Atma Darshan Krishna Menon Pdf To Excel
This book has now been translated into English: It is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats: Paperback: ($17.00) (£11.00) Kindle: ($5.94) (£4.59) Visit. Link to entry in See the section on the teaching of. The following article constitutes part 3 of 4 entitled 'I' is a Door'. The other parts may be read at his.
Atma darshan Download atma darshan or read online books in PDF, EPUB, Tuebl, and Mobi Format. Author by: SRI KRISHNA MENON Languange: en. Atma Darshan Krishna Menon Pdf To Word. TELUGUDEVOTIONALSWARANJALISRI RAMA NAVAMI 2. Tumu Narasimha Dasu (1. Lord Rama and always carried the Lord in his heart and soul.
In the two preceding parts of “‘I’ is a door” 1 attention was paid to the remarkable phenomenon that the word ‘I’, may be referring to a limited and bound entity, as well as to That which is infinite Light, sheer Freedom. In the preceding articles both Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj spoke about this phenomenon. Now we will discuss the third one of the ‘Great Three’, the three truly great Advaita teachers of the twentieth century,: Sri Atmananda, or Sri Krishna Menon. Krishna Menon was born in 1883 in Peringara, near Tiruvalla in the state of Travancore ( now a part of today’s Kerala). After completing a study of law he became a Government Advocate and Inspector and District Superintendent of Police. He once said that in his early life he prayed at length to encounter a Sat-guru, a Teacher in the true sense of the word.
One day in 1919 he met such a teacher, one Swami Yogananda, who lived in Calcutta. 2 They met during the course of one night only. Krishna Menon was particularly touched by the utmost humility of this teacher.
He later stated, “This paralyzed my ego.' Because of this encounter, he started a sadhana, which contained both bhakti- and raja-yoga as well as pure jnana. Later on having become a teacher himself, he would pass on to others only the jnana-aspect, and even criticise both the bhakti and raja yoga aspects. 3 In 1923 he came to realise his true Nature. He assumed the name Sri Atmananda and began teaching.
He continued to work in the Police Department up to 1939. Later on, he once said that a profession within the police or the military offers an ideal foundation for a spiritual sadhana, because such a profession offers in particular the maximum obstacles and temptations.
4 In 1959 Atmananda died at Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. One of the ways by which Atmananda’s approach became known in the West was through the book The Nature of Man According to the Vedanta by John Levy. He was an English pupil of Atmananda who had stayed regularly with him.
Levy rephrased Atmananda’s typical approach in a somewhat more Western style; though he did retain Atmananda’s particular and unique way of dealing with logic. 5 I got to know of Atmananda while a pupil of the late Alexander Smit, a Dutchman who had been a pupil of Atmananda’s pupil Wolter Keers.
Alexander gave me a copy of two small books by Atmananda, Atma-Darshan and Atma-Nirvriti. 6 These books are Atmananda’s brief summary of his teachings; they have been written in his mother tongue Malayalam and translated into English by himself. For two years Alexander Smit thoroughly dealt with these books. I am grateful having had the privilege to attend to these meetings; owing to this opportunity I became familiar with Atmananda’s specific approach. What is specific to his approach? It is his own special linguistic usage, his particular logic (or ‘subjective’ logic, see note 5), his way of reducing all things to their ultimate nature, and in particular his entire emphasis on what he called the ‘I-Principle’.
To him this ‘I-Principle’ was a synonym of Ultimate Reality, the Absolute – there is nothing which precedes it; it is what is truly meant with the word ‘I’. He said for instance: “Pure consciousness and deep peace are your real nature. Having understood this in the right manner, you can well give up the use of the words ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Happiness’ and invariably use ‘I’ to denote the Reality. Don’t be satisfied with only reducing objects into Consciousness. Don’t stop there. Reduce them further into the ‘I-Principle’. So also reduce all feelings into pure Happiness and then reduce them into the ‘I-Principle’.” 7 Although Atmananda loved to use words like Consciousness and Happiness in order to refer to the Ultimate, a quote like this shows that ultimately he preferred the term ‘I-Principle’ (he once even said that compared to the I-Principle the word Consciousness can be called theory!
He did so because he considered that the word ‘I’ has the least chance of being misunderstood. Everything that can be perceived can be subject to misunderstanding, however that which can be called ‘yourself’, that which cannot be perceived, ‘I’, cannot cause misunderstanding. 9 He considered the I-Principle to be everybody’s true goal, because it is in fact contained in each endeavour.
10 The use of the word ‘Principle’ by Atmananda should not be considered a mental or philosophical attempt to understand or frame the ‘I’. It is his way of using a word for what ‘I’ is in itself, I as such. What ‘I’ as such really is, precisely, is prior to each mental movement or framing.
With expressions like ‘in itself’ and ‘as such’ language stops short. Here language arrives at its limits.
Something is referring to itself. Something as such does not change the next moment into something else. Installer Windows Xp Asus Eee Pc 701. It is the constant factor in the ever changing, it is its own true nature. It does not rely on anything else. Atmananda frequently used the Sanskrit word svarupa, true nature, which referred to this constant factor.
He used it together with a number of words that he considered its synonym, such as ‘background’, ‘content’, ‘substrate’, ‘pure state’ and ‘natural state’. Atmananda used these various words as indications for one and the same thing. The trouble with language is that each attempt to refer to the essential nature of something can, as quick as a flash, be misunderstood. For instance a term like ‘the essence’ can suggest the presence of a tiny ‘being’ or ‘core’ within a more coarse form.
As if you might discover something’s essence by enlarging it more and more using a microscope, continuously looking to what is inside the core. Something of this suggestion repeatedly arises in popular commentaries on the famous ‘You Are That’ passage in the Chandogya Upanishad, in which Uddalaka teaches his son by splitting a fruit further and further.
Atmananda was a master in emphasising the mistake that can possibly lies lie in this short-sightedness. For this kind of enquiry will always get trapped in what he called the ‘objective’. Atmananda used the terms objective and subjective in a way that is uncommon in the West. To him objective was not an indication for the impartial, but for everything that can be observed, everything that is an object to the senses and thoughts. The same goes with subjective: here he did not mean a view or opinion coloured by a person, but that which is merely Subject, — that which can not be observed by definition, and which by Itself constantly illumines whatever is the object.
11 This means that the enquiry into something ‘inside’ as a findable ‘essence’ or ‘core’ is incommensurate with any insight in the Ultimate. Hence, one cannot say that the modern research of physics and true self-enquiry are one and the same thing, as is suggested nowadays in some advaitic circles. Cara Install Realtek Hd Audio Manager Windows 7.
Physics will always remain the field of the ‘objective’. This is likewise the case when the concept ‘all-encompassing’ is used to express notions such as Cosmos, Space or the Infinite.
Atmananda once gave us a useful indication or insight: “Space ( Akasha), though not perceptible to the senses, is certainly conceivable by the mind. So it is really objective in nature. If we take out of Space this last taint of objectivity, it ceases to be dead and inert, becomes self-luminous and it immediately shines as its background, the Reality.” 12 Everything in Atmananda’s teaching is about the Subject. It refers exclusively to That which knows. That which knows is not a Knower (not a He or She), but Knowing as such ( Jnana). He named this 'Knowing as such' also as ‘Experience’ ( Anubhava), meaning Experiencing as such, and also Feeling as such ( Rasa), — all three are synonyms of the Wonder which is in fact ‘I’ am.
Take for instance the following: “The ‘I-Principle’ is the only Experience that one can have. Even though he be an ignorant man, he can only experience Himself.
(.) If the experience has many objects, it is no Experience. You are superimposing objects upon your Experience.
Your Experience is one and the same, always”; and “I have already proved to you that no one can know or experience anything other than one’s own Self, the ‘I-Principle’. (.) The only experience is ‘I’, and ‘I’ is the only word which denotes experience”; and “The ‘I-Principle’ is the only thing that exists; ‘I’ requires no proof either. The objective cannot exist independent of this ‘I’, and therefore the ‘I-Principle’ is the only ultimate Reality.” 13 This radical way of speaking, in which virtually everything can be reduced to That which knows, implies that objects need not be ignored or removed, but can be considered pointers to Reality. In order to recognize the Self, most texts in the Advaita tradition consider it a must for a student to learn not to pay attention to sensory objects. However, Atmananda made it clear that as a matter of fact, nothing is an obstacle.
One is never really swallowed by an object, or hindered by an obstacle. Nothing needs to be removed. “Nothing hides consciousness.” 14 The so-called ego too, is not an enemy; on the contrary, Atmananda said it is a help: “Even the much despised ego is a great help to the realization of the Truth. The presence of the ego in man, though in a distorted form, is infinitely better than the absence of it, as for example in a tree”; and “It is the whole ego that seeks liberation and strives for it. When it is directed to the ultimate Reality, the material part automatically drops away and the Consciousness part alone remains over as the real ‘I-Principle’. This is liberation.” 15 Atmananda's emphasis on radical non-duality does not mean that he construed that in the day to day contact between people, the ego has already totally dissolved, and that this was also the case in the contact his students had with him as their teacher.
In other words, he did not have the illusion that that which he outlined to be ultimately true, was already true for his students or readers in their activities. Thus, he did not think it to be helpful at all to honour the ‘differencelessness’ or non-duality in his actual activities as teacher and police officer. He considered it a pitfall to shout all too soon that ‘everything is Consciousness’ in a worldly or relational environment, and he continued pointing out ‘difference’ as long as this was the true state of affairs to the student. Thus he considered advaita, non-duality, not applicable to the relationship between teacher and student.
“Think of your Guru only in the dualistic sphere”, he said, “apply your heart wholly to it and get lost in the Guru. Then the Ultimate dances like a child before you.” 16 And moreover: “Advaita is only a pointer to the Guru. You do not reach Advaita completely until you reach the egoless state. Never even think that you are one with the Guru. It will never take you to the Ultimate.
On the contrary, that thought will only drown you. Advaita points only to the Ultimate.” 17 Atmananda considered a devotional attitude to be a great help. But in an instruction he made it clear that such an attitude is only appropriate towards your own Guru. “That particular Person through whom one had the proud privilege of being enlightened, that is the ONLY FORM which one may adore and do Puja to, to one’s heart’s content, as the person of one’s Guru. It is true that all is the Sat-Guru, but only when the name and form disappear and not otherwise.