“To teach without words and to be useful without action –
few among men are capable of this.” Thus spoke LAOTSE
What a beautiful word the Hebrew language has for God: “Yahweh” which means “I AM”. Jehovah is the anglicized form of the
word Yahweh. Sri Ramana said that the Old Testament’s “I AM that I AM” is even
better than “Aham Brahmasmi” (“I AM Brahman”) as a description of the Self.
Sri Bhagavan has said, “Vichara is the process and the goal
also. ‘I Am’ is the goal and final Reality. To hold to it with effort is
vichara. When spontaneous and natural, it is Realization.””
I spoke to Bhagavan for some time; and then while taking
leave of him said, “You have attained a great stage”. He replied ‘Distance
lends enchantment to the view’. By this he meant, as I later learnt from many
of his teachings directly and indirectly to me, that a householder’s life was
as good as that of an ascetic, and could equally lead one to Jnana.
The Maharshi a master cook, calligraphist and caricaturist,
and naturpath, raconteur, editor and engineer extraordinaire, spoke little and
wrote even less. His poems in Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu and Malayalam are not
only mystic and magnificent mantras,
but also potent seeds sown for the integration of a people who are presently so
asleep as to consider as weakness the timeless strength inherent in the
bewildering bewitching diversity of their culture.
Ramana says:
“If you have surrendered, you must be able to abide by the
will of God and not make a grievance out of what may not please you.”
Ramana’s solution is to let the mind subside to the point
where it disappears, and what remains when the mind has subsided is the simple,
pure being that was always there.
Ramana says: “Your duty is to be, and not to be this or
that….The method is summed up in ‘Be Still’”
When one attempts to practice this conviction by putting
attention on the feeling of being that is within us, thoughts and desires will
initially continue to flow at their normal rate, but if attention is maintained
over a period of time, the density of thoughts decreases, and in the space
between them, there emerges the clarity, the stillness and the peace of pure
being. Occasionally this stillness and this peace will expand and intensify
until a point is reached where no effort is needed to sustain the awareness of
being, the attention merges imperceptibly with the being itself, and the
occasional stray thoughts no longer have the power to distract.
In the case of surrender, the initial effort is the shifting
of one’s attention from the world of thoughts to the feeling of being. When
there is no attention to it, the mind subsides revealing the being from which
it came, then in some mysterious way, the Self eliminates the residual
ignorance and Realisation dawns.
“The purpose of self-enquiry is to focus the entire mind at
its source.”
The mind is simply fattened by new thoughts rising up.
Therefore it is foolish to attempt to kill the mind by means of the mind. The
only way to do it is to find its source and hold on to it.
The precise method is simple and well known. When thoughts
arise, one does not allow them to develop. One asks oneself the words, “To whom
do these thoughts occur?” And the answer is “To me,” and then the question
occurs, “Then who am I? What is this thing in me which I keep calling’I’?” By
doing this practice one is shifting attention from the world of thoughts to the
being from where the thought and the thinker first emerged. The transfer of
attention is simply executed, because if one holds on to the feeling “I am” the
initial thought of ‘I’ will gradually
give way to a feeling of ‘I’, and
then sooner or later, this feeling “I am” will merge into being itself, to a
state where there is no longer either a thinker of the thought ‘I’, or a feeler
of the feeling ‘I am’; there will only be being itself.
…Superior to loud praise of God and to inaudible japa is the
purely mental process of meditation.
…Uninterrupted meditation, resembling the flow of water or
of ghee, is superior to that which is discontinuous.
…If after stilling the mind by stilling the breath, the mind
be fixed on one point, then the mind would be dissolved (and the Mindless State
would be reached).
…Right Awareness of the Self is just the mind becoming aware
of its own true Nature as Pure Consciousness, as the result of the mind being
disentangled from (attachment to) outside objects.
…If the truth of the mind be persistently investigated
(Keeping it away from all outside objects) in the end there will be no mind
left. This is the Direct Path which is available to one and all.
…The mind is nothing but a series of thoughts. Of all the
thoughts the root is the ‘I’ thought. Hence the ‘I’ – the ego – is the mind.
…When the source, wherefrom the ego arises is sought, the
ego perishes. This is the method of Inquiry (Vichara), leading to Right
Awareness (of the Real Self).
…Becoming aware of one’s Self apart from the vehicle (the
five sheaths making up the body) is itself rightly Knowing God, because it is
He that shines (in the Heart) as the Self.
When the breath is held, it is observed that the thoughts
also decrease and finally when the breath-movement is brought to a stand-still
the thoughts also completely subside.
There are several methods advocated as to the manner of
breath control. The method the Maharshi teaches is a rare one; if it is merely
watched, and no attempt at control is made, the breath, of itself, slows down
almost to a vanishing point.
Normally, in ‘Hatha Yoga’ the nostrils are closed and opened
with the fingers for definite intervals…..The sadhaka practicing in this way is
fighting a battle, as it were, with the force of the breath; were this battle
to be conducted on wrong lines, dangers or disaster might follow, particularly
were it to be lost. Forced effort may end in various kinds of diseases; it may
entail madness, and in some cases, if the kundalini or life-force rises
uncontrolled, the body gets almost burnt up, and death results; this practice
is to be done under the personal surveillance of the Master, with great care
and circumspection adopting easy techniques from time to time, and under
different restrictions as to diet, time and posture. The Maharshi bids us
strictly to avoid this method of Hatha Yoga.
Do not fight with the natural flow of the breath; only watch
it, as if you were a witness to a process. It is called the ‘sakshi bhava’ in
philosophical terminology.
……Not for him are the emotional surges and fits of despair
found in the bhakti marga. Nor are the anxieties of the karma marga present.
The dangers of the yoga marga will never touch him; not even the troubles of
the path of raja yoga will face him…
He says in “Upadesa Saram”, “Japa of mantras is better than
hymnal praise; and the mental repetition of the mantra or the name is more
effective thatn the utterance of either, aloud or in whisper.” And then he
explains, “If you continue sticking to the sound or the idea, there will come a
stage when there will be only a sound, undifferentiated even into various
letters.” As you go deeper and deeper, even the sound dissolves, and that
process he calls ‘dipping in’.
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