When devotees talk about the teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, they look to self-inquiry almost exclusively and rarely take up the theme of Bhagavan’s surrender. Perhaps for them surrender is thought to be more difficult to practice than enquiry. Or maybe surrender is not seen by them as a practice at all, but rather as the fruit of practice. The difficulty in understanding how we develop a mind and heart that are surrendered is knowing what surrender is and how we go in search of it. But suppose we came to see that surrender is really the natural state of the heart? What if we came to see that all the created order, the entirety of the natural world is governed by a single principle, a common essence that permeates the whole? What if surrender were not different from the Self? And what if the wisdom of the Self were nothing more than the perfect resonance and harmonization of all things, animate and inanimate, divine and mundane, born of non-resistance? What would this look like?
An image from the Atharva Veda made its way into the 3rd-century Avatamsaka Sutra describing the mysterious interpenetration of the external world and the internal realm of the mind:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each intersection of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number.
Now consider for a moment what is being offered here. The jewels in the net are the disparate entities in the world, including individual human hearts, each reflecting the life of the hearts of others, each containing a perfect reflection of the other. Each jewel is infused by the light of the Self which is the whole. But this ‘infusion’ is not separate from the whole, for each reflection IS the whole.
Bhagavan tells us that all the material world is merely Consciousness. But since form and consciousness are just words, terms relative to one another pointing to the same ultimate reality, what we call It doesn’t really matter as much as knowing it first-hand. In earlier generations, this vision of the cosmos as a field of knowing was called chidakasa. Bhagavan most often called It the Self. Here we are reminded of lines from Talks where Bhagavan says:
A mirror, as we know it, is an insentient object which reflects light. What corresponds to a mirror in an individual? The light of the Self-luminous Self is reflected on the Mahatattva. The reflected light is the mind ether or the pure mind… Chidakasa (chit ether) is Pure Knowledge. It is the source of the mind. At the moment of rising, the mind is only light; afterwards the thought “I am this” arises; this ‘I’-thought forms the jiva and the world. The first light is the pure mind, the mind ether or Isvara. Its modes manifest as objects. Because it contains all these objects within itself, it is called mind ether. [1]
Indra’s Net is simultaneously a cosmological vision and an empirical description of the world. Strange as it may seem, modern scientific descriptions of the cosmos, what Bhagavan calls bhootakasa, begin to resemble the image from the Atharva Veda. Consider the recent discovery by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of a vacuum-pressure wave originating in a super-massive black hole in the Perseus cluster of galaxies 250 million light-years from Earth. The wave has been traveling through outer space for 2.5 billion years i.e., more than half the age of the earth. At a frequency fifty-seven octaves below middle C, it is well below the threshold of human hearing but nonetheless carries a lot of information about its place of origin.[2]
While the illustration from Indra’s Net is just a symbol, it shows that the ancients were on to something. Chandra’s pressure wave is one tiny example of the vast flow of information circulating in the frictionless medium of our cosmos, revealing a multi-directional information field. The medium is so frictionless that even the pressure waves of our very first cries as new-born infants and, for that matter, every audible sound that has passed our lips since, are still being transmitted, however faintly, throughout the cosmos. Therefore, the entire universe is brimming with wave memory,[3] i.e. what Bhagavan calls the reflected light of the ‘mirror’. Every event in the present universe has been faithfully recorded, not least of all, its first moment, namely, the primordial eruption of the Big Bang.[4]
If the ancient vision of Indra’s Net is relevant to modern science, what would the ‘reflected light’ look like in contemporary scientific language?
It was the Nobel prize-winning Danish physicist Niels Bohr in the early 20th century who laid the ground for quantum theory and non-locality, that is, quantum objects communicating with each other at a distance. How did the idea of non-locality emerge? Observational physicists found that every measurement of a particle yielded a complementary outcome in the measurement on its companion particle. Every action on a particle seemed to have an instantaneous effect on its companion.[5]
Non-locality exemplifies the metaphor of Indra’s Net as linking the various ‘jewels’ that make up the (physical) universe. The non-local connection between particles, irrespective of the distance between them, is predictable and instantaneous. One physicist describes it this way:
The essence of non-locality is unmediated action-at-a-distance. A non-local interaction links up one location with another without crossing space, without decay, and without delay. [6]
To adequately apply the metaphor of Indra’s Net to the natural order, the non-locality of a quantum field should have some correlation, at least metaphorically, at the macro-scale of biological life. Hence, we might ask if there is such a thing as biological ‘non-locality’ in information fields of knowing among organisms and the inanimate world?[7] Bhagavan’s remarks would suggest a resounding, ‘yes’. The German theoretician Marco Bischof comments:
Quantum mechanics has established the primacy of the inseparable whole. For this reason, the basis of the new biophysics must be the insight into the fundamental interconnectedness within the organism as well as between organisms, and that of the organism with the environment. [8]
Holograms and Entrainment
The British physicist David Bohm made use of the hologram as a metaphor for what he calls the “implicate order”. In a hologram, each region of a photograph contains within it “the whole three-dimensional image, which can be viewed from various perspectives. Each region contains a whole and undivided image.”[9] This is precisely what Indra’s Net describes, namely, that the light reflected in any jewel of the net reflects all the others. Bhagavan takes up this discussion and asks rhetorically:
What is [this] world? It is objects distributed through space. Who [or what] comprehends [them]? The mind. Is not the mind which comprehends space itself space (akasa)? Space is physical ether (bhootakasa). The mind is mental ether (manakasa) which is contained in transcendental ether (chidakasa). The mind is thus the ether principle (akasa tattva). Being the principle of knowledge, it is identified with ether metaphysically. Considering it to be ether, there’s no difficulty in reconciling the apparent contradiction. Pure mind is ether. The dynamic and dull aspects (rajas and tamas) operate as gross objects. [Thus,] the whole universe is only mental.[10]
From an empirical point of view, resonance and communication at a distance between organisms and inanimate objects can be thought of in various ways. One is entrainment, for example, the way that singing a Sa, a Re or a Ga at a distance causes the string of an instrument tuned to that key to vibrate on its own.
In 1665 the Dutch physicist Christian Huygens studied entrainment and ‘phase syncopation’, experimenting with pendulum clocks. He set them in motion and found upon returning to his lab the following morning that their pendulums had synchronized. This is accounted for in conventional scientific terms by the small amounts of energy that are transferred between the two systems when they are out of phase such as to produce negative feedback.[11]
Neuropsychologists studying brainwave entrainment point to the acoustical resonance of participants at a music event. Group entrainment as a form of social resonance means brain patterns of large groups of people synchronise. Take evening Tamil parayana at Ramanasramam as an example. Participants synchronise their recitation by rhythm and harmony.[12] Reciting in unison bonds those gathered and strengthens the cohesiveness of the community[13]. But entrainment is measurable. Studies show that couples married for three decades or more exhibit pronounced brainwave entrainment as do identical twins. The entrainment in identical twins is so pronounced that they can often sense the pain or trauma of the other at a distance. When pairs of identical twins were rigorously monitored for brain waves, blood pressure, and galvanic skin response, and one of the unsuspecting twins was subjected to a loud alarm fitted to the back of his or her chair, the other registered the resulting shock even though he or she was closeted some distance away in a soundproof room.[14] How do we account for such occurrences? Bhagavan comments:
[Whereas] physical ether which contains objects, mind ether contains thoughts. Just as physical ether accommodating the gross objects of the universe is itself the content of the mind ether, so the latter is the content of Chit ether. Chit remains as Pure Knowledge … Ether denotes not only the insentient physical ether but also Pure Knowledge. Knowledge does not [merely] consist in knowing objects, which is just relative knowledge, but knowledge in its purity, remaining alone, one, unique [is] transcendent Light.[15]
The human heart is vast and mysterious and there may be more to our world than meets the eye. Studies show—and we know from our own experience—that unassisted communication at a distance takes place on a daily basis. Consider something as quotidian as the communication between humans and their pets. In one hundred filmed tests of pets and their owners, the former spent far more time at the window when its owner was on their way home than when they were not. Additional tests had the owner travel home in a taxi or some other unfamiliar vehicle at randomly selected times to rule out the possibility that the pet was reacting to familiar car sounds or routines.[16] While these findings are not surprising, still, they challenge conventional assumptions we have about the world.
Bhagavan’s Surrender
Now, if humans and other living creatures are (unconsciously) participating in vast fields of knowing—manakasa and chidakasa—replete with multidirectional transfers of information of every imaginable sort, still, what does this have to do with our starting point, namely, Bhagavan’s surrender, and how can it help us in our walk on the path?
Surrender is wisdom and freedom. Non-surrender is groping after something one wants but does not have, on the one hand, and resisting something one does not like, on the other. Mostly, any obstacle born of the small self is rooted in non-acceptance of the conditions one is facing at any given moment. If there are no wants and no complaints whatsoever, then we are in Bhagavan’s surrender and for the moment our fierce clinging to the small self diminishes. Here is where the language of chidakasa and resonant fields enters the picture. In non-resistance, the vast trove of universal ‘memory’—what tradition calls intuitive wisdom—is made available to us. Non-resistance opens a whole new field of knowing, namely, the inner world of Bhagavan’s self-inquiry.[17] Practicing non-resistance means greeting each moment of resistance with patience and empathy, carefully making a mental note of episodes of the least form of non-surrender and reactivity as and when they arise without trying to make them be other than what they are. By patiently inquiring into them, we come to understand something of their nature and their causes and begin to become more friendly toward them, slowly assimilating them into the heart. By this process we discover what we are and what we are not, learn to differentiate wisdom and delusion, come to know ourselves, and gradually free ourselves from long-standing afflictions born of confusion. What is the confusion? It is the samsaric assumption we carry with us day in and day out which posits an ego in a body, Bhagavan tells us. Upon experiencing the cosmos as a vast harmonised resonant field which includes all the manifest forms of bhootakasa[18], we come to see that we are bound up with one another and with the greater inanimate whole, and that this thing I call ‘myself’ is not separate from any other ‘self’. The assumption that we are a jiva in a body situated in a world is upside-down, says Bhagavan. Rather, the world and the body are contained within Us, and the jewels of the net and the light which passes through them are a seamless whole.
Bhagavan never spoke of resonant fields, but he did speak of chidakasa, as we saw above. And even if Bhagavan never gave lengthy explanations in how to cultivate surrender, when we apprentice ourselves to Mother Nature, as did Dattatreya with his ‘24 gurus’[19], we discover first-hand the dharma of flawless non-resistance. Thus what had been alien and intangible becomes familiar and intimate. In time, we discover that Mother Nature is here to help us. In Her boundless mercy, she bears us up, holds us in a perfect embrace and makes us one with Herself.
Thus the field of knowing is the field of being, and fractal patterns common throughout the natural and Divine orders abide within us, allowing us to sketch a map of the territory ahead. What is the territory ahead? It is just surrendering to things as they are, Bhagavan tells us. Surrender alone can unite us with the disparate fragments of the heart and too, with the fragments of the hearts of others. If it engenders our healing, it likewise assists theirs by virtue of the budding fulfilment within us, the source of blessing and benediction rippling out into the collective. Bhagavan tells us it all begins with seeing clearly and letting go:
Do not delude yourself by imagining the source to be some God outside you. Your source is within you. Give yourself up to that. That means that you should seek the source and merge in it. Because you imagine yourself to be [apart from] it, you raise the question “Where is the source?” … [But] can one surrender oneself and yet retain one’s individuality? … Would God—Pure Consciousness—not ask: “Who are you apart from Me that you would presume to serve Me?… It is enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one’s being.” [20] —
(to be continued)
Footnotes
[1] Talks, §569 and §589.
[2] See Science and the Akashic Field, Ervin Laszlo, p. 50. See also the Frankfurt School sociologist Hartmut Rosa in his 2016 ‘Resonance: A Sociology of the Relationship to the World’ (Resonanz: Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung)
[3] To better understand wave memory, consider how the waves of a ship transfer information. By measuring waves from a ship that passed hours earlier (even at a great distance), we can know the ship’s size, weight, speed, direction, and time of travel. A submarine conveys information in every direction. In wave memory, there is no pure place of the observer who does not simultaneously affect the field. The ocean is a relatively frictionless medium and preserves its information for long periods. If it were not for coastlines, wind and ocean currents, scientists tell us, the information would be preserved indefinitely. The cosmos by contrast is perfectly frictionless and thus its wave memory is virtually perfect (see Laszlo. p. 53).
[4] The signature of the Big Bang is preserved 14.7 billion years later in various ways, not least of all by the ongoing expansion of the universe as well as cosmic microwave background radiation which registers a temperature of 4 degrees Kelvin throughout space (UT Austin, Astronomy Dept).
[5] Thus, causing its wave-function to collapse into a complementary state. It has been speculated that quantum nature’s non-locality is born of a strange kind of topography in the universe (UT Austin, Astronomy Dept).
[6] This comment from Nick Herbert. It should be added that non-locality is the basis for ‘quantum teleportation’, or what in computer science is called quantum computing, namely, an instant transfer of information among remote particles without requiring they be proximate with one another (see Laszlo, p. 82).
[7] The biologist Rupert Sheldrake suggests that memory is inherent in the natural order and that “natural systems … inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind.” Sheldrake proposes that such memory is also responsible for telesomatic interconnections between organisms much like non-local communication between particles. (Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation).
[8] Laszlo, p. 53.
[9] David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
[10] Talks, §451.
[11] Stated in more detail: As the two machines assume a more stable phase relationship, the amount of energy gradually reduces to zero, with systems of greater frequency slowing down, and the other speeding up. A modern example comes from the laundromat where the tumbling clothes-drying machines synchronize their rotations (see Wikipedia for ‘Entrainment’).
[12] As well as by deeply held feelings regarding the content of the texts recited, namely, Bhagavan’s verses, what social psychologists call ‘narrative empathy’.
[13] And perhaps we can talk of entrainment without any salient external cues such as that which meditators in the Old Hall experience, i.e., a shared sense of ‘stillness in the hall’, possibly linked ‘to collective cuing’ to subtle ambient sounds.
[14] Guy Playfair, from his book Twin Telepathy.
[15] Talks, §589.
[16] Rupert Sheldrake, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.
[17] Sadhu Om once said, “Bhagavan taught two paths, self-enquiry and self-surrender. Just as it is natural for a man to walk on two legs, so it is natural […] to follow these two paths.” (Interview from Arunachala Ramana.)
[18] Including the immense neuronal network of the human brain.
[19] Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 11.
[20] Talks, §208.
