9/15/15
Darsanamala Introduction
Despite
a number of our stalwarts having other plans, last night’s initial exploration
of our new study consisted of a substantial and beaming group of dear friends.
My optimistic leanings were proved to have been overly restrained. The class
was spectacular! The good work we all have put in for many years to really
grasp the purport of the teachings will serve us very well in rising to the
challenge of this masterwork of spiritual psychology.
This
is probably the fourth time we at the Portland Gurukula have gone through
Darsanamala, certainly the third, though only a couple of us in the present
group have done it even once already. But the coherence of the teachings
support each other very well, and we now have a very solid background, as well
as an advanced level of trust and respect, that should make this a terrific
excursion.
I
pointed out that this was likely the only Darsanamala study group on the
planet; certainly the only one with the depth we intend to accord to it. In a
sane world, a book like this would be read and admired in every town and
village, but so far that has not been its fate. Our small group, expanded via
internet to a fair number, is the only effort of its kind in the world, as far
as we know. Considering the decades of deep contemplation given to the subject
by the three gurus before us, we are being served a rich banquet indeed. The
intent of this introductory class was to make us fully aware of the profundity
of our endeavor. It is like standing on the doorstep of a great temple or
monument, preparing to go inside and explore. In my mind it was the Ellora
temple, carved from the top down out of a single mass of mountain, which sits
in my psyche like a permanently ongoing psychedelic experience.
We
read out highlights from the Introduction, rounded off by Don Berry’s
appreciation of Nitya in the last two paragraphs of the Foreword. There is much
that is helpful in both essays, so reading the whole is recommended, if you
have the time.
Deb
started the class off by recollecting the mirror Nataraja Guru installed at the
Somanahalli Gurukula. Though it was eventually broken by monkeys, it honored
the radical installation of Narayana Guru, who sited a mirror in the place of
the deity in the core of a temple, so when you made your way into the depths
and looked there for God you saw your own face. Such sacrilege! Such genius!
Shock waves reverberated from the act all over South India. Even now it is hard
to imagine that God is truly within us, that we are all divine. Trying to get
that message across keeps good gurus busy for endless lifetimes.
Throughout
the evening we touched on several of the main themes of the work. The uniting
of materialist and spiritual attitudes is handled with great brilliance in the
early going. The way concepts are developed and take hold of the psyche, and
how to cope with them, is perhaps the most important strand. The universality
of the ground of existence, here termed the Absolute, with its attendant ideals
of tolerance, compassion, humility, and so on, will be explored in depth.
Jay
recalled working on a medical problem (a cure for muscular dystrophy) and how
scientists suffer from the same kinds of limitations as religious people. He
brought in the analogy of the blind men and the elephant, since each faction
working on it was taking a different tack, and each faction defended its turf.
If you believed that your way was right and all the rest wrong—an attitude
pretty much ubiquitously required for gainful employment—you missed the
elephant entirely. Yet if you could combine all the different pieces each group
was privy to, you had a much better chance of getting a clear picture of the
animal you were groping with.
In
science as well as religion, a simple change of attitude can have a major
impact. Embracing rather than rejecting wins the prize. Discerning the core
reality that we universally share makes it easily possible, converting conflict
into amity coupled with broad tolerance.
Andy
pointed out that we think of scientists as knowing their subject, but they are
actually peering into the unknown. I added that if we are sure we already know
a subject, then we don’t really look for anything new. It’s the humility of
being aware of our ignorance that prompts us to learn and grow. We could also
add that gurus are expected, like scientists, to be experts in their field,
brimming with finalized knowledge. But having that kind of excessive
self-esteem can be deadly. One of Nitya’s best qualities was his continuing
search for truth, and his frank acknowledgment of his delight in learning more.
This
summer, Roby Rajan ran across an English language magazine in a Marxist
bookstore in Kerala dedicated to Nitya Chaitanya Yati, and was kind enough to
procure a copy for Deb and me, as well as Nancy Y. It mostly reprints some of
Nitya’s shorter essays, but there are a few articles assessing his role in the
lives of those who knew him.
MD
Nalapat makes an important distinction in the article Humanising the Godman:
India has no shortage of
Godpersons, and indeed, the gifting of such personages to foreign lands is a
principal export of our country. To their followers these individuals have
divine qualities that place them far above humanity as a mass. Some—Nityananda
comes to mind—may use such faith in order to live lifestyles that may seem far
from spiritual. Others, such as Sri Sri Ravishankar or Mata Amritananda Mayi,
ensure that institutions get created which help hundreds of thousands of
individuals in their lives. Both are regarded as divine by devotees. However, a
century ago, Sri Narayana Guru entered on a different trajectory, rejecting the
notion that he was endowed with special qualities. The Guru saw all human
beings as equals of each other, and disregarded the barriers that practices
such as caste had instituted in order to segregate human beings into
self-sealing pools.
Sri
Narayana Guru had a message that was magnificent in its very simplicity, and
through his teachings and the example of his own frugal life changed the lives
of millions by giving them the confidence that they could achieve anything
other human beings could….
Nitya
Chaitanya Yati was a seer-philosopher in the tradition of Sri Narayana Guru. He
rejected any pomp or show, moving effortlessly among his many admirers both in
India as well as abroad as one among them.
Those
who sought to give him a more exalted status were gently corrected. He remained
entirely faithful to the elite-less credo of his teacher, Sri Narayana Guru.
Very
nice, MD! It is a curious paradox that by exalting a person as exceptional and
different, which is meant to increase their mystique, their ability to
influence ordinary people in meaningful ways is severely diminished. The
crucial idea that we are all created in the same fashion despite all our
superficial variations gives us hope that we can excel no matter what our
circumstances. It is one of the key building blocks of the Gurukula philosophy,
as well as of Vedanta itself.
We
discussed this in the light of the mahavakya
Jay brought up: tat tvam asi, That
thou art. The meditation it inspires is on how we belong, not how badly we fall
short. Deb reminded us that That comes first so that we merge into it. Nitya
warned us at times that if it is translated, as it often is, as You are That, by
putting you first there is a
possibility of getting a swelled head. The glory of the Absolute is thus
appended to your ordinary self. It is much better to append our ordinary self
to the Absolute, to give That precedence. Since even a swelled ego is far less
than one percent of our total being, we are better off to let the infinitely
greater part of ourselves do the heavy lifting.
One
of my favorite parts of the Introduction is where it takes the image of the
garland and extrapolates several sweet analogies from it. There is yet another
garland image that deserves recognition, found in Narayana Guru’s revision of
the time-honored rope and snake metaphor. A meter long piece of old rope lying
in semidarkness on a jungle path is essentially worthless, though it still has
the power to elicit terror when only partially perceived. The unfortunate (and
likely unintentional) implication is that ordinary reality is worthless, like a
piece of discarded detritus. Narayana Guru, in verse 20 of Atmopadesa Satakam,
changed the image to a garland
mistaken for a snake. Therefore life is no longer meaningless and crude, it is
gorgeously beautiful, something to love and admire. Yet in low light we may
still mistake it for something lethal and terrifying. It’s a subtle difference,
but almost infinitely important. In the Guru’s philosophy we are not trying to
escape the tedium of life, which leads to entrenched spiritual poverty, but to
embrace it in all its magnificence, and even enhance its beauty with our unique
personal contribution. In the process we are raised to a more delightful level
of functioning.
Andy
shared some nice reminiscences about his time in India with Nitya, and
hopefully later he will write some of it up to share in the notes. Possibly due
to Berry’s closing paragraph in the Foreword, Andy talked about the value of
silence. Berry wrote:
As in all Nitya’s works, Psychology of Darsana Mala
is infused
with his characteristic compassion for the student. His commentary and
examination are never merely for the sake of intellectual fancy. His eye is
always on direct realization of the unitive life, approached through the mind
but not grasped by it.
Andy
recalled a time when he was driving around with Nitya and they pulled into the
Alwaye Ashram. Nitya was immediately surrounded by the Swamis, but there wasn’t
much talk. Silence permeated the place, situated as it is on the banks of a
gorgeous river. Andy was profoundly moved, and tuned in to the underlying
stillness and peace of existence. He felt this epitomized the spirit of South
India. In his retelling you could get a barely audible sense of the bliss he
experienced there.
Nitya
radiated stillness, even in the midst of activity. I remembered how he was like
a bastion of strength and solidity against which my mind flung its chaotic
projections, seeking for a comparable steadiness. Having Nitya as a contrasting
pole to my psyche heightened awareness of my own imbalances, which stood out
like a fistful of sore thumbs. Of course, chafing about them only made them worse,
so the trick was to let go of all resistance and surrender to the peace of the
environment. Being in Fernhill with him provided ample opportunities to calm
down and become centered. Once in a while it worked. Andy’s special fondness
for that day in Alwaye was undoubtedly one of the occasions when he
successfully merged into the silence for a time, an almost unbearably intense
nothingness.
We
did some review about subjects like the horizontal and vertical that we have
covered extensively already, so I’ll not repeat any of it now. Regarding
dualities in general, Paul recalled a quote from Nitya that Spirit is self
actualized as nature and nature is self realized as spirit, unifying the
dichotomy.
We
will keep our fingers crossed that Andy shares his memory of witnessing Nitya
channeling part of the sixth darsana of Darsanamala, which he related with
gripping intensity. Speaking of channeling, one of the true channelings of
information from elsewhere that I have personally experienced was selecting That
Alone as the title for Nitya’s book on Atmopadesa Satakam. Actually it selected
itself, emerging from the depths to impress itself on my conscious mind. Over
and over it has struck me as perfectly right. I was reminded of it again when
reading from the Introduction, that in Darsanamala “the supreme teaching and
keynote of the whole [is] tat eva sat,
“That alone exists.” It seems that once again our subject is That alone, or
That Alone. Aum.
Part
II
Nataraja
Guru’s An Integrated Science of the
Absolute (hereafter ISOA) includes the original Darsanamala commentary done
by Swami Vidyananada under the direction of Narayana Guru himself. I will
include a streamlined version with each verse as we go along. I would include
all of it, except that the diacritics don’t copy properly, and the result is a
total mess. I will try to fix most of the problems in what I do send. If you
want the full version, which includes the original Sanskrit and a word by word
translation, you can have recourse to the book. In the inimitable way the book
was brought out, it is a challenge to find this essential part of each chapter,
which is not listed in the Table of Contents. It appears right before the
Epilogue of each chapter.
For
now I’m only including Nataraja Guru’s introduction to this section.
The
complexity of thought represented by these comments is astonishing. You really
get the sense that Narayana Guru was speaking from the clouds, struggling
mightily to put his ineffable insights into words. Then Nataraja Guru dedicated
his whole soul to expressing the ideas in academic terms, and finally Guru
Nitya threw his whole soul into making the import comprehensible to a dedicated
seeker of truth in the modern, more casual sense. Thus the cream of three long
lifetimes of concentrated contemplation has gone into the masterwork we are
once again turning our attention to.
Nataraja Guru begins:
(A
Garland of Visions of the Absolute)
Foreword
What follows here is a transliteration and
translation from the original Sanskrit of Narayana Guru's Darsanamala. It is followed by a short commentary by his disciple
Swami Vidyananda who took instruction each day from Narayana Guru so that he
could strictly adhere to his own commentary. Each day the Guru had the
commentary read back to him for correction and approval. Those phrases which
happened to be extraneous were deleted while the rest of the commentary
received his approval.
The present writer has been
an eye-witness to this co-operative effort between Narayana Guru and his disciple.
The feature of teacher-disciple collaboration undoubtedly enhances the value of
the commentary, however brief it might seem to anyone trying to understand the Darsanamala.
Narayana Guru also tacitly
indicates the double-sidedness of the responsibility for his work by a verse he
wrote as envoi for the commentary,
which reads:
Let this
commentary called didhiti (gloss)
Coming from my disciple Vidyananda
Be looked upon graciously by the wise
As belonging to one of
tender years.
The Guru's own
hand is clearly visible in
just those phrases where subtle epistemological or methodological aspects have
to be initially glossed over, at least tentatively, in view of further
clarifications such as what we are attempting in this book. The rest of the
commentary has only an incidental value for us, and is not so important. We
have taken some liberty with it, taking care, however, to put whatever
additions we make within brackets. We have, on the other hand, tried to keep as
close to the original when we suspected Narayana Guru's own handiwork, so as
not to spoil the perennial value of the interpretations and intentions coming
directly from him.
I hereby recognise my
deepest gratitude to Narayana Guru as also my indebtedness to my fellow
disciple, the late Swami Vidyananda, whose permission for following the broad
lines of this commentary can only now be sought by way of courtesy. Wherever
further clarifications have been felt to be necessary, the present writer has
taken care to throw some light on them, either in the Prologue of each chapter
or in the Epilogue.
In
the
present commentary, translated by us, we have tried to adhere as strictly as
possible to Narayana Guru's own words expressed through Swami Vidyananda. Swami
Vidyananda claims no credit for himself in the matter of being responsible for
this commentary and attributes almost the whole of it, as he openly states in
the preface to the Malayalam edition, even the naming of the title, didhiti meaning
`throwing light', to
Narayana Guru. He especially states that the Guru made the comments first and
these, when put on paper, were then corrected more than once by him. In the
light of these circumstances, it would be safe to assume that the purport of
these comments, though not the presented form, belongs to Narayana Guru
himself.
*
* *
For
the record I’m including the bits of historical interest I wrote in the class
invitations:
On checking up, we started our last journey through
Nitya’s superb Psychology of Darsanamala exactly ten years
ago: September, 2005. It seems fitting that we revisit it next. Beverley is
digitizing the book for us, and I’ve been proofreading the docs, and they are
as amazing as we all remember. It’s a perfect format for a weekly reflection on
the depths of consciousness.
Darsanamala was Narayana Guru’s last
word on the
evolution of consciousness. According to the introduction, it is “a
thoroughgoing exposition of psychological states from the origin of individual
consciousness to its extinction in nirvana.” As always with Nitya, the emphasis
of his commentary is on the practical application of the spiritual insights the
work overflows with.
Regarding the Introduction:
This was my first major piece of writing, and it was
as close to giving birth as a man is likely to get. I had gotten the historical
details from Nitya, and had spent several years very carefully editing his
notebook. My personal life was under terrific stress. All these factors swirled
around in me for several months before I took pen and paper (no computers yet!)
out to the garden, knowing that time was running out. Nitya had written to tell
me it was now or never. After a while, very much like having birth
contractions, the whole thing began to spew out. With some cleaning up, it
emerged fully ready for the press.
My weekly class notes are a kind of
mini version of
this, though more like giving birth to tadpoles. It would be an insult to those
who really do bear children to compare those minor productions with what they
go through. But this first big effort—bigger than me, for sure—gave me a faint
sense of what actual childbirth might be like. I am happy that this child,
riding on the shoulders of Nitya's amazing accomplishment, continues to frolic
in the rarified atmosphere surrounding the Gurukula and its friends.
At the time of writing this was Nitya’s magnum opus.
Now there are several. I don’t know if it’s fair to have three or four magnum
opuses, but it’s nonetheless true. How lucky we are!
This is a
serious study. Please give it your
concentrated attention and, as always, share your best thoughts and questions
when possible.
Part
III
As
those of us with firsthand memories of Nitya roar toward oblivion, it is
worthwhile to set down whatever we can about the life of the extraordinary
gentleman we happened to be associated with. Here’s my best recollection of
Andy’s story in class about the production of the present work:
Andy
was in London in 1981 with Nitya, who was dictating some of the Darsanamala to
Nancy, who, I think it is safe to say, has taken more dictation than the rest
of the Gurukula combined. Andy remembers waking up at five o’clock, which he
considers an ungodly hour. He grabbed a cup of coffee and went into Nitya’s
room. Nitya was sitting crosslegged on his bed, with his long hair and beard flowing
out in all directions, like a sunflower. Andy was instantly aware that the guru
was looking straight at him but not seeing him. He gaze was boring right
through him. It was as if he was possessed. He began pouring out a long,
intense, highly coherent exposition covering the subject of the hour. As was so
often the case, the result emerged quite close to its finalized form. After
this spine-tingling exposition, Nitya relaxed, resumed an air of normalcy, and
quietly said, “Okay.” Andy stumbled from the room in a daze, certain he had
been a witness to a transcendental experience, some kind of celestial
transmission.
Nancy
has kindly added her recall of the time:
It was 1981 (March?), after we (Guru, Andy, Peter, myself, and
some of the time, Kamalabai Genard!!) were in the Netherlands for the seminar
Guru was a presenter for. More than once after we left Portland (where he did a
lot of the work on DM) he mentioned that he was not yet done but that the time
wasn’t right. Then, when we were in London, it was. We worked on it quite
intensely. That was just before I came here and the Island Gurukula Aranya
story began to unfold.
I
(Scott) want to second Andy’s story. Most nonfiction writing is more or less
academic, a painstaking compilation of other peoples’ ideas in a comprehensible
format. Nitya’s style of the direct production of original material is quite
different. It’s what the word darsana
indicates, actually. He would do his homework (boy, did he!), saturating
himself in the subject matter, but when the time came to give his talk he would
bring his unique take on it from out of the depths of his being. Not only was
it astonishing how well-organized the result usually was, but there was the
added thrill imparted to us of bearing witness to that process of accessing the
wisdom of his inner self. It communicated a tacit teaching on how to tune in to
the atman, that level of genius we all share but routinely ignore.
Later
in life, in his classes (almost always one in the morning and one in the
evening) Nitya would usually sit very relaxed with his eyes closed and talk
softly and slowly. Earlier in his life he looked just like the topnotch teacher
he was, with his charming manner and surefooted presentation, animatedly
gesturing and drawing diagrams on blackboards (we still had them!), all the
while radiating electric needles of intensity. Back then he once used the
analogy of a light fixture: he pointed to one in the ceiling and said, “I am
like this light bulb. Without electricity, nothing happens. It is inert. Dark.
But I have been formatted to transmit electricity into visible light when it
flows into me. The electricity is supplied by my guru, Nataraja Guru.” This was
in 1970, while Nataraja Guru was still alive, but we all felt sure that even
after his death there was the same kind of symbiosis.
