🕉️ Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Arunachalaramanaya 🕉️
WHY DO Viṣaya-vāsanās (propensities, inclinations or desires to experience phenomena) SPROUT AS THOUGHTS, AND HOW TO ERADICATE THEM?
Vāsanās (propensities, inclinations or urges) have no will of their own, so they do not want anything. They are our desires, so the question is: what do we want? As this ego we are not yet willing to die, so we project phenomena (which are all thoughts), because it is only by grasping phenomena that the ego seems to exist, as Bhagavan says in verse 25 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu - Reality In Forty Verses:
Grasping form the formless phantom-ego comes into existence; grasping form it stands; grasping and feeding on form it grows abundantly; leaving form, it grasps form. If it seeks, it will take flight. Investigate.
[By] grasping form [that is, by projecting and perceiving the form of a body (composed of five sheaths) as itself] the formless phantom-ego comes into existence [rises into being or is formed];
[by] grasping form [that is, by holding on to that body as itself] it stands [endures, continues or persists];
[by] grasping and feeding on form [that is, by projecting and perceiving other forms or phenomena] it grows [spreads, expands, increases, ascends, rises high or flourishes] abundantly;
leaving [one] form [a body that it had projected and perceived as itself in one state], it grasps [another] form [another body that it projects and perceives as itself in its next state].
If it seeks [examines or investigates] [itself], it will take flight [because it has no form of its own, and hence it cannot seem to exist without grasping the forms of other things as itself and as its food or sustenance]. Investigate [this ego] [or know thus].
What Bhagavan refers to here as ‘form’ is phenomena of any kind whatsoever (that is, anything that appears and disappears), and according to him all forms or phenomena are just thoughts or mental phenomena, as he implies when he says in the fourth and fourteenth paragraphs of Nāṉ Yār? - Who Am I?:
"Excluding thoughts [or ideas], there is not separately any such thing as world. In sleep there are no thoughts, and [consequently] there is also no world; in waking and dream there are thoughts, and [consequently] there is also a world."
"What is called the world is only thought."
Though he says that the ego comes into existence, stands, feeds itself and grows by grasping ‘form’ or phenomena, he does not mean that forms exist independent of it or when it does not exist, because as he says in verse 26 of Uḷḷadu Nāṟpadu:
‘If the ego comes into existence, everything comes into existence. If the ego does not exist, everything does not exist’.
Therefore the ego grasps forms (thoughts or phenomena) by projecting them or making them appear in its awareness, as he says in fourth paragraph of Nāṉ Yār?:,
‘It [the mind or ego] makes all thoughts appear [or projects all thoughts]’.
Viṣaya-vāsanās (propensities, inclinations or desires to experience phenomena) are like seeds, and the phenomena (viṣayas) that we project are the plants that sprout from these seeds. That is, as this ego we project phenomena because we desire to experience them. Since we desire to experience them in order to survive, we are willing to experience even unpleasant or painful phenomena rather than to die.
When Bhagavan says that whatever thought may arise we should investigate to whom it has arisen, we should remember that according to him all phenomena (everything that appears or disappears), including any world that we may perceive, are just thoughts, so he means that whatever may appear in our awareness we should investigate to whom it has appeared.
- Michael James blog 24.1.2018
https://happinessofbeing.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-do-visaya-vasanas-sprout-as.html
Source: https://www.facebook.com/RamanaMaharshiFoundationUK/photos/a.910847292336596/3680341232053841/
