ANNAPURNA SARADA, Wednesday, July 22, 2015 5:48 am

Snake Begone!

Last post, we visited the topic of viveka, discrimination between the Eternal and the noneternal, the first qualification in the Sadhanachatushtaya (Four qualifications of the student).  I have found from my own experience, and also observing other aspirants over the years, that we get rather good and comfortable at making that distinction: what is Eternal and what is not.  We have been informed at the start that the Self/God/Brahman-Atman is the Eternal and everything else isn’t.   But for some reason the noneternal keeps tripping us up and causing misery of one type or another.  Maybe we are able to witness our suffering with a measure of detachment, which is a good start, but why are we affected?   “It’s all maya,” we say, and try not to think about it.

I remember reading early on Swami Nikhilananda’s Self Knowledge, a translation and commentary of Shankaracharya’s Atmabodha.  The introduction to this scripture is an outstanding overview of Vedanta.  In that introduction, the swami explains that there are two methods of knowledge: adhyaropa and apavada, false superimposition and its refutation.  Adhyaropa also implies the recognition that something is amiss as well as the haziness of being lost in it. So the first way I understood this issue of “why am I still getting tripped up by the noneternal” was that I was stuck in just half the equation – adhyaropa.  Apavada, refutation of the false, was not activated yet.

Vedanta makes use of the analogy of the snake in the rope in order to describe how, through ignorance/avidya, we see the noneternal instead of the Eternal, how we see varieties of names and forms when Reality is undivided.  If you have never read or heard of this analogy, it goes like this:

You are walking along the road at dusk and see a snake lying across your path.  You jump back in fear and your heart is racing.  As you stand there observing the snake, it begins to occur to you that maybe it is not what it appears to be.  Upon going closer and examining it more carefully, you find that it is only a rope.  As soon as you see the rope, you no longer see the snake and your fear is gone.   The rope stands for Brahman/Reality and the snake for the world, or all phenomena perceivable to mind and senses.  Brahman is Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss, and these aspects get superimposed over insentient matter, subtle and gross.  We think that objects exist in and of themselves; that animal and human bodies/minds are sentient; that objects and circumstances impart happiness.  In fact, those  are only borrowed from Brahman, the substratum of all phenomena.

Without the functioning of apavada we do not have the wherewithal to reject false notions and appearances. We may have the insight that what we are seeing is not truly a snake/world and that therefore there should be no fear, but we are missing something essential that dispels the false appearance and stops the pounding of our hearts.  Early on, many of us only go so far as to say “the snake is unreal; snake begone!”  But it is not convinced, and neither are we.

So where does the ability to activate apavada come from?  While revisiting my understanding of adhyaropa/apavada, I found the following passage on these two methods written by my teacher, Babaji Bob Kindler, in a manuscript awaiting publication:

“When the discriminative power of adhyaropa is applied to the mind field, and it searches out the problem of false thinking in whatever form that takes, the force of apavada is ready for application.  Apavada, what has been described as refutation, rejection, denial, or negation, is based upon clarity mixed with personal self-will – what Vedavyasa in conjunction with the Patanjala Yoga Sutras called khyati, dharma-megha and prasada – initial discernment, the rising of virtue, and the birth of clarity.  The discrimination phase of the process lies more with adhyaropa, and this often represents the hardest transition due to samskaras being subtle and lying undetected for years, even life times.  Apavada is just the natural breakdown of the old and the outdated based upon new comprehension.  This is why it is irresistible, for it is more a flow of sequential events, like seeing a light at the end of the tunnel or welcoming the dawn after a long, hard, and cold night in the wilderness.

“Nothing can resist apavada’s delivery, then, and as quick as the old concepts and tired beliefs fall like tumblers and scatter like straw before the wind, the sterling principles of Truth Eternal stand forth and immediately take their place.  False superimposition is over and vivarta is no more, for in fact it was not really there in reality, for Truth can never truly be sublated or covered up.  That is the enigma of vivarta.  It is a principle of Maya, the perplexing and inimitable power of the Universal Enchantress who makes the impossible possible, and vice versa.”  [Sword of the Goddess, Methods and Obstacles in Spiritual Life, unpublished]

From these two passages, we can see that apavada arises from a firm foundation of sadhana that includes study and the serious contemplation of one’s studies.  As Sri Ramakrishna has described it, one must dip the mind again and again in the teachings of Reality.  Only then can the layers of ignorance of one’s true nature get dissolved.  This is the “breakdown of the old and the outdated based upon new comprehension.”

In retrospect, I see that I was fed a steady stream of cosmology and philosophy to cultivate apavada.  One of Babaji’s shorthand teachings in SRV lately is “cosmology should give rise to philosophy, and philosophy should give rise to spirituality, and spirituality ends in Self-realization.”  The first particularized training I received in this came via a course of study on Ramprasad Sen’s ecstatic songs to the Divine Mother offered by Babaji.  One of the first poems for study made reference to the five elements.

O mind, my dear friend,

This projected world is only

the faint reflection of Reality.

By attempting to grasp reflected images,

we cheat ourselves of true experience.

Turn instead to the Original

And discover the Treasure of Delight.

This realm of reflection we call the universe

consists simply of earth, water, fire, air and ether,

arranging and rearranging with intricate beauty.

The principle of subtle energy

Naturally evolves into tangibility,

blossoming as millions of worlds.

The sun reflects in countless water-bearing vessels.

When these earthenware worlds are broken, one by one,

The sunlight of infinite awareness remains the same.

Floating in the Cosmic Mother’s womb,

we are all contemplatives,

but once we take birth in the world of separation,

we consume earth instead of nectar,

time instead of timelessness.

The cord that bound me to my human mother

was severed quickly and cleanly by the mid-wife.

Can I cut as easily my illusion of bondage to the world? ….*

In Babaji’s commentary I was introduced for the first time to the Twenty-Four Cosmic Principles of Sankhya, which is the cosmological foundation for most philosophical systems in India.  I had seen the frequent reference to it in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, but did not understand its significance.  Having a rather linear mind, I enjoyed memorizing the list in the poem commentary: 5 elements, 5 active senses, 5 cognitive senses, 5 tanmatras, manas/dual mind, buddhi/intellect, ahamkara/I-ness, Mahat/Cosmic Mind.  I also studied the chapter on Sankhya in Swami Prabhavananda’s Spiritual Heritage of India. These Twenty-Four cosmic principles represent the categories of the not-Self, the noneternal.  What a handy list!

The first thing that really struck me in this study was that the mind is considered part of Prakriti/Nature (in contrast to Purusha, the Sentient Self), and it consisted of subtle matter.  Consciousness reflected off of it the way the sun’s light reflects off the moon.  That is, the moon (mind) shines by borrowed light, but the sun (the Self) is self-effulgent.  This idea is also something that had been repeated at almost every lecture by Swami Aseshananda, but now I was learning a cosmological/philosophical system through which to analyze and apply it more thoroughly.

This made it possible to discern between the different modes of mind – brooding on dualities, reaching conclusions, asserting ownership and agency – and That which was observing those changes, Itself unmoved.  Physical objects could be looked upon as so many combinations of insentient elements that are engaged by senses that are themselves combinations of the elements.

Over the years of study in the various darshanas, these foundational 24 Cosmic Principles got connected up to other systems.  In Vedanta, they fit into the three bodies (gross, subtle, causal), the states of waking, dream, and deep sleep, and to the 5 Koshas (the sheaths of body, energy, mind, intellect, and bliss), thus showing how objects are not just made of atomic particles but also particles of energy, mind, and thought manifesting as karmas and samskaras (inherent tendencies), and playing out in our assumptions, conventional thinking, expectations, passions, desires, and sentimentality.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the Cosmic Principles became objects of contemplation (alambanas) for the purpose of separating the Seer from the seen.  They appeared again in Tantra.  With the teachings of AUM in Vedanta, Yoga, and Tantra, came the revelation that the Cosmic Principles evolve and involve (dissolve) via the power inherent in the mind, and that all objects that we see “outside” of us are simply our own thought made manifest.

Early on in my study of the 24 Cosmic Principles, when my understanding was still very much on the surface of the list, I wondered if I was simply dabbling with the acquisition of intellectual knowledge, as if it was a distraction to diving deeply into meditation.  But I am certain now that the foundation this cosmological system provided has made it possible to hone the intellect, understand the scriptures more deeply, and make it possible to engage in the second half of the viveka equation — apavada, refutation of false superimposition.  Snake begone!

Yours in Peace,

Annapurna

*Translated by Lex Hixon in Mother of the Universe; those interested in the poem study with Babaji should write to srvinfo@srv.org

Recent Blogs