Reading is tapas

Samvartha while giving upadesa to Parasurama, very beautifully sums up the very gist of spirituality like this:
'It is better you ask where the Atman is not rather than asking where it is. It is so pervading and forms the prior basic of the I thought. It exists prior to all the thoughts that crop up. It is the very pith-like awareness which makes possible all other things occur by meaning. It is wrong to take this body as Atman, because Atman is that which knows, whereas the body is something that is known. It is a contradiction in understanding to consider something that is known as something that which knows. So this kind of contradictory assumptions must be given up. Thinking of this body as oneself must be given up. One must rightly take to considering oneself as the knower. One who arrives at such a right understanding will come to realise that he has nothing to achieve in this ever-changing world. What is the proof that he has arrived at right awareness? Along with the right awareness there occurs automatically dispassion. Not wanting anything of this world, these worldly things and desires. A mentality of non-attachment, which doesn't give any value to the ways of the world. This is the noble path. Those who resort to this path definitely reaches the highest bliss. And this is the essence of everything to be known.' (Translation mine)
Tiripura Rahasya is wondering that even being told in such a simple way, the utmost essence of all the Sastras like this, Parasurama was not convinced and still lingered in confusion. Samvarta realised that Parasurama can attain to understanding only when given upadesa by Dattatreya and so he guided him to the great Master and went on in his way.
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Sri Ramana Maharishi, I came to know when I was a boy through the book of Sri Ramana Vijayam, written by Yogi Suddhanandha Bharathi in Tamil. Excellent photos of Bhagavan and the Arunachala Hills and caves were enchanting to the eyes and engaging the mind. In the front even Yogi's photo was such an aura.
Invariably, all spiritual personages were given those days in books, a circular-light background to the head. So in the school days, the natural idea was spirituality means something fantastic, suffusing with brilliance, light and rays. It was more optical and luminary. After reading epic-like narrations of Yogi about Maharishi it added all the more to the irradiance. Even now Yogi's 'langue' is unforgettable.
And that too, appendixed by my father's memory of meeting Bhagavan, added still more to the depth of the event of my getting introduced to the Ramana's loka. My father Mr R Venugopal, used to have a photo of himself acting the part of Prince of Morocco from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, , where the still portrays the moment of the dialogue -- "Hey pluck the young sucking-cubs from the she-bear"- when he was showing the action of gripped right fist across his chest, along his left eye. I asked him one day, 'why do you keep this photo always in your purse?' Then he was telling it carries a story, associated with Sri Ramana Maharishi. I was all eager and babbled out - 'have you seen him? did you talk to him? what did he say? what did you ask?'
My father was saying, 'cool boy cool. There was no talk and questions. Once I went to the Hills to have his Darshan. First day it didn't click. Second day I tried, thinking, if not that time then to return back home, visiting temples. Fortunately I found entry among the devotees sitting in front. It was uniquely calm to watch him and just sit there. For some purpose, I took out my purse to take or place something there. Perhaps Bhagavan was seeing that, I do not know. This photo, a still of the just-staged play, I was keeping it there. He asked for the photo and stared at it for a moment. Then doing the same action in the photo by folding his fist and looking at me, he returned it. I consider this as his blessing and am keeping it as the sacred memory.

*

SiRiyaatthaan (சிறியாத்தான்) was a unique teacher in the consequent period of Sri Ramanuja. He was principles personified. The idea 'A devotee of Thirumaal, whoever he may be, educated or ignorant, irrespective of any social divisions or satus, commands one's highest adoration' was not just a piece of eloquence or a status message to be displayed in one's FB. He meant it every word by his action. When he was passing by in the streets of Srirangam, no prapanna or Vaishnavaite devotee was able to be at ease. For no body knew how, he will be the first person to salute prostratingly, unmindful of dirtying his own clothes and not only that he will rise up and stand in full pride, as if he had achieved great laurels of endevour. Periyavaachaanpillai more than once cites him as the exemplar. And SiRiyaatthaan's favourite was Sri Krishna. How the Supreme Soul, Paramaatma, was just like that loitering in the streets of Brindavan, doing pranks like a kid! It was an inexhaustable source of wonder for him. To understand his wonder we must first become aware that the highest understanding of philosophical contemplation, the Metaphysical Being Absolute. Then we must slowly bring to our minds the altercation that happens. Such a Being Absolue Metaphysical assumes a human embodiment, is born, grows up as a kid doing all sorts of pranks and lo! it is there running visible across streets and cars, crying 'Heyyyee !' Really it is the wonder of wonders !

***


Thiruvaimozhi is unique in various ways. It is a grand work by Illusion's Enemy - Sataripu. It is the great essence of all the spiritual canons, the Sastras. It is the dispeller of maya spreading by its threefold qualities, It is the land of hope for the beings immersed in the misery-sea of the world. It is the great treasure vouchsafed to beings visible in the presence of and showing the divine presence of the Eternal Couple Super-Conscious.
saara saarasvadhaanaam sataripu paNidhi:
shanti suddhaananda seema
maayaamaayaamineebhi: SvaguNavidathibhi:
panthayantheem dayanthii |
paarampaaram pareethoo bhavajaladhi
bhavanmajjanaanaam janaanaam
prathyak prathyakshayEnna: prathiniyatharamaa
sannidhaanam nidhaanam ||

(Dramidopanishad taatparya ratnaavali, Sri Nigamaantha Desika)
***

Savitri of Aurobindo is extending the English language deep into the inward reaches and inner pulsating resonances. The language made explicitly introvert.
***

In Savitri there comes a passage -
All that the Gods have learned is there self-known.
There is a hidden chamber closed and mute
And kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law
And so even Gods are having a learning curve it seems ! What they have learnt is self-known in a hidden chamber. In that chamber are the library of the cosmic scribe. There are hung the calculation tables of sacred Law - such a corner closed and mute! Why closed? closed from whom or what? mute means no sound? silent for what ears, perhaps ears unhearing.
Once somebody told Thiruloka Sitaram, quoting Sivavaakkiyar, 'natta kallum pEsumO?'.
Thirulokam retorted saying, 'when the stone stopped talking? It is always talking voraciously. Do you have the ears to hear it?'
The other person asked back 'what do you mean?'
Thirulokam replied, 'yea! when the stones stopped talking? they are always in discourse. Perhaps sometimes a sculptor happens to hear its talk and lo! you get a beautiful Image! Sometimes an engineer happens to hear the talk of stones. And you get a wonderful bridge or building! The stones are never-stop talkers. Only we are stone-deaf !'

*

Say it is easy to talk glibly about the long period of matter-sleep and the uprise of will and praxeologic movements. But to mentally arrive at that point of realisation, to stand exactly in such a spot in awareness full and bare, the shock and shudders are steep and striking. Exactly standing at that very point can you mint the experience in words?
In the glow of the Spirit's room of memories
He could recover the luminous marginal notes
Dotting with light the crabbed ambiguous scroll,
Rescue the preamble and the saving clause
Of the dark Agreement by which all is ruled
That rises from material Nature's sleep
To clothe the Everlasting in new shapes.

(Savitri, Book One Canto Five)
***


You need some attentive inwardness and spiritual gaze powered by intuition as per Sri Aurobindo in his Savitri. Otherwise all is screened, mystical, a voyage from the unknown to the unknown.
"But all is screened, subliminal, mystical;
It needs the intuitive heart, the inward turn,
It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.
Else to our waking mind's small moment look
A goalless voyage seems our dubious course
Some Chance has settled or hazarded some Will,
Or a Necessity without aim or cause
Unwillingly compelled to emerge and be.
In this dense field where nothing is plain or sure,
Our very being seems to us questionable,
Our life a vague experiment, the soul
A flickering light in a strange ignorant world,
The earth a brute mechanic accident,
A net of death in which by chance we live.
All we have learned appears a doubtful guess,
The achievement done a passage or a phase
Whose farther end is hidden from our sight,
A chance happening or a fortuitous fate.
Out of the unknown we move to the unknown."

(Savitri, Book One Canto Four, pp 57)
***

What is there in the Ultimate, a signal happens even in the undoubting sceptic life sometimes visible to the discerning chance vision. When we stop look and stop imagining and before we start to think the rigmarole begins to run again. And we hastily run from the moment of stop.
"Even in our sceptic mind of ignorance
A foresight comes of some immense release,
Our will lifts towards it slow and shaping hands."

(Savitri, Book Two, Canto Five)
***


How true of me presently ! Autobigraphical through a different hand? Or the Eternal Eye vieweth every several being, every several minute? Who knows...!
"A hope stole in that hardly dared to be
Amid the Night's forlorn indifference.
As if solicited in an alien world
With timid and hazardous instinctive grace,
Orphaned and driven out to seek a home,
An errant marvel with no place to live,
Into a far-off nook of heaven there came
A slow miraculous gesture's dim appeal."

(Savitri, Book One, Canto One )
***

What an existential predicament the human being is thrown into! An ounce of pure contemplation at what a cost!
"A packed assemblage of crude tentative lives
Are pieced into a tessellated whole.
There is no perfect answer to our hopes;
There are blind voiceless doors that have no key;
Thought climbs in vain and brings a borrowed light,
Cheated by counterfeits sold to us in life's mart,
Our hearts clutch at a forfeited heavenly bliss. "

"Here even the highest rapture Time can give
Is a mimicry of ungrasped beatitudes,
A mutilated statue of ecstasy,
A wounded happiness that cannot live,
A brief felicity of mind or sense
Thrown by the World-Power to her body-slave,
Or a simulacrum of enforced delight
In the seraglios of Ignorance.
For all we have acquired soon loses worth,
An old disvalued credit in Time's bank,
Imperfection's cheque drawn on the Inconscient.
An inconsequence dogs every effort made,
And chaos waits on every cosmos formed:
In each success a seed of failure lurks.
He saw the doubtfulness of all things here, "
(Savitri, Book One, Canto Five)
***