Enlightenment

I You say: “‘person + Indriya + Manas is the Bhokta’ renders the sentence meaningless to me.” While that could be true, that sentence makes (and made) perfect sense to millions (over the last two millennia) on earth. Would it help if it read instead: “soul + Indriya + Manas is the Bhokta; ” or “my inner self + Indriya + Manas is the Bhokta” or “ the pudgala + Indriya + Manas is the Bhokta” or any …

One could justifiably see spirituality (the Jewish, Christian and Islamic) as ‘Adhyatma’ if one focusses on the psychological transformations that a human being undergoes in the process of moving from the mundane life to a ‘spiritual’ one. You would be closer to the notion of ‘Adhyatma’ if you can also additionally guide such a process. Such guidance requires, of course, that there is some deep …

I I think that the multiple routes that exist in the Indian culture and those that individuals follow are on par with each other. From within any one of these, the other routes appear as moments. However, this does not privilege any one route above the other. If one were to suggest, say, that the Puranic stories are simplifications of the Upanishadic insights then one has to endorse a claim of the …

Two caveats. One: the commentary is very, very short. To write down all the things I want to say about this citation requires a long paper and not a brief mail. Two: I have not checked either the citation or the reference (Brihadaranyaka upanishad - I.iv.10). I assume that both are accurate. This (Self) was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew itself only as “I am Brahman.” Therefore it became …

I Question: “Certainly that Brahman == self-awareness == Atman is also a matter of direct experience, not of intellectual reasoning?” Let me first begin with reason and then drift towards experience. Suppose, as an expansion of the sentence that ‘Atman is Brahman’, it is said: “Atman and Brahman are identical to each other”. What kind of sense does it make and how do we explain that sense? Let us …

Some Swamiji claims: “One cannot experience the Atman[, the Atman] is the witness, it is what experiences.” Obviously, this is a very rough and approximate formulation. This statement is both wrong and right in different ways. (a) In the very early days, when I began to develop my meditation exercise, I ‘sensed’ the vague presence of an observer (somewhere present in the background of my …

It would be a good thing to narrow-in on the ‘spookiness’ of the accessing ‘Real’. However, because there is a very great danger that ‘access’ can be conceptualised as an access to a ‘supra-mundane’ or a ‘spiritual’ world, or to a world that is not accessible to ‘sciences’ but can be ‘spiritually’ accessed, etc. a few extra words are required. Therefore, an attempt that might reduce one possible …

Let us agree on the proposed division into two categories: “1) That which exists or could exist (2) That which could not and does not exist but is present (therefore ‘Real’)”. Let us also accept that (1) collects: “(a) everything that we know like Earth, stars, mud, (b) everything that we can think of or imagine - models, formulas, triangles, present and future scientific theories, tooth fairies, …

9.32 Bhagavadgita māṃ hi pārtha vyapāśritya ye ‘pi syuḥ pāpayonayaḥ striyo vaiśyāstathā śūdrās te’ pi yānti parāṃ gatim The situation is a bit more complex. The word ‘yoni’ here does much more work than one assumes. All the four are born from ‘Yoni’ but yet are distinguished in terms of punya and paapa. The last two are earnt by the organism in question: ‘svayaarjita’, suggesting that being a …

To help you think through the problem you “whether Christians can get enlightened”, try using this analogy. Something, let us call it ‘daffodil’, fascinates us. Let us also assume that a great deal of concern and interest is expressed about it. Consider two scenarios now, each of which testifies to our fascination. The first scenario is this. There is versification (call it ‘poetry’) and …

This post will use an imagery as its organising thread, which tracks the search for enlightenment in terms of notions known to us from our secondary and higher education. If we consider the search for happiness in these terms, then the ideas expressed there could be reformulated thus: as human beings, almost all of us would like to be literates or would like to have a primary education. This is …

About the relationship between scientific knowledge and enlightenment: If every human being can become enlightened (at any time, place or culture), it logically follows that some or another hypothesis about the world cannot be a requirement to become enlightened. People were enlightened (in the past) without possessing knowledge that humankind has today; one can become enlightened without being a …

Christianity (to some extent Judaism), presented an idea, unknown to the world in which it grew, namely the Pagan world of Rome. The idea was that human beings are creatures of God and that they belonged to His domain. He was the dominus or the Lord of the domain. As a result, human beings should not be arrogant, but must be humble instead. (As the ‘Book of Job’ in the Old Testament makes it …

If the ‘I’ cannot be individuated or described, then there is no possible distinction between the ‘I’ and ‘the Brahman’. They are different names for ‘self-awareness’ which pick out the differential access that individuals have to ‘self-awareness’. Hence, the curious distinction that some Indian traditions make. On the one hand, the ‘I’ is alleged to be identical with the ‘Brahman’; on the other, …

No, I cannot explain the real; nor has anybody else in the world. Even more radically: the Real can never be ‘explained’, nor will there be an explanatory theory, ever (that is what is meant by ‘providing an explanation’ or speak of explaining) about the real. Well, if the ‘Real’ comprises of “all these doctrines” then the Real is the world of ideas as distinct from the material and the mental …

You say: “there seems to be an underlying assumption that all participants in the thread seem to be making. The assumption being that all these texts have the same end goal in mind, and that this end goal is enlightenment/eudaimonia/happiness. I submit that such an assumption is unwarranted.” It is not an assumption but an explicit hypothesis, as far as I am concerned, that all the Indian …

If you want to use Nirvana Shatkam*,* it might be more productive to choose translations which do the job that the text can. Because of that, a ‘faithful’ translation of Sanskrit into English is not the primary requirement; the process and the goal should determine how the words are best understood. With this in mind, some suggestions regarding the translation of the Sanskrit verses. It is …

Balagangadhara’s recent article on Enlightenment (Gyanodaya); this is based on his enlightenment. If you got questions on this paper, participate on The Heathen in His Blindness Yahoo group . Check the embedded PDF file: PDF Document

You claim that Jesus of Nazareth is a mystic. From the conversations so far, I presume that this is both your gut-feeling and conviction. The one deriving from your own mystical experience and the other because you find that mysticism, qua experience, does not distinguish between people on the basis of their color, creed, culture and country. I am perfectly willing to bow to authentic experience, …

Editor’s note: This article appeared in the Journal of American Academy of Religion Abstract The paper attempts a contrast between the process and the structure of the Christian and the Indian spirituality. Drawing attention to their dissimilarities, it attempts to reformulate the differences among the Indian traditions in a novel way. It argues that cultures and traditions are not just different; …