Judy: "First you say the Absolute can be found only by the mind ceasing to exist; then you say when the mind ceases to exist at the end of the mantra trail, there can be no finding of the Absolute. Huh??"
Edg: Let the poetry begin. Shotgun time. Hopefully a pellet or two will hit the target. I will take on the cloak of authority for convenience only. If my words are incongruent with Ramana's, then I hope someone will point such out to me. I'm a goodly intended messenger, not an authority, so, beware, I might be paving another road to hell. But you knew that. "The Absolute" cannot be an "object to be found." No thought of it can be it. Map vs territory thingy. "The manifest ego" tautologically asserts that it "is manifest," because it has the thought "I'm manifest" and identifies with the thought completely. That's a linear expression for what happens "all at once." The intellect (a subset of ego) worshippingly insists that, logically speaking, since ego has manifested, well, it must be from somewhere, and that somewhere is the Absolute -- BUT the mind cannot symbolize (model with neurons) the Absolute by any processing with any hope of completeness. The ego cannot know what it is talking about no matter how cleverly it symbolizes and processes. What "the mind comes up with," as a symbol, that, indeed, can be "found." Most thoughts, as symbols, as processes, are jarringly unfit for the role, but OM is "almost perfect" and can be experienced, and it wins the Absolute's symbol-contest "by default." But OM is no Jack Kennedy. And if ANY symbol is "refined" -- that is, if any buzzing process is attended to at ever more subtle levels, it will be resolved eventually to being a variant of amness' potential -- a color in a Being-spectrum. But if that process, or any other process, is attended to "just a titch more," all colors of the spectrum "turn out to be 'more' whiteness." The mantra disappears. All thoughts end except one. Perfect amness prevails, and it belts out this one big OM note -- as if it were Pavarotti and deserved to put its massive bulk in front of the priest, Absolute, when it sings and hogs the entire spotlight, but the priest is the one "whispering to Pavarotti from behind" like Cyrano -- writing his music (emotions) and his lyrics (concepts.) (Hee hee: Sudden thought, picture Pavarotti singing Hammer's "Can't touch this." With gold lamay balloon pantaloons, natch.) "Mind" is exactly and only "a flow of thoughts." It is typical to find the "mind" defined as "the container" of thoughts, but Advaita teaches that if no thoughts are present, no mind can be "found," "sensed," or "have any basis for separate status." The mind is like noise of a train -- it comes with the train, is of no use to the train, but the train can't move without it. (If one wants to talk about thoughts, "mind," as a concept, is handy -- like how the concept "square root of minus one," an imaginary number, helped Newton and Leibnitz invent the calculus. They "inserted the Absolute" as a fudge factor to "correctify" their math, cuz without a leash on the infinite, specificity's salt doll takes a deep dive. Later, Godel could be heard laughing, "You guys left out a lot. Silence for instance." And, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell are spinning in their graves crying to have one more go at this discussion.) "Amness" is one thought being processed -- OM. OM -- the primal ego. God. It is perfect. Sacred. Balanced. No parts. Point value. Psychic singularity. Big Bang before sound was invented and ready-and-able-but-not-itching-to manifest. Peace. Seemingly it is an experience of silence -- if one winks and ignores the shrieking OM. Amness is a symbol -- a processing of a nervous system that re-MINDs us of the Absolute. Primal, not yet sinful, amness is ego is God. When we have amness solely, we've transcended, become solely soul, and soul is realized as angel hearted individuality, sinless because no ego yet im-person-ates God. Only after the amness-thought has "passed" (and thoughts other than amness begin,) do we hear the ego speak -- then, amness explodes into every possible thought, and the idiosyncratic nervous system's choosing mechanisms decide which thought to have first, then next, then next. Daisy petals. God loves me, God loves me not. In samadhi, no mind. "Mind" is the word used for the supposed "canvas/space" on/in which thoughts occur, but this is a contrivance borne of a necessity -- we say it must exist in order to "explain" how a "stream" can "flow" and doncha know, it's gotta have some banks or other boundaries to flow within. The "mind" is never there; like a burnt rope's mirage of "snake," the mind's "real status" is only a placeholder-concept for an ununderstandable mystery -- the Absolute. But as long as the concept "snake" is there, the rope's amness is interpreted to be snake to its core. Snake colored glasses. When thinking happens, the ego identifies with each thought -- assumes it is each thought passing through -- this is merely a nano-incarnation as object of consciousness. Each thought is another horse bet upon eagerly as "my horse," and then, utterly fickle branch jumping monkey, the ego identifies with the next thought, and so on. It is a serial con artist who proposes marriage to each next process, then, outrageously offers the diamond ring to the very next thought as which it instantly pedestals as the BEST symbol-of-me. Talk about calloused knees! The ego bends to anything and begs for an endless supply of anythings. As long as they are flowing, the ego "knows" it exists. The Absolute can not be found, but amness fools everyone that it, ever so find-able, is the Absolute. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught me that if one transcends, one's taste for outer expressions lessens until only amness can capture one's identification. (The samskaras become burnt seeds so nothing titillates and imbalances amness into autoerotic manifestation any more.) Then, while transcended, at some point, even the seed of "wanting to be" is burnt and identity switches off of "I'm amness" and from that point on, we cannot use words, but if I'm forced to, I would write, "identity switches over to the Absolute." Funnily enough, nothing changes because of this. That means No Thing is changed by this switch. But oh what a difference, eh? The first mountain's realness is inferior compared to the mountain found after "no mountainness" is grokked. Switching to the Absolute doesn't invalidate or augment amness. It's like that Ronald Reagan joke where he says, befuddled as always, "I had this long role in a Broadway play. It ran for eight years! I was playing the President of the United States." Amness merely has to be gently told, by Nancy, "You really were!" Suddenly, Ronnie knows what he was missing all those years! SELF VALIDITY. Authority. When identity switches, amness suddenly becomes the Absolute -- Turq becomes correct, but not until then. Until then, amness doesn't know what it's symbolizing. Parrot must become Para. See? Parrots sing, but Para zings! After enlightenment, amness tries to come up with better symbols for the Absolute -- this is called "progress towards God consciousness." That is, the nervous system refines and refines it appreciation of thought until the ritam level is the work-a-day norm. That's the profit of propheting. Brahma travels down the lotus stalk, and fails but yet wins a freeing clarity that there's no end to this refining process. As Maharishi Mahesh Yogi puts it, the guru whispers, "That's it. All is within your ken, so stop this incessant seeking. Relax. You're there!" Once the nervous system stops the refining, unity dawns. Since it's all God, what's not to like? So if everything is as blissful as anything else, there's no reason to look anywhere especially. Amness now starts the living of that unity -- an enlightened Turq will be seen dancing in the square and blasting holiness like a gamma ray burst. Singing, "I told you so in the first place." When the two sides of the brain finally fall in love -- two kids kissing after a long Hatfield and McCoy battle -- the one says, "You're God." The other coos, "No, YOU'RE God." Finally they shut up and hold hands until they can't feel where one hand begins and the other ends. Bhakti melds. But after the identity switch, it's not a case of two-things-being-one, (unity's truth,) it has become one thing not being able to think it is two. Amness volunteers to be blind so that cannot cajole itself into any identification with the whiteness' colors -- thus it cannot distract, besmirch, obfuscate, mask, or impersonate its Self. Self is Self. Brahman consciousness. Judy: Let me ask you something, though. Where do you (if you do) fit Brahman into your scheme? Edg: I hold that the word Brahman is best used as a synonym for the Absolute. But, I see it used as if it were a thing -- say, Purusha or even Prakriti. I try not to use Sanskrit terms because of the long history of those words as they've passed through the various millennia and schools of thought. Consult Ramana for the nuances in Sanskrit terminology -- I'm not a Sanskrit scholar in any sense. Except, you know, like all of us, I've memorized a ton of verses, and so I can fool some folks some of the time that I know Sanskrit. Edg
