March Talks 2

 https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Talks-with-Sri-Ramana-Maharshi--complete.pdf

40

repeated imp

You give up this and that of ‘my’ possessions. If you give up ‘I’ and ‘Mine’ instead, all are given up at a stroke. The very seed of possession is lost. Thus the evil is nipped in the bud or crushed in the germ itself. Dispassion (vairagya) must be very strong to do this. Eagerness to do it must be equal to that of a man kept under water trying to rise up to the surface for his life

D.: Cannot this trouble and difficulty be lessened with the aid of a Master or an Ishta Devata (God chosen for worship)? Cannot they give the power to see our Self as it is - to change us into themselves - to take us into Self-Realisation? 

M.: Ishta Devata and Guru are aids - very powerful aids on this path. But an aid to be effective requires your effort also. 

Your effort is a sine qua non.

 It is you who should see the sun. 

Can spectacles and the sun see for you? 

You yourself have to see your true nature. 

Not much aid is required for doing it!

........

“Has the discrimination between Reality and Unreality (Sat asat vicharana) the efficacy in itself to lead us to the realisation of the one Imperishable?” 

M.: As propounded by all and realised by all true seekers, fixity in the Supreme Spirit (Brahma nishta) alone can make us know and realise it. It being of us and in us, any amount of discrimination (vivechana) can lead us only one step forward, by making us renouncers, by goading us to discard the seeming (abhasa) as transitory and to hold fast to the eternal truth and presence alone. The conversation turned upon the question as to whether Iswara Prasad (Divine Grace) is necessary for the attaining of samrajya (universal dominion) or whether a jiva’s honest and strenuous efforts to attain it cannot of themselves lead him to That from whence is no return to life and death. 

The Maharshi with an ineffable smile which lit up His Holy Face and which was all-pervasive, shining upon the coterie around him, replied in tones of certainty and with the ring of truth;

 “Divine Grace is essential for Realisation. It leads one to God-realisation. But such Grace is vouchsafed only to him who is a true devotee or a yogin, who has striven hard and ceaselessly on the path towards freedom.”

D.: There are six centres mentioned in the Yoga books; but the jiva is said to reside in the Heart. Is it not so? 

M.: Yes. The jiva is said to remain in the Heart in deep sleep; and in the brain in the waking state. 

The Heart need not be taken to be the muscular cavity with four chambers which propels blood. There are indeed passages which support the view. There are others who take it to mean a set of ganglia or nerve centres about that region. Whichever view is correct does not matter to us. We are not concerned with anything less than ourselves. That we have certainly within us. There could be no doubts or discussions about that. The Heart is used in the Vedas and the scriptures to denote the place whence the notion ‘I’ springs. Does it spring only from the fleshy ball? It springs within us somewhere right in the middle of our being. 

The ‘I’ has no location. Everything is the Self. 

There is nothing but that. 

So the Heart must be said to be the entire body of ourselves and of the entire universe, conceived as ‘I’.

 But to help the practiser (abhyasi) we have to indicate a definite part of the Universe, or of the Body. So this Heart is pointed out as the seat of the Self.

  But in truth we are everywhere, we are all that is, and there is nothing else.

D.: It is said that Divine Grace is necessary to attain successful undistracted mind (samadhi). Is that so? 

M.: We are God (Iswara). Iswara Drishti (i.e., seeing ourselves as God) is itself Divine Grace. So we need Divine Grace to get God’s Grace. 

Maharshi smiles and all devotees laugh together.

D.: Is not the Master’s Grace the result of God’s Grace?

M.: Why distinguish between the two? The Master is the same as God and not different from him.

D.: How are we to conceive of Supreme Consciousness (Chaitanya Brahman)? 

M.: As that which is. 

D.: Should it be thought of as Self-Effulgent? 

M.: It transcends light and darkness. An individual (jiva) sees both. The Self enlightens the individual to see light and darkness. 

D.: Should it be realised as “I am not the body, nor the agent, nor the enjoyer, etc.”?

 M.: Why these thoughts? Do we now think that we are men, etc.? By not thinking so, do we cease to be men? 

D.: Should one realise it then by the scriptural text such as “There are no differences here”.

M.: Why even that? 

D.: If we think “I am the real,” will it do? 

M.: All 'thoughts' are inconsistent with realisation. 

The correct state is to exclude thoughts of ourselves and all other thoughts. 

Thought is one thing and realisation is quite another.

52

Yogi Ramiah:

Talk 34. 

Sitting in Maharshi’s presence brings peace of mind. I used to sit in samadhi for three or four hours together. Then I felt my mind took a form and came out from within. By constant practice and meditation it entered the Heart and was merged into it. I conclude that the Heart is the resting place of mind. The result is peace. 

When the mind is absorbed in the Heart, the Self is realised. This could be felt even at the stage of concentration (dharana).

I asked Maharshi about contemplation. He taught me as follows:- 

When a man dies the funeral pyre is prepared and the body is laid flat on the pyre. The pyre is lit. The skin is burnt, then the flesh and then the bones until the whole body falls to ashes. What remains thereafter? The mind. The question arises, ‘How many are there in this body - one or two?’ If two, why do people say ‘I’ and not ‘we’? There is therefore only one. Whence is it born? What is its nature (swaroopa)? Enquiring thus the mind also disappears. Then what remains over is seen to be ‘I’. The next question is ‘Who am I?’ The Self alone. This is contemplation. It is how I did it. By this process attachment to the body (dehavasana) is destroyed. The ego vanishes. Self alone shines.

 One method of getting mind-dissolution (manolaya) is association with great ones - the yoga adepts (Yoga arudhas). They are perfect adepts in samadhi. Self-Realisation has been easy, natural, and perpetual to them. Those moving with them closely and in sympathetic contact gradually absorb the samadhi habit from them.

D.: Is intellectual knowledge enough? 

M.: Unless intellectually known, how to practice it? 

Learn it intellectually first, then do not stop with that. Practise it. 

Maharshi then made certain remarks: 

“When you adhere to one philosophical system (siddhanta) you are obliged to condemn the others. That is the case with the heads of monasteries (matadhipatis)”. 

All people cannot be expected to do the same kind of action. Each one acts according to his temperament and past lives. Wisdom, Devotion, Action (jnana, bhakti, karma) are all interlocked. Meditation on forms is according to one’s own mind. It is meant for ridding oneself of other forms and confining oneself to one form. It leads to the goal. It is impossible to fix the mind in the Heart to start with. 

So these aids are necessary. Krishna says that there is no birth (janma) to you, me, etc., and later says he was born before Aditya, etc. Arjuna disputes it. Therefore it is certain that each one thinks of God according to his own degree of advancement. You say you are the body in wakeful state; not the body in sleep. Bodies being several-fold for an individual, should not there be infinite capacities for God? Whichever method one follows, that method is encouraged by the Sages. For it leads to the goal like any other method.

D.: What effort is necessary for reaching the Self? 

M.: ‘I’ should be destroyed. Self is not to be reached. Is there any moment when Self is not? It is not new. Be as you are. What is new cannot be permanent. What is real must always exist.

D.: The Gita says that if a man fixes his attention between the eyebrows and holds his breath he reaches the Supreme state. How is that done?

M.: You are always in the Self and there is no reaching it. The eyebrow is only a place where attention is to be fixed (seat of meditation - upasanasthana).

D.: You have spoken of the Heart as the seat of meditation? 

M.: Yes, it is also that. 

D.: What is Heart? 

M.: It is the centre of the Self. The Self is the centre of centres. The Heart represents the psychic centre and not the physical centre. 

D.: The term ‘jnana’ is realised Wisdom. The same term is used for the method also. Why? 

M.: ‘Jnana’ includes the method also because it ultimately results in realisation.

58

D.: I meditate neti-neti (not this - not this). 

M.: No - that is not meditation. Find the source. You must reach the source without fail. The false ‘I’ will disappear and the real ‘I’ will be realised. The former cannot exist apart from the latter.

60

D.: We surrender; but still there is no help. 

M.: Yes. If you have surrendered, you must be able to abide by the will of God and not make a grievance of what may not please you. Things may turn out differently from what they look apparently. Distress often leads men to faith in God.

D.: But we are worldly. There is the wife, there are the children, friends and relatives. We cannot ignore their existence and resign ourselves to Divine Will, without retaining some little of the personality in us. 

M.: That means you have not surrendered as professed by you. You must only trust God.

.......

M.: Yes. There is only one consciousness, which subsists in the waking, dream and sleep states. In sleep there is no ‘I’. The ‘I-thought’ arises on waking and then the world appears. Where was this ‘I’ in sleep? Was it there or was it not? It must have been there also, but not in the way that you feel now. The present is only the ‘I-thought’, whereas the sleeping ‘I’ is the real ‘I’. It subsists all through. It is consciousness. If it is known you will see that it is beyond thoughts.

.....

How to know the ‘Real I’ as distinct from the ‘false I’. 

M.: Is there anyone who is not aware of himself? Each one knows, but yet does not know, the Self. A strange paradox. 

The Master added later, “If the enquiry is made whether mind exists, it will be found that mind does not exist. That is control of mind. Otherwise, if the mind is taken to exist and one seeks to control it, it amounts to mind controlling the mind, just like a thief turning out to be a policeman to catch the thief, i.e., himself. Mind persists in that way alone, but eludes itself.”

................................61.........end.........................................