Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing...

Of many 'pointers' to the 'truth' that are used in 'popular wisdom', like the one from Buddha's 'What you think you become', Jesus' 'what is above so is below', is the one from Rumi that is even used in the movie 'Rockstar' (:P)! It goes like 'Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there'. Like all other 'one liners', it is just half truth omitting the further gnosis without which the words don't make any sense, neither do they convey the intended meaning. I sometimes think that the notion of poetry has born out of the words of the 'seers' or or 'jnanis' that make no sense to the people who have not yet experienced any meditativeness. People tend to think that the words of people like Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Hafiz are 'poetry' and make pitiful attempts at the so-conceived 'art' that consists in deliberate abstractions and contradictions that simply mock the abstractions and paradoxes in the writings of those of the likes of Rumi. For those who are talking from the place that is indeed beyond words, the contradiction is inevitable because of the structure of the language and the logical mind, but because of certain 'hassnamuses' and their attempts at 'poetry', the real secrets of the universe have remained as 'poetry' and have become an 'object of admiration' for the 'culture junkies'. What a misfortune! 

The whole thing goes like this.. 

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."

These words look poetic but they are as precise as Patanjali's Yogasutras. This is the description of that which is revealed to a seeker. Call it God, Soul, Self, no-self, Atman, stillness, oneness, whatever.

There is indeed a field there which is out beyond all the ideas. The field of pure awareness. By pure I don't mean holy or sanskari. Pure means unclouded by thought. In the thought identified state, everything one knows is through the thinking. There is a thought construct, assumptions and certain conclusions based on this thought construct. The knowledge so to say is 'verbal'. But the state of pure awareness is a realization of that conscious field in which all the thought arises and vanishes. There, you don't look at the thought to validate what's true and what's not. The whole thought structure falls away and is rendered unnecessary. There is not even a need to establish even the most primary assumption 'I' and 'you'. Everything is that clear because even 'everything' is an assumption that there are different things like this, that and so.. so infact there is nothing to sort out because this is another dimension of consciousness which is 'complete' if we can use the word. There is no need of any thought movement. There is no suppression of thought either. Thought is simply seen arising and vanishing and falling in its proper place. It is seen that how the thought itself creates an illusion of a thinker. There is actually no one there who is thinking. Such is the nature of thought! 

This has been the plight of all those who have experienced and stabilized in that field. It is impossible to communicate. So come all the parables and metaphors and 'poetry'! 

Marathit sangaycha zala tar..

अवघा रंग एक झाला । रंगि रंगला श्रीरंग
 मी तूंपण गेले वायां ।
पाहतां पंढरीच्या राया
_/\_

A bit more on UG and others

Its a puzzle for me as why UG declared that all the spiritual quests are nonsense and at the same time it is crystal clear that it is infact true. However, the statement is not an end in itself. All the spiritual 'quests' are sure nonsense because the realization is not something to be 'attained' so there is no question of any quests and any sort of 'doing'. Although he says there is nothing like enlightenment, it is true at the same time that he himself does not function the way other people do. Maybe that was his way of pointing out of the pointlessness of asking questions and expecting answers to be given to you. He said there is no self to discover but how could he have not seen that the disagreement he has with other realized ones is only because of the use of language. When others like Ramana are talking about the 'Self' they mean the exact same thing when UG says there is no self to discover. The word 'Self' is used by Ramana to negate the separate 'I' people assume themselves to be. Ramana uses the word 'discovery' to indicate that there is nothing that you 'become' but you just 'discover' what is already there.. so the word 'discovery' is used by him to negate the false ideas about the whole thing. So when UG says there is nothing to discover, it means the exact same thing as 'Self discovery'..

It looks like he wants to not lengthen the discussion even by one word. He simply declared nothing you do will make it happen for you. It looks like whatever methods he was given by different people consisted into 'doing' more and more things to 'attain' to enlightenment. And when he gave up on everything and didn't bother anymore, the thing happened to him. He said it is 'acausal' and no volition on your part can make it happen. He didn't even say that don't try to make it happen and in the most effortless state it will happen neither did he imply. Pappaji who was the realized disciple of Ramana told people that 'you' cannot know the truth, 'you' have to disappear. UG would agree only to the first half of that!

A bit of UG and others

'What do you want?' asked UG Krishnamurti to people asking him different questions. It is so funny to see that it is very difficult to realize that all this game of asking questions, even this is borrowed from outside and has not arisen authentically in one. He said that this culture has given solutions to nonexistent problems that never and cannot work and thus has created a neurotic condition in the body. The counter question 'what do you want' may seem out of context to the existential inquiries but it totally cuts through the facade that one is in need of an answer. Is there a question that is 'yours' he would ask. And any further discussion, any movement of thought is actually taking you away from it he would say. He also denied that there is anything you can do so that 'this' happens to you. The only instrument that you have is thought and it is useless in the search of 'that' and there is no other instrument, he would say.

I love how the 'realization', if we can use that word, has found different expression in different individuals. Particularity the expressions of J Krishnamurti and UG Krishnamurti I love even though (actually there is no 'even though' but a deep harmony) they deny the whole idea that there is something to seek. Somebody has said that JK reduced the idea of enlightenment to just psychology and UG reduced it to mere biology. I, myself have had this question that is this a process at all and if it is, is it physical or nonphysical. But now I see that all these are just words. We just say something is physical, something is psychological, something is conscious. It seems that more and more vocabulary needs to be created to counter and negate every description of 'that' as nothing of the language applies to it. The complex the personality is of one, the complex will be the gnosis. UG has condemned all the spiritual teachers and teachings including Buddha, JK, Osho, each one of them. He said that the thought has to die off on its own and totally denied that there is nothing one can do to make it happen. He just said that nature throws out some flowers time to time and the maximum you can do is to put them in museum and look at them!

JK himself has condemned the tradition, culture, religion so much that even in my wildest dreams I never thought that there would a realized one that would even condemn JK! That has been one of the epic moments of my life :D UG calls JK's practice of choice-less awareness a 'gimmick'. Hahahaha. What is common with both of them is there was a prophecy about both of them and people have tried to make them enlightened by loads of different types of Sadhnas, meditations etc and they revolted against all of that. Both are the realized ones and both deny that it is a 'result' of what was done to them, or what they were made to do. What wildflowers!

I myself have observed that when a seeker understands the whole gnosis from the realized ones and understands that the thought process is not going to lead him anywhere, the investment in the thought process is automatically broken, and slowly one can abide in the source, as the source. The source of the mind, source of the I-thought as called by Ramana and the whole illusion of you being a 'this person' collapses. There is just a field of awareness. Around 3-4 years before I came to see one of the Sadhguru's video where he was talking about a 'witness' to the thought process. That if the breath is watched, there happens a dis-identification between happenings and the witness. This was the first time I encountered something 'spiritual'. Immediately there was some 'understanding' happened in me and then I explored more and more of the knowledge of this sort. There were also some ideas that one must stick to one 'path' and not spend more time just 'gathering more information' about it. But from the initial dis identification, I never settled on any identity that I am a seeker or I am spiritual or this or that and it felt the most natural thing to me to read different awakened ones. After all they are not in conflict with each other. On the surface it may appear to be so but there is a deep agreement between all of them. And I found it even better to find out about my own 'cognitive dissonance'.

Ramakrishna is said to have realized god through all the paths such as that of the Jesus, Muhammad, his devotion for Kali and so on and he says that one must try out the different paths and realize on their own that its all the same!

To be continued....