Please note – for a few weeks I will not have internet access

From tomorrow, for at least two weeks and perhaps longer, I will be staying in a place where I will not have an internet connection or access to my e-mail. Therefore if you happen to send me any e-mail, please bear with me if I do not reply promptly. Whenever I have internet access again I will begin replying to the backlog of unanswered e-mails that will no doubt build up.

When I have a regular internet connection once again, I will remove this post, and hopefully begin posting more new articles on the teachings of Sri Ramana.

New enlarged e-book edition of Happiness and the Art of Being

Yesterday I posted on my website at www.happinessofbeing.com/resources/happiness_art_being.html a revised and enlarged second e-book edition of Happiness and the Art of Being.

Since I published the first e-book edition on 15th December 2006 I have revised it thoroughly, making many small amendments and incorporating a considerable number of additional explanations, together with translations of several more passages from the original Tamil writings of Sri Ramana.

Though I have incorporated the equivalent of about 80 pages of new material in this second e-book edition, the actual number of pages has increased only by about 32 pages, up to more than 570 pages, because the software that I have used to create the PDF file of this edition has produced a more compact but still very readable font, thereby ensuring that the printed version of this book will be a somewhat less massive volume.

The 'unconsciousness' that we seem to experience in sleep

On pages 329-330 of the present e-book version of Happiness and the Art of Being there are two paragraphs in which I write:

Though in our present waking state we mistake the seeming 'unconsciousness' of sleep to be merely an unconsciousness of our body and the world, in sleep we do not think 'I am unconscious of my body and the world'. Only in the waking state do we think 'In sleep I was unconscious of my body and the world'. That which thinks thus is our mind, but since our mind was not present in sleep, it cannot accurately tell us what our experience in sleep actually was.

All we can now say about sleep is that, though we knew 'I am' in that state, it was nevertheless a state of seeming darkness, ignorance or lack of clarity. That seeming lack of clarity is the 'unconsciousness' that we experience in sleep. But what actually is that seeming lack of clarity? About what is it that we lack clarity in sleep? Only about our real self, the real nature of our essential consciousness 'I am'. In sleep we know that we are, yet we lack clarity about what we are. Therefore the seeming 'unconsciousness' of sleep is actually only our lack of clarity of true self-knowledge, our so-called 'forgetfulness' of our real self. If our real self, our essential consciousness 'I am', were not obscured by the veil of our self-forgetfulness, sleep would be a state of perfectly clear self-knowledge.

The consciousness that we experience in sleep

On page 119 of the present e-book version of Happiness and the Art of Being there is a paragraph in which I write:

Generally we think of deep sleep as a state of 'unconsciousness'. But what we were unconscious of in sleep was only things other than 'I', such as any body or world. We were not, however, unconscious of our own existence. We need other people to tell us that our body and the world existed while we were asleep, but we need no one to tell us that we existed at that time. Without the help or testimony of any other person or thing, we know 'I slept'. In sleep we may not have known exactly what we were, but we did know very clearly that we were. The knowledge that we clearly possess about our experience in sleep, and that we express when we say 'I slept peacefully, and knew nothing at that time', would not be possible if in sleep we had not been conscious that we were having that experience. If we did not know 'I am' while asleep, we could not know so clearly 'I slept' after we wake up. Since in the waking state we know clearly not only that we slept, but also that in sleep we did not know anything, is it not clear that sleep was a state that we actually experienced? The 'unconsciousness' of sleep – the absence at that time of any knowledge about anything other than 'I am' – was our own experience, something that we ourself experienced or knew at that time.

Today I have been checking all the changes that I have made while revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, and while doing so I decided to expand the explanation given in this paragraph as follows:

The fear of death is inherent in our love for our own being

In the seventh last paragraph of my recent post Overcoming our spiritual complacency I wrote:

So long as we experience ourself as a physical body, the fear of death will always exist in us, but usually in a dormant form. Because we imagine ourself to be this body, we are attached to it and hence we fear to lose it...

While doing a final check on the changes that I have made while revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, I decided to expand this explanation about our fear of death as follows:

However, though it usually remains in a dormant form, our fear of death is in fact the greatest, most fundamental and most deep-rooted of all our fears. We fear death because it appears to us to be a state of non-existence — a state in which we ourself will cease to exist, or at least cease to exist as we now know ourself. Since we love our own being or existence more than we love any other thing, we fear to lose our own being or existence more than we fear any other thing. In other words, our fear of death is rooted in our self-love — our basic love for our own essential self or being.

Knowing our source by a 'sharp intellect' or kurnda mati

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, in chapter 10, 'The Practice of the Art of Being', I have modified my translation of verse 28 of Ulladu Narpadu (on page 457 of the present e-book version) and I have expanded the explanation of it that I give in the subsequent paragraphs as follows:

Sri Ramana often used this analogy of diving or sinking into water to illustrate how deeply and intensely our attention should penetrate into the innermost core or essence of our being. For example, in verse 28 of Ulladu Narpadu he says:

Like sinking [immersing or diving] in order to find an object that has fallen into water, diving [sinking, immersing, piercing or penetrating] within [ourself] restraining [our] speech and breath by [means of a] sharp intellect [a keen, intense, acute and penetrating power of discernment or attention] we should know the place [or source] where [our] rising ego rises. Know [this].

The state of true immortality

In my previous two posts, Overcoming our spiritual complacency and Taking refuge at the 'feet' of God, I gave the first two instalments of the additional material that I have written for inclusion in chapter 9 of Happiness and the Art of Being (after the first paragraph on page 422 of the present e-book version). The following is the third and last instalment:

In the second sentence of this verse [the second mangalam verse of Ulladu Narpadu] Sri Ramana says, "By their surrender, they experience death". The death that they previously feared was the death of their body, but when the fear of that death impels them to take refuge at the 'feet of God', they experience death of an entirely different kind. That is, when they take refuge at the 'feet of God' by subsiding into the innermost depth of their own being, they will experience the absolute clarity of unadulterated self-consciousness, which will swallow their mind just as light swallows darkness.

Our mind or finite individual self is an imagination — a false form of consciousness that experiences itself as a body, which is one of its own imaginary creations. We imagine ourself to be this mind only because we ignore or fail to attend to our own true and essential being. If we knew what we really are, we could not mistake ourself to be any other thing. Hence, since our mind has come into existence because of our imaginary self-ignorance, it will be destroyed by the experience of true self-knowledge.

Taking refuge at the 'feet' of God

In my previous post, Overcoming our spiritual complacency, I gave the first instalment of the additional material that I have written for inclusion in chapter 9 of Happiness and the Art of Being (after the first paragraph on page 422 of the present e-book version). The following is the second of these three instalments:

In the first sentence of this second mangalam verse of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana says:

Those mature people who have intense fear of death will take refuge at the feet of mahesan [the 'great lord'], who is devoid of death and birth, [depending upon him] as [their protective] fortress. …

This is a poetic way of describing his own experience of self-investigation and self-surrender. Though the word mahesan, which literally means the 'great lord', is a name that usually denotes Lord Siva, the form in which many Hindus worship God, Sri Ramana did not use it in this context to denote any particular form of God, but only as an allegorical description of the birthless and deathless spirit, which always exists in each one of us as our own essential self-conscious being, 'I am'.

Overcoming our spiritual complacency

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, I have written an additional ten pages for inclusion in chapter 9, 'Self-Investigation and Self-Surrender'. These additional pages will be included after the paragraph on page 422 of the present e-book version that ends:

... The only way we can thus submit or surrender ourself to his grace is to 'think of' or constantly attend to our own essential being-consciousness 'I am', melting inwardly with overwhelming love for it. Sincerely attempting to surrender ourself in this manner is what Sri Ramana meant when he said, "Nevertheless, it is necessary to proceed unfailingly according to the path that guru has shown".

Since the additional matter to be included at this point is quite lengthy, I will post it here in three separate instalments, of which the following is the first and largest:

In order to know our own real self, which is absolute, infinite, eternal and undivided being-consciousness-bliss or sat-chit-ananda, we must be willing to surrender or renounce our false finite self. And in order to surrender our false self, we must be wholly consumed by an overwhelming love to know and to be our own real self or essential being.

The true science of consciousness and drik drisya viveka

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 8, 'The Science of Consciousness', on pages 386 to 390 of the present e-book version I discuss the modern field of study that is known as 'consciousness studies' or the 'science of consciousness', and I explain that any true science of consciousness must clearly distinguish consciousness from any object or phenomenon known by consciousness, a process that in the philosophy of advaita vedanta is known as drik drisya viveka or 'discrimination between the seer and the seen'. In this context I write on pages 388 to 389 of the present e-book version:

... Until we understand this basic distinction between consciousness and even the subtlest object known by it, we will not be able to focus our attention solely and exclusively upon our essential consciousness, and thus we will not be able to experience it as it really is — that is, as our pure and unadulterated consciousness of our own being, which is devoid of even the slightest trace of duality or otherness.

Unless modern scientists are willing to accept this fundamental but very simple principle, all their efforts to understand consciousness will be misdirected. Any scientist who imagines that they can understand consciousness by studying our physical brain, its electrochemical activity or its cognitive function, has failed to understand that all these things are merely objects that are known by consciousness as other than itself.

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print I have modified and expanded the next paragraph and added a new paragraph, so the next four paragraphs will read as follows:

The transcendent state of true self-knowledge is the only real state

In chapter 6 of Happiness and the Art of Being I explain on page 342 of the present e-book version that our fundamental state of true self-knowledge is sometimes described in advaita vedanta as the state of 'wakeful sleep' or 'waking sleep' (jagrat-sushupti in Sanskrit, or nanavu-tuyil in Tamil) because, since it is a state in which we experience no duality, it is a thought-free state like sleep, but since it is at the same time a state in which we experience absolute clarity of self-knowledge, it is also a state of perfect wakefulness. I then write:

Since this state of 'wakeful sleep' is beyond our three ordinary states of waking, dream and deep sleep, in advaita vedanta it is also sometimes referred to as the 'fourth state' or turiya avastha. Somewhat confusingly, however, in some texts another term is used to describe it, namely the 'fourth-transcending' or turiyatita, which has given rise to the wrong notion that beyond this 'fourth state' there is some further 'fifth state'. In truth, however, the non-dual state of true self-knowledge is the ultimate and absolute state, beyond which no other state can exist.

On pages 343 to 344 of the present e-book version I then quote and explain verse 32 of Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham and verses 937 to 939 of Guru Vachaka Kovai, but while revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for print I decided that I could improve my translations and explanation of these verses. I have therefore revised my translations and expanded my explanation as follows:

I think because I am, but I am even when I do not think

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 6, 'True Knowledge and False Knowledge', on pages 322 to 323 of the present e-book version I have written:

... though our basic knowledge or consciousness 'I am' alone is real, and though all the other things that appear to be real borrow their seeming reality only from this consciousness, which is their underlying base and support, we are so accustomed to overlooking this consciousness and attending only to the objects or thoughts that we form in our mind by our power of imagination, that those objects and our act of knowing them appear in the distorted perspective of our mind to be more real than the fundamental consciousness that underlies them.

The only reason why we suffer from this distorted perspective is that we are so enthralled by our experience of duality or otherness, believing that we can obtain real happiness only from things other than ourself, that throughout our states of mental activity, which we call waking and dream, we spend all our time attending only to such other things, and we consequently ignore or overlook our underlying consciousness 'I am'.

What is True Knowledge? - additions to chapter 5 of Happiness and the Art of Being

I have posted the five largest additions that I will be incorporating in chapter 5 of Happiness and the Art of Being in my five most recent posts, namely:

• Objective knowledge will disappear along with our mind when we know ourself as we really are
• Non-duality is the truth even when duality appears to exist
• Everything is just an expansion of our own mind or ego
• 'I am' is the most appropriate name of God
• The true import of the word 'I'

I will also incorporate the following three smaller additions in this chapter, 'What is True Knowledge?'

In my discussion about the meaning of verse 22 of Ulladu Narpadu I have split the paragraph that begins on the bottom of page 291 and ends on the top of page 292 of the present e-book version, and have added a new sentence, so the two resulting paragraphs will read as follows:

The true import of the word 'I'

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', on pages 309 and 311-312 of the present e-book version I quote verses 20 and 21 of Upadesa Undiyar, in which Sri Ramana says:

In the place [the core of our being] where 'I' [our mind or individual self] merges [or becomes one], the one [true knowledge] appears [or shines forth] spontaneously [or as ourself] as 'I [am] I'. That itself [or that, which is ourself] is the whole [the infinite totality or fullness of being, consciousness and happiness].

That [one infinite whole that shines thus as 'I am I'] is at all times [in the past, present and future, and in all eternity] the [true] import of the word 'I', because of the absence of our non-existence even in sleep, which is devoid of [any separate or finite sense of] 'I'.

On pages 312 to 314 of the present e-book version I discuss the meaning of verse 21, and I conclude my explanation with the following paragraph:

'I am' is the most appropriate name of God

In a recent post, Contemplating 'I', which is the original name of God, I quoted verse 716 of Guru Vachaka Kovai and while explaining it I referred to verses 712 to 715, saying that I would translate and explain them in a later post.

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication in print, I have incorporated my translation and explanation of these four verses in chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?'. That is, on pages 304 to 305 of the present e-book version there are two paragraphs in which I write that Sri Ramana often said that the words that express the true nature of the absolute reality most accurately are 'I' and 'am', and I have now enlarged upon those two paragraphs as follows:

Though the absolute reality is given many names and descriptions such as God, allah, brahman, the absolute, the eternal, the infinite, the fullness of being, purna or the whole, pure knowledge, sat-chit-ananda or being-consciousness-bliss, tat or 'it', nirvana, the kingdom of God and so on, Sri Ramana often said that the words that express its real nature most perfectly and accurately are 'I' and 'am', or their combined form 'I am'.

Everything is just an expansion of our own mind or ego

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', there is a paragraph on page 279 of the present e-book version in which I have written as follows:

Though our true, absolute and non-dual knowledge 'I am' is the ultimate support or substratum that underlies all forms of duality or relativity, it is not their immediate support or base. The immediate base upon which all duality depends, and without which it ceases to exist, is only our wrong knowledge 'I am this body', which is our individualised sense of selfhood, our ego or mind. ...

In the present e-book version I then quote what Sri Ramana says in verse 26 of Ulladu Narpadu, but for the forthcoming publication of Happiness and the Art of Being as a printed book I have written an explantion of verse 23, which I will incorporate at this point before verse 26, and immediately after verse 26 I will also incorporate another new paragraph of explanation. This entire portion will then read as follows:

[...] Therefore in verse 23 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana says:

This body does not say 'I' [that is, it does not know 'I am', because it is just inconscient matter]. No one says 'in sleep I do not exist' [even though in sleep this body does not exist]. After an 'I' has risen [imagining 'I am this body'], everything rises. [Therefore] by a subtle intellect scrutinise where this 'I' rises.

Non-duality is the truth even when duality appears to exist

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, I have written some fresh material to incorporate in chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', after the paragraph (on page 278 of the present e-book version) that ends, "... in that state we will clearly know that we have always been only the pure consciousness of being, 'I am', and that ignorance — the wrong knowledge 'I am this body' — never really existed, just as when we finally see the rope as it really is, we will understand that we were always seeing only that rope, and that the snake we imagined we saw never really existed", and I have amended and expanded the next paragraph. This new material, the amended portion and the final paragraph of this passage will read as follows:

Even when we imagine that we do not know our real self and therefore try to attend to ourself in order to know what we really are, we are in fact nothing other than our real self, which always knows itself as it really is. Our seeming ignorance of the true non-dual nature of our real self is only an imagination, and the sole purpose of our effort to know ourself is only to remove this imagination. This truth is stated emphatically by Sri Ramana in verse 37 of Ulladu Narpadu:

Even the argument that says, 'Duality [is real] in [the state of] spiritual practice, [whereas] non-duality [is real] in [the state of] attainment [of self-knowledge]', is not true. Both when we are lovingly [earnestly or desperately] searching [for ourself], and when [we] have attained ourself, who indeed are we other than the tenth man?

Objective knowledge will disappear along with our mind when we know ourself as we really are

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', after the paragraph (on page 277 of the present e-book version) that ends, "Is it not clear, therefore, that the only true knowledge that we can attain is the clear knowledge of ourself as we really are, devoid of any superimposed adjuncts — that is, knowledge of ourself as our unadulterated and essential self-consciousness, 'I am', which is the absolute non-dual consciousness that knows only itself?" I will incorporate the following addition:

All objective knowledge involves a basic distinction between the subject, who is knowing, and the object, which is known. It also involves a third factor, the subject's act of knowing the object.

Because our knowledge of ourself involves only the inherently self-conscious subject, and no object, we know ourself just by being ourself, and we do so without the aid of any other thing. Because we are naturally self-conscious, we do not need to do anything in order to know ourself. Therefore unlike all our objective knowledge, our knowledge of ourself involves neither an object nor any act of knowing, and hence it is a perfectly non-dual knowledge.

The Nature of Reality - additions to chapter 4 of Happiness and the Art of Being

Yesterday I posted the last two of the four major additions that I will be incorporating in chapter 3, 'The Nature of Our Mind', of Happiness and the Art of Being, namely:

• The foundation of all our thoughts is our primal imagination that we are a body
• Everything is only our own consciousness
• Contemplating 'I', which is the original name of God
• By self-attentiveness we can experience our true self-consciousness unadulterated by our mind

In chapter 4, 'The Nature of Reality', I do not expect to incorporate any large additions, but I will incorporate the following four small additions.

On page 219 of the present e-book version, I have added two sentences in the middle of the first paragraph, and after these sentences I have split the paragraph into two as follows:

By self-attentiveness we can experience our true self-consciousness unadulterated by our mind

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, in chapter 3 (on page 206 of the present e-book version) after the paragraph that ends, "... Therefore our states of waking and dream are a macrocosm of which the formation and dissolution of each one of our individual thoughts is the microcosm", I have added the following three paragraphs:

Therefore if we gradually refine our power of attention or cognition by our persistent practice of self-attentiveness, we will eventually be able to cognise the underlying reality that remains between each successive subsidence and subsequent rising of our mind or root thought 'I'. That underlying reality is our essential self-consciousness, which we always experience as 'I am'.

Contemplating 'I', which is the original name of God

In Happiness and the Art of Being, chapter 3, 'The Nature of Our Mind', there is a paragraph (on page 190 of the present e-book version) in which I write:

In whatever way he may describe this process of self-investigation or self-scrutiny, the sole aim of Sri Ramana is to provide us with clues that will help us to divert our attention away from our thoughts, our body and all other things, and to focus it wholly and exclusively upon our fundamental and essential consciousness of being, which we always experience as 'I am'. In his writings and sayings there are many examples of how he does this. In this fifth paragraph of Nan Yar? for instance, after first suggesting that we should investigate in what place the thought 'I' rises in our body, he goes on to give us a still simpler means by which we can consciously return to the source from which we have risen, saying, "Even if [we] remain thinking 'I, I', it will take [us] and leave [us] in that place".

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, after this paragraph I have added several new paragraphs, and have also amended the paragraph that currently comes immediately after it, as follows:

Everything is only our own consciousness

While revising Happiness and the Art of Being in preparation for its forthcoming publication as a printed book, in chapter 3 (on page 182 of the present e-book version) after the paragraph that ends, "... Whenever we perceive a world, we always do so from within the confines of a particular body, which we feel to be ourself", and before the next paragraph, which now begins, "Our primal imagination that we are a physical body is the foundation upon which our mind is built. Whenever it rises, whether in a dream or in a so-called waking state, our mind always imagines itself to be a body...", I have added the following:

Hence our perception of any world is dependent upon our imagining ourself to be a body in that world, which in turn is dependent upon our mind, the finite consciousness that imagines itself to be that body. Therefore in verses 5, 6 and 7 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana says:

[Our] body [is] a form [composed] of five sheaths [the pancha kosas or five adjuncts that seemingly cover and obscure our consciousness of our real self when we imagine any of them to be ourself]. Therefore all five [of these 'sheaths' or adjuncts] are included in the term 'body'. Without [some kind of] body, is there [any such thing as a] world? Say, having left [all kinds of] body, is there [any] person who has seen [this or any other] world?