288
4-8-46
This morning Yogi Ramiah arrived. About 9-30 a.m. Bhagavan was looking into the Tamil paper Hindusthan and read out to me the following dialogue from it. 1st man: It is only if sorrows or troubles come to us that we think of God. 2nd man: Ah, you fool. If we are always thinking of God, how can any sorrows or troubles come to us? Why Bhagavan drew my attention to this, I do not know. I wonder if it is because I generally argue with him that it should not be necessary for an all-powerful and all-loving God to make us pass through pain to turn us towards Him
294
Afternoon Yogi Ramiah gave his notebook to Bhagavan and said, pointing to Muruganar,
“People like him would write verses on occasions like the forthcoming Jubilee. But people like me can do no such thing. Instead, I want Bhagavan to write something in my notebook.”
Thereupon Bhagavan wrote on the back of the front page in the notebook, which he found blank, the Telugu version of the Tamil song which Bhagavan had composed when the late Somasundara Swami requested Bhagavan to write an ‘FÝjÕ’ in his notebook. The Sanskrit word for FÝjÕ being both a character in the alphabet and an imperishable thing, Bhagavan wrote punningly:
@dLWU úRôùWÝj RôϪl ×jRLjúRô WdLWUô UKùRÝR Yô£jRô—VdLWUôm JùWÝjùRu ßkRôö Ùs[j ùRô°oYRôm AùWÝR YpXô WûR.
Here in this book I write For you to read An akshara, But who can write The Akshara For ever shining in the heart?
.......
298
Later, on a visitor’s request, Bhagavan said,
“Concentrating one’s thoughts solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss.
Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from going outwards is called vairagya.
Fixing them in the Self is sadhana or abhyasa.
Concentrating on the Heart is the same as concentrating on the Self.
The Heart is another name for the Self.”
.....
17-8-46
This morning, a number of Gujerati visitors arrived here, evidently returning from Pondicherry, after darshan there on the 15th.
One of them asked Bhagavan, “What is meant by Self-realisation? Materialists say there is no such thing as God or Self.”
Bhagavan said, “Never mind what the materialists or others say; and don’t bother about Self or God. Do you exist or not? What is your idea of yourself? What do you mean by ‘I’?”
The visitor said he did not understand by ‘I’ his body, but something within his body.
Thereupon, Bhagavan continued, “You concede ‘I’ is not the body but something within it. See then from whence the ‘I’ arises within the body.
See whether it arises and disappears, or is always present.
You will admit there is an ‘I’ which emerges as soon as you wake up, sees the body, the world and all else, and ceases to exist when you sleep;
There is another ‘I’ which exists apart from the body, independently of it, and which alone is with you when the body and the world do not exist for you, as for instance in sleep.
Then ask yourself if you are not the same ‘I’ during sleep and during the other states. Are there two ‘I’s? You are the same one person always.
Now, which can be real, the ‘I’ which comes and goes, or the ‘I’ which always abides?
Then you will know that you are the Self. This is called Self-realisation.
Self realisation is not however a state which is foreign to you, which is far from you, and which has to be reached by you. You are always in that state.
You forget it, and identify yourself with the mind and its creation.
To cease to identify yourself with the mind is all that is required.
We have so long identified ourselves with the not-Self that we find it difficult to regard ourselves as the Self.
Giving up this identification with the not-Self is all that is meant by Self-realisation.
How to realise, i.e. make real, the Self?
We have realised, i.e. regarded as real, what is unreal, the not-Self.
To give up such false realisation is Self-realisation.”
......
In the evening, after parayana, a visitor asked Bhagavan, “How to control the wandering mind?”
He prefaced the question with the remark, “I want to ask Bhagavan a question which is troubling me.”
Bhagavan replied, after laughing, “This is nothing peculiar to you. This is the question which is always asked by everybody and which is dealt with in all the books like the Gita.
What way is there, except to draw in the mind as often as it strays or goes outward, and to fix it in the Self, as the Gita advises?
Of course, it won’t be easy to do it. It will come only with practice or sadhana.”
The visitor said, “The mind goes after only what it desires and won’t get fixed on the object we set before it.”
Bhagavan said, “Everybody will go after only what gives happiness to him. Thinking that happiness comes from some object or other, you go after it. See from whence all happiness, including the happiness you regard as coming from sense objects, really comes. You will understand all happiness comes only from the Self, and then you will always abide in the Self.
...............
312
12-9-46
Casually going through T.P.R.’s notebook I came across an entry there — Mithya=Jagat; Brahma bhavam=Satyam. As I remembered Bhagavan occasionally saying mithya means satyam, but did not quite grasp its significance, I asked Bhagavan about it.
He said, “Yes. I say that now and then. What do you mean by real or satyam? Which do you call real?”
I answered, “According to Vedanta, that which is permanent and unchanging, that alone is real. That of course is the definition of Reality.”
Then, Bhagavan said, “These names and forms which constitute the world always change and perish. Hence they are called mithya. To limit the Self and regard it as these names and form is mithya. To regard all as Self is the Reality. The Advaitin says jagat is mithya, but he also says ‘All this is Brahman’. So it is clear that what he condemns is regarding the world as such to be real, not regarding the world as Brahman. He who sees the Self, sees only the Self in the world also. To the jnani it is immaterial whether the world appears or not. Whether it appears or not, his attention is always on the Self. It is like the letters and the paper on which the letters are printed. You are wholly engrossed with the letters and have no attention left for the paper. But the jnani thinks only of the paper as the real substratum, whether the letters appear on it or not.”
.....
322
imp
This evening, D.S. Sarma, asked Bhagavan:
“In Western mysticism three definite stages are often spoken of — viz., Purgation, illumination and union. Was there any such stage as purgation — corresponding to what we call sadhana — in Bhagavan’s life?”
Bhagavan replied, “I have never done any sadhana. I did not even know what sadhana was. Only long afterwards I came to know what sadhana was and how many different kinds of it there were. It is only if there was any object or anything different from me that I could think of it. Only if there was a goal to attain, I should have made sadhana to attain that goal. There was nothing which I wanted to obtain. I am now sitting with my eyes open. I was then sitting with my eyes closed. That was all the difference. I was not doing any sadhana even then. As I sat with my eyes closed, people said I was in samadhi. As I was not talking, they said I was in mauna.
The fact is, I did nothing. Some Higher Power took hold of me and I was entirely in Its hand.”
Bhagavan further added, “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.”
329
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
332 imp
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.”
.......
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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