Śravaṇa, Manana And Nididhyāsana

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

Someone once said that knowledge is a rumour until it lives in the body. Sri Bhagavan explained this much more clearly when Kunjuswami asked him why he had lost the experience of the Self after he left Sri Bhagavan’s presence. He recorded this in his autobiography, Reminiscences (Enadu Ninaivugal):

One day I ventured to ask Bhagavan why those exalted states which I had first experienced in Bhagavan’s proximity began to wane and then were altogether gone when I left him and reached Kerala. By way of answer to my query, Bhagavan asked me to read verses 88 to 93 in the ‘Tattuva Vilakka Padalam’ [‘The Exposition of the Truth’ Section] of Kaivalya Navaneetam, wherein lay the answer to my query:

• 88. “My Lord! Can such realisation as has transcended the dual perception of ‘You’ and ‘I’ and found the Self to be entire and all-pervading, fail me at any time?”
  The Master replied: “The truth that ‘I am Brahman’ is realised from the scriptures or by the grace of the Master, but it cannot be firm in the face of obstructions. [Italics mine]
• Ignorance, uncertainty and wrong knowledge are obstacles resulting from long-standing habits in the innumerable incarnations of the past which cause trouble, and then the fruits of realisation slip away. Therefore root them out by hearing the Truth, reasoning and meditation [śravaṇa, manana and nididhyāsana].
• 90. .... Defective realization will not put an end to bondage. Therefore devote yourself to hearing the Truth, reasoning and meditation, and root out ignorance, uncertainty and wrong knowledge. ....
• 92. Hearing the Truth is to revert the mind repeatedly to the teaching: ‘That thou art.’ Reasoning is rational investigation of the meaning of the text, as already heard. Meditation is one-pointedness of mind. If every day you do these, you will surely gain liberation.
• 93. The practice must be kept up so long as the sense of knower and knowledge persists. No effort is necessary after that. Remaining as pure, eternal Consciousness, untainted like the ether, and thus liberated while alive, one will live forever as That – after being disembodied also.^[1]

Śravaṇa, manana and nididhyāsana are, thus, the cornerstones, the enzymes as it were, of spiritual ripening. And, all the great ones, including Sri Bhagavan, say they are to be carried out not once, but till the end.

What follows now are my own observations, experiments and conclusions about what these three terms mean and how I have applied them over the years so as to deepen my own sādhana. I therefore make no claim to authority. However, as I have encountered so many newcomers who have not understood the importance of these stages of practice, perhaps my observations may be of use.

In my experience śravaṇa refers not only to the act of listening but, in this age of multi-media, also reading the words of the Great Ones: the Upanishads, Adi Shankaracharya, Sri Bhagavan, Sri Ramakrishna, and so forth. Śravaṇa is, to me, like taking food into the mouth in order to get nourishment.

But śravaṇa alone is not enough, just as having a mouthful of food is not enough. The food must be thoroughly chewed before swallowing to avoid indigestion. Similarly, merely hearing or reading the Teaching is not enough, however many times it may be repeated. Unless one is a very mature soul it must be reflected upon, not just once, but repeatedly, lest one risks spiritual indigestion, quite as painful – and much more destructive – as the physical sort and having far greater consequences. A silly but accurate example is when someone sees a person who’s just been hit by a lorry and tells him, “Don’t worry. None of it is real,” and goes off to lunch.

This is the sense and purpose of manana, literally reasoning, but reasoning in the sense of poring over and reflecting upon the Teaching: “How does this teaching apply to me? Can I find some application for this teaching in my life? Can I hold it up as a mirror to guide me? If not, what in me is blocking my understanding? If I do not yet understand it, let me keep it on a handy shelf in my mind in case something comes up to illuminate it. Then I can reflect upon it further.” The slokas referred to in Kaivalya Navaneetam normally refer to the mahāvākyas – the four Great Sayings of the Upaniṣads:

• 1. Prajñānaṁ Brahma (Awareness is Brahman, or the Absolute);
• 2. Ayam Ātmā Brahma (This Self is Brahman);
• 3. Tat Tvam Asi (That thou art);
• 4. Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi (I am Brahman).

For myself, I have always found these Truths undeniable but quite beyond my experiential grasp. In my hunger to really comprehend and live them, I was forced to break things down into smaller pieces. If the experience of the mahāvākya-s is my great aim, then eliminating whatever obstacles to abiding in them became my intermediary aim. Many of the things Sri Bhagavan (or the Upanishads, Adi Shankara, and so forth) said may be over our heads at the beginning, and I believe this is a common experience. I have noticed several ways people deal with this initial lack of understanding.

One way is to swallow the teaching whole and undigested so that it remains like a rock in the stomach – that is, in the mind – as an ironclad impregnable obstruction to further ‘digestion’. Never seeking to really understand it, they thus make of it nothing better than the dogmas of whatever religion they have abandoned. They thus suffer again for the very same reason: the inability to swallow the required dogmas, formerly delivered by unenlightened ministers having no direct experience of the dogmas in the first place. ‘One isn’t a good Christian unless one believes in the Holy Trinity.’ And ‘One is a terrible Catholic if one does not believe in the infallibility of the Pope.’ Organised religion does not provide for enquiry into the profound truths behind the dogmas upon which their faith is built. And there have been religious wars over whether one should cross oneself with two fingers or three, and whether from left to right or right to left. The same may be the case with the outcropping of new teachers or gurus until the seeker has developed the requisite maturity.

Even a bhakta must perform this process. While faith and surrender are the Path, if one remains at this stage – believing rather than understanding – and turning someone else’s (Bhagavan’s for instance) experience into ‘unchewed’ blind faith, they remain at the stage of religion, which of course has its purpose but is not an end in itself. There is also a great risk of killing the teaching in oneself, making it into an intellectual, hardened conceptual understanding, incapable of modification, even preventing further experience. Sri Bhagavan’s teachings, for example, are intended to take the mind beyond itself, not further burden it with more thoughts. This kind of crystallisation can become so complete that it actually becomes a jail; and rather than modify one’s understanding of the initial teaching through continual manana, one throws away what experience may come as invalid – so unfortunate! – and continues to construct a conceptual bunker leading from the ‘ground floor’ of ignorance to an imaginary ‘roof’ of enlightenment. A great tragedy.

Another possible wrong turn is for the undigested Teaching to be enveloped by the imagination. As the Great Ones have said, mere belief and/or imagination cannot lead to realisation. Sri Ramakrishna used to comment upon this with an analogy. He said that the floor of a house, the stairs, and the roof are indeed in the same house and are made of the same materials, but it is of no use whatsoever to sit on the floor and say, “I am on the roof. I am on the roof.” He exhorted his disciples to make the effort (śravaṇa, manana and nididhyāsana) to climb each stair, making of whatever stair one is standing upon a thrust block essential for attaining the next stair: neti-neti. Alas, there are many contemporary teachers teaching just the opposite: ‘We are on the roof. There is nothing to do. We are already perfect.’ Indeed the acorn contains the tree, but without being buried in the earth, watered and receiving sunlight, that acorn will remain an acorn and eventually die to its possibilities.

Effective manana can be likened to a cow chewing its cud. We know that first the cow eats grass and other fodder. Then comes a time of day when the cow stops eating and stands or lies quietly (and gets very annoyed if disturbed!) while the grass is regurgitated so that the cow can chew it properly. Only after proper chewing does the cud become nourishment for the cow.

Next comes nididhyāsana. As we digest and understand some aspect of the teaching through repeated hearing, reflection, experience and further reflection, all of which lead to deeper experience and so on, the time of nididhyāsana comes: one-pointedly meditating on the truth of the Teaching until all impurities, doubts and obstacles disappear and permanent sākṣātkāra (realisation) alone remains. An important note regards backsliding, something we are all familiar with. Once one has come to know the truth of some aspect of the Teaching, when no doubts remain, it is incumbent upon one to live that Teaching and not allow any kind of backsliding. An example is indulging a tendency even though one has no doubts whatsoever about its undeniably negative impact; for example, overeating, taking drugs or indulging in gossip. That is, allowing the old habit of enjoying the tendency to overtake the insight into its negative effect upon oneself or others.

Another example:

One hears that there is more to life than mere eating, sleeping, procreating, money and death. Many hear about this now, both in the West and East, but much fewer are stirred to action. Some (and I know one personally) investigate aliens as the source of higher wisdom, some take haṭha yoga or seek teachers in the West, some go back to sleep, and some come to India or other Asian countries to seek a guide. This usually marks the ‘supermarket’ phase of spirituality. Just as one who has never tasted corn flakes goes to a supermarket and tries every brand of corn flakes until they find the one they like best, seekers come to India and sample all that India has to offer before they settle on the ‘brand’ that suits them best. Only thus can they become mature enough to settle down to one particular teacher or path. For the beginner this is a very important stage, not to be belittled in any way.

Once the seeker has found a teacher he believes in, it is of no use to continue looking. To do so means that one either does not really have confidence in their teacher or is not ready for a teacher. But once one is committed to a particular teacher or path, wandering here and there is counterproductive.

When I first came to Tiruvannamalai, I had done with my first teacher in the West, and was most certainly not looking for another one. I was, however, madly and one-pointedly in love with Arunachala, and nothing could keep me from the Mountain. Within a few months I was living on it. People used to visit occasionally and tell me that Krishnamurti or Anandamayi Ma were in Chennai, Sai Baba was in Puttaparti, and so on. Ammachi personally invited me to come with her to her ashram in Kerala and be her disciple. Everybody was recruiting, it seemed, and my peers were running around looking for someone to hand them the ‘Truth’, Enlightenment, whatever they imagined their goal to be.

I found this perpetual frenzy confusing but was saved by reading a line in Sri Ramana’s Talks, where he says: “Attend to the purpose for which you have come.” It rang so true and sound that I stayed where I was, and everything I needed did, indeed, come to me. Thus this teaching of Sri Bhagavan became my guiding principle. I referred to it again and again as events cropped up, and it has stood me in good stead for the past 40 years. Further, it has deepened over time. While in the beginning it kept me from dissipating my energy by running around to all sorts of teachers, later it displaced numerous activities and tendencies that dissipated my mental and physical energy so that I have become ever more one-pointed. And it continues to deepen and ripen me.

Thus, I arrive at nididhyāsana: repeatedly, one-pointedly meditating upon the Truth as I understand it so far. Of course, there are still obstacles; of course, I am most certainly NOT ‘cooked’. And while I firmly believe that ‘The Kingdom of God is within me’, and have had more and longer and deeper glimpses of it, it is not permanent.

And so śravaṇa, manana and nididhyāsana continue.