From a site visitor in India, after a prior e-mail to him dismissed the concept of karma:
Hello floyd,
One way I remove the theory of karma is that action does not affects the soul as in advaita so the world itself is an illusion as well as its actions are illusion. But this happens only in the state of realization. Right now I am following the 5 step method in which i am in the third step where i have got mantropedesha and i chanting mantras and i will reach the third stage. But lot of other people criticize saying mantras do not have power but in experience i have felt their enormous power. So can you clarify how the mantra works? I would be glad to have you answer for my question.
Thank you Rakesh
F.: Hello again, Rakesh. The mantra and the focusing on the breath and the kneeling at the feet of a guru and the study of "holy" books and all of the other disciplines are a result of believing that there is a do-er who is practicing spirituality and that he is the author of his life. To be free of body and mind identification, but to then adopt new false personalities such as “The Religious One” or “The Spiritual Giant” and then fixate in those roles is to block the path to Full Realization.
Must those religious or spiritual roles--the third of seven steps to Reality--be played? Yes. Are they the end? No. They must be “done,” it seems, in order to transition them and to realize finally that there is no do-er and that there is no “one” to “gain” (or “lose”) anything. Religion and spirituality and all of their trappings are still about accepting concepts and ideas and dogma or teachings and thus believing in do-ership. All religious and spiritual teachings, just like the Advaita teachings, should be considered to be nothing more than thorns that can be used to remove thorns. But, eventually, the pointer is, why collect thorns?
Why not live as naturally as the deer? Why spend minutes and hours and days and years while focusing on the breath, which is nothing more than a natural bodily function? A response was sent this morning to a man who had been told by his “spiritual advisor” that the breath is “vital for life,” so his advisor instructed him to focus on “the in-and-out-movements” of his breath. The man wrote to this site, proudly, to convey how beneficial the practice was for him. The question asked in response was this: “There are at least two other bodily functions that happen daily, that deal with ‘in-and-out movements,’ and that are also ‘vital for life.’ Why not focus on them for a change, since focusing on either of those two bodily functions will do you as much good in the long run as focusing on the one you’re focusing on?”
The point to him was, when are you going to stop making this relative existence into an arduous path and another fulltime job and then just live instead? When are you just going to BE and give up all this DOING? When are you going to eliminate all this supernatural “stuff” and just live naturally? That is, what is more natural than breathing? What has happened to you in your life that has resulted in your being so desperate for peace that you have to focus on a bodily function instead of just being? And most significantly, when are you going to abandon the use of temporary, stop-gap measures, transcend your role of “Spiritual Giant,” and find a permanent solution for your relative-existence problem of having no peace? Your breathing is no more sacred or holy or mystical than your urinating or your defecating. The only lesson those can model for you is that they are natural and they happen spontaneously and they happen automatically and that is the way your AS IF living could be if you'd abandon all the nonsense. Assign all the spiritual connotations you want to whatever you want for as long as you want in order to nurture your assumed religious or spiritual personality, but if Full Realization is to happen, then at some point all of that nonsense must be forfeited. But why will most continue with the nonsense instead?
The suggestion to focus on his breath was offered by his advisor in order to temporarily shift his focus away from the chatter of his “mind.” But when the meditative focusing on the breath ends and he passes through the events of his day, his focus returns to the ceaseless chattering of his “mind.” If he thinks a mere temporary respite is acceptable, so it is, but sustained peace does not come from a temporary focusing on the breath. Sustained peace comes from putting to rest permanently the illusory “mind.” Be rid of the “mind” and the do-er will disappear along with doing all the assigned disciplines that you’ve been told must be done daily…and “for your entire life.”
As for your comment that “in experience i have felt their [the mantras] enormous power. So can you clarify how the mantra works? I would be glad to have you answer for my question.”
The fact is, the mantra does not work. How can the Advaita understanding prove that? First, WHO is claiming an “experience”? Only personas experience. Post-Realization, it is understood that there is no WHO to experience anything. Next, WHO is claiming to feel “enormous power”? Power is a concept, so it is not real and thus is not being felt. Only persons—who are addicted to control—want power (their secondary addiction) in order to be able to control. What is being experienced is emotional intoxication, no different from the “blissful ecstasy” or the “rapturous sensations” that religious and spiritual persons claim to "experience" at times. Other persons claim that they feel “enormous power” from prayer, but their prayers do not alter the course of storms, do not drive away stationary fronts and provide the rain they want, and have never “saved” anyone’s life, in the end. (And what would the planet look like if their prayers to let loved ones live were answered? The planet would have stacks of people piled in mile-high heaps. Point that out and the selfishness of praying persons is revealed: “OK, don’t let everyone live—I see now that that wouldn’t work. So let all the rest die except the one I care about.” So much for any “benefits” of the prayers of persons who want the power to control, and so much for the mess they would make if their prayers really did give them the power to influence or control events and people on this planet.)
That said, is it being suggested that the practicing of your mantras—or any other religious or spiritual practices—be discontinued? No. All of those, seemingly, must be “experienced” in order for persons to see eventually that their beliefs and practices and concepts do not result in true freedom or peace. The primary flaw in reasoning is that “my humming or chanting or focusing on breath or praying allow me to be at peace with myself.” The Advaita teachings, on the other hand, eliminate the self. Religion and spiritual movements offered new concepts to replace your old ones that did not “work.” The Advaita teaching eliminates the old and the new concepts, for none of them can “work.” Yet the shortcomings and the contradictions and the fallacies of religious dogma and spiritual practice must be experienced, seemingly, in order to realize their limitations which block the “path” to Full Realization and prevent an understanding of that which is limitless. The adoption of religious personas and spiritual personas serve as a step on the “journey,” but they are not the end. Again, most persons who are playing those roles mistake the dawn for the noon time.
The pointers offered here are rooted in Nisarga Yoga—the teachings which invite persons to be rid of their belief in the fallacious body-mind-personality triad and to then live naturally, to take it easy, to relax, to just BE and to forget the illusion of DOING or needing to DO or the existence and experiences of a DO-ER. Such pointers will appear to be very strange to those who are trying to follow a knowledge path, a worship path, an action path, or a service path. So it is. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
Hello floyd,
One way I remove the theory of karma is that action does not affects the soul as in advaita so the world itself is an illusion as well as its actions are illusion. But this happens only in the state of realization. Right now I am following the 5 step method in which i am in the third step where i have got mantropedesha and i chanting mantras and i will reach the third stage. But lot of other people criticize saying mantras do not have power but in experience i have felt their enormous power. So can you clarify how the mantra works? I would be glad to have you answer for my question.
Thank you Rakesh
F.: Hello again, Rakesh. The mantra and the focusing on the breath and the kneeling at the feet of a guru and the study of "holy" books and all of the other disciplines are a result of believing that there is a do-er who is practicing spirituality and that he is the author of his life. To be free of body and mind identification, but to then adopt new false personalities such as “The Religious One” or “The Spiritual Giant” and then fixate in those roles is to block the path to Full Realization.
Must those religious or spiritual roles--the third of seven steps to Reality--be played? Yes. Are they the end? No. They must be “done,” it seems, in order to transition them and to realize finally that there is no do-er and that there is no “one” to “gain” (or “lose”) anything. Religion and spirituality and all of their trappings are still about accepting concepts and ideas and dogma or teachings and thus believing in do-ership. All religious and spiritual teachings, just like the Advaita teachings, should be considered to be nothing more than thorns that can be used to remove thorns. But, eventually, the pointer is, why collect thorns?
Why not live as naturally as the deer? Why spend minutes and hours and days and years while focusing on the breath, which is nothing more than a natural bodily function? A response was sent this morning to a man who had been told by his “spiritual advisor” that the breath is “vital for life,” so his advisor instructed him to focus on “the in-and-out-movements” of his breath. The man wrote to this site, proudly, to convey how beneficial the practice was for him. The question asked in response was this: “There are at least two other bodily functions that happen daily, that deal with ‘in-and-out movements,’ and that are also ‘vital for life.’ Why not focus on them for a change, since focusing on either of those two bodily functions will do you as much good in the long run as focusing on the one you’re focusing on?”
The point to him was, when are you going to stop making this relative existence into an arduous path and another fulltime job and then just live instead? When are you just going to BE and give up all this DOING? When are you going to eliminate all this supernatural “stuff” and just live naturally? That is, what is more natural than breathing? What has happened to you in your life that has resulted in your being so desperate for peace that you have to focus on a bodily function instead of just being? And most significantly, when are you going to abandon the use of temporary, stop-gap measures, transcend your role of “Spiritual Giant,” and find a permanent solution for your relative-existence problem of having no peace? Your breathing is no more sacred or holy or mystical than your urinating or your defecating. The only lesson those can model for you is that they are natural and they happen spontaneously and they happen automatically and that is the way your AS IF living could be if you'd abandon all the nonsense. Assign all the spiritual connotations you want to whatever you want for as long as you want in order to nurture your assumed religious or spiritual personality, but if Full Realization is to happen, then at some point all of that nonsense must be forfeited. But why will most continue with the nonsense instead?
The suggestion to focus on his breath was offered by his advisor in order to temporarily shift his focus away from the chatter of his “mind.” But when the meditative focusing on the breath ends and he passes through the events of his day, his focus returns to the ceaseless chattering of his “mind.” If he thinks a mere temporary respite is acceptable, so it is, but sustained peace does not come from a temporary focusing on the breath. Sustained peace comes from putting to rest permanently the illusory “mind.” Be rid of the “mind” and the do-er will disappear along with doing all the assigned disciplines that you’ve been told must be done daily…and “for your entire life.”
As for your comment that “in experience i have felt their [the mantras] enormous power. So can you clarify how the mantra works? I would be glad to have you answer for my question.”
The fact is, the mantra does not work. How can the Advaita understanding prove that? First, WHO is claiming an “experience”? Only personas experience. Post-Realization, it is understood that there is no WHO to experience anything. Next, WHO is claiming to feel “enormous power”? Power is a concept, so it is not real and thus is not being felt. Only persons—who are addicted to control—want power (their secondary addiction) in order to be able to control. What is being experienced is emotional intoxication, no different from the “blissful ecstasy” or the “rapturous sensations” that religious and spiritual persons claim to "experience" at times. Other persons claim that they feel “enormous power” from prayer, but their prayers do not alter the course of storms, do not drive away stationary fronts and provide the rain they want, and have never “saved” anyone’s life, in the end. (And what would the planet look like if their prayers to let loved ones live were answered? The planet would have stacks of people piled in mile-high heaps. Point that out and the selfishness of praying persons is revealed: “OK, don’t let everyone live—I see now that that wouldn’t work. So let all the rest die except the one I care about.” So much for any “benefits” of the prayers of persons who want the power to control, and so much for the mess they would make if their prayers really did give them the power to influence or control events and people on this planet.)
That said, is it being suggested that the practicing of your mantras—or any other religious or spiritual practices—be discontinued? No. All of those, seemingly, must be “experienced” in order for persons to see eventually that their beliefs and practices and concepts do not result in true freedom or peace. The primary flaw in reasoning is that “my humming or chanting or focusing on breath or praying allow me to be at peace with myself.” The Advaita teachings, on the other hand, eliminate the self. Religion and spiritual movements offered new concepts to replace your old ones that did not “work.” The Advaita teaching eliminates the old and the new concepts, for none of them can “work.” Yet the shortcomings and the contradictions and the fallacies of religious dogma and spiritual practice must be experienced, seemingly, in order to realize their limitations which block the “path” to Full Realization and prevent an understanding of that which is limitless. The adoption of religious personas and spiritual personas serve as a step on the “journey,” but they are not the end. Again, most persons who are playing those roles mistake the dawn for the noon time.
The pointers offered here are rooted in Nisarga Yoga—the teachings which invite persons to be rid of their belief in the fallacious body-mind-personality triad and to then live naturally, to take it easy, to relax, to just BE and to forget the illusion of DOING or needing to DO or the existence and experiences of a DO-ER. Such pointers will appear to be very strange to those who are trying to follow a knowledge path, a worship path, an action path, or a service path. So it is. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
