dd mar 2

 33

19-10-45 Mor 0-45 Morning 

A barrister from Bombay asked Bhagavan,

 “I have read the works of Bhagavan and others and, though I can understand them intellectually, I have not been able to realise anything in experience. I have tried Bhagavan’s method for about six years and yet I have not made any progress. When I meditate, other thoughts come. For people like me, living in cities and doing our work and coming here only occasionally, what sadhana  would Bhagavan advise so that we may succeed better than I have so far been able to do?”

 Bhagavan: Your real nature is always there. Your meditation, etc., come only temporarily. 

Reality being your Self, there is nothing for you to realise. 

All that is required is that you should give up regarding the unreal as real, which is what all are doing. 

The object of all meditation, dhyana or japa is only that, to give up all thoughts regarding the not-self, to give up many thoughts and to keep to the one thought. 

As for sadhana, there are many methods. You may do vichara, asking yourself ‘Who am I?’ or, if that does not appeal to you, you may do dhyana ‘I am Brahman’ or otherwise, or you may concentrate on a mantra or name in japa. 

The object is to make the mind one-pointed, to concentrate it on one thought and thus exclude our many thoughts, and if we do this, eventually even the one thought will go and the mind will get extinguished in its source.

 Visitor: In actual practice I find I am not able to succeed in my efforts. Unless Bhagavan’s grace descends on me I cannot succeed. 

Bhagavan: Guru’s grace is always there. You imagine it is something, somewhere high up in the sky, far away, and has to descend. 

It is really inside you, in your heart, and the moment (by any of the methods) you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its source, the grace rushes forth, spouting as from a spring, from within you. 

Another visitor asked, “What is the reality of this world?” 

Bhagavan: If you know your reality first, you will be able to know the reality of the world. It is a strange thing that most people do not care to know about their own reality, but are very anxious to know about the reality of the world.  

You realise your own Self first and then see if the world exists independently of you and is able to come and assert before you its reality or existence. 

Another visitor asked, “Why is there so much pain even for the innocent, such as children for instance? How is it to be explained? With reference to previous births or otherwise?” 

Bhagavan: As about the world, if you know your own reality, these questions won’t arise. All these differences, the pains and miseries of the innocent, as you say, do they exist independently of you? It is you that see these things and ask about them. If by the enquiry ‘Who am I’? you understand the seer, all problems about the seen will be completely solved

39

Dilip Kumar Roy read out another poem composed by him on Bhagavan. Then he sang a few songs. 

Then he asked Bhagavan, “What is the best way of killing the ego?” 

Bhagavan: To each person that way is the best which appears easiest or appeals most. All the ways are equally good, as they lead to the same goal, which is the merging of the ego in the Self. What the bhakta calls surrender, the man who does vichara calls jnana. Both are trying only to take the ego back to the source from which it sprang and make it merge there.

.......

When (on 2-11-45) Mr. Roy asked Bhagavan the best way of killing the ego, 

Bhagavan said, “To ask the mind to kill the mind is like making the thief the policeman. He will go with you and pretend to catch the thief, but nothing will be gained. So you must turn inward and see where the mind rises from and then it will cease to exist.”

.....

41

Bhagavan said, “Of course we are employing the mind. It is well known and admitted that only with the help of the mind the mind has to be killed. But instead of setting about saying there is a mind, and I want to kill it, you begin to seek the source of the mind, and you find the mind does not exist at all. 

The mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes itself, the Self. 

Such a mind is sometimes called arupa manas or suddha manas. 

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

Maha Vir Prasad, Chief Engineer, U.P., who has been staying here for about twenty days, asked Bhagavan, 

“I find it said in Maha Yoga that in the beginning of meditation one may attend to the breath, i.e.. its inspiration and expiration, and that after a certain amount of stillness of the mind is thereby attained, one can dive into the heart seeking the source of the mind. I have been badly in want of some such practical hint. Can I follow this method? Is it correct?” 

Bhagavan: The thing is to kill the mind somehow. 

Those who have not the strength to follow the enquiry method are advised pranayama as a help to control the mind. And pranayama is of two kinds, one of controlling and regulating the breath and the other of simply watching the breath.

........

Visitor: When ahankar goes, will aham vritti exist? 

Bhagavan: That which is, always is. If the ahankar dies, It, the Reality, exists as It has always existed. You may speak of It as having aham vritti or simply aham. It is all the same. That which exists is ‘I am’ or ‘aham’.

........

Siva Mohan Lal asked Bhagavan, “When I concentrate here in Bhagavan’s presence, I am able to fix my thought on the Self easily. But in my place it takes a long time and much trouble to do so. Now why should it be so, especially as I feel convinced that Bhagavan is everywhere and is my antaryami?” 

I said, “It must of course be so. Though we are told that God is immanent everywhere, are we not also told that he is more manifest in some objects or places than in others, e.g., in temples, and images or avatars?” 

Bhagavan said, “Ask Muruganar, who is here. He has sung a song where he says Ramanasramam is not simply here for him, but everywhere.” Thereupon Muruganar read out the following stanza from

(text in tamil)

Which means, ‘Because (by His grace) the mind has attained quiescence and remains calm everywhere as it used to remain at Ramanasramam, wherever I may go in this world it is to me Ramanasramam, to which even devas go with keen desire.’ In other words, Ramanasramam is chid akasa which is everywhere and to which we gain access by killing the mind. 

Bhagavan added, “Time and place really do not exist. Even in the radio we have a hint of this truth. We have Hyderabad here. What is  sung there, we hear here at the same time as it is sung there. Where is time and place?”

Dr. Srinivasa Rao asked Bhagavan, “What is the meaning of ‘ ’, i.e., being in sleepless sleep?” 

Bhagavan: It is the jnani’s state. 

In sleep our ego is submerged and the sense organs are not active. The jnani’s ego has been killed and he does not indulge in any sense activities of his own accord or with the notion that he is the doer. So he is in sleep. 

At the same time he is not unconscious as in sleep, but fully awake in the Self; so his state is sleepless. 

This sleepless sleep, wakeful sleep, or whatever it may be called, is the turiya state of the Self, on which as the screen, all the three avasthas, the waking, dream and sleep, pass, leaving the screen unaffected.” 

Bhagavan said that instead of holding on to that which exists, we are looking for that which does not. We bother about the past and the future, not realising the truth of the present. We do not know the ‘A§’ (beginning) or the ‘@kRm’ (end). 

But we know the middle. If we find out the truth of this, we shall know the beginning and the end. Bhagavan quoted from Bhagavad Gita: “I am in the heart of all beings and am their beginning, middle and end.” 

Bhagavan also said the reality is only mauna and quoted Thayumanavar: 

(i.e., If we scrutinise all the religions which look so different, we find nothing discrepant at all in them, but they are only your (Lord’s) sport. They all end in quiescence or mauna, as rivers merge in the sea). 

In this connection Bhagavan also said, when one talks of brahmakara vritti for the mind, it is something like saying samudrakara nadi, about the river which has merged in the ocean.

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

I asked Bhagavan, “It seems this morning Rishikesananda quoted some text which says wherever the mind goes, that is samadhi. How can that be? Our mind goes after whatever it likes. Can that be samadhi?” 

Bhagavan: That passage refers to jnanis. Whatever they may be doing, there is no break in their samadhi state. 

Their bodies may be engaged in whatever activities they were intended by prarabdha to go through. But they are always in the Self. We associate or identify ourselves with the body; whatever it does, we say we do. 

The Bhagavad Gita says, 

‘The wise man will think the senses move among the sense objects and be unattached to the activities of the sense organs.’ 

I would go farther and say that the jnani does not think even that. He is the Self and sees nothing apart from himself. 

What the Bhagavad Gita says in the  above passage is for the abhyasi or the practiser. There is no harm in engaging in whatever activities naturally come to one. The hindrance or bondage is in imagining that we are the doers and attaching ourselves to the fruits of such activities. In this connection 

Bhagavan also said, “A man says ‘I came from Madras’. But in reality ‘he’ did not come. The jutka or some other vehicle brought him from his house to the railway station, the train brought him to Tiruvannamalai railway station, and from there some other cart brought him here. But he says ‘I came’. This is how we identify ourselves with the acts of the body and the senses.” Bhagavan also quoted from the Vedanta Chudamani to the effect that the activities of the jnani are all samadhi, i.e. he is always in his real state, whatever his body may happen to be doing. Bhagavan also referred to Rajeswarananda and said that once he planned to take a big party of pilgrims with Bhagavan in their midst. 

Bhagavan said, “I did not consent to go and the thing had to be dropped. What is there I could go and see? I see nothing. What is the use of my going anywhere?” 

(“TôojRôp Iußm ùR¬¡\§p~”) 

This is one of those self-revealing statements, which sometimes escape Bhagavan’s lips. The following remarks were also made by Bhagavan this night: 

“The jnani sees he is the Self and it is on that Self as the screen that the various cinema-pictures of what is called the world pass. He remains unaffected by the shadows which play on the surface of that screen. 

“See with the physical eye, and you see the world. 

See with the eye of realisation, everything appears as the Self. 

“To see an object that is in the dark, both the eye and the light of a lamp are required. To see the light only, the eye is enough. 

But to see the sun, there is no need of any other light.  Even if you take the lamp with you, its light will be drowned in the light of the sun. 

Our intellect or buddhi is of no use to realise the Self. 

To see the world or external objects, the mind and the reflected light (or chidabhasa) which always arises with it are necessary. 

To see the Self, the mind has simply to be turned inside and there is no need of the reflected light. 

“If we concentrate on any thought and go to sleep in that state, immediately on waking the same thought will continue in our mind. People who are given chloroform are asked to count one, two, etc. A man who goes under after saying six for instance will, when he again comes to, start saying seven, eight, etc. “In some books, the ego is compared to a leech; before leaving one body it takes hold of another.”

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