https://archive.org/details/livingbythewordsofbhagavandairyextractsdavidgodman_202004_351_I/page/n103/mode/1up?view=theater
105
AS: You need not hold on to the person who is searching.
If you see that the one who is searching is the same as the one whose mind is wandering;
if you see that both are false,
you are already awakened.
When you light a lamp, darkness ceases to exist.
When you become aware of yourself as Self, the darkness of ‘other than Self disappears.
.....
AS: Self-enquiry must be done repeatedly and steadily.
The wandering mind slowly loses its energy when it is subjected to constant scrutiny.
The mind derives all its energy from the attention you give to thoughts and emotions.
If you refuse to give them any attention and instead challenge each thought as soon as it appears, sooner or later your attention will stop going out to all your stray thoughts.
When the attractiveness of transient thoughts diminishes to the point where you no longer feel obliged to hold on to them whenever they appear,
you will be able to rest quietly in the experience of your real nature without being distracted.
.......
Q: We are accustomed to seeing a world of many separate objects. How can we change our vision so that we see only the Self everywhere?
AS: If you repeatedly shift your attention to the all-pervasive consciousness within you, this habit of seeing the many will gradually disappear.
You see multiplicity only because you give attention to that habit.
Instead, right now, withdraw your energy from that habit and go the other way towards your real Self.
By steadily abiding in the Self you accumulate the energy to resist the illusion of multiplicity.
As you continue to immerse yourself in pure consciousness, the habit of seeing the one as many will decrease until it slowly disappears.
.......
Manikkavachagar sang, ‘You are one and nobody is apart from you\
The jnani does not see other people. He only sees the Self.
The spiritual power that is present in and near such people helps other people to lose their imperfect vision. That is why satsang is so important and so useful.
Bhagavan once said, ‘The jnanis are the only pure people. Others are polluted by their egos. Getting the association of jnanis is very important for people who want to make spiritual progress.’
......
AS: Bhagavan told me, ‘Hold onto the Self. If you can do that you need no other practice. This is the ultimate and final sadhana .’
.........
111
Finding a great Guru like Bhagavan depends on one’s karma. One cannot hope to find such a Guru unless one has done tapas in previous lives.
The path of jnana is for those who only have a little karma left.
Those who still have many karmas to undergo cannot follow the path of jnana successfully because they don’t have the capacity to be still and quiet.
Only those who have learnt how to be still can abide in the Self.
.......
114
AS: If you enquire into the origin of a thought as soon as it appears,
your attention is diverted towards the Self.
The Self is always alert. That is its nature.
......
117
Most people have many desires which they want to fulfil. But some rare people tell God: 'I want nothing. Make me desireless , that is my only desire .’ Such a one will be a fit instrument to receive grace.
There is a verse in Kaivalya Navanitam:
If you go near a tree you will get its shade; if you go near a fire you will be relieved of coldness; if you go to the river and drink, your thirst will be quenched; if you go near God you will get His grace.
If you do not go near and do not receive His grace, is it the fault of God?
The one who gets the most grace is the one who is completely desireless. Such a person will have no desire even for moksha.
....
AS: Most minds are like wet wood: they need a long period of drying out before they catch fire.
While your mind is on the Self, it is drying out.
When it is on the world it is getting wet again. The effort you expend in keeping the mind turned towards the Self is never wasted. It is only wasted when you lose interest and revert to your old mental habits.
Don’t worry if your efforts do not produce immediate results. Sooner or later you will get your reward.
......
131
AS: Whenever we are in a meditative state, all is clear. Then vasanas which have previously been hidden within the mind arise and cover this clarity. There is no easy solution to this problem.
You have to keep up the enquiry, ‘To whom is this happening?’ all the time.
If you are having trouble, remind yourself, ‘This is just happening on the surface of my mind. I am not this mind or the wandering thoughts.’
Then go back to the enquiry ‘Who am I?’
By doing this you penetrate deeper and deeper and become detached from the mind.
This will only come about after you have made an intense effort.
If you already have a little clarity and peace, when you make the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ the mind sinks into the Self and dissolves, leaving only the subjective awareness I-I.
Bhagavan explained all this to me in great detail when 1 was going for his darshan between 1938 and 1942.
,..........
139
AS: If you can focus your mind on this ‘I am’ you need not do anything else.
You do not have to cultivate a particular attitude towards it.
If you keep your attention on it, it will eventually reveal all its secrets to you.
.....
If you focus your mind on this ‘I am’, this immanent consciousness, and if you can establish yourself there for some time, you will begin to experience some peace.
When the thought processes are not present, even for a moment, one gets a lot of spiritual energy.
When that energy and that feeling of peace come, one gets more encouragement, more enthusiasm.
When you have had a little experience of the peace and bliss of the Self you always feel a determination to go back for more.
Once you get this enthusiasm and this determination, the feeling of struggling unsuccessfully gradually diminishes.
..
The next day the woodcutter went deep into the jungle and found a lot of brass vessels which someone had abandoned there.
He thought to himself, ‘The further I go into this forest the more riches I seem to find. I will leave this brass and go a little further.
In the middle of the forest he found some gold and became a wealthy man.
I am telling you this story to show that when we desire to get away from all the troubles that identifying with the body causes us, we can go inwards, towards the Self. Instead of toiling and suffering in the mind, which is the outer edge of consciousness, we should move towards the Self, the centre of our being.
As we start to move inwards we experience the peace and bliss of the Self in a very diluted form. The deeper we go, the stronger the experience becomes.
Eventually a time will come when we don’t want to leave this experience at all.
Instead, there is a continuous urge to go deeper and deeper into the Self.
When you lose all desires and attachments, the pure gold of the Self will reveal itself to you.
In that final state you don’t experience peace and bliss. You are that peace and bliss. In that state you are the equal of Siva.
You are saying that you have to make a great effort to experience even a little peace. Don’t worry about this.
Your effort will pay off sooner or later.
If you persevere the peace and bliss will come unasked.
If you give up your attachment to all thoughts except for the thought of the Self, you will find yourself being pulled automatically into the peace of the Self.
If you practise intensively and correctly you will find that the experience of this peace is addictive. When this happens you will lose interest in everything except the Self.
....
While the dream is in progress the lion is very real for us, but when we wake up there is no lion and no dream.
In the state of jnana we become aware that there was no Guru and no disciple; there is only the Self.
.........
The outer Guru appears to tell us about the reality of the Self, who is the inner Guru. With our defective vision we cannot see or experience for ourselves that this is true. The inner Guru pulls us towards the Self and establishes us there. The inner Guru is waiting at all times to perform this function but he cannot begin until we turn our attention towards him.
,........
....but there is really only one Guru and that Guru is the Self.
When we reach spiritual maturity, the Self manifests to us in the form of a Guru in order to help us to make further progress with our sadhana.
....
When a calf is very young its mother gives it milk whenever it is hungry. But after it has learned to eat grass the mother gives it a kick whenever it tries to drink milk again. After I had learned to make contact with the formless Self, Bhagavan gave me a kick when I still tried to carry on drinking the grace from his physical form. He wanted to wean me from his form.
He wanted me to get all my spiritual nourishment from the formless Self.
.......
Each of us will meet a different form of the Guru.
The form we meet depends on our maturity and our spiritual ripeness.
Each Guru gives out different teachings, and often one Guru will give different teachings to different disciples.
It is a question of maturity and temperament.
The disciples in the kindergarden class will get kindergarden lessons while the disciples in the college class will get college-level teachings. And within each class there will be different lessons for each disciple. Some may be told to follow a bhakti path while others may be told to do meditation on the Self.
The many different paths that are taught are really only preparations for Bhagavan’s path.
Ultimately, one must learn to abide in the Self
by meditation on the Self
or by self-enquiry
or by complete surrender.
Unfortunately, there are very few people who are spiritually mature enough to follow Bhagavan’s highest teachings.
Most people have to follow other paths until they are ready for the final path.
Your original question was, ‘Is the Guru-disciple relationship real?’ From the standpoint of the Self one would have to say that it is all maya , but one could add that it is the best kind of maya. One can use a thorn to remove another thorn. Similarly, one can use the maya-like Guru-disciple relationship to root out maya in all its manifestations. Maya is so firmly established in us that only the illusory Guru-lion in our dream can give us a big enough shock to, wake us.
No comments:
Post a Comment