NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 22:
Prior
to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue
the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 15,
the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental
physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.
Fine-Tuned
Universe 15:
[In the unreal reflection called the
"Universe", a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite
Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]
Carbon Nucleo–Genesis:
Now to sample a more sophisticated Anthropic observation (in the
sense that no Carbon, no Life) careful reasoning called for availability of
a hitherto unknown nuclear energy level for the Carbon nucleus, specifically
7.656 MeV predicted by Fred Hoyle and later experimentally verified. Hoyle
claimed such a state allowed the previously unimagined nucleo-synthesis in
early Main Sequence Stars. Plentiful alpha
particles:
a = He42+ or simply
He4
could combine in fusion:
He4 + He4 ==>
Be8
and then because a low level meta-stable nuclear energy level (7.656 Me) presented a close departure point for the
combination:
He4 + Be8 ==>
C12
which in turn also found a resonant Oxygen nuclear energy
level (7.1187 MeV) to allow:
He4 + C12 ==>
O16
Thus the elements Carbon and Oxygen had fast and easy
synthesis routes and therefore relatively high Stellar abundance (for heavy elements that is) so necessary
for Life. But Fine-Tuned precisely available intermediate metastable
states had to exist, just as similar Fine-Tuning
made Helium a particles stable (hence their ejection from radioactive elements) and plentiful (25%
of Matter). Beryllium did not much stick around but Carbon and Oxygen could
transition to other stable energy levels and remain. But even the interplay
between Carbon & Oxygen had to be Fine-Tuned as if by tweaking
the Electro-Magnetic & Strong nuclear force coupling constants.
Rather steep inter-crossing curves (on a logarithmic abundance scale at that) made for quick slide to
excess of deficient Oxygen. If Oxygen started high, like the top-left abundance
curve above, with Carbon lower, a small change (percents in the Fine-Structure constant, tenths of a percent in the
Strong nuclear force constant) would have made Intelligent Life impossible.
Unlike say, Saturn’s larger-than-Earth
moon Titan, with lakes, rivers, and oceans of hydrocarbons (~ cold,
small molecule gasoline) the plentiful Oxygen on our planet affords us
water, characteristic minerals, and the possibility of our kind of Life.
Fine-Tuning in the
above process would not have allowed a 4% change in the Fine-Structure constant, from 1/137
to 1/131 for instance nor a smaller change in
the Strong nuclear force coupling constant by as little as 0.4%, say from
1.001 to
1.005, for instance.
If you spend your life with worldly thoughts, these will be
the thoughts that fill your Mind at the moment of your death. But if you life
is devoted to sadhana, to
attaining an inner Peace, then, at the moment of your death,
this will be the State that you die in.
Your thoughts arise on a moment-to-moment basis because of
your vasanas, but it is a mistake to
think that you can do nothing about them. You can be interested in them, or you
can ignore them. If you show interest in them, they will persist and you will
get caught up in them. If you ignore them and keep your attention on the
Source, they will not develop. And when they don’t develop, they disappear.
In Who Am I ?
Bhagavan compared this process to laying siege to a fort. If you cutoff, one by
one, the heads of the thoughts as they come out of the fort of the Mind, sooner
or later there will be none left. The way to do this is by Self-Inquiry. As
each thought rises, you ask yourself, "To whom does this thought appear
?"
If you are vigilant in doing this, the forest of thoughts
will lessen and lessen until there are none left. When the thoughts have gone,
Mind will sink into its Source and experience that Source.
Little conversations may be going on. A crowd of people may
be congregating around. None of this is your business, but there is always a
possibility that you will get interested in some or all of these activities and
forget the reason why you are out on the street yourself. Don’t get excited by
anything you see and hear. Just walk steadily towards your destination. Your vasanas are all the sides how's in your
head that can drag your attention away from your main business, which is being
aware of the Self. If you have no interest in them, you will walk straight to
your goal. If something temporarily distracts your attention, bring yourself
back by asking yourself, "Who is interested in all this ? Who is getting
interested in this distraction ?" This will deflate the distracting desire
and it will bring you back to an awareness of your true purpose. Remember,
nothing that happens in the Mind is "you", and none of it is your
business. You don’t have to worry about thoughts that rise up inside you. It is
enough that you remember that the thoughts are not you.
Whatever kind of thought arises, have the same reaction:
‘Not me; not my business.’ It can be a good thought or a bad thought. Treat
them all the same way. To whom are these thoughts arising ? To you. That means
that you are not the thought. You are the Self. Remain as the Self, and don’t
latch onto anything that is not the Self.
If you remain as the Self, no vasanas and no karma will touch or affect you. If you remain in the
Mind, thoughts of one sort or another will bother you all the time. If the
thoughts "I should meditate" or "I should realize" arise,
ask yourself, "To whom are these thoughts arising ?"
Why do you need to think about your Body and your Mind so
much ? If you are the Light, there is no Darkness. If you are the Self, there
is no thought, no Body, and no Mind to give you any trouble. Any number of
thoughts may come. Let them. But remember all the time, "I am the
Self."
You are not the vasanas,
you are not the thoughts, you are the Self. Keep that awareness and don't worry
too much about what is going on in your Mind, and what it means.
Don't allow any mis-identifications to settle on you. Don't
think, "I am sitting here." Don't think, "I am doing, I am
acting, I am sitting." You are the Self, not the Body. Even your vasanas are the Self. All is your Self.
There are no distinctions, no differences in the Self. Nothing is separate from
the Self. You cannot find a single atom, a single thought that is apart from
the Self. All is the Self. All these doubts that are troubling you arise simply
because you are enmeshed in the "I am the Body" thought and all the
confusing consequences that it brings. It is more productive to keep the
awareness "I am the Self" than to be analyzing the usefulness of
effort. Sadhana, effort and practice,
and any ideas you may have about them, are concepts that can only arise when
you believe that you are not the Self, and when you believe that you have to do
something to reach the Self.
Even the sequence, "To whom has this thought come ? To
me," is based on ignorance of the Truth. Why ? Because it is verbalizing a
state of Ignorance; it is perpetuating an erroneous assumption that there is a
person who is having troublesome thoughts. You are the Self, not some make-believe
person who is having thoughts. If you remain in the Self, as the Self, no harm
can come to you. In that State, whatever comes to you will not be a problem.
There is no Duality when you remain as the Self; no thoughts about what you
should or should not do, and no thoughts about what can be done or what can’t
be done. The main thing is not to go out of the Self. When you have switched on
the light, darkness cannot come, not even if you desire it.
When this thought, "l am not meditating," or
"I am not in the Self," arises, just ignore it and go back to the
Self. When thoughts such as these arise, look at them and think, "Not me,
not my business," and go back to the Self. Don’t waste energy on thinking
or evaluating how well or how badly you are doing in our meditation. Whatever
thoughts come, ignore them. You have to ignore anything that is connected to
the Body-Mind idea, anything that is based on the notion that you are the Mind
or the Body. If you can do this, the rising thought will not disturb or
distract you. In a split second, it will run away. All thoughts are
distractions. including the thought "I am meditating."
If you are the Self, darkness will not overcome you.
Whatever thoughts arise in that State won’t affect you. If you are the Self, no
destiny will affect you. If you tear your shirt, does that mean that you are
also torn ? No. Something has happened
to something that is not you. Similarly, the Body and the Mind will experience
pleasure, happiness, misery, and so on, all according to the karma that has been brought into this
life. But the Self has no attachment, no detachment, no happiness, no
unhappiness and no karma.
The Body is not the Self; the Mind is not the Self. The real
"I" is the Self, and nothing ever happens to or affects the Self.
Thoughts will come as long as the potential for them is inside you. Good
thoughts, bad thoughts, they will all keep coming. There is nothing you can do
about this flow, but at the same time, this flow of thoughts need not be a
problem. Be the Self, be the Peace that is your Real Nature, and it will not
matter what comes up.
Walk, eat, drink, sleep, meditate, but never think that you
are the one who is doing these things. The thought that you are doing something
is the thought that is poisoning your life. Because once you think that you are
doing something, you will start to think that you need to be doing something
else to put yourself in a better situation. You don't have to do anything to
experience the nectar of the Self.
All you need to do is drop the idea that you are doing anything at all. You
need to change your vision, your perspective.
When you live in the Mind and see a World outside you that
is separate and apart from you, you will make plans, you will worry, you will
have doubts. These doubts keep coming up in you because you are not dwelling in
the Source, the Substratum. In that place there is Oneness, a Oneness in which
all distinctions, all separation is absent. If you abide as the Self, you will
see the World as the Self. In fact, there will be no World at all. No World, no
Maya, no Mind, no distinctions of any
kind.
It is like the state of seeing only wood in the carved elephant, only threads in the dyed
cloth. In that state of being and knowing the Self, ideas of right and wrong,
things to do and things to avoid doing, will vanish. You will know that they
were just mental concepts. In that state you will know that Mind is the Self,
Bondage is the Self, everything is the Self. With that vision, nothing will
bind you; nothing will cause you misery. The Self may appear as the manifest
World, as different separate objects, but the underlying Reality, the only real
substance is the Self in which they are all appearing and disappearing. Things
and people may appear in this Substratum, and you may use them or interact with
them, but your Peace will never be disturbed.
When you abide as the Self, there is no one left to choose
and decide. Life goes on automatically. You will pick up the things that are
needed, and not pick up the things that are not needed. What you pick up and
what you don’t pick up will not be a consequence of what you like or dislike.
These preferences will not be there any more. This perspective will be yours
when you give up or cease to believe the idea "I am different from the
World’. Giving up this thought is a great sadhana in itself. Abandoning this
false idea will be enough to give you Peace. When the thought is there, the
World seems to be full of good people and bad people, all busily engaged in
doing what appear to you to be good things and bad things. When the thought is
absent, you know them all to be your own Self. In that state you won’t like
them, dislike them or judge them, or be aware of them as being other than your
own Self. This absence of likes, dislikes and judgments will leave you in your
original natural state of
Peace. Teeth and tongue are both parts of you, and they both
function in harmony, without fighting or struggling. When there is the
knowledge that Mind and Self are one, there will be no fights, no struggles,
and no attempts to judge or attain. To have this Harmony, place the Mind in the
Self and keep it there. This is the real meditation. _ However, until you reach
this State in which there are no distinctions and preferences, you should use a
little Discrimination with regard to who and what you associate with.
Avoid bad company and bad thoughts, and try to keep the
conviction that nothing is separate from you. During sleep you have no likes
and dislikes. Jnanis and babies
manage this while they are awake. Baby mind is good; jnani mind is good; "I am the Body" Mind is very, very
bad.
The "I am the Body" thought is just as poisonous
as a cobra. "All is my Self. All is the nectar of my own Self." These are the great affirmations that
counter the "I am the Body" thought. Holding on to one of these
sayings is the equal of millions of punyas.
If we continuously meditate on the Truth of these statements, if we hold on to
the Truth that they are pointing towards, countless punyas will accrue to us.
The above themes & 1600 pages
more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of
a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:
or with
Caps-sensitive:
Duplicates
have been available on:
jstiga.wordpress.com/
[But from now on, they will be different & still
usually daily.]
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