Morning
The Swami was asking Bhagavan about the characteristics of a jnani.
Bhagavan said they are all described in books, such as the Bhagavad Gita, but that we must bear in mind that the jnani’s state being one which transcends the mind cannot be described with the help merely of the mind and that all description thereforemust be defective. Only silence can correctly describe their state or characteristics. But silence is more effective than speech. From silence came thought, from thought the ego and from the ego speech. So if speech is effective, how much more effective must its original source be? In this connection Bhagavan related the following story: “Tattvaraya composed a bharani (a kind of poetic composition in Tamiḷ) in honour of his Guru Swarupananda and convened an assembly of learned pandits to hear the work and assess its value. The pandits raised the objection that a bharani was only composed in honour of great heroes capable of killing a thousand elephants, and that it was not in order to compose such a work in honour of an ascetic. Thereupon the author said,‘Let us all go to my Guru and we shall have this matter settled there’. They went to the Guru and, after all had taken their seats, the author told his Guru the purpose of their coming there. The Guru sat silent and all the others also remained in mauna. The whole day passed, night came, and some more days and nights, and yet all sat there silently, no thought at all occurring to any of them and nobody thinking or asking why they had come there. After three or four days like this, the Guru moved his mind a bit, and thereupon the assembly regained their thought activity. They then declared, “Conquering a thousand elephants is nothing beside this Guru’s power to conquer the rutting elephants of all our egos put together. So certainly he deserves the bharani in his honour!”
Afternoon
A lady visitor from Sri Aurobindo’s Ashram asked Bhagavan, “When I concentrate, all sorts of thoughts rise and disturb me. The more I try, the more thoughts rise up. What should I do?”
Bhagavan: Yes. It will be so. All that is inside will try to come out. There is no other way except to pull up the mind each time it wants to go astray and to fix it on the Self. Bhagavan quoted the verse in the Bhagavad Gita which says that as often as the wavering mind goes after anything, it should be drawn away and fixed in the Self.
Siva Mohan Lal asked Bhagavan, “When I concentrate here in Bhagavan’s presence, I am able to fix my thought on the Self easily. But in my place it takes a long time and much trouble to do so. Now why should it be so, especially as I feel convinced that Bhagavan is everywhere and is my antaryami?” I said, “It must of course be so. Though we are told that God is immanent everywhere, are we not also told that he is more manifest in some objects or places than in others, e.g., in temples, and images or avatars?”
Bhagavan said, “Ask Muruganar, who is here. He has sung a song where he says Ramanasramam is not simply here for him, but everywhere.” Thereupon Muruganar read out the following stanza from Ramana Devamalai. Which means, ‘Because (by His grace) the mind has attained quiescence and remains calm everywhere as it used to remain at Ramanasramam, wherever I may go in this world it is to me Ramanasramam, to which even devas go with keen desire.’ In other words, Ramanasramam is chid akasa which is everywhere and to which we gain access by killing the mind. Bhagavan added, “Time and place really do not exist. Even in the radio we have a hint of this truth. We have Hyderabad here. What is sung there, we hear here at the same time as it is sung there. Where is time and place?”
Dr.Srinivasa Rao asked Bhagavan, “What is the meaning of being in sleepless sleep?”
Bhagavan: It is the jnani’s state. In sleep our ego is submerged and the sense organs are not active. The jnani’s ego has been killed and he does not indulge in any sense activities of his own accord or with the notion that he is the doer. So he is in sleep. At the same time he is not unconscious as in sleep, but fully awake in the Self; so his state is sleepless. This sleepless sleep, wakeful sleep, or what ever it may be called, is the turiya state of the Self, on which as the screen, all the three avasthas, the waking, dream and sleep, pass, leaving the screen unaffected.”
Bhagavan said that instead of holding on to that which exists, we are looking for that which does not. We bother about the past and the future, not realising the truth of the present. We do not know the ‘A§’ (beginning) or the ‘@kRm’ (end). But we know the middle. If we find out the truth of this, we shall know the beginning and the end. Bhagavan quoted from Bhagavad Gita: “I am in the heart of all beings and am their beginning, middle and end.” Bhagavan also said the reality is only mauna and quoted Thayumanavar:
(i.e., If we scrutinise all the religions which look so different, we find nothing discrepant at all in them, but they are only your (Lord’s) sport. They all end in quiescence or mauna, as rivers merge in the sea).
In this connection Bhagavan also said, when one talks of brahmakara vritti for the mind, it is something like saying samudrakara nadi, about the river which has merged in the ocean.
Night
Following Bhagavan’s quotation from the Gita, Rishikesananda referred to a verse from Mandukya Upanishad in which the words adi and anta occur. Bhagavan took it out and explained the text, which says: “That which was not in the beginning and which won’t be at the end, but which is only in the middle, can’t be real. Only that can be real which is not only in the middle, but also at the beginning and the end”.
Dr.Srinivasa Rao asked Bhagavan, “When we enquire within ‘who am I?’ what is that?”
Bhagavan: It is the ego. It is only that which makes the vichara also. The Self has no vichara. That which makes the enquiry is the ego. The ‘I’ about which the enquiry is made is also the ego. As the result of the enquiry the ego ceases to exist and only the Self is found to exist.
I asked Bhagavan, “It seems this morning Rishikesananda quoted some text which says wherever the mind goes, that is samadhi. How can that be? Our mind goes after whatever it likes. Can that be samadhi?”
Bhagavan: That passage refers to jnanis. Whatever they may be doing, there is no break in their samadhi state. Their bodies may be engaged in whatever activities they were intended by prarabdha to go through. But they are always in the Self. We associate or identify ourselves with the body; whatever it does, we say we do. The Bhagavad Gita says, ‘The wise man will think the senses move among the sense objects and be unattached to the activities of the sense organs.’ I would go farther and say that the jnani does not think even that. He is the Self and sees nothing apart from himself. What the Bhagavad Gita says in the above passage is for the abhyasi or the practiser. There is noharm in engaging in whatever activities naturally come to one. The hindrance or bondage is in imagining that we are the doers and attaching ourselves to the fruits of such activities.
In this connection Bhagavan also said, “A man says ‘I came from Madras’. But in reality ‘he’ did not come. The jutka or some other vehicle brought him from his house to the railway station, the train brought him to Tiruvannamalai railway station, and from there some other cart brought him here. But he says ‘I came’. This is how we identify ourselves with the acts of the body and the senses.” Bhagavan also quoted from the Vedanta Cūḍāmaṇi to the effect that the activities of the jnani are all samadhi, i.e. he is always in his real state, whatever his body may happen to be doing. Bhagavan also referred to Rajeswarananda and said that once he planned to take a big party of pilgrims with Bhagavan in their midst.
Bhagavan said, “I did not consent to go and the thing had tobe dropped. What is there I could go and see? I see nothing.What is the use of my going anywhere?” (“”) This is one of those self-revealing statements, which sometimes escape Bhagavan’s lips.
The following remarks were also made by Bhagavan this night:
“The jnani sees he is the Self and it is on that Self as the screen that the various cinema-pictures of what is called the world pass. He remains unaffected by the shadows which play on the surface of that screen.
“See with the ‘E]dLi’ (the physical eye), and you see the world. See with the ‘Oô]dLi’ (the eye of realisation), everything appears ‘©WmUUVm’ (as the Self).“To see an object that is in the dark, both the eye and the light of a lamp are required. To see the light only, the eye is enough. But to see the sun, there is no need of any other light.
Even if you take the lamp with you, its light will be drowned in the light of the sun. Our intellect or buddhi is of no use to realise the Self. To see the world or external objects, the mind and the reflected light (or chidabhasa) which always arises with it are necessary. To see the Self, the mind has simply to be turned inside and there is no need of the reflected light.“If we concentrate on any thought and go to sleep in that state, immediately on waking the same thought will continue in our mind. People who are given chloroform are asked to countone, two, etc. A man who goes under after saying six for instance will, when he again comes to, start saying seven, eight, etc.
“In some books, the ego is compared to a leech; before leaving one body it takes hold of another.”