https://www.davidgodman.org/bhagavan-manikkavachagar-and-the-tiruvachakam/3/
Devotee: Horripilation, sobbing voice, joyful tears, etc., are mentioned in Atma Vidya Vilasa and other works. Are these found in samadhi, or before, or after?
Bhagavan: All these are symptoms of exceedingly subtle modes of mind [vrittis]. Without duality they cannot remain. Samadhi is perfect peace where these cannot find place.
After emerging from samadhi, the remembrance of the state gives rise to these symptoms. In bhakti marga [the path of devotion] these are the precursors to samadhi.
Question: Are they not so in the path of jnana?
Bhagavan: May be. There is no definiteness about it. It depends on the nature of the individual. Individuality entirely lost, these cannot find a place. Even the slightest trace of it being present, these symptoms become manifest.
Manikkavachagar and other saints have spoken of these symptoms. They say tears rush forth involuntarily and irrepressibly. Though aware of tears they are unable to repress them. I had the same experience when I was staying at Virupaksha Cave. (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 372)
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Bhagavan mentioned earlier that spontaneous and uncontrollable weeping could occur in jnanis. He also sometimes said, as the following story by Devaraja Mudaliar reveals, that crying for God could be an effective sadhana:
in the early days Bhagavan encouraged me whenever I was singing with deep feeling. He would have such a look on his face, with his radiant eyes directed towards me, that I would be held spellbound, and not infrequently, at some especially moving words in the songs, tears would come and I would be obliged to stop reciting for one or two minutes. Bhagavan told me that such weeping is good,
quoting from Tiruvachakam,
‘By crying for You [God], one can get You’.
I recollect here that Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa once said,
‘If you will only cry for God with a tenth of the fervour with which you cry for your wife and children, you will see God in no time’.
It was in connection with Mrs Eleanor Pauline Noye, an American devotee, that Bhagavan quoted to me the above line from Tiruvachakam. She had contributed an article on Bhagavan to The Golden Jubilee Souvenir published by the Asramam in 1946 in which she mentioned that, when after a stay of about two months with Bhagavan she had to return to America and was weeping inconsolably, Bhagavan was kind enough to assure her in so many words (a thing very unusual with him, from my fairly long contact with him) that she was not to grieve and that he would be with her wherever she might go. She writes in the Souvenir, 2nd edition, page 362, ‘Bhagavan said, “I will always be with you wherever you go”.’
.....
False am I; my heart too is false, and my love also is false.
Yet, bound by tainted karma,
I can win You by crying for You.
Honey! Nectar! Essence of the sugar cane!
Sweet Lord! Grant to me in grace, your devotee,
the path that leads to union with You! (‘Tirucatakam’, 9.10.)
.....
Devotee: How to begin? Your grace is needed for it.
Bhagavan: Grace is always there. ‘Dispassion cannot be acquired, nor realisation of the truth, nor inherence in the Self, in the absence of the Guru’s grace,’ the Master quoted.
Practice is necessary. It is like training a roguish bull confined to his stall by tempting him with luscious grass and preventing him from straying.
Then the Master read out a stanza from Tiruvachakam which is an address to the mind, saying,
‘O humming bee [namely, mind]! Why do you take the pains of collecting tiny specks of honey from innumerable flowers? There is one from whom you can have the whole storehouse of honey by simply thinking or seeing or speaking of Him. Get within and hum to Him [hrimkara].’
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 220)
.......
Sri Bhagavan mentioned Sri Manikkavachagar’s: ‘We do bhajans and the rest. But we have not seen nor heard of those who had seen Thee.’
‘One cannot see God and yet retain individuality.
The seer and the seen unite into one Being.
There is no cogniser nor cognition, nor the cognised.
All merge into one Supreme Siva only!’
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 450)
who say: ‘In all the elements You dwell!’
who dance and sing: ‘You come not, neither do You go!’,
we have neither known nor heard of anyone
who has seen You or has known You.
King of Perunturai, that cool rice fields surround!
You whom even thought is powerless to reach!
You who come before us, abolishing our flaws,
subjecting us to Your compassion’s rule, our Lord,
Arise from Your couch, in grace, come forth! (‘Tirupalliezhuchi’, verse 5)
..
Devaraja Mudaliar: Bhagavan would frequently refer to the seventh stanza [of ‘Koyil Tirupatikam’], especially to the line, ‘Approaching and approaching, getting reduced into an atom, and finally becoming one [with the Absolute,]’ and also to the tenth stanza. (My Recollections of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, p. 52)
...
There you stood, Your nature manifest,granting me this day Your grace,
rising like a sun within my heart,
driving out the darkness of ignorance.
My thoughts upon that nature dwelt
till thoughts there were no more.
There is nothing else other than You.
Approaching and approaching,
I became worn down to an atom,
then worn away till I was one with Him.
Hail Siva, dwelling in Holy Perunturai!
There is nothing that You are,
yet without You nothing is!
Who indeed can know You? (‘Koyil Tirupatikam’, verse 7)
Bhagavan continued to speak of the dvaitism of the Vaishnavites and quoted the Nammalvar song beginning ‘Yaane ennai …,’ the gist of which is:
‘Not knowing myself, I went about saying “I” and “mine”.
Then I discovered that
“I” is “You”
and
“mine” was “Yours,”
O God.’
He [Bhagavan] said, ‘This is clear advaita but these Vaishnavites would give it some interpretation to make it accord with their feeling of duality. They hold that they must exist and God must exist, but how is that possible? It seems that they must all remain forever doing service in Vaikunta, but how many of them are to do service, and where would there be room for all the Vaishnavites?’
Bhagavan said this laughing, and then after a pause he added, ‘On the other hand advaita does not mean that a man must always sit in samadhi and never engage in action. Many things are necessary to keep up the life of the body, and action can never be avoided. Nor is bhakti ruled out in advaita. Sankara is rightly regarded as the foremost exponent of advaita, and yet look at the number of shrines he visited (action) and the devotional songs he wrote.’
Bhagavan then gave further quotations from the eighth ‘Decad’ of Thiruvoymozhi to show that some of the Vaishnavite Alwars had clearly endorsed advaita. He particularly emphasised the third stanza where it says: ‘I was lost in Him or in That,’ and the fifth which is very like the Tiruvachakam stanza that says
the ego got attenuated more and more and was extinguished in the Self.
(Day by Day with Bhagavan, 27th June 1946)
To attain through His grace, He who is unique among those who are elevated in jnana, I established Him in my consciousness.
That too was due to His sweet grace.
To gain the jnana that the mind, the prana, the body and the rest of the apparently indestructible entities are flawed,
I crawled strenuously to the very end,
till my ego was extinguished in Him.
Reworded: After supreme efforts, I realised that the body, mind, prana, do not exist.
There is no entity.
I was well established in the dnyana with the complete extinction of my ego.
I was established in the state of supreme oneness, kaivalya.
Having realised myself the one enduring reality, there is nothing in its attribute-free subtle nature for anyone to know in an objective way as ‘this’ or ‘that’.
Even to see it is impossible. Impossible to know as either good or evil, it totally transcends objective knowledge. Approaching and approaching It, and being worn away more and more, I was destroyed without any residue.
(Thiruvoymozhi, by Nammalvar, 8.8.3 and 8.8.5)
reworded:
I realised that my true nature is without any attributes.
What follows is, that it cannot be known objectively.
Being sthira, sayami, I disappeared like a puff of smoke.
......
Devotee: I am a sinner. I do not perform religious sacrifices [homa], etc. Shall I have painful rebirths for that reason? Pray save me!
Bhagavan: Why do you say that you are a sinner? Your trust in God is sufficient to save you from rebirths. Cast all burdens on Him.
In the Tiruvachakam it is said:
‘Though I am worse than a dog, you have graciously undertaken to protect me. This delusion of birth and death is maintained by You.
Moreover, am I the person to sift and judge? Am I the Lord here? O Maheswara! It is for you to roll me through bodies [through births and deaths] or to keep me fixed at your own feet.’
Therefore have faith and that will save you.
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 30)
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In the second line of ‘Siva Puranam’, the first poem in the Tiruvachakam, Manikkavachagar states his experience of Self-abidance by saying that Siva’s feet never ever leave his heart:
Long live [the mantra] Nama Sivaya!
Long live the feet of the Master!
Long live the feet that never, even for an eye’s blink, leave my heart!
Long live the jewel among gurus, who in Kokazhi, bent me to his rule!
Long live the feet of him who, as the Agamas, sweetly dwells!
Long live the holy feet of the One, the Many, the Being Supreme! (‘Siva Puranam’, lines 1-5)
‘Kokazhi’ means ‘great port’, a reference to Perunturai, where Manikkavachagar first encountered Siva.
Bhagavan also commented on this line by Manikkavachagar when a devotee complained that this particular truth had not been realised by him.
Bhagavan: It will be realised in due course. Till then there is devotion (bhakti).
‘Even for a trice you do not leave my mind.’
Does He leave you any moment?
It is you who allow your mind to wander away.
He remains always steady.
When your mind is fixed you say, ‘He does not leave my mind even for a trice’.
How ridiculous!
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 306)
...
Meanwhile a Tamil devotee opened the Tiruvachakam and began singing the ‘Songs of Pursuit’. Towards the end comes the passage, ‘O Iswara, you are trying to flee, but I am holding You fast. So where can You go and how can You escape from me?’
Bhagavan commented with a smile,
‘So it seems that He is trying to flee and they are holding Him fast!
Where could He flee to?
Where is He not present?
Who is He?
All this is nothing but a pageant.
There is another sequence of songs in the same book, one of which goes,
“O my Lord, You have made my mind Your abode.
You have given yourself up to Me and in return have taken Me into you.
Lord, which of us is the cleverer?
If You have given Yourself up to me, I enjoy endless bliss, but of what use am I to You, even though You have made of my body Your temple,
out of Your boundless mercy to me?
What is it I could do for You in return?
I have nothing now that I could call my own.”
This means that there is no such thing as “I”.
See the beauty of it!
Where there is no such thing as “I”,
who is the doer and what is it that is done,
whether it be devotion or self-enquiry or samadhi?’
(Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, 8th September, 1947)
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........Manikkavachagar did not say anything but asked them to accompany him. He went into the temple of Natarajan and standing opposite the Lord said, ‘Sirs, the Lord in front of us is the only answer to your question. He is the answer.’ After having said that, he merged into the Lord.
[Suri Nagamma comments:] As he narrated the story, Bhagavan’s voice got choked. Unable to speak any more he remained in ecstatic silence.
(Letters from and Recollections of Sri Ramanasramam, pp. 10-12)
.....
When asked by others about the meaning of the Tiruvachakam, the great and saintly Manikkavachagar pointed at the subtle chidakasa [space of consciousness] and merged in it. (Padamalai, page 355)
Bhagavan was once asked how this was possible:
He [Bhagavan] remarked, ‘Manikkavachagar is one of those whose body finally resolved itself in a blazing light, without leaving a corpse behind.’
Another devotee asked how this could be.
Maharshi said that the gross body is only the concrete form of the subtle stuff – the mind.
When the mind melts away and blazes forth as light, the body is consumed in that process.
Nandanar [an outcaste saint] is another whose body disappeared in blazing light.
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 215)
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