Dr. Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India, New Delhi, B.I. Publications Pvt Ltd, (1934), Reprint 1989
For review, see: [Book Review](https://dayanandbharati.in/a-hunt-for-yogis-book-review-a-search-in-secret-india/)
Three thoughts caught my attention while I was reading this book: Rationalism, Who am I, and Experience.
I have already shared my rationalistic view on reason, so I need not repeat it here again. However, I would like to add one more thought to it: nothing stands beyond reason. Even the concept of ‘going beyond reason, standing beyond reason’ also comes within the premises of reason. To put it another way, when I say that I cannot understand certain things, still the ‘non-understanding’ is also part of understanding. As everyone understands this, I need not elaborate by giving examples or various rhetorical [my own] rationalistic or non-rationalistic explanations.
Next is the question ‘Who am I’. Though this concept became very famous after Sri Ramana Maharishi, even before him Sri Adi Sankara raised this question in his famous Bhaja Govindam, where he wrote: kastam koham; kuta aayataha; ka me janani kome tata ha; iti paribhavaya sarvama saram; vishvam tayktva svapna vicharam = From where do you come; Who am I; from where do you come; who is your mother [and] who is your father; consider this world like this and renounce it like a dream. [quoted from memory and my own translation].
Most probably, Sri Ramana pondered this question based on his knowledge of Bhaja Govindam and other scriptures related to Advaita.
Sri Ramana is a great saint and is considered by his followers as even Bhagavan. I am not denying his experience or enlightenment. However, to this question, my answer is that I don’t even have the right to ask this question. Because the answer to the question ‘Who am I’ is already answered by others when I came to this world. I came, not as an isolated individual having my own personal identity as a mere atman suspended somewhere away from this earth in some space, but as a person in relationship to others.
I came as a son to my parents, grandson to my grandparents, brother to my siblings, nephew to aunts and uncles, etc. Even in my death, I will continue to have this identity or relationship. When I die, ‘Dayanand’ is either buried or burnt [in my case, as I wish, donated to a medical college]. When children do sraddha [annual ancestral ritual remembering them], they have to not only mention the name of their parents or grandparents but also their relationship to them. For example, when a son does sraddha for his mother, in case his father had a first wife who died without a child and married again, his mother and had him as their son, then he has to offer pinda [rice ball] mentioning his or her relationship to them. The same is the case while offering pinda or tharpana [offering rice and gingili seed] or mere water. This relationship goes up to 21 generations to every individual, about which I have already mentioned in another song [Secular Song 420].
Even we call someone like Sri Ramana who found the answer to the question not merely ‘Maharishi’ but Sri Ramana Maharishi, separating him from other Maharishis. Of course, they never claimed this identity or were least bothered about how they are called while living and would be called after their mukti. But they continue to remain having an identity given by others. So personally, I think we even don’t have the right to ask the question ‘Who am I’ as our identity is decided by others, which will continue even after death—whatever might be our personal answer to this question.
We all know about the famous encounter of Sri Adi Sankara in Varanasi with a chandala while he was going in the narrow lane to the temple of Vishwanatha. When Sri Sankara asked the chandala who was coming from the opposite side with his dog to ‘stand aside and give way’ so that he wouldn’t be polluted by his presence, the latter asked him, ‘which one should I keep away not to pollute you—this body or this atman?’ Then Sri Sankara got his enlightenment as the Chandala was none other than Shiva, who came in the form of a chandala to enlighten Sri Sankara. Though Advaitans are right to point out that the body does not have any identity and it is atman which alone remains eternal, my understanding is that even without this body, any particular atman cannot even ask this question ‘Who am I’.
Though we Hindus believe that every living being has the very same atman, still I am not sure whether non-human atmans are going to ask or ponder over this question. Even if they do, fortunately, they need not communicate their answer to us—though we have plenty of stories about such incidents in which even non-human beings [or animals] taught such wonderful lessons to human beings. For me, the question ‘Who am I’ is not addressed only to the atman independent of the body. And without having a physical body, we cannot even ask this question, that too borrowing from others’ doctrines, which they derived based on their personal experience. So to the question ‘Who am I?’, my answer is that it is my entire personality—my body, soul, spirit, buddhi, etc. After death, the body might perish, but without this body, I as a human being cannot even ask this question. So accepting this material reality as an essential part of this life and accepting our stewardship with responsibility is important.
Next is the experience. Brunton says, ‘Besides, I have no desire to become the depository of another man’s doctrines; it is a living, first-hand, personal experience which I seek, a spiritual illumination entirely my own and not someone else’s.—p. 270
Unfortunately, it is not possible for anyone to have their ‘my own’ experience. Of course, I understand that we can have our personal experience. However, we all need to begin or several times borrow from others’ experience to have this personal experience. I don’t want to answer the hypothetical question, ‘then from whom did the first human being get his personal experience?’ We all know about the famous riddle: which came first, the egg or the chick? Leaving aside this riddle, in my case, what all the experiences I own now are some kind of ‘depository’ of another man’s doctrines in whichever name that doctrine was given to me. I don’t want to engage in any ‘wordless, experience-less, transcendental stage of intellect’ as I am not competent for this kind of philosophical discussion. However, as I often say, we can express even these concepts in any language borrowing the words which were coined based on the doctrine of someone else’s experience. Even when we coin our own word or term, then in order to understand and communicate to others, we have to borrow others’ words and illustrations, etc., that are coined or created based on their experience. For example, when we give our ‘Adirasam’ {Tamil; Kajayam in Kannada] to a Westerner, to help him understand, we can say, ‘this is a kind of Indian donut’.
When Brunton came to India, he had to ‘cram and concentrate his investigations into minimum time’, for he ‘cannot afford to spend years out of a life upon a single quest.’ (p. 270) So he has to return back to his country to pursue his many other [rationalistic] investigations [as a writer and journalist] romanticizing his mystic Indian experience. When later he reflected on that experience and wrote this book, he had to put that romanticism into a rationalistic category which he had called “Moments of Illuminations.”(p. 312) But Indian spirituality and philosophy, though giving lots of hope for further search, still once attained that ‘enlightenment’ [like that of Sri Ramana Maharishi and other Yogis], will continue to abide in it as it is the climax of Yoga which aims to attain that ‘nirvikalpa samadhi’ which never wavers with so many rationalistic questions not settled in one particular discipline [sadhana] or philosophy.1 Though I respect and accept others’ experiences as genuine, I still have my questions about such claims, particularly by outsiders from any culture and tradition about which they make all such tall statements that I found in Brunton.
Revised on 15-8-2024
Gurukulam, 21-1-2022
Note
1 …In some religious traditions, however (especially in Buddhism and classical Yoga), such ‘altered’ states are sometimes taken to be the normative and ‘natural’ state of mind, and it is the everyday states of waking and dreaming, etc., that are somehow an ‘alteration’ of or an aberration from that norm. Thus in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, yoga is defined as ‘the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind’ (citta-vrtti-nirodha, YS!.2). The ‘normal’ status of the seer is to abide in its own form (svaruupa), as pure consciousness (Purusa, YS1.3).— Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic East,’ New Delhi, Oxford, 1999, p.22
For it is in appearance only that such activities as yoga produced the desired state of ‘pure’ consciousness. Properly understood, yoga, for example, is not an unconditioning of consciousness or deconditioning of consciousness, but rather it is a reconditioning of consciousness, i.e. a substituting of one form of conditioned and/or contextual consciousness for another [Steven Katz, ‘Language, epistemology and mysticism’, in Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, New York, Oxford University press, 1978, (pp. 26-7), p.57]
This has led to responses such as the critique of Donald Evans, which focuses on the inappropriateness of scholars casting judgement over issues about which they are not qualified to speak….—ibid. p.175
…Purusa becomes intrigued by prakrti and ‘forgets’ its true nature, thereby mistakenly identifying itself with embodied existence through a succession of lives (samsaara). The goal of the Samkhya tradition, as well as the Raja Yoga tradition, is to realize that one’s true nature is that of a pure witness consciousness (saaksin), untouched by the vicissitudes and fluctuations of worldly existence. Thus, in the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, a progressive path is outlined for overcoming the fluctuations of the mind (citta vrtti) and attaining a state of unconstructed and concentrated awareness (nirvikalpa samaadhi), where one perceives reality as it is and the seer dwells in its own pure form….(italics original)—ibid. p.181 [emphasis added—db]
Dr. Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India, New Delhi, B.I. Publications Pvt Ltd, (1934), Reprint 1989
For review, see: [Book Review](https://dayanandbharati.in/a-hunt-for-yogis-book-review-a-search-in-secret-india/)
Three thoughts caught my attention while I was reading this book: Rationalism, Who am I, and Experience.
I have already shared my rationalistic view on reason, so I need not repeat it here again. However, I would like to add one more thought to it: nothing stands beyond reason. Even the concept of ‘going beyond reason, standing beyond reason’ also comes within the premises of reason. To put it another way, when I say that I cannot understand certain things, still the ‘non-understanding’ is also part of understanding. As everyone understands this, I need not elaborate by giving examples or various rhetorical [my own] rationalistic or non-rationalistic explanations.
Next is the question ‘Who am I’. Though this concept became very famous after Sri Ramana Maharishi, even before him Sri Adi Sankara raised this question in his famous Bhaja Govindam, where he wrote: kastam koham; kuta aayataha; ka me janani kome tata ha; iti paribhavaya sarvama saram; vishvam tayktva svapna vicharam = From where do you come; Who am I; from where do you come; who is your mother [and] who is your father; consider this world like this and renounce it like a dream. [quoted from memory and my own translation].
Most probably, Sri Ramana pondered this question based on his knowledge of Bhaja Govindam and other scriptures related to Advaita.
Sri Ramana is a great saint and is considered by his followers as even Bhagavan. I am not denying his experience or enlightenment. However, to this question, my answer is that I don’t even have the right to ask this question. Because the answer to the question ‘Who am I’ is already answered by others when I came to this world. I came, not as an isolated individual having my own personal identity as a mere atman suspended somewhere away from this earth in some space, but as a person in relationship to others.
I came as a son to my parents, grandson to my grandparents, brother to my siblings, nephew to aunts and uncles, etc. Even in my death, I will continue to have this identity or relationship. When I die, ‘Dayanand’ is either buried or burnt [in my case, as I wish, donated to a medical college]. When children do sraddha [annual ancestral ritual remembering them], they have to not only mention the name of their parents or grandparents but also their relationship to them. For example, when a son does sraddha for his mother, in case his father had a first wife who died without a child and married again, his mother and had him as their son, then he has to offer pinda [rice ball] mentioning his or her relationship to them. The same is the case while offering pinda or tharpana [offering rice and gingili seed] or mere water. This relationship goes up to 21 generations to every individual, about which I have already mentioned in another song [Secular Song 420].
Even we call someone like Sri Ramana who found the answer to the question not merely ‘Maharishi’ but Sri Ramana Maharishi, separating him from other Maharishis. Of course, they never claimed this identity or were least bothered about how they are called while living and would be called after their mukti. But they continue to remain having an identity given by others. So personally, I think we even don’t have the right to ask the question ‘Who am I’ as our identity is decided by others, which will continue even after death—whatever might be our personal answer to this question.
We all know about the famous encounter of Sri Adi Sankara in Varanasi with a chandala while he was going in the narrow lane to the temple of Vishwanatha. When Sri Sankara asked the chandala who was coming from the opposite side with his dog to ‘stand aside and give way’ so that he wouldn’t be polluted by his presence, the latter asked him, ‘which one should I keep away not to pollute you—this body or this atman?’ Then Sri Sankara got his enlightenment as the Chandala was none other than Shiva, who came in the form of a chandala to enlighten Sri Sankara. Though Advaitans are right to point out that the body does not have any identity and it is atman which alone remains eternal, my understanding is that even without this body, any particular atman cannot even ask this question ‘Who am I’.
Though we Hindus believe that every living being has the very same atman, still I am not sure whether non-human atmans are going to ask or ponder over this question. Even if they do, fortunately, they need not communicate their answer to us—though we have plenty of stories about such incidents in which even non-human beings [or animals] taught such wonderful lessons to human beings. For me, the question ‘Who am I’ is not addressed only to the atman independent of the body. And without having a physical body, we cannot even ask this question, that too borrowing from others’ doctrines, which they derived based on their personal experience. So to the question ‘Who am I?’, my answer is that it is my entire personality—my body, soul, spirit, buddhi, etc. After death, the body might perish, but without this body, I as a human being cannot even ask this question. So accepting this material reality as an essential part of this life and accepting our stewardship with responsibility is important.
Next is the experience. Brunton says, ‘Besides, I have no desire to become the depository of another man’s doctrines; it is a living, first-hand, personal experience which I seek, a spiritual illumination entirely my own and not someone else’s.—p. 270
Unfortunately, it is not possible for anyone to have their ‘my own’ experience. Of course, I understand that we can have our personal experience. However, we all need to begin or several times borrow from others’ experience to have this personal experience. I don’t want to answer the hypothetical question, ‘then from whom did the first human being get his personal experience?’ We all know about the famous riddle: which came first, the egg or the chick? Leaving aside this riddle, in my case, what all the experiences I own now are some kind of ‘depository’ of another man’s doctrines in whichever name that doctrine was given to me. I don’t want to engage in any ‘wordless, experience-less, transcendental stage of intellect’ as I am not competent for this kind of philosophical discussion. However, as I often say, we can express even these concepts in any language borrowing the words which were coined based on the doctrine of someone else’s experience. Even when we coin our own word or term, then in order to understand and communicate to others, we have to borrow others’ words and illustrations, etc., that are coined or created based on their experience. For example, when we give our ‘Adirasam’ {Tamil; Kajayam in Kannada] to a Westerner, to help him understand, we can say, ‘this is a kind of Indian donut’.
When Brunton came to India, he had to ‘cram and concentrate his investigations into minimum time’, for he ‘cannot afford to spend years out of a life upon a single quest.’ (p. 270) So he has to return back to his country to pursue his many other [rationalistic] investigations [as a writer and journalist] romanticizing his mystic Indian experience. When later he reflected on that experience and wrote this book, he had to put that romanticism into a rationalistic category which he had called “Moments of Illuminations.”(p. 312) But Indian spirituality and philosophy, though giving lots of hope for further search, still once attained that ‘enlightenment’ [like that of Sri Ramana Maharishi and other Yogis], will continue to abide in it as it is the climax of Yoga which aims to attain that ‘nirvikalpa samadhi’ which never wavers with so many rationalistic questions not settled in one particular discipline [sadhana] or philosophy.1 Though I respect and accept others’ experiences as genuine, I still have my questions about such claims, particularly by outsiders from any culture and tradition about which they make all such tall statements that I found in Brunton.
Revised on 15-8-2024
Gurukulam, 21-1-2022
Note
1 …In some religious traditions, however (especially in Buddhism and classical Yoga), such ‘altered’ states are sometimes taken to be the normative and ‘natural’ state of mind, and it is the everyday states of waking and dreaming, etc., that are somehow an ‘alteration’ of or an aberration from that norm. Thus in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, yoga is defined as ‘the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind’ (citta-vrtti-nirodha, YS!.2). The ‘normal’ status of the seer is to abide in its own form (svaruupa), as pure consciousness (Purusa, YS1.3).— Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic East,’ New Delhi, Oxford, 1999, p.22
For it is in appearance only that such activities as yoga produced the desired state of ‘pure’ consciousness. Properly understood, yoga, for example, is not an unconditioning of consciousness or deconditioning of consciousness, but rather it is a reconditioning of consciousness, i.e. a substituting of one form of conditioned and/or contextual consciousness for another [Steven Katz, ‘Language, epistemology and mysticism’, in Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, New York, Oxford University press, 1978, (pp. 26-7), p.57]
This has led to responses such as the critique of Donald Evans, which focuses on the inappropriateness of scholars casting judgement over issues about which they are not qualified to speak….—ibid. p.175
…Purusa becomes intrigued by prakrti and ‘forgets’ its true nature, thereby mistakenly identifying itself with embodied existence through a succession of lives (samsaara). The goal of the Samkhya tradition, as well as the Raja Yoga tradition, is to realize that one’s true nature is that of a pure witness consciousness (saaksin), untouched by the vicissitudes and fluctuations of worldly existence. Thus, in the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, a progressive path is outlined for overcoming the fluctuations of the mind (citta vrtti) and attaining a state of unconstructed and concentrated awareness (nirvikalpa samaadhi), where one perceives reality as it is and the seer dwells in its own pure form….(italics original)—ibid. p.181 [emphasis added—db]
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