Q: Is there such a
thing as free will?
A: Whose will is it?
So long as there is the sense of doership, there is the sense of enjoyment and
of individual will. But if this sense is lost through the practice of vichara
[Self Enquiry], the divine will will act and guide the course of events. Fate
is overcome by jnana, Self Knowledge,
which is beyond will and fate
Q: ………..can it be that
all the details of his life, down to the minutest, have already been
determined? …………….
A: Certainly. Whatever
this body is to do and whatever experiences it is to pass through was already
decided when it came into existence
………Ramana Maharshi
The New Man by
Maurice Nicholl ……….There was one word in his book that completely opened my
eyes. It was an interpretation of the word “repent”, which until then I had
been taught to mean “be sorry for your sins”. But the word in Christ’s local
language meant “to turn around and see everything anew.”
Tony [Parsons]…..The
Open Secret ………Presence is our constant nature but most of the time we are
interrupting it by living in a state of expectation, motivation or
interpretation. We are hardly ever at home. In order to rediscover our freedom
we need to let go of these projections and allow the possibility of presence.
Its real discovery, or our access to it, can only be made within the essence of
what is. This is where spontaneous aliveness resides and where we can openly
welcome the unknown.
Tony Parsons…..
If a thought arises – what I call an abstract thought – then
the watching just chops it off as it arises. It’s there for a moment but there
isn’t anybody who owns it. In the gaze, it just evaporates.
Q: Why does not
Bhagavan go about and preach the truth to the people at large?
A: How do you know I
am not doing it? Does preaching consist in mounting a platform and haranguing
the people around? Preaching is simple communication of knowledge; it can be
done in silence only. What do you think of a man who listens to a sermon for an
hour and goes away without having been impressed by it so as to change his
life? Compare him with another, who sits in a holy presence and goes away after
some time with his outlook on life totally changed. Which is better, to preach
loudly without effect or to sit silently sending out inner force?
Again, how does speech
arise? First there is abstract knowledge. Out of this arises the ego, which in
turn gives rise to thought, and thought to the spoken word. So the word is the
great-grandson of the original source. If the word can produce an effect, judge
for yourself, how much more powerful must be the preaching through silence
…….Ramana Maharshi
There’s a lovely
sentence that you [Vijai Shankar] sometimes
use – ‘I’m not a human being having a spiritual experience. I’m a spiritual
being having a human experience.’
….Ashtavakra Gita:
‘The awakened one is not distracted even in distraction.’
[Nisargadatta]
Maharaj: Do what you feel like doing. Don’t bully yourself. Violence will make
you hard and rigid. Do not fight with what you take to be obstacles on your
way. Just be interested in them, watch them, observe, enquire. Let anything
happen – good or bad. But don’t let yourself be submerged by what happens………The
mind must learn that beyond the moving mind there is the background of
awareness, which does not change. The mind must come to know the true Self and
respect it and cease covering it up, like the moon which obscures the sun
during solar eclipse.
Why is it in India everything seems to be so much more alive
and real, so much more intense?
Legend has it that throughout the ages, Dakshinamurthi has
been sitting on the north slope of Arunachala, underneath a banyan tree and
that anyone who approaches him will attain Self-realization.
Ramana himself spoke of the differences in absorption in the
Self, which can either be temporary or permanent. Nirvikalpa samadhi Ramana likened to a bucket lowered into a well;
the water in the bucket merges with the water in the well but the rope and
bucket (representing ego and its attachments) still exist, meaning that the
bucket can always be pulled out from the well, ending the total absorption.
Meanwhile sahaja samadhi he likened
to a river flowing into an ocean, whose waters become inseperably merged.
Ramana’s sahaja samadhi happened
spontaneously at the age of 17 ……
We shall not cease
from exploration
And the end of all our
exploring
Will be to arrive
where we started
And know the place for
the first time
‘Little Gidding’, Four
Quartets
T S Eliot
So, to turn to the
teaching, in the West everybody thinks about philosophy as ‘I think, therefore I
am.’ But in the East, it’s the other way round, ‘I am, therefore I think.’
[Ramesh Balsekar] Absolutely
correct….. The West says, I believe it if I see it… In Eastern philosophy,
believe it and then you will see it!
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