339
https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Ramana-Maharshi-Day-by-Day-with-Bhagavan.pdf
“You gave me refuge, saying, ‘Child, when the bell of
extroversion rings, the assembly will gather. In the audience hall, be ever raising the incense of vichara or enquiry. Mind,
the minister, is a drunkard. Confusing himself with the
intoxication of thought, he will keep confusing the assembly
as well.
This incense of vichara will clear the intoxication of
thought. The assembly will function in order. As this incense
of vichara increases more and more, those assembled will
take leave.
When the bell of ‘abidance’ rings, mind will finally
disappear.
All that incense of vichara transformed into light,
you will abide as yourself, alone and blessed.
“‘Therefore, you should not give up even for a moment
this ‘Self-Enquiry’ of ‘Who am I?’
With the progressive
increase of vichara, jagrat and swapna will merge in sahaja
nirvikalpa samadhi.
All sleep will become kevala nirvikalpa
samadhi.
The vichara will merge in swarupa.’
...
Prayer
“Ramana, my mother and father, you gave me the sword
of jnana, termed vichara. Grant to this humble self, that has
sought refuge at your feet, the necessary desirelessness to lay
low and destroy the demon of ‘thought’ as and when it arises,
with determination, and without any pity or compassion.
“Lord, I surrender myself.
Kannan.”
.
345
shraadha rites for dead etc.
Answer: Such rites only help the deceased to a small extent.
It is on the same principle that prayaschittam and good deeds
are said to mitigate the evil consequences of one’s bad actions.
After the visitor went away I asked Bhagavan, “Till
three years ago, I was under the impression that doing annual
ceremonies to the dead would confer benefit on them so long
as they are not reborn.”
Bhagavan intervened with the remark,
“They will receive benefit though they are reborn several
times and there is an agency to look after all this. Of course,
Jnana marga does not say all this.”
After a while I said,
“Bhagavan used to say that if one believes in the existence
of this world, one should also believe in the existence of
other worlds.”
Bhagavan said that it was so.
I asked, “The
jnani transcends all stages and he is not bound by any karma
(vidhi or nisheda). The ajnani should do his own dharma
prescribed by sastras till he gets jnana. But while he is
attempting to reach jnana, will he be held responsible for
the consequences of not doing the ordinary karma or will he
be presumed to have done all this karma, just as a person
reading in a higher class is presumed to have finished the
lower classes?”
Bhagavan said, “It depends on the superiority
of the path one pursues.
Unless a person has finished (in
this or previous births) the other paths, he will not pursue
the jnana path;
and he need not bother himself that he has
not done the various karmas prescribed by sastras.
But he
should not wilfully transgress the sastraic injunctions by
doing things prohibited by them.”
.....
About 10-30 a.m. today a visitor asked Bhagavan, “The
realised man has no further karma. He is not bound by his karma.
Why should he still remain with his body?”
Bhagavan replied,
“Who asks this question? Is it the realised man or the ajnani?
Why should you bother what the jnani does or why he does
anything? You look after yourself.”
A little later he added, “You
are under the impression you are the body. So you think the
jnani also has a body. Does the jnani say he has a body? He
may look to you as having a body and doing things with the
body, as others do. The burnt rope still looks like a rope, but it
can’t serve as a rope if you try to bind anything with it.
So long
as one identifies oneself with the body, all this is difficult to
understand.
That is why it is sometimes said in reply to such
questions,
‘The body of the jnani will continue till the force of
prarabdha works itself out, and after the prarabdha is exhausted
it will drop off. An illustration made use of in this connection is
that of an arrow already discharged which will continue to
advance and strike its target. But the truth is the jnani has
transcended all karmas, including the prarabdha karma, and
he is not bound by the body or its karmas.”
The visitor also asked, “When a man realises the Self,
what will he see?”
Bhagavan replied, “There is no seeing. Seeing
is only Being. The state of Self-realisation, as we call it, is not
attaining something new or reaching some goal which is far
away, but simply being that which you always are and which
you always have been.
All that is needed is that you give up
your realisation of the not-true as true.
All of us are realising,
i.e., regarding as real, that which is not real. We have only to
give up this practice on our part. Then we shall realise the Self
as the Self, or in other words, ‘Be the Self’.
At one stage one
would laugh at oneself that one tried to discover the Self which
is so self-evident. So, what can we say to this question?
“That stage transcends the seer and the seen. There is no
seer there to see anything. The seer who is seeing all this now
ceases to exist and the Self alone remains.”
...
24-11-46
Mrs. Chenoy (from Bombay) asked Bhagavan this evening
(after reading Who am I?) whether it was the proper thing to do
if she asked herself “Who am I?” and told herself she was not
this body but a spirit, a spark from the divine flame.
Bhagavan
first said, “Yes, you might do that or whatever appeals to you.
It will come right in the end.”
But, after a little while, he told
her:
“There is a stage in the beginning, when you identify
yourself with the body, when you are still having the body consciousness. At that stage, you have the feeling you are
different from the reality or God, and then it is, you think of
yourself as a devotee of God or as a servant or lover of God.
This is the first stage.
The second stage is when you think of
yourself as a spark of the divine fire or a ray from the divine
Sun. Even then there is still that sense of difference and the
body-consciousness.
The third stage will come when all such
difference ceases to exist, and you realise that the Self alone
exists.
There is an ‘I’ which comes and goes, and another ‘I’
which always exists and abides. So long as the first ‘I’ exists,
the body-consciousness and the sense of diversity or bheda
buddhi will persist.
Only when that ‘I’ dies, the reality will
reveal itself. For instance, in sleep, the first ‘I’ does not exist.
You are not then conscious of a body or the world. Only when
that ‘I’ again comes up, as soon as you get out of sleep, do you
become conscious of the body and this world. But in sleep you
alone existed. For, when you wake up, you are able to say ‘I slept soundly.’ You, that wake up and say so, are the same that
existed during sleep. You don’t say that the ‘I’ which persisted
during sleep was a different ‘I’ from the ‘I’ present in the waking
state. That ‘I’ which persists always and does not come and go
is the reality. The other ‘I’ which disappears in sleep is not real.
One should try and realise in the waking state that state which
unconsciously everyone attains in sleep, the state where the
small ‘I’ disappears and the real ‘I’ alone is.”
At this stage, Mrs.
C. Asked, “But how is it to be done?”
Bhagavan replied,
“By
enquiring from whence and how does this small ‘I’ arise.
The
root of all bheda buddhi is this ‘I’.
It is at the root of all thoughts.
If you enquire where from it arises, it disappears.”
Mrs. C. then asked, “Am I not then to say (in answer to my
own question ‘Who am I?’) ‘I am not this body but a spirit etc.’?”
Bhagavan then said, “No.
The enquiry ‘Who am I?’ means really
the enquiry within oneself as to where from within the body the
‘I’-thought arises.
If you concentrate your attention on such an
enquiry, the ‘I’-thought being the root of all other thoughts, all
thoughts will be destroyed and then the Self or the Big ‘I’ alone
will remain as ever. You do not get anything new, or reach
somewhere where you were not before. When all other thoughts
which were hiding the Self are removed, the Self shines by itself.”
Mrs. C. then referred to the portion in the book (Who am
I ?) where it is said, “Even if you keep on saying ‘I’, ‘I’, it will
take you to the Self or reality” and asked whether that was not
the proper thing to be done.
I explained, “The book says one
must try and follow the enquiry method which consists in
turning one’s thoughts inwards and trying to find out where from
the ‘I’, which is the root of all thoughts, arises. If one finds one
is not able to do it, one may simply go on repeating ‘I’, ‘I’, as if
it were a mantram like ‘Krishna’ or ‘Rama’ which people use
in their japa. The idea is to concentrate on one thought to exclude
all other thoughts and then eventually even the one thought
will die.”
On this, Mrs. C. asked me, “Will it be of any use if one simply repeats ‘I’, ‘I’ mechanically?”
I replied, “When one
uses ‘I’ or other words like ‘Krishna’, one surely has in one’s
own mind some idea of the God one calls by the name ‘I’ or
anything else. When a man goes on repeating ‘Rama’ or
‘Krishna’, he can’t be thinking of a tree as the meaning behind
it.”
After all this, Bhagavan said,
“Now you consider you are
making an effort and uttering ‘I’, ‘I’ or other mantrams and
making meditation. But when you reach the final stage,
meditation will go on without any effort on your part. You can’t
get away from it or stop it, for meditation, japa, or whatever
else you call it, is your real nature.”
......
28-11-46
This evening just before parayana, a Telugu gentleman
wrote a few questions and presented them to Bhagavan.
Bhagavan replied to him. The questions in effect were: “They
say that jivanmuktas are always having brahmakara vritti.
Would they be having it during sleep? If they have it, then
who is it that sleeps in their case?”
Answer: “Of course, the jivanmuktas are having
brahmakara vritti always, even during sleep.
The real answer
to the last question and the whole set of questions is that the
jnani has neither the waking, dreaming, or sleeping avasthas,
but only the turiya state.
It is the jnani that sleeps. But he
sleeps without sleeping or is awake while sleeping.”
.....
This night, a gentleman quoting a few stanzas from Tamil
works like Thiruppugazh, and those of Thayumanavar and
Manikkavachakar, wanted to know, whether, as he had been told
by a certain teacher of his in interpreting these passages, the proper
way to attain salvation was to see to it that the body did not die,
drop off from the ‘D«o’ (life) and get destroyed, but that it
gradually became less and less and finally vanished merging into
the Supreme. The gentleman prefaced his remarks with the
submission that he was without eye, i.e., understanding
“SV]eL[t\úRôo Eo GßúTôXúY” (i.e., like a bull roaming
about without eyes) and that he prayed for enlightenment.
Bhagavan asked him, “Have you not got eyes?”
He
replied, “I want the eye which would enable me to see what is
the body and what is the soul.”
Bhagavan: You say this. You have a body and you say
‘my body’, etc. How do you see all this?
Visitor: With the fleshy eye (oonakkan). I lead the life of
egoism.
Bhagavan: Exactly. So, to see where from this ahamkara
rises and to go back to its source is the only way.
You wanted the way. This is the only way, to go back by the same way by which
you came.
You said ùT¬úVôo úTô]Y¯ (the way which the
great ones of old trod). They all used only this way. Because you
asked ‘Which way?’, I replied ‘The way by which you came’.
The visitor still pointed out that his teacher, basing
himself on various texts from the above authors, had taught
him that the proper yoga is to see that the body does not die.
Bhagavan: People put various interpretations on the same
texts, according to their pet theories. You quote for instance from
Manikkavachakar and say he used the way advocated by your
teacher, the way in which the soul D«o is to be made to leave
the body by the tenth gate (and not by the nine gates).
Can you
point out a single line in that saint’s works where the phrase
(tenth gate) occurs? You said the great ones used this yoga. What
is the viyoga (separation) from? Who got that viyoga, and who
wants to achieve yoga (union) again? That must first be know
The visitor also asked in the course of his long talk:
“How else is the jiva (individual soul) to join sivam (God),
how is the jivatman to become one with the Paramatman?”
Bhagavan said, “We do not know anything about Siva or the
Paramatman. We know the jiva. Or, rather, we know we exist.
‘I am’ is the only thing that always abides, even when the
body does not exist for us, as for instance, when we are
asleep. Let us take hold of this, and see where from the ‘I’
sense or ahamkara, as you put it, arises.”
The visitor asked Bhagavan, “I am asked to go the way by
which I came. Then what will happen?”
Bhagavan replied, “If
you go, you go away. That is all. There is nothing more. You
won’t come back. Because you asked ‘which way?’, I said ‘The
way you came’. But who are you?
Where are you now and where
do you want to go, that one may show the way?
All these questions
will have to be first answered. So the most important thing is to
find out who you are. Then all else will be solved.
.....
31-12-46
A visitor asked Bhagavan, “What is the right conception
of life?”
Bhagavan: If you know who wants to have this cleared,
i.e. who puts this question, then all will be solved. What is
meant by life, by right conception, and who are you?
Visitor: I am a man. I want to know what is the right
conception of life so that I may live accordingly.
Bhagavan: Life of man is what is. That which is, is. All
the trouble arises by having a conception of it. Mind comes
in. It has a conception. All trouble follows. If you are as you
are, without a mind and its conceptions about various things,
all will be well with you. If you seek the source of the mind,
then alone all questions will be solved.
Another visitor asked Bhagavan, “Will not right conduct
be enough to secure salvation?”
Bhagavan: Salvation for whom? Who wants salvation?
And what is right conduct? What is conduct? And what is right?
Who is to judge what is right and what is wrong? According
to previous samskaras, each one regards something or other
as right. It is only when the reality is known, what is right can
be known. The best course is to find out who wants this
salvation, and in tracing this ‘who’ or ego to its original source
consists all right conduct.
This answer did not satisfy the visitor, and he kept on asking
whether doing nitya karmas and sat karmas will not lead to
salvation, as mentioned in books.
Thereupon Bhagavan said,
“It
is said so in books. Who denies that good conduct is good or that
it will eventually lead you to the goal? Good conduct or sat karma
purifies the chitta or mind and gives you chitta suddhi.
The pure
mind attains jnana, which is what is meant by salvation.
So,
eventually jnana must be reached, i.e. the ego must be traced to
its source.
Sam: Dnyana must be reached = Ego must be traced to it's source.
But to those to whom this does not appeal,
we have to
say sat karmas lead to chitta suddhi, and chitta suddhi will lead
to right knowledge or jnana, and that in its turn gives salvation.”
..............356,..................
I was going through a book on Ma Ananda Mayi, recently
received by the Asramam. On pages 127-129 of the book the
question is put as to whether she is to be deemed to be in the
super-conscious state, knowing all, when she speaks in the
ordinary way of the world, asking her disciples when they came,
whether they have had their food, or how their family was, etc.
She replied that in that super-conscious state there could be no
conversation and no duality in fact; and that when she converses,
she does so like other persons, and not with all knowledge. But
she added, “There is another state when whatever I tell any
particular person will be true.” I asked Bhagavan what was this
state and what was its name.
Bhagavan said, “I don’t know
what they mean by it. Some are able to see what is hidden by
time or space. But that is among the siddhis so called, and
nothing to do with jnana or Liberation of the Perfected Being.”
...........359....................dd ends ...........................................................
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