This picture popped up in my Facebook feed.
A good illustration, I think, of the fundamental attitude of many spiritual seekers.
“I want to be free — I have to escape from the prison of my mind — I need to crack this damn lock.”
The room, the door, the lock — they are the mind.
The effort to escape from the room is the effort to see, to experience, what’s outside it.
That effort is mental activity and whatever experience it might bring would be mental activity.
Mental activity hides the Self.
In fact you don’t need to go anywhere. Quite the contrary.
You need to stop going anywhere. Focus on yourself. You have no location but if you did, you would be here.
Bonus suggestion
Read paragraph 4 of Nan Yar and ask yourself why Ramana included it.
Your post reminded me of verse 921 in Guru Vachaka Kovai (am quoting here from the Dr. T.V. Venkatasubramanian, R. Butler, D. Godman translation).
921 If one realizes one’s swarupa, the purusha that is the substratum of prakriti, as it really is, and abides as That, the power of prakriti will automatically be gradually destroyed. No one can destroy the impetuosity of prakriti by any method other than through the enquiry that scorns it as an unreal entity.
The annotation appended by Mr. Godman for that verse includes a quote from Conscious Immortality:
Q: How to get rid of maya?
Bhagavan: Do not trouble [yourself] to conquer maya. Be in your real state and maya will go away if its own accord. If you attempt to conquer it, it will lead you through many difficulties.
(The translation of the above verse in the Sri Sadu Om & M. James version is very helpful too, as is Sri Sadhu Om’s commentary!)
The locked door scenario also brought to mind this quote from Sri Anandamayi Ma in As the Flower Sheds its Fragrance:
Mataji: Everything is God’s Lila, but since you do not know this you ask questions, yet even your questions are part of His Lila. The world is indeed perpetual movement and the individual is that which is bound. However, the bondage is only temporary because it is of the world that is in constant flux. You may lock your room and go away, but the lock cannot last for ever and neither can the door. Every jiva (individual) is indeed Siva in reality. You are longing for freedom because you are in fact eternally free. When one is advancing towards God, it will be found difficult to move toward the world and vice-versa.
Hi Mr. Rico,
I agree, the main point of GVK 921 is the same. Thank you for posting it. After reading the verse I wish now that I had emphasized the following point as well.
As soon as we develop a little bit of familiarity with what it’s like to attend to ourself, we can easily see why that main point is true. Part of the reason anyway. We can see for ourselves, not because we read it in a book but because it’s evident, that when we reach out to know or experience something, we look away from ourself. This is as obvious and ordinary as the observation that when we close our eyes we stop seeing the world.
We tend to believe that these profound teachings from Muruganar and Ramana are metaphysical truths that only sages can see. But in this case we can see a piece of it too. As much as possible I like to tie things to the experience of beginners because that’s what most of us have to work with. We must attend to what we know not what we imagine Ramana knows or what we hope to know in the future, because imagination and hope are mental activities. As long as we attend to them we are looking in the wrong direction.
“As much as possible I like to tie things to the experience of beginners because that’s what most of us have to work with…”
Yes, it’s interesting — when I first was exposed to Sri Ramana’s teachings I found some of what was emphasized to be somewhat off-putting, precisely because at times it seemed to me so SIMPLE, in fact almost childlike in its simplicity — “just be”, etc. But time and time again, we read him emphasizing just that — attend to our sense of pure being, and don’t get caught up in thoughts (I am paraphrasing here, obviously!)
I like Annamalai Swami’s way of putting it:(from “Conversations” section of Living by the Words of Bhagavan)
Instead of filling your mind with thoughts and then organizing fights between them, pay no attention to the mind at all. Rest quietly in the feeling of ‘I am’, which is consciousness, and cultivate the attitude that all thoughts, all perceptions are ‘not me’.