288
4-8-46
This morning Yogi Ramiah arrived. About 9-30 a.m.
Bhagavan was looking into the Tamil paper Hindusthan and
read out to me the following dialogue from it.
1st man: It is only if sorrows or troubles come to us that
we think of God.
2nd man: Ah, you fool. If we are always thinking of God,
how can any sorrows or troubles come to us?
Why Bhagavan drew my attention to this, I do not know.
I wonder if it is because I generally argue with him that it
should not be necessary for an all-powerful and all-loving
God to make us pass through pain to turn us towards Him
294
Afternoon
Yogi Ramiah gave his notebook to Bhagavan and said,
pointing to Muruganar,
“People like him would write verses
on occasions like the forthcoming Jubilee. But people like
me can do no such thing. Instead, I want Bhagavan to write
something in my notebook.”
Thereupon Bhagavan wrote on
the back of the front page in the notebook, which he found
blank, the Telugu version of the Tamil song which Bhagavan
had composed when the late Somasundara Swami requested
Bhagavan to write an ‘FÝjÕ’ in his notebook. The Sanskrit
word for FÝjÕ being both a character in the alphabet and
an imperishable thing, Bhagavan wrote punningly:
@dLWU úRôùWÝj RôϪl ×jRLjúRô
WdLWUô UKùRÝR Yô£jRô—VdLWUôm
JùWÝjùRu ßkRôö Ùs[j ùRô°oYRôm
AùWÝR YpXô WûR.
Here in this book I write
For you to read
An akshara,
But who can write
The Akshara
For ever shining in the heart?
.......
298
Later, on a visitor’s request, Bhagavan said,
“Concentrating one’s thoughts solely on the Self will lead to
happiness or bliss.
Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them
and preventing them from going outwards is called vairagya.
Fixing them in the Self is sadhana or abhyasa.
Concentrating
on the Heart is the same as concentrating on the Self.
The
Heart is another name for the Self.”
.....
17-8-46
This morning, a number of Gujerati visitors arrived here,
evidently returning from Pondicherry, after darshan there on
the 15th.
One of them asked Bhagavan, “What is meant by
Self-realisation? Materialists say there is no such thing as God
or Self.”
Bhagavan said, “Never mind what the materialists or
others say; and don’t bother about Self or God. Do you exist or
not? What is your idea of yourself? What do you mean by ‘I’?”
The visitor said he did not understand by ‘I’ his body, but
something within his body.
Thereupon, Bhagavan continued,
“You concede ‘I’ is not the body but something within it. See
then from whence the ‘I’ arises within the body.
See whether it
arises and disappears, or is always present.
You will admit there
is an ‘I’ which emerges as soon as you wake up, sees the body,
the world and all else, and ceases to exist when you sleep;
There is another ‘I’ which exists apart from the body,
independently of it, and which alone is with you when the body
and the world do not exist for you, as for instance in sleep.
Then ask yourself if you are not the same ‘I’ during sleep and
during the other states. Are there two ‘I’s? You are the same
one person always.
Now, which can be real, the ‘I’ which comes
and goes, or the ‘I’ which always abides?
Then you will know
that you are the Self. This is called Self-realisation.
Self realisation is not however a state which is foreign to you, which
is far from you, and which has to be reached by you. You are
always in that state.
You forget it, and identify yourself with
the mind and its creation.
To cease to identify yourself with the
mind is all that is required.
We have so long identified ourselves
with the not-Self that we find it difficult to regard ourselves as
the Self.
Giving up this identification with the not-Self is all that is meant by Self-realisation.
How to realise, i.e. make real,
the Self?
We have realised, i.e. regarded as real, what is unreal,
the not-Self.
To give up such false realisation is Self-realisation.”
......
In the evening, after parayana, a visitor asked Bhagavan,
“How to control the wandering mind?”
He prefaced the question
with the remark, “I want to ask Bhagavan a question which is
troubling me.”
Bhagavan replied, after laughing, “This is nothing
peculiar to you. This is the question which is always asked by
everybody and which is dealt with in all the books like the Gita.
What way is there, except to draw in the mind as often as it
strays or goes outward, and to fix it in the Self, as the Gita advises?
Of course, it won’t be easy to do it. It will come only with practice
or sadhana.”
The visitor said, “The mind goes after only what it
desires and won’t get fixed on the object we set before it.”
Bhagavan said, “Everybody will go after only what gives
happiness to him. Thinking that happiness comes from some
object or other, you go after it. See from whence all happiness,
including the happiness you regard as coming from sense objects,
really comes. You will understand all happiness comes only from
the Self, and then you will always abide in the Self.
...............
312
12-9-46
Casually going through T.P.R.’s notebook I came across
an entry there — Mithya=Jagat; Brahma bhavam=Satyam.
As I remembered Bhagavan occasionally saying mithya
means satyam, but did not quite grasp its significance, I asked
Bhagavan about it.
He said, “Yes. I say that now and then.
What do you mean by real or satyam? Which do you call
real?”
I answered, “According to Vedanta, that which is
permanent and unchanging, that alone is real. That of course
is the definition of Reality.”
Then, Bhagavan said, “These
names and forms which constitute the world always change
and perish. Hence they are called mithya. To limit the Self
and regard it as these names and form is mithya. To regard all
as Self is the Reality. The Advaitin says jagat is mithya, but
he also says ‘All this is Brahman’. So it is clear that what he
condemns is regarding the world as such to be real, not
regarding the world as Brahman. He who sees the Self, sees
only the Self in the world also. To the jnani it is immaterial
whether the world appears or not. Whether it appears or not,
his attention is always on the Self. It is like the letters and the
paper on which the letters are printed. You are wholly engrossed with the letters and have no attention left for the
paper. But the jnani thinks only of the paper as the real
substratum, whether the letters appear on it or not.”
.....
322
imp
This evening, D.S. Sarma, asked Bhagavan:
“In Western
mysticism three definite stages are often spoken of — viz.,
Purgation, illumination and union. Was there any such stage as
purgation — corresponding to what we call sadhana — in
Bhagavan’s life?”
Bhagavan replied, “I have never done any
sadhana. I did not even know what sadhana was. Only long
afterwards I came to know what sadhana was and how many
different kinds of it there were. It is only if there was any object
or anything different from me that I could think of it. Only if
there was a goal to attain, I should have made sadhana to attain
that goal. There was nothing which I wanted to obtain. I am now
sitting with my eyes open. I was then sitting with my eyes closed.
That was all the difference. I was not doing any sadhana even
then. As I sat with my eyes closed, people said I was in samadhi.
As I was not talking, they said I was in mauna.
The fact is, I did
nothing. Some Higher Power took hold of me and I was entirely
in Its hand.”
Bhagavan further added, “The books no doubt speak
of sravana, manana, nididhyasana, samadhi and sakshatkara.
We are always sakshat and what is there for one to attain karam
of that?
We call this world sakshat or pratyaksha. What is
changing, what appears and disappears, what is not sakshat, we regard as sakshat. We are always and nothing can be more directly
present pratyaksha than we, and about that we say we have to
attain sakshatkaram after all these sadhanas. Nothing can be
more strange than this.
The Self is not attained by doing anything,
but remaining still and being as we are.”
329
Bhagavan: You yourself concede, it is the direct method.
It is the direct and easy method. When going after other things,
alien to us, is so easy, how can it be difficult for one to go to
one’s own Self?
You talk of ‘Where to begin’.
There is no
beginning and no end. You are yourself the beginning and the
end.
If you are here and the Self somewhere else, and you have
to reach that Self, you may be told how to start, how to travel
and then how to reach.
Suppose you who are now in Ramana
Asramam ask, ‘I want to go to Ramana Asramam. How shall I
start and how to reach it?’, what is one to say? A man’s search
for the Self is like that. He is always the Self and nothing else.
You say ‘Who am I?’ becomes a japa. It is not meant that you
should go on asking ‘Who am I?’ In that case, thought will not
so easily die. All japas are intended, by the use of one thought,
the mantra, to exclude all other thoughts. This, japa eventually
does for a man. All other thoughts, except the thought of the
mantra, gradually die and then even that one thought dies. Our
Self is of the nature of japa. Japa is always going on there. If
we give up all thoughts, we shall find japa is always there without any effort on our part.
In the direct method, as you call
it, by saying ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ you are told to concentrate
within yourself where the I-thought (the root of all other
thoughts) arises. As the Self is not outside but inside you, you
are asked to dive within, instead of going without, and what
can be more easy than going to yourself?
But the fact remains
that to some this method will seem difficult and will not appeal.
That is why so many different methods have been taught. Each
of them will appeal to some as the best and easiest. That is
according to their pakva or fitness. But to some, nothing except
the vichara marga will appeal. They will ask, ‘You want me to
know or to see this or that. But who is the knower, the seer?’
Whatever other method may be chosen, there will be always a
doer. That cannot be escaped. Who is that doer must be found
out. Till that, the sadhana cannot be ended. So eventually, all
must come to find out ‘Who am I?’. You complain that there is
nothing preliminary or positive to start with. You have the ‘I’ to
start with. You know you exist always, whereas the body does
not exist always, e.g., in sleep. Sleep reveals that you exist even
without a body. We identify the ‘I’ with a body, we regard the
Self as having a body, and as having limits, and hence all our
trouble. All that we have to do is to give up identifying our Self
with the body, with forms and limits, and then we shall know
ourselves as the Self that we always are
332 imp
Sarma quoted “abhyasakale sahajam sthitim
prahurupasanam” (Ramana Gita).
What is sahaja state is
known as upasana during practice.
Bhagavan again repeated
much of what he told Prof. Sarma and said,
“What is obvious,
self-evident and most immediate to us, the Self, we say we are
not able to see.
On the other hand, we say that what we see
with these eyes alone is pratyaksha (direct perception).
There
must first be the seer before anything could be seen.
You are
yourself the eye that sees.
Yet, you say you don’t know the eye
that sees, but know only the things seen.
But for the Self, the
Infinite Eye (@kRªXôdLi), referred to in the stanza in
Ulladu Narpadu (Reality in Forty Verses), what can be seen?
You want sakshatkaram. You are now doing karam of all these things, i.e. real-ising these things, regarding as real all these
things, making real what is not real.
If this karam is given up
out of your present sakshatkaram of the unreal, then what will
remain is that which is real or sakshat.”
.......
Dr. Roy was asking Bhagavan,
“In the case
of persons who are not capable of long meditation, will it not
be enough if they engage themselves in doing good to others?”
Bhagavan replied, “Yes, it will do. The idea of good will be at
their heart. That is enough. Good, God, Love, are all the same
thing. If the person keeps continuously thinking of anyone of
these, it will be enough. All meditation is for the purpose of
keeping out all other thoughts.”
After some pause, Bhagavan
said,
“When one realises the Truth and knows that there is
neither the seer nor the seen, but only the Self that transcends
both, that the Self alone is the screen or the substratum on which
the shadow both of the ego and all that it sees, come and go, the
feeling that one has not got eyesight, and that therefore one
misses the sight of various things, will vanish.
The realised
being, though he has normal eyesight, does not see all these
things.”
He sees only the Self and nothing but the Self.
..................................
After further discussion with Dr. Roy, Bhagavan added,
“There is nothing wrong in seeing anything, this body or the
world. The mistake lies in thinking you are the body. There is
no harm in thinking the body is in you. The body, world, all must be in the Self; or rather nothing can exist apart from the
Self, as no pictures can be seen without the screen on which
the shadows can be cast.”
In answer to a question as to what
is the best way to the goal, Bhagavan said,
“There is no goal
to be reached. There is nothing to be attained. You are the
Self. You exist always. Nothing more can be predicated of the
Self than that it exists. Seeing God or the Self is only being
the Self or yourself. Seeing is being. You, being the Self, want
to know how to attain the Self. It is something like a man
being at Ramanasramam asking how many ways are there to
reach Ramanasramam and which is the best way for him. All
that is required of you is to give up the thought that you are
this body and to give up all thoughts of the external things or
the not-Self. As often as the mind goes out towards outward
objects, prevent it and fix it in the Self or ‘I’.
That is all the
effort required on your part. The different methods prescribed
by different thinkers are all agreed on this. The Advaita,
Dvaita, Visishtadvaita schools and other schools all agree that
the mind must give up thinking of external things and must
think of the Self, or God as they may call it. That is called
meditation.
But meditation being our nature, you will find
when you realise the Self that what was once the means is
now the goal, that while once you had to make an effort, now
you cannot get away from the Self even if you want.”
...........................336................end...........................
