The world is a projection
Shri Shankara says the ‘intelligent man’ – intelligence means to see the point, not to miss the point. It doesn’t mean a very fine or developed intellect, it doesn’t mean skill with words. There are some stories being constructed now about a junior officer who is supposed to have survived the Titanic disaster. The Court of Enquiry said to him, “Didn’t you suspect the ship would go down, sailing so far north in an early spring with the icebergs coming loose?” He said, “Oh yes. I thought probably it would if we kept that far north.” “Why didn’t you tell the captain?” “Oh, I didn’t have the cheek – it might have ruined my career.” “Well, that must have been terrible for you. You couldn’t do anything.” “I didn’t do nothing.” “Well, what did you do?” “I made certain that the decks were kept absolutely clean.”
This is an example – there are many of these stories now, of missing the point. Our teacher said that all of the activities of the world, if this main point of Yoga is missed, are trivial and in the end have no meaning. People live in the world, but in the end the life is meaningless, unless this point is approached, unless there is an enquiry. In this account of Shri Shankara, the commentor, Anandagiri, says about it that, although living in the projection, the yogi lives as, as it were, one who is sitting out, who is detached from it. We can say, “Oh well, detached from it, that’s alright when you’re in a very comfortable country. If there’s no Worcester sauce, you’re detached from that; but if it comes to a serious matter…” The Chinese have a saying about this, about the necessities of life: “One bowl of food a day, he must eat; two is better; three is a luxury; four makes him ill; five kills him.” They apply this to many things in life. They say, “Yes, there’s a necessity, there’s a line of necessity, but beyond that it’s not merely unnecessary, but it’s positively harmful to live a life of luxury.
Then living in the world, the projection, Shankara says, liberation begins when the man begins to seek for something beyond it. “Where did this universe come from? Is it real? What is the Self?” There are these texts which he gives: “I am Brahman, the supreme reality. Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinity, supreme knowledge and bliss.”
It’s said of these texts, “Where’s the proof of them?” “The statements are made,” said a Chinese disciple of the sage Daikaku, “but there is no outward sign of your liberated man, so where is the proof of it?” He said, “This is an experience in the man’s own Self, not depending on some proof obtained from another. If one’s own experience is not proof, what is?”
The account is given of the waking state which is defined by Shankara as when the objects of the senses are seen. When objects are seen by the senses, this is the waking state; and the waking state consists of seeing the objects, which is the result of the great elements which have divided and combined. Sureshvara’s commentary on this text says, “The individual knower must be meditated upon as the universal, so that all duality is removed.” This is one of those vaguely uplifting statements that seem to be alright provided they’re not examined. The individual identified with the universal – it seems to mean something and then when it’s examined, as the Chinese said, “It doesn’t mean anything at all.” But Daikaku said it refers to an actual experience. What would that experience be?
Swami Rama gives an account of it: “When I give up this dream body, this feeling of duality, and open my spiritual eye, then the elements of the world become like my limbs. The movements of nature become like the opening or shutting of my eyes.” There are hundreds of such passages describing his experience in the physical world, it’s an extension of consciousness over the whole of the physical world. He quotes a Vedic text of the sage Vamadeva whose experience was; “I am honey, I am the sun, I am the ancient sage Kakshivan. I give the earth in charity to Manu, the first man. I send the thundering clouds all over the world. All the gods act in obedience to my will.”
Swami Rama in America, when he quoted these texts, repeatedly called them ‘hard cash’. He said, “Don’t think they’re credit. Don’t think they’re marks on a piece of paper, saying something that can be, or will be, or might be.” These are what he called ‘hard cash’. These are actual experiences which the yogi can have.
There’s a meditation on OM as the first syllable A, as the whole physical universe. If the yogi meditates on that, he finds the confines of his consciousness are expanded from the physical body until they become universal. This is very often referred to. In the Zen tradition, it’s the goose that was put into a glass bottle when it was very small and grew up inside the glass bottle until it was too big to get out through the neck. How could the man get it out without killing the goose or breaking the bottle? The modern teacher comments on that. He says, “What a ridiculous fairy story. You couldn’t do that – the goose would die and anyway, who would put a tiny goose inside a glass bottle and bring it up there? What would be the point? Ridiculous, ridiculous!” – that’s how the modern man sees that. But what he doesn’t see is that universal consciousness is confined inside a physical body. “In spite of all that he says, that’s his experience and he’s living in the fairy story – ‘ridiculous, ridiculous’.
This is the first meditation, to practice unity with the universe and Rama Tirtha describes it as being practiced by OM, taking the sound OM as extending throughout the whole universe. Our teacher said the sun moves to the sound of OM; and many of the mystics speak of hearing this universal sound, OM. There was a theory in Greece that the reason we don’t hear this sound so clearly is because we’ve always heard it since birth, so it doesn’t stand out and it’s not noticed.
Titles in this series are:
1. There are five subtle elements
3. Consciousness underlies all
The full talk is OM and meditation
© Trevor Leggett