Pillar of Life

Poem 319, from Mystical Poems of Jnaneshwar

Pillar of life,

support of all,

Himself standing

on nothing.

Creating Himself

in Himself,

can’t know Him as the other,

this one beyond knowing,

this one beyond becoming.

Try as you will

can’t rope Him in words,

standing as He does

right in front.

So how about some other way

like signs, allusions?

Silence!

My sight’s opened

to the Absolute,

to the very core

of conscious bliss.

our thoughts

The poem points to Jnaneshwar’s state. It also talks to the process to it. Jnaneshwar is face to face with the absolute. He is standing in front of it. Actually, even saying that he is face to face with the absolute is inaccurate, for you cannot know it as the other. You can only know it as yourself. This knowing is beyond knowing as we know it. This knowing of yourself is beyond any reflection or description. This knowing can only be known in silence. Knowing it is being it.

Ramana Maharshi called it direct knowing. I see myself in a mirror. Then, I take the mirror out. When I take the mirror away, I can know myself directly, as me. Now I can be me. Such knowing and being are not different from each other. Such knowing is being. It requires no tool, no mirror. It is self-sufficient.

Shaivism would call this Pratyavamarsha. Self-knowing. Consciousness, or awareness knowing itself. In fact, Shaivism would say that any seeing is always of consciousness knowing itself. Utpaladeva says: Ghatoyam iti adhyavasaa/naama roopaatirekini/paresha-shaktihi-atmeti/bhaasate na tvidantayaa. When I say “this”, it is the affirmation of the existence of the power of consciousness: the power to be and to know itself. The entire experience is nothing but consciousness, needing nothing but itself. Yet it creates this duality, dividing that one experience into I and this, projecting “this” as if it is outside. Abhinavagupta, when commenting on this, says: Pure consciousness, Samvit, spreads itself out, in the form of “idam – this”. And, he says, even when it spreads itself thus, manifesting itself as the universe, its inner fullness, its Perfect I consciousness, is never interrupted, never broken.

The “pillar” in the poem, of course, is also a reference to the Sushumna – the middle of the three subtle channels. The sushumna sits in the core of consciousness as the support of everything. Kshemaraja, the great disciple of Abhinavagupta, says: “Madhya vikaasaat chidaananda laabhaha”: the expansion of the core leads to the bliss of consciousness.