dd7 - What is sahaja state is known as upasana during practice

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https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Ramana-Maharshi-Day-by-Day-with-Bhagavan.pdf

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........I added, “But she puts the question on the assumption that the cow is the old woman reborn, whether Bhagavan has said so or not, and she desires an answer.” 

Thereupon Bhagavan said, “It is not true that birth as a man is necessarily the highest, and that one must attain realisation only from being a man. Even an animal can attain Self-realisation.”

.....

In the conversation that followed on this, 

Bhagavan said, “Even as a calf only some days old, Lakshmi behaved in an extraordinary way. She would daily come to me and place her head at my feet. On the day the foundation was laid for the goshala (cow-shed), she was so jubilant and came and took me for the function. Again on the day of grahapravesam she came straight to me at the time appointed and took me. In so many ways and on so many occasions, she behaved in such a sensible and extremely intelligent way that one cannot but regard it as an extraordinary cow. What are we to say about it?”

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it would mean “To cure or heal the disease of countless births, the Arunachala Hill has risen as a medicine.”

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 “The books no doubt speak of sravana, manana, nididhyasana, samadhi and sakshatkara. 

We are always sakshat and what is there for one to attain karam of that? 

We call this world sakshat or pratyaksha. What is changing, what appears and disappears, what is not sakshat, we regard as sakshat. 

We are always and nothing can be more directly present pratyaksha than we, 

and about that we say we have to attain sakshatkaram after all these sadhanas. 

Nothing can be more strange than this. 

The Self is not attained by doing anything, but remaining still and being as we are.

...........

“One day, when we were at Skandasramam, I was aghast to find a scorpion climbing up over Bhagavan’s body in the front and another at the same time climbing down his back. I was terrified and wanted to do something. But Bhagavan remained calm, as if nothing happened, and the two scorpions, after crawling over his body as if over a wall, eventually left him. After they left, Bhagavan explained to us, ‘They crawl over you just as they would crawl on the floor or a wall or tree. Do they crawl over these, stinging as they go? It is only because you fear them and do something that they fear you and do something in return’.”

.......

T.S.R. then asked, “It seems Bhagavan once had a dream and saw so many siddhas assembled before him, that they looked all familiar to him and that he sat there on a dais with chinmudra.” 

Bhagavan replied, “Is that the only thing? I have seen several such visions. What am I to say?” 

He continued, “Once I came across a sunai (spring in a cave); I went towards it. As I approached, it was getting wider, and there were trees on either side. It became broader and broader. There was good light and the passage led to a big tank. In the middle of the tank was a temple.” 

I asked, 

“This was not a dream?” 

Bhagavan said, “Whether it was a dream or jagrat (waking), call it what you like.” (Somasundaram Pillai says the words Bhagavan used were L]úYô, Lôh£úVô).

 Bhagavan also recounted that after he came here, within the last six years or so, he saw huge streets, lined with imposing houses on either side leading to the Asramam; that Chadwick and others were following him in that dream, and Bhagavan asked Chadwick, “Can anyone call all this a dream?” and that Chadwick replied, “Which fool will call all this a dream?” At that stage, he woke up. When Bhagavan distinctly calls this a dream and the previous experience he leaves to others to call, dream or waking, I am led to believe that the other vision of the tank and temple was in the waking or some other stage, which was not dream.

.......

Mr. T.V. Krishnaswami Aiyer asked, “Were Bhagavan’s brother and others aware of Bhagavan’s absorption in the Self and indifference to external things?” 

Bhagavan said, “Yes. They could not but be aware. For though I tried my best to appear as if I was attending to external affairs, I could not succeed fully in the attempt. I would sit down to read like others, open a book, pretend to read it and after some time turn the page. Similarly, after some time I would take up another book. But all knew that my attitude had changed. They used to make fun of me for this abstraction of mine. I never took offence, as I was totally indifferent to their taunts. This encouraged them to go on with their mockery. If I was so minded, I could have silenced them all with one blow. But I did not care at all. After the ‘death’ experience I was living in a different world.

How could I turn my attention to books? Before that, I would at least attend to what the other boys repeated and repeat the same myself. But afterwards, I could not do even that. At school, my mind would not dwell on study at all. I would be imagining and expecting God would suddenly drop down from Heaven before me.”

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Someone asked Bhagavan whether he deliberately went in for a study of Periapuranam. Thereupon Bhagavan said, “No. No. It was a mere accident. A relation of mine, my uncle, was given the book by a swami who was living near our house and was advised to read it. Thus the book happened to be in our house and, coming across it, I looked into it first out of curiosity and then, becoming interested, read the whole book. It made a great impression on me. 

Before that, the sixty-three images of the Nayanars in the temple were mere images and no more. But afterwards, they gained new significance for me. I used to go and weep before those images and before Nataraja that God should give me the same grace He gave to those saints. But this was after the ‘death’ experience. Before that, the bhakti for the sixty-three saints lay dormant, as it were.” Mr. Somasundaram Pillai asked Bhagavan, “With what bhava did Bhagavan cry before those images? Did Bhagavan pray he should have no further birth, or what?” 

Bhagavan replied, “What bhava? I only wanted the same grace as was shown to those saints. I prayed I should have the same bhakti that they had. I knew nothing of freedom from births or bondage.”

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8-10-46 

This afternoon, a visitor asked Bhagavan, “No doubt the method taught by Bhagavan is direct. But it is so difficult. We do not know how to begin it. If we go on asking, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who am I?’ like a japa, with ‘Who am I?’ for mantra, it becomes dull. In other methods, there is something preliminary and positive with which one can begin and then go step by step. But in Bhagavan’s method, there is no such thing, and to seek the Self at once, though direct, is difficult.”

Bhagavan: You yourself concede, it is the direct method. 

It is the direct and easy method.

 When going after other things, alien to us, is so easy, how can it be difficult for one to go to one’s own Self?

 You talk of ‘Where to begin’. There is no beginning and no end. 

You are yourself the beginning and the end. 

If you are here and the Self somewhere else, and you have to reach that Self, you may be told how to start, how to travel and then how to reach. 

Suppose you who are now in Ramana Asramam ask, ‘I want to go to Ramana Asramam. How shall I start and how to reach it?’, what is one to say? A man’s search for the Self is like that. 

He is always the Self and nothing else. 

You say ‘Who am I?’ becomes a japa. It is not meant that you should go on asking ‘Who am I?’ In that case, thought will not so easily die. All japas are intended, by the use of one thought, the mantra, to exclude all other thoughts. This, japa eventually does for a man. All other thoughts, except the thought of the mantra, gradually die and then even that one thought dies. Our Self is of the nature of japa. Japa is always going on there. If we give up all thoughts, we shall find japa is always there without any effort on our part. 

In the direct method, as you call it, by saying ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ you are told to concentrate within yourself where the I-thought (the root of all other thoughts) arises. 

As the Self is not outside but inside you, you are asked to dive within, instead of going without, and what can be more easy than going to yourself?

But the fact remains that to some this method will seem difficult and will not appeal. 

.....

That is why so many different methods have been taught.

 Each of them will appeal to some as the best and easiest. That is according to their pakva or fitness. 

But to some, nothing except the vichara marga will appeal. 

They will ask, 

‘You want me to know or to see this or that. But who is the knower, the seer?’ 

Whatever other method may be chosen, there will be always a doer. That cannot be escaped.

 Who is that doer must be found out. 

Till that, the sadhana cannot be ended.

 So eventually, all must come to find out ‘Who am I?’. You complain that there is nothing preliminary or positive to start with.

 You have the ‘I’ to start with. 

You know you exist always, 

whereas the body does not exist always, e.g., in sleep. 

Sleep reveals that you exist even without a body. 

We identify the ‘I’ with a body, we regard the Self as having a body, and as having limits, and hence all our trouble. 

All that we have to do is to give up identifying our Self with the body, with forms and limits, and then we shall know ourselves as the Self that we always are.

The visitor further asked, “May I believe that there is nothing more to be known now, so far as the technique of sadhana is concerned, than that which has been written in your books from time to time? This question arises from the fact that, in all other systems of sadhana, the sadguru unfolds some secret technique of meditation to his disciple at the time of initiation or diksha, as it is called.” 

Bhagavan: There is nothing more to be known than what you find in books. No secret technique. It is all an open secret, in this system.

Visitor: If, even after God-realisation, one has to pay attention to his bodily needs such as hunger, sleep, rest, heat and cold, of what use is Self-realisation? This state is something, which cannot be called completeness.

Bhagavan: What will be the state after Self-realisation? Why should you bother about it now? Attain Self-realisation, and then see for yourself. But why go to the state of Self realisation? Even now, are you without Self? And are all these things, eating, sleeping, etc., without or apart from the Self?

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Bhagavan recollected that he had in answering Sarma quoted “abhyasakale sahajam sthitim prahurupasanam” (Ramana Gita). 

(What is sahaja state is known as upasana during practice). 

....

Bhagavan again repeated much of what he told Prof. Sarma and said, 

“What is obvious, self-evident and most immediate to us, the Self, we say we are not able to see. 

On the other hand, we say that what we see with these eyes alone is pratyaksha (direct perception). 

There must first be the seer before anything could be seen.

 You are yourself the eye that sees. 

Yet, you say you don’t know the eye that sees, but know only the things seen.

 But for the Self, the Infinite Eye (@kRªXôdLi), referred to in the stanza in Ulladu Narpadu (Reality in Forty Verses), what can be seen? You want sakshatkaram. You are now doing karam of all these things, i.e., real-ising these things, regarding as real all these things, making real what is not real. If this karam is given up out of your present sakshatkaram of the unreal, then what will remain is that which is real or sakshat.”

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17-10-46 

This morning Dr. Roy showed before Bhagavan how he writes, reads, reads his watch, etc. I have learnt he is a M.A., B.L., of Calcutta University and afterwards became a Ph.D. of an American University. In the afternoon, when I entered the hall about 3 p.m., 

Dr. Roy was asking Bhagavan, 

“In the case of persons who are not capable of long meditation, will it not be enough if they engage themselves in doing good to others?” 

Bhagavan replied, “Yes, it will do. The idea of good will be at their heart. That is enough. Good, God, Love, are all the same thing. If the person keeps continuously thinking of anyone of these, it will be enough. All meditation is for the purpose of keeping out all other thoughts.” 

After some pause, Bhagavan said, 

“When one realises the Truth and knows that there is neither the seer nor the seen, but only the Self that transcends both, that the Self alone is the screen or the substratum on which the shadow both of the ego and all that it sees, come and go, the feeling that one has not got eyesight, and that therefore one misses the sight of various things, will vanish. 

The realised being, though he has normal eyesight, does not see all these things.” (He sees only the Self and nothing but the Self). After further discussion with Dr. Roy, Bhagavan added, “There is nothing wrong in seeing anything, this body or the world. The mistake lies in thinking you are the body. There is no harm in thinking the body is in you. 

The body, world, all must be in the Self; or rather nothing can exist apart from the Self, as no pictures can be seen without the screen on which the shadows can be cast.” In answer to a question as to what is the best way to the goal, Bhagavan said, 

“There is no goal to be reached. There is nothing to be attained. You are the Self. You exist always. Nothing more can be predicated of the Self than that it exists. Seeing God or the Self is only being the Self or yourself. Seeing is being. 

You, being the Self, want to know how to attain the Self. 

It is something like a man being at Ramanasramam asking how many ways are there to reach Ramanasramam and which is the best way for him. 

All that is required of you is to give up the thought that you are this body and to give up all thoughts of the external things or the not-Self.

As often as the mind goes out towards outward objects, prevent it and fix it in the Self or ‘I’. 

That is all the effort required on your part. 

The different methods prescribed by different thinkers are all agreed on this.

 The Advaita, Dvaita, Visishtadvaita schools and other schools all agree that the mind must give up thinking of external things and must think of the Self, or God as they may call it. 

That is called meditation. 

But meditation being our nature, you will find when you realise the Self 

that what was once the means is now the goal, 

that while once you had to make an effort, now you cannot get away from the Self even if you want.”

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