Ramana Maharshi would tell the Vedanta parable of the 10th:
Hiking the hills &
needing to cross a raging snow-fed river in Spring, 10 traveling Fools made of
themselves a human chain to safeguard their passage. Given the slippery stones
underfoot & unexpected high water level & onrushing force, there was
natural concern that they all had made it the other shore. The first one to
think of it began a head count, pointing at each, calling out as he wagged his
finger: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.” Suddenly upset the poor Fool cried out:
“That’s it, only 9. Omigosh! Who did we lose?”
In horrified disbelief,
another Fool repeated the head count: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.” & so did
another, & another, until everyone on shore gave it a try, all confirming
the original tragic announcement. The confusing part for them, of course, was
that no one could figure out who was the missing one. Easy for us, we aren’t
shivering & wet with freezing river water, exhausted & frightened. But
then again, it was kind of silly. Given that they all followed the misguided
example of the first, pointing only at other heads as they counted. If only one
of them had kept track & counted the number of counts called, they would
have be reassured when the full 10 counts were listed.
Their luck soon changed when
just then an eminent spiritual master & teacher, a Guru much revered in the region, came walking down their shore,
having seen the pantomime of their plight from the distance as he approached,
not needing to be within earshot get the picture. But upon listening patiently &
trying in vain to explain the proper Arithmetic to them, he decided to quickly
demonstrate after kindly letting them off the hook, saying that many people
experience confusion like this, as when told that such & such will occur in
10 days. some will ask: “Does that 10 count today, or do we start counting
tomorrow as 1?” “But practical experience is best, so here we go” he said, &
continuing: “when I tap your head with my staff, you the first one call out 1 & next 2 & so on until I’ve tapped the last one.”
And so he did, & they
called out, a bit nervous as they got to 9.
But sure enough, they distinctly heard one last hollow bonk of the staff on a
head & the call 10. There he was
smiling & laughing with relief, the one the Guru had arranged to be last, the same first one the Guru saw start the counting, recognizing
him now as had seen him from a distance. Smiling with kindness the Guru concluded for him: “Yes, Thou Art the
10th.”
When
equating the Non-Dual Self with Absolute Reality Brahman, the most authoritative Upanishads repeatedly intoned the Mahavakya or Great Proclamation “Thou
Art That”, with Absolute Reality, Brahman
understood to be “That.”
In “Thou Art the 10th!”
the actual number 10 has no particular significance there other than in helping
recall of the Parable. What matters is that each essentially makes the same
mistake when failing to count himself, or more to the point, take himself into
account. The remedy is to Inquire “who am
I” in order to know oneself. Self-Knowledge, the direct result of
Self-Inquiry, is also known as Self-Realization, Enlightenment, Liberation, &
in the original languages: Moksha,
Nirvana, Mukti, & so on. That is the ineffable Reality itself, ever
inexplicable & beyond words. In that same Dream, the Maharshi continued to respond
to a succession of questions about Self-Knowledge that were winding down-level
to issues of their being two ways one forgets to take into account oneself.
Both kinds of self-amnesia are
modeled in slightly different ways by analogy based on the Parable about the 10th.
Robert Heinlein's hero
in Stranger in a Strange Land drew from the same scriptures, without
direct reference, when his planet-colony "visitor" was asked about
the that colony's understanding of "God". Confused at first, that
character, Michael Valentine, hesitated, pondered, & then realized what was
being asked. Shaking his head in denial of the basic premise of the question,
one about some separate super-being, the extra-terrestrial visitor responded:
"Thou art God!" (Of course the "thou art" would not have
been used unless the Mahavakya was being referenced. Thou Art … – Tat
Tvam Asi, That Thou Art, is the one Mahavakya
out of the tradition of 4 that is typically rendered in the archaic English
thou and art to lend a “biblical” significance to the 3 short words. With
far less understanding of the very deepest meaning, we can note sci-fi written at the close of the
1950’s and published in the next decade by Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, in which
another version of that Mahavakya appears.
That story’s Alien is seeking to
decipher the earthling word “God” but is met with a confusing array of poorly
conceived answers, as would still be the case. Only very slightly parallel to
our own Alien, the old sci-fi version finally gets the drift of
their stammering and he is stunned that they don’t already know. He utters:
“Thou Art God” – a nice honoring or the Mahavakya for the American 1950’s even
if Heinlein exhibits no further understanding of the Proclamation, in terms of
Self-Knowledge, the primary concern. As for the partial equivalence of the word
“God” compared to the assumed Brahman in
the Mahavakya, it is worth noting
that Meister Eckhart came closer with the term Gottheit “Godhead”. Written in the late 1950's & then published
in '61, this was pretty "far out" for an American sci–fi
author.
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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