PSYCHIC EXPERIENCE VS. SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE

This topic was touched upon briefly here on 9/1/13.  Included was Swami Prabhavananda's observation that a psychic experience had no effect on a person, whereas a spiritual experience had a lasting effect; a spiritual experience resulted in a permanent shift in consciousness.

But now Christopher Isherwood in his book Ramakrishna and His Disciples provides a fuller explanation.  He points out, to begin with, that “the psychic world exists superimposed upon the material world, but it does not normally make itself apparent to us or concern itself with our doings.

“Our experience of the material world is obtained only while we are awake.  Our experience of the psychic world may be obtained while we are awake or dreaming, and it may be produced by means of concentration or austerities or drugs. . . . 

 “Unlike psychic visions, spiritual visions are not generally variable.  If you have a vison of Jesus, for example, he will appear to you just as he has appeared to other devotees; he will not necessarily resemble any picture of him you have made for yourself in your imagination.  A psychic experience may cause you no particular emotion, or it may depress or terrify you; a spiritual experience will always be accompanied by great joy.

“During a spiritual vision, the experiencer often remains fully aware of his material surroundings, and indeed the apparition itself is apt to appear in such a natural manner that it is at first mistaken for an ordinary human being or animal.

“The highest spiritual experiences can only be known in that state of consciousness which in Sanskrit is called ‘samadhi.’  Samadhi is a state quite other than that of waking, dreaming, or dreamless sleep.  It has been described as superconsciousness.  In Samadhi, a person knows his absolute identity with the Atman, which is his real nature.”

THE BRAHMIN, HISTORICALLY

In his biography of Ramakrishna, Christopher Isherwood explains that in India the ideal has always been to obtain knowledge of the Atman, the divine nature within humans, through direct experience. 

That such knowledge can actually be obtained by any individual, that the Atman can really be known in the sense of self-knowledge, is the fundamental proposition of Vedanta.

It is not towards any religious body, such as a Church, as in the West, but towards the individual seer, the knower of the Atman, that the community, in its own struggles to gain enlightenment, depends.  The Brahmin was this knower.

The Brahmin was more than just a priest.  According to the Bhagavad Gita, he needed to be the mystic of the community, the person through whom the community’s contact with the spiritual was maintained.

How can the Atman be known?  By meditation, and by self-disciplines which open the eye of the spirit, the eye of the Atman.  Such was the discipline of the Brahmin. 

The faith of the Brahmin needed to be based on specific self-knowledge, not simply on good intentions.  He might be a scholar and interpreter of sacred books, but his interpretations had to be grounded in his own experience, rather than in the academic knowledge of former commentators.

DAILY DECLARATION: A SHORT STORY

He began everyday with this:

“There is a lot going on in the outside world, in the world of the senses, in the thinking mind and egoic self, and in the physical body.  But it is peaceful and calm here in the center, in the clearing that is the awakened Atman.

“This is the portal through which the Atman awakened in this person five years ago.  May he grow ever more present in this person, continue to unfold, to blossom, to deepen, to widen.  After all, this is his life, not this person’s life.  The Atman's many lifetimes, his many journeys, including the current sixty-nine years and counting journey, have been that he may realize his destiny, which is this awakening.

“This person is proud to have been the Atman's vehicle, and as it happens his final vehicle.  This person, this biology, will die one day, but the Atman will not, nor will he ever be born into this world of form again.  His task is complete, his mission accomplished, the deed done.

“At the same time, this person is well aware that he is one of the rare ones to have actually experienced the awakening of the Atman.  It takes countless incarnations as both insentient and sentient beings, that is as objects and then as living organisms, for the awakening to occur.  That it has happened in this person’s life is humbling indeed.

“But with this comes a responsibility to maintain the awakened state, because all too easily it can be smothered over by the outside world, the world of the senses, the thinking mind and egoic self, and the workings of the physical body.

“The Atman has come too far for this person to ruin it all by becoming so distracted as to lose the awakened state.  Accordingly, this person will not permit that to happen.  Accordingly, this person will maintain the awakened state faithfully.”

RIGHT HERE

The Atman is not up in the clouds somewhere apart from us.  His kingdom is within us.  He is right here.  There is never one instant when we are without him.  To be with him, we need only recall him.

LIMITS OF THE ATMAN

Vedanta teaches that the Atman does not participate in our lives, does not contribute to our lives, guide our lives, or interfere in our lives in any way.  It witnesses our lives only. 

There is, accordingly, no reason to pray to the Atman for assistance, or, for that matter, to thank the Atman for anything. 

Our fortunes good or bad are not the doings of the Atman, but are the result of the good and bad karma we are generating in our current life and that we have generated in our past life/lives.

The term God’s grace occurs in Vedanta.  God’s grace is a way of explaining the truly inexplicable, the really miraculous in our lives, which karma does not adequately account for, in our minds at least.

As soon as we accept the possibility of God’s grace, or Divine grace, however, we find ourselves thanking God and then appealing to God and then talking to God at every turn, except that God, the Atman, does not hear us.

In Vedanta, though, there are lots of intermediaries, gods, goddesses, and avatars, so there is always someone for us to talk to.

MUDRA CLUSTER: A SHORT STORY

Following his morning prayer, he presented the following mudras, remembering that mudras are hand gestures that aid in concentrating the mind on God.

His first mudra represented the awakened Atman in him and was the most powerful and enduring of all his mudras.  The palms of his hands were open at his face like an open book.

The second gesture was the rudder of concentration mudra.  The rudder kept him on an even keel in the flow of the awakened Atman.  His one hand was out in front of him like guiding a ship.

His next mudra symbolized his receiving energy from the awakened Atman.  His hands were up in the air in front of him like antennae.

Then there was his mudra representing transcendental consciousness, the background, pure consciousness that is in all things and that in humans illuminates the conditioned consciousness.  Here, the hands begin together as though in a Namaste greeting, but then are extended out, indicating expanded consciousness.

The fifth gesture was one hand up as if waving to someone, not unlike its meaning as a mudra.  It was his acknowledgement of and greeting to his spiritual family, his kindred spirits, both here in the world of form and over in the afterlife, in other dimensions, planes.  He had in mind everyone from Shankara to Madame Blavatsky to D. T. Suzuki.

Sixth was the oblique-world gesture.  The oblique world was that region of consciousness that was, metaphorically, just out of sight, backstage, behind the scenes.  A lot takes place there, psychically especially, that we are not immediately aware of.  This is the place of jiji muge, as Zen calls it, where the mutual interpenetration of all things and events occurs.  Meaningful coincidences, synchronicity, also arises there.  To represent this, he cocked his two hands diagonally to the side.

Lastly was his gesture for moksha, liberation.  He created the gesture of raised hands on June 3, 2015 when he accepted that there was only one thing in his life now, that his life was for that one thing only, and that was the awakened Atman.  Everything other than the awakened Atman was, for him now, irrelevant or simply not the point.

He ended his presentation where he began it, with the awakened-Atman gesture of open hands.

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY GODS IN VEDANTA?

Swami Chinmayananda said it is because there are many paths to God.  For instance, an aspirant in Vedanta will select what is called a “Chosen Ideal” (Ishta, in Sanscrit).  This is the aspect of the Godhead that resonates most for him, and may be, for example, Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Rama, Kali, Buddha, Jesus as an avatar, or even simply the Atman.  

Through meditation on his Chosen Ideal, the aspirant gradually gains concentration of mind, love of God, and ultimately illumination.  The phenomenon of the Chosen Ideal reflects the experience of Ramakrishna who sampled many faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Jainism, and Buddhism, before settling on Advaita Vedanta.

Related to this is the mantra, or mantram, consisting of a word, or a sound, which corresponds to the aspirant’s Chosen Ideal.  When an aspirant is initiated into the spiritual life, he is given a mantra. 

The mantra, regarded as one with God, is to be kept sacred and secret.  The aspirant is, for the rest of his life, to meditate on the aspect of God which the mantra symbolizes.  Repetition of the mantra, called japa, performed regularly and reverently, results in purification of the mind, and ultimately in God-realization.

(This is the 500^th posting on this blog.)

EVOLUTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS

(Based on the Internet article “What Vedanta Teaches: Science, Consciousness & Vivekananda.”)

Much of what happened in the early stages after the “Big Bang” remains theory.  The “Big Bang,” however, went on to produce quarks and antiquarks, protons and neutrons, nuclei of the lighter elements, and finally the first atoms, like hydrogen, helium, and lithium.  Gravitational forces eventually helped form the first stars, and the universe was born.  But what prompted the “Big Bang” in the first place, and where did it come from?  What is the inherent energy within the quarks and the protons and neutrons and atoms that urges it to evolve?

Swami Vivekananda spoke about that energy by giving a simple example of a plant.  We take the seed of a dried-up flower.  We plant it carefully and soon a small plant emerges.  It slowly grows, becoming bigger and bigger, until finally it becomes a full, blooming, plant.  Then it withers and dies, leaving again new seeds.  So it completes a circle.   This circular process of the stages of seed, growth, reproduction, death, and new seeds, is uniform throughout the universe.  It is a cause giving rise to an effect that in turn produces a new cause.

Vivekananda introduced two different concepts.  In the first, he talked about evolution versus involution.  (Involution, philosophically, means “turned in upon itself.”)    As Vivekananda explained it, that which is to be evolved is first in a primary seed stage, or “in-volved.”  The implication of this is that the evolved universe already existed before the “Big Bang,” except in an in-volved state.  When something is in-volved, it goes on to evolve, and then is again in-volved.  The universe, in this way, has no beginning and no end.
 
The second concept connected to this is that all of creation is penetrated by the core substance, consciousness.  If you look at the evolution of elementary particles leading to a human being, it evidences that, from the beginning, consciousness has been trying to express itself progressively.  It is the ever increasing urge of consciousness to express itself, Vivekananda said, that prompts evolution to take place.  This consciousness, as such, is equal in the quark and the human being, but the human being, due to his advanced state of evolution has been able to manifest a higher degree of consciousness.  Vivekananda held that the manifestation of the higher degree of consciousness is what creation has been all about.

FROM VIVEKANANDA

Look not for truth in any religion; it is here in the human soul, the miracle of all miracles--in the human soul, the emporium of all knowledge, the mine of all existence--seek here.  (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda:  Volume 1, page 355)

Do not identify yourself with anything.  Hold your mind free.  All this that you see, the pains and miseries, are but the necessary conditions of this world; poverty and wealth and happiness are but momentary; they do not belong to our real nature at all.  (CW:  Volume 1, page 100)

Get away from all books and forms and let your soul see itself.  (CW:  Volume 6, page 82)

Hear day and night that you are that Soul.  Repeat it to yourself day and night until it enters into your very veins, until it tingles in every drop of blood, until it is in your flesh and bone.  (CW:  Volume 2, page 302)

Man should hunger for one thing alone, the spirit, because spirit alone exists.  (CW:  Volume 8, page 119)

You must take your mind off of lust and lucre (monetary profit), must discriminate always between the real and unreal--must settle down into the mood of bodilessness, with the brooding thought that you are not this body, and must always have the realization that you are the all-pervading Atman.  (CW:  Volume 6, page 482)

You must end where you begin; and as you began in God, you must go back to God.  (CW:  Volume 4, page 215-216)