This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 is The Person as Subject.
The Technique of Vichara
Mouni Sadhu made the journey from Theosophy to the Hermetic tradition, although he seems to have found his ultimate resting place in the Vedanta as taught by Ramana Maharshi. Interestingly, he and Valentin Tomberg had the same Russian Tarot teacher, although not at the same time. This may have some significance later.
In his book describing his experiences in India, Mouni Sadhu devotes one chapter to the specific practice of vichara. Ramana Maharshi is best known for posing the question “Who am I”, which his disciples are to meditate on constantly. In attempting to answer it, the disciple sees that he is not his thoughts, not his emotions, not his bodily sensations. Sadhu explains:
When we try to shut out all the whims and fancies of our restless mind, and to concentrate on the one chosen for a definite purpose, the mind fights desperately in order to resist control. It depends upon our will, who wins this fight. Find out who is the creator of thoughts and you have achieved the goal. Such is true realization.
He would repeat the mantra “who am I”, eventually reaching several thousand times per day. This conscious control of thought little by little crowds out all those other thoughts that arrive mechanically and then periods of inner quietude become longer. In this way, he comes to realize his true “I”, which is obviously transcendent to any of the contents of consciousness. This sounds in some fundamental way like the Way of the Pilgrim; it would be interesting if it leads to the same understanding of the “I”, or even a deeper one. But I don’t know of anyone who has tried each technique over two different periods in order to compare.
The vichara practice leads to the source of life and even eternal life, which is understood as uninterrupted consciousness. This is the immortality of the spirit. So the true “I” or Self (or Person) is consciousness, since that is unchanging despite the never ending flow of thoughts, visions, emotions, likes, sensations, etc., that the consciousness experiences. This can be understood in the various cycles. First there is the breath. After each exhalation, there is no guarantee you will take another breath. Try to maintain consciousness through the entire inhalation and exhalation. This must be why the prayer of the heart is synced with the breath. The next such cycles is wakefulness and sleep. It is more difficult to maintain the continuity of consciousness through the period of sleep. The first step is to learn to be conscious while in the dreaming state, and obviously I mean a detached awareness that one is dreaming.
Analogously, consciousness can be maintained after life ends, which we have tried to document in the review of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Fr. Seraphim Rose’s The Soul after Death. As was seen, that period immediately after death can be shocking, terrifying, and a severe test. Provided one has learned to recognize who he really is, this transition will be experienced in a better way.
Mouni Sadhu recommends meditating on this and “the truth will be made clear even to the outer mind.” The danger of misunderstanding is that the technique described seems too mechanical. The reality is that an inner transformation is always required; the vichara may create the space, i.e., a mind free from random thoughts, in which that realization can occur. However, it cannot by itself “create” such a realization. In the west, such a realization, which is also immortality, is tied in to certain moral virtues. Mouni Sadhu, like Guido de Giorgio, is a “vedantized” Catholic (or perhaps vice versa), so he ties this understanding to his own background:
Such are the heavens promised to the righteous and the saint, as told to us by Christ. For them there is no death any more. How clear now are the words of the great teacher of humanity!
So we see that Mouni Sadhu is relating salvation to self-realization. But I don’t know that salvation in the western sense is the realization that one is a Person, i.e., a transcendental I. This may be part of it, but the post about St. Gregory and the Soul asks for more. We will end with a few thoughts about this.
First I want to point out a teaching by Ramana Maharshi on reincarnation that is quite similar to Valentin Tomberg. In Mouni Sadhu’s words: [Ramana Maharshi] denies reincarnation in the realm of spirit, but otherwise speaks about it as an established fact
. Tomberg wrote that reincarnation is a fact, but not a necessary principle. But this is a separate discussion.
There is another point to ponder although the two options proposed will not be convincing to everyone. From the western perspective, the effectiveness of the eastern techniques is not denied, but it is relegated to a lesser level as merely “natural”. Of course it is not natural in the contemporary understanding of the term, but is it natural in the sense that there is no need for “grace” or “sacraments”, nor even a moral conversion. Anyone who is willing to follow the exercise of asking “who am I”, may reach the state of Samadhi.
The other perspective is expounded by Paul Sedir, the French Hermetist who was greatly admired by Mouni Sadhu and also by Valentin Tomberg. Like Thomas Aquinas, Sedir seems to have undergone an intellectual or spiritual conversion, after which he gave up all his interest in initiatic societies. In the meditation on the Fool, Tomberg provides an extensive quote from Sedir. Sedir clearly has a deep understanding of metaphysics and the supra-individual states. He describes metaphysical realization as identification through knowledge. He describes the successive stages:
- The unlimited development of all possibilities contained virtually in the individual
- Going beyond the world of forms to a degree of universality which is that of pure Being
- The final aim is the absolutely unconditioned state, free from all limitation. The liberated being is then truly in possession of the fullness of his possibilities. This is union with the supreme Principle.
Clearly, this must have been quite influential on the young Rene Guenon, since it could have come from his own pen. Sadhu and Maharshi recognize step 3, specifically, union of Atman with Brahman. Guenon criticizes Christian understanding as not moving past step 2, the union with Being.
However, the fact that Tomberg knows this, and even includes it as the conclusion of his meditations, shows that Guenon is mistaken. The point is not that Christian Hermetic meditation stops as step 2, but rather that is aim is greater, or at least, different. Actually, it aims for a step 4. Sedir writes:
True metaphysics cannot be determined in time: it is eternal. It is an order of knowledge reserved for an elite … and then, all existing manifestations of the Absolute are not there for the sake of being ignored; to abandon them because they encumber us, as the yogi or the arhat does, is neither noble nor Christian.
If you recall the post on the soul, one of the aims of salvation is that “It exteriorizes itself in a life of virtue and beauty,” while the yogi is no longer interested in his own exteriorizations or possibilities of manifestation. The essential difference is in Ramana Maharshi’s teaching on the I-I, as opposed to the I-Thou of the West. Hermetic enlightenment, hence, is ultimately the alchemical marriage of the duality, not the I-I relationship of the Self with Brahman as in the Vedanta.
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