dd mar 3

52

“When I lay down with limbs outstretched and mentally enacted the death scene and realised that the body would be taken and cremated and yet I would live, some force, call it atmic power or anything else, rose within me and took possession of me. With that, I was reborn and I became a new man. 

I became indifferent to everything afterwards, having neither likes nor dislikes.”

..........

Later Bhagavan said, 

“The spark of jnana will easily consume all creation as if it were a mountain-heap of cotton. 

All the crores of worlds being built upon the weak (or no) foundation of the ego, they all topple down when the atomic bomb of jnana comes down upon them.” 

Bhagavan said, 

“All talk of surrender is like pinching jaggery from the jaggery image of Lord Ganesa and offering it as naivedya to the same Lord Ganesa. 

You say you offer your body, soul and all possessions to God. Were they yours that you could offer them? At best, you can only say, ‘I falsely imagined till now that all these which are yours (God’s) were mine. Now I realise they are yours. I shall no more act as if they are mine.’ And this knowledge that there is nothing but God or Self, that I and mine don’t exist and that only the Self exists, is jnana.” He added, “Thus there is no difference between bhakti and jnana. Bhakti is jnana mata or mother of jnana.”

53

Talking of the innumerable ways of different seekers after God, 

Bhagavan said, “Each should be allowed to go his own way, the way for which alone he may be built. It will not do to convert him to another path by violence. The Guru will go with the disciple in his own path and then gradually turn him into the supreme path at the ripe moment. Suppose a car is going at top speed. To stop it at once or to turn it at once would be attended by disastrous consequences.”

The talk then turned to the names of God and Bhagavan said, “Talking of all mantras, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says ‘Aham’ is the first name of God. The first letter in Sanskrit is A ëAí and the last letter Ha ‘h’ and ‘Aha’ thus includes everything from beginning to end. 

The word ‘Ayam’ means that which exists, Self-shining and Self-evident. 

‘Ayam’, ‘Atma’,  ‘Aham’, all refer to the same thing. 

In the Bible also, ‘I Am’ is given as the name of God.”

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59

Bhagavan: All depends on a man’s pakva, i.e., his aptitude and fitness. Those who have not the mental strength to concentrate or control their mind and direct it on the quest are advised to watch their breathing, since such watching will naturally and as a matter of course lead to cessation of thought and bring the mind under control. Breath and mind arise from the same place and when one of them is controlled, the other is also controlled. As a matter of fact, in the quest method — which is more correctly ‘

Whence am I?’ and not merely ‘Who am I?’ — we are not simply trying to eliminate saying ‘we are not the body, not the senses and so on,’ to reach what remains as the ultimate reality, but we are trying to find whence the ‘I’ thought for the ego arises within us. The method contains within it, though implicitly and not expressly, the watching of the breath. 

When we watch wherefrom the ‘I’-thought, the root of all thoughts, springs, we are necessarily watching the source of breath also, as the ‘I’-thought and the breath arise from the same source.

........

The old gentleman asked Bhagavan whether one should not first go through nirvikalpa samadhi before attaining sahaja samadhi. 

Bhagavan replied, 

“When we have vikalpas and are trying to give them up, i.e. when we are still not perfected, but have to make conscious effort to keep the mind one-pointed or free from thought it is nirvikalpa samadhi. 

When through practice we are always in that state, not going into samadhi and coming out again, that is the sahaja state.

In sahaja one sees always oneself. 

He sees the jagat as swarupa or brahmakara. 

What is once the means becomes itself the goal, eventually, whatever method one follows, dhyana, jnana or bhakti. 

Samadhi is another name for ourselves, for our real state.”

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65

...............So after a few days, Vitthal went to Nam Dev’s house and like a guileless soul enquired how it was that Nam Dev has forgotten him and never visited him. Nam Dev replied, ‘No more of your fooling me. I know now. Where is the place where you are not! To be with you, should I go to the temple? Do I exist apart from you?’ 

Then Vitthal said, ‘So you now understand the truth. That is why you had to be sent for this final lesson’.”

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67

In the afternoon Bhagavan explained to Dr. Srinivasa Rao the significance of the name Rama. “The ‘Ra’ stands for the Self and ‘ma’ for the ego. As one goes on repeating ‘Rama’, ‘Rama’, the ‘ma’ disappears, getting merged in the ‘Ra’ and then ‘Ra’ alone remains. In that state there is no conscious effort at dhyana, but it is there, for dhyana is our real nature.”

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84

Answer: 

To enquire ‘Who am I?’ really means trying to find out the source of the ego or the ‘I’ thought. 

You are not to think of other thoughts, such as ‘I am not this body, etc.’ Seeking the source of ‘I’ serves as a means of getting rid of all other thoughts. 

We should not give scope to other thoughts, such as you mention, but must keep the attention fixed on finding out the source of the ‘I’ thought, by asking (as each thought arises) to whom the thought arises and if the answer is ‘I get the thought’ by asking further who is this ‘I’ and whence its source?

Question 2: Is atma a subject of sakshatkara? 

Answer: 

The atma is as it is.

 It is sakshat always. 

There are not two atmas, one to know and one to be known. 

To know it is to be it. 

It is not a state where one is conscious of anything else. 

It is consciousness itself.

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