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138

Question: What is sahaja samadhi? 

Answer: It is our svabhava sthiti. It is being in our natural state. 

Nirvikalpa samadhi  means merely giving up our vikalpas.

 Samadhi is our natural state, if we give up the vikalpas.

158

Some young men who had come with an introduction from the Ramakrishna Mission at Madras asked Bhagavan, 

“Which is the proper path for us to follow?” 

Bhagavan: When you speak of a path, where are you now? and where do you want to go? If these are known, then we can talk of the path. Know first where you are and what you are. 

There is nothing to be reached. You are always as you really are. But you don’t realise it. That is all.

,.....

Bhagavan remarked, “Mantra japa, after a time, leads to a stage when you become Mantra maya i.e. you become that whose name you have been repeating or chanting. First you repeat the mantra by mouth; later you do it mentally. 

First, you do this dhyana with breaks. Later, you do it without any break. 

At that stage you realise you do dhyana without any effort on your part. 

That dhyana is your real nature. 

Till then, effort is necessary.”

......

Next the talk drifted to the Self being pratyaksha (self evident) and Bhagavan then related how the song Atma Vidya  was composed. 

He said, “Any vidya is for the purpose of knowing something. If it is so self-evident as to render the well known classical example of hastamalakam or a gooseberry on the palm a false analogy, as Muruganar had put it, where was the need for Atma Vidya, whether you call it easy or not? 

What Muruganar meant to say was: ‘In the classical example, a hand is necessary, a hand that will and can feel a fruit on it, a fruit, an eye that can see, a person that has already known what fruit it is, and so on and so forth. 

But for knowing the Self, nothing at all except the Self is needed.’ In sleep for instance nothing at all exists for us except ourselves and we admit we existed during that sleep. 

On waking we say, ‘I slept and none of us believes there are two ‘I’s, the one that slept and the one that is awake now. 

In the classical example all these must exist to make the fruit self-evident. All these depend on or derive from the Self and make the fruit self-evident. How much more self-evident must the Self itself be? Anyhow there it was, Muruganar had written the pallavi and anupallavi and wanted the charanams. 

He said he could not possibly complete the song, as somehow no more lines would come to him, and so requested me to complete it. Thereupon I wrote this song. First I wrote only one stanza or charanam, but Muruganar wanted at least four, thereupon I made three more. Finally I recollected, I had not made any mention of Annamalai and so made a fifth charanam also and made mention of Annamalai in it, as Ponnambalam is mentioned in the stanzas of the song in Nandanar story on which our song is modelled.”

.....

167

Dr. Syed asked Bhagavan, “Does not total or complete surrender require that one should not have left in him the desire even for liberation or God?” 

Bhagavan: 

Complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own. 

That God’s desire alone is your desire. 

And that you have no desire of your own. 

.......

Dr. Syed: Now that I am satisfied on that point, I want to know what are the steps by which I could achieve surrender. 

Bhagavan: There are two ways; one is looking into the source of ‘I’ and merging into that source. 

The other is feeling “I am helpless by myself, God alone is all-powerful and except  throwing myself completely on him, there is no other means of safety for me,” 

and thus gradually developing the conviction that God alone exists and the ego does not count.

 Both methods lead to the same goal. 

Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation.

.........

169

Balaram also quoted from some other book a passage which says, ‘We, people of the world, have to make great efforts to draw the mind from the objects of sense or from the world and to fix it in the heart, on God. But you, Radha, in whose heart God is fully caught, you have to make effort to get away from God.’ 

On this Bhagavan remarked, “That is the stage of the jnani. He can’t escape the Self or go away from it. Where else to go, as all that he knows is the Self which he himself is?”

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174

’ God, Guru and the Self are the same. 

After your bhakti to God has matured you, God comes in the shape of Guru and from outside pushes your mind inside, while being inside as Self he draws you there from within. 

Such a Guru is needed generally, though not for very rare and advanced souls. One can go to another Guru after his Guru passes away. 

But all Gurus are one, as none of them is the form. Always mental contact is the best.

.......

175

Bhagavan: You may continue in your present method. 

When the japa becomes continuous, all other thoughts cease and one is in one’s real nature, which is japa or dhyana. 

We turn our mind outwards on things of the world and are therefore not aware of our real nature being always japa. 

When by conscious effort or japa or dhyana as we call it, we prevent our mind from thinking of other things, then what remains is our real nature, which is japa. 

So long as you think you are name and form, you can’t escape name and form in japa also.

 When you realise you are  not name and form, then name and form will drop off themselves. 

No other effort is necessary.

 Japa or dhyana will naturally and as a matter of course lead to it. 

What is now regarded as the means, japa, will then be found to be the goal. 

Name and God are not different. See the teaching of Nama Dev on the significance of God’s name, extracted in the September, 1937, issue of the Vision. (This was read out in the hall).

..........

Question: Is liberation to be achieved before the dissolution of the body or can it be had after death? What is the meaning of a verse like II, 72 or VIII, 6 of the Gita? 

Bhagavan: Is there death for you? For whom is death? The body which dies, were you aware of it, did you have it, during sleep? The body was not, when you slept, but you existed even then. When you awoke, you got the body and even in the waking state you exist. You existed both in sleep and waking. But the body did not exist in sleep and exists only in waking. That which does not exist always, but exists at one time and not at another, cannot be real. You exist always and you alone are therefore real.

..

Liberation is another name for you. 

It is always here and now with you. It has not to be won or reached hereafter or somewhere. 

Christ has said, “The Kingdom of God is within you” here and now. You have no death. Thayumanavar has sung, 

.... even when living in the world those who are always in nishta do not think there is such a thing as death). 

The Gita verse only means in the context of the whole Gita (Ch. II, for instance) that you must achieve liberation during your lifetime. Even if you fail to do it during your lifetime, you must think of God at least at the time of death, since one becomes  what he thinks of at the time of death. But unless all your life you have been thinking of God, unless you have accustomed yourself to dhyana of God always during life, it would not at all be possible for you to think of God at the time of death.

177

A visitor from Poona, who has been here for the last two or three days, asked some questions, and 

Bhagavan told him, “Mukti or liberation is our nature. It is another name for us. Our wanting mukti is a very funny thing. 

It is like a man who is in the shade, voluntarily leaving the shade, going into the sun, feeling the severity of the heat there, making great efforts to get back into the shade and then rejoicing, ‘How sweet is the shade! I have after all reached the shade!’ 

We all are doing exactly the same. We are not different from the reality. 

We  imagine we are different, 

i.e. we create the bheda bhava (the feeling of difference) and then undergo great sadhana to get rid of the bheda bhava and realise the oneness. 

Why imagine or create bheda bhava and then destroy it?”

....

Bhagavan remarked on this, “Somebody has told him so. I do not teach only the ajata doctrine. I approve of all schools. The same truth has to be expressed in different ways to suit the capacity of the hearer. The ajata doctrine says, ‘Nothing exists except the one reality. There is no birth or death, no projection or drawing in, no sadhaka, no mumukshu, no mukta, no bondage, no liberation. The one unity alone exists ever.’ 

To such as find it difficult to grasp this truth and who ask, ‘How can we ignore this solid world we see all around us?’, the dream experience is pointed out and they are told, ‘All that you see depends on the seer. Apart from the seer, there is no seen.’ This is called the drishti-srishti vada or the argument that one first creates out of his mind and then sees what his mind itself has created. To such as cannot grasp even this and who further argue, ‘The dream experience is so short, while the world always exists. The dream experience was limited to me. But the world is felt and seen not only by me, but by so many, and we cannot call such a world non-existent’, the argument called srishti-drishti vada is addressed and they are told, ‘God first created such and such a thing, out of such and such an element, and then something else, and so forth.’ That alone will satisfy this class. Their mind is otherwise not satisfied and they ask themselves, ‘How can all geography, all maps, all sciences, stars, planets and the rules governing or relating to them and all knowledge be totally untrue?’ 

To such it is best to say, ‘Yes. God created all this and so you see it.’” Dr.M. said, “But all these cannot be true; only one doctrine can be true.” 

Bhagavan said, “All these are only to suit the capacity of the learner. The absolute can only be one.” The letter further said, “Avyabhicharini bhakti is the only necessary thing.” 

As Dr.M. did not understand what avyabhicharini bhakti meant, Bhagavan explained that it only meant bhakti to God without any other thought occupying the mind. 

Bhagavan said, “This word, ananya bhakti, ekagrata bhakti, all mean the same thing.” The letter continued, “In the mind two things do not exist at the same time. Either God or samsar. Samsar is already there. That is to be reduced little by little and God is to be entered in its stead.”

 Bhagavan remarked on this. “God is there already, not samsar. Only you do not see it on account of the samsar rubbish you have filled your mind with. Remove the rubbish and you will see God. If a room is filled with various articles, the space in the room has not vanished anywhere. To have space we have not to create it, but only to remove the articles stocked in the room. Even so, God is there. If you turn the mind inward, instead of outward on things, then you see the mind merges in the one unity which alone exists.” 

Bhagavan also agreed with the writer when he said that to see God, Guru’s grace is necessary, for which again God’s anugraha is necessary, which in its turn, could be had only by upasana. The letter conveyed the writer’s namaskar to Bhagavan. Thereupon, 

Bhagavan said, “The mind merging in its source, the one unity, is the only true namaskar.”

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