Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog - Posts Tagged "advaita"
Big Bang And The 7 ‘O Clock Alarm
The big bang theory states that the whole universe with its countless life forms, galaxies, various organisms and the elements sprang to life from a singularity. That moment had the potential for all the life and possibilities of a whole universe. Now, my limited knowledge of the big bang and Advaita vedanta and Sri Ramana Bhagwan’s teachings led me to this thought a few days ago.
Ramana Maharishi,a most venerable sage who had Self realization at the age of 17 and whose name is synonymous with the holy hill, Thiruvannamalai where he spent all his life, always used to ask the questioners with ther various problems and issues a simple yet powerful question: ‘Who is asking the question?’
‘Who am I?’ or atma vichara, was the constantly recurring theme of His teaching, which was mostly rooted in silence. On one occasion, he said that there is a moment in everybody’s life when there is pure awareness, before the ‘I’ thought enters. That moment is in the morning, just before you wake up.
From deep sleep to dream land and the waking stage , our life is divided into these three stages. In the Gayatri mantra, the goddess is venerated as the ‘the One who illuminates three planes of consciousness’. Ramana Maharishi’s oft repeated question ,’Did these occur to you when you were in deep sleep?’ always brought the questioner back to the root of the problem. The essence of it was that we all say we slept well. But in our deep sleep not only was there no problem, no family, relatives and friends, or home or job, we did not even have our body. So who is the one now who says he or she has all these problems?
If we go back to the moment we wake up, in a micro-second, the whole universe with its multitude of life forms, including our friends and family members, and everything we see, comes to life. Instantly.
In light of this, it might seem that there is a big bang every time you wake up. And hit the snooze button.
Ramana Maharishi,a most venerable sage who had Self realization at the age of 17 and whose name is synonymous with the holy hill, Thiruvannamalai where he spent all his life, always used to ask the questioners with ther various problems and issues a simple yet powerful question: ‘Who is asking the question?’
‘Who am I?’ or atma vichara, was the constantly recurring theme of His teaching, which was mostly rooted in silence. On one occasion, he said that there is a moment in everybody’s life when there is pure awareness, before the ‘I’ thought enters. That moment is in the morning, just before you wake up.
From deep sleep to dream land and the waking stage , our life is divided into these three stages. In the Gayatri mantra, the goddess is venerated as the ‘the One who illuminates three planes of consciousness’. Ramana Maharishi’s oft repeated question ,’Did these occur to you when you were in deep sleep?’ always brought the questioner back to the root of the problem. The essence of it was that we all say we slept well. But in our deep sleep not only was there no problem, no family, relatives and friends, or home or job, we did not even have our body. So who is the one now who says he or she has all these problems?
If we go back to the moment we wake up, in a micro-second, the whole universe with its multitude of life forms, including our friends and family members, and everything we see, comes to life. Instantly.
In light of this, it might seem that there is a big bang every time you wake up. And hit the snooze button.
Advaita, Bob Dylan and Kannadasan
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie”, rasps Dylan in Things Have Changed. Which is what Advaita Vedanta alludes to in general. Once you know the rope to be a rope, then the fear of it as a snake disappears. It’s not that everything you see in the world is an illusion. It’s not that there is no cruelty around, or that people are not killing people, and that there is no violence. It’s the wrong identification with the body that gives rise to the sense of reality curated by the five limited senses. As Ramana Maharishi would often remind people, “Did all these occur to you in deep sleep?”
Meaning, all of this came to life with the waking up of the wrong ‘I’. We see the world after we open our eyes, the world doesn’t come and tell us it exists. In deep sleep, we have no nationality, no religion, no beliefs, no gender, no family, no name, no worries, no anxiety, no plans and we don’t even have our body. Yet, we wake up and declare that ‘I’ slept well. Bhagwan Ramana would ask questioners, “Who is the I that says I slept well and who is the I that has all the problems and questions and doubts?”
Or that’s what I understand (that’s the trouble with limited knowledge, isn’t it?). So all that we think is true, all that we think is the ‘snake’ is, in fact, a strand of rope.
Kannadasan, the greatest Tamil lyricist of the 20th century who distilled the most profound truths into easily digestible, simple cinema songs, has a similar yet more powerful take on it. In a song titled “Yaarada mandihan ange” (meaning “who is the real man there?”) he says, “In laughter, Man isn’t. In tears, Man isn’t. In his heart, Man isn’t. In sleep, man is. Living beast, sleeping god, in between is Man”. Brilliant.
It is the Man in sleep who is real. Not the beast that reacts and repents. Not the Man in between two stages who is confused and confounded. It is the Truth that lies behind one Big Lie.
*Originally published on www.guruswriting.com*
Meaning, all of this came to life with the waking up of the wrong ‘I’. We see the world after we open our eyes, the world doesn’t come and tell us it exists. In deep sleep, we have no nationality, no religion, no beliefs, no gender, no family, no name, no worries, no anxiety, no plans and we don’t even have our body. Yet, we wake up and declare that ‘I’ slept well. Bhagwan Ramana would ask questioners, “Who is the I that says I slept well and who is the I that has all the problems and questions and doubts?”
Or that’s what I understand (that’s the trouble with limited knowledge, isn’t it?). So all that we think is true, all that we think is the ‘snake’ is, in fact, a strand of rope.
Kannadasan, the greatest Tamil lyricist of the 20th century who distilled the most profound truths into easily digestible, simple cinema songs, has a similar yet more powerful take on it. In a song titled “Yaarada mandihan ange” (meaning “who is the real man there?”) he says, “In laughter, Man isn’t. In tears, Man isn’t. In his heart, Man isn’t. In sleep, man is. Living beast, sleeping god, in between is Man”. Brilliant.
It is the Man in sleep who is real. Not the beast that reacts and repents. Not the Man in between two stages who is confused and confounded. It is the Truth that lies behind one Big Lie.
*Originally published on www.guruswriting.com*
