ANNAPURNA SARADA, Friday, April 10, 2015 9:16 am

Many Paths, One Way – Part 3

Renouncing the sense of agency, continued

Previously, we have discussed renouncing the sense of agency via discrimination between the actionless Self and the ever-shifting gunas, summed up superlatively by Sri Krishna when He states that gunas as objects and gunas as senses merely abide with each other, and that the knower does not become entangled over this.  This is a teaching from the perspective of jnana yoga, the path of wisdom, which can also be applied to karma yoga, the path of action.

Bhakti yoga, the path of devotion, has its own approaches to breaking down the binding power of the ego, of the sense of “I, me, and mine.”  These paths work well together and should be used together.  Bhakti and Jnana are often described as the two wings of the bird.  The bird of our spiritual life will not get off the ground with only one wing.  Further, karma yoga and dhyan yoga (path of meditation) form the body and tail feathers (rudder) of the bird, respectively.  The integration of all the yogas via practice will bring the sincere aspirant to a comprehensive understanding of spiritual life, and the natural result will be entrance into the “one way” of mature renunciation.  The less we cling to the world, as Sri Ramakrishna and others have shown, the more will love of God suffuse our mind and actions.

Even those who cherish the path of wisdom, who prefer a formless Ideal and take Advaita, nondualism, to be the highest Truth, are practicing at the stage of qualified nondualism.  Ishvara, the Personal God, the personification of Saguna Brahman, who is both immanent and transcendent of all the worlds, holds sway here.  Many spiritual aspirants do not realize that Ishvara is not only expressed through the various Deities and Incarnations, but is also a “formless form,” conceptualized as the dynamic power of Intelligence flowing through everything in all dimensions (akashas).  One’s ideal of the Self or Brahman, beyond form and formlessness, is limited by the unavoidable conceptualization that occurs as we take the mind and intellect with us to that pinnacle of realization, called Nirvikalpa Samadhi in Vedanta, Asamprajnata Samadhi in Yoga, and Nirvana in Buddhism.  The increasingly subtle concepts we hold of the Self/Brahman that occur as the mind undergoes purification are expressions of the Personal Reality/Ishvara, which is the highest rendering of God possible for the human mind.  Sri Ramakrishna sums this up from his direct experience:

“Whatever we see or think about is the manifestation of the glory of the Primordial Energy, the Primal Consciousness.  Creation, preservation, and destruction, living beings and the universe, and further, meditation and the meditator, bhakti and prema – all these are manifestations of the glory of that Power.” – Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 290

That Power and Brahman are known to be identical after Brahmajnana, the Knowledge of Brahman, has been attained.  They represent two different perspectives: the first from the angle of the mind, and the second from the standpoint of Advaita (of course, in the “experience” of Advaita, there is no separate entity to describe this).

One method of reducing and eliminating the sense of agency while treading the spiritual path, is to cultivate the “ripe I,” as Sri Ramakrishna called it.  The unripe “I” takes all action to itself, “I am the doer – I am a leader, a teacher, a worker, manager, an organizer, mother or father of the household,” and so forth.  The ripe “I,” on the other hand, cultivates humility and love of God.  “…keep the ‘ripe I,’ which will make you feel that you are the servant of God, His devotee, and that God is the Doer and you are His instrument.” (ibid. p.269).  This practice also eliminates the growth of a spiritual ego that is proud of its knowledge, or its experiences in meditation, as well as feelings of dejection along the way.  The spiritual ego is dangerous and leads the practitioner astray, effectively preventing realization that “all knowledge lies within and belongs to the Divine Mother.  “Divine Mother sits in my throat and pushes knowledge out,” is one of the ways Sri Ramakrishna described the constant presence of wisdom pouring forth from him.  Thus, the practitioner, applying this method, will discriminate about which ego, ripe or unripe, is expressing itself in any given action and thought, and strive to make the ripe ego his or her natural orientation.

To be continued…

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