> Someone asked:
> What is the TM/MMY-approved sanskrit word for intellect?
In response, choices were offered: buddhi and pragya.
Buddhi = intellect
Pragya = sprouting (pra) of knowledge (gya - as in 'gyan')
Rtam bhara pragya = that most subtle level where knowledge sprouts (1st
appears) in only its radiant state of truth, where name and form are not
yet separate, where knowledge is immediate and pure (not yet separated
from the source), where intellect has hardly become individuated, where
there is no gap between desiring to know something and knowing it, where
the knowledge is, as if, inherent in the question or desire itself.
Dr. Pete asked about how that rtam is experienced:
It can be experienced in at least two ways:
1. When a specific desire for knowledge arises and is instantly and com-
pletely fulfilled - no gap, no waiting, no partial answer, no lack.
Complete identity of question/desire and answer/fulfillment.
2. As a more general experience of omniscience, of being omniscient, of
"sitting" in that place where all knowledge is available, as you need
it (even if no specific question/desire is arising at that moment).
Maharishi Patanjali lists this second one as one of the final siddhis
in the Yoga Sutras - the siddhi of omniscience and omnipotence (III-50).
But first a little preface, before Patanjali takes the stage:
Maharishi once told us an interesting thing. He said (paraphrased):
It's not difficult to be established in the Self, sitting in some cave
in the Himalayas. It's all silence there, nothing challenges the Self.
But the real test of how well-established the Self is - is if it is
maintained while you're sitting in a dirty taxi, stuck in a traffic
jam in Manhattan, behind a fume-belching bus. Self-realization, he
said, has to be tested, tempered, in the world of activity. Only
then will the fear of "losing it" be dissolved. We have to see that
nothing in the relative - no negativity, no emotion, no thought, no
activity, no 'impurity', no pleasure, no pain - can challenge it.
That's one motive for the expansion that leads Self-realization to ma-
ture in God-realization (C.C. to G.C.) - to test the stability of the
silent Self, to see if there's anything, any experience, that can "bring
it down". And the ultimate test is to experience the biggest possible
experience, the experience of God/Goddess. Can the gripping power of
that ultimate experience - that vastness, that divinity, that bliss,
that intensity of activity, that fullness of power (omnipotence), that
fullness of knowledge (omniscience) - challenge the Self?
For an example of an overshadowing knowledge experience:
Picture in the Gita, when Arjuna asks Lord Krishna to show Arjuna His
true nature, His real form. Krishna opens His mouth and reveals to
Arjuna the vision of the whole creation - infinite universes, every
relative value from the darkest to the lightest, life/death, creation/
destruction... Imagine having that experience and not being oversha-
dowed. To Arjuna, at that stage of his journey to full realization
at the hands of Lord Krishna, it WAS overwhelming, and Arjuna begged
Krishna to revert to his pleasant human form.
Now think of that verse in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (III-50), toward the
end of all the siddhis, where he lays out the siddhi for omniscience
and omnipotence, the "ultimate" siddhi (because if you have all know-
ledge and all power you could do any other imaginable siddhi!). The
experience of sitting in that place of omniscience and omnipotence is
the experience of being God. You can DO anything or KNOW anything -
instantly, effortlessly, at the slightest impulse of thought/desire.
It is very tempting, very difficult to let go of, to "come out" of!
Yet the next verse (III-51) says: "By renunciation of that (omniscience
and omnipotence) even, comes kaivalya (unity, peace)...". Imagine vol-
untarilly giving up all power and all knowledge, of not being gripped
by those, of not yielding to temptation even when offered to be God/God-
dess. The Self, even when tempted by the ultimate in the world of boun-
daries, stands firm in its dedication to remaining Self-referral.
So the Self has to come out, play in the relative, establish it's stabi-
lity in the face of anything in the relative, in order to take the final
steps. The tender Self eventually has to become the bold Self. And rtam
bhara pragya is a test of that boldness.
Namaste,
PARA - THE CENTER FOR REALIZATION and THE RELATIONSHIP INSTITUTE
Michael Dean Goodman, Ph.D., D.D., Director
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