Blue Lotus

State of Liberation and Enlightenment

Blavatsky and Indian Wisdom teaches about Jivanmukta. In this article I have been collected writings from different sources and my own experiences too.

Jivanmukta (devanāgarī: जीवन्मुक्त jīvanmukta) is a term derived from a combination of the Sanskrit words jīva, "life", and mukti, "freedom", and can be translated as "liberated (from rebirth) before death" or "emancipated while still alive."

Jīvanmukta

A Sanskrit word which implies liberation from the wheel of rebirth while living. This concept involves a subtle philosophical argument. It might be maintained that spiritual liberation cannot be attained while in a physical body, but according to ADVAITA the body is really an illusion and when the individual realizes that all manifestation is illusion, then there is no obstacle to liberation even though he or she continues in the physical. A jivanmukti (or jivanmuktin) is a person who has attained jivanmukta.

Dang-ma

A Tibetan word meaning an absolutely purified soul, free from the necessity of rebirth. It is equivalent to the Hindu jivanmukti or the theosophical Adept, Master, or Mahatma. In The Secret Doctrine, Helena P. BLAVATSKY comments on the “Opened Eye” of the Dangma (Stanzas of Dzyan, I, 8), “His ‘opened eye’ is the inner spiritual eye of the seer, and the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood . . . but rather the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable” (I, 46 fn) and “over which no Maya can have any influence” (I, 45).

https://www.theosophy.world/encyclopedia/jivanmukta

https://www.theosophy.world/encyclopedia/dang-ma

TRANSACTIONS OF THE BLAVATSKY LODGE

DISCUSSIONS ON THE STANZAS OF THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE BY H. P. BLAVATSKY

https://universaltheosophy.com/hpb/transactions.html

Q. We are taught that a man can unite all his “principles” into one—what does this mean?

A. When an adept succeeds in doing this he is a Jivanmukta: he is no more of this earth virtually, and becomes a Nirvanee, who can go into Samadhi at will. Adepts are generally classed by the number of “principles” they have under their perfect control, for that which we call will has its seat in the higher Ego, and the latter, when it is rid of its sin-laden personality, is divine and pure.

Blavatsky brought her teachings and the Light and Wisdom mostly from India, so let's have a look and concentrate what India's Gurus have told and teached about Jivanmukti. There are many Indian words which is originally from India like for example The Causal body - originally Karana-Sarira - is a Yogic and Vedantic concept that was adopted and modified by Theosophy and from the latter made its way into the general New Age movement and contemporary western esotericism. It generally refers to the highest or innermost body that veils the atman or true Self.

JIVANMUKTA By SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA

https://www.dlshq.org/saints/jivanmukta/

A Jivanmukta is a liberated sage. He is released even while living. He lives in the world, but he is not of the world. He always revels in the eternal bliss of the Supreme Self. He is Ishvara (God) Himself. He is a God on earth. The Jivanmukta or full-blown Jnani (a person with full wisdom) is full of pure love, compassion, mercy, exquisite gentleness, and hidden power and strength. Love and lustre shine through his brilliant eyes.

He will sometimes appear like a Sarvajna, all-knower. He will sometimes appear like an Ajnani, ignorant man. He knows when to act like a Brahmanishtha (one who is established in the Knowledge of Brahman), and when to behave like a fool. Do not judge him. If you approach him with the proper Bhava (feeling), with faith, devotion, and spiritual thirst, he will impart the highest knowledge to you. If you approach him with a bad motive, he will behave like a mad man, and you will be deceived. Great will be your loss then.

The state of Jivanmukti is the be-all and end-all of existence. There is fullness in this state. All desires are burnt. It is a state of plenum of absolute satisfaction. There is no gain greater than this, no bliss greater than this, no wisdom greater than this. You can also ascend to summit if only you will.

From the book The Causal Body by Arthur E Powell, The Theosophical Publishing house 1928

The Fifth Initiation makes a man Master, an Adept, a Superman. The Buddhist call Him the Asekha - literally, the not-disclipe - because He has no more to learn, and has exhausted the possibilities of the human kingdoms of nature. The Hindus speak of him as the Jivanmukhta, a liberated life, a free being, because His will is one with the Universal Will, that of the One without second. He stands ever in the light of Nirvana, even in his waking consciousness, should He remain on earth in a physical body. When out that, He rises still higher into the Monadic plane, beyond not merely our words but our thought. As the Secret Doctrine express it: the adept begins his Samadhi on the Atmic plane, all planes below the Atmic being one to Him.

In Christian symbolism, the Ascension and the Decent of the Holy Spirit stand for the attainment od Adeptship, for the Adept does ascend above humanity beyond this earth, altough, if he chooses as did the Christ, He may return to teach and help. as he ascends, he becomes one with the Holy spirit, and invariably the first thing he does, with His new power, is to pour it down upon His disciples, even as the Christ poured down tongues of fire upon the heads of his followers at the Feat of Pentecost. (pages 316-317)

From the book: Be as you are The teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi edited by David Godman.Penguin Arkana 1985.

Sri Ramana occasionaly indicated that there were three classes of spiritual aspirants. The most advanced realise the Self as soon as they are told about its real nature. Those in second class need to reflect on it for some time before Self-awareness becomes firmly established. Those in the third category are less fortunate since they usually need many years of intensive spiritual practice to achieve the goal of Self-realisation. (page 19)

Sri Ramana said that a true Guru is someone who has realised Self and who is able to use his power to assist others toward the goal of Self-realisation. (page 95)

Although Sri Ramana was happy to give his verbal teachings, he frequently pointed out that his 'silent teachings' were more direct and more powerful. These 'silent teachings' consisted a spiritual force which seemed to emanate from his form, a force so powerful that he considered it be the most direct and important aspect of his teachings. The people who were attuned to this force report that they experienced it as a state of inner peace and well-being; in some advanced devotees it even precipitated a direct experience of the Self. this attention is often called sat-sanga, which literally means 'association with being' (page 105). A realised one sends out waves of spiritual influence which draw many people towards him. Yet he may sit in a cave and maintain complete silence. To come into contact with realised one, though he speaks nothing, will give much more grasp of the subject. He never needs to go out among the public. The Guru is the bestower of silence who reveals the light of Self-knowledge which shines as the residual reality. Spoken words are of no use whatsoever if the eyes of the Guru meet the eyes of the disciple. (page 107) (In hindu tradition sat-sanga is also called Shaktipat meaning the touch of Guru that transmits Spiritual Energy).

J. Glenn Friesen has written books and criticism about Ramana Maharishi's enlightenment. He is sceptic and don't believe that state of Jivanmukti can be reached while still alive and he believes that this state is only reached after death. Friesen says that Ramana Maharshi's experience of enlightenment was not as simple as his devotees have assumed. Ramana's own interpretations of his experience were influenced by non-traditional Hindu ideas of living liberation (jivanmukti), as well as by Western sources like Madame Blavatsky's theosophy, and even by Christian sources. Friesen is not enlightened for sure. When I read about Jivanmuktis it is inspiring and I can feel Love-Bliss state. There is not so much information about Jivanmuktis, but if someone is interested from Friesen, he can read the books, but like I said it is criticism and not enlightening. Road to God and to Enlightenment are many, so why critisize others experiences. In Hindu philosophy there are also said to be sadeha mukta (liberated in body) and videha mukta (liberated without body at the time of death).

From the book: The promised God-Man is here. Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj by Carolyn Lee. The Dawn Horse Press 1998

Avatar Adi Da has explained how to rightly understand the nature and purpose of his Spiritual Transmission in relation to all the experiences and accounts of Spirit-Power described in the Great Tradition. There is however, a greater tradition in Spirit-Power to be found in history of esoteric religion, which Avatar Adi Da distinguishes from the lesser tradition of effortful Kundalini Yoga. This senior tradition of Kundalini Power, or Kundalini Shakti, is of Divine origin, and it cannot be induced by any kind of self-effort. Rather this Kundalini Shakti is only transmitted by a Siddha, or a Spirit-Initiator or profound Realization. In the traditions of Guru-devotion, there are various accounts of the Spiritual 'Master imparting his or her own Spiritual Energy directly to a disciple, often through an inititory glance or touch. This Transmission of Spirit-Power or Shaktipat, can have the effect of awakening the various Yogic Samadhis. (pages 121-123)

The first time I saw Beloved Adi Da, I was overwhelmed by His extreme Beauty and Love. Adi Da called a small group of devotees over to His House. I realized how profoundly He had drawn me to Him. The mysterious Power that I had felt guiding me was simply Him. He had pulled me literally, out of the world. He initiated me into a Condition that I had never known before. He drew me beyond the body-minto into a Spiritual reality that I have come to know as the Very Condition of my Beloved Lord Adi Da, the Truth of Existence Itself. I felt drawn with Him into a most profound Samadhi, which was bodiless and mindless. (page 181)

I was sitting at home one night with nothing much to do, and I looked up at the bookshelf - at the one book in it I hadn't read. I sat down and opened The Dawn Horse Testament. The most bizarre thing happened. I was sitting there reading this book, and suddenly the words started to blur, and light started to come off the pages - literally, there was a shimmering light flickering up, like something out of a science fiction movie. I slammed the book shut and thought, I am getting the flu, but then I noticed that I felt happy! I cautiously opened the book again at the different page, and the same thing happened - light was streaming off the page now. I was seeing the words, and it was as if I were reading Latin or Greek. It didn't mean anything to my mind - but I knew what this book is saying! And I was getting happier and happier, and my body was swaying, and the light continued emanating from these pages! I was ecstatic. Two or three days later, I went to see a video of Beloved Adi Da. The minute I heard his voice and saw His face, I was moved into an ecstatic state, and then my peripheral vision disappeared. Again I felt very, very happy - unreasonable happy. And I knew I was receiving something extraordinary from an extraordinary Being. (pages 448-449)

I was having same kind of experience when I opened Sri Ramana Maharshi's book Be as You Are. I saw lights coming from the book and my bodily senses disappeard and I was in Samadhi. Adi Da's book is full of devotees stories and same kind of experiences. In Sri Chinmoy's book The Wings of Joy, Fireside Simon & Schuster 1997, is said that You have to start with faith - sincere, genuine sublime faith. This faith is not going to mislead you. When you read a spiritual book, that book embodies light. While reading, you may not feel light inside book right away, but still you don't discard the book. You have some faith in the messages that book contains. You meditate on the words and ideas that the book embodies, and eventually you do get light. If you believe in that hidden reality while you are reading, in the course of time you will get illumination. But you have to read the book in order to get the essence, the quintessence of the book. (pages 53-54)

From the book The Future Evolution of Man. The Divine Life upon Earth. Sri Aurobindo. A Quest Book 1974.

The last or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realized the Self and Spirit within him, entered into the cosmic consciousness, passed into union with the Eternal and, so far as he still accepts life and action, acts by the light and energy of the Power within him working through his human instruments of nature. The largest formulation of this spiritual change and achievement is a total liberation of soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them all into sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality. The spiritual evolution of the individual has then found its way and thrown up its range Himalayan eminence and its peaks of highest nature. Beyond this height and largeness there opens only the supramental ascent or the incommunicable Transsendence. (page 73)

Two principal results follow this emergence: forst an effective guidance and mastery which unmask and reject all that is false and obscure or all that opposes the divine realization: then a spontaneous influx of spiritual experiences of all kinds. Experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy, illuminations of the sense and the body by higher experience, illuminations of dynamic action in the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the joy and power of the divine force working in the will and the conduct. These experiences are the result of an opening outward of the inner and inmost being and nature; for then there comes into play the soul's power of unerring inherent consciousness, its vision, its touch on things which is superior to any mental cognition; there is there, native to the psychic consciousness in its pure working, an immediate sense of the world and its beings, a direct inner contact with them and a direct contact with the Self and with the Divine, - a direct knowledge, a direct sight of Truth and of all truths, a direct penetrating spiritual emotion and feeling, a direct intuition of right will and right action, a power to rule and to create an order of the being not by the grou pings of the superficial self, but from within, from the inner truth of self and things and the occult realities of Nature. (page 87)

From the book Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness by Satprem, Institute for Evolutionary Research 1984.

The first result, Sri Aurobindo wrote, was a series of tremendously powerful experiences and radical changes of consciousness which he had never intended.It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world - only when looked through the immobile senses, something percived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialized shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even. only just absolutely That featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realization nor something glimpsed somewhere above - no abstraction - it was positive, the only positive reality - although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial... What it brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence an infinity of release and freedom. Sri Aurobindo had entered straight into what Buddhist call Nirvana, what the Hindus call silent Brahman, That, the Tao of the Chinese, the Transcendent, the Absolut, the Impersonal of the Westerners. He had reached that famous "liberation" (mukti), which is considered the "summit" of spiritual life. (pages 154-155)

A Search in Secret India. Paul Brunton. Mayflower Press 1947

Man can be perfectly spiritual without running away to caves, and that he can reach the highest attaintments in Yoga while carrying on with worldly avocations. (page 166)

When the goal is reached, when you know the Knower, there is no difference between living in a house in London and living in the solitude of jungle. (page 202)

In Sri Ramana's book Be as you are. The teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi there is whole chapter about the same subject; chapter Life in the world. (page 132 - 140)

From the book The Wings of Joy by Sri Chinmoy. Fireside Simon & Schuster 1997

The Steadily Increasing Light. Full enlightenment is called God-realization. God-realization does not come all at once. It is a series of experiences. Sometimes when a seeker is in his highest meditation, he may get a kind of inner illumination. For half an hour or an hour his whole being may be illumined. But then, after an hour or two, he may become his same old self. Once again he may come a victim of desire and undivine qualities. On one level, illumination has taken place, but it is not the transcendental enlightenment of the Buddha or other God-realized Masters when one gets God-realization, automatically infinite illumination takes place in one's outer as wells as one's inner existence.

Sometimes when we speak of enlightenment, we mean that we have been in darkness about a particular subject for many years and now that particular place in our consciousness is enlightened. But this is just a spark of the boundless illumination of God-realization. It is only temporary burst of light in aspiring consciousness. After a short while it pales into insignificance, because there is no abiding reality in it. Abiding reality we get only constant, eternal, and transcendental illumination, which is God-realization. (pages 197-198)

From the book Conversations With Sathya Sai Baba by John S. Hislop Sathya Sai Book Center of Amer (May 1, 1979)

The God-realised person, the Jivanmukta, no longer has any identification whatsoever with the body. He is one in whom only the divine vision is active. He pays no attention to the body, and it wastes away and dries up. He does not bother with food and water. They don't even come to mind. As a result 21 days is the time that life can remain in the body under these circumstances. He has lost all body identification and neither eats or drinks except as forced. The 21 days may vary a little due to the condition of the person. King Janaka retired to the forest and became Jivanmukta. Life remained in his body for 19 days. The person of divine vision is known as a Raja Yogi. He retains some body identification, and thus continues to live with the body. King Janaka reigned for many years as a Raja Yogi. Jivanmukti is permanent God-realization. It is merging with God. There can be a temporary God-realization for a few hours or a day or so in deep meditation, or at various levels of samadhi, but that is not permanent. It is not merging. (pages 108-109)

I have been experiencing samadhi many times and during my samadhi I always wish that hopefully others would experience it too. I have also felt deep Oneness with all. Sai Baba has been told that body senses drops away and I have noticed that I no longer want sex at all. I have been living in celibacy two years and that just only just happened. I was not planning to live in celibacy but it was natural and part of Ascension process and evolution as well. Sai Baba also said that there can be temporary realizations, but is not permanent and merging and that I have realized, but I am close to it. Sri Chinmoy speaks about this too. I can also see my own past lives and I have healing hands and I am telepathic. In theosophical texts there is said that seeing past lives and Akashic records is an ability that awakens first in spiritual abilities.

According to internet and Wikipedia there are lot of criticism against almost all Indian Gurus, as well as all kinds of stories about scandals what Gurus has done. I been reading and experienced a lot from them and I take from their teachings only what is good and what resonates with me. Probably part of those stories about Gurus are also part of sceptics propaganda.

Aurobindo was influenced by the guidance he got from the yogi, who had instructed Aurobindo to depend on an inner guide and any kind of external guru or guidance would not be required. Ramana Maharshi also had never studied any system of yoga and had never practiced under any teacher. It is also said that in the Aquarian Age Gurus don't gather followers and that there is no need for Gurus. It is said also that in India even a minute's contact with a master will produce important spiritual and material results. So, its up to everyones own opinion if he needs a Guru.

I would love to read more about Jivanmuktis, so if you know any good books or links or videos please share. Tell and share your experiences too.

Worth to watch these youtube videos about Sri Ramana Maharshi too. In this first video David Godman is telling that he read some words about Sri Ramana in the bookstore and it made an influence on him and he started searching for more information. Same Kind of thing happened to me too. I was searching from Google images quotes about Ascended Master Saint Germain and in the search results there was Ramana's quote: "A realized one sends out waves of spiritual influence in his aura, which draw many people towards him. Yet he may sit in a cave and maintain complete silence." That really got my attention because Asecnded Masters are working in same way and I started searhcing more info about Ramana. When one read about Indian Gurus, Ramana is almost only one who has not doing any scandals and he has never taking money or even donations from his teachings. Much more can be said and words cannot explain all in the state of Jivanmukta. I can recommend that you read all the books what I mentioned with open mind, and I hope that this article will lead you to the Self-Realization and God-Realization and Cosmic Consciousness and state of Liberation.

Who am I? The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jevWr3IIIfc

Sri Ramana Maharshi - JNANI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYv9ktilQw

Sri Ramana Maharshi Full Documentary in English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkcYAFGjkVU