The Direct Method

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D: What is the difference between meditation and enquiry into the self?

M: Meditation is possible only if the ego ('I') is kept up. There is the ego ('I') and the object meditated upon. The method is indirect. Whereas the Self is one. Seeking the ego's source it disappears. What is left is the Self. This method is direct.

An American lady seeker came to India in search of truth. She went from ashram to ashram and kept asking what is the common unalterable dictum underlying Vedanta. Wherever she went the reply was the same. The world is 'unreal' and Brahman alone is 'real'. She knew nothing about Brahman. Its reality was lost on her. On the other hand she was aware of the world with its myriad beauty, with all its bewildering variety. How could it be unreal? Was there no truth in her relationships with 'her people', 'her family', 'her friends' and 'the society'? Was it all meaningless? Were her bank account and economic circumstance inconsequential? Was she to deny the evidence of her eyes, her ears and indeed all her senses? Bewildered and confused she came to Sri Ramanasramam.

The Master asked, 'What happens to your 'real world' in sleep? Do you exist then, let alone your world? Again, was your dream world the same as your waking world? Were your friends able to give you their company when you were feeling lonely and lost while dreaming? How can the phenomena which keeps coming and going be real?' Slowly the truth dawned on her. She could realize the error in seeing the world as apart from the perceiver, apart from the continuing substratum of all the daily states of waking, dream and sleep. It dawned on her that the superimposition of the notion of reality on changing movement and labeling the individual and his world as real was like 'an infatuated lover foisting chastity on a prostitute'. We too have to recognize this truth. It is time to step out of illusion. Otherwise we could be trying to ride two horses simultaneously. One would be clinging to one's worldly attachments and seeking that which can dawn only when their hold loosens and drops off.

But this knowledge is only the first step. Chastity is unknown to thought. It keeps flirting in contra directions, attracted by pulls and contra-pulls and innate tendencies, which keep playing games more puzzling that the tricks that a magician pulls out of his hat. One must remain the victim of the mind's many allurements and illusions so long as one has separated oneself from the mind. Unless this primary ignorance regarding the mind as separate from oneself is ended there is no escape from mind's vagaries. For one is the mind.

The whole thought structure with all its intricate patterns is for the thinker. The thinker and his thoughts are an integrated whole. Where are thoughts without the thinker? Why don't they come to life when his attention is absent? Once this is recognized we are on the right track. We have laid our hands on the malaise. We have diagnosed the cause of the mental muddle. We have arrived at the point that as long as the thinker is not the focus of one's attention, any sadhana to control the mind, to be free of its illusions, would be peripheral and perhaps even counter-productive.

To be continued