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Realization and Development

When I was in elementary school it dawned on me that the doctrines of the major religions were mutually exclusive. As such, I reasoned, none of them were true. The idea that just one of them had the right answer seemed unlikely in the extreme. Surely the truth could not belong to just one tribe. And since the idea of a great bearded fellow in the sky sounded way too much like Santa Claus to me, I decided that I did not know, and was therefore an agnostic. I went to the library and read about agnosticism, and soon came across Friedrich Engels' comment that "an agnostic is really a shamefaced atheist." Nine-year-old boys do not like to think of themselves as shamefaced, so I immediately resolved to be an atheist.

One could make the case that a pure Advaita Vedanta teacher who talks about development is a shamefaced Advaitist; it is axiomatic that development is not and cannot be the goal of Advaita. Advaita is only about Realizing what is always already the case. The last thing an Advaita teacher wants is to have his students obsessing about what might happen in the future, as that would only distract them from noticing that their salvation lies in the here and now. Nonetheless, most Advaitists are eventually drawn into a discussion of what might happen if a student continues to follow Advaita. Even Ramana Maharshi, as pure an Advaitist as any, broke down long enough to make some extraordinary comments about development.

Very reluctantly, after being hectored mercilessly by his students about what would happen if they practiced his "Who am I?" self-enquiry method, Ramana admitted that development does happen. He further asserted that in order for this development to happen, all one had to do was Ramana's own self-enquiry technique. No further practice was required. Then he described the result. I will paraphrase from memory what he said.

According to Ramana, there is an energy that develops within the body, moving gradually upward with time and practice. It eventually rises out of the crown shakra at the top of the head, curves around, and comes to rest at the heart center, thereby permanently completing the circuit.* This is the best description of arahatship that I have ever heard! This takes "full enlightenment" out of the realm of the speculative and plants it squarely in the realm of, as I call it, the physio-energetic. Arahatship, the logical culmination of development practice, is a normal, organic, human, biological process that is, according to Ramana, Gotama Buddha, and many others, accessible to ordinary people. Once again, the centuries of hero-worship and wishful thinking that grew like barnacles over the core reality of the experience have been shaken off. Ramana, speaking with the simple authority of personal experience, repeatedly denied having supernatural powers, and insisted that anyone could do what he had done.

*(The above description is paraphrased from Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, edited by David Godwin. I don't have a copy in front of me, but it is available on Amazon.com and is my favorite meditation manual.)

This is so important, because with these words Ramana asserts that the Advaitist can have his cake and eat it too. By conscientiously inquiring into the thought "Who am I?" the yogi can learn to dwell in primordial awareness, which is, in and of itself, Realization. As a fringe benefit, the yogi can complete his kundalini development and finally be at rest with respect to this energy that many of us feel but that science has not yet found a way to measure.

If Ramana is correct, this is good news for pure Advaitists. They need not fear missing out on the fruits of development even if they never spend a moment on practices that specifically target development. All that is necessary is to dwell as primordial awareness. By the way, the common denominator between pure concentration practice and dwelling as the "I AM," is... concentration. Concentration, coupled with insight, leads to developmental enlightenment. Ramana's practice promotes both concentration and insight. All of this makes perfect sense when seen through the lens of the Buddhist maps. The non-dual aspect is, of course, not addressed in Theravada, which is why we have the Mahayana. If Hinayana were complete, there would be no need for Mahayana or Vajrayana.

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