Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 9 Michael James Only when one sends the mind, which will be restrained when one restrains the breath, on the investigating path will its form perish. [6] This is also implied and further clarified by him in the eighth paragraph of Nāṉ Ār?: For the mind to cease, except investigation [Sa. vicāraṇā] there are no other adequate means. If made to cease by other means, the mind remaining as if it had ceased, will again rise up. Even by breath-restraint [Sa. prāṇāyāma] the mind will cease; however, so long as the breath [Sa. prāṇa] remains subsided mind will also remain subsided, and when the breath emerges it will also emerge and wander about under the sway of its inclinations [Sa. vāsanās] … Therefore prāṇāyāma is just an aid to restrain the mind, but will not bring about manōnāśa. [7] Two key verbs that Bhagavan uses in this passage are aḍaṅgu, which means both “subside” and “cease”, and aḍakku, which is the causative of aḍaṅgu and hence means “to cause to subside or cease”, so it is generally used in the sense of “subdue”, “curb”, “restrain” or “constrain”. Since subsidence can be either partial or complete, and since complete subsidence or cessation can be either temporary or permanent, whenever either aḍaṅgu or aḍakku are used, we need to understand from the context whether they are referring to either partial or complete subsidence, and if they are referring to complete subsidence, which means cessation, whether that cessation is temporary or permanent. Temporary cessation of mind is called manōlaya, whereas permanent cessation of it is called manōnāśa. In the first sentence, “For the mind to cease, except investigation there are no other adequate means” (Ta. “maṉam aḍaṅguvadaṟku vicāraṇaiyai-t tavira vēṟu tahunda upāyaṅgaḷ-illai”), “for the mind to cease” (Ta. “maṉam aḍaṅguvadaṟku”) implies for the mind to cease permanently, or in other words, for it to subside in such a way that it never rises again, whereas in the subsequent sentences (in which aḍaṅgu occurs four more times and aḍakku occurs twice) aḍaṅgu is used in the sense of “subsiding” or “ceasing temporarily” and aḍakku is likewise used in the sense of “restraining” or “causing to subside or cease temporarily”. In the first sentence of this passage, “for the mind to cease, except investigation there are no other adequate means”, “investigation” (Sa. vicāraṇā) implies “self-investigation” (Sa. ātma-vicāraṇā), and the fact that there are no adequate means to make the mind cease except self-investigation is also emphasised by him in the first sentence of the sixth paragraph of Nāṉ Ār?: “Only by the investigation who am I will the mind cease” [8], in which he likewise uses the verb aḍaṅgu in the sense of ceasing permanently. Just as we cannot see that what seems to be a snake is actually just a rope unless we look at it carefully enough, we cannot see that we, who now seem to be ego or mind, are actually just pure awareness unless we investigate what we actually are by attending to ourself keenly enough. In other words, since ego is a false awareness of ourself, being an awareness that knows itself as “I am this body” and that consequently knows the seeming existence of other things, it cannot be eradicated by any means other than our being aware of ourself as we actually are, namely as pure “being-awareness” (Sa. sat-cit), which alone is what actually exists and which is therefore never aware of anything other than itself. And we cannot be aware of ourself as we actually are by attending to anything other than ourself, but only by attending to ourself so keenly that we thereby cease to be aware of anything else whatsoever. 7 The Nature of Ego The very nature of ourself as pure being-awareness is just to be as we actually are without ever rising to know anything other than ourself, whereas the very nature of ourself as ego is to rise to know other things. Therefore as ego our nature is to always attend to things other than ourself, because we cannot rise or stand as ego without attending to other things, as Bhagavan points out in verse 25 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu: Grasping form it comes into existence; grasping form it stands; grasping and feeding on form it grows abundantly; leaving form, it grasps form. If sought, it will take flight. The formless demon ego. Investigate. [9] The penultimate sentence, “the formless demon ego” (Ta. “uru-v-aṯṟa pēy ahandai”), implies that what is described in the previous five sentences is the very nature of ego, which is a formless demon or phantom. Here “form” (Ta. uru) means not just physical forms but anything that can be distinguished in any way from any other thing, so phenomena of all kinds are forms in this sense. Ego is formless because it has no form of its own, so in its formless state it has no separate existence, meaning that it is nothing other than pure awareness, and hence it seems to have a separate existence only because it identifies itself as the form of a body consisting of five sheaths. This is therefore the first form it grasps, and without grasping such a form it could not rise or stand (that is, it could not come into existence or endure),
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