Chanukah With Ramana

THE TECHNIQUE IS SIMPLE: just lay on your back, breathing evenly, and take a complete and negative bodily inventory: “I am not my legs; I am not my feet; I am not my arms;” “I am not my mind;” et al.

Now: What’s left after everything else is taken away?

This admittedly (and deceptively) simple exercise comes from Ramana Maharshi, an inadvertent Hindu holyman whose “Self-realization” technique resulted in one of the great spiritual experiences of my life.

In the early 2000s, on the sixth night of Chanukah (our Festival of Lights), my copilot and I were honored to play host to a famous “New Age” rabbi (“R”). I also invited along a filmmaker (“F”) of my acquaintance, who had long wanted me to meet R; he arrived with a Hindu friend of his (“H”), and you may imagine our delight and surprise when R told us that F was his own beloved teacher!

R and we were anticipating a small crowd in our apartment, but the only guests were the sparse handful I just described. So the session turned into a metaphysical round-robin between R, F and H of various Eastern and Western spiritual figures. When one of them mentioned Ramana’s name, the trio became very animated and described the holyman’s negation-of-thought technique which, upon my own diligent practice later that night, produced a most startling and profound awakening.

My word-busy mind dropped away to reveal a deep connection to the wordless Source of all consciousness – a perception of the unspoken silence between one thought and another – an all-encompassing peace of mind – a vision of the vast and intimate Self beyond the ego, beyond even the apparent separation of one thing from another.

Even now, years later, I still can’t adequately describe what happened. (Which is, kind of, the point.) Time’s passage has almost dulled the experience’s immediacy, but not its effect, which inspired in me a fierce non-dualism (or if you prefer, an undying all-is-One-ism) – and which makes me happy, and grounded, every time I recall it.

Thanks, Ramana. Apparently, that’s just what I needed.