplined and hatha-yogic; another may carry it along with whatever they are doing. Others may integrate it with a Kabbalist, alchemical or holistic visualisation. It may be done as a meditation at home, while reclaiming land, or protecting a wildlife habitat.

There may be a controlled kumbaka – inhalation, retention and exhale the breath to four counts each. Or there may be just that fluid instant in the rising and falling curve of the wave. It may come spontaneously when on a walk and seeing or hearing a beauty: response. Or it might help to calm a torment in the feelings. All it needs is attention. Ramana, the inspiration, advised never to force the breath or turn it into a School. Watch it in empathy, relaxed like a rider on horse.

horse friends, 1964

For my nature, it helps to notice the rhythmic waves of life: pulse, respiration, the ebb and flow of sound, and of shadows through Plato’s cave. When I begin to notice them, instead of battling away in a little box room by myself, I am already diving into the heart. Alan and I used to joke a lot about the resistant wall or knight’s armour-plating. But in my opinion it is unwise to imagine that there is one, or to construct in this way, a duality.

I am inspired by watching swans on water. In yoga, an amrita-nadi (subtle nerve-current of bliss, like a spider-thread at dawn) links the third eye chakra (mental focus) to the heart (life-centre). Do not seek it in a linear way, but accept that third eye and heart are One, through the shining filament; and it happens of itself: the thought is stilled, going deep.

Similarly, Alchemy’s famous Pelican opens her breast and feeds the seven chicks (planets’ rainbow spectrum) with the light of Sol within her. In alchemy, the work of the Sun and Moon is done with the help of Mercury – the mind’s capacity to visualise.

In my previous post, I mentioned that one can let nature dive into one’s own heart. Let autumn leaves, damp grass, signposts and the sky – even a jar of good marmalade – do the diving. Diving into the heart is for me, a reversal of habitual attitude. Be dived into!

It is particularly helpful for those – like Alan and like myself – who find it difficult to sit and meditate. And how about combining it with this …?

– salutations to the Sun

I have not done this for ages. This morning my living-room carpet invited me – why? Touch ground and see! So I gave it a try. I remembered some of the positions, and searched for a sketch I did years ago, but then found this beautiful image online.

A few days later … I found the sketch.

“hostile workplace environment” – SUN HERMIT – impressions from a misty autumn stroll through Santa Cruz

Now, here is what I wrote the other day, about the Veils

Contemplation is human portraiture: the essences and savouries. When I feel like celebrating someone, I want to write and picture a massive blog with all my living associations and poetry around that being. It is the relaxing throne.

A thought with “H”: accommodate his way of needing to spread the sand around a bit, before he gets to the point, so when he arrives and we talk, I wait. What I see here, is his need to bring all of himself into the room and be centered, before getting down to business. This is affection.

The being! The being is a citadel of the Self, as filled with Light as the inside of a Tree.

I want to look at the shroud. My night time shroud: the settlement of the tangled web. Francis Lucille’s meditations which guide the “witnessing” are not much use when I am within my samskara. It troubles me how enmeshed I still am. Going deeper, I perceive: the shroud itself to be allowed and fully realised, even through its drift of decades – just as much as a single passing thought in Plato’s cave. The discipline required, is to locate and concentrate on one feeling, towards its root.

I live daily and nightly with my shroud – the big plankton raft. This is what is given, with the dolphins from the ocean playground swimming up to and around it, and often leaping through it. It is a projective veil – tamas. It is a byproduct of my realisation, like vaseline is a byproduct of carboniferous oil. It behaves according to the Law. Attempts to tear it apart or dispel it are pretty futile, and so is feeling bad about it.

dakini oracle

The practice of the Light skulls the boat in dark waters. The dark waters are heavy and mean. Mean and Heavy! And who looks at me through that dakini oracle? Mother Kali.

It is difficult to find peace at night, and I feel as if I have erred, which is part of the conundrum. Realise that the night-cloth is unmovable for the time being, and it gets laid over the moist sculpture when I am not actually at work. The night-cloth is precisely those grey clay-soaked tattered rags in the studio, with their muddy smell. I dreamed about them in the Watershed and since – two cloths were used to clean a wall, and how distressed and filthy they became – and had to be made even more unhappy and filthy, dipped in the bucket, to get the job done. But they got washed at last, and turned into two children, tucked clean and safe, into their cots.

Perhaps if I processed my subconscious day a bit in the evening, as well as next morning, this would happen, and sleep better.

Still on the surface of Portraiture, and what this is really about; the shining Face before I am born, with its enamoured practice-runs in life… It is the pith of the stem; a white brilliance; a magnet of JAH = alchemical magnesia.

mudmaid by … ?

Then as it is human landscape, accept the shadows thrown by geology and forest and town. As the redoubtable Rebbe Alan Yakov of Prague used to tell his disciples, some of God’s brush strokes are dark; without them there is no painting, so we should welcome them. I made this into a poem:

Nature’s common ground
is your truth receiving light.

Let your canvas find a key –
the tonal spectrum of one flower, rock or leaf.

Fidelity earths the lover’s act.
Be a well for your brush.
Welcome what is given.

Acceptance of the shadow turns them to light, peace, shalom. But precisely because they ARE shadows and not postage stamps on the wall, they are suffered and then realised, suffered and then realised, again and again; and this is the Understanding which liberates and clarifies. This is the Underbeing of life.

And the Way of the Underbeing is the unhurried tempo of touching each flavour in the passing show, uniquely, to let it be.

A dewy spider web on a barb wire fence … The vintage essence starts into leaf … a branch with life bursting inside, whittled down and fertile.

When I first knew him, Alan said his Sadhana is the sculptor’s chisel: the pain of life is what is being chipped away.

Conundrum! Living in the present is full of obvious but INACCURATE notions that I am lazy and losing my grip. The true NOW is an unfolding movement under that grave-cloth.

http://joelgillin.com/2009/12/02/shroud-of-turin/

There is a Face, features of living Light like soft cloud marble; and just raised off it is the dark woven grave-cloth which protects it when not at work, and which takes all the battering of life.

GALLERY

I looked everywhere in my photo-library for the picture of a mudmaid. At last I found her. But before I did, out dropped all these images which I like today, for this post.

from The Sacred India Tarot, 6 of Disks/Pentacles

following my mother through a magical footprint

somewhere near Rhum and Eigg and Muck – probably Tyreee

near Strumble in Pembrokeshire

I don’t remember whose blog I found this photo in – (recently). If it’s yours, let me know!

Mevlana

circa 1956

Riss near Mt Assiniboine, canadian rockies

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2013. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Human Landscape – a Holy Task of Self-Enquiry

Posted on September 25, 2013 by janeadamsart

Following on my last post – a portrait of Alan Jacobs – I abridge here a chapter we wrote together on “Diving into the Heart”. This practice is at the core of Alan’s sadhana and devotion to Ramana Maharshi. The chapter appeared in a booklet we published in 1994, called The Holy Task. After that … another portrait gallery.

“In the inmost core, the Heart
shines as Brahman alone
as I … I, the Self aware.
Enter deep into the Heart
by search for Self, or diving deep,
of with breath under check –
thus abide ever in Atman.”

Ramana Maharshi in “Ramana Gita” by Ganapati Muni

This metrical verse that Ramana Maharshi himself translated from the Sanskrit original into English, is considered by many devotees to be the essence of his teaching.

Self-enquiry does not mean an endless analysis of the non-Self or personality, but a direct probing into the nature of Reality. The actions and identifications of the personal ego are impartially witnessed, observed, noticed by normal self awareness, when we are not too carried away by external objects and events.

For those in the great majority – if we are honest with ourselves – who have not the strength of attention to hold the I thought in its source and investigate its movement, or who are riveted by the cares of the world, Ramana gave us a great aid: the control of breath or pranayama.

In verses 28, 29 and 30 of the Forty Verses, he states,

As in a well of water deep,
dive deep with Reason cleaving sharp.
With speech, mind and breath restrained,
exploring thus … discover the real source of ego-self.

The mind through calm in deep plunge enquires.
That alone is real quest for the Self.
“This I am” – “mine is not this” –
these ideas help forward the quest.

Get at the Heart within by search.
the personal bows its head and falls.
Then flashes forth another “I” …
not personal, but the Self supreme.”

The paradox of Self enquiry is that it is intimately transpersonal. I substituted ‘personal’ for the word ‘ego’ which has variable interpretations.

Ardhanariswara

Alan extracted a technique based on a practice somewhat similar which he found in The Technique of Maha Yoga by N.R.Narayana Aiyar. It is advisable to ground this practice in a working knowledge of pranayama (the science of breath), physiology, and one’s own innate capacity.

Sit on the floor, kneeling or at ease. Take in a deep inhalation for four or eight counts (as Ramana explains in Self Enquiry), then hold the breath for another four, while turning inward. On the full retention, take the normal focus of concentration which is say, between the eyebrows, and implant it in the spiritual Heart centre just to the right side within the chest, mirroring the physical heart. This is what Ramana experienced, and how he indicated it: “Nam Yar – I, who?” Visualise him inside, and feel this question.

Let it penetrate deeply through the veiling of the mind – which varies in resistance according to the play of the Gunas – into the innermost flame which shines in the cave of the Heart eternally. It is one’s own, yet universal. Allow the intuition of this source or beingness, to generate itself as I AM. Or let go and discover it in the receptivity of the stillness itself.

We may find that the diver is “I” but the receptivity is “Amness”.

After the maximum penetration attained – perhaps four to eight counts – release the breath gently; exhale. The movement of the breath and the birth of thought are linked. Restraint of the one quietens the other. It might be said that prana is that essence of the indrawn and outgoing breath which becomes our awareness.

This practice may be repeated, depending on the practitioner, as often and wherever he or she wishes. It will vary in depth and intensity, but no effort is in vain. The power of concentration related to the harnessed breath will increase, and gradually over a period of time, awaken a subtle vibrance or sphurana within the chest and centre spine, a little to the right. Though the Spiritual heart has no physical location, this area through Ramana’s own experience – and our own – serves as its point of support in the bodymind. Continual practice benefits the nervous system overall, acting as an anchor for Self-remembering, and an instrument of change.

As a byproduct of diving into the Self, there may be a few observable changes in one’s attitudes and innate tendencies. It is a radical procedure, bypassing the mental circus.

On exhalation, one lets go of the world, of darkness, fret and ignorance, like so many old clothes. On inhaling deeply, it may be with some sacred silent image, a mantra sound, or any loved symbol of the Self. On the retention, dive inward by letting the thought-world float away downstream from here; immerse for a moment as if underwater, in being. A sense of urgency may be brought to “who am I?” by thinking of one’s death.

The retention or kumbakha may also be practiced after exhaling and before inhaling, as the Technique of Maha Yoga suggests. In this case, the analogy is with the tide going out; an open sandy beach cleansed of impurities, before the incoming wave of inhalation. In both methods, the root of the breath is watched, as it swells from ‘no where’. We may dive into fullness, as into emptiness. “The mind through calm in deep plunge, enquires.”

What does “to dive into the Self” mean? It is to abide, to be calm and concept free, to be not drawn forth, yet present. Ramana told Ganapati Muni, “Find out wherefrom this ‘I’ springs forth, and merge at its source, this is tapas. Find out wherefrom the sound of the Mantra in japa (repetition of the divine Name) rises up, and merge there; this is tapas.” Nothing more.

Results should not be sought, for these are of the mind’s own machination. When the inner and outer guru are ready, some direct understanding may occur, as a descent of grace strong enough to control the wandering thought, or as a pull from within – a lessening of interest in one’s worries, a tendency to bathe in the mystery of the Source; to trust.

Our minds are very rajas, accustomed to straying outwards for many lifetimes. Gradually as the inner guru pulls us from within, an alert dispassion develops. We need to get to know and hear this inner guru! It is a purifying process: there may be some nervous “churning” as kundalini wakes, and the notion that the vasanas are increasing in strength. Like silt stirred up from the river bed, ALL must come out to be impartially witnessed, in the light of awareness: the worst along with the best. Grace is given.

At this stage, in Alan’s experience, to dive into the Self is beneficial and therapeutic. It opens the way to an intenser God-love, or bhakti. One should never strain in this act, nor let it be a mechanical chore. Ramana’s general recommendation was to watch the natural breath without involvement, and to let the diving into the Heart happen of its own accord. Sattvic or receptive moods encourage it; as does the urgency of one’s death – “to love life, to do service and to die consciously”. Our tiny effort mirrors the effortless and unimaginable power of the guru within. The inner guru dispels the darkness, primordially.

We should also be properly informed first, about our physical and spiritual anatomy, and the science of kundalini. There is no point in practising anything without a genuine interest in how it works.

Use strength without strain. It is a non-verbal gesture inward, of enquiry and discrimination. Paradoxically, the strength of the mind leads it to turn inward and surrender its own notions, like wheat to be harvested; the grain to be bread. “Who is this ‘me’ I’m so concerned about?”

When thoughts stray outward, impelled by preference, fear and political tendency, the mind is weak because it is unfocused. A radical means is needed to pierce the veil of life. In some persons, whose devotional calling is strong, the breath spontaneously slows and stills as they enquire; without the pranayama.

We all have specific vasanas or inherited tendencies, for inner work and witnessing. The nervous system – the network of nadis – must be gradually and systematically purified before the mental engine and all its predilections can safely approach its Source. The diving is a preparatory and cleansing sadhana; Atman the Self in due course takes over, and grips the mind, melting it into the heart; one’s centre of being.

The inner guru pulls the outer circumstances of life in towards the Centre, gradually highlighting aids and techniques which help the quest; and also the time for them to disappear.

Alan practiced diving and plunging as described, for some years. He can honestly say that it helps his all round understanding. It undermines the verbal or conceptual level towards a fuller Self surrender, and deeper insights into the teaching. Ramana’s key unlocked his prison.

I have not practiced it for a long time, and it is about time I did! However, the diving happens in many ways. The secret is to engage an ancient Mantra or sound, with the living breath, instead of just repeating it verbally, or expecting it to do some magic for you. The secret is to embody it and take it with you to pay the bills.

The resonance enters blood and bone, and returns transposed; it is Alchemy. For instance: the sanskrit “SO (inhale) HAM” (exhale). I remember doing this while hiking along the trails in Sedona; Robert Adams taught it. In Kabbalah, we inhale and exhale similarly the syllables of Angels and names of JHVH. We bring them into our pranic being.

A long time ago, I linked the Tetragrammaton (JHVH) to the four lines of the tsarets Prayer of the Heart, and breathed them in and out. I remember doing this on the puffer-train from Exeter to Barnstaple – a very beautiful winding valley.

But it takes practice and commitment, and these I have to say, I have lacked, in recent years. I get overwhelmed by my local troubles. The sign of an untrained and unfocused psyche is when she tries to push the sides of the train.

GALLERY – more memories!

When creating new Life – any spiritual practice – it needs to be given patience, love, attention, time and space. Nothing grows in just a weekend. Vera Moore, my old piano teacher, would have her students wrap each note like a baby in a shawl, and re-discover it with that tactile tenderness.

So I am glad to recall now, what Alan and I practiced together, and teased each other about, and argued and muddled along with. Added to that, is the full palette of life, aging and … the way my understanding ripens since that time. And his. A lifetime is a parabola – a curve of manifestation: Malkuth.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link

Human Landscape – a Portrait

Posted on September 25, 2013 by janeadamsart

17 July 1999

TEMPO

Dear Poet Philosopher!
you’re an ocean liner on the seas
not a jet plane.

You belong to the Victorian
leisure eccentric class
and you deal in seventeenth century
Dutch gold skies.

You move by hunch, your advances
missing out the modern way.
You are lissome with your romances.
Like a snake they shine, and fall away.

No scrape
has quite the nerve
yourself to drape.

You’re sufficiently moved on the whole, to regulate
your affairs from red into black.
Clearing your daily slate
your warm, flamboyant hand no lack,
nothing piles up

yet in the deep
unruffled, the long drawn out and hidden marge
moves with rabbinic inscrutability –
storms in tilting teacups to submerge.

Your tendency with life
is almost infinitely elastic.
In love with, and un-frightened of your wife,
her naivety sometimes fantastic,

immovably and willingly stubborn,
with a swing of long arms wide, your knack
to welcome it all, is a splash of water borne
from a duck’s straight back.

To wash the dishes and care for the cat
are polite devoted tasks.
You are not touched by any of that,
for deep in your noble squares sublimning, basks
an esoteric quicksilver Knight
whose rhyme into metre quick to appreciate
Castling his King and exchanging port for Poet
‘pon measured modes of black and white
doth square his Circle bright
in such way that patient Lord Yama might,
receiving you into his House, with abashed insight,
himself the Ultimate Question ask –

who Am I?

Dear Poet Philosopher Spouse,
my Alchemystic Solitude
is cradled like an online mouse
in your August Be-At-itude.

Just one turn it takes
of that great ruby Stone
on your little finger
for the knot in your hanky carefully tied,
to forget the ropes and snakes

and know that

all is well,
all is One.
Nothing matters and
who cares?

We were married for about ten or fifteen years, and remain close friends. Some readers of my blog will recognise him, as he is held in deep affection by spiritual seekers and pilgrims. He has an awesome ability to lay his hand on just the right book for a person’s sadhana, or point to a path which will “ease their doubts”.

I drew him dozens of times, and made us both laugh. Here is a selection from my sketches which celebrate Alan:

GALLERY

Hampstead Garden Suburb from the Heath Extension

My parents are bottom left, at their instruments, with Lavinia N at the piano, while my sister, brother and I build my father’s new greenhouse just above; neighbours drop in, and Alan surveys the scene

And here is a poem by him – circa 1999:

The Royal Game

“On chequered squares of space and time
grey shadows dance their game of mime ;
to slay the self is their cryptic aim –
by tricks of mind to heights they climb.

“There sits the King, and black’s his name.
Proud ego is his claim to fame.
This cosmic game he’s made to play
helped by his dark, deluding Dame.

“False bishops at his feet do pray.
Marauding knights have feet of clay,
a swarm of puppet pawns at rest –
all forces poise in gaunt array.

“The Lord of Light is truly blest,
a White Goddess his Queen, no less;
with ancient Sages at each side,
he waits to enter the celestial jest.

“His warriors noble stallions ride,
maintaining righteous order, wide.
In silence, rooks withdraw and meditate,
enslaved to dream of seek and hide.

“The Self wants Ego checked to mate,
the rascal fights to thwart his fate
and kill his foe himself, instead;
we’ll see a battle tense and great!

“By laws of nature the rules are led,
peace conceived by Consciousness ahead.
To wage this war in awesome glory
’til black or white surrenders – dead!

“After ages going grey and hoary,
all lie boxed; the victory was gory.
When WHO created this sport is ready,
a game begins anew: another story.”

Alan Jacobs

On one pinhead where the angels dance, dear Alan, my Knight jousts your Bishop. How can Consciousness be ahead of the game, when “Consciousness is all there is?”

Ah, an answer. Consciousness or “enlightenment” appears to be “ahead” by the construction of our brain in space and time; but from birth to death it encircles and is our rite of passage. The heart and essence of a human life is released in full, when the apple falls. The joy of a portraitist touches that region; a hem of the Great Garment.

I shall follow up this post with the chapter on “Diving into the Heart” from The Holy Task – a booklet we wrote together, in the early days of Ramana Foundation UK.

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

aquariel link