Talk 28.
Q: What is the interrelation between regulation of thought and regulation of breath?
Ramana: Thought (intellectual) and respiration, circulation, etc. (vegetative) activities are both different aspects of the same – the individual life. Both depend upon (or metaphorically ‘reside’ or ‘inhere’ in) life. Personality and other ideas spring from it like the vital activity. Continue reading
There’s an image at the beginning of this poem, which is an image of a contemporary of St. Colman, and his name was St. Kevin, and he was the kind of Irish St. Francis, because he had this remarkable experience with all the animals and birds. He was constantly losing his prayer book, and then an otter would bring it back; and then he’d lose it again, and a stork would bring it. You get the feeling he was just chucking it in the river in the end, and they were just bringing it back.
Nisargadatta: That state is not to be experienced, about that you can’t speak. Just be that state, what is experienced is not truth. What is experienced is not truth that is the primary problem. I did not know that I was in that state, suddenly I knew, I am, thus all the trouble. In that state there was no knowingness, suddenly ‘I am’ and I caught hold of the body. My identity of ‘I amness’ is the entire manifestation, not individual body. All the trouble began with the ‘otherness’, a quality that came with ‘I amness’. Whenever there is a problem you ask: ‘let us find the state of affairs as they are’, don’t try to bluff, and then the solution comes. So in this fraudulent play of the manifest world I went on to find the actual position, the ‘I amness’ means world manifestation and it is a time bound state, so why should I bother?
Presently ‘I amness’ is bubbling and challenging, but all this is time bound, pride will go along with the ‘I am’ (So Hum), later on, no ‘I am’ (No Hum). Whatever you do is as per your concepts, nothing was, here or there. In the Brahman aperture there is sprouting of ‘I amness” and all manifestation too, but I am not that. Yogis after penetrating all the ‘chakras’, take up the breath in the Brahma Chakra and hibernate. If the body does not swell, his ‘I am’ is in the tranquil state in the aperture, but once the ‘I am’ is dissolved his body will swell. Any being when born with that ‘I am’ still inside, will have an outside manifest world; each being having its own inside and outside world. The one who has attained the target, he is no more an individual, thus he has no ego, when ego is gone, it will be realized that the ‘I amness’ is felt no more.
source: Nisargadatta, I am Unborn, 30th January 1980, PDF p 102
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Sivananda:
The Annamaya Kosha constitutes the gross physical body. The Pranamaya, the Manomaya and the Vijnanamaya Koshas constitute the Linga Sarira or subtle body (astral body). The Anandamaya Kosha constitutes the causal body (Karana Sarira).
The physical body is formed of the essence of food. The subtle body is formed of unquintuplicated, Apanchikrita or uncompounded elements. The casual body is formed of Samskaras or Moola Ajnana (primitive ignorance). The Anandamaya Kosha is the cause for the subtle and gross bodies or the remaining four sheaths.
Why are we so far away from the Absolute, is also a question. The Supreme Being, or Absolute, is transcendent to our level. This transcendence, which we call Brahman or the Absolute, is manifest through space and time by way of externalisation; and in the process of externalisation, the selfhood of experience is gradually lost. The greater the externalisation, diversification, expression, manifestation outwardly towards objects in space and time, the greater is the loss of selfhood. The more we are conscious of an external object, the greater is the loss of self-consciousness.
