https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Ramana-Maharshi-Day-by-Day-with-Bhagavan.pdf
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Highlights:
Bhagavan replied,
“Whoever objects to one having a God to worship, so long as he requires such a separate God?
Through bhakti he develops himself, and comes to feel that God alone exists and that he, the bhakta, does not count.
He comes to a stage when he says, ‘Not I, but Thou’. ‘Not my will, but Thy will.’
When that stage is reached,
which is called complete surrender
in the bhakti marga, one finds
Effacement of ego is attainment of Self.
108
Another young man from Colombo asked Bhagavan, “How are the three states of consciousness inferior in degree of reality to the fourth? What is the actual relation between these three states and the fourth?”
Bhagavan:
There is only one state, that of consciousness or awareness or existence.
The three states of waking, dream and sleep cannot be real. They simply come and go.
The real will always exist.
The ‘I’ or existence that alone persists in all the three states is real.
The other three are not real and so it is not possible to say they have such and such a degree of reality.
We may roughly put it like this:
Existence or consciousness is the only reality.
Consciousness plus waking, we call waking.
Consciousness plus sleep, we call sleep.
Consciousness plus dream, we call dream.
Consciousness is the screen on which all the pictures come and go.
The screen is real, the pictures are mere shadows on it.
Because by long habit we have been regarding these three states as real, we call the state of mere awareness or consciousness as the fourth.
There is however no fourth state, but only one state.
In this connection Bhagavan quoted verse 386 from ‘TWôTWd Li¦’ of Thayumanavar and said this so-called fourth state is described as waking sleep or sleep in waking — meaning asleep to the world and awake in the Self.
......
n, “But why should these three states come and go on the real state or the screen of the Self?”
Bhagavan: Who puts this question? Does the Self say these states come and go? It is the seer who says these states come and go. The seer and the seen together constitute the mind. See if there is such a thing as the mind. Then, the mind merges in the Self, and there is neither the seer nor the seen. So the real answer to your question is, “Do they come and go? They neither come nor go.” The Self alone remains as it ever is. The three states owe their existence to ‘@®NôW’ (non enquiry) and enquiry puts an end to them.
However much one may explain, the fact will not become clear until one attains Self-realisation
and wonders how he was blind to the self-evident and only existence so long.
.........
Another visitor asked Bhagavan, “What is the difference between the mind and the Self?”
Bhagavan: There is no difference. The mind turned inwards is the Self; turned outwards, it becomes the ego and all the world. The cotton made into various clothes, we call by various names. The gold made into various ornaments, we call by various names. But all the clothes are cotton and all the ornaments gold. The one is real, the many are mere names and forms.
But the mind does not exist apart from the Self, i.e. it has no independent existence. The Self exists without the mind, never the mind without the Self.
......
110
In the English abridgement of Srimad Bhagavatam I found it said that Prithu let his body be dissolved into the several elements of which it was composed. As this sounds very much like what is generally reported of Ramalinga Swami, (viz. that he got into a room and locked himself up and that, when after some days the room was broken open, it was found empty), I asked Bhagavan whether ‘realised’ men could make their bodies disappear thus.
He said, “The books tell us that some saints went away with their bodies to heaven, riding on elephants, etc., sent specially to take them. They also speak of saints disappearing as light or flame, as akasa or ether, and as stone lingam. But it must be remembered that all this is only in the view of the onlooker.
The jnani does not think he is the body.
He does not even see the body. He sees only the Self in the body.
If the body is not there, but only the Self, the question of its disappearing in any form does not arise.”
In this connection Bhagavan again quoted the Tamil verse from Bhagavatam already referred to in the entry under 9-1-46; and at this time he made us take out both the Sanskrit verse and the Tamil verse from the books, I give below the two verses:
deham cha nasvaram avasthitam utthitam va siddho no pasyati yatodhyagamat svarupam daivadapetam uta daiva vasad upetam vaso yatha parikrtam madira madandhah. (22, Hamsa Gita: The Bhagavata, Ch. XI) (The meaning of this stanza is given on page 113).
Bhagavan added, “There is a certain school of thinkers who would not call anyone a jnani whose body is left behind at death. It is impossible to conceive of a jnani attaching such importance to the body. But there is such a school — the Siddha School.
In Pondicherry they have a Society.” Soon after this a boy of about seventeen years from Pondicherry came and asked Bhagavan,
“After hearing the pranava sound, what is the stage beyond it that one should reach?”
Bhagavan said, “Who is it that hears the pranava or talks of the stage beyond? See and find out, and then all will be clear. What is pranava, and what is that stage beyond hearing pranava of which you speak? Where is it? About all those things we don’t know. But you are.
So find out first about your self, the seer, and then all will be known.”
The boy again asked, “I wish to know what is the way to mukti.”
........
Bhagavan: That is all right. But what is mukti? Where is that and where are you? What is the distance between the two, so that we can speak of a path? First find out about yourself and where you are and then see if these questions arise.
...
116
Gokul Bhai read out the Gujarati Ramana Gita Chapter XI and then the Gujarati Upadesa Saram. Mr. P.C. Desai asked Bhagavan, “In verse 14, they have translated the second line of the Sanskrit verse as
‘If the mind is continuously fixed on meditation of the Self, etc.’ Is that all right, seeing that neither ‘continuously’ nor ‘Self’ is found in the original?”
Bhagavan:
Eka chintana involves continuous thought.
If no other thought is to come, the one thought has to be continuous.
What is meant by the verse is as follows:
The previous verses have said that for controlling the mind breath control or pranayama may be helpful.
This verse says that the mind so brought under control or to the state of laya should not be allowed to be in mere laya or a state like sleep, but that it should be directed towards eka chintana or one thought, whether that one thought is of the Self, the ishta devata or a mantram.
What the one thought may be will depend on each man’s pakva or fitness. The verse leaves it as one thought.
Mr. Desai wanted to know if in the next edition verse 14 in the Gujarati should be corrected or if it might stand as now. Bhagavan said nothing. He had said enough on the subject. (I concluded that there could be no harm in introducing ‘continuous’ in the second line, but there was no justification for bringing in ‘thought or Self’ as all that Bhagavan said in the original was that the mind brought to laya should be made to occupy itself with eka chintana, one thought).
....
(1) Searching who this ‘I’ was, Soon I found You only standing as the heaven of bliss.
You only, blessed Lord! — (Thayumanavar)
(2) Not knowing who I was, I used to speak of ‘I’ and ‘mine’.
But I am You and mine is You, Lord whom all the gods adore. — (Nammalvar)
...
Though I have become You and You alone exist Undestroyed the ‘I’ persists As I within that knows
And I that turns to what is known, The many things knowing and unknowing —
.....
On this stanza which says, “I discover that I am You, and all that I called mine is You,” the Visishtadvaita commentator said, “I reached so near God as to regard I and mine as God himself.”
........
About 11 a.m. a visitor asked, “Bhagavan told me this morning ‘Unless one knows the reality (yathartham), one cannot get peace (shanti).’ What is that reality?”
Bhagavan:
That which always IS,
is the reality.
It is peace.
Peace is another name for it.
Visitor: How to reach it or how to get peace?
Bhagavan: As I said already, that which is, is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet.
Peace is our real nature. We spoil it.
What is required is that we cease to spoil it.
We are not going to create peace anew.
There is space in a hall, for instance. We fill up the place with various articles. If we want space, all that we need do is to remove all those articles, and we get space.
Similarly if we remove all the rubbish, all the thoughts, from our minds, the peace will become manifest.
That which is obstructing the peace has to be removed. Peace is the only reality.
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138
Question: Is seeing that light Self-realisation?
Answer: Abiding in it and being it, not seeing it, is Self realisation.
Question: In nirvikalpa samadhi what happens to the prana?
Answer: It goes and merges where it came from.
....
Question: I wish to know if there will be breathing then.
Answer: It may not be then in the form of respiration, but in some sukshma form. They talk of maha prana.
Question: What is sahaja samadhi?
Answer: It is our svabhava sthiti.
It is being in our natural state.
Nirvikalpa samadhi also means merely giving up our vikalpas.
Samadhi is our natural state, if we give up the vikalpas.
......
158
Some young men who had come with an introduction from the Ramakrishna Mission at Madras asked Bhagavan, “Which is the proper path for us to follow?”
Bhagavan:
When you speak of a path, where are you now?
And where do you want to go?
If these are known, then we can talk of the path.
Know first where you are and what you are.
There is nothing to be reached.
You are always as you really are.
But you don’t realise it. That is all.
.
186
Dr. Syed: Now that I am satisfied on that point, I want to know what are the steps by which I could achieve surrender.
Bhagavan: There are two ways;
one is looking into the source of ‘I’ and merging into that source.
The other is feeling “I am helpless by myself, God alone is all-powerful and except throwing myself completely on him, there is no other means of safety for me,” and thus gradually developing the conviction that God alone exists and the ego does not count. Both methods lead to the same goal.
'Complete' surrender is another name for jnana or liberation.
.......
Question: Bhagavan says, ‘The influence of the jnani steals into the devotee in silence.’
Bhagavan also says, ‘Contact with great men, exalted souls, is one efficacious means of realising one’s true being.’
Bhagavan: Yes. What is the contradiction? Jnani, great men, exalted souls — does he (Dr.) differentiate between these?
.......
Thereupon I said, ‘No’.
Bhagavan: Contact with them is good. They will work through silence.
By speaking, their power is reduced. Silence is most powerful.
Speech is always less powerful than silence. So mental contact is the best.
..........
Question: Does this hold good even after the dissolution of the physical body of the jnani or is it true only so long as he is in flesh and blood?
Bhagavan: Guru is not the physical form. So the contact will remain even after the physical form of the Guru vanishes.
Question: Similarly, does the contact of a devotee with his Guru continue after the passing of the Guru or does it stop? It is possible that for a ripe soul his Self may act as his Guru after the going away of the Guru, but what is the unripe soul to do?
Bhagavan has said that an outer Guru is also needed to push the mind of the devotee towards the Self.
Can he come in contact with another adept? Is this contact to be necessarily physical or will a mental contact do? Which is better?
Bhagavan:
As already explained, Guru not being physical form, his contact will continue after his form vanishes.
If one jnani exists in the world, his influence will be felt by or benefit all people in the world and not simply his immediate disciples. All the people in the world are divided into his disciples, bhaktas, those who are indifferent to him and those who are even hostile to him and it is said in the following verse that all these classes will be benefited by the existence of the jnani.
From Vedanta Chudamani:
The gist is: ‘Four classes of people are benefited by jivanmuktas. By his faith in the jivanmukta, the disciple attains mukti, the bhakta who worships his Guru attains merit, the indifferent who have seen the sacred life of the jivanmukta acquire desire for righteousness and even the sinners (i.e. the hostile in the first verse) get rid of their sins by the mere fact of their having had darshan of such saints.’
God, Guru and the Self are the same.
After your bhakti to God has matured you, God comes in the shape of Guru
and from outside pushes your mind inside,
while being inside as Self he draws you there from within.
Such a Guru is needed generally, though not for very rare and advanced souls.
Reworded: Most people need a Guru.
However, some rare, highly spiritually mature people wouldn't need one.
One can go to another Guru after his Guru passes away. But all Gurus are one, as none of them is the form. Always mental contact is the best.
..........
Liberation is another name for 'you'.
It is always here and now with you. It has not to be won or reached hereafter or somewhere. Christ has said, “The Kingdom of God is within you” here and now. You have no death.
Thayumanavar has sung,
'even when living in the world those who are always in nishta (Sam: Self) do not think there is such a thing as death.'
The Gita verse only means in the context of the whole Gita (Ch. II, for instance) that you must achieve liberation during your lifetime. Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of God at least at the time of death, since one becomes what he thinks of at the time of death.
But unless all your life you have been thinking of God, unless you have accustomed yourself to dhyana of God always during life, it would not at all be possible for you to think of God at the time of death.
......
176
Bhagavan told him,
“Mukti or liberation is our nature. It is another name for us. Our wanting mukti is a very funny thing. It is like a man who is in the shade, voluntarily leaving the shade, going into the sun, feeling the severity of the heat there, making great efforts to get back into the shade and then rejoicing,
‘How sweet is the shade! I have after all reached the shade!’ We all are doing exactly the same.
We are not different from the reality.
We 'imagine 'we are different,
i.e. we create the bheda bhava (the feeling of difference) and then undergo great sadhana to get rid of the bheda bhava and realise the oneness.
Why imagine or create bheda bhava and then destroy it?”
....177
Dr. Masalawala placed in Bhagavan’s hands a letter he had received from his friend V.K. Ajgaonkar, a gentleman of about 35 (a follower of Jnaneswar Maharaj) who is said to have attained jnana in his 28th year. The letter said, “You call me purna. Who is not purna in this world?” Bhagavan agreed and continued in the vein in which he discoursed this morning, and said
“We limit ourselves first, then seek to become the unlimited that we always are. All effort is only for giving up the notion that we are limited.”
The letter further said,
“The first verse in the Isavasyopanishad says the world is purna.
It simply cannot be anything else, as its very existence is built on the purna.”
Bhagavan approved of this also, and said,
“There is this typed letter, for instance. To see the world alone and not the purna or Self would be something like saying. ‘I see the letters, but not the paper,’ while it is the existence of the paper that makes the existence of the letters possible!”
Dr. M. said, “In the letter we see the paper. But we are able to see only the world and we don’t see God!”
Bhagavan replied: “What happens in sleep? Where did the world go then? Then you alone or the Self alone existed.”
The letter also said, “Jnaneswar Maharaj has said God will never forsake his bhakta who has undivided love for him.”
Bhagavan said, “Every saint, every book says so. I have been reading Ram Das’s writings. Here, too, so many verses end, ‘Ramachandra will never forsake his bhakta.’” So saying, Bhagavan read out a few of those verses. The letter went on to say, “Ramana Maharshi is an exponent of ajata doctrine of Advaita Vedanta. Of course it is a bit difficult.”
Bhagavan remarked on this, “Somebody has told him so. I do not teach only the ajata doctrine. I approve of all schools. The same truth has to be expressed in different ways to suit the capacity of the hearer. The ajata doctrine says,
‘Nothing exists except the one reality.
There is no birth or death, no projection or drawing in, no sadhaka, no mumukshu, no mukta, no bondage, no liberation.
The one unity alone exists ever.’
To such as find it difficult to grasp this truth and who ask, ‘How can we ignore this solid world we see all around us?’, the dream experience is pointed out and they are told, ‘All that you see depends on the seer. Apart from the seer, there is no seen.’
This is called the drishti-srishti vada or the argument that one first creates out of his mind and then sees what his mind itself has created.
To such as cannot grasp even this and who further argue, ‘The dream experience is so short, while the world always exists.
The dream experience was limited to me. But the world is felt and seen not only by me, but by so many, and we cannot call such a world non-existent’, the argument called srishti-drishti vada is addressed and they are told, ‘God first created such and such a thing, out of such and such an element, and then something else, and so forth.’ That alone will satisfy this class. Their mind is otherwise not satisfied and they ask themselves, ‘How can all geography, all maps, all sciences, stars, planets and the rules governing or relating to them and all knowledge be totally untrue?’ To such it is best to say, ‘Yes. God created all this and so you see it.’” Dr.M. said, “But all these cannot be true; only one doctrine can be true.”
Bhagavan said, “All these are only to suit the capacity of the learner. The absolute can only be one.”
The letter further said, “Avyabhicharini bhakti is the only necessary thing.”
As Dr.M. did not understand what avyabhicharini bhakti meant, Bhagavan explained that it only meant bhakti to God without any other thought occupying the mind.
Bhagavan said, “This word, ananya bhakti, ekagrata bhakti, all mean the same thing.” The letter continued, “In the mind two things do not exist at the same time. Either God or samsar. Samsar is already there. That is to be reduced little by little and God is to be entered in its stead.”
Bhagavan remarked on this. “God is there already, not samsar. Only you do not see it on account of the samsar rubbish you have filled your mind with. Remove the rubbish and you will see God. If a room is filled with various articles, the space in the room has not vanished anywhere. To have space we have not to create it, but only to remove the articles stocked in the room. Even so, God is there. If you turn the mind inward, instead of outward on things, then you see the mind merges in the one unity which alone exists.
Bhagavan also agreed with the writer when he said that to see God, Guru’s grace is necessary, for which again God’s anugraha is necessary, which in its turn, could be had only by upasana.
Sam: upasana...anugraha..Grace..God.
The letter conveyed the writer’s namaskar to Bhagavan. Thereupon, Bhagavan said,
“The mind merging in its source, the one unity, is the only true namaskar.”
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Last night, Mr. Bose, his mother, Lady C. V. Raman and Swami Sambuddhananda of the Ramakrishna Mission, Bombay, arrived here. The Swami quoted a verse from Bhagavad Gita which says that one in a thousand succeeds and knows really the tattva or entity. For some time Bhagavan kept quiet.
When the Swami wanted an answer, some of us could not help remarking, “What is your question? What answer do you expect?” Dr. Masalawala even pointedly asked, “What is the motive behind this question?” Thereupon, the Swami said,
“I think our Bhagavan has attained Self realisation. Such beings are walking Upanishads. So I want to hear, from his own lips, his experience of Self-realisation. Why are you all butting in and distracting us from the point and purpose of my question?”
After all this, Bhagavan said,
“You say you think I have attained Self-realisation. I must know what you mean by Self realisation. What idea do you have in your mind about it?”
The Swami was not pleased with this counter-question, but added, after some time, “I mean the atman merging in the paramatman.”
Bhagavan then said, “We do not know about the paramatman or the Universal Soul, etc. We know we exist. Nobody doubts he exists, though he may doubt the existence of God.
So, if one finds out about the truth or source of oneself, that is all that is required.”
The Swami thereupon said, “Bhagavan therefore says ‘Know Thyself’.”
Bhagavan said.
“Even that is not correct. For, if we talk of knowing the Self, there must be two Selves, one a knowing Self, another the Self which is known, and the process of knowing.
The state we call realisation is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything.
If one has realised, he is that which alone is and which alone has always been. He cannot describe that state. He can only be that. Of course, we loosely talk of Self realisation, for want of a better term.
How to ‘real-ise’ or make real that which alone is real?
What we are all doing is, we ‘realised’ or regard as real that which is unreal.
This habit of ours has to be given up.
All sadhana under all systems of thought is meant only for this end.
When we give up regarding the unreal as real, then the reality alone will remain and we will be that.”
...185
The Swami replied, “This exposition is all right with reference to Advaita. But there are other schools which do not insist on the disappearance of triputi (the three factors of knowledge) as the condition for Self-realisation. There are schools which believe in the existence of two and even three eternal entities. There is the bhakta, for instance. That he may do bhakti, there must be a God.”
Bhagavan replied,
“Whoever objects to one having a God to worship, so long as he requires such a separate God?
Through bhakti he develops himself, and comes to feel that God alone exists and that he, the bhakta, does not count.
He comes to a stage when he says, ‘Not I, but Thou’. ‘Not my will, but Thy will.’
When that stage is reached,
which is called complete surrender
in the bhakti marga, one finds
Effacement of ego is attainment of Self.
We need not quarrel whether there are two entities, or more, or only one. Even according to Dvaitis and according to the bhakti marga, complete surrender is prescribed. Do that first, and then see for yourself whether the one Self alone exists, or whether there are two or more entities.”
......
Bhagavan further added, “Whatever may be said to suit the different capacities of different men, the truth is,
The state of Self-realisation must be beyond triputis.
The Self is not something of which jnana or ajnana can be predicated.
It is beyond ajnana and jnana.
The Self is the Self.
That is all that can be said of it.”
...........
The Swami then asked whether a jnani could remain with his body after attaining Self-realisation.
He said, “It is said that the impact of Self-realisation is so forceful that the weak physical body cannot bear it for more than twenty-one days at the longest.”
Bhagavan said, “What is your idea of a jnani? Is he the body or something different? If he is something apart from the body, how could he be affected by the body? The books talk of different kinds of mukti, videha mukti (without body), and jivan mukti (with body). There may be different stages in the sadhana. But in realisation there are no degrees.”
........
The Swami then asked, “What is the best means for Self realisation?”
Bhagavan:
‘I exist’ is the only permanent, self-evident experience of everyone.
Nothing else is so self-evident (pratyaksha) as ‘I am’.
What people call ‘self-evident’ viz., the experience they get through the senses, is far from self evident.
The Self alone is that.
Pratyaksha is another name for the Self.
So, to do Self-analysis and be ‘I am’ is the only thing to do.
‘I am’ is reality.
I am this or that is unreal.
‘I am’ is truth, another name for Self.
‘I am God’ is not true.
.......................................186......end..........................................
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