The Sage and the youthful Rama discuss the nature of the perceptible universe. If all is Atma, what is that we perceive? What is that phenomenon? Bala Rama also asks about the awareness in immoblie things, trees, stones, like this.
Question 223: The nature of Pure Consciousness or Undifferentiated Existence
The young Rama – schooled in religion and worship – asks the sage about the forms of Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara. The sage takes the young Rama back to his true self.
Question 220 – 222: The removal of Ignorance
The young Rama has many questions. With patience, Guru Vasishtha explains that perception of the Universe, the body, desires and illusions, pain and suffering are all due to ignorance. Ignorance is removed only by intense effort, contemplation of the Atma. Wisdom – jnana – is the removal of ignorance.
Question 219: The Form of Brahman
The human form is ubiquitous on Earth. So many forms. So many forms of life. So many forms of inanimate matter. So many lifeless forms. It is said over and over again, human life is very rare. What is the real form of the human, what is it we aspire to as we cross the ocean of life, bhavasagaratharanam?
Question 218: The Many and the One
The human condition we are born into – Brahman itself – clothed with illusion and our selected karmas has us see, feel and reacting to many phenomena. We are e-motion, energy set into motion when we tumble out of the womb. How is it that we see all this varigated universe with all its life-forms when there is only One? This is the question the young Rama presents.
Question 216-217: What is the proper inquiry?
It is said that we should spend up to 75% of our time in self-inquiry. Even those who take sanyas are encourage to mingle in society and observe their reactions. This is self inquiry. When you travel in a carriage, do you take the carriage as ‘I’? Look at the Sun. It gets reflected in a small pot filled with water, in a broad river, in a mirror, or a polished pot. For this reason does the Sun feel that all these things are ‘He’? Does it get sad when the pot breaks, or the river gets dry? This is exactly like that. If you take ‘I’ to be the body, then it is all bother! If you don’t take it so, you will shine like the sun, independent of anything else.
Question 210-215: How does non-dual awareness engage in action?
Swami Rama once asked a sishya (disciple), “Tell me one thing you have learned by yourself, that you have not gleaned from anything else, nor any other person!” The sishya was struck dumb, for he had not had any such experience, insight or realisation. Most people are blind to their desires and attachments, fruit of ideations, driven by vasana and samksara, thoughts, impressions and karma brought across from the previous life. It is very hard to stand outside the senses and have self-awareness, like the guru of Arunachala – Ramana Maharshi. We are slaves to the senses, not realising that the Divine is avinasambandhana, divinity that has cloaked itself with maya, illusion.
Question 209: The Story of Muni Vitahavya
The young Rama asks Sage Vasishtha about true knowledge or non-dual cognition. This gives the sage the opportunity to narrate the story of Muni Vitahavya and is interior dialogue with his mind. It is a tour-de-force instruction of the mind (chitta, consciousness) that it has no basis, no reality and the only reality that is, is that of the Atma. Thereafter, one has non-dual cognition, samyak-jnana, samyak-drishti.
Question 208: What is the heart?
Many seek the heart, and many have tribulations of the heart – yet, where is this heart? Where is this place called the “sky of the heart”? There is the physical heart, enlivened by the atma, the power of the soul. What of the spiritual heart? What is this heart?
Question 205-207: What is the vital breath and how is it managed?
The conversation between the young Rama and the sage turns to stabilising chitta-consciousness, which then turns to an exposition on managing the vital breath – prana-vayu.