dd mar 10

 243

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.”

......Bhagavan was silent for a while and then replied. “Your worry is due to thinking. Anxiety is a creation of the mind. Your real nature is peace. Peace has not got to be achieved; it is our nature. To find consolation, you may reflect: ‘God gave, God has taken away; He knows best’. But the true remedy is to enquire into your true nature. It is because you feel that your son does not exist that you feel grief. If you knew that he existed you would not feel grief. That means that the source of the grief is mental and not an actual reality. There is a story given in some books how two boys went on a pilgrimage and after some days news came back that one of them was dead. However, the wrong one was reported dead, and the result was that the mother who had lost her son went about as cheerful as ever, while the one who had still got her son was weeping and lamenting. So it is not any object or condition that causes grief but only our thought about it. Your son came from the Self and  was absorbed back into the Self. Before he was born, where was he apart from the Self? He is our Self in reality. In deep sleep the thought of ‘I’ or ‘child’ or ‘death’ does not occur to you, and you are the same person who existed in sleep. If you enquire in this way and find out your real nature, you will know your son’s real nature also. He always exists. It is only you who think he is lost. You create a son in your mind, and think that he is lost, but in the Self he always exists.”

.....

In the evening Bose asked, “Is it good to do japa and puja and so on when we know that enquiry into the Self is the real thing?” 

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.

.....

Bhagavan: Yes; so long as there is the feeling ‘I’, it must have a source from whence it came.

.....

249

Why should your occupation or duties in life interfere with your spiritual effort? For instance, there is a difference between your activities at home and in the office. In your office activities you are detached and so long as you do your duty you do not care what happens or whether it results in gain or loss to the employer. But your duties at home are performed with attachment and you are all the time anxious as to whether they will bring advantage or disadvantage to you and your family. But it is possible to perform all the activities of life with detachment and regard only the Self as real. It is wrong to suppose that if one is fixed in the Self one’s duties in life will not be properly performed. It is like an actor. He dresses and acts and even feels the part he is playing, but he knows really that he is not that character but someone else in real life. 

In the same way, why should the body-consciousness or the feeling ‘I-am-the-body’ disturb you, 

Once you know for certain that you are not the body but the Self? 

Nothing that the body does should shake you from 

Abidance in the Self. 

Such abidance will never interfere with  the proper and effective discharge of whatever duties the body has, any more than the actor’s being aware of his real status in life interferes with his acting a part on the stage. 

You ask whether you can tell yourself: “I am not the body but the Self”.

 Of course, whenever you feel tempted to identify yourself with the body (as you may often have to, owing to old vasanas) it may be a help to remind yourself that you are not the body but the Self. But you should not make such repetition a mantram, constantly saying: “I am not the body but the Self”. By proper enquiry into the Self, the notion ‘I am this body’ will gradually vanish and in time the faith that you are the Self will become unshakeable.

........

K.M. Jivrajani: In the early stages would it not be a help to man to seek solitude and give up his outer duties in life? 

Bhagavan: Renunciation is always in the mind, not in going to forests or solitary places or giving up one’s duties. 

The main thing is to see that the mind does not turn outward but inward. 

It does not really rest with a man whether he goes to this place or that or whether he gives up his duties or not. 

All that happens according to destiny. All the activities that the body is to go through are determined when it first comes into existence. 

It does not rest with you to accept or reject them. 

The only freedom you have is to turn your mind inward and renounce activities there.

...........

K.M. Jivrajani: But is it not possible for something to be a help, especially to a beginner? Like a fence round a young tree. For instance, don’t our books say that it is helpful to go on pilgrimage to sacred shrines or to get sat sang. 

Bhagavan: Who said they are not helpful? Only such things do not rest with you, as turning your mind inward does. Many people desire the pilgrimage or sat sang that you mention, but do they all get it? 

 K.M. Jivrajani: Why is it that turning inward alone is left to us and not any outer things? I answered: Nobody can answer that. That is the Divine scheme. 

Bhagavan: If you want to go to fundamentals, you must enquire who you are and find out who it is who has freedom or destiny. Who are you and why did you get this body that has these limitations? 

.......

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.

....

Dr. Haridas, a disciple of Swami Madhava Theertha and a relative of Mahatma Gandhi by marriage, asked Bhagavan, 

“If ajnana is also Brahman, why is Brahman not visible but only ajnana or the world?” 

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.

...............

In the evening Bhagavan said with reference to a question somebody had asked:

 “During sleep there is both the Self and ajnana — ajnana because we knew nothing and the Self  because we existed, and when we wake we say, ‘I slept well’, although we knew nothing. If one asks how the Self and ajnana can exist together, any more than light and darkness, the answer is that to one who realises, the Self is all light and there is no such thing as darkness at all, but to one who has not realised we say that there can be ajnana in the Self like the seeming shadows on the moon.”

.........

Another visitor said to Bhagavan: I want to have darshan of God. What should I do? 

Bhagavan: First we must know what you mean by ‘I’ and ‘God’ and by ‘darshan of God’. The visitor dropped the matter and said no more.

.....

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.

...........

265

Then, turning to Khanna, Bhagavan said, 

“Why distress your mind by thinking that jnana has not come or that the vasanas have not disappeared? Don’t give room for thoughts. 

In the last stanza of Sukavari by Thayumanavar, the Saint says much the same as is written on this paper.” 

And Bhagavan made me read the stanza and translate it into English for the benefit of those who do not know Tamil. 

It goes: “The mind mocks me and though I tell you ten thousand times ....you are indifferent. 

So how am I to attain peace and bliss?”

......

Then I said to Khanna, “You are not the only one who complains to Bhagavan like this. I have more than once  complained in the same way, and I still do, for I find no improvement in myself.” 

Khanna replied, “It is not only that I find no improvement but I think I have grown worse. The vasanas are stronger now. I can’t understand it.” 

Bhagavan again quoted the last three stanzas of Mandalathin of Thayumanavar, 

Where the mind is coaxed as the most generous and disinterested of givers, to go back to its birthplace or source and thus give the devotee peace and bliss. 

And he asked me to read out a translation of it that I once made. Khanna then asked, 

“The illumination plus mind is jivatma and the illumination alone is paramatma; is that right?” 

Bhagavan assented and then pointed to his towel and said, “We call this a white cloth, but the cloth and its whiteness cannot be separated, and it is the same with the illumination and the mind that unite to form the ego.” 

Then he added: “The following illustration that is often given in books will also help you. The lamp in the theatre is the Parabrahman or the illumination, as you put it. It illumines itself and the stage and actors. We see the stage and the actors by its light, but its light still continues when there is no more play. Another illustration is an iron rod that is compared to the mind. Fire joins it and it becomes red-hot. It glows and can burn things, like fire, but still it has a definite shape, unlike fire. If we hammer it, it is the rod that receives the blows, not the fire. The rod is the jivatma and the fire the Self or Paramatma.”

.....

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...

 ‘ 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?” 

Bhagavan said this laughing, and then, after a pause, he added, 

“On the other hand, Advaita does not mean that a man must always sit in samadhi and never engage in action. Many things are necessary to keep up the life of the body, and action can never be avoided. Nor is bhakti ruled out in Advaita. Shankara is rightly regarded as the foremost exponent of Advaita, and yet look at the number of shrines he visited (action), and the devotional songs he wrote.” 

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.

.......

In the afternoon Khanna’s wife appealed to Bhagavan in writing: 

“I am not learned in the scriptures and I find the method of Self-enquiry too hard for me. I am a woman with seven children and a lot of household cares, and it leaves me little time for meditation. I request Bhagavan to give me some simpler and easier method.” 

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: 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.

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.

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