..

Here is another Liverpool sketchpad from 1969.  I was at art school there, for a year.  You can use the Search button on this blog, to find my other Liverpool sketches  – I use my blog to archive them !

I shall companion this post with my next one – Jung’s account (in Memories, Dreams, Reflections) of his vision in Liverpool.  He called Liverpool the pool of life;  the dark city flowed around the glowing centre of a mandala.  It led him to the Way of the Golden Flower.  He had just finished painting a mandala which he called the Golden Castle – through its portal, he entered the I Ching.

Some of the drawings in this post are of London, where my Italian sweetheart lived.  I hitch hiked south at weekends, to be with him.

..

In those days, I met and talked with strangers a great deal.  There was something to learn from everyone;  I was a captive audience.

..

This sequence is more visionary:

..

..

I just found this passage in my journal, early spring in 1969.  My meeting with John left an indelible impression in my pool of life, and a sketch:

“It is all a bit like practicing Bach – the complexity of fugal themes and analysis of fingers, with which one has to think hard and precisely; and the sudden resolution, the fitting into place of a phrase like a jigsaw piece in harmony – before it flies apart and you have to work some more. The sudden realisation comes out of the bed of a sea of data, facts and study.  Intuition must have form to pass through as expression, otherwise it is dumb – unresolved spasmodic movements in the dark.  Intuition must be completed through a receiving set of Reality, to come to the light – as music, as painting, as love.

“I’m spending Saturday afternoon at John’s, practicing.”

John the Organist

“Here is John playing the organ.  He lectures also at the art college.  He is from Trinidad.  He is an aggressive person, tremendously active intellectually – immersed in philosophy and music.  He pushes his argument to the bitter end, just for the hell of it, and says he doesn’t have many friends, he prefers to live off his own means.  He “travels” in his room.  I am fascinated by his personality.  He has no time for refinement:  it might weaken him.

“He admires intensely the ancient Greeks, whom he emulates in his direct, self sufficient state of enquiry.  He likes to be with people who spark off debate which he carries to the end of the road and beyond.  More an organist than a pianist, he makes music with all of himself – ‘Here I am!’ – he thrusts.   Fred who visited, heard me playing, and said it was interesting to hear a woman on the piano.  ‘Makes a change from your brute force, John!’

“The pair of them went out shopping in the freezing snow and ice, so I had some time to myself.  I try to be a still, small rock of truth somewhere in myself, over which the waves wash their colours.  My contacts with people are intense;  at the same time I can live from my own means …  I don’t want to copy their styles, I don’t want to crash through a Brahms sonata I grew up with, for I knew its exquisite pain when Aunty Lonie and my father played it together – the same exquisite pain is in sex – I hope one day to climb the mountain.

“John and I like discussions which fly from pole to pole, and find each other interesting as opposites;  but I am too bendy so he gets bored.  He is a hard man; he allows human frailty no room;  I live with it because I have no choice.  We both stick to our guns.  In the evening after we had tea, two people came with their little two year old daughter who said “A garden on the wall!” when she saw the wood-carving hung there.   She is at the age of fascination.  Her dad is an architect with a gentle face, a “street acquaintance”.  Because I was feeling defenceless and raw, events and people took on a magnified intensity, harsh and new.  I knew suddenly, a powerful music of life.  John put scraps of Messiaen on the record-player…

“Later in the evening, John said ‘Would you like to come and play the organ in the Swedish church?’ The place we drove to, down dim frosty streets, was in an unfamiliar part of Liverpool, nearby.  Suddenly we found ourselves in a warm room with Swedish lamps. It was a Swedish mariners’ club, and rather elegant.  The TV was hidden;  a few men with jutting Nordic faces and bristly hair sat on settees and drank black coffee.  There was a girl there, a trainee occupational therapist.  She was working in a mental hospital and found the experience depressng.

“I’d like to speak their steely language, and to see the midnight sun.  John is like them.  He and I went upstairs to the circular vaulted church, hard and white, where the organ was. He is black but his mind is blown from the North.  Sitting on the altar step I listened and watched his feet fly around on the pedals, his silhouette dark against the keyboard lamp.  The music of Bach and Cesar Franck lifted my thoughts in great celestial waves;  I felt so HIGH.

“When I had a go, I tried to synchronise both hands and feet in the architecture which is organic harmony.  The place had a strange atmosphere, like a German expressionist film.  I felt  ‘resurrected’ and on the pulse of great mysteries.

From journal, early spring 1969

..

That picture of an angel in society, feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable – I dreamed it, the way it spoke, and the tender buds behind the shoulder blades.

..

These sketches are mostly of London, and contain an awakening.

The figure in the smoke above Battersea Power Station is a “Wicked Prince” searching for a Ruby.  Whenever he rolls the plain grey rocks and stones around in his search, there is thunder.  When I was a child, my grandfather Jim Ede told us tales of The Wicked Prince year by year.   The saga ended at this point when I was about twelve;  Jim shut his mouth – though we begged him to go on – and wouldn’t tell us any more.

The Wicked Prince is still on his adventurous quest.  He is locked up in the sky.  He seeks the Ruby –  alchemical tincture of the Stone:  a rare wine that grew in the water:  a wine that grows in the rain.

Battersea Power Station was in those days still functioning, and a truly marvellous building – created by the architect of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral.   It lifted my soul.

..

,,

,,

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

..

Liverpool Cathedral

This post is a partner to yesterday’s Liverpool sketchbooks (for my archive) – Jung’s dream in 1927 of Liverpool.

His pioneering journey into the unconscious was extraordinary and illumined the way for generations to come.  As I and many others travel on his shoulders, the places he visited keep joining up with mine, and feel startlingly familiar.  I had similar dreams of a dark city, mountainous in scale,  with a glowing centre and even a pool or inlet from the sea.  It was  the city of the mind – a many towered labyrinth.   In one of these dreams I was a fish in the pool, and someone threw a line, hooked my nose and flipped me onto dry land.  Ouch!

Here are extracts from the chapter Confrontation with the Unconscious in Jung’s  “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”.  The chapter first describes the creation of the Red Book. Then:

“I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self.  There is no linear evolution;  there is only a circumambulation of the self.  Uniform development exists at most, only at the beginning;  later everything points towards the centre .  This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.  I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self, I had attained what was for me the ultimate.  Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I.

..

Window on Eternity by C G Jung – Red Book

“In 1927 I obtained confirmation of my ideas about the centre and the self by way of a dream.  I represented its essence in a picture which I called ‘Window on Eternity’.  The picture is reproduced in ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’.  A year later I painted a second mandala, with a golden castle in the centre.  When it was finished, I asked myself, ‘Why is this so Chinese?’

The Golden Castle by C G Jung – Red Book

..

“… Shortly afterwards I received a letter from Richard Wilhelm enclosing the manuscript of a Taoist-alchemical treatise entitled ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower‘, with a request that I write a commentary on it.  I devoured the manuscript at once, for the text gave me an undreamed of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the centre.  That was the first event which broke through my isolation.  I became aware of an affinity;  I could establish ties with someone and someone.

“In remembrance of this coincidence, this synchronicity, I wrote underneath the picture which had made so Chinese an impression on me:  ‘In 1928, when I was painting this picture showing the golden, well fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm in Frankfurt sent me the thousand year old Chinese text on the yellow castle, the germ of the immortal body.’

..

“This is the dream I mentioned earlier.  I found myself in a dirty, sooty city.  It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining.  I was in Liverpool.  

With a number of Swiss – say, half a dozen – I walked through the dark streets.  I had the feeling that there we were coming from the harbour, and that the real city was actually up above, on the cliffs.  We climbed up there.  

It reminded me of Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up through the Alley of the Dead, which leads to a plateau above, and so to the Petersplatze and Peterskirche.  

“When we reached the plateau, we found a broad square dimly illumined by street lights, into which many streets converged.  The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square.  In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island.  

While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight.  On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, in a shower of reddish blossoms.  It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight and was at the same time the source of light. 

..

“My companions commented on the abominable weather, and obviously did not see the tree.  They spoke of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise that he should have settled here.  I was carried away by the beauty of the flowering tree and the sunlit island, and thought, ‘I know very well why he has settled here.’  Then I awoke.

Swan Hebrew letter Beit

“On one detail of the dream I must add a supplementary comment:  the individual quarters of the city were themselves arranged radially around a central point.  This point formed a small open square illuminated by a larger street lamp, and constituted a small replica of the island.  I knew that the ‘other Swiss’ lived in the vicinity of one of these secondary centres.

“This dream represented my situation at the time.  I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain.  Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque – just as I felt then.  But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all.   Liverpool is the ‘pool of life’.  The ‘liver’ according to an old view, is the seat of life – that which ‘makes to live’.” 

..

(The Liver of Life!   His Window of Eternity mandala shows – like a grid – the city districts as holograms.  Each is as the whole, with its illumining centre and radii:  our human connectivity, beyond the box of space and time:  macrocosm of the microcosm.  When we awake we discover our imagined isolation was a fantasy.)

..

“This dream brought with it a sense of finality.  I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the centre.  The centre is the goal, and everything is directed towards that centre.  Through this dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning.  Therein lies its healing function … Out of it emerged a first inkling of my personal myth. 

“After this dream I gave up painting mandalas …” 

Jung age 85

..

The Liverpool dream looks to me like a four-dimensional snapshot of Jung’s whole working life.   The lamp which the Red Book kept alight during World War One, glowed very deep, hidden inside the dark, but it passed from soul to soul.

During the following decades, Jung worked with clients – high achievers – who were deeply depressed and searching for a reason to live at all.  European society, collectively shattered by the carnage in the trenches, and with Nazism on the rise, endured dense clouds of scepticism and banality – the mind’s dark glamour.

He discovered that if he encouraged his patients to paint what they felt and saw, something in them took charge of the process and led them to an unexpected interior contact.  As the healing awoke, it took charge of the patient who began to open doors.  

Dr Jung found it had little to do with himself as therapist.  His job was to lead his patients to the underground stream, on which they floated paper boats.   Art therapy was born.   It is for ourselves, each one, to contact the unique inner mystery which unites us.

Wandering Fool with DNA and paper boats – 1988

..

Jung himself had pioneered the way, through the Red Book;  he told very few people about it, (though he showed some of his paintings to those whom he trusted) – but it rekindled by morphic resonance, as in “Window of Eternity”.

In his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, he describes the new discoveries with his clients.

Jung and his house at Bollingen

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

..

Sages by the holy hill – Ramana, Poonja and devotee

I am conditioned by a spiritual teaching: to keep quiet in personal matters – why? Because – the noise and pain is on the surface, and cannot transform anything inside its own scarring.   To keep quiet and open with a situation as it changes, is trans-formative.   Instinctively, intuitively, I know this, and its potential awakening.   But  I want to tell, and it is in me a stuck clamour, when the personified fragments which come out, are untrue to my truth.   Conscious with and as these painful personified fragments till they fade … — they fade and flutter like Siva’s grey ash turning white. .

Jung said in The Red Book, “Then turn to the dead, listen to their lament and accept them with love. Be not their blind spokesman.”  He adds this to the Christian law of love and redemption. .

“… Have reverence for what has become. … If you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. When Christ ascended after completing his work, he led those up with him who had died prematurely and incomplete under the law of hardship and alienation and raw violence. The lamentations of the dead filled the air at the time, and their misery became so loud that even the living were saddened, and became tired and sick of life and yearned to die to this world already in their living bodies. And thus you too lead the dead to their completion with your work of salvation.” .

Jung’s mandala to the flowering dead.  They are the souls also of our previous lives and formation.  On the compass points, the two vertical gates contain “animus” – he describes them as an elder sage and a magical or cthonic one     The horizontal gates contain  “anima” – the dark and the light womb or Mother.

Recent unbearable impressions: a ten year old boy in Gaza going crazy because all his family are killed by another bomb from Israel.  Small girls in chains, being dragged to unknown husbands as cattle.  The great Tree Spirits of the rain forest being slaughtered, torn, and replaced by tidy rows of dark-green palm slaves.  Cattle jammed in desert corrals somewhere in America, like ants, with giant trucks driving through them with “feed” – concentration camp, this is what humans eat.  Fish being vacuumed out of the sea.  The human wound and greed spills poison into nature and the oceans.

It seems to me now, that humans in the retro trap of aggressive wealth, cannot change their nature.  But souls who are incarnating into the human race at present, can and do.   A time approaches, when the above scenes of inhumanity are inconceivable.  Something emerges through the dead end: the truth of living and dying; and living and dying.

Earth, water, air

..

In my mind, I am, you are, a human child – a culture, a civilization, with countless humans (thoughts) passing through, living and dying, many are of the same herd type, they bleat like distressed sheep.   In Plato’s cave are Shadows! The parade is endless. They are all mine, since the fire glowing behind me throws “mine” onto the cave wall, which attracts the collective dark parade from nowhere to no place.

..

http://iblog.stjschool.org/dsader/2006/02/12/platos-cave-allegory/

The ascent to the sunlight is under the road-bridge. Along the road-bridge come the procession of shadows and lives which the firelight projects onto the cave wall in front of the bound souls.

I remain fascinated by the primal fire of life which projects these shadows – the fire is behind me, the Karmic furnace – yet there is an opening to my right, and the choice is to turn and venture up that passage into the open, into the direct, warm light of the Sun itself.

I know all the shadows are still there flickering with their fire in the cave, an essence of my identity, my root in the ground.

I know when I am outside, by looking back at the cave entrance, and seeing it in its place.   I cannot avoid the stress of my being, and I often get engulfed by it.

..

But the Hermit with the greater lamp, dawns within the dark, and indicates the Way Through to the sun, the beauty of the orchard outside the cave; where solar fruit drops from the boughs.

And relax, letting go the stress in living and dying …  let my solar plexus loosen, let breath be drawn unobstructed, all the way down into my root chakra, through the dantien.   It rounds itself, like an earthenware vessel which carries cool water from the well.   In the water are reflected and born again, the distant stars and Suns.

..

This is Alchemy.

..

..

..

..

**

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright(c) janeadamsart 2012-2014.  May not be used for commercial purposes.  May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com

..

Pierrot in the fields

This story for our children, and for the world’s ageless children in ourselves, was written in French by Catherine Harding during the 1990s; she asked me to illustrate it. In due course it was published privately in France, with a few of my illustrations, as “Les Explorateurs du Vrai Monde” – Explorers of the Real World.   Here is the complete set of drawings and paintings I did for Catherine, plus a few extras at the end.

Pierrot’s story is a celebration of the late Douglas Harding’s life and work. Douglas was born in Lowestoft, and trained as an architect. After he discovered his real Home, he travelled all over the world for sixty years to share it. His unique series of experiments tap our resources of infinity, and demonstrate the treasure lying at the heart of the great traditional faiths.   The experiments can be done at any time and place, right now.

Douglas and Catherine met and married in about 1991; their loving and down-to-earth teamwork – built open for each other – enchanted all who attended their workshops. Douglas passed away in 2007, age 98.

Douglas & Catherine Harding at Sholland, Nacton

 ..

For more information about Catherine and the Headless Way, contact The Sholland Trust, 87B Cazenove Road, London NW16 6BB, or visit www.headless.org.   Douglas’s many books include On Having No Head, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, The Trial of the Man who said he was God, Look for Yourself, The Spectre in the Lake, To Be And Not to Be, Head off Stress, and The Little Book of Life and Death.

Douglas’s 90th Birthday

..

..

Now, here are the pictures which tell the story. To view, click on any image.

Chapters One and Two – A White Wolf Arrives in the Village

..

..

Chapters Three, Four, Five, Six – Experiments in Seeing

..

Pierrot showed them all his secrets

..

..

Chapter Seven – Sharing the Seeing

..

..

Chapters Eight-Thirteen – The Attack

..

..

Chapters Fourteen-Seventeen – A French Village Awakens

..

..

Artists’ Epilogue

..

It is time for the artist to ask herself some questions.   As I draw my self-portrait, what do I see? What enters my extended hand and heart? What fills the un-named movement along my arm, what welcoming focus – shape to space?   What ancient world, before historians wrote a word?

Who draws through me? the taut flow through finger and thumb to a dancer’s point ?   What smile in space for lines of life to happen?   What urgency gives birth?   And the tight hours – as often as not – groping towards the magic “touch” with tippex, eraser, and elimination?

How many faces do I see? Do I have one here?   Or is it yours? Plainly, my daily life and relationships require the same careful attention to precisely what is there.   Not what I’m told, or think I should believe: but receiving the curve – “I am you are. Thou art I am.” Keep practicing. Look, I am built open. I may trade faces with Pierrot’s white wolf, or with my foot on the floor, a still-life on the window sill, a sketch-pad on the kitchen table, the sense of dotting an I. I may trade faces with you or with the sky whose clouds keep changing curtains.   Where I look in the room, looks back, and I, un-named and changelessly, change all the time.   Look, if I cross my eyes a bit, there’s a nasal blur and spectacle frames – as I thought. But when I put them on … The One Eye has these details like a mountain spring.

As I put life’s tunnel on my nose, who comes to meet me but my Friend?

..

..

and now a surprise Present to unwrap at the End of …

“Wait,” said Douglas (on our first meeting in Nacton), “How many faces in this bag?  Scientifically – how many faces do you see?”

I looked for some time silently.  The sides of the paper bag removed Douglas’s face from the context of everyday resistances.  Bit by bit I freed myself to gaze and to receive the information as if I never saw such a thing before.  It was rather warm in the paper tube, and from time to time we had to come out like divers, for air.  At first the intimacy made me feel selfconscious.  Presently as I overrode my small fret, I found myself contemplating with compassion, a living landscape.  I received the searchlight of that sensitive terrain into my emptiness.  I saw how the pupils and lids of the eyes narrowed or dilated, as they roved and scanned mountains and valleys.  They examined features in detail – eyes, nose, the lines in forehead, the contour of the cheek, the growth of hair, the twitch and lilt of expression.  I saw the baby unborn and everlasting, the bed of the river, the vulnerable soul in those dark eyes which, like wells, never age or end; the youthful profundity of that searching glance.

I received and beheld an inescapable mysterium, a humanity.

“Just the one face,” I replied.

“Yes,” rumbled Douglas, “You’re starting to see the point.”

Put on your space

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

..

fish by Steven Szegedy Szuts

Dreams No.89   May 1975

IF YOU were Chinese …

If who was Chinese?   Me, you or history?

The dream is a scribe of “his” story.   The dream tells me with some authority, that if I was Chinese and wise like a mandarin, I would know very well that I make my own bed to sleep on. The floor on which I lie for the night to imprint “his” story in my fibre, should be roughened.   Otherwise it will have no “key”.   My pillow would then slip, and no message come to my hearing.

This seems to be an ancient Oriental tradition.   As you make your bed, so you live.   A page too smooth cannot take the ink from heaven and the underworld. The fibre holds the script.   The rationale for this insight comes to me with all the force of Chinese respect for ancestry, and with the revelation of a brush scribing pictures.

So far so good.

Am I a printing press?   And from which civilisation did Renaissance Europe take the idea?

They say to me in this dream, roughen a plank on the wooden floor with a flaming torch to char the grain.   Lay paper on the burnt patch, and your pillow on the paper.   And lo! when you raise your head from sleep the paper will be printed with the mark of your life.

This principle seems unfathomably relevant to living, creating and suffering. A wisdom within it glows – something to do with fire which heats, burns out old wood and hollows a primitive boat for voyaging.   In the spirit of fire are interwoven myriad patterns of incarnation.   I gaze into the embers of flame, red, yellow, blue, violet, sometimes even lucid green. In fragile castles of carbon, whole histories fall to ash.   A dreamer is a traveller on the spot with his or her ear to the ground.

Certain prints of life are stroked out into the crinkle of slow flame; they glow.   It is breaking my heart!   how some people can play with fire and create these without having to make beds to lie in, or go to sleep at all.   These people – like my sister – have wonderful ideas.   They conjure filigree landscape from random traceries of the wood’s charred grain, to the delight of all who behold.

..

..

B gave me some sheets of thick paper to experiment with.   And look, my sister and her friend Jemima at school are here in the room with me;   in their play, they made five or six colour pictures by holding the burning torch to the thick paper.   The sharp, incisive lines of their pictures have the glory of a Byzantine woodcut.   The flame crinkled or split lines or curves along the papery grain, along which they drew. I held those pictures in my hands.   I gazed at them envious, and humble, before such mastery.   B said my sister was an ordinary girl – so I never saw the power and clarity of her imagination, till now.   How does she do it?   Won’t she show me?   Then I could make a card like this, for his birthday next week.   I want him to value something from me, some taste and texture to delight in, like new brown bread, or an earthen pot with lapis lazuli glaze.   Then he couldn’t possibly tell me I’m a “spiritual desert”.

I was in his room later.   He went to get loo-paper for me to blow my nose.   We agreed to see each other less often for a while.   At least, our dialogue is not a wound.   Can we shake out the feathers, allow our own colours to grow, be less mutually invaded when we meet?   Hope broke shyly through into space.   The mood changed, and became sensitive to one another.   It could smile and laugh with our trouble.

I showed him three of those prints my clever sister made – the tension of her inner eye and the delicacy of her touch.   “Look!”   I said.   “My sister made those. What an artist she is.” Here’s a black and white one of a labyrinth, an immense industrial landscape somewhere in the North Country. To the left, a group of business magnates in top-hats and frock-coats, barter nineteenth-century expansion.   They haven’t refined the technology yet.   Smoke billows from chimneys, stove-pipes and flues, and to the right a black city opens to the foot, an intricate tangle of streets and sooty towers – a pool of life that is still a furnace.

So she too knew Liverpool!   And here’s a green one, the deft caricature of an earthy old man bent like a gnome.   The third one shows a field of long summer grass deep enough to wade in, rich with clover and wild garlic, active with the multi-level hierarchy of small creatures.   All her Tragic Stories are here, to walk with – the stories she tells to herself with chewed stems of grass for girls’ hair and bits of bent wire for boys’ legs. She is a sturdy, short-sighted child. She mumbles her song through field and farmyard, utterly absorbed in the drama at play in her hands.   I follow sometimes, and listen.

..

I am burning to do it too.   I want to release that vision heat-held in wood and paper.   I thirst for the water of life, that slow dew of remembering …

What is really happening is that a baby is sitting here in this room with the burnt patch on the floor, a baby with dark eyes.   And the drawing that he, she, I, am doing so carefully along the advice of the ageless sages collapsed, and broke into a wild infant scrawl.

..

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

 ..

The Sacred India Tarot bridges Indian yoga and mythology with western esoteric schools.

Tarot key 1 – the Magus – belongs here, to open a new Suit – the Suit of Wands. His is the Intelligence of Transparency. With the Wand in his right, he conducts the divine current. His left hand indicates the garden. In front of him are the tools for the Work.

..

Jane’s Notes – More than a decade has passed since Rohit and I worked on this suit.  Reviewing it, I see the essence of the Wands – the Staves in Indian mythology – as a warrior’s dance.  The action is martial but it moves with grace – for instance the wonderful episode which carries Rama and Sita across the sea to freedom and the homeland:  an End-of Karma card, as with the Eights in the other three Suits.

There is also the gesture of the multi-dimensional Ashwin Twins, children of the Sun – as they reach a long hand to the struggling mariner in the high seas.   We created a rare depiction of this stupendous and health giving deity.

We began to touch upon the martial art as a dance form, towards the end of the Suit of Arrows in this Archive (See Archive of all Posts, or use the Search button).  Returning through the Wands/Staves, the form and its focus matures, giving Rama the power to pierce the formidable Ravannah King of Demons.

There is an old Buddhist teaching:  the well placed stone.  Not how many stones you throw – but which one, and where it lands – in conversation and in dance, as well as in battle:  the Art of Life, the great middle way.

In the Indian sense, these pebbles are lingum, the Sign.

..

..

Rohit’s Notes (2003)

“I have selected for this Suit of Wands, the Yuddha Kanda – the section of the Ramayana dealing with the battle to recover Sita from captivity in Lanka and its aftermath from the Ramayana.  We cannot deliver the whole epic in one Suit, but we can distil some essence from this archetypal chapter.  A Gnostic book I read says that, as well as their more traditional meaning as the Fire Suit, the Wands represent the air and the intellect, just as we suppose the Swords to do.  So we get multiple layers of meaning here.

“The Ramayana and Mahabharatha are not just India’s epics;  they are the national epics also of Java, Bali, Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand.  I would like to show by hinting at those costume styles, that Indian mythology like the Tarot, transcends local contexts and has universal relevance.  The Balinese look is spectacular, as this illustration shows.

“I like the tunic clad bearded Ravana;  it shows a sense of virile power instead of being grossly ugly and repulsive as most representations of Ravana are.  Perhaps the demons should be shown in this style all through?”

..

Rohit’s Notes (2003): The story goes:  Rama in alliance with Sugriva king of the monkeys, and with Hanuman’s assistance, attacks Lanka where his wife Sita is held captive by the King of the Demons, Ravana.  Rama slays Ravana and rescues Sita who then undergoes an ordeal of fire in order to clear herself of the suspicion of infidelity.  At a later stage, Rama becomes imperilled by doubt, loses his trust in the feminine and banishes her to the forest where she meets the sage Valmiki.  Valmiki is the traditional author of the Ramayana and its seer.  In the forest, Sita gives birth to Rama’s two sons, but after having to again protest her innocence, asks to be received by the earth, which swallows her up.

“Like Krishna in the Suit of Arrows, Rama is an avatar of Vishnu the Sustainer.  The poem is immensely popular in India, setting prototypes of a harmonious and just kingdom, conjugal love, filial and fraternal love.  Everything is designed for harmony which after being disrupted is at last regained.”

Jane’s Notes:
Significantly, this story is a multi-level parable.  For instance, Rama attains the ideal of wise government and conjugal happiness, but “loses” the plot when he drops to a lower level of the mind and its advisors.  The prototypes are self-sustaining, eternally.  They bide their time while the human reascends to their timeless horizon.  The woman, received into the earth, is the earth’s wisdom which births us.  All ideas which battle to the contrary, are time drawn out in fantasy.  This suit of Staves depicts some of the psychological uplifts and downdraughts between the Worlds.

..

Rohit’s Notes – “Ace of Staves – Building the Stone Bridge over the Sea to Lanka – representing creative endeavour”

“We need to have a scene of frantic activity with a bridge of stone receding into the horizon over the sea, monkeys clambering about helping in the construction, and so on.  Rama, Laxmana and Hanuman can be shown supervising the operation.  This is not very popular as a scene in art, so we have only this vague reference to offer.  Please feel free to use your imagination.

“The scene of Sagara the ocean offering to help Rama may also be used as a reference.  The Single wand could be a fiery flaming arrow that Rama holds and threatens to release into the ocean to dry it up, so that the building of the bridge is not hampered.  Perhaps it would be best to combine Sagara before Rama and bridge-building as one composite scene.  The bow held in Rama’s hand in the sculpture panel does look remarkably like a wand anyway!”

..

Jane’s Notes – An observation:  The immense labour in building up a causeway of stones in the sea, to access the higher dharma dimension.  This is our human way, committed to our real relationships as well to sadhana and all creative endeavours – the sweat of our brow, the fruit of our lives.   Interestingly when Rama returns with Sita, they are borne effortlessly by the dimension attained through Ravana’s defeat !  (See 8 of Staves, pictured above.)

The initial work itself reminds me of this painting:

Rubicon 63 – Building a Jetty 1986: the beginning of the process, with all its friends and backers and a salutary shipwreck nearby.  This was about relationships, the ache and hunger of the soul for connection.  The island the jetty is being built from looks like a mushroom cloud, but was based on the Alet headland near St Malo in Brittany.

..

Rohit’s Notes – from the Book with the Deck
“The impossible is suddenly prosaic reality:  a bridge has been built upon the ocean.  The demon king Ravana was secure in his island fortress of Lanka – the city of gold bounded by the impassable sea.  Ravana who has kept the kidnapped Sita wife of Rama prisoner in Lanka, is shockingly confronted with the unbelievable news and unthinkable consequences.

“… The Ace of Staves sears away the illusions and delusions dear to the heart;  it forces a creative and ultimately more integral response to the challenge of life.  If one persists in the old ways, the consequences are swift and harsh as one of Rama’s weapons.  This colossal feat was accomplished with the help of his great brother Laxmana and his simian-like Vanara allies – magical creatures of equal, if not greater accomplishment than humans … Such unorthodox brilliance in the swift use of resources, the sheer chutzpah of conception and execution, is typical of the Staves energy…   The Staves are only apparently disruptive, and integrate the churned situation at a higher level of consciousness. 

“In a reading:  Situations unfold at bewildering speed.  Vision and visionaries:  energy, fiery and swift;  resiliance and enduring courage, stimulating thinkers.   Shadow:  low creative energy, or misapplication – frustration and delays, over-commitment at all levels, sexual imbroglios.  There is no need to take on the world.  Are you running away with yourself and your enthusiasm?  Conversely, what is the strangest, weirdest thing you could do to get this done?“

..

Here is the finished card:

Sacred India Tarot – the Ace of Staves

..

Correspondence – Rohit to Jane
“Ace of Wands – There is nothing significant I would like to change in this card as it has a very unusual other worldly element to it.  Supernatural events are manifestly taking place as we look.  The monkey in the picture can be safely regarded as Sugriva or any one of the innumerable simian hordes who supported Rama.  When portraying Hanuman he should be white in colour as he was an albino monkey, very handsome and muscular with warrior’s helm and holding a mace or even hammer. (See Sacred India Tarot, Knight of Arrows in this series.) The hammer might be a strange choice but I have actually seen pictures of him holding one, and it would be a refreshing change to the normal depiction of Hanuman.

“A very small point that did not occur to me until I saw it.  Rama is shown with Vaishantha forehead markings, in acknowledgement of his being an avatar Vishnu, but he was personally a devotee of Siva, having in fact just established the famous Rameshwaram Siva temple by the Ocean before the events of this card.  It would make a good point about tolerance and the peculiar Hindu genius to meld and assimilate, if Rama was shown with Shaiva markings on the forehead.  I never thought about this point as I did not anticipate any such depiction, but now that it has emerged, it will significantly deepen the spiritual and cultural aspects of the suit.  In all other respects, the card is perfect.”

Unfortunately I do not seem to have taken this on board for the finished card;  all the better to mention the detail here.

..

..

..

**

For other Sacred India Tarot posts, look under Recent Posts, Search,
or Archive of All Posts in the title bar.

Rohit Arya
Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He has also written A Gathering of Gods. He is a corporate trainer, a mythologist and vibrant speaker as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga.
Earlier posts about the deck, including the first 15 Major Arcana archives are in http://aryayogi.wordpress.com The deck is copyrighted (c) 2011 to the publishers, Yogi Impressions Books pvt, and available also on Amazon and internationally.

Jane Adams
My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books).

All original art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012 – 2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

What can a war artist do?

A photo is quickly taken, sold to a news agency, reacted to in passing by millions, and passed over.  A drawing takes far longer in time and space, to contemplate the condition. I did this one and two others, yesterday.  Some more were done last week, and the rest are from a few years ago. .

Our children are the same for us the world over.  This woman works hard on the land and in her household.  She holds it all together, and carries the weight of water from the well.  She gave birth to her babies in pain and crying out and relief; they are her life, each one.  Her husband may or may not be a strong, caring father. .

Now their homestead and village is shattered:  they wait homeless on the waterless mountain.  She is vulnerable.  In a war zone, you do not know who is friend or rapist – like an earthquake.  Her children are hungry and there is no roof.  There is the tearing pain inside her belly, of anxiety and shock:  the soft smell of her baby:  the bewildered bravery of her daughter as a journalist’s lens draws near.  They are rounded up like goats, by unknown herders. .

She is my sister.  I live in a safe house with interesting things to do, and plenty to eat.  I can only reach out by drawing her, to touch, that she may feel somehow, somewhere that someone knows.  Send her strength …  Even now … wherever she is. .

..

He’s a father, and they lost their mother.  The children want to help him, and don’t know how.  On their terrifying journey to survival, it is the artist’s way to support them.  Loaded on a donkey they ride off into uncertain night, the first desolate steps through quicksand, of an astounding courage. .

It is humiliating to have your home torn away and to ride with all you can carry on the donkey to God knows where?

..

The newspaper said:  She has a badly needed drink.   While I was drawing her – and it took me nearly all day –  I wondered a lot about what blinds a man or boy, to kill or hurt a beautiful child like this in the name of fundamentalism.

..

I singled these children out from a crowd in Gaza –  two brothers and a sister. They watch perhaps the bombing of their street – evacuated.  A rope to hold back the crowd, threads together each child’s parentless abyss…   the grownups’ broken world

..

..

This was a design for a Christmas card some years ago – a refugee camp anywhere and the Star.

..

The late Valerie Brooks gave 17 years of her life to support children in distress.  Through her cleaner, (a doctor from West Ukraine who could earn more for her family by cleaning houses in London, than by practicing medicine in her home town) assistance was given also to a poverty-stricken Ukrainian community, through the Maria Relief Fund  http://mariarelieffund.org.uk/ .   A network of friends and sponsors helps to support each family there, and to establish an English class and educational opportunities for their children. .  It is an extended family.

Many large charities lose their definition in administrative overheads.  Smaller charities operate in a grass-roots way through human contact and serendipity.  The Maria Relief Fund is a small registered charity, assisting displaced children around the world.  I am associated with it and also with the Phoenix Aid Centre .  PAC provides accessible therapy and counselling for refugees, victims of abuse and for all who might rise from their ashes and fly. .

A man or woman who brought their family from danger into safety – through the final hurdle of UK border control and language barrier – drew on reserves of superhuman values, to make their quantum leap, and integrate with a new culture.  Such persons have that gift to contribute – when these qualities within them are recognised.  So we should find it within ourselves, to recognise. .

..

This is a village child in Ukraine.

..

More refugees on displaced borderlands – the children take care of each other.  They are our future – the unbreakable jewel within us.   The Age of Aquarius breaks down old walls.

..

Kristina is a talented girl in the Ukraine, whom I help to sponsor.  She lives with her granny and grandad, who worry what will happen to her when they die.

..

Dancers at a village festival in West Ukraine.

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

..

Sacred India Tarot – Ramana as Skanda son of Siva

Tensions are imagination trapped in illusory codes. The tension appears to have the power to materialise, but it has no substance after the thought.   Whenever I get through a bit of rotten concrete I turn and see how weak it is. The human lower mind is powered mostly by negative apprehensions. This is why it became embedded in our psyche and expectation, that we have no power to see above the hedges or to change direction – no power of Magic.

There is a huge gulf between general human bedtime, and the real human nature to draw together the stars and move with them consciously, joyfully.   The power and the dawn and the history of Magic is simply … this! to take up my bed and walk.

The tapestry is the stars and the Great Heaven:  quantum unity. This theme of the tapestry is mirrored back to me from persons I move with, this week: things they say. My tiny thread-loop in the tapestry stands in the lane at night and looks up at the sky.

Starling murmuration by jchip84

Back in history, some priests got hold of Magic and began to manipulate aspects of it with a tendency which grew and grew.   For a while they had power and the passwords to re-shape people and environment beguilingly.   It concealed from them, the Power.   They lost sight and lived inside dark glasses to write history. Tension bred and grew, which obscures and fragments the Power.   The political world is ruled by Tension, which manifests nowadays all our yesterdays.   But I see the Power and I see the monster in the waves.   The Power is hauling it up and out to be seen.   Tension appears eternal (so does hell) but in due course it breaks and self destroys. It dismantles.  It is rotten concrete whose reinforcing wires get rusted and snap.

The Tension which obscures the Power is separative.   By “separative” I do not mean the sword-tip which parts the elements to live with and enhance each other, like brush strokes of colour.   “Separative” is the dreary default dream-like notion that I am an isolated object, and therefore powerless, a frightened wage slave, reading only the headlines.

..

The Power which dissolves the Tension, is “all there is”.   There is as Robert used to say – the power that knows the way.   I need only turn toward it voluntarily, and see.   This is metanoia: a word meaning ‘repent’, in the sense of ‘turn around to face the light’.   Whenever and wherever this happens in the world, those stars come out and form a constellation linking oceans: a golden net.

..

I just came across this, in Katie Spero’s blog Let Yourself Learn: – together with a golden mountain and what happens when the subtle thread to your friend strengthens over the ocean:

“When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer
in his absence as the mountain to the climber
is clearer from the plain.”

Kahlil Gibran

..

Siva – Rudra the Wild Hunter

A Story – adapted from Alan Jacobs’ “Myths of Siva: Siva Nilakantha”

“Once upon a time the Gods in heaven and Demons in Hell formed a parliament. To create ambrosia, they planned to churn the Milky Way as if to make butter.  They tore great Mount Mandarva from its roots, for a churning stick; Vasuki, snake of the world became the rope.  

“As they whirled and stirred the celestial ocean, to their horror there rose to the surface, a hideous black oil-slick – Kalakuntha, the world’s poison:  Time itself.  The Gods and Devils in terror like smart young ladies seeing a mouse, appealed to Lord Siva. 

“Siva dipped his hands in the sea. Drinking the poison to the last drop, he held it in his lily  throat which – as if kissed by a serpent – turned a sinister peacock blue.   Now named Nilakantha, Blue-throated One, he retired to his cave in Mount Kailas.  All the sages and rishis made their pilgrimage.

kailas and manasarovar

“Ramana on Siva’s hill Arunachala says, ‘When the selfish thought returns to the Self, Self-awareness shines, distilled and pure:  the elixir of health and wholeness, ever enduring.’

..

“Mixing too much with the world, I swallowed poisons  churned up by confusing my activities, good and bad.   With a deep exhalation, I cleanse my body.   Drawing in fresh prana, I use that attention to dive within and find in my heart’s cave, Siva Nilakantha … ever illumining those who, from dreaded Kalakuntha, call upon His transmutation.”

Alan Jacobs 1993

“Within a cavern of  man’s trackless spirit
is thrown an image so intensely fair
that the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
the splendour of its presence, and the light
penetrates their dreamlike frame
’till they become charged with the strength of flame.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Siva – Rudra Immerses

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

During my visit to Ramesh in Mumbai, in early 1999, I witnessed the following conversation with Leonard Cohen, and bought the tape.
After I got home, I made this transcript:

Ramesh – You live in a Zen monastery, I am told?

Leonard – That’s correct, yes.

For how long, three or four years?

I’ve been associated with this institution for about thirty years – and about four and a half years ago, I was ordained as a monk.

I see. I see. Would you say it is a pretty stiff discipline?

It’s – very rigorous.

But you like it?

Not particularly, no.

Well that is honest. So what I would like to ask is this: the understanding before you came here, and what I talk about – how does it compare?

It was the resonance between the two models, yours and my teachers’, that led me to study your books with some diligence. And because of the experiences I received from your books, and because of the advanced stage of my Teacher and yourself, I felt it would be appropriate to come and sit with you.

I see. But you used the word ‘resonance’. Can you explain that a little bit, Leonard?

I found that during some of the rigorous retreats that we’re subjected to, I would find myself opening one of your books, specifically The Final Truth; and I would find that your writing would illuminate the discourses of our Master, and vice versa. It became urgent that I …

A similar thing happened to me. When I was with my – Nisargadatta Maharaj. You know Wei Wu Wei?

Yes, Sir.

..

..

Particularly one book which a friend of mine gave me twenty years ago, which I knew was a treasure, but I couldn’t understand it – I kept it aside. So that was what used to be – what Maharaj said, and what was said in the book – amazing. …   You’ve been here for ten days!

Yes, Sir.

But you’ve been so silent!

I’ve been sipping at the nectar. It’s very delicious to be here.   On the intellectual level, your model becomes clearer and clear to me – your conceptual presentation – and so does my old Teacher’s. On the experiential level, I feel the weakening of certain proprietorial feelings about doership.

That is a very good word!   Proprietorial – me, mine!   I see. Now, this weakening – how do you mean this weakening, when did it start?   Did it start thirty years ago? Is that what you are saying?

I couldn’t characterize this seeking as spiritual. It was a kind of urgent …

You mean what started thirty years ago was not really spiritual?

No Sir.

I see. I see.

I don’t know if it is today. The description seems to pale in the urgency of the actual search, which is for peace.

Yes. Yes.

And you know, over the years, especially anyone who hangs around a Zendo meditation hall, is going to get a lot of free samples, as you put it. If you sit for long hours every day, and are subjected to sleeplessness and protein deficiency, you’re going to start having experiences that are interesting. It was a hunger for those experiences that kept me around, because I NEEDED those experiences.

YES! The HUNGER for those experiences. Yes! So?

I forget where we were. I’m sorry.

You said, experiences happened, and there was a hunger for those experiences.

There was a hunger to maximize, to continue, a greed to … a greed for those kinds of experiences develops. Which is what happens in monasteries.

I entirely agree, yes. There is a greed for those experiences.

Very much so. And I must say that my old Teacher puts little value on those experiences.

I see. In fact, did he WARN you against them?

Warns you, and BEATS YOU, against them!

With his stick? On your shoulder?

Yes Sir. We are not encouraged to take these hallucinations seriously.

But how effective are those beatings, Leonard?

Not effective at all. I’ve seen them more effective in the case of other monks than they were in this case. So I respect the system; it’s a rigorous system based on a very useable model, but it wortks for some and does not work for others.

Quite right. I see. And what you’ve been hearing for ten days, has it made some difference, do you think?

Sweet!

Some difference in this greed?   Can you explain that a little bit, please Leonard?

Your emphasis on the disidentification with the sense of doership, is crucial to the weakening of – the modification of that greed.   And by the grace of this activity, I have experienced …

You have tried it, during the last ten days?   I see.

Yes. Of course, greed arises. The hunger arises, legitimately, and without my bidding. The greed for peace, for equanimity, for balance, arises spontaneously. But I feel that somehow I don’t have any leverage on the apparatus. Somehow there is a sweetening of the whole experience.

I see. You see, what happens is – Wayne and I had a very brief talk a couple of days ago; we were both walking on the roof. He made a point that while certain practices bringing about these free samples, inflate the ego, could these practices also not inflate the ego to an extent where it bursts? Which is one way for the annihilation of the ego.

..

That is a very excellent characterisation of this kind of practice.

I see. That is what it is supposed to do. But I told Wayne, the explosion will happen if that is the will of God, and if it is the will of God, that that bodymind organism follow THAT PATH. … … Ramana Maharshi used the words “Who am I” because in English there is a marvellous distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me’, but in the Tamil language and most other languages I am told, this distinction is not there. So when Ramana Maharshi said, “Find out who am I”, he really meant, “Who is this me I’m so concerned about?”

 ..

If this process starts, it is the will of God. And if this process reaches a certain depth – every step is God’s will and the destiny of that body-mind organism – the actual arising of this question is there a me, out of DEEPEST FRUSTRATION, is what is perhaps called THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL   In the time lag between the arising of the question and the arising of an answer, the deepest frustration is the dark night of the soul. And the dark night of the soul awakens you into the answer: “There never has been a ‘me’. There is thinking, but no thinker. There is doing, but no doer.”   The thinker, the doer, the experiencer, comes later, and becomes proud, or has a feeling of guilt.   Thinking happens. A thought arises and leads to some action. And later on, the individual ego doer comes in and says “I had a brilliant idea which I put into practice, and now I am Bill Gates, making five hundred dollars every second.” That is how thought occurs. But the one who says ‘I thought’ comes later. And it was God’s will and the destiny of the mindbody organism that that should happen. Albert Einstein in his total humility, has gone on record as saying the equation came to him from outside.

I think that’s the experience of every artist and mind worker.

Yes. Nureyev the ballet dancer has said, “Nureyev dances best when Nureyev isn’t there.”   And the same thing is said by I suppose, any artist in whatever field … …   Bhagavad Gita says this: “Out of thousands of people there is one seeker. Out of the many seekers, there is ONLY ONE who knows me in principle.” … … Many Gurus, unfortunately, tie down their disciples, saying “Now you have come to me. You wanted to be initiated. Now our relationship is life-long.” You see? But to me, that is ridiculous. You initiated him, but who sent him to you?   That Source certainly has the right to send that disciple somewhere else!   Who is this Guru, to bind him for life?

In the Zen tradition as you know, monks went from one Master to another, in search of different aspects of the teaching. I don’t feel I am betraying my Teacher by being here.

Yes. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. In fact, Wayne told me, you told your Teacher.

Yes. He asked me to cook him one last meal. Because I’m his cook.

And what is his favourite dish?

Uh – salmon teriyaki.

Oh. Well, that’s – that’s my favourite dish too. I mean, the particular dish you mention, I don’t know what it is, but … salmon.

It’s just marinated in soy sauce and saki, ginger, pepper, for a certain period of time, and then battered.

So is cooking one of your talents?

It’s not a talent, it’s a duty. I cook for the old man.

So it is your duty to cook salmon for your Guru.

That is correct.

And it is the Guru’s duty to eat it, whatever way you cook it!

He is very cavalier with his duties.

I see. Yes. YES. So, Leonard, is he likely to ask you when you go back, what did you learn?

My understanding, he will discern exactly. I think the issue more urgent, is whether I stay there or not.

Yes. But if he does ask you – which is not impossible, is it? – what would you say, Leonard?

Well, we have – I would try to convey to him in the terms that – but he doesn’t speak English.

So you speak Japanese?

No. He speaks very very little English. I speak very little Japanese. But we’ve been studying together and drinking together for a long time.

What is his favourite drink?

I tried to introduce him to vintage French wine, which I consider a refined beverage, but he insists on drinking saki.

If you ask me, I’d prefer Scotch or sherry.

I agree with you. He did – he was very discerning about cognac.

Yes.

He liked cognac, and he established masculine and feminine qualities to the different brands. For instance he thought Remy Martin had a feminine expression, while Courvoisier had a masculine expression. None of these designations were taken too seriously after the third or fourth drink.

You see, that is the whole point, Leonard. The whole business is taken far too seriously. That is the ridiculous thing about it. There’s nothing serious about it, because there’s no seeker!   And who is serious about it? – the seeker!   You see? The seeking goes on, on its own course. So, if this question were asked you Leonard, is there a specific point which you learned from Ramesh – which is NOT what you had earlier – what would you say?   I don’t want to suggest an answer …

I would probably gasho to him. (Bows deeply)   And depending on the truth of the moment, whether I could step aside from the understanding and let the understanding communicate itself …

The answer is, “I don’t know”.   Is that what you meant?

It’s correct.

Then that is absolutely correct: “I don’t know what answer will come out.”

He has, you know, the Japanese rigour.   So he would question, he would listen carefully to my saying “I don’t know”. Because “I don’t know” is the answer to many koans.

No no. What I’m saying is: “I don’t know” is your answer to me. … …   Must be a pretty hard life there?

I’m given many privileges that the younger monks don’t have, because I have a family and obligations, so although I’m not free from the general form, which is very early waking up and long hours in the meditation hall and lots of work, I’m allowed to go down, into the city from time to time, to take care of my affairs and see my children.

Yes. I see. Yes. You have a family?

I have two children.

Two children. I see. And a wife?

I never married.

I see. So the two children are grown up?

They’re in their middle twenties.

Oh I see. But they’re on their own then, yes? – You have to help them?

They’re on their own, but I feel I can be of use to them. It’s difficult raising children in America. It’s a difficult manoevring and navigating through a lot of dangerous waters. So I’ve tried to stay close to them through some very difficult periods. A child growing up in America with money.

They have their own money?

No, I mean, in a comfortable surrounding.

..

..

Yes. What is your relationship with your children? What advice do you give them – depending on the circumstances? The point is, how does one raise one’s children with the total acceptance that each child has its own destiny? Each child is programmed in a unique way. And yet you have to do your duty, as a father. What has been your experience, Leonard? Was it interesting?

My experience is to rely on instinct at the moment, and discard principles I myself received from my own parents, which were quite effective in their own way. I find for instance, that that the way I did it, or the way it was revealed to me –

Do they live on their own?

My daughter lives in my apartment, and I live on the mountain, and my son lives around the corner.

And you provide the money for them, or do they work?

They work. They work hard.

And they earn their own living then?

Yes, Sir.   But they grew up in a privileged environment. They didn’t have to work. They didn’t have to struggle.

They didn’t have to earn and learn?

No, they didn’t have to earn and learn, and not only that, but  they were exposed to things very early in their lives, as many American kids are. I had been through that myself. So I was able to react in a way that was unconventional. But having understood something  …

From personal experience?

From personal experience, I established a connection with the child on the basis of that common experience, rather than on a principle of right or wrong.

Quite right. Yes. It worked?

And fortunately, it seemed to work.

Oh? I see. In other words, you talked to your children not like a father to a son or daughter, but as one person who has experience of what they are experiencing.

Yes Sir, that’s correct; not only that, but having taken that course, it’s enabled a real usable friendship to develop.

Yes! Yes! In fact the relationship itself must have taken a beautiful turn.

It has! My daughter says, like “You’re really cool, Dad.”

That is the highest compliment, isn’t it. Cool. And the curious part of it is, this word is really the definition of the traditional word ananda. The traditional word ananda is translated as “bliss”. But my objection to the word “bliss” is, it raises expectations in the seeker.

It’s a tyranny.

Calm. Cool. Well, this is a great compliment from your daughter!

It was, it was.

..

..

You are cool, Dad. And what about your son? What do they do?

My daughter runs a store for antique deco furniture. She goes to England and buys furniture and brings it back and sells it. She got a job with an antique dealer two years ago, who apprenticed her. And my son has just put out his first record with a big record company.

Oh well! So he inherited your talent for music?

Well, I don’t have much talent for music, but he has. People who know my work will, er … I have a kind of croaking delivery. But he actually is very musical.

What you are saying is, your son is better than you are – were.

He has strengths that are much more apparent!

And you have told him that?   So he must ALSO have said “Dad, you’re cool.”

He has.

The son being praised by the father. So you have a very good relationship with your children!

Thank God, I do.

..

Again, God’s grace. You know what I say about God’s grace and God’s will? We use the word God’s grace when something nice happens. When something not so nice happens, and we know we can do nothing about it, we put our head down and say God’s will. So now, if somebody asks you Leonard, “how do you live your life?” – you are about sixtyish?

Getting to be sixty-five.

I see. How do you live your life? Does living your life present a problem? What would be your answer, from personal experience? Is living your life now, with this understanding, a difficult thing?

Well, if it is – and it’s been the experience of this being, that things come with difficulty rather than with ease – so I think the perspective on that programming is changing.

I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that. Things come difficult?

Yes, for instance I’m a song writer by profession …

You still write?

Yes Sir. And I’ve always found that I write one word at a time. With sweat and difficulty.

Like pulling out teeth.

It’s like pulling teeth, and it takes a great effort. I’ve written some decent songs, and people ask me about song writing, you know, they say “How do you write a good song?” And I always say, “If I knew where the good songs came from, I would go there more often.” I don’t know where they come from. I know that I have to sit at my desk or in my café or wherever it is, and sweat over it. Other song writers greater than I – and I’ve had this conversation with them – will give me completely different information. They’ll say, like “I wrote it in the back of the taxi cab” – you know, a great song. So it seems to be my experience, that things are difficult in just the way this programming works.

That is correct.

So the understanding now is, that this programming, unless it is the will of God to change the programming, is going to be as it is, but I don’t have to get involved in the programming. I can work at my desk as I’ve always done, but without that additional tyranny of disapproval of the method; because this is the method that …

… is supposed to be for you

… is supposed to be for me.

I tell you how I understand it. What you are saying is this: writing a song comes easy for some people. They can write one in a taxicab. For you it becomes much more difficult. But what you are saying, I think, is, that there is no wish that you could do what that other fellow is doing. Isn’t that right?

No. There is no wish.

That’s the whole point. You have accepted the way YOU write your songs, and you have accepted the way someone else is able to write the songs.

And deeper than that, Sir, there is – I’ve always had a sense of this – this perception of this bodymind orgasm – organism … !

The American pronunciation!

… has been that there is a background of anguish, of mental anguish, that does not seem to respond to any methods that I impose on it. So as that understanding deepens, I try less to impose any methods; and although the chatter and the activity of the mind continues, it doesn’t seem to have its poisonous sting.

Say that again, please? The chattering of the mind goes on?

The chattering of the mind, and the alleged anguish of the mind continues to operate sometimes in degrees of intensity that make one gasp or cry for help …

YES!

But with this understanding that is dawning, it seems that I am less willing to criticize or impose.

I see. Again, the same thing. You write the songs the way YOU are programmed to write, but there is no wishing that YOU could do what some others can. Doesn’t the same thing apply here? Isn’t that what you are saying?

Yes Sir. (Bows deeply). Yes, Sir.

Exactly the same thing. The chattering of the mind happens, but there is no wish that the chattering of the mind should become less. Isn’t that what you are saying? So whatever happens is accepted. Alright, there IS the chattering of the mind! It is the nature of the mind to chatter. It is the nature of the monkey to moan. So you let the monkey moan – the way he wants to! Therefore, the chattering of the mind may be there, but there’s no anguish. Is that what you are saying – as I think you are?

..

It is. But even if there is anguish …

You mean, accept even that anguish is acceptance? Quite correct. Even if the anguish does happen, even if the involvement does happen, acceptance of it means “the cutting off of the involvement, when it is accepted.”

Correct.

So, even the involvement has to be accepted. Involvement happens – oh, alright, so it is happening …   Thank you very much, Leonard. That is exactly what I was hoping I’d get from you. (Obeisance).

First published in Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK Journal
“Self Enquiry”, summer 1999

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

In my previous post, I abridged the full transcript of Ramesh Balsekar’s conversation with Leonard Cohen in early 1999, because it was very long.  Here are the missing bits, including Ramesh’s teaching on Satori.  For the dialogue to run smoothly, I have retained some of the exchanges in Part One.

.. 

Ramesh Balsekar:  But you used the word “resonance”.

Leonard Cohen:  Yes Sir.

RB – Can you explain that a little bit, Leonard?

LC – I found that during some of the rigorous retreats that we’re subjected to, I would find myself opening one of your books, specifically The Final Truth;  and I would find that your writing would illuminate the discourses of our Master, and vice versa.  That resonance became very discernible.  It became urgent that I …

RB – A similar thing happened to me.

LC -Yes?

RB – You know Wei Wu Wei?  Have you heard of Wei Wu Wei?  – particularly one book which a friend of mine gave me twenty years ago, which I knew was a treasure, but I couldn’t understand it – I kept it aside. So that was what used to be – what my teacher said, and what was said in the book – amazing. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

LC – Yes Sir, it is.

RB – I see.  And in particular, The Final Truth?

LC – Well, that was the book I happened to have with me in my pack.  I would open it at any free moment, and the words would rise up, illuminating the whole day. 

RB – Yes, I see.  Have you read any other books of mine?

LC – Yes, I have just finished “Pointers”.  I have it with me now.  But I read it very, very slowly.  It seems that one section can occupy me for long, long periods.

RB – Yes.  And then, you’ve been here ten days!  But you’ve been so silent!

LC – I’ve been sipping at the nectar.  It’s very delicious to be here.

RB – Yes.  So now, what you have heard these ten days, and what you have read in the book, and your original understanding – how do they resonate?  Can you explain that a little bit?

LC – On the intellectual model, your model becomes clearer and clearer to me – your conceptual presentation – and so does my old Teacher’s.  On the experiential level, I feel the weakening of certain proprietorial feelings of doership … …  You know, over the years, especially anybody who hangs around a Zendo meditation hall, is going to get a lot of ‘free samples’, as you put it.  If you sit for long hours every day and are subjected to sleeplessness and protein deficiency, you’re going to start having experiences that are interesting … … A greed for those kinds of experiences develops.  Which is what happens in monasteries.

..

RB – I see.  You see, what happens is – Wayne and I had a very brief talk a couple of days ago; we were both walking on the roof. He made a point that while certain practices bringing about these free samples, inflate the ego, could these practices also not inflate the ego to an extent where it bursts? Which is one way for the annihilation of the ego.

LC – That is a very excellent characterisation of this kind of practice.

RB – That is what it is supposed to do. But I told Wayne, the explosion will happen if that is the will of God, and if it is the will of God, that that bodymind organism follow THAT PATH. This reminded me of the story of Lao Tsu and his disciple, which I’m sure you know, but I will repeat it.  A disciple went to Lao Tsu with his face flushed with the vigour of achievement.  And he told him, “Master!  I’ve got it!”  Lao Tsu compassionately placed his hands on the disciple’s shoulders and told him, “Son, you have NOT got it.”  You’ve heard this story?

LC – No, Sir.

RB – Oh really?  Oh well!  He said, “No my son, you haven’t got it.”  So, dejected, the disciple went away.  Some time later he came back again, fell at the Master’s feet and said “Master, it has happened.”

Lao Tsu looked into his eyes, knew it, and raised him up saying, “Now tell me what happened.”  The disciple explained, “I was so SURE that I had got what I wanted, all the experiences, all the joy, I knew I had got it;  but when you told me that I had NOT got it, I accepted that as the truth.  But it was also the truth as far as I was concerned, that I had done all I could, and yet you said I had achieved nothing.  So the result was: accepting BOTH as the truth.  I went about my way, not wanting anything, not expecting anything;  and suddenly I noticed that the joyous experiences had gone, but a peace had descended.  And it also struck me then, that this was the peace that I was after – not achieving anything!”

So this is the peace that came when the seeking stopped.  You see?  So, it was the destiny of the mindbody organism of that particular disciple, that the ego be bloated to an extent where it burst;  and the pin that burst it was Lao Tsu telling him “No, you haven’t got it!”

..

But again, the danger IS – if it is the will of God and the destiny of that bodymind organism – that the ego will bloat, and stay bloated at a level where the bloated ego considers himself a Master, you see?  and wants and does get hundreds and thousands of disciples!  And the bloated ego stays there.  So it may not get pricked.

But, when the ego gets weaker and weaker and weaker, then it has to ultimately die, finding out “Who is doing anything?  Who is seeking anything?  Who is to get anything? You see?  That is why I said, the only Sadhana I recommend, is to find out at the end of the day, how many actions that I remember having happened today, were MY actions, and how many just happened?

And I dare say that an honest analysis will make the ego come to the conclusion that no actions were HIS actions, or HER actions!  And if this happens day after day –  it may start with the end of the day, but it will be found that this analysis happens many times DURING the day! – until towards the end, an action happens and the analysis that it was not my action, happens almost simultaneously;  so that with the firmest possible conviction, with unconditional acceptance that I do nothing, the question arises, not intellectually “Who am I?” but from the very depths of frustration – it can be said, frustration of the ego – “If I have not been doing, if no act is my action, who is this ME I’ve been so concerned about?”

Ramana Maharshi used the words “Who am I” because in English there is a marvellous distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me’, but in the Tamil language and most other languages I am told, this distinction is not there. So when Ramana Maharshi said, “Find out who am I”, he really meant, “Who is this me I’m so concerned about?”

..

If this process starts, it is the will of God. And if this process reaches a certain depth – every step is God’s will and the destiny of that body-mind organism – the actual arising of this question is there a me, out of DEEPEST FRUSTRATION, is what is perhaps called THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

In the time lag between the arising of the question and the arising of an answer, the deepest frustration is the dark night of the soul. And the dark night of the soul awakens you into the answer: “There never has been a ‘me’. There is thinking, but no thinker. There is doing, but no doer.”   The thinker, the doer, the experiencer, comes later, and becomes proud, or has a feeling of guilt.   Thinking happens. A thought arises and leads to some action. And later on, the individual ego doer comes in and says “I had a brilliant idea which I put into practice, and now I am Bill Gates, making five hundred dollars every second.” That is how thought occurs. But the one who says ‘I thought’ comes later. And it was God’s will and the destiny of the mindbody organism that that should happen. Albert Einstein in his total humility, has gone on record as saying the equation came to him from outside.

LC – I think that’s the experience of every artist and mind worker.

..

 ..

RB – Yes. Nureyev the ballet dancer has said, “Nureyev dances best when Nureyev isn’t there.”   And the same thing is said by I suppose, any artist in whatever field.   So, proceeding this way, even that depends on the will of God and the destiny of the organism.

There’s a tiny book, an abridged edition of the Bhagavad Gita.  Have you read it?

LC – This edition, no.

RB – Bhagavad Gita is seven hundred verses.  Someone told me that Ramana Maharshi had condensed it into forty-three or forty-eight verses.  This friend of mine who used to come regularly, had a copy, so I said, “Would you give me that copy?”  He said “Yes, yes, I’ll bring it next time.”  And four times he came, and four times he forgot.  So I said, “Ramana Maharshi’s answer to me is clear.  Do it on your own!” – (Laughter.)  “Don’t read MY collection!”

And so I started doing it:  so mine came to sixty-six verses.  And one of those verses is this:  “Out of thousands of people there is one seeker. Out of the many seekers, there is ONLY ONE who knows me in principle.”   You see?  So the many seekers who don’t reach this ultimate end, obviously have to be following paths which are not supposed to lead them to the end, during the process of that bodymind organism anyway.

So the misconception “What is the best path?  Which is the best Spiritual path?” – there is no “best spiritual path”.  There is only a particular spiritual path for you, or for this particular bodymind organism, at that moment of its development.  So the Source will send this bodymind organism to that Guru who is appropriate for him or her at the time;  all the bodymind organism can do, is to follow that Guru to whom he has been sent.

But my only point is this:  many Gurus, unfortunately, tie down their disciples, saying “Now you have come to me. You wanted to be initiated. Now our relationship is life-long.” You see? But to me, that is ridiculous. You initiated him, but who sent him to you?   That Source certainly has the right to send that disciple somewhere else!   Who is this Guru, to bind him for life?   Therefore the word “Guru hopping” is used in a sort of derogatory way.

LC – Guru …?

RB – Guru Hopping.  (Laughter).  It’s used in a derogatory way.  To me, it is perfectly logical and acceptable.

LC – In the Zen tradition as you know, monks went from one Master to another, in search of different aspects of the teaching. I don’t feel I am betraying my Teacher by being here.

RB – Yes. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. In fact, Wayne told me, you told your Teacher.

LC – Yes.

RB – And he didn’t ask for …?

LC – Yes. He asked me to cook him one last meal. Because I’m his cook.

..

RB – I see.  So, Leonard, is he likely to ask you when you go back, what did you learn?

LC – My understanding, he will discern exactly. I think the issue more urgent, is whether I stay there or not.

RB – Yes. But if he does ask you – which is not impossible, is it? – what would you say, Leonard?

LC – Well, we have – I would try to convey to him in the terms that – but he doesn’t speak English … …  I would probably gasho to him. (Bows deeply)  

RB – This is gasho?

LC – Yes, and depending on the truth of the moment, whether I could step aside from the understanding and let the understanding communicate itself …

RB – The answer is, “I don’t know”.   Is that what you meant?

LC – It’s correct.

RB – Then that is absolutely correct: “I don’t know what answer will come out.”

LC – He has, you know, the Japanese rigour.   So he would question, he would listen carefully to my saying “I don’t know”. Because “I don’t know” is the answer to many koans.

RB – No no. What I’m saying is: “I don’t know” is your answer to me.

LC – Ah Yes.  Yes, Sir.

RB – That I DON’T know what will come out of my lips if such a question were asked.  That’s what I meant.   When I said “I don’t know”, what I mean is – that would be your answer to my question about what you should say.

..

You see? So some experience happens.  Then people want more experiences.  This greed as you quite rightly said, for the experience.  Wanting – ananda means ‘bliss’.  But the word ‘calm’ or ‘cool’ – deep down, that is how the word has come – cool, or calm.  At one stage Ramana Maharshi uses the word ‘bliss’ because it has come down – not Ramana Maharshi, but in the translation.  One point I came across, which I have triple underlined – he said: “Calm is superior to bliss.”  The word I prefer is “peace”.

..

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Under Piccadilly circus 1965

When the author Susan Howatch is writing her novel, she loves all her characters astray and how they develop, light and shadow, bad and good, as they well to life, and she loves them for their problems, their sexual nature, their honest discoveries, their extravagant delusions, and their (some of them) difficult paradoxical-surprise endings. Bishop Jardine lost his inner truth and died a sad man – she loves him for that authenticity. He is loved for that reality.   He is one of her inner voices.

This is an important insight with how we are in God, and how we are in our Teacher or Magid. I am loved as my teacher loves me; as my higher Self loves the vehicle along the path. And this is the way I should love –  in the difficulties I imagine I and others have.

 ..

Tree of Advaita – jnana marga, the path of Wisdom

Kabbalah group notes – 30 October 2014

Who is the Watcher of my life? Go back in time to an early memory – who looked through my eyes? When did I first sense behind me, my Magid, my inner teacher?   Keep this question open, because although we may seem to make a priori statements about “the watchers” or “the magidim” for convenience, the inner dialogue is a unique and open mystery to each one of us … when touching base with it.   Through it is received the connection:  the collective human eagle, seeing far and wide.

The magidim may not present words, they may present a symbol or shape or pattern of events in our life. Gina took a book to bed –  the seductive intellectual language of a popular atheist undermining God; an enormous black bluebottle suddenly flew in and hit the page, startling her.

Our Guardians manifest in small doses of synchrony and are “visibly distressed” when a promising pilgrim gets caught up in lower-case politics. Some spiritual- journal entries by an old Indian friend were found, written in 1978 –  since then, he became immersed in the Indian political game.   The early notes brought tears to the old man’s eyes. Had he lived his life?

Try to perceive when the Voiceless Voice is shaking his/her head behind you or to one side, or withdrawing energy from your impulse. Keep hearing them silently.  They know your destiny. They only intervene when they absolutely have to; and then you get three warnings.

..

Circle Line 1965

Each one of us is a fractal kaleidoscope, giving the childlike Holy One much pleasure.

On healing situations: a practitioner asks sometimes, Is anyone there? If there is, she stops what she’s doing, leaves the room, lets them get on with it.

Operating theatres are filled with the Watchers – those who gather at emergency, at birth and at death:  those whose concern is with this human river of destiny.

Sacred India Tarot – Parvati waters trees

Discriminate the musical essence from the soul who creates it – discriminate the symphony from the conductor. Schumann said Schubert’s music cleanses and banishes evil. We have these two aspects in our Watchers, to discern – the soul’s essence evolving through light and shadow; and the guiding factor/dialogue with our Magid.

W spoke of portrait painting, and how the connection/contact between artist and sitter over real time and space speaks much more profoundly than a photo. This contact is heart to heart  (a way of love).

Warnings cross your path – when Tom was in India, a big python glided by, as thick as a football; yet the person with him didn’t see it.  Julia had a dream: should she take a certain path, or stay with Kabbalah? The dream was Chartres with all the seats turned to face the door, the Rose window. There sat a very old man – Melchisedek – and she melted into him.   He said, keep the path Kabbalistically. All are one.

You can tell the quality of good or bad movies: likewise your inner guidance – its quiet calibre and commitment, rather than drama.

..

Confession by the fire – 1963

..

The language of visions and of dreams comes from the connective link, and when your path forks, note the atmosphere in the fork before you go down it too far.

Sense the Pre-sence of the Guides. Clarity is a breakthrough of Yetzirah into Beriah. In Mozart’s Magic Flute, water flows to the left and fire on the right, with the air we breathe … the flute … in the centre.

Praying for those who died in holocaust or violence, for their rest, we pause – a dark night of soul – a sadness. The inner Teacher helps us to raise the level. They indicate.

..

Evening in the Snowdon hut, 1964

..

A question was asked whether a Watcher or Magid can exist simultaneously incarnate (as an embodied pilgrim) and discarnate (as source of wisdom – like a lighthouse – to distant pilgrims).

The magidim are not angels, they are human – they are involved in the human condition which the angels cannot perceive. The angels have cosmic functions:  the magidim are the clear dew of our human resonance above the clouds.  They are discarnate in Yetzirah (the World of Formation) and they have a way of orchestrating omens. So look for the pattern of the omens, to see your magid.

On the tandem of magid and embodied soul: while we are discarnate, we can do and be the things in life which we cannot do or be in the physical body – where we have to buy a ticket to get from Finchley Road to Cockfosters. The magid doesn’t buy a ticket or travel – the magid unifies the two places, because the magid stands a little beyond space and time.

Astrology characteristics in our chart, build up an individuated picture over the lifetime.

 ..

..

Jacobs Ladder showing the Four Worlds in the interlocking Trees: Aziluth, Emanation (names of God); Beriah, Creation (Archangels and magidim); Yetzirah the Formative World (planets, magidim and the psyche) and Assiyah the Physical World (physical organs, the material universe.)

..

I do not see the Watcher as a linear fixture. I guess our Guardians and their quality, proliferate according to the level of third eye in the intelligent perception. Each Guardian is a member of their own School, each Guardian has his or her magid also; and when I lift above the waves, I should see through that face-cloud, receiving the quintessential One behind it – transparency on transparency.   In spiritual lineages the features change but remain constant as the One. Our Guardians blend the bookends of our life together as a distinct and  profound thought form; but we tread the mill.   We walk their scented trail.

My basis for contemplation is the Tree, where these thoughts and ideas come naturally.

..

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Vedic goddess

Here’s a four-part post series for scholars!

I haven’t studied the layered meanings in Sanskrit.  But I learnt a few sacred Names and phrases along the way;  I hear the chanting and smell the sandal paste;  the syllables are long musical frequencies;  from in between them, emerge the tantras.  Tantra is the art of touch throughout the universe.  Needing to touch base with some of my Indian and Vedic threads, I turned to Ganapati Muni’s analysis of his mantric science.  I prepared this text in the 1990s from Sri K Natesan’s translation, for the Ramana Foundation Journal Self Enquiry.  Sri Natesan – a “grandchild” in the Muni’s sacred lineage – checked it for mistakes.

In the text the secret known to knowers of truth is mentioned:  when we truly know that we do not know – we begin.

..

“Guru Mantra Bhashyam”   by Ganapati Muni

Introduced and Translated by S.Sankaranarayanan
Adapted for English readers by J.A., with the help of Sri K.Natesan at Ramana Ashram

..

The eighteenth chapter of Sri Ramana Gita contains a series of verses which describe the characteristics of Ramana Maharshi. Amongst them, the tenth verse enunciates in the style of the Tantra, the Mantra by which the Maharshi has to be invoked.

Ganapati Vasishta Muni valued this Mantra very highly. When disciples approached Ramana Maharshi for elucidation on the Mantra, he directed them to the Muni. So Vasishta Muni decided to write a commentary on the 10th verse of the eighteenth chapter of Sri Ramana Gita for the benefit of aspirants. The Guru-mantra-Bhashyam was written in sanskrit and it was published along with the Text and Sri Kapali Shastriar’s Prakasha Bhashye (Commentary) of Sri Ramana Gita.

Considering the importance of the work and the wealth of spiritual insights it unfolds, a free translation in English of the whole commentary and Appendix to the Commentary is provided here, in four parts. Footnotes explain certain terms and concepts occurring in the commentary.

Meeting

Ramana and Ganapati were spiritual brothers – Ramana the silent jnani or Realised One and Ganapati the tantric philosopher and poet.  Ramana was regarded as the embodiment of Skanda or Kumar:  Ganesh and Skanda are the sons born to Siva and Parvati. When the two wild young sages sat together in the caves of Siva’s hill Arunachala, Ramana taught Ganapati that the root of the mantra and of the breath are one and the same, to dissolve into Self enquiry.  Ganapati’s outpouring of verses to the Mother brought their ageless Saivite brotherhood into the 20th century.

skanda and ganapati

..

Some years ago, Alan Jacobs and I wrote 55 sonnets on the Ramana Gita English version; the sonnet form was chosen, to interact imaginatively with the formal Sanskrit text, and as a spiritual practice. Here below, to provide the setting, is a sonnet based on verses 8 – 11 of Chapter Eighteen, Ramana Gita (see below). It contains our interpretation of the Mantra OM VACADHBUVE RAMANA.

In Praise of Ramana:   Three

FROM grasping freed, his peace
in quantum abyss unheeding
restores our alchemy. He pilots the seas.
Ganapati child at breasts of Parvati feeding,
cried “Mother’s mine!” In her lap, Kumar his brother
replied, “Never mind, for mine is Father!
I rest in his right heart, he kisses my head!”

Give glory, elephant child, to He whose lance
in Kumar’s hand pierced hill to the heart, ‘tis said.
Boon bringer, pour poem from His holy glance
by Vedic vessel whence emerges Word
by power of Fire as mystic Sword.

Without a staff, our song you uphold –
ferryman, defend everyman from demon gold!

..

     THE VERSES FROM ‘RAMANA GITA’ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

v.8     Free from infatuation, greed, distracting thought and envy, he is ever blissful. He is ever active, helping others to cross the sea of Becoming, regardless of reward.

v.9   When Ganapati saying ‘Mother is mine’ sat on the lap of Parvati, Kumara retorted ‘Never mind, Father is mine,” and got on to Siva’s lap and was kissed by him on the head.   Of this Kumara who pierced (with his lance) the Krauncha Hill, Ramana is a glorious manifestation.

v.10     He is the mystic import of the mantra ‘OM VACHADBHUVE NAMAH.

v.11     An ascetic without danda , yet is he Dandapani.   He is Taraka for crossing the sea of suffering, yet is he the foe of Taraka.

NOTE - Danda is a "Staff"or wand, yet Dandapani is the staff
holder - even one who no longer uses it.
The word Taraka means Deliverer, but "Taraka" was also the
great demon Taraka who almost destroyed the universe.
These are typical Sanskrit word-plays.

 ..

Sacred India Tarot – laws of Manu as the Hierophant – Ganapati the scribe near Arunachala

..

THE COMMENTARY ON THE MANTRA OF THE MASTER

“Om Vacadbhuve Namah Nahasyam”-
“Salutation to the Fire of Brahman whence emerges the word”

First Chapter: Pronouncing the Mantra
VERSE TEN, Chapter 18, RAMANA GITA

Vedådi påkadamanottara kacchapesair                 “He is the secret sense
Yuktair dharadhara susuptyamaresvaraisca           of the group of words arrived at
Suksmamrtayug amrtena saha pranatya                 by uttering the following Sampannasabda patalasya nahasyam artham*      Om Va ca dbhu, ve and Namah”

..

• –Vedadih “the beginning of the Veda”, or Pranama OMKARA (1)
  –Pakadamanat “from the destroyer of Paka Asura”, that is, Indra bija, whose letter is la
  –Uttarah the letter next to it alphabetically, that is VA ; pakadamanottara kacchapesah –the bija (2) of Rudra in His form as Lord of the tortoise Kurmesa” that is, the letter CA.
  –With these letters OM   VA CA, – Dharadharah, the bija of the Mountain,
  the letter DA.
  –Susuptih   the sakti power of deep sleep, whose bija is the letter BHA.
  –Amare-Isvarah “the Lord (Isvara) of the immortals” (Amara, deathless) – Rudra dwells in this Name, his seed-letter U ; therefore DBHU.   Yuktaih, “union” (at the beginning of the line) joins this with the letter DBHU.
  –Suksmamrta, whose Sakti’s bija is the letter E ;   Yuk joined to amrtena, (nectar) whose seedletter is the watery VA, form the letter VE.
  –Pranatya, (Salutation) unites with the suffix namah (3.) The Sampanna sabda patalasya group of words forms the secret of the mantra OM VACADBHUVE NAMAH NAHASYAM. This can be known only to the knowers of Truth.

 (Sabda is another word for Primordial Sound, Word, the Vedas, Omkara.)

 The secret (Nahasyam) of this Mantra is revealed only to knowers of Truth. To them alone can the artham or full meaning be outwardly expressed; as in the form of the king of ascetics, Bhagavan Ramana (4 ), when questioned by Amrtanatha. (Ch.18, Ramana Gita)

• –Thus   “OM Vacadbhuve Namah” is established as the Mantra of Bhagavan the Guru.

..

Sri Kapali Shastri – a disciple of the Muni – in the 1930s

Kapali Sastri’s Commentary on this verse in the Ramana Gita, states in brief:

“By joining all these letters we arrive at the group of letters OM VACADBHUVE NAMAH.   This group of letters forms the Mantra. Its secret sense, known to the learned, expresses the meaning   “RAMANA WHO IS THE FORM OF THE DEITY INVOKED BY THIS MANTRA”.

Who is God, expressed in this Mantra ? Subrahmanya.   How so ? ‘Om Vachadbhuve Namah’ – Omkara is the supreme Brahman.   The word is indeclinable, and so it will make sense with all the case endings.   Vacadbhu, the field that creates, releases the Word, the Fire.   The fire became the word and entered the mouth.   So explains the scripture.   Born from the god who presides over speech is Vacadbhu, born from Fire, Kumara. Salutation to Him.

“This is not physical fire, but the effulgence of the word. In order to drive this home, in the Mantra, Agni is denoted by the word ‘vacat’.   It is the tradition of the Tantra Shastra to expound the Mantra by using words of similar sense.   Following this, the Master (Ganapati Muni) has expounded the Mantra of Subrahmanya.   The author of this work, our Master has been praising the Maharshi, as one born out of a portion of Kumara.   And so the essence of the Mantra is said to be Ramana.”

Kapali Shastri

..

FOOTNOTES - PRONOUNCING THE MANTRA:
* - Sri K Natesan states: "The literal translation is given here.
In Tantra Shastra (science) the mantras are not mentioned plainly
and directly. There is a way of symbolic expression for which a
working knowledge of their terminology is needed."

1 - pranava the letter OM:  the primordial sound from which the
Veda, the word of revelation, has sprung

2 - The Tantra talkes about bijakshava, SEED LETTERS which contain
in a potential form what they would be manifesting. The SEED LETTER
is fixed for each Deity.  For example Indra's SEED LETTER is la.
By convention, each SEED LETTER is connoted by one or more names.
The Bhija-nighantu, the Dictionary of seed-letters,
gives the corresponding names.

3 - Pranati, bowing down, which is expressed by the word namah

4 - This verse is one of twenty four verses in praise of the
Maharshi, at the end of which the questioner Amrtanatha addresses
him.

K Natesan & Vamadeva Shastri (David Frawley)

 ..

..

The Detailed Commentary by Ganapati Muni now Continues :

If we are asked:   is not this mantra, the famous one of Skanda, mentioned in Tantric works like Saradatilaka? we say it is only the mantra of our guru, Bhagavan. It is known that Bhagavan Ramana, the Master, is avatara, descent of effulgence from the original guru, Skanda the Godhead, another of whose names is Sanat kumara. (5)

Ramana sat in silence, then asked the Muni – “Did you write down all I spoke?”

THE BODY OF THE MANTRA

This great mantra is originally of six letters as vacadbhuve namah. It becomes a mantra of seven letters with the pranava which is usually employed by certain Tantrics at the beginning of all mantras.   Just as the five-lettered namah shivayah becomes six letters with the Omkara, so also here.   All godheads have four forms. One pertains to the spirit, the other to the physical, another to the gods and the last to the form of the mantra.

Elsewhere we find this vedic piece:

Vacam astapadim aham navasraktim rtasprsam       “Around Indra I create the body
Indrat paritanvam name                            of the Word with eight steps and nine parts
                                                                                 close in touch with the Right Law.”

(Rig Veda VIII 65.12)

By this Rik, the Rishi says that he creates the body of Indra, in the form of mantra. The Tantrics also say this:

Derike manavabhrantim                                   “To inferno he goes who mistakes
pratimasu silamatim                                        the guru for a man,
Mantresvaksarabhuddhim                          the idol in the temple for a piece of stone
ca kurvano nirayam vrajet.                                 and the mantra for a group of letters.”

Here the popular parlance that Gayatri is the Deity of the most famous Mantra, Tat Savitah serves as evidence. (6)   Gayatri is the Mantra itself alone,  not ‘a woman’; (this word indicates the name of a metre –  the sakti as the name or vessel).   What does this establish?   that the body of God Guha in the form of mantra has six letters.   In this view that the body is formed by the Mantra, six letters become the six faces of the Lord.

Likewise, the five letters in the Panchakshara Mantra of the Supreme Shiva — NAMAH SHIVAYA — are his five faces. This is the same as the saying of the Mimamsakas:   that the Deity is formed by the Mantra.

vedic vessel

..

 THE GENERAL MEANING OF THE MANTRA

• Om to the One in the form of Brahman. As the word OM is indeclinable, it keeps the same syntax with all cases. As acclaimed in the Upanishads, the letter OM denotes Brahman.
• Vacadbhuva – Vacatah “from one who speaks”, creates statements.   This is derived from Agni (god of sacred fire) in whose subtle form is the inner sense of ‘word’.
• Bhu born, to Him Namah, salutation. It is well known that Skanda was born from Fire, Agni.

Agni

..

TO BE CONTINUED.

FOOTNOTES: GANAPATI'S COMMENTARY CONTINUES ...
5 - Chandogya Upanishad (7:26:2) equates Sanatkumara with Skanda,
and says that he takes ashore across the (ocean of) ignorance,
the pure soul with constant awareness.

6 - "Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dimah
Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat" -
"We meditate upon that excellent splendour
of the Lord Savitr.  May he activate our thoughts."

7 - Badarayana is the author of the Brahma sutras.  This Sutra
IV.1.5 says that symbols are to be regarded as Brahman, and
not vice versa.  An inferior object has to be looked upon as
symbolic of the superior.

..

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

..

My blog includes my “landmarks”, which I archive within the creative process.  As a  western sadhak searching to become more focused, and to plug in to the “dimension”, I am inspired again by Ganapati Muni’s Guru Mantra Bhashyam - it helps to ‘hold my feet on the Path.’

My elder Indian roots go very deep:  the light is in the well.

Adapting the Muni’s mantric analysis (translated from sanskrit by K Natesan) to my understanding, was a landmark about 14 years ago.  It is rather technical; here is (see previous post) the second of four parts - a few readers (including dancing yetis) may find this curious treasure a-musing to mull over.  But if you incline more to neti-neti … then enjoy the pictures!

I am no scholar; but I spent many a lifetime scribing the thoughts of scholars, which I love doing.  My heart caught fire and now dances around it. I found this second part difficult to understand, especially at the beginning, but worth persevering with, as it elucidates the living entities in Mantra, and the salutation to God.  The footnotes include a precise definition of Maya, and Sanskrit “keys” for meditation to nourish the soul.

For some of the Skanda background mythology, search “Puranas” on this blog.

..

Ramana and the Muni. A devotee enquired if it were a fact that they used to swim in Pandava tank. Bhagavan replied, “Yes. That also was only in those days” (i.e.the Virupaksha Cave period). We used to try to excel each other in swimming. That was great fun.” (From Suri Nagamma’s Letters from Ramanasramam no.59)

..

            HOW THE GODHEAD IS OF THE FORM OF BRAHMAN by Kavyakanta Ganapati Muni

The Mantra’s general meaning has been stated. (see Part One).  Now we enquire into its specific meanings.   If Skanda is a distinct Godhead, how can he be of the form of Brahman? for Brahman is That Supreme which transcends all Gods.

Ramana as Skanda Siva’s son – Sacred India Tarot Knight of Staves

..

(Scroll down a little way for footnotes )

Well then, if we say Brahman is the all, his form as ascribed to Skanda is no contradiction, and the sense of it clarifies.   But this, in worship, is wrong. In worship we should reflect on the object as representing the superior – not confer inferior status onto a superior Subject. That is why Badarayana (7) says “Brahma drstir utkarsat”.  

If you worship Guha(*) in the form of Brahman, you will limit, in the all pervading Brahman, your vision of the pervaded Guha. The misrepresentation will be removed if the following meaning is given: vacadbhuve Om namah - “Salutation to Brahman in the form of Guha.” However, it will then be the mantra of Brahman, not of Guha; and this goes against what we set out to establish.

FOOTNOTES -
7- Badarayana is the author of the Brahma Sutras. This Sutra
1V.1.5 says that symbols are to be regarded as Brahman, and not
vice versa. An inferior object has to be looked upon as
symbolic of the superior.

*- "Guha means literally the cave of the divine, the secret place,
Heart cavern. However the Guha mentioned here is in the sense of
personal God, another name of Skanda"- K.Natesan

..

When doubt assails us on both sides, we should clarify the overall meaning as: “Salutation to Guha who in the form of Brahman is Brahmasvarupa”. (i.e. as an image of the immanent and formless Brahman).

Notions of inferior and superior belong to the realm of attributes. In Brahman without attributes or qualities, whence superior or inferior? The notion depends for its existence upon attributes, as also upon differences. If Brahman is the integral Wholeness, then relative to what is His superiority? If He is the all Self, to whom is he superior?   His superior state is experienced through His worldly manifestations, and His inferiority through the ignorant jiva’s limitation (8) .  

Just as Brahman becomes superior by upadhi (9) , so is he also inferior. In the present context, Guha is worshipped, and the worshipper is the jiva. If there is no upadhi, then both (worshipper and worshipped) are of the form of Brahman: therefore they are one. In this undifferentiated reflection, a doubt may arise in the worship as to whether we picture ourself in Guha or Guha in our Self?   It appears logical “to see Guha in our Self”.   The chapter on Worship in the Sutra Brahmadrstir utskarsat (**) relates to Saguna, the God with attributes. There is then no conflict.

FOOTNOTES -
8- Jiva - the soul or strand of ego that experiences incarnations
as "its own" memory base in vasanas (Karmic tendencies).

9- Upadhi, conditioning. "A superimposed thing or attribute that
veils and gives a coloured view of the substance beneath it;
Or - a limiting adjunct, instrument, vehicle, body, a technical
term used in Vedanta philosophy for any superimposition that gives
a limited view of the Absolute and makes it appear as the
relative.  Jiva's Upadhi is Avidya or ignorance.  Isvara's
Upadhi is Maya or divine hypnosis."
(Definition from Yoga Vedanta Dictionary/Swami Sivananda)

**- "Brahmadrstir - the view of Brahman. Utskarsat - on account
of superiority, i.e. being exalted, all should be seen as the
Supreme Self" - K.Natesan

..

It is established then, that with and through the Mantra, Guha (as a personal god) in the form of Brahman is worshipped. As Brahman is the universal Self, the Guha image in Brahman emerges.

Here another doubt arises.   It is said that a portion of Guha’s effulgent form which is of the Gods, and is gracious to devotees, may enter well deserving individual souls who have destroyed their erratic tendencies.

Is this an image of Brahman (the formless) with attributes? Or a perfected Person of divine origin?   What distinguishes the two?

The former is the Lord whose body is the entire universe, and who, to favour the devotee, took a divine body by his maya. (10) The latter is an exceptional being who individuated amongst the crores of jivas, and attained a divine body by the excellence of his virtues.

If we say ‘let the Lord himself be Skanda’, we will be faced with the postulate of several other Gods, with nothing to mark out Skanda from among their great and glorious galaxy.   And if we say ‘let him be an exceptional being amongst the jivas’, then the problem of inferiority will crop up. Let it then be said: the Lord alone is Skanda – not an exclusive being amongst the crores of jivas. Thus, we do not postulate several Gods. For the sake of the world’s work, Brahman takes forms by maya in the world, and thus conducts the universe. If mere perfected souls have the capacity to take many forms by maya, what can we say about the all powerful God?

FOOTNOTES -
10- MAYA, from ma, to measure, the skill of measuring the
immeasurable, therefore an impossible feat, the intrinsic
power of the Lord, the marvel.  Later in Vedanta, this word
came to mean"illusion".  From the same root comes the Mother
or birthgiver - and also the French word la mer - the ocean.

 ..

Click on image and again on ‘view full size’ in gallery

Amongst those forms of God taken by maya for the sake of the world’s work, Skanda’s form pertaining to the Gods is unique. We shall touch on such authoritative forms taken by God through maya.

The votaries of Vishnu claim that “Narayana alone is the form of the Lord pertaining to the Gods”: “the Supreme Shiva alone”, say the Saivites: “none but Ganapati”, proclaim the followers of Ganesh: “Savitr (the sun as creative godhead) is All”, say the worshippers of the sun. Men of Indra say “He alone”;  and “Jesus alone”, claim the Christians:  Allah is One, say the Mohammadans.  Then “he alone is Subrahmanya”, say followers of Skanda.

Furthermore, if one sees the usages in the Veda, like tam i mahe purustutam yahvam pratnabhir utibhih (11) it looks as if another name of Indra is yahva, the Judaeo-Christian Jehovah.  Perhaps ahla da (12) – Allah – is another name for the Person in the orb of the moon.

When such dispute arises among the votaries of various religions, what is the truth? On investigation, the Vedas give us no unanimous answer. Here, as we have hitherto said, we must reconcile distinctions in an overall harmony.

FOOTNOTES -
11- "We praise through new hymns, Him (JahveH)
Who is hymned by all creatures."

12- Ahlada, delight. Moon is the source of delight.

young ramana

..

In this context, here is the Vedic Rik:

“Indram mitram varunam agnim ahur         “They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni atho divyah sa suparno garutman.  and he is the divinely beautiful plumed Garutman Ekam sadvipra bahudha vadant –    One Alone existent; sages speak of it differently. Yagnim yamam matarisvanam ahuh”          They call it Agni, Yama and Matarisvan.”  

                                                                                                          Rig Veda 1.164.46  

On enquiry into the meaning of this mantra, some say these are alternative Names for the One God. Others point out that as the forms taken through maya are diverse, different Names are conceived. The latter view is better. Then only will it harmonise with that of other sages. Here even, the view of the followers of Nirukta that there are just three Godheads, is preferable.(13)

FOOTNOTE -
13- Nirukta, the work of Yaska on Vedic etymology.  The three
Godheads are Agni, Vayu and Aditya

..

Agni – the sacred fire

           ..

WHO IS AGNI, THE PRODUCER OF SKANDA?

It is established that Guha’s form, pertaining to the Gods, is specific, amongst the forms taken through maya by Brahman with attributes.

Now in the mantra, the father of Skanda, Agni, is mentioned as vacadbhuh. Who is this? We shall enquire. There are five energies in the world – solar, lunar, electricity, physical fire, and the sound. Sound is not a quality but an energized substance, with the action of movement and the attribute of resonance.

A quality by itself is without action or attribute. The sound caught in a recording instrument is understood as a substance.   When sound is transmitted through an instrument to a great distance, it appears first as energy and then manifests as sound. This illustrates that sound is a vibration, or energized substance. Many Vedic Riks support this view. We shall cite only two mantras as example:

wood grain & cosmic egg

“Ima abhiprano numo vipamagresu dhitayah
Agney socir na didyutah.” 

“Here we put forth loudly the words,  
in front of illuminations luminous like the blaze of fire.”

(Rig Veda VIII.6.7.) (14)

Here dhitayah are said to be luminous like Agni’s flame. Dhitayah are the words.

FOOTNOTE -
14- Alternative translation by Sri K.Natesan for this Mantra:
"We bow to the syllables, effulgent as Agni, foremost among
those who protect themselves, and others."

..

..

“Tam tva marutvati paribhuvadvani sayavari
Naksumana saha dyubhih.”          

“Sound, the divine Omnipresence
is One in Name with the Divine splendours”

            (Rig Veda VII.31.8)

Here vani - the word – is said to have a Name (naksamana)through dyubhih, energies.

..

Rudra Immerses

..

This vibration of pervasive sound is also named as Sabda Brahman; the form pertaining to the physicality of the supreme Siva. Its Vedic name is Rudra. Yaska gives the etymology as one who cries, Rudra.   This same sound vibration known as Rudra is mentioned as vacat in the Mantra. When the sense of speech is spiritualised it becomes the manifestation of Sabda Brahman. Thus there is no difference between this vocalisation and Sabda Brahman.

In this manner, Kumara the young one is born from Agni. Here Agni pertains to sound and not to physical matter. The Mantra does not say agnibhuve but precisely, vacadbhuve in order to clearly indicate the truth. Though the word Agni is used in connection with physical fire, it also denotes any form of subtle energy.

Therefore, in the Name, the ordinary meaning flashes. The word vacadbhuva … flashes forth specifically the meaning of energised sound or Agni.

ganapati gives mantra – into his devotee’s hairy ear, he whispered sabda brahman – the unforgettable sound which never ends

 ..

THE MEANING OF SALUTATION Now we shall touch on the salutation itself, and what it signifies in the course of the japa.

There is a doubt here. Should we when repeating the Mantra imagine some divine form of Guha, to contemplate as our prayer?   or is the meaning of the salutation a simple notion that: “you are superior, I am inferior”?   Neither are proper. In both methods, we would with each repetition of the Mantra, resort to the idea that we are different, and imagine some form which is false and of little glory to the Godhead. The nature of our Self would be lost.

There is however, another, third meaning: the salutation is not to the gross body, but to the subtle body. The subtle body is the mind, its place the head. It bows.

trinosofia inner cave of light

..

Bhagavan the Master has said:

“Kirtyate hrdayam pinde             The Heart is said to be in the microcosm
yathande bhanumandalam         as the orb of the Sun in the macrocosm.
Mavah sahasraragatam bimbam           Like Moon’s disk is mind
candramasam Yatha”                 in the thousand petalled Centre.

                                                                                           Ramana Gita Chapter V.verse 13

When the mind bows down to seek the form of Self placed in the Heart, or to plunge itself into the effulgence of its own form placed in the Heart, this is bowing down, salutation. In both cases, we should not forget to see Skanda as the Self.

The japa of the Mantra thus performed, will seek our own realised Truth. It will not be polluted by any diversity.

Brahmana

 ..

Maharshi revealed the whole truth of these two forms of worship in a foot of this verse:  “Hrdi visa manasa svam
cinvata majjata va”           

“Enter into the Heart by the mind which seeks Self 
or which wants to take a plunge.”

                                                                                             Ramana Gita, Chapter II verse 2

trinosofia bird lamp

 ..

Thus is revealed the meaning of the Mantra:

Om Vacadbhuve Namah

 “I enter or plunge into Bhagavan the Master,
who is the descent of Skanda,
as the true form of my Self”.

 Thus ends the First Chapter.

 ..

..

..

**

  My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/  

CONTINUED FROM PART TWO – the “Guru Mantra Commentary” by Ganapati Muni (see previous post.)

Mantric language is cyclic, rhythmic, primordial. Whether we know any Sanskrit or not, the vibration grows through a commitment of the syllables to archetypal visual images. This passage develops the ASTRAGNI or weapon within the mantra.  In my understanding, only a pure intention may access the metaphysical power of the Word:  otherwise it rebounds.

In Part Two, we bowed to Guru in the heart’s cave. Here in Part Three, the repeated sounding of vacadhbu,  agni, sara, sastra encircle and warm up my path of awe.  I do not know.  Unconfined to the mind, the resonance is received afresh;  I begin again to ascend the mountain at dawn.

..

Second Chapter: The Enunciation of the Second Mantra

The Muni continues:
In this second chapter, we shall comment on another Tantric mantra of Bhagavan. Here is its verse of enunciation: (No English translation available)

“Sukham krsanuh kilalam
murdhanyascanunasikah
Nidra vari ca vikhyato
Namo mantro vadadbhuvah.”

The letter sa, Sukham happiness;   the letter ra krsanuh, fire; the letter na kilalam, water; the letter va murdhanyah anunasikah;   the letter na nidra, cerebral nasal;   the letter bha vari, sleep;   the letter va, water.**

1. Happiness sa
2. Fire ra
3. Water va
4. Cerebral nasal  na
5. Sleep bha
6. Water va

When these six letters are read together they become sa ra va na bha wa. – “One who is born from the forest of sara”. As there are six letters in this Mantra also, like before, we understand by this the six faces of Skanda.*

FOOTNOTES -
**- Sri Sankaranarayanan’s translation of this paragraph 
was ambiguous, and K.Natesan apparently overlooked my query 
about it. I have arranged it as best I can, and would welcome the 
advice of an educated Sanskrit reader. J.A.

*- The child Skanda (Kumara)- seed of Agni in the wives of Seven
Rishis who warmed themselves by the fire - could not be carried
by wives (goddesses of Krttika the Pleiades constellation) or
Himalaya mountain or Ganga river, so it fell in a bed of reeds
(grass). Six parts of the seed joined in this birthplace as one
six headed child; Siva's wife Parvati filled with milk and the 
universe rejoiced - for this child of Siva (through the inter-
mediary of Agni) was destined to defeat the demon of the 
reactive mind, Taraka.
Skanda's older brother was Ganapati.

Note from Wendy O’Flaherty: ‘Siva the Erotic Ascetic’

ramana embryo

..

THE MEANING OF THE SECOND MANTRA:    Saravanabhawa

“One who is born from the forest of sara, a kind of grass”. ASTRAGNI : (astra, missile or weapon invoked with a mantra, agni, sacred fire) – this means “fire of guided missile”. Here, a physical fire born from igniting grass, is not what is meant. If it were, it would not be vacadbhu - born out of the sound vibration (energy). 

The story that the effulgent seed of Rudra placed in the stalk of grass became Kumara, has some deep truth behind it:   Rudra is full of sound. His effulgent seed is the fire born by focussing the perfected astra mantra of a great yogi accomplished in the lore of the astras. It acquires the form of sara, grows, and slays its enemies.

“Vidma sarasya pitaram parjanyam - “We know the father of the SARA,
bhuridhayasam   - Parjanya, liberal nourisher,
Vidmo svasya mataram - we know his mother Prithvi,
prthivim bhurivarpasam. - earth with her manifold designs.

Jyake pari nona masmanam tonvan krdhi - O, Bowstring, bend thyself around us,
Virur variyo ratirapa dvesarasya krdhi.” - make my body stone.
Firm in thy strength, drive far away malignities and hateful things.”    

Aghawa Samkita II. 1. 2.

..

Sara described in the above two Mantras is a special kind of grass, not an arrow made of bamboo or metal.   This is indicated by saying that its mother and father are the earth and the rain God.   If we say that bamboo also, being a tree, can deserve to be the son of the earth and the rain God, the fourth Mantra in that same chapter, removes any doubt :

Yatha dyam ca prthivim cantas tiethati tejanam
evarogam casravam cantas tisthatu munja it. 

Just as the sharp point stands
between earth and heaven, 
let the munja grass stand between wellbeing and illness.

Breaking through – For the Rose and the Fire are One

Here by the word munja he deduces the aforesaid sara.   Munja is a type of grass and not bamboo. How could fragile grass be capable of killing enemies without relating to astra, the fire warming the word which an accomplished Mantra fills ?15

“Isikam jaratim stva
tilpinjam dandanam nadam
Tamindra idhmam
krtva yamasyagvim niradadhan

He sought the grass, Isika
tilpinja, nada and dandana.
He enriched Indra’s fuel
and the fire of Yama.

Athawa Samhita XII.2.54.

 ..

Isika, Tilpivja, nada are types of grass. Dandanum might be of bamboo. Amongst them isika is a synonym for the sara grass.   Here by the word Indra, the Jiva is meant. As the Veda says: “Rupam Rupam pratirupo babhuva.”16.  He, the perfected Person knows the astra. He bound the isika grass into faggots, and nourished the sages around the fire of Yama, Kala, Time.   This means he expanded and increased that which stood in the sky as the fire of Time.

Time is not different from sound. The sound resonates subtly in the sky and cultures everything.

FOOTNOTES 
15- ASTRA from the root AS - to throw; a missile, usually of grass
or any fragile material backed up by a powerful Mantra, 
though astra is loosely translated as an arrow.
Sastra(scriptures) is an arrow, while astra is a weapon backed up 
by the Mantra. 
Here the Mantra is significant, and not the material used as a 
weapon.

16- "He put his image in every form."

Frank Humphries, Ramana and the Muni

..

That is why we have said in our Indra Gita:

“Sadvyapakasaktim pranam kathayanti
Vyaktetarasabdam kalam ganayanti.” (17) 

“The pervading force of Existence they call Prana ;
and they reckon as Time the unmanifest Sound.”

FOOTNOTE -
17- Indra Gita is one of the compositions of Ganapati Muni
and is included in Gitamala.

..

There itself it has been said that Kala, Time, is known by the name of Yama and Rudra.

“Rudram vidureka netarbahulilam
Prahur yamam anye kayam tava kalam.”

“O, Leader, some know you as Rudra of many sports ;
Others call thy body Time, Yama.”

Rudra who is the Sabda Brahman and Time factor pervades the sky. His effulgence impelled by the fire of Mantra becomes the Agni, named astra in the form of sara. This Agni is the Lord, the Commander-in-Chief of the armies, the destroyer of Asuras, the accomplisher of the Divine Purpose. The word isu is formed only from the word isika. The ancients employ the word isvastra to denote astra.

“Isvastram esam devatvam paritranam satamiva
Bhayam vai manuso bhavah parivado satamiva.”       

“Their astra denoted divinity.
It bore divine protection to good people.
Fear is their human aspect to the wicked.”

By esam* the Kshatriyas (warriors) are covered. Also the primary name for astra is only isikastra. (See Ramayana and Mahabharata). Though the word sara meant astra, later on by derivative significance, it came to denote the arrow. The word sara is a pointer to the other “faggot bundles” (weapons) of astra.   Principally, the usage is the form “from out of the forest of sara”, saravanabhava.

FOOTNOTE - 
esam, a Sanskrit word for prowess (footnote supplied by K.Natesan)

..

THE APPROPRIATENESS OF SKANDA AS THE GURU?

If “Skanda” had these attributes alone, he would be a War God, not the Guru Causal. Yet being the God of war does not deter him from being the Guru Causal. In fact, it helps. The one who manifests the fire of astra, destroying foes, is our inner illumination. He burns away the ties that bind, and reveals the shore beyond darkness.

An effulgence  of sound is inner knowing. By this alone, the Brahmin attains a vision of the Divine.

By the effulgence alone, the Kshatriya (warrior) masters the divine astra. The effulgence is the Brahmanhood of Brahman;  the kingship of the Warrior caste.

And thus ends the Second Chapter.

..

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

In this concluding post of the series, Ganapati Muni’s commentary elucidates the forms of Skanda and Indra which bear the mantra’s sound-wave, Subra Brahman, seeing them realised in his spiritual brother and mentor, Ramana Maharshi of Arunachala.  See also the three preceding posts, and search “Puranas” on this blog for a racy account of the Skanda mythology.

Note: the god Skanda is also known as Kumara, Murugan (or Subrahmanya) and Krtikkai.

..

Third Chapter:  The Vedic Mantra of Guha
by Ganapati Muni

We have commented upon the two Tantric Mantras of the master Ramana. Yet his Mantras are found even in the Veda. Amongst them, here is a clear cut Mantra of Bhagavan:

“Vrsa jajana vrsanam ranaya
tamu cinnari naryam sasuva.
Prayah senanir adha nrbhyo astinah
satva gavesanah sa dhrsruh.”

• The seer is Vasishtha. The Deity is Indra and the metre is Trishtubh.
• vrsa is “Rudra who is of the form of Sabda Brahman”. He is vrsa because “he pours down (varsati) the special knowledge”;
  vrsanam “the God who showers down flames ranavya for battle”.
  To wage war brings forth the meaning - vrsa jajana - (Rudra)

• Tamu -  the way God, u, is indeclinable (without inflexions) – suggests the loftiness of the Name with which it is closely associated

• nari cit is the divine Force: cit is indeclinable, used to denote the indescribable.
  If nari is derived from nara, men, then the word nari (feminine) means the Kundalini sakti hidden in man. (*)

• sasuva – “is produced”. In what way ? Naryam – “born amongst men” – are the leaders, or perfected beings.

FOOTNOTE -
* Nari is feminine (nari-kundalini)

..

THIS IS THE TRANSLATION IN ESSENCE:

“Kundalini sakti in the body of perfected man produces for ‘battle’
Indra’s form within the fire of astra from Sabda Brahman.”

God, taking birth, “becomes the commander – senanih – of the armies of the Gods”.
The third and fourth lines of the verse conclude:

• adha nrbhvo asti – “and a helper to their leaders”
• inah (means) svami – “the Master”,  
• satva “is the possessor of sat, of Truth”
• gavesanah “seeking out”
• sa “the acclaimed God”
• dhrsruh, “assailer of all foes.”

Arunachala, inner path

To read here that Indra is being referred to and not Subrahmanya (Skanda), presents no problem. The ‘ordinary’ name for the fire of astra is Indra, and Kumara (Skanda) is the special name.

In what way ordinary? or special?   For instance, the common name for the sun is Light, but his special or personal name is Surya.

Indra denotes broadly, all ideas of multi-faceted strength.(18)

According to a thing’s true nature, each facet of it has separate specific or ‘special’ names.   In the Veda and the Brahmana it is well-known that Indra is the god of strength. The fire of astra is a powerful and mighty concept, for which, combined with supreme Lordship,  Indra’s name (as the ‘ordinary’) is appropriate. The commanding fire of astra is described specifically as Kumara.   There exists another reason beyond all this, which we shall submit later.

FOOTNOTE:
18 Indra denotes the strong lord, as in Mahendra, Kavindra,
Munindra, etc.

Sacred India Tarot – Indra and Garuda

..

WHERE ‘ITIHASA’ IS APPROPRIATE

When the world was afflicted by powerful Asuras, the Gods begged and prayed to Brahma the Creative power for relief.   Brahma replied the young Kumara (Skanda) born of Rudra from Gauri would destroy the Asuras. Later Kama the god of lust was sent by the Gods to incline ascetic Rudra towards the idea of progeny. Kama was burnt up (by one look from Rudra’s third eye). Thereupon, the young Gauri did tapas. Attracted to the severity of her tapas (spiritual effort) Rudra married her. Uniting with her, he ejected his seed upwards. The seed took shelter successively in the fire, in the water and in the stalk of sara grass, and finally became the young one, Kumara.

Parvati(Gauri) and Siva with Bull Nandi and their children Ganapati and Skanda. Ganapati’s vehicle is the rat, and Skanda’s is the peacock.

In other words:   All human means were futile to conquer the Asura race (of demons) who devastated the world by the strength of their maya.   Here we should take the Asura race as a specific, or special human type; in the world of men the Kingdom of Asuras became perpetual.  (A problem cannot be solved with itself; the higher octave has to be called in.) The Gods gave astra, wisdom (*) to the seers, in order to destroy the Asuras. With the destruction of the Asuras, the Kingdom of the devotees of God became once more established on earth.

..

This story is related by Itihasa in a covert manner. When the jiva does tapas, firstly kama, desire, is burnt by the glory of tapas.   We should not forget the fact, that the state of  tapas is  poised in the effulgence of Sabda Brahman.   Though desire is burnt up in its gross form, it prevails in the seed form, and impels the Kundalini sakti, called Gauri (or Parvati), to perform tapas.   About Kundalini being called Gauri, it is said in the Upanishad: “pita bhasatyanupama.” (19)     Gauri’s form of Kundalini is fairly wellknown in the Tantra. By her tapas, the Sabda Brahman manifests.

The whole purport is that the form of the Supreme Vak (pronunciation, divine speech) becomes capable of experiencing.   When Kundalini herself, reunited with Sabda Brahman, performs tapas, the sound vibration (energy) manifests.   It impels the energised sound in the sky, and becomes the astra.

The seed of Sabda Brahman is cultured in the fire of muladhara (root) and the nectar of the head (sahasrara) - these are said to be its consecutive sojourns in Agni and in Ganga. (20)

The manifestation in the stalk of sara grass has been described in the Second Chapter.

We have to take the Asuras as belonging to all times, not as born in a particular period.   Itihasa’s aim is to propound an all time truth.

FOOTNOTES:
* - or Awareness

19 - Gauri, lit. "of golden yellow colour." The Narayana
Upanishad says "Yellow, like an atom, she shines."

20 - In the subtle body, the centre at the base of the spine
is muladhara and the centre at the top of the head is
sahasrara. Muladhara is the seat of Fire, while sahasrara
is the seat of the moon wherefrom the nectar flows.

As Ganga is the celestial river, she symbolises the nectar
in sahasrara while Agni is the element in muladhara. The seed
of the Sabda Brahman passes from muladhara to sahasrara, and
has its sojourn in both centres before it manifests.

This is the meaning of the Puranic story that Skanda is
born from Agni as well as from the Ganga.

Gauri – Parvati – being pestered by sages

 ..

WHO IS THE ASURA TARAKA?

Well, is it not to destroyTaraka that Skanda is born? Is Taraka a historical personage?

No. Yet, Tarakasura represents a truth. Taraka is death, one who (as the ferryman) takes across -   tarati – all men. (20A)   In both ways, Guha (in heart’s cave) conquers Death. By granting Self knowledge, he conquers death, the lack of awareness which causes samsara.   By the strength of the astra, he conquers death, the desire of his foes.   It is said in the Puranas that the Tripura Asuras are sons of this same Taraka.   The Tripura Asuras are none other than the three bonds. (21) Their father is lack of awareness.   That is, we fall from the Self into the body – into the idea (of being separate), of considering it as the self.

FOOTNOTE:
20A See also tara, goddess of time

21 The Three Bonds are the three pasas from which release is
sought from Varuna by the Vedic Rishi. In the later Tantra,
these take the form of the three granthi knots in the subtle
body: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Asura Lord (Demonic)

 ..

COMMANDER OF ARMIES

How do the words commander of armies in the Mantra signify ‘commander of armies of the gods?’   Indra, the King of Gods, becomes in this context their commander. This is made clear in another Mantra:

“Indra asem neta brha spatir      Let Indra be the leader. Let Brhaspati
dakshina yajnah pura etu somah           go in front, Dakshina, the sacrifice, and Soma
Devasenanam abhibhanjatinam     Let the Maruts march in the forefront
jayantinam maruto yatvagram.”    of the army of the Gods that demolish and conquer

Rig Veda X.103.8

This Mantra is mentioned in the chapter on astra. Also, the word ina in the Mantra became later on in the common parlance the word svami, (22) Master.

“Vavrajasim anadatir adabdha     He moved all round the seven mighty ones
divo yahvir avasana anagnah     of Heaven; undevouring, inviolate.
Sana yatra yuvatayah, sa yonir        neither were they clothed, nor were they naked;
Ekam garbham dadhire sapta vanih.”   here, young and eternal in one native land
the seven Voices held in their womb the one Child

Rig Veda III.1.6. (Sri Aurobindo’s translation)

Sapta vanih are the Seven metres* in Sanskrit poetry.   The birth of Agni as this Mantra is nothing other than the fire of astra.   This is revealed in the hymn of Agni in the sense of burning: but not with the idea of physical fire.

FOOTNOTES:
22 - Svami is one of the principle names of Skanda.

* - The seven metres represent also seven stars in the
Pleiades constellation, the 'natural mothers' of the child
Skanda.

Gauri Siva's bride was the daughter of the Himalaya. She is
also known as Parvati in the Puranic cycle. The river
Ganga, lit by the seven stars and the moon,"poured down"/
descended through Siva's matted dreadlocks in their love-play.
As stated earlier, neither the fire (Agni) nor the water
(Ganga) could receive his seed. It finally came to rest
in the stalk of the mantric sara grass. From the mythology
we gain some idea of the elemental power of mantra.
See previous post.

Skanda as Muruganar and Krttikai (pleiades

Another version of this tale is Siva's seduction of the
wives of seven Rishis (seers) in the forest. Entering
the heart of the fire (Agni) to which the women came to
warm themselves,Siva impregnated them through their hair
follicles, causing chaos in the ashram. The seed could
not be held by them, or by fire or by water, until it
came to rest in the grass; then Gauri's breasts filled,
and the world rejoiced, unknowing as yet where the
divine child with six heads lay.



Ganapati Muni saw in his spiritual brother Ramana
Maharshi, the effulgence of Skanda the warrior of light who
delivered us from Taraka. Ramana taught Self-enquiry which
dismantles the mind and quests consciousness:  the "I ... I".
(J.A.)

..

Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi

..

..

COMMENTARY CONTINUED: ENQUIRY INTO THE PERSONALITY

Now we must say a word about the individualised Personality of the maya (23) form of Brahman with attributes, which is known as Subrahmanya.

We say that Indra alone is Guha’s form pertaining to the Gods. This is because Agni, the energy of sound-vibration is in the middle region; and Indra is the Lord of the middle region. This is proven in the Aranyaka when, referring to Indra, it closes with the words, Subrahmanyam, Subramanyam.

Indra’s Vedic fame as the War God, lends additional support.

What is Siva’s form among the Gods? It is Indra only. If it is said, that as father and son they are one and the same, this is correct. The only difference to note, is regarding the hidden Sabda Brahman and the manifest sound vibration. The relationship of father and son is mentioned to specify Siva and Subrahmanya.

What is Ganapati’s form among the Gods? It is Indra only. If it is said, that as brothers Ganapati and Subrahmanya are one and the same, this is correct. The only difference to note, is that regarding the perfected mantra within, and the astra Agni impelled by it. The fraternal relationship demonstrates that first the mantra is born from Sabda Brahman; then the astra Agni.     Through the concept of Ganapati, we explain Brihaspati and Brahmanaspati. (24)

What is lightning’s form pertaining to the Gods?   It is Indra only.   Here he has a unique quality. Indra is named as the deity of Lightning.

There are other great conceptual facets in the middle region, with Indra as their deity. They are not mentioned here, as we would have to go into a lot of detail.

FOOTNOTES:
23 Maya - form - the form that we measure out of the
immeasurable

24 Ganapati, Brihaspati and Brahmanaspati - all three names
denote the same Godhead in the Veda of the famous Rik
"Gananam tva ganapatim lawamake ..."

Brishaspati - Lord of the letters; Brahmanaspati - Lord of
the Mantras. Brahma means both letter and mantra in the veda.
Ganapati Lord of tantra, and these two names, denote the
same Godhead.

 ..

Doorstep chalk pattern at dawn in Tiruvannamalai

..

THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE DIFFERENT DESCENTS

By means of whichever portion of energy the Lord Indra descends into awareness, the descent bears that specific or personal Name.  

Indra’s descent as a portion of the lightning bears his own name. His descent as a portion of Sabda Brahman is named Rudra. His descent as the force of Tantra is known by the name Ganapati, and his descent as a portion of sound vibration is called Skanda. Ganapati and Subrahmanya are brothers, and they are interdependent.

We have briefly interpreted the three great Mantras of the Master. We shall develop the conceptual truth of Skanda in our Devata mimamsa. (25)

FOOTNOTES
25 - Another of Vasishtha Ganapati Muni's works, where he
unravels the significances of the Deities

Thus Ends the Third Chapter.

..

Thus ends the Commentary on the Mantras of the Master,
a work of Ganapati Vasishtha, son of Narasimha
and disciple of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi

The Closing Verse

“Munina srimukhe simhe dive suryendusangame
Suryoparagasamaye bhasyam etadudiritam.”

“In the month Sravana of the year Srimukha
on a new Moon day, at the time of Solar eclipse,
this Commentary was given out by the Muni.”

..

..

..

APPENDIX TO THE COMMENTARY

1).   Subrahmanya is the one who is born of the auspicious Brahman, that is, Sabda Brahman.

2).   By this we have explained the name Brahma garbha (from the womb of Brahma)

Vide Amara: “Subrahmanya brahma-garbha svami saravanodbhavah”.

3).   Kumara, eternal child. He is born, finishes the work and again vanishes. Again manifests at the time of work. Therefore, he is called the eternal child. In the Veda, in the Hymn to Indra, is mentioned ‘arbhako na kumarakah‘26 . Also, ‘sadyo jajnano nirinati saturn’.27

4).   By this we have explained the name sanat kumara - sanat always; kumara, young one.

5).   Sanatsujatah also in the same way. sanat, always; sujatah, well born.

6).   Sanandana samanah equal nandanah, son (giver of happiness) to Rudra along with Ganapati.

7).   Sanakeh, eternal.

Thus these four names denote one and the same person. Perhaps because of their different manifestations, it appears they were mentioned as four (28) .

26 The youth like a little child

27 Born at once, he demolishes the foes.

28 The four disciples of Shiva as Dakshinamurti: Sanaka,
Sanandana, Sanatkumara and Sanatsujata. Etymologically they
have the same meaning and denote one and the same principle.
(See also Sanatanadharma)

Here the Commentary and Appendix by the Muni ends.

We express our grateful thanks to Sri K.Natesan of Ramanasramam for making this rare manuscript available to us, and for his help with the text.   Ganapati Muni’s Commentary on the Mantra of the Master, was recently published by Ramanasramam, along with the first translation into English of Kapali Sastri’s sanskrit Commentary on the Ramana Gita.   Material from this has been utilised for the present work.

For the benefit of English readers, the language and presentation of the Guru Mantra Bhashya text have been slightly adjusted, and translations of Vedic Mantras, that were provided as footnotes, are now incorporated in the text, for easier reference..

J.A. Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK 2002

Arunachala village children

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

.

..

Drag.  Pierce lightly.
Left hand is my power unskilled
at life, the in-tuition.

The opening for a second
is in this broken moment,
unforgettable.

..

..

You said to the imp in a bubbling girl, “You will
be pierced as deep as you now laugh” -
her eyes then filled.

Lightly brushing palm,
did your touch
in mine create havoc?

Here, to the homeopath
we are One.

Pierced water of life burst from the rock;
I start to see:  so now keep quiet -
I place in your right hand my left – a saxifrage.

Starry saxifrage flower growing wild and wet,
cracks rocks.
Helpless fingers curl half closed;
be it so.

You are my brother.
I your little sister.

The cosmos is in fact delicate and gentle
standing still in children
and in gardens and innocence.

From Poems of Eclipse, 1999

..

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

What do I do with
ways Home
when none of them
take me home?

Stay homeless!

Today the tide does not deliver energy and hope.
This surging current is the no mans land.

Deep down, is a well of peace
larger than joy or comfort:
who could place
its unknown value?

My window is filled with the edgeless sea coming in
and this event has wealth beyond my words.

I am open to the world
as is.
How else to comprehend
suffering?

I wait.  Hast thou forsaken me?  Presence is all there is,
even when it feels just confused.

Upon your brow, furrows appear,
then disappear
as in water, in sound or on sand
arising, melting as you hear

and after a long while, an answer begins to stir
the fullness of your lips:

“Homeless is home.
There is no place like it.
It hears the exhausted sorrow inescapably.
It is the coin which doesn’t flip.
It is heads and tails at once.”

Walking the dark plank that feels true,
I don’t “go for” anything.
It is the cross that Jesus carried.
It is heavy, gut crushing,
floats on a ripple of the stagnant tide.

My saturated wood adrift thuds into things.
Cast up on shore, bleached grey by sun,
it lies on pebbles, soaked and dried
by sun and salt.

Poems of Eclipse, 1999

..

..

20 December 2014

It is solstice, and things that turn, turn slowly, close to the core.  Be in this way of moving, low in spirits.  Love in the core of life yet wells up through the murk:  and yesterday evening I felt very loving  towards …  I remembered a remarkable little episode, 25 November eleven years ago.  (The Croatian guy who sells Big Issue outside Waitrose, and tells me I’m a ray of sunshine – his voice reminded me of him).  On that day I was in my favourite spot on Hampstead Heath (the same place where I met a Saluki man six months later) and a graceful vagabond came through the conifer branches, stroked them over my face and kissed me without stopping through the hour.  Wasn’t that lovely?

Don’t fret about feeling glum today, and drifting around.  Sometimes the cold branches part and through them comes a kiss.  He came from Croatia.  He loved the winter trees, their gestures and  the quirky conversations they have – they told him droll stories .  He loved to sit and feel them breathe.

Solstice silence is grey and obscured with collective Xmas greed and hyperactive loneliness;  and yet it is a Christmas tree, a conifer with candles lit, and through cold winter branches comes the kiss of life:  warm lips and searching tongue.

Why, I am making a Christmas tree – my own in the soul.  I have a tiny fire-nest, and I blow on it gently, to kindle.

The Upanishadic symbol is:  the fire hidden within the tree … the cream within the milk.

ADONAI thou art God.  The dawn comes, silvering clouds through winter boughs:  early blackbird chorus and a peal of seagulls.  Every day the dawn comes.  The fire-nest wakes in heart, hands and feet:  the immeasurable fire of Sol, about to rise.  I am, you are, made from Sol;  and Sol is pulsed from the galactic core – our dark Mother.  Each atom is a solar atom.  In the stable’s silence in deep solstice night, the Child is born.  A wild rose blushes the sky.

..

Merry Christmas!

“Even as fire is not seen in wood, and yet by power it comes to light as fire, so Brahman in the universe and in the soul is revealed by the power of OM.

“The soul is the wood below that can burn and be fire, and OM is the whirling friction rod above.  Prayer is the power that makes OM turn round, and then the mystery of God comes to light.

“God is found in the soul when sought with truth and self sacrifice, as fire is found in wood, water in hidden springs, cream in milk, and oil in the oil-fruit.

“There is a Spirit who is hidden in all things, as cream is hidden in milk, and who is the source of self-knowledge and self-sacrifice.  This is Brahman, the Spirit Supreme.”

Svetasvatura Upanishad

..

..

**

Gene keys website link

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address http://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

“..

In this Tarot series we are still transitioning from the Swords which administer Karma, to the Wands which deliver justice.

A wand, staff or stave is a connecting instrument.  It signifies authority and the power of a completed circuit.  The wand symbolises creative force and investiture:  less a weapon than a fiery transmission.  The ancient Egyptians called theirs the ankh – a staff of life. Inheriting their wisdom, Moses hit the rock releasing the water of life, with a rod he had mastered in its earlier form as a snake.  It became the Arc of Covenant – for humankind and the Holy One.

The Tarot’s suit of Wands generates a flow of current – related to the serpentine helix of our DNA:

When a battle is waged, instruments are required, which are more than mere weapons. They come from within us and they come from between the worlds.  The Two of Wands in Tarot are in relationship – a bridging of realms.  It took an epic force – assisted by the simian intellect – to build a stone bridge from southern India to Sri Lanka, to rescue Rama’s bride Sita from her captivity under Ravana, king of demons.

It takes that same strength for us to evolve beyond the labels:  to affirm in the light of last week’s events – “I am human”.   My good friend pointed out, that more than “je suis Charlie” in Paris, “je suis Humaine”. The profound power of one simple truth through the networks can change the world.  The revolutionary baton is, “I am human.”

Humanness is our amnesty, a meditation of the depth, the breadth and the height.  Keep saying “I am human” – look deep within, and look around – it is contagious.  That forgotten collective memory could disorient and disable a killer cell, if more and more of us have it.   We can try.   I am human.

..

..

Rohit Arya’s Notes – 2003

“This event is difficult to conceptualise, as there is really no artistic depiction of it.  What we need is a feel of a seashore, the stone bridge receding into the horizon, a gorgeous spectacular sky-scraping ancient city of Lanka dominating the landscape, and the tents of the invading army, with the monkeys all over the place. Perhaps we could have Rama, Sugriva (the monkey king), Hanuman and Laxmana on a little hillock surveying the City.

“Lanka can be made as bizarre and fanatastical as you please, there is no version of Lanka which will not be true, for it was an illusion built city, actually created by a Danava called Maya for his powers of captivating, lllusionary architecture.  He was the equal of Vishwakarma, architect of the gods, and in reality built the more famous structures!

“The illustration is very poor, and we certainly don’t want Lanka to look like that, but some of the themes are contained in it.  The two Wands could be placed one each in Lanka and the hillock illuminating the scene.”

..

Here is the Ramayana epic now, from Rohit’s book with the deck:

“Lanka is besieged.  An unending horde of Vanaras is eagerly awaiting the chance to lock horns with rakshasas (demons) who, for the first time in their life, are diffident about combat.  They have been jolted by this inconceivable invasion and, up in the sky their dread nemesis Hanuman (see Knight of Arrows) keeps a menacing vigil.  The last time they confronted him, he burnt the golden city to cinders and ash, so belligerence is not an option.  The golden city was then magically rebuilt by the sorcerer Mai Danava, father-in-law of Ravana, and a greater craftsman than Vishvakarma, architect of the gods.

“Rama has sent word that peace can be obtained by the simple expedient of returning Sita to him.  Their own karma brought them to a stage where they cannot accept this, though they desperately want to.  They are the rakshasha race, conquerors of the three worlds, and to surrender a prize is to lose face irrevocably.  Like well entrenched comfortable Mafiosi, controlling territory on violent reputation alone, their bluff has been called.

King Ravana, the many-headed

“This card is called Dominion, but the person normally does not attain the heights of success it promises, or loses it in being too grasping.  Returning Sita would save their kingdom but unravel their reputation and power;  fighting Rama and Hanuman is suicide.

“Stuck!  If they fight, they lose their fantastical comfortable life.  If they don’t, they are finished as a ruling power.  Ruin beckons them in either eventuality, and the rakshashas glumly realise, long before Rama does, that their days of power and glory are over.

A Rakshasha or demon

Interpretation:

“Reassess your position – moral and ethical choices … Many options exist, though you may not see them.  Patience is needed.  Interaction with an overwhelming personality. Don’t take the lead of spiritual mentors or leaders, blindly … Too much reliance upon supposed ‘strong’ figures, and falling for pseudo-spiritual flim-flam … Lack of discipline is compounded by greed. Use of will power to overcome stagnant situations.  A little extra patience is required – don’t spoil it now by getting greedy. Self reliance is your best option.”

..

Here is the finished card:

Sacred India Tarot Two of Staves/Wands – the Crossing into Lanka

My Lanka fell rather short of Rohit’s vision, but presents a walled and besieged citadel. The expression in Hanuman’s eyes and face carries the nuances of this encounter, both sides.

I am concluding this post with my invocation of “The Flowering Staff” – a Tree of Life within a tower of Alchemy.

Malkuth (physical body or root) is an almond blossom;  Yesod (personal, foundation) is the nut;  Tifareth (heart and soul) a Rosy Cross, and Daat (collective unconscious) is an opening pine cone – the pineal chakra or third eye.  The staff uniting the worlds is both wand and sword, expressing higher and lower frequencies simultaneously.  A dove flies toward Kether the One Light.

“I am human”.

..

The Flowering Staff 2002

..

..

..

**

For other Sacred India Tarot posts, look under Recent Posts, Search, or Archive of All Posts in the title bar.

Rohit Arya

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He has also written A Gathering of Gods. He is  a corporate trainer, a mythologist and vibrant speaker as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. 

Earlier posts about the deck, including the first 15 Major Arcana archives are in http://aryayogi.wordpress.com   The deck is copyrighted (c) 2011 to the publishers, Yogi Impressions Books pvt, and available also on Amazon and internationally.

..

Jane

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Here are some “Imponderables” from the American sage Robert Adams (21 January 1928 11.30pm – 5 March 1997).  

I woke up this morning, saw something on facebook, and was inspired to celebrate his birthday with these “imponderables” from transcript 85 of his satsangs.  It is called “Ponder This”  – some sips of rare wine to mull along the day while riding on buses and recovering from sore backs and concerned about the world situation, and so forth.

**

A new sketch for Robert’s birthday

“All of your desires, all of your needs, all of your wants are already within you, waiting to be fulfilled and expressed . . .  Ponder this.”

..

..

“All of the masters, the teachers, the saints, the sages you worshipped all your life, whether it is Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Moses, whomever, have always been within you, waiting to be expressed . . . Ponder this.”

..

..

“The only problem you have, that does not allow these sages, your desires, your wants to be expressed for you, is your noisy mind . . . Ponder this.”

..

“Whatever you see in your life right now, good or bad, is a result of your thoughts and your belief.  It has no other reality.  It is not permanent . . . Ponder this.”

..

..

“There is absolutely nothing in this universe that can hurt you, or cause you physical harm, or cause you pain, except when your mind is trained to believe these things . . . Ponder this.”

..

“You have absolutely nothing to do with this world, this universe, or with others.  Yet, at the same time, you are this universe.  You are places and things and others . . . Ponder this.”

..

“No one is responsible for where you are right now, whether you like your position or you do not.  This is where you are Karmically.  This is where you are supposed to be, and all is well . . . Ponder this.”

..

Robert and Dmitri

..

…   To be continued, over the next few days.  I made these imponderables into a little book, and illustrated it, at around the time Robert passed away in Sedona, in 1997.  To read my posts about meeting Robert, type Robert Adams in the search button.

Happy birthday, beloved one.

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

See previous post for more soliloquies from the late American sage and jnani, Robert Adams, who sat with Ramana Maharshi …

..

“You are not what you appear to be.  The world is not what it appears to be.  The universe is not what it appears to be.  Your God is not what it appears to be . . . Ponder this.”

..

“The substratum of all existence is absolute intelligence, choiceless pure awareness.  Therefore, how can there be evil so called, on this earth?

“How can there be sickness, man’s inhumanity to man, lack and limitation on this earth, if the substratum is pure consciousness? . . . Ponder this.”

..

..

“Everything that you behold with your senses is an optical illusion.  . . . Ponder this.”

..

..

“There is only one intelligence, one consciousness, one awareness, one ultimate reality, one life, and you are that . . . Ponder this.”

..

..

“To free yourself from this optical illusion, this maya, the mind has to be controlled, by finding its source . . .  Ponder this.”

..

“You find the source of the mind by following it to its original place of origin.  From where did it arise?  Who gave it birth?  How did you come by a mind?  By inquiring into the ultimate nature of the Self, you attain unconditional freedom . . . Ponder this.”

..

“When one intelligently investigates the source of ‘I’, one then ultimately becomes free from the bondage of ‘I’, and becomes all pervading, omnipresent Consciousness . . . Ponder this.”

..

“Your past only exists because you think about it.  Your fears, your frustrations, only exist because you think about them.  Where would they come from if you didn’t think about them?  If you didn’t bring them into play in the present?  Where would they come from?  And how would they be there?  You are the cause of your problems . . . Ponder this.”

..

“The so-called good things of your life are equal to the bad things of your life.  They are both karmic, and you have created these things at one time or another.  You are now experiencing them.  The only way to remove them from your life is through inquiry:  To whom do they come?  What is their source? . . . Ponder this.”

..

“Who is the one that is pondering all these things?  That one must go !  . . . Ponder this.”

Robert Adams , 1928-1997:  Peace

..

To be Continued

..

..

..

**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/