ANNAPURNA SARADA, Friday, August 21, 2015 9:08 am

India Pilgrimage 2012-13 Part 2

In Kolkata

Since our mini retreat at Belur Math, we have joined up with the rest of the SRV pilgrims and are awaiting our reservations at Kamarpukur and Jayrambati villages where Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi were born.  We will have four days over the Christmas holy season there, including Christmas Eve and Day itself.  Christmas Eve is a significant date for members of the Ramakrishna Order, not only because of the birth of Jesus Christ, but also because the Ramakrishna Order can be traced to that very night in 1886.  The story goes like this:

Sri Ramakrishna’s mahasamadhi had occurred the prior August.  Some of the young disciples had dispersed to their homes and others lived in a house rented by some of the householder devotees so that they could continue to live as a brotherhood engaged in austerities.  They had not formally renounced the world as yet.  One of the boys’ mother (later, Swami Premananda) who lived in the village of Antpur not far from Kolkata invited as many as could come for the Christmas holiday.  They stayed there engaged in study, holy conversation, meditation, and other austerities for some days.  One night, they lit the sacred dhuni fire and prepared to stay awake all night in spiritual practices.  The young Swami Vivekananda, then called Naren, was filled with the spirit of renunciation, not only as embodied in their master, Sri Ramakrishna, but also in the pure life of Christ.  In fiercely glowing words he depicted the life of Christ, His great love, sacrifice, illumination, and His teachings to his gurubhais, inspiring them all to take the vows of sannyas right then.  Thus, they took vows of life-long renunciation before the fire and each other on what they later learned was Christmas Eve.

However, we are still here in Kolkata passing the time fruitfully.  We have been obliged, being a large group, to stay in a hotel until we leave for the villages, but we have turned it into our ashram by renting one suite that has a sitting room large enough for 14 people to sit for meditation and classes.  Early in the morning the hallway echoes with the sound of Vedic verses being chanted and again at class time.  After our first meditation Babaji spoke to us about meditation and the need to “investigate one’s consciousness.”  “Meditation is not leisure time,” he told the assembled group ranging in age from 15 to 77yrs.  “It is not a time to let the mind roam, or to fall asleep.  Rather, quiet the mind and then examine your consciousness.”  He elaborated on this theme more fully in the afternoon class.

The following are some notes from that class:

Since we have some new students with us, Babaji placed the chart of Sankhya’s 24 Cosmic Principles in view and gave the fundamental teachings that allow one to begin the all-important practice of Viveka, discrimination between the Real (unchanging, eternal) and the unreal (changing, finite).  “What is viveka to be followed by?”  At least half the students all responded, “Vairagya,” in chorus, which really had a very satisfying sound to Babaji and senior students alike.  “But most people do not understand this viveka/discrimination.  Without discrimination, they cannot have vairagya, detachment and are therefore in a state of confusion.  They cycle again and again through the gunas.”  Pointing to the chart, Babaji, showed how the subtle and gross bodies come out of Egoism filtered through the gunas: sattva/balance, rajas/restlessness, and tamas/dullness or inertia.  As Sri Shankara states in the Vivekachudamani, the subtle body consists not only of the cognitive senses, the subtle elements, prana, and mind, it also consists of karma and kama, the effects of actions, and desire, the thirst for life.  He quoted from Swami Vivekananda’s poem, Song of the Sannyasin: “this thirst for life forever quench.  It drags from birth to death and death to birth the soul.”

This thirst is embodied in the guna of rajas, restlessness. Babaji explained, “If one understands viveka, one realizes there is no ultimate meaning to life.  People perplex themselves searching for meaning and run themselves ragged in a state of rajas, thirsty for more experiences to satisfy themselves.  But ‘satiation never comes.’ That was a lecture my teacher would frequently give.  When people try to satisfy themselves, they create karma.  All this happens in the subtle body.  To break free of this cycle, one needs to bring in a very great Light.  This Light is Ishvara, the Chosen Ideal.”

Again pointing to the chart of 24 Cosmic Principles, Babaji showed how the individual mind and intellect are sparks off the Great Mind, called Mahat.  Untrained in these teachings of cosmology and philosophy, people think they are only individual bodies and minds with no connection to the collective or cosmic. Naturally, then, they fall into the error of thinking that they, who are truly nothing other than Consciousness (Atman), dream and sleep.  “How can Consciousness become unconscious?  So come up, come up here (to awareness/identification of) Mahat.  The air is better here.  Consciousness never sleeps.”

“The seers want you to recognize these three states of waking, dream, and sleep and master them.  They want you to master your consciousness.  Watch it shift from waking to dreaming, and especially from dreaming to deep sleep and then back again.  The entire world and all our experiences are projected from this state of deep sleep (correlative to the causal body, which is a state of formlessness) and out via dreaming and waking.  This happens exceedingly fast – so fast we do not notice.  What we want to do is slow everything down in order to watch this happen. ‘Practice deep meditation and cut time down’ sings Ramprasad. This is why we practice meditation – to watch how consciousness goes from form to formlessness, back and forth.”

“So when we say ‘awaken consciousness,’ we mean to watch our consciousness and inspect it.  There are three ways in which we go from form to formlessness:

1 – once a lifetime, from birth to death

2 – once every 24 hours, from waking to dreaming to sleeping and back again.

3 – in meditation

This last way is superior.  The first way means we do not recognize our formless nature until death, if even then.  In the second, we see it as sleep, and in the third way, we become the witness of these states, which leads to realization of Turiya/Atman.  When you go to sleep tonight know that you are dissolving the solid into the subtle.  And when you reach the dream state, see how you dissolve it into the deep sleep state.  You are the best alarm clock for your own awakening.  Do not become unconscious of Consciousness.  We want to master form/life and formlessness/death.”

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