Talks with Bhagavan

Student:  ‘It is my great desire that I should actually experience your gracious wisdom.  Kindly fulfill my desire.’

Ramana Maharshi:  ‘Is it the body in front of me that desires to obtain my Grace?  Or is it the awareness within it?  If it is the awareness, is it not now looking upon itself as the body and making this request?  If so, let the awareness first of all know its real nature.  It will then automatically know God and my grace.  The truth of this can be realised even here and now.

‘It is not the body that desires to attain the grace.  Therefore, it is clear that it is the awareness that shines here as “you”.  To you who are the nature of awareness there is no connection during sleep with the body, the senses, the life force (prana) and the mind.  On waking up you identify yourself with them, even without your knowledge.  This is your experience.  All that you have to do hereafter is see that you do not identify yourself with them.  In the states of waking and dream try to remain as you were in the state of deep sleep.  As you are by nature unattached, you have to convert the state of ignorant deep sleep, in which you were formless and unattached, into conscious deep sleep.  It is only by doing this that you can remain established in your real nature.  You should never forget that this experience will only come through long practice.  This experience will make it clear that your real nature is not different from the nature of God.’

from The Power Of The Presence, part 1 (page 99 & 100).  Edited by David Godman.


SURRENDER UNCONDITIONAL

Q: What is unconditional surrender?

A: If one surrenders oneself there will be no one to ask questions or to be thought of. Either the thoughts are eliminated by holding on to the root-thought `I', or one surrenders oneself unconditionally to the higher power. These are the only two ways for realization.

Q: Does not total or complete surrender require that one should not have left even the desire for liberation or God?

A: Complete surrender does require that you have no desire of your own. You must be satisfied with whatever God gives you and that means having no desires of your own.

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

A: There are two ways. One is looking into the source of `I' and merging into that source. The other is feeling `I am helpless by myself, God alone is all-powerful and except by throwing myself completely on him, there is no other means of safety for me. By this method one gradually develops the conviction that God alone exists and that the ego does not count. Both methods lead to the same goal. Complete surrender is another name for jnana or liberation.

ONLY ONE AND ALL–PERVADING SELF

Yesterday, a sadhu came and sat in the Hall. He seemed anxious to speak to Bhagavan, but hesitant. After some time, he approached him and said,

“Swami, it is said that the Self (atma), is all-pervading. Does that mean that it is in a dead body also?”

“Oho! So that is what you want to know?” rejoined Bhagavan. “And did the question occur to the dead body or to you?”

“To me,” said the sadhu.

Bhagavan: “When you are asleep do you question whether you exist or not? It is only after you wake up that you say you exist. In the dream state also, the Self exists.

There is really no such thing as a dead or a living body. That which does not move we call dead, and that which has movement we call alive.

In dreams you see any number of bodies, living and dead, and they have no existence when you wake up. In the same way this whole world, animate and inanimate, is non-existent.

Death means the dissolution of the ego, and birth means the rebirth of the ego. There are births and deaths, but they are of the ego; not of you.

You exist whether the sense of ego is there or not. You are its source, but not the ego-sense.

Deliverance (mukti) means finding the origin of these births and deaths and demolishing the ego-sense to its very roots. That is deliverance. It means death with full awareness.

If one dies thus, one is born again simultaneously and in the same place with Aham sphurana known as ‘Aham, Aham (I, I)’. One who is born thus, has no doubts whatsoever.”

Yesterday evening, after the chanting of the Vedas, a young European who came four or five days ago, asked Bhagavan a number of questions. Bhagavan, as usual, countered him with the question, “Who are you? Who is asking these questions?” Unable to get any other elucidation, the young man as a last resort asked Bhagavan which verse of the Gita he liked the most, and Bhagavan replied that he liked them all. When the young man still persisted in asking which was the most important verse, Bhagavan told him, Chapter X, Verse 20 which runs:

“I am the Self, Oh Gudakesa ,
seated in the heart of all beings.
I am the beginning and the middle
and the end of all beings.”

The questioner was pleased and satisfied and on taking leave, said, “Swami, this unreal self is obliged to travel owing to the exigencies of work. I pray that you may be pleased to recommend that this unreal self be merged into the real Self.”

Bhagavan, smiling, replied, “Such a recommendation might be necessary where there are a number of different selves — one to ask for a recommendation, one to recommend and one to hear the recommendation. But there are not so many selves. There is only one Self. Everything is in the one Self.”

Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, 11th September, 1947


He who instructs an ardent seeker to do this or that is not a true master. The seeker is already afflicted by his activities and wants Peace and Rest. In other words he wants cessation of his activities. Instead of that he is told to do something in addition to, or in place of, his other activities. Can that be a help to the seeker? Activity is creation; activity is the destruction of one's inherent happiness. If activity be advocated the adviser is not a master but the killer. Either the Creator (Brahma) or Death (Yama) may be said to have come in the guise of such a master. He cannot liberate the aspirant but strengthens his fetters.


~ Sri Ramana Maharshi (Talk 601)






SELF AND INDIVIDUALITY

D: Does not death dissolve the individuality of a person, so that there can be no rebirth, just as the rivers discharged into the ocean lose their individualities?

M: But when the waters evaporate and return as rain on the hills, they once more flow in the form of rivers and fall into the ocean; so also the individualities during sleep lose their separateness and yet return as individuals according to their samskaras or past tendencies. Even so it is in death; and the individuality of the person with samskaras is not lost.

D: How can that be?

M: See how a tree whose branches have been cut, grows again. So long as the roots of the tree remain unimpaired, the tree will continue to grow. Similarly, the samskaras which have merely sunk into the heart on death, but have not perished for that reason, occasion rebirth at the right time; and that is how jivas are reborn.

D: How could the innumerable jivas and the wide universe whose existence is correlative to that of the jivas, sprout up from such subtle samskaras sunk in the heart?

M: Just as the big banyan tree sprouts from a tiny seed, so do the jivas and the whole universe with name and form sprout up from the subtle samskaras.

D: How does individuality emanate from the Absolute Self, and how is its return made possible?

M: As a spark proceeds from fire, individuality emanates from the Absolute Self. The spark is called the ego. In the case of the ajnani, the ego identifies itself with some object simultaneously with its rise. It cannot remain without such association with objects.

This association is due to ajnana, whose destruction is the objective of one’s efforts. If this tendency to identify itself with objects is destroyed, the ego becomes pure and then it also merges into its source. The false identification of oneself with the body is dehatma-buddhi or ‘I-am-the-body’-idea. This must go before good results can follow.



Verses form Guru Vachaka Kovai

95 If it is asked, ‘How has the Supreme Self, the one without a second, come to possess the limitation of the mind, the form of ignorance?’ the reply is, ‘The limitation has attached itself only through the deluded jiva-perspective. In truth, it never attached itself to the Self, consciousness.’

Muruganar: In the same way that, through confusion, a rope is perceived as a snake, consciousness appears as mind through the delusion of the jiva. When one enquires into that matter, no such entity as mind will be seen to exist at all separate from consciousness. Like someone questioning a kind person who looks after his parents very well, ‘How did you acquire this habit of annoying your parents?’ the question itself is fundamentally inappropriate.

96 The little jiva will not rise as a tiny separate ‘I’ – entity from the supreme reality that is the plenitude of consciousness. Only from a ball of fire of finite size can tiny sparks split off, fly away and fall to the ground.

Since consciousness is all pervasive, nothing can arise from within it and then become separate from it. The idea of a separate jiva is therefore just an erroneous idea that arises through ignorance.

Non-existence of the body

97 The body itself does not exist in the unrestricted view of the real Self, but only in outward-turned attention, which is the perspective of the mind that has become deluded through the expansion of maya. Therefore, it is wrong to call the Self, which is the vast expanse of consciousness, the owner-occupier of the body.

98 It is only when you live your life by taking the body alone to be ‘I’ that the external world, constituting of moving and unmoving objects, will manifest itself. Since, for the Self, there is a complete absence of external objects, whether far or near, it is therefore wrong to say that is an unaffected witness.

99 The world does not exist without the body; the body never at any time exists without the mind; the mind does not exist at all apart from consciousness; and consciousness too does not exist apart from being.