Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 21 Michael James prior to being told that we are that, we took “that” (namely what is real, brahman, God, happiness, knowledge, liberation, salvation, nirvāṇa or whatever else we were seeking) to be something other than ourself, so the reason why the Vedas tell us that we ourself are that is to make us understand that what we were seeking is nothing other than ourself, so in order to find it all we need do is investigate and thereby know what we actually are. In other words, the sole intention of the mahāvākyas is to turn our attention back to ourself, because we alone are “that”. So long as we take that to be something other than ourself, we will never find it, because we will be looking for it in the wrong direction, namely outside ourself. In order to find “that”, we need to look deep within ourself, because there is no “that” (God, brahman, reality, happiness or whatever) other than ourself. Therefore if we do not turn our attention back to ourself in order to see what we actually are, we have failed to understand the clear and obvious intention of the mahāvākyas. After hearing the mahāvākyas, many people assume that we need to meditate “I am that, not this”, meaning “I am brahman, not this body consisting of five sheaths”, but Bhagavan says that meditating in this way is “due to non-existence of strength” (Ta. “uraṉ iṉmaiyiṉāl”), in which “strength” (Ta. uraṉ) means strength of understanding. If we have clearly and firmly understood the meaning and purpose of the mahāvākyas, we will not meditate on any thought such as “I am brahman” but only on ourself, because we alone are what the words brahman and “that” refer to. Like all other thoughts, the thought “I am brahman” is something other than ourself, so we cannot know what we actually are by meditating on this or any other thought, but only by keenly and steadily attending to ourself, the fundamental awareness “I am”, which alone is brahman. Therefore true brahma-dhyāna (Sa. “meditation on brahman”) is not meditation on the thought brahman but only “meditation on ourself” (Sa. svarūpa-dhyāna), because only by meditating on ourself will we as ego subside and thereby be as we actually are, namely as brahman, as Bhagavan implies in the first maṅgalam verse of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu: If what exists [Ta. uḷḷadu] were not, would existing awareness [Ta. uḷḷa-v-uṇarvu] exist? Since the existing substance [Ta. uḷḷa-poruḷ] exists in the heart [Ta. uḷḷam] without thought, how to think of the existing substance, which is called ‘heart’? Being in the heart as it is alone is thinking. Know. [31] The first sentence of this verse, “uḷḷadu aladu uḷḷa-v-uṇarvu uḷḷadō?”, is a rhetorical question that can be interpreted in any of three ways, namely “if what exists were not, would existing awareness exist?”, “except as what exists, does existing awareness exist?” or “other than what exists, is there awareness to think?”. In the first two of these three interpretations, uḷḷa is an adjectival participle of the tenseless verb uḷ, which means “to be” or “to exist”, so uḷḷa means “being”, “existing”, “real” or “actual”, and hence uḷḷa-v-uṇarvu means “being awareness” (in the sense of “awareness that is”), “existing awareness”, “real awareness” or “awareness that actually exists”, so it refers to “being-awareness” (Sa. sat-cit), which is our awareness of our own being, “I am”. Derived from the same verb, uḷḷadu is a participial noun that means “what is” or “what exists” and that implies what actually exists as opposed to what merely seems to exist. Therefore the first interpretation, “If what exists [Ta. uḷḷadu] were not, would existing awareness [Ta. uḷḷa-v-uṇarvu] exist?”, is an argument for the existence of something that actually exists, and indirectly implies that that something is ourself, because we ourself are the awareness that knows our own existence. That is, if we did not actually exist, we could not be aware of our existence, so the fact that we are aware of our existence proves conclusively that we do actually exist. In other words, what he refers to as uḷḷadu (Ta. “what is” or “what exists”) is ourself, and what he refers to as uḷḷa-vuṇarvu (Ta. “existing awareness” or “real awareness”) is our awareness of our own being or existence, “I am”. The second interpretation, “Except as what exists [Ta. uḷḷadu], does existing awareness [Ta. uḷḷa-v-uṇarvu] exist?”, is closely aligned to the first one and corroborates it, because it implies that uḷḷa-v-uṇarvu (Ta. “real awareness”) is itself uḷḷadu (Ta. “what actually exists”), as Bhagavan explains in verse 23 of Upadēśa Undiyār: Because of the non-existence of other awareness to be aware of what exists, what exists [Ta. uḷḷadu] is awareness [Ta. uṇarvu]. Awareness alone exists as we. [32] That is, if “awareness” (Ta. uṇarvu) were something other than “what exists” (Ta. uḷḷadu), it would be a non-existent awareness, so it would neither exist nor be aware. Therefore, since there is awareness of what exists, “what exists” (Ta. uḷḷadu) must itself be “awareness” (Ta. uṇarvu). Moreover, since we are what is aware of what exists, we ourself are the awareness that is what exists. In the third interpretation, “Other than what exists, is there awareness to think?”, uḷḷa is the infinitive of the verb
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