Jnana Yoga
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I wish to start out by saying that neti, neti and tat tvam asi are not merely mottoes or truisms that one recites to sound mystical or cool. Got it? Good. That said, Jnana Yoga consists of three stages. The first stage I call the Education Stage. During this stage the aspirant must endeavor to learn all that they can about the true nature of the Self and the false, illusory nature of the Ego. Also one has to unlearn during this stage all of the misleading (as far as Advaita Vedanta is concerned) concepts that they have accrued up to this point--e.g. original sin, we are our bodies, we are our senses, we are our emotions, we are our memories, we are our thoughts, we are our minds/Egos, we are weak, God is higher/distinct from the Self, there is a personal soul, Brahman requires our worship/belief, lasting happiness can be found within māyā, etc..
The second stage is Jnani Meditation. This stage can be broken down into two parts: conditioning and "active" meditation. Conditioning is where neti, neti and tat tvam asi come into play and is done throughout the everyday activities of life. Whenever you find yourself immersed in any thinking which distracts you from the Self or which strengthens the Ego, then you are to bring your attention back to the lordship of the Self, the Atman, with neti, neti and tat tvam asi. In the beginning stages you can find yourself repeating these phrases 500 times a day. This practice is very important nonetheless as it enacts abhyasa, which is constant effort to fix the mind on God or Self. It is also crucial while performing all actions during the day to constantly strive to see yourself as the Non-Doer. For example, if you are sweeping the floor, instead of thinking to yourself "I am sweeping the floor," you should rather see it that "the floor is being swept." Be unattached to your deeds and their fruits. The Atman is the Silent Witness and Non-Doer. By making a habit of viewing your daily actions as the Non-Doer it helps you identify more intuitively with the Self and less with the partitioning Ego. Think of these exercises as building up of a ladder that will make "reaching the top" by the process of "active" meditation that much easier.
"Active" meditation is the second part of the second stage of Jnani Meditation. The basic method of all yogas whose goal is moksha is tripartite: 1) stop all thought, 2) initiate the non-dual state, and 3) eliminate the Ego idea. The first brings on the second, and continual exposure to the second eventually brings about the finality of the third. I put the word "active" in quotations because in practice the goal is to stop thought--not very "active," eh? I only use the word "active" at all to differentiate between this part of Jnani Meditation and the previous conditioning practices, as this is now where you will sit down with the sole intention of meditating. This part is simple to explain but difficult to make happen. Ready for it? Stop thinking. There. Done. We actually do this every night during dreamless sleep, however, the objective here is to bring our consciousness along so that we can experience all of its limitations evaporate from it and see it off to--upon reaching the stage of complete thought cessation--its emergence in the non-dual state, samādhi, that it is able to be the eternal, impersonal Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, satchitananda, that it all of the time truly is when not (seemingly) being pigeonholed into a limited self.
The third stage I call Rinse and Repeat. Basically duplicate the second stage in order to ingeminate the identity with the Self until you become completely detached from the limiting Ego idea.
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Jnana Yoga is Union by Knowledge. There are two kinds of knowledge which comprise the different aspects of Jnana Yoga. The first form of knowledge is learned by talking about spiritual matters and the reading of books (viz. holy books). It is that from which the right foundation is built upon. From doing such comes viveka, the apex crystallization of book learning and the ability to discern what is Real, the Self, from what is Unreal, māyā. The second form of Knowledge, from which the path of Jnana Yoga takes its name, is firsthand. This is wherein meditation gives direct experience of the things learned about in the books. Without this experiential Knowledge (not "knowledge" as is used by the mind to procure and process ideas, but the direct "Knowledge of Self"; i.e. samadhi), all of the concepts known are nonsense or much worse. One must experience the true "I," the Self, and transcend the limited "I," the Ego, which exists only in relation to thought. This can be accomplished by traversing the path of self-abnegation through to the hall of Silence. The Self is satchitananda. The Self is not existing somewhere, It is Existence itself. The Self is not conscious of phenomena, It is Consciousness itself. The Self is not blissfully happy, It is Bliss itself. What need has Perfect Being for names and forms?
Awareness and mind are not the same thing. Awareness pervades as the canvas upon which the mind displays. Anyways, the most fundamental element of existence is awareness. In order for anything to exist there must be awareness of its existence. Everything which exists does so within the scope of awareness. The greatest entity conceivable is as nothing without the presence of awareness.
In Hasidic Judaism the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi is called bitul b’metziut. It's nirodha samapatti in Buddhist circles, of course. In Islam it's called fana. Regardless, Jnana Yoga effects the delamination and reverse engineering of the mind for the benefit of dissolving the grip of the Ego.
*My eyes, like two eyes of needles,
Met the thread of your eyes
And with me you sewed within me to sow real peace;It's not for this Ego life,
It's not for its petty gain,
So what does it really matter
If in this life you do not attain?* -
"In the beginning the Cup of the student is almost empty; and even such truth as he receives may leak away, and be lost.
"They say that the Venetians made glasses which changed colour if poison was put into them; of such a glass must the student make his Cup. [see [Book 4, Part 1, Chapter 5] also, viveka
"Very little experience on the mystic path will show him that of all the impressions he receives none is true. Either they are false in themselves, or they are wrongly interpreted in his mind.
"There is one truth, and only one. All other thoughts are false.
"And as he advances in the knowledge of his mind he will come to understand that its whole structure is so faulty that it is quite incapable, even in its most exalted moods, of truth.
"He will recognize that any thought merely establishes a relation between the Ego and the non-Ego.
"Kant has shown that even the laws of nature are but the conditions of thought. And as the current of thought is the blood of the mind, it is said that the Magick Cup is filled with the blood of the Saints. All thought must be offered up as a sacrifice."
- [Aleister Crowley]
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Yoga. Mysticism. Meditation. What do these three words have in common? They share the fact that they have been blitzed, bludgeoned, then bled to death, in order to fill the pride and pockets of charlatans. No matter how a person may attempt to elevate the definition of these words, they are destined to bear the stigma of abject connotation. I need to just accept that.
But how about this word? Concentration. Everybody knows what the word Concentration means: the conditioning, by degree, of the attention to remain fixed on a single object or objective. Such is entirely free from obscurity or exotic affectation. It instantaneously nips all fantastical and metaphysical speculation right in the bud; those building blocks of dogma. And not even the most hardcore skeptic can deny the capability of the human mind to concentrate. Concentration also happens to comprise the essence of the method of attaining samadhi. All of the rest is either an aid or an offshoot to that method. Concentration is the direct pathway to the firsthand experience of pure and undiluted consciousness, that earliest and most fundamental component of awareness, which is the pristine habitation of every sentient being....
A phenomenon is anything that is, or can be, perceived. This includes not just physical entities and conditions, but also feelings, thoughts, and memory. All phenomena are external to consciousness. Consciousness is awareness that is aware (redundancy points for clarity). When it becomes aware of phenomena it can be termed "mind." Consciousness is pure awareness; mind is consciousness which is directed towards and directed with phenomena, which includes all perceivable possibility... It does...
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"But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that's all right said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bath.
"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
"Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.
"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . ."
- C.S. Lewis, (possibly) unwittingly on the HGA (lion)
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@seekinghga said
""
- C.S. Lewis, (possibly) unwittingly on the HGA (lion)"
"
Or [probably] "All words are sacred and all prophets true;" save of a different flavor than some.
As the Serpent has always been the Serpent, so has the Lion always been the Lion.
Read'em's'more
- C.S. Lewis, (possibly) unwittingly on the HGA (lion)"
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Thank you for all the information, it was well-written.
@seekinghga said
"In Hasidic Judaism the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi is called bitul b’metziut."
Indeed, and bitul b'metziut has a "twin" called bitul ha'yesh, which essentially means doing (only) one's True Will.
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@FiatYod said
"Thank you for all the information, it was well-written.
@seekinghga said
"In Hasidic Judaism the experience of nirvikalpa samadhi is called bitul b’metziut."
Indeed, and bitul b'metziut has a "twin" called bitul ha'yesh, which essentially means doing (only) one's True Will.
"In my Psalms of an Aeon #29 I wrote:
"The man of Earth aspires; the Lover comes face-to-face in embrace; the Hermit is."The Hermit (IX) is the tenth card of the tarot, which corresponds to Yod, hand. Your forum name can roughly be paraphrased then as "Let there be the Hermit." Indeed.
"If the body of the King dissolve, he shall remain in pure ecstasy for ever."
"This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all."
[edit]
The K&CotHGA is the state of perfect equilibrium. The closer to that state that one is, the more open to the pull or influence or perception of the True Will that one will be (i.e. with a minimum of resistance). Forward from there comes integration. -
Shadows cannot exist within the direct path of the sun's light. The light of the sun dispels shadows. The sun does not do this because of choice or duty, rather, it is the nature of the sun's light to disperse shadow. By way of analogy we can call the light "consciousness" and the shadows are the Ego.
Shadows are only created when the light of the sun is obscured by objects. In the same way, the Ego only has substance or meaning when awareness attends to phenomena (thoughts, feelings, body, beliefs, objects, environment, etc.). The Ego depends on phenomena for its existence, they protect from the light of pure consciousness by drawing its attention away. In dreamless sleep there is no perception of phenomena and there is no Ego. "which is nothing but a limiting, illusory, perpetually self-insisting and self-important, ever-dependent perspective. [heruraha dot net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14646&p=103160#p101359]
The attention of awareness is drawn to phenomena by way of subliminal tendencies of the mind. These tendencies are the sankharas of Buddhism and vasanas of Advaitic Hinduism. -
I just wanted to make it abundantly clear what I am referring to by my usage of the word Ego. When I say "Ego" it does not mean excessive vanity, as some are wont to signify by the term. Rather, it is simply the self-referential component of awareness. "I am Jeremy." In that sentence the word Jeremy is the label. What is implied by the word "I" in the sentence is the Ego, "am" denoting its attachment to that label. It is merely that element of our perception which believes that phenomena are occurring to it: "I," "me," "mine." (There's a hint there for those who get what I'm saying in the sum of my posts.
)Again, the Ego is not necessarily something that one is doing wrong. It is a default piece of our cognitive apparatus which happens to latch on to and identify itself with an infinitesimally small portion of the universe. I would conjecture that it is an artifact of our evolution, an erstwhile vital factor for survival that, for most of us, has become complacent and central. To the pre-Adept it only really becomes a serious problem when that one mistakes it for the things which it is Not. 61.
The Ego is the root of duality, hence of sorrow. Love works by way of the dissolution of perceived boundaries. The nature of the Ego, which is identity and attachment, is thoroughly shaken by every manifestation of love. So great is the uniting influence of love that the actions of the Ego are momentarily arrested upon its (love's) appearance. The emotion of love is the primary example.
Please please remember that this is all just rubbish concept. My words are like plastic models. They may get across the idea but are completely lacking in the subtext of reality. These things can only be properly conveyed by way of one's own personal experience. Otherwise there is only intellectual apprehension, another tidbit to heap onto one's pile of Knowledge...