by Greg Goode
Another way to look at the guru-versus-book issue is this. Why can’t the Karana-guru be the book itself? Can’t the author appear in literary form?
There’s a kind of rich rhetorical irony here. The guru principle stresses face-to-face contact with the guru. And as we see in Notes, the principle is itself communicated face-to-face. The medium in which the guru principle is most frequently not asserted, and even perhaps denied, is writing. The irony is that each rhetorical mode tends to bring its own authority to the forefront and place the other mode in the background. We don’t find Shri Atmananda talking about the authority of writing, or writing about the authority of talking. Such ironies often emerge in communication.
We can honor Shri Atmananda’s legacy by honoring either mode of communication. So for the seeker who reads all of Atmananda’s available texts, both possibilities are present. This brings us back to our original question.
Back to Bulgaria
Our Bulgarian friend asked in so many words, “Is it really true that I must have personal contact with a living guru in order to reach enlightenment?” In view of everything we’ve discussed here, I suggest that this isn’t a clear or helpful question. I would recommend a more reasonable and practical question instead: “Would working with a guru be helpful in my search to realize the truth?” This question is much easier to answer. In fact, there’s a helpful irony with this question. The more important the question seems to the person asking it, the more affirmative the answer.
A guru will be helpful for all the usual reasons that teachers are helpful. A guru can provide individualized help and recommendations, as well as inspiration. The guru can serve as a living, breathing example of the truth of the teaching.
So what about Shri Atmananda’s teachings about the special love, light, and force of Truth that emanate from the guru in person? There are many ways to look at this. One person’s beloved guru may be another person’s boring old windbag. Or, perhaps the love, light, and force of Truth can come through a one-on-one video chat. Or how about a text? Some people are able to feel love, light, and the force of Truth coming quite strongly from the words in Atma Darshan and Atma Nirvriti. Why should this be impossible, especially when, according to the direct path, all words are appearances in awareness? Perhaps the two parties don’t even have to be connected through visual means at all. For example, practices such as remote viewing and energetic healing can be performed at a distance. Perhaps the truth can be communicated in this way too.
Some people might require more face-to-face assistance than others. Because of this, and because Shri Atmananda articulates different approaches in different places, I like to interpret the guru doctrine as one particular teaching method among others. So I think that our Bulgarian friend’s chances are quite good!
Chapter 5
Alternatives to Inquiry
Although the direct path has a reputation for being intellectual, it offers a surprising number of non-intellectual activities and experiments. In this chapter, we’ll look at these other activities.
The reputation for intellectuality is probably due to the direct path’s emphasis on inquiry, which uses reasoning and insight. In direct-path inquiry, you use a combination of direct experience and reasoning to inquire into the world, the body, and the mind. The result is a radical gestalt shift, a change in perspective. You stop identifying as a mind, a body, or a person, and you begin to identify as awareness before ceasing to identify altogether. When this teaching is set forth in its entirety, either by a teacher or in a book such as The Direct Path: A User Guide, it’s called tattvopadesha (“teaching on reality”).
The process of working through these inquiries does involve cognitive resources, and it can make the path seem dry and philosophical. Not everyone relates to that approach.
But many other spiritual approaches in the direct path don’t use this kind of inquiry. These other approaches are used most often when teachers work directly with students. If you attend a retreat, for example, you stand a very good chance of encountering these other methods.
Karma yoga
Bhakti yoga
Reminders
Standing as awareness
The Heart Opener
Sleeping Knowingly
Guided meditations
The Yoga of Awareness
The Direct Method vs. the Upanishadic Method
According to the direct path, what makes it “direct” is that it doesn’t try to move or change or create or eradicate anything. Students of the direct path don’t become anything new or discard anything old. The direct path proposes no creation stories about the world and gives no causal explanations as to why things seem to be a certain way. It doesn’t try to get you to ascend to higher and higher levels of reality. It doesn’t have you try to better your individual thoughts and feelings so that only pleasant or impressive ones arise. Instead, it begins by taking you as you are. It directs your attention to the clarity, love, and truth of your direct experience, and then it proceeds from there. You discover global clarity. Even the moments that previously seemed to prove the truth of duality, you discover, are seamless clarity.
Shri Atmananda explains this “direct method” by distinguishing it from what he calls the traditional Upanishadic method:
All Upanishadic methods try to eliminate you from the anatma, and to establish you in the Atma.
But here, according to the direct method, you are shown that you can never get away either from your own shadow or from your reality. You are only asked to look deep into what you call anatma, and see beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is nothing but Atma—the Reality.44
The difference, as Shri Atmananda sees it, is that the Upanishadic methods try to dispel ignorance and establish you in the truth, whereas in the direct method you look at anatma (“not-self”) and understand that it was already the self. There’s nothing to eliminate, nothing to become, and nothing that you need to establish yourself in.45 Because what we think of as the “not-self” is already Reality, the method that recognizes this is called “direct”—it doesn’t rely on a process of becoming. This directness applies to the whole range of spiritual activities offered by the direct path.
We’ll start with karma yoga. Karma yoga is usually considered to be the yoga of action, in which the fruits of one’s actions are dedicated to the guru, to one’s deity, to other beings, or to awareness itself. But Shri Atmananda has his own take on karma yoga!
Karma Yoga
About karma yoga, Shri Atmananda says:
Of all these margas, karma-yoga alone has an advaitic goal called “naishkarmya-siddhi”—i.e. to be engaged in all the activities of body, senses and mind, and at the same time to be convinced beyond all doubt that you are neither the doer nor the enjoyer at any time, but only the ultimate witness or Truth itself.46
This approach to karma yoga is versatile. You can “perform” karma yoga in this sense at any time, with any activity. You can engage in volunteer work, social service, and social activism, as well as more mundane activities, such as fixing a leaking pipe in the kitchen. As you perform an activity, you can use the reminder (see below) that the doer and the recipient of the action are the same: “the ultimate witness or Truth itself.” The opportunity to do this is always available to you.
Bhakti Yoga
The direct path allows for bhakti yoga (“devotion”), but there’s not much emphasis on it in the works of Shri Atmananda. The bulk of his teaching on devotion is found in Notes. For Shri Atmananda, bhakti yoga should be directed toward the person of the guru, not toward a deity. Here’s a representative passage from Notes.
That particular person through whom one had the proud privilege of being enlightened, that is the only form which one may adore and do puja to, to one’s heart’s content, as the person of one’s Guru. It is true that all is the Sat-guru, but only when the name and form disappear and not otherwise. Therefore, the true aspirant should beware of being deluded into any similar devotional advances t
owards any other form, be it of God or of man.47
Bhakti yoga usually involves adoration and doing puja, which includes invocations, prayers, and rituals. Even though Shri Atmananda was a fairly traditional Hindu teacher, he didn’t recommend that aspirants begin worshipping traditional deities such as Shiva, Krishna, Durga, and Kali. His approach seems to be that if you feel that bhakti yoga should be part of your path, then the object of your devotion should be the guru. This was perhaps because of his emphasis on jnana yoga and the important role the guru plays in unfolding the truth for the aspirant.
Another topic that relates to the role of the guru is the teaching found in Notes that states that a living teacher is necessary for liberation. In his “Life Sketch” of Shri Atmananda, editor Nitya Tripta says, “He asserted most emphatically that no aspirant, however great, could ever attain liberation without the help of a Karana-guru in person.”48
I should point out that Atmananda was emphasizing only that aspirants should hear teachings pertaining to the truth of their nature expounded in person from the guru, not that they should worship a guru bhakti-yoga style. I discussed this in chapter 4, “The Guru Doctrine.”
Reminders
Reminders are short, simple, intense contemplations that don’t involve inquiry. Shri Atmananda mentions quite a variety of reminders, which help you change your perspective by reducing your doubt and confusion. Experiencing the correct change of perspective is one of Shri Atmananda’s definitions of liberation.
Here are examples of reminders given in the direct path. Notice that they don’t all assume an absolute or final perspective. That’s exactly why they can be helpful. They’re designed to resonate with your perspective at particular points along the path and then shift your perspective toward a more holistic view.
Remember that changes such as birth, growth, decay, and destruction are features of physical matter, which is an object of consciousness.
Remember that words such as “consciousness,” “knowledge,” “being,” and “happiness” all point to the “I.”
Remember that when you attribute physical reality to the world, you’re also identifying consciousness with the body.
Think about the true “I” indirectly, since you can’t think about it directly. You can think of it as the residue left after everything objective has been removed from what we usually take to be the “I.”
Think of an object—for example, a coffee cup—in the same way. Remove all objective qualities from it, and all you have is the “thinking.” But the “thinking” is also an object. When this is removed, what’s left is your nature: witnessing awareness. Witnessing awareness is not an object but rather that to which objects appear.
Contemplate how even the words “awareness,” “consciousness,” and “happiness” point only to the true “I.”
Keep in mind how your true nature is that into which all thoughts subside. If you follow any thought as it subsides, it’ll take you to your true nature.
Contemplate how the “I” is always the observer of experience, never the observed object.
Ask yourself, How, if there’s no color without seeing, is it even possible to see a color? This applies to all the sense objects, not just color. Do you have to believe it when your thoughts say that objects exist?
Ask yourself, How, if there’s no color before seeing, and no color after seeing, can there be color during seeing?
Ponder this: Can a thought touch its object? Can it meet or make contact with the object in any way? If not, then how can the thought be “about” that object? How can it be “caused” by that object?
Keep the great Advaitic aphorisms in mind: “Ayam atma brahma.” (“This self is all there is.”) “Tat tvam asi.” (“You are that”—in the second person because it’s told to the student by the teacher.) “Aham brahma ’smi.” (“I am all there is.”) Make sure that you interpret the words in their indicatory sense, not their literal sense. “You” and “I” refer to awareness. “That” refers to existence or “all there is.”
Contemplate the witness aspect of awareness. The deeper your contemplation, the quieter the mind becomes. This quietness, combined with contemplation, gives you the opportunity to experience the mind itself as witnessed.
Contemplate “I am.” This is not a state but a description of the truth of your being. This truth doesn’t depend on being asserted, but the contemplation drives away all competing thoughts. Slowly the contemplation becomes deeper and deeper until happiness is experienced, which is the nature of the “I.” At this point the “am” disappears, being no longer needed.
Remember that spiritual or meditative states apply to the mind, not to witnessing awareness. Even the most subtle and profound nirvikalpa samadhi49 is a state of mind that can come and go. The coming and going appear to you as witnessing awareness.
Bear in mind that when you stand as awareness, perception and thinking vanish.
The reminders help you recapture specific key insights and stabilize on them. You can choose insights that are familiar but need more exploration. You can work with insights that feel challenging. And you can choose reminders that don’t seem very clear but arouse a sense of mystery or wonder. And you can create your own reminders.
When you use one of these reminders, don’t just repeat it to yourself. You’re not trying to brainwash yourself or simply memorize the reminder. Instead, dig into it. Try to recapture the steps that led up to your insight. Or you can recapture the teacher’s presentation, or your sense of wonder about it, as well as the insight itself.
Recapturing the insight will help counteract any doubt and confusion. It’ll clarify that bit of the teaching. This clarity will radiate out and improve your understanding in general.
When you reach the point of realization or the aha moment, stabilize on it. Stay there and let it sink in. Try not to pursue another thought. Don’t congratulate yourself. Don’t even evaluate how you’re doing. Just stay with that peak moment of insight. As you stabilize in that moment, the reminder will take you directly to the truth of your nature. You’ll feel an opening into warmth. This peak moment will eventually become fainter and fainter. That doesn’t mean it’s leaving you. It’s just returning to the silent witnessing awareness from which it came. As it goes, it’ll take you with it. You’ll experience a small homecoming.
Of course, sooner or later you’ll turn to other things. Other thoughts and actions will arise. But for a moment, you’ll have experienced being taken to the truth experientially with the help of one of these reminders.
In his various texts, Shri Atmananda recommends doing these reminders over and over again. They all remove uncertainty and take you experientially to witnessing awareness. And as any single reminder becomes clearer, they all become clearer to some extent.
Standing as Awareness
When you stand as awareness, you take the perspective of the transparent witness immediately. Your experience begins to verify this stand. This is a little different from reaching the witness through inquiry. With inquiry, you investigate what seems to be other than awareness, and through direct experience you realize that nothing is other than awareness.
But when you stand as awareness, the effect is immediate. It’s as if you’re stepping into the infinite right here. It’s like saying to yourself: I know that the teachings say that I am awareness. What if it were really true? Let me now take the perspective of awareness. The “I” is awareness, not a body or a mind. What follows from this? Appearances come and go, so they can’t be me. As awareness, I don’t suffer. I don’t even have experiences—I am experience.
Awareness doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t need anything. Nothing is missing. Awareness doesn’t suffer. There might be unpleasant arisings, but they don’t take hold. They don’t last. They’re simply witnessed as they come and go.
This isn’t the perspective of the person. Even the person comes and goes in witnessing awareness, which is the truth of your nature. You’re already this awa
reness. Taking a stand as awareness is just a way to be awareness a bit more knowingly.
When you take your stand like this, your experience will confirm the stand. This is similar to what happens in everyday life, in which your everyday experience seems to confirm your everyday stand. Your everyday perspective says that you’re the body or the mind. Therefore, your experience seems to verify this perspective, and it seems as if things affect the body and the mind. From the everyday perspective, even this “taking a stand” business seems an exercise, something you’re doing on purpose. It might seem like an artificial visualization.
But when you stand as awareness, you notice that things change. When you stand as awareness, what seemed to be true from your everyday perspective isn’t even on your radar. What shows up is different, and what seems convincing is different. From the perspective of you as awareness, nothing happens to you. All “happenings,” “bodies,” and “minds” are themselves passing appearances. They’re arisings in awareness, which is the single true “I.”
If standing as awareness sounds appealing to you, keep the following points in mind.
First, it isn’t a process of “fake it till you make it.” If standing as awareness were really a put-on, then how could your heart feel the sweetness, peace, and contentment that it does when you’re in the middle of that stand? Also, if standing as awareness were a process of faking it, then that would mean that you aren’t really awareness after all. So then what would you be?
