https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Ramana-Maharshi-Day-by-Day-with-Bhagavan.pdf
Ramakrishna swami discussion continued:
187
The Swami thereupon said, “The Upanishads themselves have said ‘I am Brahman’.”
Bhagavan replied,
“That is not how the text is to be understood. It simply means, “Brahman exists as ‘I’ and not ‘I am Brahman’.
It is not to be supposed that a man is advised to contemplate ‘I am Brahman’, ‘I am Brahman’. Does a man keep on thinking ‘I am a man’ ‘I am a man’? He is that, and except when a doubt arises as to whether he is an animal or a tree, there is no need for him to assert, ‘I am a man.’ Similarly the Self is Self, Brahman exists as ‘I am’, in every thing and every being.”
.......
The Swami remarked, “The bhakta requires a God to whom he can do bhakti. Is he to be taught that there is only the Self, not a worshipper and the worshipped?”
Bhagavan: Of course, God is required for sadhana. But the end of the sadhana, even in bhakti marga, is attained only after complete surrender.
What does it mean, except that, the effacement of ego results in the Self remaining as it always has been?
Whatever path one may choose, the ‘I’ is inescapable, the ‘I’ that does the nishkama karma, the ‘I’ that pines for joining the Lord from whom it feels it has been separated, the ‘I’ that feels it has slipped from its real nature, and so on.
The source of this ‘I’ must be found out.
Then all questions will be solved.
Sam: Then and only then...all questions will be solved.
.......
Whereas all paths are approved in the Bhagavad Gita, it says that the jnani is the best karma yogi, the best devotee or bhakta, the highest yogi and so on.”
.....
The Swami still persisted, “It is all right to say Self analysis is the best thing to do. But in practice, we find a God is necessary for most people.”
Bhagavan: God is of course necessary, for most people. They can go on with one, till they find out that they and God are not different.
The Swami continued, “In actual practice, sadhakas, even sincere ones, sometimes become dejected and lose faith in God. How to restore their faith? What should we do for them?”
Bhagavan: If one cannot believe in God, it does not matter. I suppose he believes in himself, in his own existence. Let him find out the source from which he came.
Swami: Such a man will only say the source from which he comes are his parents.
Bhagavan: He cannot be such an ignoramus, as you started by saying he was a sadhaka in this line already.
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193
Bhagavan said, “You say, all schools advise you to give up all vrittis so that you can reach your final goal, whether it is becoming purushottama or something else. You must cease to be the three kinds of ordinary purusha i.e., the adhama, madhyama, uttama and become that purushottama. This is accepted. Whether, when you transcend these three kinds and cease to be the ordinary purusha, there is any vritti still left is a matter with which you need not concern yourself now.
Attain that state and see for yourself what that state is and whether there is any vritti in it.
To speak even of brahmakara vritti, as we sometimes do, is not accurate.
If we can talk of the river that has merged in the ocean as still a river and call it samudrakara river, we can talk of the final stage in spiritual growth as having Brahmakara vritti.
When people from Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram come here and ask about the differences between our school and theirs, I always tell them,
‘There, complete surrender is advised and insisted upon before anything further could be hoped for or attained. So, do it first.
I also advise it.
After making such surrender, i.e. complete surrender and not any partial or conditional surrender, you will be able to see for yourself whether there are two purushas, whether power comes from anywhere and gets into anywhere, etc.’
For we know nothing about God or any source from which power comes and gets into us. All that is not known.
But ‘I exist’ is known beyond all dispute by all men.
So let us know who that ‘I’ is.
If, after knowing it, there still remain any doubts such as are now raised, it will be time enough then to try and clear such doubts.”
209
Mr. Nanavati of Bombay asked Bhagavan, “In the fifth stanza of Arunachala Pancharatna reference is made to seeing ‘Your form in everything’. What is the form referred to?”
Bhagavan said,
“The stanza says that one should completely surrender one’s mind, turn it inwards and see ‘you’ the Self within and then see the Self in ‘you’ in everything.
It is only after seeing the Self within, that one will be able to see the Self in everything.
One must first realise there is nothing but the Self and that he is that Self, and then only he can see everything as the form of the Self.
That is the meaning of saying, ‘See the Self in everything and everything in the Self’, as is stated in the Gita and other books.
It is the same truth that is taught in stanza 4 of the Reality in Forty Verses.
If you have the idea that you are something with form, that you are limited by this body, and that being within this body you have to see through these eyes, God and the world also will appear to you as form.
If you realise you are without form, that you are unlimited, that you alone exist, that you are the eye, the infinite eye, what is there to be seen apart from the infinite eye?
Apart from the eye, there is nothing to be seen. There must be a seer for an object to be seen, and there must be space, time, etc. But if the Self alone exists, it is both seer and seen, and above seeing or being seen.”
.......
Question: The Lord has created all this, has He not? What was created first? It is said light or sound was created first.
Answer: All these things, which you say have been created have to be seen by you before you say they exist. There must be a seer. If you find out who that seer is, then you will know about creation and which was created first. Of course various theories as to what came into existence first from God are given out. Most, including scientists, agree that all has come from light and sound.
Bhagavan quoted the Gita and said,
“We should not sleep very much or go without it altogether, but sleep only moderately. To prevent too much sleep, we must try and have no thoughts or chalana (movement of the mind), we must eat only sattvic food and that only in moderate measure, and not indulge in too much physical activity.
The more we control thought, activity and food the more shall we be able to control sleep. But moderation ought to be the rule, as explained in the Gita, for the sadhak on the path.
Sleep is the first obstacle, as explained in the books, for all sadhaks.
The second obstacle is said to be vikshepa or the sense objects of the world which divert one’s attention.
The third is said to be kashaya or thoughts in the mind about previous experiences with sense objects.
The fourth, ananda, is also called an obstacle, because in that state a feeling of separation from the source of ananda, enabling the enjoyer to say ‘I am enjoying ananda’ is present.
Even this has to be surmounted and the final stage of samadhana or samadhi has to be reached, where one becomes ananda or one with the reality and the duality of enjoyer and enjoyment ceases in the ocean of sat-chit-ananda or the Self.”
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218
Bhagavan replied, “You see, you think he is a human being or one with a human form, the son of so and so, etc. whereas he himself has said, ‘I am in the Heart of all beings, I am the beginning, the middle and the end of all forms of life.’
He must be within you, as within all.
He is your Atma or the Atma of your Atma.
So if you see this entity or have sakshatkara of it, you will have sakshatkara of Krishna.
Atma Sakshatkara and sakshatkara of Krishna cannot be different.
However, to go your own way, surrender completely to Krishna and leave it to Him to grant the sakshatkara you want.”
..........
Sam: Mind merged in its Source = Mauna
Bhagavan: Of course. If we have real mauna, that state in which the mind is merged into its source and has no more separate existence, then all other kinds of mauna will come of their own accord, i.e., the mauna of words, of action and of the mind or chitta. Bhagavan also quoted in this connection, the following from Thayumanavar.
[If I get pure mauna (quiescence), I shall have mauna of chitta, mind, word and deed].
Bhagavan added, “Such mauna is not inertness but great activity. It is the most powerful speech.”
........
223
In answer to a visitor, Bhagavan said,
“Find out to whom is Viyoga. That is yoga.
Yoga is common to all paths.
Yoga is really nothing but ceasing to think that you are different from the Self or Reality.
All the yogas — karma, jnana, bhakti and raja — are just different paths to suit different natures with different modes of evolution and to get them out of the long cherished notion that they are different from the Self. There is no question of union or yoga in the sense of going and joining something that is somewhere away from us or different from us, because you never were or could be separate from the Self.”
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225
Bhagavan has said the same on previous occasions also. He continued to speak about mukti and said,
“Mukti is not anything to be attained. It is our real nature. We are always That.
It is only so long as one feels that he is in bondage that he has to try to get released from bondage. When a man feels that he is in bondage he tries to find out for whom is the bondage and by that enquiry discovers that there is no bondage for him but only for the mind, and that the mind itself disappears or proves non-existent when turned inwards instead of outwards towards sense-objects; it merges into its source, the Self, and ceases to exist as a separate entity. In that state there is no feeling either of bondage or liberation.
So long as one speaks of mukti he is not free from the sense of bondage.”
........
233
Bhagavan:
You must do as you find most convenient. You will not attain mukti simply because you refrain from driving away the mosquitoes, nor be denied mukti simply because you drive them away.
The thing is to attain one-pointedness and then to attain mano-nasa.
Sam: One pointedness first..then Mano nasha.
Whether you do this by putting up with the mosquito bites or driving the mosquitoes away is left to you. If you are completely absorbed in your meditation you will not know that the mosquitoes are biting you. Till you attain that stage why should you not drive them away?
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242
Bose: When the Upanishads say that all is Brahman, how can we say, like Shankara, that this world is mithya or illusory?
Bhagavan: Shankara also said that this world is Brahman or the Self. What he objected to is one’s imagining that the Self is limited by the names and forms that constitute the world.
He only said that the world does not exist apart from Brahman.
Brahman or the Self is like the screen and the world is like the pictures on it. You can see the picture only so long as there is a screen.
But when the seer himself becomes the screen only the Self remains.
Kaivalya Navaneeta has asked and answered six questions about maya. They are instructive.
The first question is:
What is maya?
And the answer is:
It is anirvachaniya or indescribable.
The second question is: To whom does it come?
And the answer is: To the mind or ego who feels that he is a separate entity, who thinks: ‘I do this’ or ‘this is mine’.
The third question is: Where does it come from and how did it originate?
And the answer is: Nobody can say.
The fourth question is: How did it arise?
And the answer is: Through non-vichara, through failure to ask: who am I?
Sam: Non vichara is the cause of maya.
The fifth question is: If the Self and maya both exist does not this invalidate the theory of Advaita?
The answer is: It need not, since maya is dependent on the Self as the picture is on the screen. The picture is not real in the sense that the screen is real.
The sixth question is: If the Self and maya are one, could it not be argued that the Self is of the nature of maya, that is illusory?
And the answer is: No; the Self can be capable of producing illusion without being illusory.
A conjuror may create for our entertainment the illusion of people, animals and things, and we see all of them as clearly as we see him; but after the performance he alone remains and all the visions he had created have disappeared. He is not a part of the illusion but is real and solid.
....
30-5-46
Today again Bose reverted to the subject of maya and asked Bhagavan, “What is Hiranyagarbha?”
Bhagavan replied, “Hiranyagarbha is only another name for the sukshma sarira or Ishwara.
The books use the following illustration to help explain creation. The Self is like the canvas for a painting. First a paste is smeared over it to close up the small holes that are in any cloth. This paste can be compared to the antaryami in all creation. Then the artist makes an outline on the canvas, and this can be compared to the sukshma sarira of all creation, for instance the light and sound, nada, bindu, out of which all things arise. Then the artist paints his picture with colours etc., in this outline, and this can be compared to the gross forms that constitute the world.”
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244
He went on to tell how after that he freely begged in almost all the streets of Tiruvannamalai.
He said: “You cannot conceive of the majesty and dignity I felt while so begging. The first day, when I begged from Gurukal’s wife, I felt bashful about it as a result of habits of upbringing, but after that there was absolutely no feeling of abasement. I felt like a king and more than a king. I have sometimes received stale gruel at some house and taken it without salt or any other flavouring, in the open street, before great pandits and other important men who used to come and prostrate themselves before me at my Asramam, then wiped my hands on my head and passed on supremely happy and in a state of mind in which even emperors were mere straw in my sight. You can’t imagine it. It is because there is such a path that we find tales in history of kings giving up their thrones and taking to this path.”
.........
Bhagavan: All are good. They will lead to this eventually. Japa is our real nature. When we realize the Self then japa goes on without effort. What is the means at one stage becomes the goal at another. When effortless, constant japa goes on, it is realisation.
......
253
In the afternoon G.V.S. asked, “What is the difference between manasa japa and dhyana?”
Bhagavan: They are the same. In both, the mind is concentrated on one thing, the mantra or the Self. Mantra, japa, dhyana — are only different names. So long as they require effort we call them by these names, but when the Self is realized this goes on without any effort and what was the means becomes the goal.
........
Bhagavan: Brahman is not to be seen or known. It is beyond the triputis (triads) of seer, seen and seeing or knower, knowledge and knowing. The Reality remains ever as it is; that there is ajnana or the world is due to our moham or illusion. Neither knowledge nor ignorance is real; what is beyond this, as all other pairs of opposites, is the Reality. It is neither light nor darkness but beyond both, though we sometimes have to speak of it as light and of ignorance as its shadow.
.....
G.V.S.: It is said that the Self cannot be realized by reading books but only by anubhava (personal experience).
Bhagavan: What is anubhava? It is only going beyond the pairs of opposites or the triputis.
...
256
G.V.S.: What justification have we for imagining that the source of all this must be unchanging?
Bhagavan: It is not mere thinking or imagining that the ‘I’ is unchanging.
It is a fact of which everyone is aware.
The ‘I’ exists in sleep when all the changing things do not exist. It exists in dream and in waking. The ‘I’ remains changeless in all these states while other things come and go.
.......257
16-6-46
G.V.S.: Is it stated in any book that for ultimate and final Self-realization one must ultimately come to the Heart even after reaching sahasrara, and that the Heart is at the right side?
Bhagavan: No. I have not come across this in any book. But in a Malayalam book on medicine I came across a stanza locating the heart on the right side and I have translated it into Tamil in the Supplement to the Forty Verses. We know nothing about the other centres. We cannot be sure what we arrive at in concentrating on them and realizing them.
But as the ‘I’ arises from the Heart it must sink back and merge 'there' for Self-realization.
....
He gave its meaning in English as: “I ask nothing of Thee, Lord; but if Thou art disposed to grant me any favour, then take away this ego-sense, kill all my thoughts, destroy the world and let my mind be dissolved in the ocean of Self.”
Bhagavan said, laughing, “You are not asking me to give but to take.” And then he added, “There is nothing to give. If all this goes, that is the ego and the world created by it, the Reality remains. That is all. Nothing new is brought in. If the false goes the true remains.”
......
257 Tennyson:
Later in the day G.V.S. said, “It is said that by repeating his own name a number of times Tennyson used to get into a state in which the world completely disappeared and he realised that it was all illusion.” And a discussion ensued as to where the quotation came from and whether we could find it.
cont after 2 paras 258:
In continuation of yesterday’s conversation about Tennyson, the relevant passage was found in a footnote to the English translation of Upadesa Saram. It was not in a poem but in a letter to B.P. Blood.
Bhagavan asked me to read it out, so I did:
“. . . .a kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself, silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being:
and this not a confused state but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life.”
Bhagavan said, “That state is called abidance in the Self. It is described in a number of songs.”
He quoted Thayamanuvar....state of Sahaja Nishtha.
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259
G.V.S. translated the Pancharatna (the last of the Five Hymns) of Bhagavan in English verse and showed it to Bhagavan. Bhagavan said, “The third stanza deals with the sat aspect, the fourth with the chit and the fifth with the ananda. The jnani becomes one with the sat or Reality, like the river merging in the ocean; the yogi sees the light of chit; the bhakta or karma-yogin is immersed in the ocean of ananda.”
.........
G. Mehta: Is there a rebirth?
Bhagavan: If there is birth there must be not only one rebirth but a whole succession of births. Why and how did you get this birth? For the same reason and in the same manner you must have succeeding births. But if you ask who has the birth and whether birth and death are for you or for somebody distinct from you, then you realize the truth and the truth burns up all karma and frees you from all births.
The books graphically describe
how all sanchita karma, which would take countless lives to exhaust, is burnt up by one little spark of jnana,
just as a mountain of gunpowder will be blown up by a single spark of fire.
It is the ego that is the cause of all the world and of the countless sciences whose researches are so great as to baffle description, and if the ego is dissolved by enquiry all this immediately crumbles and the Reality or Self alone remains.
.....
267
Bhagavan replied rather sarcastically:
“So God can’t get on without their services? On the contrary, God asks: ‘Who are you to do service to Me?’
He is always saying: ‘I am within you; who are you?’
One must try to realize that and not speak of service. Submission or surrender is the basic teaching of Vaishnavism, but it does not consist in paying a Guru a fee for initiation and telling him that you have surrendered. As often as one tries to surrender, the ego raises its head and one has to try to suppress it.
Surrender is not an easy thing. Killing the ego is not an easy thing.
It is only when God Himself by His Grace draws the mind inwards that complete surrender can be achieved.
But such Grace comes only to those who have already, in this or previous lives, gone through all the struggles and sadhanas preparatory to the extinction of the mind and killing of the ego.”
Bhagavan added, “In the old days these Vaishnavites used to come and advise me to undergo a samasanam but I used to keep silent.”
.......
Bhagavan continued to speak of the Dvaitism of the Vaishnavites and quoted the Nammalvar song beginning ‘Vôú] Fu{ @±V¡XôúR’ the gist of which is: “not knowing myself, I went about saying ‘I’ and ‘mine’.
Then I discovered that ‘I’ was ‘You’ and ‘mine’ was ‘Yours’, oh God.”
He 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 for ever doing service in Vaikunta, but how many of them are to do service and where would there be room for all these Vaishnavites?”
.......
268
Bhagavan then gave further quotations from the eighth decad of Tiruvoimozhi to show that some of 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 Thiruvachagam stanza that says the ego got attenuated more and more and was extinguished in the Self.
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269
Bhagavan:
No learning or knowledge of scriptures is necessary to know the Self,
as no man requires a mirror to see himself.
All knowledge is required only to be given up eventually as not-Self.
Nor is household work or cares with children necessarily an obstacle.
If you can do nothing more, at least continue saying ‘I, I’ to yourself mentally all the time, as advised in Who am I?,
whatever work you may be doing and whether you are sitting, standing or walking.
‘I’ is the name of God. It is the first and greatest of all mantras.
Even OM is second to it.
...............
Khanna: The jiva is said to be mind plus illumination. What is it that desires Self-realization and what is it that obstructs our path to Self-realization? It is said that the mind obstructs and the illumination helps.
Bhagavan: Although we describe the jiva as mind plus the reflected light of the Self, in actual practice, in life, you cannot separate the two, just as, in the illustrations we used yesterday, you can’t separate cloth and whiteness in a white cloth or fire and iron in a red-hot rod. The mind can do nothing by itself. It emerges only with the illumination and can do no action, good or bad, except with the illumination. But while the illumination is always there, enabling the mind to act well or ill, the pleasure or pain resulting from such action is not felt by the illumination, just as when you hammer a red-hot rod it is not the fire but the iron that gets the hammering.
.....
Khanna: Are our prayers granted?
Bhagavan: Yes, they are granted. No thought will go in vain. Every thought will produce its effect some time or other. Thought-force will never go in vain.
........................271...........................end...........................................
270
Khanna: Is there destiny? And if what is destined to happen will happen is there any use in prayer or effort or should we just remain idle?
Bhagavan: There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it.
One is to enquire for whom is this destiny and discover that
only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self,
and that the ego is non-existent.
The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realizing one’s helplessness and saying all the time:
‘Not I but Thou, oh Lord!’, and giving up all sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you.
Surrender can never be regarded as complete so long as the devotee wants this or that from the Lord.
True surrender is love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not even for the sake of salvation.
In other words, complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or through bhakti-marga.
.......................................end........................................
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