Objectification - Witnessing - Negation Meditation
(Objectification process aka embodiment or manifestation)
Concepts, arise from thoughts, and together form a bundle that is known as mind. 'Thinking' means 'conceptualizing', creating objects in mind, and this is 'bondage'. Words, basically dualistic and conceptual, are an obstruction to enlightenment. They can only serve the temporary purpose of communication, but thereafter they are a bondage. Getting rid of conceptual thinking means enlightenment, awakening, which cannot be otherwise 'attained', or 'obtained' by any one.
Mind is a bundle of mental objects (seeds) like desires, thoughts, feelings and emotions that we accumulate. It is nothing but a collection of Samskaras, desires arising from contact of the sense-organs with different external objects, feeling aroused by worldly botherations, ideas gathered together from various different objects. These desires, feelings and ideas are not steady—they will be constantly changing. Suddenly some will subside and some others will occupy their places like the waves in the seas. Some old ones will depart from the storehouse, the mind and some new ones will replace them at once. It is also a bundle of habits. The bad habits and prejudices, although hidden by one’s own nature will come up and occupy the surface of the mind as and when opportunity occurs. According to the Vedantic school of philosophy mind is of middling size (same size as that of the body), it is atomic (Anu) as per Nyaya school and Patanjali Maharshi says in Raja Yoga that it is Vibhu (all-pervading).
The objectification process is the continuous creation of mental objects and concepts based on existing likes/dislikes that leads to actions/karma for gain/loss and enjoying the resulting pain/pleasure. This is the wheel of birth, bondage, sufferring, death and rebirth. It is this objectification process that we delusively identify as thinking/feeling mind/self and try to gratify and protect.Constant choiceless awareness this objectification/ embodiment/ manifestation process in real time leads to slowing, calm abiding, purification and complete liberation.
The underlying Peace/Bliss conciousness is covered by continuous conceptualizing, judging, blaming from morning till night conceptualizing, objectivizing, he is doing good, she is doing bad. That is what makes one lose the peace, which is already there. So, it is not a question of achieving peace but it is a question of something leaving that is preventing that peace from being felt.
In meditation, when you try to watch this process and distinguish between the subject and the object in the imaginal space, and become the observer, the following conceptual selfs shows up.
The word I
The Concept I
The Knowledge/Knowing I
The Feeling I
The Existence/Presence I
Emptiness Concept I
Nondual concept I
All of the above have its own trappings of impermanent joy, bliss, peace, freedom etc. which again leads you in a different kind of bondage .
Also, all the above Is can be seen as an object by itself separate from the SUBJECT. Anything that can be objectified is not you and will lead to further bondage and dreams. Use NEGATION "Neti-neti. Not this, not this" to discard all these fake mental objects posing as absolute self.
Then there is THAT which stands neutral behind all this phenomenal/manifestation stuff, which observes it all, and whose existence cannot be objectified, CANNOT BE KNOWN in the way everything else is known (BECAUSE THERE IS NO KNOWER) , but can only be known as you being it, which is a different kind of knowing altogether. It can not be an act of volition. At this point languages and mind withdraws and bow down to the Great Silence.
THAT cannot be seen/perceived as an object with name and form or experienced as a process.
THAT can only ....................
YOU ARE THAT
Sri Ramana Maharshi: Knowing the Self is being the Self, and being means existence, one’s own existence. No one denies one’s own existence any more than one denies one’s eyes, although one cannot see them. The trouble lies with your desire to objectify the Self, in the same way as you objectify your eyes when you place a mirror before them. You have been so accustomed to objectivity that you have lost the knowledge of yourself, simply because the Self cannot be objectified. Who is to know the Self? Can the insentient body know it? All the time you speak and think of your ‘I’, yet when questioned you deny knowledge of it. You are the Self, yet you ask how to know the Self.
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Nisargadatta Maharaj: To avoid being lost in the bewildering diversity of the play of Maya (Lila), said Nisargadatta Maharaj, it is necessary at this stage not to forget the essential unity between the Absolute, and the relative, between the non-manifest and the manifest. Manifestation comes into existence only with the basic concept, 'I am'. The substratum is the noumenon, which is total potentiality. With the arising of 'Iam- ness' it mirrors itself into the phenomenal universe which only appears to be exterior to the noumenon. In order to see itself, noumenon objectifies itself into phenomenon and for this objectivization to take place, space and time are the necessary concepts (in which the phenomena are extended in volume and duration). Phenomenon, therefore, is not something different from noumenon, but it is noumenon itself when objectivized. It is necessary to understand—and never to forget—this essential identity.
Once the concept 'I am' arises, the fundamental unity gets notionally separated, as subject and object, in duality. When impersonal consciousness manifests itself and identifies itself with each physical form the I-notion arises, and this I-notion, forgetting that it has no independent entity, converts its original subjectivity into an object with intentions, wants and desires, and is, therefore, vulnerable to suffering. This mistaken identity is precisely the 'bondage' from which liberation is to be sought.
And what is 'liberation'? Liberation, Enlightenment, or awakening, is nothing other than understanding profoundly, apperceiving — (a) that the seed of all manifestation is the impersonal consciousness, (b) that what is being sought is the unmanifested aspect of manifestation and (c) that, therefore, the seeker himself is the sought!
Summarizing the discourse Maharaj said: Let us get it all together once again.
1. In the original state prevails I am, without any knowledge or conditioning, without attributes, without form or identity.
2. Then, for no apparent reason (other than that it is its nature to do so), arises the thought or concept I am, the Impersonal Consciousness, on which the world appears as a living-dream.
3. Consciousness, in order to manifest itself, needs a form, a physical body, with which it identifies itself and thus starts the concept of 'bondage', with an imaginary objectivization of 'I'. Whenever one thinks and acts from the standpoint of this self-identification, one could be said to have committed the 'original sin' of turning pure subjectivity (the limitless potential) into an object, a limited actuality.
4. No object has an independent existence of its own, and, therefore, an object cannot awaken itself from the living-dream; yet — and this is the joke — the phantom individual (an object) seeks some other object, as the 'Absolute' or 'Reality' or whatever.
5. If this is clear, one must reverse and go back to find out what one originally was (and always has been) before consciousness arose.
6. At this stage comes the 'awakening' that one is neither the body nor even the consciousness, but the unnameable state of total potentiality, prior to the arrival of consciousness (in consciousness, that state, with whatever name, can only be a concept).
7. And so the circle is complete; the seeker is the sought.
In conclusion, said Maharaj, understand profoundly that, as 'I', one is noumenal. The current condition of phenomenonality (the seed of which is consciousness) is a temporary one, like a disease or an eclipse on one's original changeless condition of noumenality, and all that one can do is to go through one's allotted span of living, at the end of which the eclipse of phenomenality is over and noumenality prevails again in its pure unicity, totally unaware of its awareness.
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Maharaj often repeats what he has always been saying: All knowledge is conceptual, therefore, untrue. Apperceive directly and give up the search for knowledge. But how many of you will do so? How many of you understand what I am trying to convey to you? What is the purpose of all my talks? asks Maharaj. It is to make you understand, to see, to apperceive your true nature. But first there is a hindrance to be removed; or rather, a hindrance that must disappear before you can see and be the what-is. All 'thinking', 'conceptualizing', 'objectivizing' must cease. Why? Because what-is does not have the slightest touch of objectivity. It is the subject of all objects, and not being an object it cannot be observed. The eye sees everything else, but cannot see itself.
To the question 'what does one have to do, what efforts must one make to stop conceptualizing', Maharaj's answer is: Nothing; no efforts. Who is to make the effort? What effort did you make to grow from a tiny sperm cell to a full grown baby in your mother's womb? And thereafter, for several months when you grew from the helpless baby to an infant, what efforts did you make to sense your presence? And now you talk of 'efforts', which 'you' must make!
What efforts can an illusory, conceptual 'I' make to know its true nature? What efforts can a shadow make to know its substance?
Realizing one's true nature requires no phenomenal effort. Enlightenment cannot be attained, nor forced. It can only happen, when it is given the opportunity to do so, when obstruction by concepts ceases. It can appear only when it is given a vacant space to appear in. If someone else is to occupy this house, says Maharaj, I must first vacate it. If the conceptual 'I' is already in occupation, how can enlightenment enter? Let the conceptual 'I' vacate and give enlightenment a chance to enter. Even making a positive effort to stop thinking as a method of getting rid of conceptualizing, is an exercise in futility, and so is any other kind of 'effort'! The only effective effort is instant apperceiving of truth. See the false as false and what remains is true. What is absent now will appear when what is now present disappears. It is as simple as that. Negation is the only answer.
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Maharaj began speaking softly. Please, understand. No truth remains as truth the moment it is given expression. It becomes a concept! Add to it the fact that in order to communicate with each other, the words 'I' and 'you', and 'we' and 'they' have necessarily to be used. Thus, the very first thought breaks the unicity and creates duality; indeed it is only in duality that communication can take place. Words themselves further expand the dichotomy. But that is not all. Then the listener, instead of directly and intuitively perceiving what is being communicated, begins the process of relative reasoning with its implicit limitations when applied to the subjective and the noumenal.
Are you with me so far, Maharaj enquired, and then continued. What is relative reasoning? It is the process of reasoning whereby a subject creates in his consciousness objects with opposing qualities or characteristics which could be compared. In other words, the process just cannot work except on the basis of a subject-object duality. Such relative reasoning may be effective, and indeed necessary, for describing objects by comparison. But how can it work with the subjective? That which conceives — the subject — obviously cannot conceive itself as an object! The eye can see everything else except itself!
Is it any wonder therefore, said Maharaj, that you have found yourself bogged down in the mire of ideas and concepts from which you find it impossible to extricate yourself? If you could only see the actual position, you would see what a joke it is!
This is the background. Now, to the real problem: Who is this 'you' that is trying to go back the way he came? No matter how far back you go chasing your shadow, the shadow will always precede you. What is meant by going back? It means going back to the position when there was total absence of consciousness. But — and this is the crux of the matter— so long as there is a negator who keeps on negating and negating (chasing the shadow), 'you' will remain un-negated. Try to apperceive what I am saying, not with your intellect, not as 'you' using your intellect, but just apperceiving as such.
I wonder if I have made myself clear, asked Maharaj.
The professor, however, seemed to have come to a mental obstruction, an impenetrable block, and he said so. Maharaj then told him that this 'block' was an imaginary obstruction caused by an imaginary 'you', which had identified itself with the body. He said: I repeat, there must be a final and total negation so that the negator himself disappears! What you are trying to do is to understand what you are by means of a concept of 'existence', whereas in reality 'I' (you) neither am, nor am not, 'I' am beyond the very concept of existence, beyond the concept of both the positive and the negative presence. Unless this is understood very profoundly you will continue to create your own imaginary obstructions, each more powerful than the earlier one. What you are trying to find is what you already are.
A professor among listeners then asked: Does it mean then that no one can lead me back to what I am? Maharaj confirmed that that was indeed so. You are — you always have been — where you want to be led. Actually, there really is no 'where' that you can be led to. Awareness of this obvious position is the answer—just the apperception; nothing to be done. And the tragic irony is that such awareness and apperception can not be an act of volition. Does your waking state come about by itself, or do you awaken yourself as an act of volition? Indeed, the least effort on 'your' part will prevent what otherwise might have happened naturally and spontaneously. And the joke within the joke is that your deliberately not doing anything will also prevent it happening! It is simple really; 'doing' something and 'not doing' something are both volitional efforts.
There must be a total absence of the 'do-er, the total absence of both the positive and the negative aspects of 'doing'. Indeed, this is true 'surrender'.
When, at the end of the session, the professor and his artist friend were leaving, Maharaj smiled at the artist and asked him whether he would be coming again. The artist paid his respects most humbly, smiled and said that he could not possibly avoid it, and I wondered who had had the real benefit of the talk that morning, the actively articulate professor with his learned intellectuality, or the passively receptive artist with his sensitive insight
