27. Spirituometry

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The scriptures describe the qualities of a Jnani in very much detail. For e.g. the last 18 verses of the second chapter of the Gita are fully dedicated to explaining Sthita Prajna Lakshana. It has been repeated in several other places in the Gita as the qualities of a true devotee, qualities of a Karma yogi etc. They all finally describe the same – Realized state – by various names. Adi Shankaracharya, in his commentary of the Gita, mentions that these qualities are described for two purposes – to describe the Jnani, and to exhort what qualities a practitioner should try to build in him/her.

The qualities of a Jnani, are of great reference value for a seeker. It is like the goalpost on which we should always have an eye, even if we are at the other end of the field. Else the sense of direction itself will be lost. So, without doubt, and with common sense, knowing the Sthita Prajna Lakshana is a necessity for the practitioner.

But then, for direction vector to be meaningful, there have to be two points. Beginning and the end. A friend of mine once asked me “Suppose I tell you now ‘Let us go to the market’. What is the first thing that you will do?”. I said “Dress up myself”. He asked back “Before that?”

“Get up from the chair”         “Before that?”

“Agree to come with you”     “Before that?”

“Before that? I listened to your request of going to the market”

“You are very close. After you listened to me, and before agreeing to come, you did something. It happened so fast and spontaneously, that you are taking it for granted”

“I do not know”

“You located your current position relative to the market. Before the smallest activity that you do, this is the very first thing you do – decide where you are with respect to the target. It may not only be with respect to distance. It will be with respect to anything – distance, time, money, abilities etc. Locating the current coordinate the first essential step before moving to another coordinate.”

I thought over it, and you too imagine with me. Suppose I am suddenly left in an unknown place, in the middle of a street in a city. I want to go back home. What is the first thing I ask the people around? It is “What is this place?”, isn’t it? My first question can be nothing else apart from locating my current coordinate. Destination coordinate gets meaning only after I know my current coordinate. When I am in that unknown place, I very well know the map of my country. I very well know where my hometown is, in the map. I even know the latitude and longitude of my house. But will any of that help without locating my current coordinate? Only if both are known, current coordinate and destination coordinate, there can be a meaningful direction vector and hence, a journey.

In a situation such as the one above, this fact is very conspicuous. But this happens all the time in all our activities. Even if I am in my house and decide to go to the market, this is the very first reckoning that my mind does – locating the current position. But it is so fast that it goes unnoticed. When in my house, it only takes a fraction of a moment for locating the current position, as mind has done it several thousand times before.

And after locating the current position, immediately mind tries to locate the destination w.r.t. the current coordinates. Suppose I am new to the city and I do not where the market is. Now I would enquire about the location of the market w.r.t. the location of my house only. It does not mean anything to me if someone says “Market is next to the Central movie theatre”, because I do not know where that movie theatre is w.r.t. my current location. Then I will try to find land marks one by one, in a chain, until I get one known land mark – a land mark whose coordinates are known to me w.r.t. my current location. That first land mark may be just a few yards away from my house. And then the whole picture becomes clear to me. I get a clear idea about the path joining my location and the market. So, finally, what matters to me is the shortest path between my location and the market, not all the paths that lead to market.

During my journey, although my goal is market, initially I ask for the directions to the landmarks, and not the market (assuming that the market is quite far from the house). This may be everybody’s experience. And once a particular landmark is reached, we ask for directions for the next landmark and so on until finally we ask for the market itself. We do that because, if we directly ask for market initially, the guide (?) dumps a heap of right-left-straight information on us that leaves us more confused. We finally walk away from him, pretend to walk a few feet, wait for that enthusiastic guide to disappear from the scene, so that we can ask another person ;) And now that we have learnt our lesson, we ask for directions to the next land mark in the list, and not the market directly. But all the while, our aim is market and not the landmarks.

Now let us end this market business and look at how to apply this to what really matters. If we summarize the market example we can note several points:

First, we should note our current coordinate. Perhaps some of the earlier posts did that to a certain extent – honestly accepting to ourselves all our negativities openly without hiding anything from ourselves – no Self Cheating. At the same time we note our strengths as well. But soon I realized that accepting all the negativity in myself itself boosted positivity! So, there was no need of a specific identification of the strengths. Strength was always there, only hidden by weakness.

Second, we note the destination coordinate. Scriptures describe the final state as we saw earlier.

Third, only bother about the shortest path between the source and the destination. Do not dump ourselves with the whole map of the city. There may be hundreds to paths, but we have to choose what is easiest and shortest for us – mainly enquiry or surrender – Jnana Marga or Bhakti Marga. Even a mixture of two or three paths helps as per masters. But certainly not keeping our foot in every road that we see, just because it is very neat and clean. Or if we start walking on a road just because many are walking on it, it may lead us nowhere. Who knows where those people are walking to? Their aimed destination may be name-fame, money, health, miracles etc, and not realization.

Fourth, initially aim at the landmarks and not the destination directly. If we directly look at the destination, it may only leave us confused and stranded, as we saw in the Miraculous Mistake and the Extrication of Extremes. When we get sufficiently closer to the destination, then we may aim directly at the destination itself and ditch the landmarks.

Fifth, do not stick to the landmarks so much that they themselves become the goal. Always remember the final destination even if we are currently aiming at the landmarks.

It may be a good idea to look at the fourth point (landmarks) in detail.

Jnani, Mukta, Sthita Prajna – these are all the different names of the final realized state.

Jijnasu, Mumukshu, Sthita Prajnabhilashi – these are all different names for a genuine seeker (well, the last one was coined just now, I don’t know if it exists in scriptures! Let Samskrita scholars worry about that, not our head ache!)

As we saw earlier, the qualities of a Jnani (the destination coordinate) is already very well explained by the scriptures. Let us have our eye on this goalpost constantly, but for the time being aim at the landmarks. Qualities of a seeker would serve as the landmarks. The qualities of a seeker (the landmarks) are also well explained in certain scriptures, especially the Viveka Chudamani of Adi Shankaracharya. In fact, without our knowledge, we have looked at details of several qualities of a Jijnasu in the earlier posts. Now, let us look at these Jijnasu Lakshanas as per the scriptures, in simple terms. This may act as a summary to some of the earlier posts. And just notice that the middle path is a common factor in most of them.

He, who uses his common sense to clarify things to himself, rather than going after blind beliefs, or dry logic, is a Jijnasu (Viveka – Discrimination – I prefer ‘Common sense’, I believe you too opt for simple terms!).

He, who tries neither to suppress, nor to give free vent to his strong likes, but believes in slow and gradual withdrawal from the likes, is a Jijnasu. (Vairagya – Dispassion)

He, who intelligently cuts down external sense objects one by one very systematically over a period of time (neither with a sudden and blind cut-down of everything at once nor with lack of any efforts to cut down anything whatsoever), is a Jijnasu. (Dama – External sense control – Matches with Pranayama of Ashtanga Yoga). This sounds as simple regulation of life style by moderating everything one by one.

He, who constantly monitors his sense inputs and what the mind munches, regulates them and moderates them to taper off the Prana expenditure gradually over a period of time, again without blind suppression or free day dreaming, is a Jijnasu. (Shama – Internal sense control – matches with Pratyahara of Ashtanga Yoga)

He, who while constantly waging the war against his sense demands and the mind as above, loses the war very miserably thousands of times, but still does not feel like a loser, and keeps the war-drums beating, finally to taste victory one day is a Jijnasu. (Titiksha and Samadhana – withstanding the loses and saying “We will see next time” with the same determination and poise after each lose). The game ends only when we win!

He, who finds interest, curiosity and hence a sense of effortlessly being occupied, while contemplating about spiritual concepts, Self-enquiry etc, and develops it over the years into a huge tree whose branches begin to occupy all the activities of the day, is a Jijnasu (Uparati – enjoying the proximity of our ego to our own true Self, finally to merge into the Self one day). This is opposite of Shama-Dama-Vairagya. There we gradually cut down one set of trees, and here we aid the growth of another set of trees.

He, who has unshakable faith that the destination exists, without the slightest of doubts, solely based on his spiritual longing, although he has never seen the destination, is a Jijnasu. This is something like, even if someone has never seen water in his life, he will have to believe the existence of water solely based on his thirst. Existence of water cannot be denied, because there is thirst. (Shraddha)

And finally and obviously, he, who begins to feel the spiritual thirst, feels a great void in the worldly affairs, goes into frequent depressions, cries for it constantly, and begins to find light gradually, is a Jijnasu. (Mumukshatva – Longing for liberation)

Since this chapter talked about the various the coordinates of the spiritual journey – source, destination and the intermediate coordinates, it is named as Spirituometry (you know… Geometry).