Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Moksha and Samadhi are words for different experiences.  Some claim more for some experiences they have had — expecially one they calls Samadhi but others as well — than those experiences really are.  What we have we do not talk about.  What we talk about we do not have.

I think — already a condition — that the experience [Name] has been describing with customary eloquence is properly indicated, Sanskritic-ally, with the word Nirvana.

Although neither the depth nor type of my experience nor the height of my skill at articulating same is sufficient to entitle me to discourse at length on this matter — which is nonetheless significant — I feel justified, by resident experience, in making these comments.

Moksha and Nirvana are different experiences. Related, but distinguishable existentially. This is why the literature has these words: they indicate identifiable and identifiably different experiences, albeit related ones — and there is another story, which I will not touch now.

The no-thing-ness [Name] experiences — and not just as a wannabe — is, as he insists, a no-mind-ness and yields an euphoric feeling of liberation. This experience is that indicated by the word Nirvana — the Buddhist or at least Gauthamic goal. I believe Nirvana means literally “no garden.”. The sadhana of this experience is a type of neti. (There is another type of neti which [Name] is not yet indicating).

Calling Nirvana Moksha (Liberation) finds me uneasy. Not because Nirvana does not yield a feeling of liberation — it clearly does, else no one would seek it, starting with the Prince himself [he was of the Bharatha family (Solar Dynasty), incidentally] — but because the feeling of liberation it yields is, we suspect, something far more extensive and positive in the sense of world-affirming than the sadhana and goal [Name] is commending (and he so commends with full authority of experience, be it noted).

It seems to me — the condition, again — that if we take Nirvana and Moksha as indicating different albeit related experiences, Moksha something more plenary, we can gain some sense of the relative geniuses of the several points of view that have been so carefully and delightfully shared these past few days.

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA