Discourses from Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon
(from 'Notes on Spiritual Discourses')

Note that the following quotations are extracted from the 'Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda', taken by Nitya Tripta. The numbers correspond to those in the proposed second edition (see below). These are my own selections, a few of those quotations that I found particularly insightful and helpful.

847. CAN I UNDERSTAND ANYTHING TILL THE EGO DIES? (55)
No. In the question, you are putting the cart before the horse. You are emphasizing the ego more than the understanding.
However much you may try to kill the ego, it will only become stronger. So you have to approach it from the other end. Everybody understands in spite of the ego. The truth is that the ego automatically dies when you understand anything.
You will never succeed in bringing in light, if you insist upon removing all the darkness from your room before you do so. Therefore simply ignore the ego and try to understand, and the understanding itself will remove the ego.

929. WHAT OBSTRUCTS THE REALITY? (137)
The presence as well as absence of the object. When you see the wall without the usual picture hanging on it, you form a percept and a concept together - the concept getting the better of the two. The percept is the absence of the picture and the concept is the idea of the presence of the picture. It is clear that the wall, as it is, will never be perceived if your attention is directed to either of the two. Similarly, the Reality behind the world is obstructed both by the presence of the world in the waking and dream states, and by its absence in the deep sleep state. You have to transcend both in order to reach the background.

963. HOW DOES ONE LIVE? (171)
We see two distinct ways of living. They are:

1. The ignorant man's life, and
2. The jivan-mukta's life.

Life consists of the relationship of objects and knowledge. Objects and knowledge are distinct and separate. The ignorant man attributes reality to objects alone and lives in them. His life begins with the mind and ends there. Therefore, he is bound. His activities begin from the ego and end in the ego.

But the jivan-mukta knows that objects are nothing but Consciousness and lives in Consciousness. He knows that life begins in him, beyond the mind, in Consciousness and ends there. Therefore what ordinarily affects an ignorant man does not affect the Sage.

Thus the Sage is not upset by apparently conflicting thoughts, feelings, perceptions or actions. He sees them all as nothing but Consciousness, the Self. That is the reason why activities do not leave any samskara in the Sage. The Sage knows that even the ego rises from Consciousness and ends there.

So the difference comes only with regard to the centre. To the ignorant man, the centre is the ego; and to the Sage, the centre is Consciousness.

Know that your relationship with an object is only 'knowing'. The jivan-mukta is a living commentary of the Truth you have visualized. So knowing that life is Consciousness, live in Consciousness and be free.

985. WHAT IS YOUR PLACE IN AN ACTIVITY? (7)
An important statement is often made by you. You say, 'I stand here.'

Who says that? Certainly not the dead inert body which is standing, but someone who has seen the standing. He, the witness, can only see and cannot say. This sayer is the ego, who identifies himself with the witness and claims the witnessing for himself.

Therefore in every statement which concerns your activities, there are three different entities involved, namely the body, the ego and the witness. Of these three, know that you are always the witness. Be there, and you are free.

1015. EFFICACY OF THE SPOKEN WORD OF THE GURU AND THE WRITTEN WORD
(37)
When the Guru talks to you about the Truth there is no doubt that it is the words that you hear. But the words disappear at once. Nothing remains for you to refer to or to depend upon, except the Guru himself. So in case of any doubt you approach the Guru again any number of times; and every time he explains it in a different set of words. Each time you understand the same sense, more and more deeply. Therefore it is evident that it is not from words or their meaning that you understand the sense, because the words used each time are different. From this it is clear that something else also follows the words, from the Guru. It is this something that penetrates into the inmost core of the disciple and works the miraculous transformation called experience.

When you read the written word before listening to the Truth from the lips of the Guru, that something, which follows the spoken word of the Guru, is entirely absent; and you have to depend upon the dead word which is still before you and its meaning as your ego is inclined to interpret it, in the dark light of its own phenomenal experiences. Naturally, therefore, you miss that divine experience when you only read the written word; though it is so easily and effortlessly obtained in the presence of the Guru, or after even once listening to the Truth from him.

When you listen to the spoken word of the Guru, even on the first occasion your ego takes leave of you and you visualize the Truth at once, being left alone in your real nature. But when you read the same words by yourself, your ego lingers on in the form of the word, its meaning etc., and you fail to transcend them. To visualize the Truth, the only condition needed is the elimination of the ego. This is never possible by mere reading, before meeting the Guru. Therefore listen, listen, listen and never be satisfied with anything else. After listening to the Truth from the Guru direct and after visualizing the Truth in his presence, you may well take to thinking deeply over what the Guru has told you. This is also another form of listening and takes you, without fail, to the same experience you have already had in his presence.

1030. METHODS FOR SELF-REALIZATION (52)
The methods usually adopted for Self-realization are of two kinds:

1. The absorption process (the traditional method).
2. The separation process (the direct method).

The yogically minded jnyanins usually adopt the first method - that of absorption. Here you try to purify the mind and make it more and more sattvic, until at last you make it fit to be absorbed into your own Self. There is still another application of the process of absorption. The object is at a distance. You bring it nearer by seeing. You bring it still nearer by loving. Lastly, by knowing, you absorb it into you.

The real jnyanins adopt the second method - that of separation. The ordinary man's self is a crude mixture of the real Self with a lot of accretions, viz., body, senses and mind. By proving, with the aid of reason and your own experiences, that you are not the body, senses or mind, and standing separate from all that, you remain in your real Self. According to this process, everything - from the intellect down to the body and the world - become objects to be separated from you.

1034. ACTIONS (56)
Two distinct kinds of actions have been employed in order to visualize the Truth. They are called voluntary and involuntary, with reference to the attitude of the mind.

1. The voluntary action makes the mind active and tries to comprehend Truth as its object. This path is evidently doomed to failure, since it can never take you beyond objective truth.

Nirvikalpa samadhi is the highest experience that can result from such action. It is preceded by an intense effort. In the relative level, this effort may well be considered to be the cause and nirvikalpa samadhi its legitimate effect. So nirvikalpa samadhi is limited by causality. The yogin admits that he goes into nirvikalpa samadhi and comes out of it. Therefore it is also limited by time. In order to get into nirvikalpa samadhi, the body is necessary for the yogin to start with. Therefore nirvikalpa samadhi is also limited by space.

Thus nirvikalpa samadhi clearly forms part of the phenomenal.

2. The involuntary action is the other type. This is spontaneous and objectless. It comes over you involuntarily; you yield to it and merge into it. In its progress, the mind gets relaxed and ultimately disappears, leaving you to yourself all alone.

This experience denotes the real significance of the term 'deep sleep'. The interval between two mentations is another instance of involuntary action. You stand as yourself alone in both these experiences, but you do not cease to be the same Reality, yourself, in the so called dream and waking states. Therefore you do not ever go into or come out of deep sleep, and it is uncaused.

Hence deep sleep, if correctly understood, is evidently your real nature. It is, strictly speaking, no state at all; and is far beyond any samadhi.

1072. ANALOGY OF THE SELF TO THE CINEMA SCREEN (18)
A changeless screen is needed for the manifestation of forms and their movements upon it. Likewise, a changeless background is needed for the manifestation of the changing universe upon it. This background is the real 'I'-principle. If you attempt to seize a person on the screen, it is really the screen alone that is seized and not the person. Likewise when any part of the universe is seized (perceived), it is the background Reality that is seized (i.e. it is Reality that shines).

A thought-form (or a subtle object) can never be of a gross object, and knowledge can never be of a thought-form; because they are all in three distinct and separate planes, where one plane can never transgress into another without losing its identity. Perception is always in terms of the instrument used and the object of perception is always in the perception itself. Similarly the object of knowledge is always in knowledge, and knowledge is not affected by the thing known. So there is knowledge and knowledge alone, without reference to the thing known. This is the ultimate Truth or Atma, your real nature.

Objects cannot exist independently of the senses, nor the sense perceptions independently of the mind, nor mentations independently of Consciousness. Therefore all is Consciousness or Atma. When a perception vanishes, the object perceived also vanishes and ceases to exist in any form whatsoever: like the objects of the dream that has passed. Therefore that object can never be connected with any subsequent thought-form.

A gross object is limited by both space and time.
A subtle object is limited by time alone.

Whenever you take a thought, the corresponding gross object can never come in, because of its space limitation. If it gives up its space limitation, it ceases to be a gross object and vice-versa. Therefore a gross object can never be thought of, and a thought-form can never become gross.

Strictly speaking, you cannot say that an object exists in space, nor can you say that a thought-form exists in time. Because space is itself an object and time is itself a thought-form. You can never perceive two objects or two thought-forms simultaneously, and unless two or more objects are simultaneously perceived, you can never say one thing exists in another.

1076. SPIRITUAL STRIVING AND ENLIGHTENMENT (22)
The ignorant man feels that he is a sufferer. He finds that suitable objects give him momentary relief, and so he seeks to hoard such objects.

But the earnest man soon discovers that nothing on earth can give him permanent relief, and so he turns to something beyond the world. This is the beginning of spirituality. Of such few, the fortunate one obtains a Karana-guru.

The Guru tells him first to analyse the 'seeker' in him. According to the aspirant, the seeker is only a vicious group consisting of body, senses and mind. He is shown that each of this triad is impermanent and that, as any one of them, the seeker can never attain permanent happiness. But still the urge to obtain permanent happiness does not leave him. Then he is shown that there is a permanent, changeless principle behind this group (the seeker), and that the source of the desire for permanent happiness is the presence and nature of that background.

Next he is shown that he is himself that permanent principle. He is then told its real characteristics, and he ultimately visualizes it (Atma) beyond the shadow of a doubt. This is enlightenment. The attempt is not to remove suffering from the sufferer, but only to make the seeker visualize his real nature of permanent Peace, and thereby to make him understand that he is not the sufferer even when the suffering seems to last. When he realizes that he had all along been the Peace, all questions disappear.

If you want to remove the suffering alone and retain the sufferer, it is never possible. Because the suffering and the sufferer always appear and disappear simultaneously

1085. AS LONG AS I AM A HUMAN BEING, IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO KNOW THE TRUTH BEYOND? (31)
The question presupposes that you are a human being. I question that statement first. Are you a human being? Define a human being. A human being is an incongruous mixture of body, senses and mind with the 'I'-principle. All except the 'I'-principle are changing every moment.

But you will admit that you are that 'I'-principle. You, as that 'I'-principle, stand as the permanent background connecting all these changes that come and go. That 'I'- principle is distinct and separate from the changing body, senses and mind. Where is the human being in your deep sleep, when you have no body, senses or mind? Certainly nowhere.

Still 'you' are there, as that 'I'-principle. Therefore you are not a human being but a changeless, permanent principle. As such, you can very well understand that Truth, beyond.

1159. CONSCIOUSNESS ALONE, PERCEIVED OBJECTIVELY AS WELL AS SUBJECTIVELY (38)
1. Light by itself is not perceptible to the naked eye. You perceive light only when it is temporarily obstructed by an object. This perception of light you wrongly call the object. This is a phenomenon usually misunderstood; and the fallacy is, on the face of it, obvious. Similarly, pure Consciousness is not perceivable, as is evident in deep sleep. But when it is confined or limited to a particular object, it seems to become perceptible. Even then, it is not the object but it is Consciousness alone that is perceived. Therefore, nobody has ever seen or perceived an object, but only light or Consciousness.

2. Take hold of an object. You find the object cannot appear without the help of Consciousness. Take hold of Consciousness that is in the object. This is possible only with the help of a Guru. Then you reach pure Consciousness objectively. Take hold of Consciousness in the senses or mind in the same manner and you reach pure Consciousness, your real nature, subjectively. Both being one, you stand in Advaita.

If you achieve that degree of identification with the light of knowledge as you had with body in the waking state, there is nothing more to be achieved. Then the impersonal becomes stronger than the personal. The sAdhaka [aspirant] who stands as the personal does the sAdhana [spiritual work] of acting the part of the impersonal.

'I know I am.' In this, the 'am'-ness does not belong either to the senses or to the mind. This is intrinsic. This is the nature of self-luminosity

1210. HOW DOES ADVAITA EXPRESS ITSELF EVEN IN OUR WORLDLY ACTIVITIES?
(89)
You see a picture and enjoy its beauty. What does this mean? It means that, for the time being, you change your stand from the gross externals to the subtle idea, and that you forget your personal self or ego. It is only in such a state that you experience peace as beauty or Happiness.

At such moments you are standing in Advaita. The original painter had first within himself an experience of advaitic beauty or Peace. This gradually condensed into an idea, which still further condensed into the gross picture. The onlookers are also taken, in the reverse order, to the same experience of advaitic beauty or peace experienced by the painter.

It is true you experience sublime beauty or happiness on witnessing objects like a mountain, the sea or a waterfall. This is because you forget your lower self for the time being and stand as one with the object, in the advaitic sense.

1240. MENTAL SATISFACTION REGARDING A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE (119)
Question: I have perfect certitude that I have understood and visualized the Truth. Still, I feel that there is something wanting. I do not know what. What is the cause and the remedy for this trouble?

Answer: You mean you do not get full mental satisfaction. Is that not so? Satisfaction is the outcome of the fulfilment of desire. It may result both from that which is right and from that which is wrong. It can, however, never be the identical experience in the two cases. Diversity is its rule, as with everything else which is phenomenal. Satisfaction is a measure only of phenomenal enjoyment. It can never be a measure of the Absolute. Satisfaction always presupposes an object, with all its limitations. There is nothing phenomenal which can satisfy everyone, for all time. The many can never do this.

But there is only one thing - the Atma, the impersonal Self, by nature changeless, self-luminous, and being Peace itself - that can bring permanent Peace or satisfaction. Being changeless and uncaused, it cannot strictly be called satisfaction It may be called 'objectless Happiness'. The knowledge that 'I am that changeless experience itself' is the svarupa of satisfaction. This satisfaction is therefore self-luminous. No other satisfaction can be self-luminous.

The experience of being impersonal cannot be the object of any desire. It takes one beyond the mental level of satisfaction. But the memory of the age-long samskaras of satisfaction prompts us still to crave for satisfaction, even when we stand beyond it. Therefore, that false craving has to be ignored as illusion or destroyed in the light of the higher reason

1286. THE DEEP SLEEP STATE IS ALWAYS IN THE PAST. (28)
When you experience deep sleep, you stand identified with pure Consciousness or Peace beyond time. It can never be called the present in deep sleep. But when you refer to it from the waking state, you call the preceding state the 'deep sleep state' and then it is only an idea.

Similarly, every thought or perception is nothing but the ultimate Reality or knowledge, at the moment when you know it. But when you refer to it subsequently, you make an idea of it, which is not the thing referred to at all. This is the truth of the whole world, which - though a heap of thoughts, feelings and perceptions - is nothing but pure Consciousness.

1341. WHY CAN’T ONE OBTAIN TRUTH FROM THE BOOKS OF A SAGE? (9)
This can be answered in many ways:
1. Who asks the question? Of course the ego-mind. The mind can understand only in terms of the mind. The Truth transcends the mind and so cannot be understood in terms of the mind. You read books and understand them only at the mental level. Therefore Truth cannot be understood from books.

2. Truth cannot be understood from anything other than the Truth. Because everything other than the Truth is untruth. Thus book, as such, is also an untruth; and anything understood from it, by the mind, is also untruth.

3. The question itself is the product of ignorance. The question presupposes that Truth can be obtained from somewhere else, as an object of the mind. But the fact about Truth is that it is the Self. You are that always, and the question of obtaining it is wrong and does not legitimately arise. It is the activities of the body, senses and mind that obstruct your visualizing the Truth, your real nature.

Then you might ask how does the Guru help you. Truth being your real nature, it has not to be obtained from elsewhere, but the obstacles on the path have to be removed; and then the Truth, being self-luminous, shines in its own glory. This is actually what the Guru does.

If a child asks where its body is, no book can teach it where it is. The nurse has only to remove the child's clothes and nothing else has to be done to show the child its own body. Similarly, the Guru creates the conditions wherein your real nature of Truth shines in all its glory, and the mind with all its questions disappears for ever.

1354. WHAT IS THE SECRET OF ALL PROBLEMS, AND HOW TO DO AWAY WITH THEM FOR EVER? (22)
Answer: The world is nothing but a bundle of problems raised in an unbroken chain by the ego, while he himself always eludes recognition.

All sciences and yoga run after analysis and the examination of individual objects, ignoring the arch-usurper - the ego - altogether. Their methods can never exhaust the world problem, nor end in any reasonable conclusion.

Therefore, the only right approach to solve problems is to direct attention to the subject of all this trouble, the ego. The moment you begin to do that, you unknowingly take your stand in the Awareness beyond the ego or the mind. Then the ego sheds all its accretions and stands revealed as that Awareness itself. Looking from that position, the baffling world problem disappears like mist before the sun, never to appear again.

1366. HOW TO VIEW OUR STATES? (34)
Our so called waking and dream states are in fact only a succession of waking states, all equally real. In the same waking state, we subsequently correct some of our experiences. E.g. the snake in the rope. Similarly, one waking state may be corrected from another waking state; but we are never to take one state as waking and the other state as a dream.

1388. THE HELPLESS FALLACY IN EXPRESSING IN WORDS A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE (56)
'Spiritual experience' is only one. It is visualizing or knowing the real Self. It is knowing the self in identity, without the least trace of subject-object relationship.

Subsequently, the ego attempts to express that experience in words, without itself ever having been present in the realm of experience at all. In this attempt, the ego miserably caricatures the spiritual experience, in terms of the only standard available to it - the subject-object relationship. Here, name and form must come in. The ego poses itself as the subject, and tries to make the impersonal Self its object, by calling it 'happiness'. Thus the ego says it 'enjoyed happiness'. This statement is nothing short of a veritable lie, since the experience was unique and indivisible.

The ego is a spurious mixture of Reality (the Self) and unreality (body and mind). The presence of Reality, in the ego itself, enables the ego to remember something of the real experience. But the memory gets blurred, by the identification of the real with the unreal, in the ego. It is further distorted in the attempt to express it through the narrow media of mind and language.

Thus the experience, when expressed in words, appears to be what it was not.

1429. WHAT IS A PERCEPT? (1)
First answer: No percept really exists - either in the present, the past or the future. A percept is the result of perception and it cannot exist independent of perception. Therefore there cannot be a percept either before or after perception.

Perception goes into the make of the percept itself. Therefore, if you attempt to perceive the percept, the perception part of the percept has to be withdrawn and placed outside it, in order to perceive it. But when the perception part is thus withdrawn, the percept crumbles and disappears. Thus there is no percept during the perception also. It is the perception itself appearing as the percept, for the time being.

Therefore 'percept' is a misnomer. There is only perception. And perception being dependent upon Consciousness for its very existence, it is nothing but consciousness.

Similarly, Consciousness itself appears as an idea; and when Consciousness tries to perceive the idea, the idea disappears and Consciousness alone remains over.

Therefore, all is Consciousness.

A shorter approach: A percept is nothing but the object and is representative of the whole world. Perception goes into the make of the percept, and therefore the percept is perception itself.

Consciousness goes into the make of perception, and therefore perception is Consciousness itself.

Similarly, Consciousness goes into the make of the idea, and therefore idea is Consciousness itself.

Therefore the world, gross as well as subtle, is nothing but Consciousness