https://archive.org/details/annamalaiswamifinaltalksdavidgodman_610_m/page/n7/mode/2up
60 pdf pages double scroll left / right. however pg numbers of book are different. Pg numbers of book are quoted below:
When Self-realisation happens, mind is no longer there.
However, you do not get Self-realisation by getting rid of the mind.
It happens when you understand and know that the mind never existed.
It is the recognition of what is real and true, and the abandonment of mistaken ideas about the reality and substantiality of this ephemeral shadow you call the mind.
This is why Bhagavan and many other teachers kept bringing up the analogy of the snake and the rope. If you mistake a rope on the ground for a snake, the snake only exists as an idea in your mind. That idea might cause you a lot of worry and anxiety, and you may waste a lot of mental energy wondering how to avoid the snake or kill it, but this fact remains: there is no snake outside your imagination.
When you see the rope, the substratum upon which your false idea of a snake is superimposed, the idea that there is a snake, and that it is real, instantly vanishes. It is not a real snake that has disappeared. The only thing that has disappeared is an erroneous idea.
The substratum upon which the false idea of the mind has been superimposed is the Self. When you see the mind, the Self, the underlying substratum, is not seen. It is hidden by a false but persistent idea. And conversely, when the Self is seen, there is no mind.
You have to make an enormous effort to realise the Self.
It is very easy to stop on the way and fall back into ignorance.
At any moment you can fall back.
You have to make a strong determined effort to remain on the peak when you first reach it,
but eventually a time will come when you are fully established in the Self.
When that happens, you cannot fall. You have reached your destination and no further efforts are required. Until that moment comes, constant sadhana is required.
pg 8/60
Once you have become established in the inner Guru, the Self, the distinction between Guru and disciple disappears. In that state you no longer need the help of any Guru. You are That, the Self.
Until the river reaches the ocean, it is obliged to keep on the flow stops. The water of the river originally came from the ocean. As it flows, it is merely making its way back to its source. When you meditate or do sadhana, you are flowing back to the source from which you came. After you have reached that source, you discover that everything that exists - world, Guru, mind - is one. No differences or distinctions arise there.
Non-duality is jnana; duality is samsara.
If you can give up duality, Brahman alone remains.
And you know yourself to be that Brahman.
But to make this discovery continuous meditation is required.
Don’t allocate periods of time for this.
Don’t regard it as something that you do when you sit with your eyes closed.
This meditation has to be continuous.
Do it while you are eating, walking, and even talking. It has to be continued all the time.
Question: How does the jnani relate to his body? How does it feel to him?
Annamalai Swami:
The jnani is not really aware of the body. Or if he is, he feels it like akasha, space itself.
After one of the operations to remove the tumour on Bhagavan’s arm had been completed, I was worried enough to send a girl who worked for me to the ashram to ask how Bhagavan was. I could not go myself because Bhagavan had asked me not to visit him.
When this girl told Bhagavan why she had come, he started laughing very loudly. I interpreted this to mean that nothing had really happened. His laughter was a message to me that Bhagavan was not his body and that I should therefore not be upset or worried by anything that happened to it.
Years before, I was walking on the hill with Bhagavan when he remarked, ‘I don’t feel the weight of the body at all. I feel as if I am walking weightlessly through the sky.’
I sometimes have the same feeling when I am walking around.
12
Though the body is needed for sadhana, one should not identify with it. We should make good use of it, and look after it well, but we should not pay too much attention to it.
There are so many thoughts in the mind. Thought after thought after thought, they never stop. But there is one thought that is continuous, though it is mostly subconscious: ‘I am the body.’ This is the string on which all other thoughts are threaded. Once we identify ourselves with the body by thinking this thought, maya follows. It also follows that if we cease to identify ourselves with the body, maya will not affect us any more.
Maya is fundamentally non-existent. Bhagavan said that maya literally means ‘that which is not’. It is unreal because everything that maya produces is an outgrowth of a wrong idea. It is a consequence of taking something to be true that is not really true. How can something that is not real produce something that is real? If a barren woman says that she has been beaten by her son, or that she has been injured by the horns of a hare, we would rightly take her to be deluded. Something that does not exist cannot be the cause of suffering or of anything else.
Maya may appear to be real, to have a real existence, but this is a false appearance. The truth is: it is not real; it has no existence at all.
How to get rid of this ‘I am the body’ feeling and of the maya that is produced by it? It goes when there is saman bhava, the equanimity or equality of outlook that leaves one unaffected by extreme opposites such as happiness and unhappiness, pleasure and pain. When saman bhava is attained, the idea ‘I am the body’ is no longer present, and maya is transcended.
Question: Is the body to be regarded as unreal, as ‘not me’? What attitude should I have towards this body and all the sensory information it provides me with?
Annamalai Swami: By itself, this body is jada, inert and lifeless. Without the mind, the body cannot function. And how does the mind function? Through the five senses that the body provides.
Mind and body are like the tongue and teeth in the mouth. They have to work in harmony with each other. The teeth do not fight with the tongue and bite it. Mind and body should combine in the same harmonious way.
However, if we want to go beyond the body, beyond the mind,
we have to understand and fully accept that,
all of the information that the senses provide, is not real.
Like the mirage that produces an illusory oasis in the desert, the senses create the impression that there is a real world in front of us that is being perceived by the mind.
The apparent reality of the world is an illusion. It is merely a mis-perception.
When the mind perceives a snake where in reality there is only a rope, this is clearly a case of the senses projecting an imaginary image onto a real substratum. This, on a large scale, is how the unreal appearance of the world is projected by the mind and the senses onto the underlying reality of the Self.
Once this happens, we see the superimposition, the unreal names and forms we have created, and we forget about the substratum, the reality that underlies them. Many examples are given by our teachers and by our spiritual books. If you see a carved wooden elephant, for example, at some point you forget that it is only wood. You see the form of the carving, and your mind gives that form the name ‘elephant’. While your mind is registering this name and this form, you are no longer registering the object as a block of wood. It is the same when you see jewellery made out of gold. You see a shape, call it a ring or a necklace, and while you are studying the form, you temporarily forget the substance it is made of.
Self-enquiry is the process by which attention is put on the substratum instead of on the names and forms that are habitually imposed on it.
Self is the substratum out of which all things appear to manifest, and the jnani is the one who is continually aware of the real substratum.
He is never deluded into believing that the names and forms that are perceived by the senses have any real existence.
Whatever we see in this room, for example that picture of Bhagavan over there, is unreal. It has no more reality than the objects we perceive in our dreams. We think we live in a real, materially substantial world, and that our minds and bodies are real entities that move around in it.
When the Self is seen and known, all these ideas fade away and one is left with the knowledge:
That Self alone exists.
Question: If I regard all the people that I see and meet as unreal projections, what do I base my moral sense on? I can go around killing them or robbing them without feeling guilty because I would know that they are just characters in my dream.
Annamalai Swami: Everything that we perceive is maya, an unreal dream, but one should not then think, ‘Since everything is unreal, I can do what I like’. There are dream consequences for the bad acts committed in the dream, and while you still take the dream to be the reality, you will suffer the consequences of your bad behaviour. Do no evil and have no hate. Have equanimity towards everything.
Question: I wasn’t here yesterday, but I was told that someone asked the following question: ‘I have been following Bhagavan’s teachings for many years, but without any obvious benefits. I don’t feel any peace. What am I doing wrong? Why am I not getting results?’
Annamalai Swami:
Self-enquiry must be done continuously. It doesn’t work if you regard it as a part-time activity.
You may be doing something that doesn’t hold your interest or attention, so you think, ‘I will do some self-enquiry instead’. This is never going to work.
You may go two steps forward when you practice, but you go five steps backward when you stop your practice and go back to your worldly affairs.
You must have a lifelong commitment to establish yourself in the Self.
Your determination to succeed must be strong and firm, and it should manifest as continuous, not part-time effort.
For many lifetimes you have been immersed in ignorance. You are habituated to it. All your deeply rooted beliefs, all' your patterns of behaviour reinforce ignorance and strengthen the hold it has over you.
This ignorance is so strong, so deeply enmeshed in all your psychological structures, it takes a massive effort over a long period of time to break free from it.
The habits and beliefs that sustain it have to be challenged again and again.
Ignorance is ignorance of the Self, and to remove it Self- awareness is required.
When you come to an awareness of the Self, ignorance vanishes. If you don’t lose contact with the Self, ignorance can never arise.
If there is darkness, you remove it by bringing light. Darkness is not something real and substantial that you have to dig out and throw away. It is just an absence of light, nothing more. When light is let into a dark room, the darkness is suddenly no longer there. It did not vanish gradually or go away piece by piece; it simply ceased to exist when the room became filled with light.
This is just an analogy because the Self is not like other lights. It is not an object that you either see or don’t see.
It is there all the time, shining as your own reality.
If you refuse to acknowledge its existence, if you refuse to believe that it is there, you put yourself in an imaginary darkness.
It is not a real darkness. It is just your own wilful refusal to acknowledge that you are light itself. This self-inflicted ignorance is the darkness that has to be banished by the light of Self-awareness.
We have repeatedly to turn to the light of the Self within until we become one with it.
Bhagavan spoke about turning inwards to face the Self.
That is all that is needed.
If we look outwards, we become entangled with objects
and we lose awareness of the Self shining within us.
But when, by repeated practice, we gain the strength to keep our focus on the Self within, we become one with it and the darkness of Self-ignorance vanishes.
Then, even though we continue to live in this false and unreal body, we abide in an ocean of bliss that never fades or diminishes.
This is not going to happen in a moment because lifetimes of wrong and ignorant thinking have made it impossible for most of us to focus intently and regularly on the Self within.
If you leave your house and start walking away from it, and if you continue this habit over many lives, you will probably be a long, long way from home when you finally decide that you have had enough and that you want to go back to where you started from.
Don’t be discouraged by the length of the journey, and don’t slacken in your efforts to get home.
Turn 180° to face the source of your outward journey, and keep moving back to where you started.
Ignore the pain, the discomfort, and the frustration of seeming not to get anywhere. Keep moving back to your source, and don’t let anything distract you on the way.
Be like the river on its journey back to the sea.
It doesn’t stop, take diversions, or decide to flow uphill for a while. It doesn’t become distracted. It just moves slowly and steadily back to the place its water originated from. And when the river dissolves in the ocean, river is no more. Only ocean remains.
Jiva [the individual self] came from Siva and has to go back to Siva again. If there is a big charcoal fire, and one burning ember jumps out, the fire in the ember will soon go out. To reignite it, you have to put it back into the fire, back into its burning source.
There is no happiness in separation. The jiva has no happiness, contentment or peace so long as it remains a separate being. The separate being comes from the Self. It has to go back there and end there. Only then will there be eternal peace.
The energy of the mind comes from the Self.
In the waking state the mind functions as a separate entity.
In the sleep state it goes back to the source. Again and again it comes out and goes back.
It does this because it doesn’t know the truth of what it really is.
It is Self and Self alone, but its ignorance of this fact makes it miserable.
It is this feeling of separateness that gives rise to desires, suffering and unhappiness.
Keep the mind in the Self.
If you can do this, you can live in peace both while you are awake and also while you are asleep.
In deep sleep all differences are dropped.
If you keep the mind in the Self during the waking state, there will also be no differences, no distinctions.
You will see everything as your own Self.
Question: How can we recognise a jnani!
Annamalai Swami: For a mature seeker there is one principal symptom of being in the presence of a jnani. If the seeker’s mind becomes quiet, without any effort, then this is a good indication.
But this is not a test that is valid or conclusive for everyone. If an immature seeker sits in the presence of a jnani, his or her mind will probably remain just as active as ever. It is very difficult for ordinary people to determine who is and who is not a jnani. There are no consistently reliable tests.
..22/23
People perceive jnanis through the distorting prisms of their minds. More than that they cannot do. If you put on yellow glasses, everything you see will be coloured yellow.
Change the colour of the lenses, and the colour of what you perceive also changes. The jnani has no distorting lenses or prisms to obscure, fragment or change his vision. He sees everything as God, as his own Self.
Question: How do we get this unobscured, unfragmented vision?
Annamalai Swami:
Bhagavan wrote in Ulladu Narpadu that perceived objects are of the same nature as the one who perceives them.
In the waking state the gross physical eyes see gross physical objects. In the dream state the subtle eye sees subtle dream-world objects.
Beyond that there is the eye of the Self.
Since the Self is infinite and immaterial, what it ‘sees’ is infinite and immaterial.
The jnani, being Self alone, sees and knows only the Self.
Annamalai Swami was referring to verse four: ‘If one is a form, the world and God will also be so.
If one is not a form, who can see their forms and how?
Can what is seen be of a different nature to the eye? Self, the eye, is the limitless eye. ’
Bhagavan’s explanation of this verse can he found in Maha Yoga (1973 ed. p.72): ‘If the eye that sees he the eye of flesh, then gross forms are seen; if the eye be assisted by lenses, then even invisible things are seen to have form; if the mind be that eye, then subtle forms are seen; thus the seeing eye and the objects seen are of the same nature; that is,
if the eye be itself a form, it sees nothing but forms.
But neither the physical eye or the mind has any power of vision of its own. The real Eye is the Self; as He is formless, being the pure and infinite Consciousness, the Reality, He does not see forms. ’
Annamalai Swami now continues with his answer:
The Self shines all the time. If you can’t see it because your mind has obscured it or fragmented it, you have to control your vision.
You have to stop observing with the eye of the mind, because that eye can only see what the mind projects in front of it. If you want to see with the eye of the Self, switch the projector of the mind off.
The infinite eye of the Self will then reveal to you that all is one and indivisible.
Question: Going back to the question of how to determine who is and who is not a jnani, can we not come to some valid conclusion by studying his life and his teachings? Will not his state be somehow reflected in the life he leads?
Annamalai Swami: You cannot determine the answer to this question by studying the teachings or the behaviour of a person you think might be a jnani. These are not reliable indicators. Some jnanis may stay silent; others may talk a lot. Some are active in the world; some withdraw from it. Some end up as teachers while others are content to stay hidden. Some behave like saints, whereas others act like madmen. The same peace can be found in the presence of all these beings, since this peace is not affected by modes of behaviour, but there may be no other common factors.
Question: Jnanis are supposed to have an equality of vision. Can we not decide whether someone may be a jnani on the basis of whether he treats people around him equally?
Annamalai Swami:
Jnanis remain absorbed in the Self at all times
and their apparent behaviour is just a reflection of the circumstances they find themselves in.
Some may appear to be egalitarian. Others may not. They play their allotted roles, and though they may seem to be involved in them as ordinary people would be,
they are not really touched by any of the events that occur in their lives.
Equal vision may be there, internal equanimity may be there, but don’t expect all jnanis to behave in a prescribed, egalitarian way.
Bhagavan often used to cite King Janaka as an example of a jnani who was fully involved in the affairs of the world. But when his palace caught fire and was burning to the ground, he was the only person in the vicinity who was not disturbed.
In this same story there was a group of sadhus who lived near the palace. When the fire began to spread, they panicked and began to collect their sticks, their spare kaupinas , their water pots, and so on. They had very few possessions, but they were still very attached to them, and they definitely didn’t want to lose them to the fire. They were more worried about their spare underwear than Janaka was about his palace.
Janaka watched his palace burn to the ground with complete equanimity. When you have this jnana, your inner peace is a solid rock that cannot be disturbed.
Being rich and being a king will not obstruct jnana. It’s just a question of having the right attitude. There is a story in Yoga Vasishta about a king called Mahabali. He had lost interest in his kingdom, his riches and his pleasures because he had developed a strong desire for jnana. He summoned his Guru, Sukacharya, to the court and asked him what he should do to attain jnana. Mahabali was assuming that Sukacharya would tell him to renounce his kingdom and go to the forest and meditate.
Instead Sukacharya told him, ‘I am the Self. You are the Self. All is the Self. That’s all you need to know to attain this jnana you are looking for. I cannot give you any lengthy teachings today because I have to go and attend a meeting of the gods. Anyway, lengthy teachings are not needed. Just remember the words I have told you.
If you can hold on to this knowledge “I am the Self ” at all times, no further practice or initiation will be necessary.’
There is another story about Janaka that I like. A man called Sukabrahman called on Janaka for spiritual advice.
‘I am a seeker of truth,’ he said. ‘What can you tell me?’
‘What did you see while you were coming here?’ asked Janaka.
‘I saw houses made of sugar,’ answered Sukabrahman. ‘I saw streets made of sugar. I saw trees and flowers made of sugar. I saw animals made of sugar. I saw your palace and saw that it was made of sugar. Everything I saw was made of sugar. As I stand here, I see that you are made of sugar and that I also am made of sugar.’
Janaka laughed and said, ‘You are a ripe soul. You don’t need any teaching. You are already a jnani.’
25 book pg not pdf pg
Question: Some people realise the Self just by hearing the Guru’s words. How is this possible?
Annamalai Swami:
Disciples who are spiritually very advanced can realise the Self as soon as they hear the truth from an enlightened Guru,
because the words of such a being have great power.
If you are in this advanced state, they will reach your inner core and reveal to you the peace that is your real nature.
When the Guru tells you that you are the Self, there is a power and an authority in those words that can make them become your own reality.
If you are pure and ready, no practice will be required.
One word from a jnani and his state will become yours too.
Question: How does the mind project this world I see in front of me?
Annamalai Swami: Everything we see in this waking state is a dream.
These dreams are our thoughts made manifest. Bad thoughts make bad dreams and good thoughts make good dreams, and if you have no thoughts, you don’t dream at all.
But even if you do dream, you must understand that your dream is also the Self.
You don’t have to suppress thoughts or be absolutely thoughtless to abide as the Self.
If you know that even your waking and sleeping dreams are the Self, then the thoughts and the dreams they produce can go on.
They will not be a problem for you any more.
Just be the Self at all times.
In this state you will know that everything that appears to you is just a dream.
Question: What I am trying to say is, ‘How do thoughts and desires create this world we live in?’ It doesn’t seem possible that all this that I see could be a manifestation of my hidden desires.
Annamalai Swami: Imagine that a man has to catch a train at 3 a.m. He goes to bed thinking, ‘I have to wake up before that so I can catch this train’.
Then, sometime during the night he has a dream in which he wakes up at 2.30. He remembers the train journey, gets out of bed, goes to the station, boards the train, and takes his seat.
Then he thinks, ‘I got up early this morning. I am a bit sleepy. I will lie down and have a nap.’
He stretches himself out and goes to sleep.
The next morning he wakes up at 8 a.m. in his own bed at home and realises that he has missed his train. His whole journey had just been a dream that had been provoked by the thought, ‘I must wake up before 3 a.m’.
The waking state, which you take to be real, is just an unfolding dream that has appeared to you and manifested in front of you on account of some hidden desire or fear.
Your vasanas sprout and expand miraculously, creating a whole waking-dream world for you. See it as a dream. Recognise that it is just an expansion of your thoughts.
Don’t lose sight of the Self, the substratum on which this vast, believable dream is projected.
If you hold onto the knowledge ‘I am the Self,’ you will know that the dreams are also the Self, and you won’t get entangled in them.
Question: ‘All is one’ may be the truth, but one can’t treat everything in the world equally. In daily life one still has to discriminate and make distinctions.
Annamalai Swami: I once went for a walk near the housing board buildings [government flats that were built in the 1970s about 300 metres from Annamalai Swami’s ashram]. There was a sewage trench on one side of the building. I could smell the stench of the sewage even though I was a long way away. I stayed away from it because I didn’t want to be nauseated by the bad smell.
In circumstances such as these you don’t say, ‘All is one. Everything is the Self,’ and paddle through the sewage. The knowledge ‘everything is the Self’ may be there, but that doesn’t mean that you have to put yourself in dangerous or health- threatening places.
When you have become one with the Self, a great power takes you over and runs your life for you.
It looks after your body; it puts you in the right place at the right time; it makes you say the right things to the people you meet.
This power takes you over so completely, you no longer have any ability to decide or discriminate.
The ego that thinks, ‘I must do this,’ or ‘I should not do that,’ is no longer there.
The Self simply animates you and makes you do all the things that need to be done.
If you are not in this state, then use your discrimination wisely. You can choose to sit in a flower garden and enjoy the scent of the blooms, or you can go down to that trench I told you about and make yourself sick by inhaling the fumes there.
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