Guru Ramana II

The Basic Theory

The teaching varies according to the understanding of the listener.

Just as in dreams, you wake up after several new experiences, so after death another body is found. Just as rivers lose their individuality when they discharge their waters into the ocean, and yet the waters evaporate and return as rain on the hills and back again through the rivers to the ocean, so also individuals lose their individuality when they go to sleep but return again according to their previous innate tendencies. Similarly, in death also, being is not lost.

See how a tree grows again when its branches are cut off. So long as the life source is not destroyed, it will grow. Similarly, latent potentialities withdraw into the heart at death but do not perish. That is how beings are re-born.

The birth of the ‘I’-thought is a person’s birth and its death is his death. After the ‘I’-thought has arisen, the wrong identification with the body arises. Identifying yourself with the body makes you falsely identify others also with their bodies. Just as your body was born and grows and will die, so you think the other also was born, grew and died. Did you think of your son before he was born? The thought came after his birth and continues even after his death. He is your son only insofar as you think of him. Where has he gone? To the source from which he sprang. So long as you continue to exist, he does too. But if you cease to identify yourself with the body and realise the true Self, this confusion will vanish. You are eternal and others also will be found to be eternal. Until this is realised there will always be grief due to false values which are caused by wrong knowledge and wrong identification.

Only he who concentrates on the heart can remain aware when the mind ceases to be active and remains still, with no thoughts, whereas those who concentrate on any other centre cannot retain awareness without thought but only infer that the mind was still after it has become active again.

The cause of your misery is not in your outer life; it is in you, as your ego. You impose limitations on yourself and then make a vain struggle to transcend them. All unhappiness is due to the ego.

If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it, you would be free. If you accept it, it will impose limitations on you and throw you into a vain struggle to transcend them. That was how the ‘thief’ sought to ruin King Janaka. To be the Self that you really are is the only means to realise the Bliss that is ever yours.1

He will discover that the Self always exists and that the body which is born resolves itself into thought, and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief.

In order that you might seek it. Your eyes cannot see themselves but if you hold a mirror in front of them they see themselves. Creation is the mirror. See yourself first and then see the whole world as the Self.

Because the quality of purity (Sattva) is the real nature of the mind, clearness like that of the unclouded sky is the characteristic of the mind-expanse. Being stirred up by the quality of activity (rajas) the mind becomes restless and, influenced by darkness (tamas), manifests as the physical world. The mind thus becoming restless on the one hand and appearing as solid matter on the other, the Real is not discerned. Just as fine silk threads cannot be woven with the use of a heavy iron shuttle, or the delicate shades of a work of art be distinguished in the light of a lamp flickering in the wind, so is Realisation of Truth impossible with the mind rendered gross by darkness (tamas) and restless by activity (rajas). Because truth is exceedingly subtle and serene. Mind will be cleared of its impurities only by a desireless performance of duties during several births, getting a worthy Master, learning from him and incessantly practising meditation on the Supreme. The transformation of the mind into the world of inert matter due to the quality of darkness (tamas) and its restlessness due to the quality of activity (rajas) will cease. Then the mind regains its subtlety and composure. The Bliss of the Self can manifest only in a mind rendered subtle and steady by assiduous meditation. He who experiences that Bliss is liberated even while still alive.

Almighty God, it is for You to roll me through many bodies, or keep me fixed at Your feet.’

Because you proceed on a wrong principle. Your conclusion is arrived at by the intellect which shines only by the light it derives from the Self. Is it not presumptuous on the part of the intellect to sit in judgement over that from which it derives its little light? How can the intellect, which can never reach the Self, be competent to ascertain and much less decide the nature of the final state of Realisation? It is like trying to measure the sunlight at its source by the standard of the light given by a candle. The wax will melt down before the candle comes anywhere near the sun. Instead of indulging in mere speculation, devote yourself here and now to the search for the Truth that is ever within you.

Why worry about God? We do not know whether God exists but we know that we exist, so first concentrate on yourself. Find out who you are.

What is meditation? It is the suspension of thoughts.

You are perturbed by thoughts which rush one after another. Hold on to one thought so that others are expelled. Continuous practice gives the necessary strength of mind to engage in meditation.

Meditation differs according to the degree of advancement of the seeker. If one is fit for it one can hold directly to the thinker; and the thinker will automatically sink into his source, which is Pure Consciousness. If one cannot directly hold on to the thinker, one must meditate on God; and in due course the same individual will have become sufficiently pure to hold on to the thinker and sink into the absolute Being.

But if you have surrendered, it means that you must accept the will of God and not make a grievance of what may not happen to please you. Things may turn out differently from what they appear. Distress often leads people to faith in God.

The Lord bears the burden of the world. Know that the spurious ego which presumes to bear that burden is like a sculptured figure at the foot of a temple tower which appears to sustain the tower’s weight. Whose fault is it if the traveller, instead of putting his luggage in the cart which bears the load anyway, carries it on his head, to his own inconvenience?

Surrender to Him and accept His will whether He appears or vanishes. Await His pleasure. If you want Him to do as you want, it is not surrender but command. You cannot ask Him to obey you and yet think you have surrendered. He knows what is best and when and how to do it. Leave everything entirely to Him. The burden is His and you have no more cares. All your cares are His. That is what is meant by surrender.

Not from any desire, resolve, or effort on the part of the rising sun, but merely due to the presence of his rays, the lens emits heat, the lotus blossoms, water evaporates, and people attend to their various duties in life. In the proximity of the magnet the needle moves. Similarly, the soul or jiva subjected to the threefold activity of creation, preservation and destruction, which takes place merely due to the unique Presence of the Supreme Lord, performs acts in accordance with its karma, and subsides to rest after such activity. But the Lord Himself has no resolve; no act or event touches even the fringe of His Being. This state of immaculate aloofness can be likened to that of the sun, which is untouched by the activities of life, or to that of the all-pervasive ether, which is not affected by the interaction of the complex qualities of the other four elements.

From Theory to Practice

This mode of reply is common to spiritual teachers. I remember once reading the life of a Sufi saint, Abu Said, by Professor Nicholson, in which the learned author concluded that he seems to have taught predestination in theory but free will in practice. Puzzling as it may be for the philosopher, this is the attitude of all spiritual teachers, just as Christ affirmed that not even a sparrow can fall without the will of God, and that the very hairs on one’s head are numbered, just as the Quran affirms that all knowledge and power are with God and that He leads aright whom He will and leads astray whom He will; and yet both Christ and the Quran exhort men to right effort and condemn sin. Bhagavan was quite categorical that effort is necessary. In actual life everyone realises this, whatever theoretical view he may hold. A man makes the physical effort of putting the food in his mouth and eating; he does not say: What is the use of eating if I am predestined to die of starvation? He makes the mental effort of earning the money to buy food to eat. Why should he, then, apply a different logic when it comes to spiritual effort?

Effortless and choiceless awareness is our real nature. If we can attain that state and abide in it, that is all right. But one cannot reach it without effort, the effort of deliberate meditation. All the age-old vasanas (inherent tendencies) turn the mind outwards to external objects. All such thoughts have to be given up and the mind turned inwards and that, for most people, requires effort. Of course, every teacher and every book tells the aspirant to keep quiet, but it is not easy to do so. That is why all this effort is necessary. Even if we find somebody who has achieved this supreme state of stillness, you may take it that the necessary effort had already been made in a previous life. So effortless and choiceless awareness is attained only after deliberate meditation. That meditation can take whatever form most appeals to you. See what helps you to keep out all other thoughts and adopt that for your meditation.

Meditation is a fight. As soon as you begin meditation, other thoughts will crowd together, gather force and try to overwhelm the single thought to which you try to hold. This thought must gradually gain strength by repeated practice. When it has grown strong, the other thoughts will be put to flight. This is the battle always going on in meditation. So long as the ego lasts, effort is necessary. When the ego ceases to exist, actions become spontaneous. No one succeeds without effort. Mind control is not your birthright. The few who succeed owe their success to their perseverence.

The Upanishads say, I am told, that he alone knows the Atman whom the Atman chooses. Why should the Atman choose at all? If it chooses, why some particular person? B.: When the sun rises some buds blossom, not all. Do you blame the sun for that? Nor can the bud blossom of itself; it requires the sunlight to enable it to do so. D.: May we not say that the help of the Atman is needed because it is the Atman that drew over itself the veil of Maya? B.: You may say so. D.: If the Atman has drawn the veil over itself, should it not itself remove the veil?

Life in the world

The silence of solitude is forced. Restrained speech in society is equivalent to silence, for then a man controls his speech. There must be a speaker before there can be speech. If the mind of the speaker is engaged otherwise, speech is restrained. When the mind is turned inwards it is active in a different way and is not anxious to speak. The purpose of a vow of silence is to limit the mental activities provoked by speech but if the mind is controlled, this is unnecessary and silence becomes natural.

First surrender and then see. Doubts arise because of the absence of surrender. Acquire strength by surrender and then your surrounding will be found to have improved to the degree of strength acquired by you.

Continued : Guru Ramana III