Yoga Bhoomika

yoga-bhoomika ~ when both subject and object are absent.

Selections from Jnaneshwar’s Amritanubhava as presented in Experience of Immortality, Ramesh Balsekar

INVALIDATION OF IGNORANCE

p.209

Our true nature shines when volition disappears

185. In the negation of the duality of subject and object, the state that arises is experienced as the noumenal aspect known as Yoga-bhoomika (the yogic state).

186. It is like that state of water when the waves (that have arisen) settle down and the next series of waves has not yet started;

187. Or the state that exists when deep sleep has ended and the waking state has not yet taken over;

188. Or the state of the sky when the sun has set and the darkness has not set in;

189. Or the state of mind when one thought has passed and the next thought has not yet arisen;

190. Or the state of breathing when one breath has ended and the next one has not yet begun;

191. Or the state of satiation when all the senses are satisfied in the same instant.

192. It is this kind of state that is the yoga-bhoomika, when both subject and object are absent. “Who” will then experience “what” in such a state?

p. 220

Difference is Itself a Concept

All there is is the noumenal functioning – the “I-functioning” – in the whole-mind without duality. Such functioning – such seeing – is whole, holy, without duality.”

p.234

The transformation requires no doing or not doing

3. My Guru has so transformed me into this state in which I now find myself that it is difficult to say whether I have been contained in this state or whether this state has been contained in me.

4. Indeed, it is difficult to see any change in my condition because that would at once cause a distinction between the two states. (My original state has never undergone any change.)

The Jiva (individual) joins with Shiva (the noumenal absolute), YET…

The concept of an autonomous individual is something that has inadvertently come about, and it is really a question not of joining the individual with the noumenon [Source] (since they are not really separate at all) but of abandoning something inessential and superficial. As Nisargadatta Maharaj explained, it is really a matter of negation – abandoning something rather than doing something positive – where bondage and freedom are concerned, because even these are themselves concepts intimately involved with the illusion of the individual. Or more accurately, it is neither a matter of doing something nor of not doing something but of merely SEEING things as they are, BEING what we are, LIVING as we are. In such SEEING-BEING-LIVING, there is really no ‘who’ at all, only the functioning aspect of the objectivization of the phenomenon, a sort of noumenal living – free, unconditioned, and impersonal.”

The Hindu view of the individual merging with Shiva implies an essential IT duality, between that-which-we-THINK-we-are and THAT-which-we-ARE, whereas this duality is actually purely conceptual like that of the wave and the water. The wave and the water do not need to be joined; the wave merely subsides into water…

HARI OM TAT SAT

Ramesh Balsekar
May 25, 1917 - September 27, 2009