ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE REALM OF FORMLESSNESS

The philosopher Yajnavalkya said to his wife Maitreyi:

When there is, as it were, duality, then one sees the other, one smells the other, one tastes the other, one speaks to the other, one hears the other, one perceives the other, one touches the other, one knows the other. But when the one is the

self (aZ/nan), how should one see another, how should one smell another, how should one taste another, how should one speak to another, how should one hear another, how should one perceive another, how should one touch another, how should

one know another? How should one know that through which one knows all this? The self is to be described only as “Not this, not this.” It is incomprehensible, for it cannot be comprehended; it is imperishable, for it cannot be destroyed; it is unattached, for it does not attach itself; it is unfettered, for it does not suffer, it does not fail. How should one know the knower? Thus you have already been instructed, O Maitreyi. Ah, immortality is truly thus!

Having said this, Yajnavalkya went away [into the forest].14

Those who idealize the absolute tend to be suspicious of what is diverse. Psychologically, their ideal is the absence of discriminatory thought and the cessation of mental functioning. Of the various mental conditions—being awake, being in a

dream state, and being deeply asleep—they consider that the first is the condition closest to delusion, for a person who is awake must be in contact with the world at its most diverse. This diversity is reduced somewhat in the dream state, but in the state of deep sleep it disappears entirely. It is when diversity is annihilated that the spirit exists in its purest form.

Toga. According to Indian tradition, fundamental truth cannot be attained through daily, busy life, but only by the concentrated mind. This concentration of mind is variously called yoga, samadhi, or dhyana. Toga

(etymologically the same as the English yoke) means “attaching the mind to one object,” “concentrating the mind on one thing.” Samadhi means “putting together (the mind which always tends to disperse).” The Hindu yoga school

probably started before the common era, but its most important scripture, the Yoga-sutra, was composed by Patanjali's around the fifth century C.E. Many new yogic sects subsequently developed. One of them, Hathayoga {hatha, “force, pertinacity”) which developed after the twelfth century C.E., specializes in bodily training, in the belief that the body’s function and the spirit’s function are inseparable.

It is very difficult to probe the origins of this tradition. Among the remains of the Indus Valley civilization that flourished around 2,300 B.C.E., there is a statue excavated from Mohenjo-Daro of a man, perhaps a priest, meditating (see photo 3). His eyes are half-closed, the very image of one who has entered samadhi (though some believe that this means only that he is of

Mongolian origin). The way his robe is worn over the left shoulder, leaving the right one bare, is similar to the custom that pertained later in Buddhism. (A seal also found at Mohenjo-Daro depicts a man, or perhaps a god, in a yogic pose.)

Nevertheless, there is a gap of nearly two thousand years between the Indus Valley civilization and the time of the Upanisads and the new religious sects. Furthermore, the new religious movements did not arise in the Indus Valley, but in the Ganges Valley. We do not yet know for sure whether this one small statue will be able to bridge the gap of two thousand years and two thousand kilometers.

Yoga is the most non-European of all the ways of thought. European civilization has believed that one can approach reality by seeing things clearly, and that anything else leads to turbidity. For Westerners, lack of cognition is

imbecility. In the Yogic teachings about being asleep and awake, however, there is something very persuasive. People often reminisce at the ends of their lives that all has been somehow like a dream. That might very well be true, but it is something that can be fully realized only after we die.

While we dream, we do not doubt the truth of what happens in the dream. After we awake, though, and recall what happened in the dream, we know the dream world to be full of contradictions and impossibilities. In a dream, I can be in one place now and an instant later far away. I can be speaking with someone and then find him turned into someone else. Nevertheless I continue talking, completely unconcerned, and with no doubts whatsoever. To my awakened self, the dream is a world of illusion.

Now I am awake. Things occur logically, leaving no room for doubt. This waking world is not the world of dreams but the realm of undeniable truth. We cannot think otherwise. It is the world of dreams that deceives us, for there not a single doubt arises. But isn’t the waking world just the same? It is an even greater trickster. Isn’t death itself the true awakening?