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17/60
Annamalai Swami was referring to verse four:
‘If one is a form, the world and God will also be so.
If one is not a form, who can see their forms and how?
Can what is seen be of a different nature to the eye? Self, the eye, is the limitless eye. ’
Bhagavan’s explanation of this verse can he found in Maha Yoga (1973 ed. p.72):
‘If the eye that sees he the eye of flesh, then gross forms are seen;
if the eye be assisted by lenses, then even invisible things are seen to have form;
if the mind be that eye, then subtle forms are seen;
thus the seeing eye and the objects seen are of the same nature;
that is, if the eye be itself a form, it sees nothing but forms.
But neither the physical eye or the mind has any power of vision of its own.
The real Eye is the Self; as He is formless, being the pure and infinite Consciousness, the Reality, He does not see forms. ’
The Self shines all the time.
If you can’t see it because your mind has obscured it or fragmented it, you have to control your vision.
You have to stop observing with the eye of the mind, because that eye can only see what the mind projects in front of it.
If you want to see with the eye of the Self, switch the projector of the mind off.
The infinite eye of the Self will then reveal to you that all is one and indivisible.
Question: Some people realise the Self just by hearing the Guru’s words. How is this possible?
Annamalai Swami:
Disciples who are spiritually very advanced can realise the Self as soon as they hear the truth from an enlightened Guru,
because the words of such a being have great power.
If you are in this advanced state, they will reach your inner core and reveal to you the peace that is your real nature.
When the Guru tells you that you are the Self, there is a power and an authority in those words that can make them become your own reality. If you are pure and ready, no practice will be required. One word from a jnani and his state will become yours too.
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19/60
When you have become one with the Self, a great power takes you over and runs your life for you.
It looks after your body; it puts you in the right place at the right time;
it makes you say the right things to the people you meet.
This power takes you over so completely, you no longer have any ability to decide or discriminate.
The ego that thinks, ‘I must do this,’ or ‘I should not do that,’ is no longer there.
The Self simply animates you and makes you do all the things that need to be done.
If you are not in this state, then use your discrimination wisely.
You can choose to sit in a flower garden and enjoy the scent of the blooms, or you can go down to that trench I told you about and make yourself sick by inhaling the fumes there.
So, while you still have an ego, and the power of discrimination that goes with it, use it to inhale the fragrance that you find in the presence of an enlightened being. If you spend time in the proximity of a jnani, his peace will sink into you to such an extent that you will find yourself in a state of peace. If, instead, you choose to spend all your time with people whose minds are always full of bad thoughts, their mental energy and vibrations will start to seep into you.
I tell you regularly, ‘You are the Self. Everything is the Self.’
If this is not your experience, pretending that ‘all is one’ may get you into trouble.
Advaita may be the ultimate experience, but it is not something that a mind that still sees distinctions can practice.
Electricity is a useful form of energy, but it is also potentially harmful. Use it wisely. Don’t put your finger in the socket, thinking ‘all is one’. You need a body that is in good working order in order to realise the Self.
Realising the Self is the only useful and worthy activity in this life,
so keep the body in good repair till that goal is achieved.
Afterwards, the Self will take care of everything and you won’t have to worry about anything any more.
In fact, you won’t be able to because the mind that previously did the worrying, the choosing and the discriminating will no longer be there.
In that state, you won’t need it and you won’t miss it.
Question: What should be the right attitude when one sits in the presence of a jnani?
Annamalai Swami: Just keep quiet.
Make contact with the silence of the Self within.
This is the way of making contact with your Guru, and it is also the best attitude to have when you are sitting in his presence.
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21/60
Only the Supreme Self which is ever shining in your Heart as the reality, is the Sadguru. The pure awareness, which is shining as the inward illumination “I”, is His gracious feet. The contact with these [inner holy feet] alone can give you true redemption. Joining the eye of reflected consciousness /chitabhasa/, which is your sense of individuality, to these holy feet, which are the real consciousness, is the union of the feet and the head which is the real significance of the word asi [the verb in tat tvam asi, “that thou art”]. As these inner holy feet can be held naturally and unceasingly, hereafter, with an inward- turned mind, cling to that inner awareness which is your own real nature. This alone is the proper way for the removal of bondage and the attainment of the supreme truth. ’
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Question: Whenever I start meditating, soon after I start, I fall into these states. How can I prevent these laya states from coming and taking me over?
Annamalai Swami: Keep practising self-enquiry. This is the way to avoid laya. The mind usually has two habits; either it is occupied with many thoughts and engaged in activities, or it goes back to sleep. But for some people, there is this third option, falling into this laya state. You should not indulge in it because once it becomes a habit, it becomes addictive. It is a pleasant state be in, but if you fall very deeply into it, it becomes very hard to get out of it.
You know what this state is like because you have been in it many times. As soon as you feel the first symptoms of an approaching trance, get up and walk around. Don’t remain sitting or lying. Walk around or do some work, and above all, keep up the practice of self-enquiry. If you practise self-enquiry constantly, you will never find yourself falling into laya.
You can conquer this habit. You just need to be attentive and to do self-enquiry.
Question: Bhagavan once remarked, ‘What is the value of knowing God if we don’t know the name of our own “I”?’ He also spoke about the T-I’ vibration, saying that it was an emanation of the Self. When Bhagavan spoke of T-I’, did he mean that it was shabd nadi, a subtle sound, or is it merely the feeling T-I’?
Annamalai Swami: They both indicate and mean the Self.
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24/60
Sadhana is a battlefield. You have to be vigilant. Don’t take delivery of wrong beliefs and don’t identify with the incoming thoughts that will give you pain and suffering.
But if these things start to happen to you, fight back by affirming, ‘I am the Self; I am the Self; I am the Self’.
These affirmations will lessen the power of the ‘I am the body’ arrows and eventually they will armour-plate you so successfully, the ‘I am the body’ thoughts that come your way will no longer have the power to touch you, affect you or make you suffer.
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Forgetfulness of the Self happens because of non-enquiry. So I say, ‘Remove the forgetfulness through enquiry’. Forgetfulness or non-forgetfulness is not apart of your destiny. It is something you can choose from moment to moment.
That is what Bhagavan said.
He said that you have the freedom either to identify with the body and its activities, and in doing so forget the Self, or you can identify with the Self and have the understanding that the body is performing its predestined activities, animated and sustained by the power of the Self.
If you have an oil lamp and you forget to put oil in it, the light goes out. It was your forgetfulness and your lack of vigilance that caused the light to go out. Your thoughts were elsewhere. They were not on tending the lamp.
In every moment you only have one real choice: to be aware of the Self or to identify with the body and the mind. If you choose the latter course, don’t blame God or God’s will, or predestination. God did not make you forget the Self. You yourself are making that choice every second of your life.
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The result of following these three paths is the same: Self-realisation. And it can also be said that the three paths are also the same, although at first sight the description of them makes it sound as if three totally different techniques are being described.
Bhagavan said, ‘Do self-enquiry. Find out who you really are. When you are totally absorbed in this problem, this enquiry will lead you to the Self.’
Some people, though, said that they found this very hard, or they said that this method somehow didn’t appeal to them. Bhagavan would sometimes tell such people to watch the breath, to see where it arose. Bhagavan always maintained that mind and breath arose in the same place, so focusing attention on the source of the breath is really the same as focusing attention on the source of the mind through self enquiry.
The third option is diving within. This is not a separate path. It is just another description of what happens when you follow self-enquiry, or when you find the source of the breath through intense observation.
‘Diving within’ means putting your whole mind on the Self.
When the one-pointed intensity to discover the Self is there, diving in happens and the mind goes back to its source and merges there.
Question: So there is no special method for diving within. It happens by itself. Is this true?
Annamalai Swami: It doesn’t happen by itself. You have to go on making an effort until the point where you become totally effortless. Up till that moment your effort is needed.
The mind only gets dissolved in the Self by constant practice.
At that moment the ‘I am the body’ idea disappears, just as darkness disappears when the sun rises.
Question: I have read several books about the practical side of Bhagavan’s teachings. Mouni Sadhu wrote about the T-current. Osborne wrote about a current that is not physical, but which can be felt physically. My understanding is that these writers were describing a current of some sort that helps sadhaks to be aware. It is said in these books that it can be felt very strongly. What is this current? Is it a special grace of Ramana, or is it common to all paths?
Annamalai Swami:
Ramana and other Gurus only show us the way. We have to walk on the path ourselves to realise the truth. If you want to go to America, having someone tell you where it is and how to get there will not magically transport you to that place. You have to go to the airport and get on the plane yourself. You have to carry out the instructions the Guru has given you until you realise the truth for yourself. Grace takes us to the Guru. Grace shows us the way home by guiding us in the right direction, but we still have to do the work ourselves.
Question: My question is not so much about grace itself. It is about this T-current that I have been reading about. Is it the grace of Ramana? Is it the grace of the Self? I don’t know the answer to this question, but I feel this current very strongly inside me.
AS: This current, this ‘I am’ consciousness, is present within all of us. It is not something special that devotees of one particular Guru have. It is our nature, and as such it is common to all.
But only a few souls are mature enough or ripe enough to be aware of it.
Though it is present within all of us, grace puts us in touch with it and gives us a taste of what it is like.
And once that taste is there, the thirst to realise the Self follows.
Tayumanuvar, a Tamil saint whom Bhagavan often quoted, wrote in one of his poems:
‘My Guru merely told me that I am consciousness. Having heard this, I held onto consciousness.'
What he told me was just one sentence, but I cannot describe the bliss I attained from holding onto that one simple sentence.
Through that one sentence I attained a peace and a happiness that can never be explained in words.
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Forty Verses.
‘In the interior of the Heart-cave Brahman alone shines in the form of the Self with direct immediacy as “I”, as “I”.
Enter into the Heart with questing mind or by diving deep or through control of breath, and abide in the Self. ’
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When the one-pointed intensity to discover the Self is there, diving in happens and the mind goes back to its source and merges there.
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Question: So there is no special method for diving within. It happens by itself. Is this true?
Annamalai Swami: It doesn’t happen by itself.
You have to go on making an effort until the point where you become totally effortless.
Up till that moment your effort is needed.
The mind only gets dissolved in the Self by constant practice.
At that moment the ‘I am the body’ idea disappears, just as darkness disappears when the sun rises.
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Question: Why should I ask? Asking has not produced the right answer so far.
Annamalai Swami: You should persist and not give up so easily.
When you enquire intensely ‘Who am I?’ the intensity of your enquiry takes you to the real Self.
It is not that you are asking the wrong question. You seem to be lacking intensity in your enquiry.
You need a one-pointed determination to complete this enquiry properly.
Your real Self is not the body or the mind. You will not reach the Self while thoughts are dwelling on anything that is connected with the body or the mind.
Question: So it is the intensity of the enquiry that determines whether I succeed or not.
Annamalai Swami: Yes. If enquiry into the Self is not taking place, thoughts will be on the body and the mind.
And while those thoughts are habitually there, there will be an underlying identification: ‘I am the body. I am the mind.’
This identification is something that happened at a particular point in time.
It is not something that has always been there.
And what comes in time also goes eventually, for nothing that exists in time is permanent.
The Self, on the other hand, has always been there.
It existed before the ideas about the body and the mind arose, and it will be there when they finally vanish. The Self always remains as it is: as peace, without birth, without death.
Through the intensity of your enquiry you can claim that state as your own.
Enquire into the nature of the mind by asking, with one- pointed determination, ‘Who am I?’
Mind is illusory and non-existent, just as the snake that appears on the rope is illusory and non-existent.
Dispel the illusion of the mind by intense enquiry and merge in the peace of the Self.
That is what you are, and that is what you always have been.
Question: Has Swamiji realised the Self?
Annamalai Swami: Yes.
But this is sometimes a strange question to answer. It is like having somebody ask you if you have become a human being. You are always a human being. You didn’t have to do anything to accomplish it. You are self- evidently a human being, so much so, it is strange to field questions about it.
Question: It is not self-evident to me.
Annamalai Swami: Then find out who you are.
Question: How does one find out who one is?
Annamalai Swami: You will find out by constantly doing self enquiry. Ask yourself, ‘Am I the body? Am I the mind?’ When self-enquiry is deepened, you understand who you are.
Question: How long did it take for Swamiji to find out?
Annamalai Swami:
If one is mature, one can realise it in this moment.
If one is not mature one has to take up sadhana to make oneself receptive to the truth.
Question: Which category were you in?
Annamalai Swami: I served Bhagavan for more than twelve years. After that I came to this place because I wanted to be more established in the Self. After several years of sadhana I realised the Self.
Question: Is Swamiji totally established in the Self?
Annamalai Swami: Yes.
Question: What happens in your deep sleep state? Is it the same as when you are awake?
Annamalai Swami: Yes.
Whether you feel peace or not in a jnani’s presence depends on your maturity’.
People who are mature are sensitive to the jnani’s presence. Such people will immediately experience peace when they come into the presence of a jnani. Others have to wait. Buds that are ready to bloom open when the sun’s rays fall on them. Those that are not ready have to wait.
Question: In other words, is it because of my immaturity that I am not able to feel peace in the presence of Swamiji?
Annamalai Swami: Don’t make this kind of judgement about yourself. Don’t think that you are not mature. If you hold onto this kind of thought, this will be a hindrance to your realisation, because the truth is already within you.
Question: But Swamiji just said that if a person were mature, he would be able to feel peace in the presence of a realised soul.
Annamalai Swami: Maturity and immaturity belong to the mind. You are not the mind; you are already the Self.
.......
...I would advise you to question yourself, ‘Who is asking the question? And who is getting the answer?’
If you have this attitude towards your doubts and your questions, your quest for their source will lead you back to the Self.
In that place there are no questions and no answers. There is only peace.
Question: I want to ask Swamiji about his own experience. Was his own experience a single event, an explosion of knowledge? Or did it happen more gradually, in a more subtle way?
Annamalai Swami: It was my experience that through continuous sadhana I gradually relaxed into the Self. It was a gradual process.
Question: So it is not necessarily something that happens with a big bang?
Annamalai Swami: It is not something new that suddenly comes. It is eternally there, but it is covered by so much. It has to be rediscovered.
Question: But do some people explode into That? I was with a man this morning who claims to be realised. He came here. Do you remember him? He said he had an experience of exploding into it, and that the experience of the Self, he says, stayed with him ever since 1982.
Annamalai Swami [laughing]: If he says ‘I don’t know myself’ or if he claims ‘I have known myself,’ both are statements to laugh at. Because you are That. You can be That, but there is nothing to say about it. If somebody says, ‘I am a jnani. I am an enlightened person,’ then who is claiming that?
Question: My doubts are not my only problem. I find that my yearning for the Self is not very strong. This bothers me quite a lot.
Annamalai Swami: When you forget the state of being yourself, then is the time to enquire, ‘Who forgets the Self? Who is in doubt? Who is having the confusion?’ Enquire in this way.
Discard all that is not you and come back to yourself.
Question: Sometimes I am overpowered by self-doubt.
Annamalai Swami:
If the meditation is not continuous enough, the other part of the mind becomes predominant.
You have to overpower this mind that is taking you away from yourself by repeatedly doing this self-enquiry.
When you chum curd and separate butter and buttermilk, they will not become one again, after they have been separated.
If you take milk from the cow’s udder, it will never go back into the cow again.
In the same way, if you become established in the Self, you will never go back into ignorance again.
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If the intensity to know yourself is strong enough, the intensity of your yearning will take you to the Self
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If you remain in the Self, enquiry will not be necessary.
If you move away from the Self and go back to the mind, you then have to enquire again and go back to your Self.
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Question: To whom does this intensity to realise the Self arise? It has to arise to the T that ultimately has to disappear.
Annamalai Swami: Who is this T? It is neither the body nor the mind. If you remain as the Self, there is neither body nor mind. So what is this T ? Enquire into it and find out for yourself.
When you see the rope, what happens to the snake? Nothing happens to it because there never was a snake. Similarly, when you remain as the Self, there is a knowing that this T never had any existence.
All is the Self. You are not separate from the Self. All is you. Your real state is the Self, and in that Self there is no body and no mind.
This is the truth, and you know it by being it.
This ‘I am the body’ idea is wrong. This false idea must go and the conviction ‘I am the Self’ should come to the extent that it becomes constant.
At the moment this ‘I am the body’ idea seems very natural for you.
You should work towards the point where ‘I am the Self’ becomes natural to you.
It happens when the wrong idea of being the body goes, and when you stop believing it to be true, it vanishes as darkness vanishes when the sun appears.
This life is all a dream, a dream within a dream within a dream. We dream this world, we dream that we die and take birth in another body. And in this birth we dream that we have dreams. All kinds of pleasures and suffering alternate in these dreams, but a moment comes when waking up happens. In this moment, which we call realising the Self, there is the understanding that all the births, all the deaths, all the sufferings and all the pleasures were unreal dreams that have finally come to an end.
Everyone has experienced dreams within dreams. One may dream that one has woken up from a dream, but that waking up is still happening within a dream. Our whole lives are dreams. When this dream life ends and a new one begins, there is no knowledge that both dreams are happening in the underlying dream of samsara.
Bhagavan has instructed us in Who Am I?
to see the whole world as a dream.
When realisation comes, nothing will affect you because you will have the firm knowledge that all manifestation is an unreal dream.
Question: In order to do self-enquiry we have to use the mind, which is mostly troublesome and in reality does not even exist. Why is this?
Annamalai Swami: The mind that we use for self-enquiry is the pure mind, the sattvic mind. By using this sattvic mind we do self-enquiry to remove the impure mind, which is rajas and tamas. If you keep on doing self-enquiry with the sattvic mind, ultimately, this sattvic mind will be dissolved in the Self.
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Annamalai Swami: The one who had the depression was not you. Your real nature is peace. Don’t identify yourself with either the mind or with the depressed states it produces. These are not you.
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Question: While you were doing a lot of work in the ashram, how did you manage to keep up your sadhana!
Annamalai Swami: In those days Bhagavan was accessible for most of the time, so I was able to get regular guidance in my sadhana. He told me to read Sivananda Lahari, Ellam Ondre, Upadesa Saram and his other writings. He also told me to do parayana [chanting of scriptural works]. All this was very helpful in keeping my mind on the Self during work.
Sri Bhagavan often said, ‘While doing the work, don’t have the idea, “I am doing the work”. If you can keep up this attitude, work will not be a burden, and no problems will touch you.’
Don’t differentiate between work and meditation.
If you don’t differentiate, every job you do becomes meditation.
And don’t make distinctions between different kinds of work. Don’t think, ‘This is good work. That is bad work.’ If you treat all work equally, any work you do will be beneficial for your sadhana.
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.......
Enquire ‘Who am I?’ or ‘What is my real nature?’ The nature of the Self is nothing but peace.
If you are not aware of that peace, it means that you are identifying with something that is not the Self.
As long as you hear, taste and smell things, you identify with the body.
When the perceptions and the perceiver of them vanish, you become aware of the peace that is there all the time.
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imp
You need not hold on to That because you are That all the time.
That is enough. You are That.
How can you hold on to That, or feel separate from it, or try to get it back, or lose it?
If That is your real nature, how can you pretend that you are nearer to it in two places and separate from it when you are somewhere else?
......
Question: I have the experience of That with Swami, but I don’t have that same experience when I am away from him. This is definitely my experience, so I don’t really understand what you are telling me.
Annamalai Swami: Your understanding or your lack of it does not affect the truth of what I am saying. You are That. See who you are and there will be nothing obstructing the experience of this fact.
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Question: I still say I see who I am when I am near Swami. When I am away from him, I can remember it as a fact, but it is not my direct experience.
Annamalai Swami: This is because you identify with your body and your mind. Your mind is making you believe that a certain experience can only happen when you are in a particular place.
Give up this identification and you will find that the Self is everywhere.
You will see it, know it and be it wherever you go. Everything is Swami, including you yourself.
Question: How do I give up identification with the body, particularly when I am not in front of Swami? I keep practising, but I don’t have that experience.
Annamalai Swami: Meditate ‘I am the Self’. If you do this, the idea that you are the body will go. ‘I am the Self’ is still an idea, and as such, it belongs in maya, along with all other ideas.
But you can begin to conquer maya by giving up utterly wrong ideas that bind you and cause you trouble. How to do this?
Replace them with ideas that are a better reflection of the truth, and which are helpful in leading you to that truth.
If you want to cut iron, you use another piece of iron.
Sadhana is a battlefield. You have to be vigilant.
Don’t take delivery of wrong beliefs and don’t identify with the incoming thoughts that will give you pain and suffering. But if these things start to happen to you, fight back by affirming, ‘I am the Self; I am the Self; I am the Self’. These affirmations will lessen the power of the ‘I am the body’ arrows and eventually they will armour-plate you so successfully, the ‘I am the body’ thoughts that come your way will no longer have the power to touch you, affect you or make you suffer.
This fight all takes place within maya because in reality you are peace and peace alone. But while you are suffering in maya you can use these thoughts as a means of ultimately conquering it.
Question: To remain as myself, to have this awareness ‘I am the Self’, is it enough that I merely hear this sound, T-I’, because I do hear it everywhere?
Annamalai Swami: If it is constant, it will be enough.
If you don’t forget your real Self, that will be enough.
Your real Self is everything. Not an atom exists apart from the Self. You, the real you, the Self, are all inclusive. When I say give up your identification with the ‘I am the body’ idea, I don’t mean that you are not the body. I mean that you should give up the idea that you are only the body. You are all bodies, all things, all creation, but paradoxically, this knowledge will not come to you unless you give up identifying with particular objects, such as 1 am the body’, and limiting thoughts such as ‘I am so-and- so’. When you have given up all thoughts, all identifications, the true knowledge suddenly dawns on you: T am the unmanifest Self and I am also the whole of manifestation.’
So I tell people: ‘This physical body is not you; the mind is not you. Go beyond them to see what is really behind them.’
This is done to make people give up their incorrect, limiting ideas, so they can have a direct experience of what is truly real. I am asking people to be aware of the rope of reality instead of being confounded and led astray by the mental illusion of the snake.
Question: This ‘I’-thought seems to vibrate at the same speed as the sound and the feeling of T-I’. So when I think T, it reminds me of the sound. This seems to happen by itself. But afterwards, I need to think T to remind me of this vibration that is going on.
Annamalai Swami: Since you forget your real Self, the only way is to go back to your real Self. If you keep the light on all the time, darkness cannot enter your room. Even if you open the door and invite it to come in, it cannot enter. Darkness is just an absence of light. In the same way, mind is just a self- inflicted area of darkness in which the light of the Self has been deliberately shut out. You live in the darkness by insisting on believing ideas that have no validity, and you live in the light of the Self when you have given up all ideas, both good and bad.
Question: So you are saying that believing that I am a body and a particular person is purely imagination. Or better still, a bad habit that I should try to get rid of?
Annamalai Swami: Correct. This habit has become very strong because you have reinforced and strengthened it over many lifetimes.
This will go if you meditate on your real Self.
The habit will melt away, like ice becoming water.
Question: Bhagavan once remarked that free will is non existent, that all our activities are predetermined and that our only real choice is either to identify with the body that is performing the actions or with the underlying Self in which the body appears.
Someone once said to him: ‘If I drop this fan, will that be an act that has always been destined to happen in this moment?’
And Bhagavan replied, ‘It will be a predestined act’.
I assume that these predestined acts are all ordained by God, and that as a consequence, nothing happens that is not God’s will, because we, as individuals, have no power to deviate from God’s ordained script.
A question arises out of this. If I remember the Self, is this God’s will? And if I forget to remember at a certain moment, is this also God’s will?
Or, taking my own case, if I make an effort to listen to the sound ‘I-F, is this God’s will, or is it individual effort?
Annamalai Swami: Forgetfulness of the Self happens because of non-enquiry. So I say, ‘Remove the forgetfulness through enquiry’. Forgetfulness or non-forgetfulness is not apart of your destiny. It is something you can choose from moment to moment. That is what Bhagavan said. He said that you have the freedom either to identify with the body and its activities, and in doing so forget the Self, or you can identify with the Self and have the understanding that the body is performing its predestined activities, animated and sustained by the power of the Self.
If you have an oil lamp and you forget to put oil in it, the light goes out. It was your forgetfulness and your lack of vigilance that caused the light to go out. Your thoughts were elsewhere. They were not on tending the lamp.
In every moment you only have one real choice: to be aware of the Self or to identify with the body and the mind. If you choose the latter course, don’t blame God or God’s will, or predestination. God did not make you forget the Self. You yourself are making that choice every second of your life.
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The Self is always present. Nothing obstructs your awareness of it except your self-inflicted ignorance. Our efforts, our sadhana, are directed towards removing this ignorance. If this ignorance is removed, the real Self is revealed.
This revelation is not part of destiny. Only the outer bodily activities are destined.
...
Bhagavan is always present, inside you and in front of you. If you don’t cover the vision of Bhagavan with your ego, that will be enough. The ego is the ‘I am the body’ idea. Remove this idea and you shine as the Self. That is the only thing you need to do in this life. The various events of your life - all the things that are going to happen to you - they are all destined. If you don’t want them to happen, they will still occur, even if you try to avoid them. And if you want things that are not in your destiny, they won’t come to you.
There is no point worrying about the outer events of your life because you can exercise no control over these destined activities. Your responsibility in this life is to see who you are, not to rewrite your life script.
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Correct. This Bhagavan you speak of is not a body, a person who existed at some time. All is Bhagavan;
all is Ramana.
There can be no mistakes in following Bhagavan’s path because Bhagavan is like an eternal light that is always burning, a grace that is always giving. To be aware of Bhagavan is to be aware of this inner truth. If you are not aware of this Bhagavan, it is your responsibility, not his. He is not hiding from you; you are hiding from him. He does not think that he is separate from you. It is you who believe that you are separate from him.
Question: I am not experiencing the peace that Swami is talking about. I must therefore need to do something more.
Annamalai Swami: See who you are. That is the only advice I can give you. You are peace. Be that peace and there will be no hankering for anything else.
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[The subject of this conversation is a verse that Bhagavan wrote in 1913. It originally appeared in Sri Ramana Gita, and was later incorporated into Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham, the Supplement to Forty Verses.
‘In the interior of the Heart-cave Brahman alone shines in the form of the Self with direct immediacy as “I”, as “I”. Enter into the Heart with questing mind or by diving deep or through control of breath, and abide in the Self. ’]
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Question: In Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham Bhagavan mentions the three paths: self-enquiry, observation of breathing, and diving within the heart. Could you please say something about this diving? What it is, how it happens?
Annamalai Swami: The result of following these three paths is the same: Self-realisation. And it can also be said that the three paths are also the same, although at first sight the description of them makes it sound as if three totally different techniques are being described.
Bhagavan said, ‘Do self-enquiry. Find out who you really are. When you are totally absorbed in this problem, this enquiry will lead you to the Self.’
Some people, though, said that they found this very hard, or they said that this method somehow didn’t appeal to them.
Bhagavan would sometimes tell such people to watch the breath, to see where it arose. Bhagavan always maintained that mind and breath arose in the same place, so focusing attention on the source of the breath is really the same as focusing attention on the source of the mind through self enquiry. The third option is diving within.
This is not a separate path. It is just another description of what happens when you follow self-enquiry, or when you find the source of the breath through intense observation. ‘Diving within’ means putting your whole mind on the Self. When the one-pointed intensity to discover the Self is there, diving in happens and the mind goes back to its source and merges there.
Question: So there is no special method for diving within. It happens by itself. Is this true?
Annamalai Swami: It doesn’t happen by itself.
You have to go on making an effort until the point where you become totally effortless.
Up till that moment your effort is needed.
The mind only gets dissolved in the Self by constant practice.
At that moment the ‘I am the body’ idea disappears, just as darkness disappears when the sun rises.
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Annamalai Swami: This current, this ‘I am’ consciousness, is present within all of us. It is not something special that devotees of one particular Guru have. It is our nature, and as such it is common to all. But only a few souls are mature enough or ripe enough to be aware of it. Though it is present within all of us, grace puts us in touch with it and gives us a taste of what it is like. And once that taste is there, the thirst to realise the Self follows.
Tayumanuvar, a Tamil saint whom Bhagavan often quoted, wrote in one of his poems:
‘My Guru merely told me that I am consciousness.
Having heard this, I held onto consciousness.
What he told me was just one sentence, but I cannot describe the bliss I attained from holding onto that one simple sentence.
Through that one sentence I attained a peace and a happiness that can never be explained in words.
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Annamalai Swami: You say that you are not getting the right answer. Who is this ‘you’? Who is not getting the right answer?
Question: Why should I ask? Asking has not produced the right answer so far.
Annamalai Swami: You should persist and not give up so easily.
When you intensely enquire ‘Who am I?’ the intensity of your enquiry takes you to the real Self.
It is not that you are asking the wrong question.
You seem to be lacking intensity in your enquiry.
You need a one-pointed determination to complete this enquiry properly.
Your real Self is not the body or the mind.
You will not reach the Self while thoughts are dwelling on anything that is connected with the body or the mind.
Question: So it is the intensity of the enquiry that determines whether I succeed or not.
Annamalai Swami: Yes.
If enquiry into the Self is not taking place, thoughts will be on the body and the mind. And while those thoughts are habitually there, there will be an underlying identification: ‘I am the body. I am the mind.’ This identification is something that happened at a particular point in time. It is not something that has always been there.
And what comes in time also goes eventually, for nothing that exists in time is permanent. The Self, on the other hand, has always been there. It existed before the ideas about the body and the mind arose, and it will be there when they finally vanish. The Self always remains as it is: as peace, without birth, without death. Through the intensity of your enquiry you can claim that state as your own.
Enquire into the nature of the mind by asking, with one- pointed determination, ‘Who am I?’ Mind is illusory and non-existent, just as the snake that appears on the rope is illusory and non-existent. Dispel the illusion of the mind by intense enquiry and merge in the peace of the Self. That is what you are, and that is what you always have been.
Question: Has Swamiji realised the Self?
Annamalai Swami: Yes. But this is sometimes a strange question to answer. It is like having somebody ask you if you have become a human being. You are always a human being. You didn’t have to do anything to accomplish it. You are self- evidently a human being, so much so, it is strange to field questions about it.
Question: It is not self-evident to me.
Annamalai Swami: Then find out who you are.
Question: How does one find out who one is?
Annamalai Swami: You will find out by constantly doing self¬ enquiry. Ask yourself, ‘Am I the body? Am I the mind?’ When self-enquiry is deepened, you understand who you are.
Question: How long did it take for Swamiji to find out?
Annamalai Swami: If one is mature, one can realise it in this moment. If one is not mature one has to take up sadhana to make oneself receptive to the truth.
Question: Which category were you in?
Annamalai Swami: I served Bhagavan for more than twelve years. After that I came to this place because I wanted to be more established in the Self. After several years of sadhana I realised the Self.
Question: Is Swamiji totally established in the Self?
Annamalai Swami: Yes.
Question: What happens in your deep sleep state? Is it the same as when you are awake?
Annamalai Swami: Yes.
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Annamalai Swami: Maturity and immaturity belong to the mind. You are not the mind; you are already the Self.
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Question: I want to ask Swamiji about his own experience. Was his own experience a single event, an explosion of knowledge? Or did it happen more gradually, in a more subtle way?
Annamalai Swami: It was my experience that through continuous sadhana I gradually relaxed into the Self. It was a gradual process.
Question: So it is not necessarily something that happens with a big bang?
Annamalai Swami: It is not something new that suddenly comes. It is eternally there, but it is covered by so much. It has to be rediscovered.
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Q.........I feel a little confusion about the process and the technique of self-enquiry, so much so I have to go back to reading Ramana’s teachings on the subject again and again until the confusion leaves me. I would like Swami’s comments on this. I know that there is nothing new that he can say about it. I know that I have to continue with self-enquiry.
Annamalai Swami:
Constant meditation is the only way.
If you bring the light into your room, the darkness immediately goes away. You have to see that the light is not put out. It has to be continuously burning so that there is no darkness.
Until you get firmly established in the Self, you have to continue with your meditation.
Doubts take possession of you only if you forget yourself.
Question: My doubts are not my only problem. I find that my yearning for the Self is not very strong. This bothers me quite a lot.
Annamalai Swami: When you forget the state of being yourself, then is the time to enquire, ‘Who forgets the Self? Who is in doubt? Who is having the confusion?’ Enquire in this way. Discard all that is not you and come back to yourself.
Question: Sometimes I am overpowered by self-doubt.
Annamalai Swami: If the meditation is not continuous enough, the other part of the mind becomes predominant. You have to overpower this mind that is taking you away from yourself by repeatedly doing this self-enquiry.
When you chum curd and separate butter and buttermilk, they will not become one again after they have been separated. If you take milk from the cow’s udder, it will never go back into the cow again. In the same way, if you become established in the Self, you will never go back into ignorance again.
Question: When I do have these self doubts, the yearning or the desire to know myself does come up quite strongly, but at other times it is not there so strongly. What do you think about this?
Annamalai Swami: Whatever may be happening, enquire, ‘To whom is all this happening?’ Do this and go back to your Self, which is peace.
Question: I thought that this yearning was a plus point in my favour. Isn’t it a help to have this yearning?
Annamalai Swami: If the intensity to know yourself is strong enough, the intensity of your yearning will take you to the Self.
Question: But still, I must keep up with the enquiry.
Annamalai Swami:
If you remain in the Self, enquiry will not be necessary.
If you move away from the Self and go back to the mind, you then have to enquire again and go back to your Self.
Question: To whom does this intensity to realise the Self arise? It has to arise to the T that ultimately has to disappear.
Annamalai Swami: Who is this T? It is neither the body nor the mind. If you remain as the Self, there is neither body nor mind. So what is this T ? Enquire into it and find out for yourself.
When you see the rope, what happens to the snake? Nothing happens to it because there never was a snake. Similarly, when you remain as the Self, there is a knowing that this T never had any existence.
All is the Self. You are not separate from the Self. All is you. Your real state is the Self, and in that Self there is no body and no mind. This is the truth, and you know it by being it. This ‘I am the body’ idea is wrong. This false idea must go and the conviction ‘I am the Self’ should come to the extent that it becomes constant.
At the moment this ‘I am the body’ idea seems very natural for you. You should work towards the point where ‘I am the Self’ becomes natural to you.
It happens when the wrong idea of being the body goes, and when you stop believing it to be true, it vanishes as darkness vanishes when the sun appears.
This life is all a dream, a dream within a dream within a dream. We dream this world, we dream that we die and take birth in another body. And in this birth we dream that we have dreams. All kinds of pleasures and suffering alternate in these dreams, but a moment comes when waking up happens. In this moment, which we call realising the Self, there is the understanding that all the births, all the deaths, all the sufferings and all the pleasures were unreal dreams that have finally come to an end.
Everyone has experienced dreams within dreams. One may dream that one has woken up from a dream, but that waking up is still happening within a dream. Our whole lives are dreams. When this dream life ends and a new one begins, there is no knowledge that both dreams are happening in the underlying dream of samsara.
Bhagavan has instructed us in Who Am I? to see the whole world as a dream.
When realisation comes, nothing will affect you because you will have the firm knowledge that all manifestation is an unreal dream.
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By constant self-enquiry. ‘Who had the experience, and who lost it? Who has the yearning to regain it? Who has all these thoughts about it?’ If you follow this approach, you will ultimately realise who you really are.
The experience you had didn’t come from somewhere else. It is already within you. Find out who had the experience.
Question: While you were doing a lot of work in the ashram, how did you manage to keep up your sadhana!
Annamalai Swami: In those days Bhagavan was accessible for most of the time, so I was able to get regular guidance in my sadhana. He told me to read Sivananda Lahari, Ellam Ondre, Upadesa Saram and his other writings. He also told me to do parayana [chanting of scriptural works]. All this was very helpful in keeping my mind on the Self during work.
Sri Bhagavan often said, ‘While doing the work, don’t have the idea, “I am doing the work”. If you can keep up this attitude, work will not be a burden, and no problems will touch you.’
Don’t differentiate between work and meditation. If you don’t differentiate, every job you do becomes meditation. And don’t make distinctions between different kinds of work. Don’t think, ‘This is good work. That is bad work.’ If you treat all work equally, any work you do will be beneficial for your sadhana.
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As I sat in front of Bhagavan on my first day back, Bhagavan looked at me, and while he was looking I began to hear the words of one of the verses from Ulladu Narpadu Anubandham resonating in my Heart:
‘The supreme state which is praised and which is attained here in this life by clear enquiry, which rises in the Heart when association with a sadhu is gained, is impossible to attain by listening to preachers, by studying and learning the meaning of the scriptures, by virtuous deeds, or by any other means.
Question: During deep meditation peace is there all the time. But there is still a feeling that peace is something that can come and go. I know that this is just an idea, but I want to eliminate this idea and have the direct experience of the peace that never comes and goes.
Bhagavan says, ‘You are always the Self. It is just your notion that you are not the Self that has to be got rid of.’ How does this happen?
Annamalai Swami: The Self is peace and happiness. Realising peace and happiness within you is the true realisation of the Self. You cannot distinguish between peace, happiness and the Self. They are not separate aspects. You have this idea that peace and happiness is within you, so you make some effort to find it there, but at the moment it is still only an idea for you.
So, ask yourself, ‘To whom does this idea come? Who has this idea?’
You must pursue this line if you want to have the idea replaced by the experience. Peace is not an idea, nor is it something that comes and goes. We are always That. So, remain as That. You have no birth and no death, no bondage and no freedom. It is perpetual peace, and it is free from all ideas. The ‘I am the body’ idea is what is concealing it. This is what has to go.
Question: How can we avoid getting attached to the form of the Guru, to his personality, and to the place where the Guru lives?
Annamalai Swami: If you completely avoid attachment to your body and mind, then all other attachments will vanish. Identify with That which is neither body nor mind, and all your attachments will go. You can only put your attention on one thing at a time. While it is on the mind or the body, it cannot be on the Self. Conversely, if you put attention on the Self and become absorbed in it, there will be no awareness of mind and body.
Every night during sleep you let go of your attachment to both the body and the mind, and the result is silence, peace, and an absence of duality. You can have this silence, this peace, and this absence of duality in the waking state by not believing the rising thoughts that create duality for you. Resist limiting thoughts. Replace them with thoughts such as ‘All is myself. Everybody is myself. All animals, all things are myself.’ What you think, you become. If you understand and experience that everything is yourself, how can you have likes and dislikes? If everything is you, there will be no desire to avoid anything, no impulse to discriminate in favour of anything.
If you want to discriminate at all, avoid bad company and bad thoughts. At night, when you suddenly start to experience the cold, you pull a blanket over yourself. Pull the blanket of discrimination over yourself when you feel that there is a possibility of bad company and bad thoughts dragging you down.
You may need to do this but the jnani will not because nothing can ever drag him back into the realm of false identifications again. He will always be in that state in which he knows everything to be himself. He will never again have the idea that anything is different or apart from his own Self.
Annamalai Swami: Bhagavan watched me very closely in the years that I served him in the ashram. One time I went to the Mother’s temple where many people were talking about worldly matters.
Bhagavan called me back, saying, ‘Why should you go to that crowd? Don’t go to crowded places. If you move with the crowd, their vasanas will infect you.’
Bhagavan always encouraged me to live a solitary life and not mix with other people. That was the path he picked for me. Other people got different advice that was equally good for them. But while he actively discouraged me from socialising, he also discouraged me from sitting quietly and meditating during the years that I was working in the ashram. In this period of my life, if Bhagavan saw me sitting with my eyes closed he would call out to me and give me some work to do.
On one of these occasions he told me,
‘Don’t sit and meditate.
It will be enough if you don’t forget that you are the Self.
Keep this in your mind all the time while you are working.
This sadhana will be enough for you.
The real sadhana is not to forget the Self.
It is not sitting quietly with one’s eyes closed. You are always the Self. Just don’t forget it.’
Bhagavan’s way does not create a war between the mind and the body. He does not make people sit down and fight the mind with closed eyes. Usually, when you sit in meditation, you are struggling to achieve something, fighting to gain control over the mind. Bhagavan did not advise us to engage in this kind of fight. He told us that there is no need to engage in a war against the mind, because mind does not have any real, fundamental existence.
This mind, he said, is nothing but a shadow.
He advised me to be continuously aware of the Self while I did the ordinary things of everyday life.
And in my case, this was enough.
If you understand the Self and be that Self, everything will appear to you as your own Self.
No problems will ever come to you while you have this vision. Because you are all and all is the Self, choices about liking or disliking will not arise. If you put on green-tinted glasses, everything you see will appear to be green.
If you adopt the vision of the Self, everything that is seen will be Self and Self alone.
So these were Bhagavan’s teachings for me:
‘If you want to understand the Self, no formal sadhana is required.
You are always the Self.
Be aware of the Self while you are working.
Convince yourself that you are the Self, and not the body or the mind, and always avoid the thought, “I am not the Self’.’
Avoid thoughts that limit you, thoughts that make you believe that you are not the Self.
I once asked Bhagavan: ‘You are at the top of the hill. You have reached the summit of spiritual life, whereas I am still at the bottom of the hill. Please help me to reach the summit.’
Bhagavan answered, ‘It will be enough if you give up the thought, “I am at the bottom of the hill”. If you can do this, there will be no difference between us. It is just your thoughts that are convincing you that I am at the top and you are at the bottom. If you can give up this difference, you will be fine.’
Don t adopt attitudes such as these that automatically assume that you are limited or inferior in any way.
On another occasion I asked Bhagavan: ‘Nowadays, many people are crossing big oceans by plane in very short periods of time. I would like Bhagavan to find us a good device, a jnana airplane that can speedily transport us all to moksha.'
This time Bhagavan replied, ‘We are both travelling in a jnana airplane, but you don’t understand this.’
In his answers to me Bhagavan would never let me fall into the false belief that I was separate or different from him, or that I was a person with a mind and a body who needed to do something to reach some exalted spiritual state. Whenever I asked him questions that were based on assumptions such as these, he would show me the error that was implicit in the question and gently point me back to the truth, the Self. He would never allow me to entertain wrong ideas.
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Don’t forget your Self wherever you go. If you can manage this, you will not need anything else.
One of the old Siddhas [Tamil poet-saints who lived about 1,000 years ago] composed a song:
‘I yearned for and searched for the truth. I ran everywhere looking for it. I wasted my life, my time and my energy looking everywhere for this truth. So much time was wasted in this pursuit, I have grown old and am about to die. But finally I have understood that the true light is within myself.
You are going to different places on a pilgrimage, but what you are really looking for is you yourself. You cannot achieve success in this by going on external searches because you yourself are the one that is being looked for. Your real nature is peace. Forgetting this, you have lost your peace and you are searching in the outside world where there is no peace to be found.
This is the teaching of Bhagavan, my Guru. I am passing it on to you.
You must understand who you are and what you are, and then you must remain as that.
If you can manage this, this itself will suffice.
Right now you are under the impression that you are your body and your mind, but the truth is, you are the Self.
Let go of the T that you imagine yourself to be and catch hold of the real ‘I’, the Self.
What do you hope to gain from your pilgrimage, from going here and there in an external journey? You are holding onto the idea that you are your body and your mind.
Having assumed this, you are now looking for an external God so that you can worship him.
Though such worship may be beneficial, it will not take you beyond the realm of the mind.
While you hold onto the idea that you are a person inside a body, whatever you see will be a manifestation of your own mind.
You cannot transcend the mind by worshipping your own external projections.
All these external appearances that you see in front of you are maya.
They have no fundamental abiding reality.
To find the Self, to find what is true and real, you have to look inside yourself.
You have to find the source, the place where all these mental projections arise.
You are looking for satisfaction in the outside world because you think that all these objects you see in front of you are real.
They are not.
The reality is the substratum in which they all appear.
This is what you should be seeking, instead of looking for external gods in different pilgrimage places.
An elephant is made out of wood. If we see it as wood, it is wood. But if we get caught up in the name and form, we will see only an elephant and forget that its underlying nature is wood.
All is your own Self.
This form is different; that form is different. This is more powerful; this is worse. These are all judgements you make when you see separate objects instead of having the true vision that all is an undifferentiated oneness. There may be different varieties of light bulbs, but the current that activates and sustains them is the same. You must learn to become one with this activating current, the unmanifest Self, and not get caught up in all the names and forms that appear in it.
Here is another verse from one of the Siddhas:
‘Because of your ego you are going to the forest to look for spiritual light. You are looking for this darshan of light in Badrinath and other Himalayan pilgrimage places. These things are the illusion of the mind. They depend on the states of the mind and the functioning of the mind. That which you are searching for is within yourself.’
Bhagavan wrote in Ulladu Narpadu, verse eleven: ‘Knowing all else without knowing oneself, the knower of objects known, is nothing but ignorance. How instead can it be knowledge?’
All the information the mind accumulates and all the experiences it collects are ignorance, false knowledge. Real knowledge cannot be found in the mind or in any external location. The mind sees through coloured glasses, and what it sees is tinted and tainted by that colour. If your mind is in a spoiled and disturbed condition, the entire world will appear to be in a spoiled and disturbed condition. If your mind is crystal clear, everything will appear to you to be clear and peaceful.
Your most important objective must be realising the Self.
If you have not done this, you will spend your time in ignorance and illusion.
You, your mind, this world - they are all maya. Don’t become a slave to this maya. Instead, realise the Self and let maya become your servant.
I have just remembered another verse from the Siddhas:
‘Many people have struggled years together to realise the Self. Millions and millions of people have struggled, looking for the light outside themselves. If these millions and millions of people have died without understanding the Self that is within them, it is because they didn’t understand the real path.’
You must find someone who has followed the right path,
someone who has discovered this inner truth for himself,
and who stabilised himself there.
Such a one will give you good advice.
He will not send you out on unproductive adventures in the outside world.
Following the advice of someone who has not reached this state is simply a case of the blind leading the blind.
Neither knows the right path and both will eventually fall into a big hole.
You may find a fruit that is very bitter and decide to improve its flavour. You could take it to all the holy rivers in the country and wash it in each one, but when you come home, the fruit will not be any less bitter than the day you started.
You can carry your mind to every comer of the country, visiting all the famous pilgrimage places on the way, bathing in all the holy rivers, doing pujas at all the sacred shrines, but when you return your mind will be in the same state as the day you started.
Mind is not improved by long journeys to far-flung places. Instead, make an internal pilgrimage.
Take the mind back to its source and plunge it into the peace-giving waters of the Self. If you once make this pilgrimage, you will never need to go looking for happiness or peace in any other place.
Question: Is it not good to remember God and to repeat his name?
Annamalai Swami: The Ribhu Gita advises us to remember at all times, ‘I am the Self; all is the Self’. The entire universe is ‘I’. If you can keep this permanently in your mind, millions and millions of punyas will come to you. There were many books that Bhagavan liked, but Ribhu Gita was definitely one of the best. He once said that Ribhu Gita is a book for one’s last life.
You must have read Hanuman’s story in the Ramayana. Hanuman’s mind was completely lost in the name of Ram, and because of this he accumulated great powers. He was able to jump across the ocean because of his full and complete devotion.
I advise doing japa to the Self,
either by repeatedly thinking about it or by repeating affirmations such as ‘I am the Self’.
This affirmation is the greatest mantra of all.
If you can do it continuously, without interruption, you will get results very quickly.
There is no greater japa, no greater sadhana than this.
The one who is seeking is also that which is sought.
The seeker and the sought are both Self.
If you are not able to find this Self within yourself, you will not find it anywhere else.
Searching on the outside and visiting holy places will not help you.
Many people are visiting swamis, temples and holy places. Doing these things will not yield any good fruit. For real and lasting results you have to look inside yourself and discover the Self within. You can do that anywhere.
Question: Many people say that they have found peace in holy places.
Annamalai Swami: If you are attached to places, stay here in Tiruvannamalai for some time.
The best place to discover the Self is here at Arunachala. The power to know the Self is available here.
That has been the experience of many sages, including Bhagavan. Arunachala is the Self. Ramana is the Self. Both are here. Both are inside you.
You have an inclination towards holy places. Try this one for some time, and don’t be so keen to rush off to other places.
Keep up the meditation, ‘I am the Self’, and be completely surrendered to that Self that is within you and which has appeared here in the forms of Bhagavan and Arunachala.
Forget about your bus for a while.
You stumble around in the darkness of your mind, not knowing that you have a torch in your hand. That light is the light of the Self. Switch it on and leave it on and you will never stumble again.
You are all here because there is a desire in you to realise the Self.
This desire does not arise randomly or accidentally in some people and not in others.
It is there because of the punyas you have accumulated from previous births, punyas that may have come from meditation, charitable works, and so on.
These punyas will manifest as a desire for freedom, a desire to do earnest sadhana, a desire to find a good teacher in whose presence the truth will be taught and revealed. If someone is destined to be a jnani in this life, it means that he has come to this final birth with a mountain of punyas to his credit. These punyas will take him to a real Guru, to a real satsang, and in this environment he will do sadhana and achieve the goal.
If one does not have this mountain of punyas from the past, there will be no desire for freedom, no desire to look for a Guru who can deliver it.
Such a person may meet a Guru and that Guru may even give him good advice, but the determined resolve to put that advice into effect will not be there.
The fierce determination to succeed and the discrimination that allows one to ignore worldly entanglements only arise in those who have accumulated these punyas.
Other people may hear the words of truth, but although they accept that they are true, the inclination to act on them will not be there.
Wet wood does not catch fire easily, but if you dry it for a long time in the sun it will be much more combustible.
Other materials such as camphor, petrol, kerosene and gunpowder will ignite as soon as they are touched by a flame. Devotees can be classified in the same way: some ignite as soon as they meet a Guru or hear the truth for the first time; others need a period of drying out before they are ready to catch fire.
Those who are damp or wet can dry themselves out by sadhana, by having a strong determination to be aware of the Self at all times.
Self is readily available all the time but we cannot be aware of it or even put our attention on the thought of it because our vasanas are continuously leading our interest and attention in other directions.
That is why it is so important to have the awareness, T am not the mind. I am the Self.’
You have forcibly to drag your wandering attention back to the Self each time it shows an interest in going anywhere else. Don’t be interested in the words that the mind is serving up for you. It is putting them there to tempt you into a stream of thoughts that will take you away from the Self. You have to ignore them all and focus on the light that is shining within you.
When I was serving Bhagavan in the 1930s and 40s, 1 obeyed only him. For me, he was the light, and everything else was the chattering mind trying to lead me astray. I ignored the words and advice of everyone else in the ashram and kept all my attention on Bhagavan and his instructions to me. Even Chinnaswami had to concede, finally, that I was following the correct course.
One day he came up to me and said, ‘You are not listening to my words or carrying out my instructions. You are only paying attention to Bhagavan’s orders. This determination could only be a result of all the punyas you have accumulated in many previous lives.’
If there is no external light such as Bhagavan to guide you, you have to look within to find the Self.
You will not benefit from looking anywhere else, from doing anything else, or from listening to any other voice.
Walking round and round a temple, doing rituals to a deity - activities like these will not bring you any nearer to the Self.
The pujas, the japas, the rituals - these are just for beginners.
Meditation is the syllabus in a higher class.
We need not waste our time by indulging in the activities of the infant class again and again.
Here, in this class, I ask you to put all your attention, all your interest on realising the final teaching: ‘I am not the body or the mind. I am Self. All is the Self.’
This is Bhagavan’s final teaching.
Nothing more needs to be added to it.
Keep good company while you pursue this knowledge and all will be well.
Question: I know that listening to the Guru and believing his words is important. When he says, ‘You are the Self. The world is not real,’ and so on, I can accept that what he says is true, but my belief in the truth of those words doesn’t seem to make it my experience.
Annamalai Swami: You must believe the Guru and you must also believe your own experience because the Guru is not telling you to add another belief to your mind. He is instead telling you to look at your own experience of yourself, and in doing so, disregard everything else.
There is a story that Ram Tirtha used to tell. A man who was a little mad lived in a small village with his wife. His friends liked to tease him and make fun of him because they all thought he was stupid.
One day, one of them said, ‘We have some bad news for you. Your wife has become a widow.’
He believed them and started crying out in grief, ‘My wife has become a widow! My wife has become a widow!’
Some of the people he passed on the street laughed at him and said, ‘Why are you mourning? You are very much alive. How can your wife be a widow if you yourself are alive to complain about it?’
‘My closest friends have told me this,’ he replied, ‘and I trust them. They are very reliable people. If they are saying that my wife has become a widow, it must be true.’
We would think that a man who behaved like this was utterly stupid because he chose to believe the words of others instead of his own experience. But are we any better? We believe, on the basis of indirect information provided by the senses, that we are the body. The experience of ‘I am’, of the Self, is present in all of us, but when the mischievous senses gang up on us and try to make us believe something that is patently untrue, we believe them and ignore our direct experience.
Then we grieve about our state, lamenting, ‘I am bound; I am unenlightened; I am not free’.
And even when the Guru comes along and says, ‘You are the Self. You are free. Why do you insist on believing this misinformation that the mischievous senses are giving you?', still you do not believe the truth.
You tell him, ‘The senses have always given me reliable information in the past. I have learned to trust them. What they tell me must be true.'
And so you go on grieving and complaining, even when your direct experience and the words of the Guru agree with each other and reveal the truth.
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After a few days his Guru came to see how he was getting on.
‘How’s the meditation going?’ he asked. ‘Your wife tells me that you have done nothing else for days.’
‘Gurudev, there is no one left to meditate. I have found the peace you have been talking about all these years.’
The Guru knew that this man would never focus full-time on realising the Self because he was too caught up with his family and his business affairs. By making him think that his death was imminent, he made him concentrate on what was real and important. And it worked.
This is not just a story; it is a tactic that will work for anyone. If you can withdraw energy from your worldly attachments and instead focus full-time on the Self, you will soon get results.
If you are having trouble with your enthusiasm for sadhana, just tell yourself, ‘I may be dead in seven days’. Let go of all the things that you pretend are important in your daily life and instead focus on the Self for twenty-four hours a day. Do it and see what happens.
Question: It’s not possible for some of us to make this kind of commitment. We have work to do, responsibilities in the world.
Annamalai Swami: Sadhaks should only work enough to maintain the body. Try to avoid unnecessary activities. Less work is good. Devote yourself to your sadhana all the time. You dissipate your desire for the Self by undertaking all kinds of useless activities that waste your time and lead to attachments. You think that your life is endless and that you can put off meditation till a later date. With this kind of attitude, you will die filled with regrets, not filled with peace.
If you have to engage in activity to support yourself or your family, then do it, but always be aware of the Self while you work. While you are doing that work keep your thoughts a hundred per cent on the Self.
You are what you think you are. You become what you think. If you think of the Self all the time, that is what you will become. If you live and die with thoughts of work and family, you will be reborn in a place with more work and more family business to worry about.
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Your thoughts arise on a moment-to- moment basis because of your vasanas, but it is a mistake to think that you can do nothing about them. You can be interested in them, or you can ignore them.
If you show interest in them, they will persist and you will get caught up in them. If you ignore them and keep your attention on the source, they will not develop. And when they don’t develop, they disappear.
In Who Am I? Bhagavan compared this process to laying siege to a fort. If you cut off, one by one, the heads of the thoughts as they come out of the fort of the mind, sooner or later there will be none left.
The way to do this is by self-enquiry.
As each thought rises, you ask yourself, ‘To whom does this thought appear?’ If you are vigilant in doing this, the forest of thoughts will lessen and lessen until there are none left. When the thoughts have gone, mind will sink into its source and experience that source.
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Little conversations are going on in one place. Perhaps workmen are digging a hole somewhere. Inside a store a customer may be arguing about the price of some goods, while in the middle of the road there may be a crowd of people congregating around an accident victim. None of this is your business, but there is always a possibility that you will get interested in some or all of these activities and forget the reason why you are out on the street yourself. Don’t get excited by anything you see and hear. Just walk steadily towards your destination.
Your vasanas are all the sideshows in your head that can drag your attention away from your main business, which is being aware of the Self.
If you have no interest in them, you will walk straight to your goal.
If something temporarily distracts your attention, bring yourself back by asking yourself, ‘Who is interested in all this? Who is getting interested in this distraction?’ This will deflate the distracting desire and it will bring you back to an awareness of your true purpose.
Remember, nothing that happens in the mind is ‘you’, and none of it is your business.
You don’t have to worry about thoughts that rise up inside you. It is enough that you remember that the thoughts are not you.
Question: That goes for all kinds of thoughts?
Annamalai Swami: Whatever kind of thought arises, have the same reaction: ‘Not me; not my business.’ It can be a good thought or a bad thought. Treat them all the same way. To whom are these thoughts arising? To you. That means that you are not the thought.
You are the Self. Remain as the Self, and don’t latch onto anything that is not the Self.
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If you remain as the Self, no vasanas and no karma will touch or affect you. If you remain in the mind, thoughts of one sort or another will bother you all the time.
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If the thoughts ‘I should meditate’ or ‘I should realise’ arise, ask yourself, ‘To whom are these thoughts arising?’ Why do you need to think about your body and your mind so much? If you are the light, there is no darkness. If you are the Self, there is no thought, no body, and no mind to give you any trouble. Any number of thoughts may come. Let them.
But remember all the time, ‘I am the Self’.
You are not the vasanas, you are not the thoughts, you are the Self.
Keep that awareness and don’t worry too much about what is going on in your mind, and what it means.
Don’t allow any identifications to settle on you.
Don’t think, ‘I am sitting in Bhagavan’s shrine’. Don’t think, ‘I am doing, I am acting, I am sitting’.
You are the Self, not the body. Even your vasanas are the Self. All is your Self. There are no distinctions, no differences in the Self.
Nothing is separate from the Self. You cannot find a single atom, a single thought that is apart from the Self. All is the Self.
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All these doubts that are troubling you arise simply because you are enmeshed in the ‘I am the body’ thought and all the confusing consequences that it brings.
It is more productive to keep the awareness ‘I am the Self’ than to be analysing the usefulness of effort.
Sadhana, effort and practice, and any ideas you may have about them, are concepts that can only arise when you believe that you are not the Self, and when you believe that you have to do something to reach the Self.
Even the sequence, ‘To whom has this thought come? To me,’ is based on ignorance of the truth. Why? Because it is verbalising a state of ignorance; it is perpetuating an erroneous assumption that there is a person who is having troublesome thoughts. You are the Self, not some make-believe person who is having thoughts.
If you remain in the Self, as the Self, no harm can come to you.
In that state, whatever comes to you will not be a problem.
There is no duality when you remain as the Self; no thoughts about what you should or should not do, and no thoughts about what can be done or what can’t be done.
The main thing is not to go out of the Self.
When you have switched on the light, darkness cannot come, not even if you desire it.
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Annamalai Swami:
When this thought, ‘I am not meditating,’ or ‘I am not in the Self,’ arises, just ignore it and go back to the Self.
When thoughts such as these arise, look at them and think, ‘Not me, not my business,’ and go back to the Self.
Don’t waste energy on thinking or evaluating how well or how badly you are doing in your meditation.
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Whatever thoughts come, ignore them. You have to ignore anything that is connected to the body-mind idea, anything that is based on the notion that you are the mind or the body. If you can do this, the rising thought will not disturb or distract you. In a split second, it will run away.
All thoughts are distractions, including the thought ‘I am meditating’.
If you are the Self, darkness will not overcome you. Whatever thoughts arise in that state won’t affect you.
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destiny?
Annamalai Swami: If you are the Self, no destiny will affect you.
If you tear your shirt, does that mean that you are also torn? No. Something has happened to something that is not you. Similarly, the body and the mind will experience pleasure, happiness, misery, and so on, all according to the karma that has been brought into this life.
But the Self has no attachment, no detachment, no happiness, no unhappiness and no karma.
The body is not the Self; the mind is not the Self.
The real ‘I’ is the Self, and nothing ever happens to or affects the Self.
Thoughts will come as long as the potential for them is inside you. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, they will all keep coming. There is nothing you can do about this flow, but at the same time, this flow of thoughts need not be a problem.
Be the Self, be the peace that is your real nature, and it will not matter what comes up.
Walk, eat, drink, sleep, meditate, but never think that you are the one who is doing these things.
The thought that you are doing something is the thought that is poisoning your life.
Because once you think that you are doing something, you will start to think that you need to be doing something else to put yourself in a better situation.
You don’t have to do anything to experience the nectar of the Self.
All you need to do is drop the idea that you are doing anything at all.
You need to change your vision, your perspective.
When you live in the mind and see a world outside you that is separate and apart from you, you will make plans, you will worry, you will have doubts such as the ones you have been telling me about today.
These doubts keep coming up in you because you are not dwelling in the source, the substratum.
In that place there is oneness, a oneness in which all distinctions, all separation is absent.
If you abide as the Self, you will see the world as the Self.
In fact, there will be no world at all.
No world, no maya, no mind, no distinctions of any kind.
It is like the state of seeing only wood in the carved elephant, only threads in the dyed cloth.
In that state of being and knowing the Self, ideas of right and wrong, things to do and things to avoid doing, will vanish.
You will know that they were just mental concepts.
In that state you will know that mind is the Self, bondage is the Self, everything is the Self.
With that vision, nothing will bind you; nothing will cause you misery.
The Self may appear as the manifest world, as different separate objects, but the underlying reality, the only real substance is the Self in which they are all appearing and disappearing.
Things and people may appear in this substratum, and you may use them or interact with them, but your peace will never be disturbed.
When you abide as the Self, there is no one left to choose and decide.
Life goes on automatically.
You will pick up the things that are needed, and not pick up the things that are not needed.
What you pick up and what you don’t pick up will not be a consequence of what you like or dislike. These preferences will not be there any more.
This perspective will be yours when you give up or cease to believe the idea I am different from the world’.
Giving up this thought is a great sadhana in itself.
Abandoning this false idea will be enough to give you peace.
When the thought is there, the world seems to be full of good people and bad people, all busily engaged in doing what appear to you to be good things and bad things.
When the thought is absent, you know them all to be your own Self.
In that state you won’t like them, dislike them or judge them, or be aware of them as being other than your own Self.
This absence of likes, dislikes and judgements will leave you in your original natural state of peace.
Teeth and tongue are both parts of you, and they both function in harmony, without fighting or struggling.
When there is the knowledge that mind and Self are one, there will be no fights, no struggles, and no attempts to judge or attain.
To have this harmony, place the mind in the Self and keep it there. This is the real meditation.
However, until you reach this state in which there are no distinctions and preferences, you should use a little discrimination with regard to who and what you associate with.
Avoid bad company and bad thoughts, and try to keep the conviction that nothing is separate from you.
During sleep you have no likes and dislikes. Jnanis and babies manage this while they are awake. Baby mind is good; jnani mind is good; ‘I am the body’ mind is very, very bad.
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Yes, yes. The ‘I am the body’ thought is just as poisonous as a cobra.
‘All is my Self.’ ‘All is the nectar of my own Self.’
These are the great affirmations that counter the ‘I am the body’ thought.
Holding on to one of these sayings is the equal of millions of punyas.
If we continuously meditate on the truth of these statements, if we hold on to the truth that they are pointing towards, countless punyas will accrue to us.
There are many other mantras, but none are as useful as these. Ribhu Gita says, ‘All is one. All is the Self.’
This is the truth that you have to hold onto. To the real ‘I’, nothing is foreign in the entire universe.
If you know you are everything, there will be no desire to pursue some things and not others.
Nothing will be liked more or less than anything else. Do you like or desire your arm more than your foot?
When your body is the whole universe, likes, dislikes and desires will be absent.
Drop the body-mind idea and you will discover that you don’t have any likes or dislikes.
You do not think that your shirt is yourself. Similarly, the jnani does not believe that he is his body or his mind. The jnani understands that the body and the mind are animated by the Self, but he also knows that he shines as the Self whether the body and mind are there or not.
Without the Self, the body and the mind can do nothing at all. You could not eat, sleep, speak, or do anything at all without the Self.
Keep your body in good condition if you want to, but don’t ever believe that it is you.
You can keep your car in good working order without ever believing that you are the car. Have the same attitude towards your body. You are not your car and you are not your body. Both will perish, but the Self will continue because it is always there.
When you identify with transient things that pass away or perish, you too will pass away and perish,
but when you identify with the Self, you will not pass away or change in any way.
The Self has no birth, no death, no bondage, no misery, no youth, no old age, and no sickness. These are attributes of changing bodies and minds, not the Self.
Be the Self and none of these things will ever happen to you.
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If you go to a physical Guru and ask him how to realise the Self, he will probably tell you that you are already the Self, and that you should just hold onto the Self that you already are.
If you can manage that you will be with the true Guru all the time, and you will not need the physical form of the Guru to keep reminding you of who you are.
In that state you will be living with Bhagavan, staying as the Self, holding onto the real ‘I’ at all times.
If you go to the physical form of the Guru and ask about Self- realisation, you will not be told about the importance of the physical form of the Guru.
You will be told to hold onto the real ‘I’.
You will be told that you should not fall into the trap of believing that the Guru is just a body.
The Guru is inside you as the Self and outside you as a physical form that has manifested in the Self.
If you follow the advice that the physical Guru gives, you will discover that the inner and outer Gurus are one and the same.
However, very few people can manage this by themselves.
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Initially, abidance in the Self may not be firm and irreversible. Vigilance may be needed at first to maintain it.
There is a verse from Kaivalya Navaneeta that Bhagavan often quoted. It speaks of the need for vigilance even after the Self has been experienced for the first time.
In the verse the disciple is speaking to his Guru:
‘Lord, you are the reality remaining as my inmost Self, ruling me during all my countless incarnations! Glory to you who have put on an external form in order to instruct me. I do not see how I can repay your grace for having liberated me. Glory! Glory to your holy feet!’
The Guru replies:
‘To stay fixed in the Self without the three kinds of obstacles [ignorance, uncertainty and wrong knowledge] obstructing your experience, is the highest return you can render me.’
The Guru knows that without vigilance, an initial experience of the Self may slip away.
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If vasanas are still there, they will rise up again and the experience will be lost. While they are there, there is always the possibility that we may again take the unreal to be real.
If we take the mirage to be real water, that is ignorance. Similarly, if we take the unreal body to be the Self, that is also ignorance.
As soon as ignorance comes, you must question it. ‘To whom does this ignorance come?’ A strong determination to pursue enquiry in this way will dissolve all doubts.
By questioning ‘Who am I?’ and by constantly meditating, one comes to the clarity of being.
As long as vasanas continue to exist they will rise and cover the reality, obscuring awareness of it.
As often as you become aware of them, question, ‘To whom do they come?’
This continuous enquiry will establish you in your own Self and you will have no further problems.
When you know that the snake of the mind never existed, when you know that the rope of reality is all that exists, doubts and fears will not trouble you again.
Question: What is it that brings maturity and growth in a person? How do the gunas change in such a way that the mind eventually becomes sattvic?
Annamalai Swami: Self has no birth, no death, no sufferings and no problems. It is the witness of all these phenomena, but it is untouched by them. All these experiences happen to the mind, and through numerous lives the mind lives, learns and matures. It takes a body and learns some lessons in that body. Then it takes another form, another body and learns something else.
The mind goes on like this for innumerable lifetimes until finally it has learned enough to go back to its source, the Self.
Question: Do the five sheaths, the kosas, mature in this process? Do some of them mature, or do all of them?
Annamalai Swami: Mind includes all the five kosas. Through many lifetimes one can say that the kosas are maturing and growing, but realisation ultimately has nothing to do with a mature mind or mature kosas. It is the state in which one transcends the five kosas and the mind. It is the state in which one finally understands that the mind, whether mature or immature, never really existed.
Question: Does the acquisition of spiritual knowledge make the mind mature?
Annamalai Swami: The acquisition of knowledge belongs to the realm of education, not sadhana.
Seeing everything as one is the true seeing, and controlling the five senses in the body is the true sadhana.
They must be controlled, and success in this endeavour is truly heroic.
No traditional education can prepare you for this.
Realising the Self is the true education.
One of Mahatma Gandhi’s disciples was educated to a very high level. He was also a pious man and a strict disciplinarian with himself. When he realised that all he wanted in life was Self-realisation, he tore up all his academic certificates and threw them away. He knew that neither his education nor his worldly knowledge would help him. In fact by doing this he implied that his knowledge was a hindrance that had to be rejected.
A proper education does not come from books. It comes from associating with jnanis. They alone can guide us and teach us properly. I served Bhagavan for twelve years. Looking back on those years I can now say that just as you cannot get a proper formal academic education without attending school, one cannot get a true spiritual education without satsang, either with a jnani or with one’s own Self.
Question: It is difficult for me to stay focussed on the T-thought, especially when I am in the middle of worldly activities. Is it enough to be aware of awareness, of consciousness in general?
Annamalai Swami: If you are conscious of consciousness, there is no duality. Everything is included in consciousness.
Question: But is it enough to be aware of the awareness?
Annamalai Swami: You are repeating the question, so I will repeat the answer. If you remain in the state of consciousness, there will be nothing apart from it. No problems, no misery, no questions.
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I don’t lose consciousness of the Self because I don’t get identified with the body and the mind. It is only in the state in which you identify with the body and the mind that problems arise.
In deep sleep we forget the body and the mind, but consciousness is still there. That same state is present now, while we are awake. If you give up all your ideas about separateness, that will be enough. When those ideas have gone you realise you are everything.
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Question: In the Ribhu Gita it is mentioned that bad qualities and good qualities are both Brahman. Does that mean that we don’t need to care about good and bad qualities?
Annamalai Swami: In your real state there is only consciousness. In deep sleep no names and forms manifest in that consciousness, whereas in the dreaming and waking state they do. When you look at a piece of cloth, you notice its name- and-form attributes: the colour, the design, the thickness, etc. But what you are really looking at is just threads.
The underlying nature of consciousness, the equivalent of the threads in the cloth, is peace.
To abide knowingly as consciousness is to be a deep, undisturbed peace, even though thoughts and activities may be manifesting in it.
When you see through the eyes of wisdom, there is only peace.
No bondage or samsara touches you. Even to say that the Self is peace is not quite correct. I call it peace, but really, it is not something that can be described or defined by words.
Good and bad qualities are ideas that manifest in the mind, in samsara. They are concepts that vanish when only this peace remains. When you are peace, when you are consciousness, all good qualities will manifest in you and through you, but you will not be aware of them as being ‘good’. You will just be that peace.
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If you understand the true nature of this wheel of life, this wheel that is giving everyone so much alternating happiness and misery, this understanding will lead you to where there is no wheel, no change, no movement. This wheel is spinning in the substratum of the changeless Self. If you take your position in the still, peaceful centre of the Self you will know, simultaneously, that the Self is motionless peace, and that the spinning wheel is also the Self.
Question: Why is there a need to have this spinning wheel in the Self? Why a need for manifestation at all?
Annamalai Swami:
This question is happening only in your mind.
If you remain in the Self, as the Self, the question will not arise.
Whether you move your hand or keep it still, it is still a hand. Its nature is not changed in either case. Maya is the Self. All is the Self. If you give up all distinctions, you will know this for yourself. That’s all you need to do.
Question: Why does the mind always go outwards instead of inwards?
Annamalai Swami: Because we don’t ask the question, ‘Why does the mind go outwards instead of inwards?
This question arises because the nature of happiness is not properly understood. People are always looking for it in the wrong places and by doing the wrong activities. You begin with the impression, which is really a misunderstanding, that happiness is something that can be found outside you, and furthermore, that you have to do something or go somewhere to reach it. This is your illusion, and it is your belief in this illusion that makes the mind search for happiness in the outside world.
Even when you are told, ‘Happiness is within you as your own Self. Look inwards and find it,’ still you think that you have to do something or go somewhere to discover it. This is the power of maya, of illusion. This is like one fish in the sea asking another fish for directions to the ocean.
When you are not aware that your glasses are resting on your nose, you may look for them all day, thinking that they are lost. As a consequence, you believe that they are an object to be found. Eventually, you realise that you were wearing them all the time.
While the search was on, that which was being sought was, in reality, that through which the seeing was taking place.
You were looking for an object that finally turned out to be the subject that was doing the seeing.
So it is with the mind and the Self.
Mind sets up the notion that the Self needs to be found, and then proceeds to hunt for it as if it were some object that could be located in some interior place.
This is as foolish as a man with a goat wrapped round his shoulders spending his time wandering around, looking for his goat, and asking everyone he meets where it might be.
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59/60
Grace is always present, always available, but for it to be effective, one must be in a state to receive it and make full use of it.
If you want to take a full cup of water from a lake, you have fully to immerse the cup first.
If you want to fill your mind with grace, submerge it fully in the Self.
In that place the grace will manifest in you as peace and happiness
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Question: Does the mind die gradually or suddenly?
Annamalai Swami: One answer is: ‘When the sun comes up, does darkness disappear suddenly or gradually?’
Bhagavan, speaking on this topic, once remarked: ‘Someone mistakes a rope hanging in the darkness for a snake. He then asks how many years it will take for the snake to die.’
This is a better answer. If the mind does not exist, it cannot die either quickly or slowly.
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