SELF KNOWLEDGE

CONTENTS

1. PRAYER

2. SENSITIVITY AND SELF KNOWLEDGE

3. IN CONVERSATION

4. SNIPPETS OF WISDOM

5. CHILDREN'S CORNER

6. SUBHASHITANI

VOLUME :1 AUGUST 2020 NO. 1

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SELFKNOWLEDGE 2020

वागथा%&वव संपृ+ौ वागथ%-&तप/ये।

जगतः &पतरौ व6े पाव%तीपरमे9रौ॥ १-१

In order to gain mastery in expressing the word and its meaning , I worship the Primeval Parents of the Universe , Parvati and Parameshvara , who are as insepara-ble as the word from the meaning .”

- Raghuvamsam (Kalidasa)

स<ः स=ु &वधीयता ंभगवतो भB+C%ढाऽऽधीयतां   शाGाHदः पJरचीयता ंCढतर ंकमा%शु सGMताम् ।

स&OOानुपसृQता ं-&तHदन ंतRादकुा सेSतां   TUैकाWरमX%ता ंYु&तZशरोवा[ ंसमाक\%ताम ्॥२॥“

Remain in the company of the holy (thoughts, words, deeds; books, music, art; people and strengthen your devotion to God. Cultivate the qualities such as self-restraint and give up all work prompted by selfish desire. Approach those who are wise and holy, and serve them. Seek only the Imperishable Being (“God”) and hear the words of the scripture .

-Kaupeena pancakam

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SELFKNOWLEDGE 2020

SENSITIVITY AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE

SWAMI SUDDHANANDA

The language that somebody is stupid, a riff raff, a low family, uneducated and therefore should be shunned, touched me deeply.

I grew up in a village without feeling ‘poor’. All around, almost all were of same status. Even the few who were relatively more affluent in a village with lower middle class people, were not asserting their affluence in any way. It was an innocent world of the ignorant where people may be unconscious but not self-conscious.

That is how I grew up and grew up without any sense of discrimination between the rich and the poor, high caste and low caste. In case somebody had looked down upon me to segregate me from others, today I would not have been where I am now. If where I was, was in ignorance, poverty and helplessness, now there is wisdom, prosperity and strength. And this wisdom be-longs to all as even the absolute prosperity and strength.

But the pathless path to the absolute wisdom, the Self Awareness , crosses the path of relative knowledge. And the relative knowledge about the world and the relative identities in relation to many thoughts, experiences and acquisitions are necessary to force a growing conflict in relation to roles in order to feel the need to search for and to wake up to the Absolute Identity in Total Self Awareness.

Since the ignorance is universal, every human child is born ignorant irrespective of sex, race, nationality or material status. The rich kid is not more or less ignorant than the poor kid. The kid has no sense of riches and poverty. He has no sense of ignorance either as he is already ‘con-scious’, knowledgeable! There is no sense of relative or absolute ignorance and knowledge. Per-ceptions begin effortlessly as even the memories. By naming only, we remember the experiences for ‘a’ relatively long period of time. Or else we will forget it soon i.e. the thoughts will pass quickly. It seems that a name lingers longer than an unnamed experience.

The naming or the familiarity with the names is known as knowledge – relative knowledge. Identifying with those thoughts, the ‘I’ gains different relative identities not only in relation to the thoughts but also in relation to the objects of the thoughts.

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SENSITIVITY AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE

SWAMI SUDDHANANDA

The child must develop a strong sense of relative identities to experience a conflict of identities in relation to different roles. Then only, he can be initiated to the idea of challenging the ‘I’, the thinker, the identities, the owner who owns up every relative role.

The village, the family, the society around did not discriminate against me as a child. They provided the scope for learning in the schools and the colleges. Later when I was about to face the conflicts of the individuality, the Upanishadic tradition embodied in a Guru accepted me as I am, without discrimination and shared the knowledge about the knower ‘I’! When knowing the objects invoked in me a ‘knower’, knowing the nature of the knower, the knower itself faded away in the knowing and ‘the’ knowledge, where all the three – the knower, the known and the knowledge are one and the same. No more the living is a conflict or pain. Rather it has been a complete celebration thanks to all – the parents, the society, the teachers in the school, the Guru in the ashram, the world around and ultimately to God Himself where I too am an inseparable part.

It will be absolutely insensitive and stupid to shun the ignorant as even it is insensitive for the rich and literate to shun the poor and illiterate. The rich was poor. The literate was illiterate. The wise was ignorant. If the so called society of rich, literate and the powerful would have dis-criminated against us, we would never be where we are now.That is why to see an overbearing, superior attitude towards anybody is absolutely sickening. How can anyone ever forget his childhood, the helplessness, the ignorant illiterate past! To forget the past ignorance and help-lessness and to continue with arrogance and holier-than-thou attitude is to declare that the igno-rance is yet not a mood of the past, but a glaring reality. We may be apparently a little harsh to give a hard shake instead of a gentle tapping to wake up a sleeping person, but we cannot afford to destroy him in the process of waking! Then what is the need of waking or however can we wake a thoroughly demoralized person?

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“Immortality needs no form and no form can be Immortal” —Swami Suddhananda

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SENSITIVITY AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE

SWAMI SUDDHANANDA

They, especially, the children need all the care, the tenderness and the love. A grown up baby of thirty or forty plus may need some chiding, persuasion, even a willful conscious negligence to bring him to the path, but the children need all the love, care and tender nourishment of all kinds to grow healthily in life. No child must be neglected for his/her parentage, race, language, lineage, faith, sex, nationality or any such relative considerations. Every child is as divine, as ab-solute as anybody else, but is ignorant without a choice. A growing person is knowledgeable, but shall have the insight as it is provided by the information available to him by the society he is growing up within. Even to discriminate, he must learn ‘how’ to discriminate and to choose he must have the knowledge of the entire range of choices.

When a society or a theology gives you a choice between known mortality and an unknown possibility of a heaven, we really do not have much to choose. In case they give us a whole range of possibilities in the realm of mortality, that too does not leave much choice. It is equally mean-ingless to have choices in the realm of the eternally unknown. Hence a mystery that promises ranges of comfort in the realm of mortality is as deceptive as the religion which promises the ranges of comfort in the unknown hereafter. At least the former can be questioned and verified, but the latter is always unverifiable and expects not to be questioned. People growing up in both these systems are trained to focus only on the known or to have faith in the unknown.

The knower, the questioner, is never questioned but is conditioned only to question the per-ceived creation and to have the faith in the unknown. It is again not the mistake of the child, but the incompleteness therefore incompetence of the system. The complete picture emerges in knowing not only the known but also the knower. When the nature of ‘the knower’ is seen as the Absolute, Pure Awareness, that happens to be inherent not only in the knower, the known and the knowing, but also in the unknown. When the Absolute, the Self Awareness begins as an unknown, it still is a ‘knowable’ unknown but cannot be ‘known’ or objectified as it is ‘the sub-ject’ – never available for objectification. The hereafters are unknown and unknowable in this world. It demands unquestioned faith and such faithful have to be dogmatic, fanatic as both the faith and the faithful cannot stand questioning or challenging of any kind.

The ‘I’ has concluded itself as an absolute faithful and its faith comes first before anything else in life. The faith does not protect him. Rather he has to protect the faith. The faith makes him feel unprotected without it!

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SELFKNOWLEDGE 2020

SENSITIVITY AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE

SWAMI SUDDHANANDA

Such faiths or theologies must be complemented with the real Knowledge about the ‘’I’, the faithful as even the ‘I’ the secular individuality must know its own nature! When the secular ‘I’ deals with ideas that can be questioned, challenged and improved upon, the ‘I’ the faithful has forfeited its right to any questioning or challenging including the ‘I’ itself! That is why when a secular person by habit of questioning everything may be available to the suggestion of question-ing the ‘I’ that questions everything, a religious fanatic will have no such chance.

The adults have to be rescued from such secular – identities or religious faiths to learn to chal-lenge themselves who in the first place existed long before picking up secular ideas or religious faiths. Children must be initiated into knowing all these known, unknown possibilities –

The knowable known – the perceptible universe. The unknowable known – that opens all the possibility of future knowledge. The unknowable unknown – the unverifiable heaven, hell, the hereafter. The knowable unknown – not only the world but also the self.

In the last possibility is included all the possible identities of ‘I’ and the possibility of chal-lenging the ‘I’, to know the absolute meaning of the word ‘I’. The relative identities of ‘I’ have already a name that the ‘I’ drags unto itself. Its absolute meaning is ‘the meaning’ of the word ‘I’, the first name that stands for the nameless, the Awareness, the formless existence!

Every child must have this choice and nobody may be allowed to create an exclusive class of people for any knowledge, more so in Self-Knowledge. When in relative knowledge, children may be encouraged to exercise conscious choice, there is no such option in Absolute Knowledge that is the Self, the meaning of the word ‘I’! Let no child be denied! Let no grown up be denied this information to make a conscious choice! How can one consider any relative identity as the Absolute, when in the first place he/she was born without being branded and was still existing only to ‘pick up’ and therefore establishing the fact that his Existence, his ‘being’ never depend-ed upon ‘picking up’ or ‘dropping’ a role. Hence no fear of losing or gaining anything as he is the Absolute in his ‘being’ and he must wake up to!

Wake up and help others in the awakening – a simple ‘being’!

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SELFKNOWLEDGE 2020

IN CONVERSATION Student :Can you help us understand how we are responsible for our own misery or frustration?

Swamiji : Interesting.... Look at yourself : did you ever set a goal and help yourself to reach it. Or went on grumbling that nobody helped you.... Those who wished to achieve and achieved something, they really HELPED themselves. For example: if you want to lose weight, surely no-body else shall or can do it for you. You want to finish reading a book or writing an article, no-body can do it for you unless you do it for yourself.

Someone may live, walk, eat, sleep, swim, enjoy or suffer WITH you, but surely nobody can do it FOR you.

Blaming others for one's frustration or failure is a sad past time of a failed mind.....

Ponder over...

SNIPPETS OF WISDOM

The Self Knowledge is the crowning glory , ‘The Knowledge’ that makes every knowledge , per-ception or the very living itself meaningful. Without this knowledge , the average man is lost in any number of roles and never learns to differentiate between himself and the roles .

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“ In the womb of Consciousness , let the thoughts rise and fall . See that each of them is surrounded by The Consciousness . Be one with the seer in whose presence , the thoughts play about”. —Swami Suddhananda

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CHILDREN'S CORNER

One day Emperor Akbar went to the river along with his two sons for a bath. Birbal accompa-nied him as usual. After wearing bathing clothes before getting into the water , the Emperor and the Princes took off their robes and gave it to Birbal asking him to carry them .

Akbar was in a mood to tease Birbal and said , “Oh Birbal, you look like a waterman’s donkey with a load of clothes”.

Birbal retorted “Yes Maharaj , but as you can see I am carrying the load of not one but three donkeys”.

This left the Emperor speechless!

SUBHASHITANI

यः पठ&त _लख&त पb&त पJरपृc&त पं&डतान् उपाYय&त। तf HदवाकरHकरणैः न_लनी दलं इव &वiाJरता बु_kः॥

One who reads, writes, sees, inquires, lives in the company of learned, his intellect expands as the lotus petals expand due to the rays of the sun.

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