Seer / Perception Equipments
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before Jun 27, 2017
MiBeloved 5 years ago
From a discussion on LinkedIn:
Drik-Drishya viveka for me is the seer and its mandatory perception equipments. As far as I am concerned the seer is dependent on the equipments. I did not read in the Yoga Sutras that the seer can permanently exist without the equipments.
Other yogis have said that it can but I do not see that in the Sutras.
The so called essence or essential self cannot function by itself without the perception equipments and that is why it has to make an effort to free itself from the equipments in the first place. But even when it attains some freedom, it finds itself fused back into the equipments.
Unless we can explain this repeated mandatory re-fusion, the idea about it being non-reliant makes no sense, at least not to me.
I agree however that the self should have a routine to find quiet time with itself, just as a caring mother has to find some quiet time from her badgering kids, because otherwise she will become schizophrenic. But don’t tell me that she doesn’t have a reliance on the kids. I am not going to buy into that unless there is conclusive practical proof that in her nature there is no need for children.
Imagining non-reliance, buying into the doctrine of it, is one matter and actually living that out in real terms is a totally separate matter.
The other thing is choice. Can you really go on eternally from now onwards without the perception equipments? I can agree however that we may feel better about our existential status if we convince ourselves that we are the Absolute.
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Query: Is the seer personal or impersonal?
MiBeloved’s Response:
If we are discussing Patanjali then we have to admit a personal deity, whom he listed as Ishwar, whom he stated was the teacher of the ancient yogis and whom is devoid of the kleshas or blemishes.
If we are discussing the advaita Vedanta then there is no personal deity. Person is denied as it is mostly in the Buddhist idea of anatma.
If on the other hand, we are posturing our own ideas, experiences, convictions or beliefs, then that is a different matter.
Since this conversation began with Patanjali’s sutras, I want to stick to Patanjali. If we shift to Advaita Vedanta, then I am prepared to consider that view of reality just as well. But I won’t hodge podge it or mix it up.
Patanjali is a personalist, a Vaishnava. He was not an Advaita Vedantist. Sometimes for one reason or the other one has to talk help from a personalist Acharya. At other times one takes help from an impersonalist Acharya. There is no need to muddle all of it into one theme.
The personalists follow a system known as Samkhya which was explained by Kapila Muni, son of Devahuti. That is different to the advaita system of Shankara.
Marcia Beloved 5 years ago
Michael wrote:
I did not read in the Yoga Sutras that the seer can permanently exist without the equipments.
Marcia Beloved’s Query:
I am confused. I thought that the permanent existence which we are striving for or trying to realize was exactly this: to exist without the equipments in an environment where the equipments do not apply.
If Patanjali does not say we will exist without the equipments, then are we all stuck in the dimensions where the equipments are needed?
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Patanjali cannot award any person the impossible. It is not possible to exist without the equipments unless everything shuts down and there is no existence at all, and actually that happens when there is pralaya, a Sanskrit word means complete annihilation of a set of beings for some time. It is never an eternal state however as the system which shuts down again comes back into existence.
Check Krishna Cosmic Body about this, where Markandeya gave his experience.
Patanjali gave us a very important piece of advice which is that at first one has to strive for kaivalyam which is aloneness, meaning being alone without the perception equipments.
Then again he said that one should fuse with the equipments when they are purified.
In the first kaivalyam (kevalam) one separates from the equipments, in order to discipline them and bring them in purity and useful order. In the second and final stage one re-unifies with the purified, spiritually useful equipments.
Using your vocabulary it is like this:
The permanent existence which we are striving for or trying to realize was exactly this: to exist without the present spiritually-depressive equipments in an environment where those equipments do not apply, but where other equipments which are either new stuffs or purified conditions of the faulty psychic technology.
