Question and Answer session with Bhagawan.

Talks with Ramana Maharshi (Talk 31)
4th February, 1935

A visitor asked: What to do to get liberation (moksha)?

M.: Learn what liberation is.

D.: Should I do worship (upasana) for it?
M.: Worship is for mind control (chitta nirodha) and concentration.

D.: Should I do idol worship? Is there any harm in it?
M.: So long as you think you are the body there is no harm.

D.: How to get over the cycle of births and deaths?
M.: Learn what it means.

D.: Should I not leave my wife and family?
M.: How do they harm you? First find out who you are.

D.: Should not one give up wife, wealth, home?
M.: Learn first what samsara is. Is all that samsara? Have there not been men living among them and getting realisation?

D.: What are the steps of practical training (sadhana) for it?
M.: It depends on the qualifications and the nature of the seeker.

D.: I am doing idol worship.
M.: Go on with it. It leads to concentration of mind. Get one-pointed. All will come out right. People think that freedom (moksha) is somewhere yonder and should be sought out. They are wrong. Freedom (moksha) is only knowing the Self within yourself. Concentrate and you will get it. Your mind is the cycle of births and deaths (samsara).

D.: My mind is very unsteady. What should I do?
M.: Fix your attention on any single thing and try to hold on to it. All will be right.

D.: I find concentration difficult.
M.: Go on practising. Your concentration will be as easy as breathing. That will be the crown of your achievements.

D.: Are not abstinence and pure food helpful?
M.: Yes, all that is good. (Then Maharshi concentrates and silently gazes at vacancy, and thus sets an example to the questioner).

D.: Do I not require Yoga?
M.: What is it but the means to concentration?

D.: To help concentration, is it not good to have some aids?
M.: Breath-regulation, etc., are such helps.

D.: Is it not possible to get a vision of God?
M.: Yes. You see this and that. Why not see God? Only you must know what God is. All are seeing God always. But they do not know it. You find out what God is. People see, yet see not, because they know not God.

D.: Should I not go on with repetition of sacred syllables, (mantra japa), e.g., Krishna or Rama's name, when I worship images?
M.: Mental japa is very good. That helps meditation. Mind gets identified with the repetition and then you get to know what worship (puja) really is - the losing of one's individuality in that which is worshipped.

D.: Is the Universal Soul (Paramatma) always different from us?
M.: That is the common belief, but it is wrong. Think of Him as not different from you, and then you achieve identity of Self with God.

D.: Is it not the Advaita doctrine to become one with God?
M.: Where is becoming? The thinker is all the while the Real. He ultimately realises the fact. Sometimes we forget our identities, as in sleep and dreams. But God is perpetual consciousness.

D.: Is not the Master's guidance necessary, besides idol worship?
M.: How did you start it without advice?
D.: From sacred books (puranas).
M.: Yes. Someone tells you of God, or Bhagavan Himself tells you.
In the latter case God Himself is your Master. What matters it who the Master is? We really are one with Master or Bhagavan. The Master is God; one discovers it in the end. There is no difference between human-guru and God-guru.

D.: If we have done virtuous action (punya) the achievement will not leave us. I hope.
M.: You will reap your destiny (prarabdha) that way.

D.: Will not a Wise Master be a great help in pointing out the way?
M.: Yes. If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you.

D.: Is there a difference between prapatti (self-surrender) and the Path of Yoga of the Seers?
M.: Jnana Marga and Bhakti Marga (prapati) are one and the same.
Self-surrender leads to realisation just as enquiry does. Complete self-surrender means that you have no further thought of `I'. Then all your predispositions (samskaras) are washed off and you are free. You should not continue as a separate entity at the end of either course.

D.: Do not we go to Heaven (svarga), etc. as the result of our actions?
M.: That is as true as the present existence. But if we enquire who we are and discover the Self, what need is there to think of heaven, etc.?

D.: Should I not try to escape rebirth?
M.: Yes. Find out who is born and who has the trouble of existence now. When you are asleep do you think of rebirths or even the present existence, etc.? So find out whence the present problem arises and there is the solution also. You will discover that there is no birth, no present trouble or unhappiness, etc. All is That; All is Bliss; we are freed from rebirth in fact. Why fret over the misery of rebirth?

Leave the shyness behind.

Four Gems from Ashtavakra Gita

1. Bondage is when the mind longs for something,grieves about something, rejects something, holds on to something, is pleased about something or displeased about something.

2. Liberation is when the mind does not long for anything, grieve about anything, reject anything, or hold on to anything, and is not pleased about anything or displeased about anything.

3. Bondage is when the mind is tangled in one of the senses, and liberation is when the mind is not tangled in any of the senses. 

4. When there is no "me," that is liberation, and when there is "me" there is bondage. Consider this carefully, and neither hold on to anything nor reject anything.

ASHTAVAKRA GITA

Do we get paranoid, when death is near ?

 

Ram Dass : I sit with a lot of people who are dying these days because I am very interested in seeing whether we can develop a metaphor for dying that isn’t quite as horrendous as the one we have going in the West. Because our metaphor for dying comes out of philosophical materialism where a person that is dying is surrounded by people who are saying “you got to be up and around tomorrow. Don’t talk nonsense about death.” Then they walk out into the corridor and say “she won’t last the night.” I mean, just total hypocrisy.

While you can’t kill anybody you can’t prolong life. You only know whether or not life is to go on or not when you are yourself not afraid of death. Otherwise your fear totally distorts your perception all the time and you just panic when somebody is near death. Recently Wavy Gravy called me up, he is a very beautiful guy. Wavy said there was a boy who was dying here in San Francisco, and asked if I would visit him. And I said sure, so I went over and visited with him. He was about 23 years old and he was dying of Hodgkin’s disease. It was last August. We met at Tom Wolf’s house, and I went over to the kid and I said to him “I hear your going to die soon.” He says “yeah.” I said “you want to talk about it?” He says “ok.” So we started to talk about dying. After a while he went to light a cigarette and I noticed that his hand was shaking, he was very thin and weak. And I suddenly got totally paranoid and I felt like “gee what right have I got to be coming onto to him? After all, he’s the one that’s dying.” So I said “hey if I am coming onto you, you know, just tell me to go away. I don’t have to do this.” And he says “well, being with you is getting me nervous, but the reason is because as death is approaching I’ve been looking for the strength to die and you are the first person I’ve met who doesn’t seem to be afraid of dying. And that’s just what I am looking for.”

And I feel like a child in this scene, and I’m just so excited by it that I am shaking. He was giving me the license – he was giving me the license to be with him. And we went on being together for quite a while and then he died later on. And what I recognize now – there’s a woman that just died in New York last year, her name was Debbie Matheson – she’s a beautiful woman. She was in her forties, she had two children and she was married to an author by the name of Peter Matheson. She was connected with the Zen Center in New York City, and when she was dying she was put in Mount Sinai Hospital to die. So the Zen students all came to her room every night and meditated and they turned the room into a Zen temple. And what happened was the first night they did this the doctors, the three young residents came to visit her room making their rounds, which usually consists of pushing open the door with that kind of hearty hail good fellow well-met type, you know, “how we doing today? Did we eat well today? Let’s look at that chart.” You know, that type of thing. They walked in and they faced all these beings sitting like this with candles and incense and the room was darkened and it freaked them out completely. And the second night they came in a little more gently, and by the third they would open the door very quietly and come in and stand in awe for a little while and then go away.

There, right in the middle of Mount Sinai they redefined a whole new metaphor, a metaphor that can be created through the strength of mind because you can create your universe anywhere you are. Once you recognize that, a hospital is merely a collectivity of minds who share a certain model about what it is all about. And the problem is that this society is one where the medicine men are knowledgeable, but not wise. And with the recognition of that, we are now seeking wisdom not just knowledge in our healers. And wisdom has in it compassion. And compassion understands about life and death.

A doctor is committed by the Hippocratic Oath to save life, but she or he does not have to be attached to that. They merely do that in the same way a bus driver drives a bus. It is the emotional attachment that they have to it that comes out of their own fear of death that is the problem in medicine at this moment in the West. And hopefully within a few years we will have an 800 number telephone number like you do for getting a motel reservation where if you are going to die in the next few months you can call that number and somebody will come and hang out with you and provide help for you in defining a new metaphor for how you’re going to die. And we’ll have some cassette tapes that you can play when you are in pain that will help you figure out what the pain is about, and how to use it to become more conscious. Because it’s obvious that the way to die is to learn how to live, and the answer to dying is to be present at the moment.
Ram Dass
Berkley Comm. Theater
March 7^th 1973

Source Link : http://www.ramdass.org/a-metaphor-for-dying/

Whatever you have in hand now, direct it towards One Source.

Question: Namaskaram Sadhguru, In one of your discourses, you said we need to direct all our energies towards Shiva. You said, “Whether it is love, lust, anger or greed, everything should be directed towards Shiva.” How is it possible to direct one’s anger, lust and greed? Love is understandable, but the others I do not understand.

Whatever you do in your life, you can only do it with what you have. You cannot do something with what you do not have. So whatever you have, use that. It is not about whether Shiva gets something or not; he really needs nothing from you. The important thing is that you learn to direct all your energy – everything that you are – in one direction. If you do not put everything that you are in one direction, you will not go anywhere.

 

If your love is for Shiva, your lust is for someone in the neighborhood and your hatred is for your friends, you will drive yourself in five directions. One who is trying to drive himself in five directions obviously is not serious about making a journey. But if you put everything in one direction right now, you will go somewhere. I want you to understand – you neither have love, hatred, lust or jealousy in you. You just have life in you. What you make out of it is up to you. You can make love out of it, blissfulness, depression or frustration. You can make it pleasant, unpleasant, ugly or beautiful.


There is a wonderful story…On the way to Mysore, there is a place called Nanjangund. Just after Nanjangund, there is a little ashram on the left side called Mallanna Moolai. Over a hundred years ago, there was a man there named Malla. At that time, Mysore City was one of the few cities in South India which was planned and done-up beautifully because the Maharaja had a sense of aesthetics. He created a wonderful palace and gardens.


People would go to Mysore for everything – commerce, livelihood and pleasure. They would either walk or go in a bullock-cart. But when they came to this corner, which was 16 miles from Mysore, Malla would rob them. People came to find out about this and instead asked if they could make a deal with him. He became like a tax collector, and set up a system where every person that passed would pay him one rupee, which was a big amount of money at that time. The people hated this, so they called him Kalla which means “thief”, and that spot became known as Kallana Moolai which means “thief’s corner.”


He collected money the whole year and then on Mahashivarathri, he celebrated in a grand way and fed the whole town. He didn’t eat up this money, he just had a little piece of land on which he lived, but he robbed everybody and then conducted a big festival for Shiva. So when two Veera Shaivas – sages who were also great devotees of Shiva – came and saw what he was doing, robbing everyone and then having a big Mahashivarathri, they were both embarrassed and intrigued by this form of devotion. They talked him out of this and said, “There are other ways to conduct this festival.” They set up a little ashram and Malla became a monk along with them, and all three of them attained Mahasamadhi.


There are many wonderful stories about how Shiva is most pleased with his devotees – not because they offer a lump of gold or a diamond, but because they offer what they have. The message is, “You offer what you have” because in the very nature of things, you cannot offer what you do not have.
So the question is not about in what form you offer; you just offer your life. In offering, your life becomes one-pointed. Once it becomes one-pointed, it will begin to move. If it is a five-pointed star, it is not going anywhere. It will just create tension in five different directions. If you make a weapon, you want it to penetrate so you make it one-pointed. It has to be sharp. Sharpness means its point is limited.

Love & Grace,

Sadhguru.

"Hum Loag" - Shankar Tucker sings with Mumbai

Words of wisdom from Mooji.

Be aware of this persistent feeling that there's something more to do in order to attain the Self.
Somehow, you have been brought, so far, to a stage where you are encouraged to leave aside all intentions, projections, fantasies and simply keep quiet inside your being.
Mind is inclined to say this is not enough. It is suggesting you take some action. However, the Master tells you to keep quiet and to focus on the Silence of your Heart rather than the rush of the mind. You are advised to avoid the trap of waiting for something to happen.
There may arise a little tension because of this advice to not go with the movement from mind.
Learn to bear your own Silence by observing the tensions encircling it.
Observe rather than react.
Again, keep quiet.
Stay only as Awareness.

~ Mooji

The chess game that God plays with us. What is your next move ? A Poem from Hafiz.

“TRIPPING OVER JOY
What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.”
― Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

  

  

  

Total bhaktas cannot work in the world. People who commit totally to jnana become too proud, so half of each is good. - Papaji.

  

Devotee: I feel that I am in the middle of bhakti (devotion) and jnana (knowledge).

Papaji: Total bhaktas cannot work in the world. People who commit totally to jnana become too proud, so half of each is good.

If you want to know the Truth,
you must have one hundred percent love for the Truth.
In this way there is no difference
between the ways of love and knowledge.
You need love to know
and you need to know what your loving.

Different people may appear to take different paths. The intellectual person is interested in the path of knowledge. The one who has love in their heart will want to see God as love itself. God is love and God is truth.

So, if you are intellectual rub your intellect and find where all the intelligence comes from. You will find it comes from the heart, which is Love. When you love you are loving your own heart.

'Become aware that what is seen is the seeing." - Nisaragadatta

Sit quietly. Stop all thoughts [including day dreaming and all imagining]. Be aware of yourself, this is most important. If you are sitting on a chair be aware of your weight on the seat and of the back of the chair. Sense the pressure of your feet on the ground and of the clothing on your skin -- you bring an observer into the picture by doing this. Whilst stopping thoughts, and being aware of yourself, expand your attention. See all that is facing you and on either side, smell and hear, and without turning around be aware of all those around you. Hold this. Watch what you see, feel, taste, smell and hear. Note what happens inside you. All this with no discursive thoughts.

Just Be aware. Observe -- do not interfere. Do not worry about anything.

Consciously experience. Not as an achievement, or a conclusion or a goal. Become aware that what is seen is the "seeing".

'Become aware that what is seen is the seeing." And then experience seer, seen and seeing, merging into Youself. What remains is "I Am", Hold It. Keep holding It as long as one can. Remain fully aware. If swerved, become aware of yourself once again and just be.

Nisaragadatta Maharaj

Sri Sadhu Om on the Path to Self-Realization

  

  

At first one may not be able to maintain unbroken Self-attention even for a few minutes. Due to long habit, it is only natural that the mind will start to think of some second or third person objects. Each time the attention thus turns outwards, the aspirant again tries to turn it back towards the first person. This process of slackening of Self-attention and then trying to regain it, will repeat itself again and again. If the aspirant’s mind is weak due to deficiency in the love to know Self, the slackening of Self-attention will happen frequently, in which case a struggle will ensue and the mind will soon become tired. Instead of thus repeatedly struggling to regain Self-attention, one should relax the mind for a while as soon as the initial attempt to fix the attention on the first person becomes unsteady, and then again make a fresh attempt. If one thus makes intermittent attempts, each attempt will be found to have a fresh force and a more precise clarity of attention.

      If one presses one’s thumb on a pressure scale, the dial may at first indicate a pressure of ten kilograms. But if one tries to maintain that pressure for a long period of time, the dial will show that it is gradually slackening and decreasing. On the other hand, if one releases the pressure and after a brief rest presses again with fresh vigour, the dial will show a little more than ten kilograms. Similar is the case with Self-attention. If one struggles for a long time to maintain Self-attention, the intensity and clarity of one’s attention will gradually slacken and decrease. But if instead one relaxes as soon as one finds that one’s Self-attention is slackening, and if after a brief rest one makes a fresh attempt to fix one’s attention on Self, that fresh attempt will have a greater intensity and clarity. Therefore, what is important is not so much the length of time one spends trying to attend to Self, but the earnestness and intensity with which one makes each fresh attempt.

      During the time of practice (sadhana) our attention, which is now focused on second and third person objects, has to turn back 180 degrees, so to speak to focus itself on the first person. In the beginning, however, one’s attention may be able to turn only 5, 10 or 15 degrees. This is because one’s turning is resisted by a powerful spring  – the spring of one’s tendencies (vasanas) or subtle desires towards worldly objects. Every time one tries to turn towards the first person, this spring of one’s worldly tendencies will tend to pull one’s mind back again towards second and third persons. Therefore the number of degrees one is able to turn will depend upon the firmness of one’s desirelessness (vairagya) towards worldly objects and upon the strength of one’s longing (bhakti) to know Self. Such vairagyaand bhakti  will be increased in one by regularly practising Self-attention, by earnestly praying to Sri Bhagavan and by constantly associating with such persons or books as will repeatedly remind one, “Only by knowing Self can we attain real and enduring happiness; so long as we do not know Self we will be endlessly courting and experiencing misery; therefore our first and foremost duty in life is to know Self; all other efforts will only end in vain.”

      As one’s desirelessness and longing to know Self thus increase by prayer to the Guru, by study (sravana) of and reflection (manana) upon His teachings, and by practice(nididhyasana) of Self-attention, one’s ability to turn one’s attention towards the first person will also increase, until one will be able to turn it 90, 120 or even 150 degrees at each fresh attempt. When one’s ability to turn one’s attention Selfwards thus increases, one will be able to experience a tenuous current of Self-awareness even while engaged in activity; that is, one will be able to experience an awareness of one’s being which will not be disturbed by whatever one’s mind, speech or body may be doing, in other words, one will be able to remember the feeling ‘I am’ which always underlies all one’s activities. However, this tenuous current of Self-awareness should not be taken to be the state of unceasing Self-attention, because one will experience it only when one feels inclined to do so.  [Emphasis mine]

      How then can one experience the state of unceasing Self-attention, the state of unswerving Self-abidance? The Guru’s Grace will more and more help those aspirants who thus repeatedly practise Self-attention with great love (bhakti) to know Self. When a glowing fire and a blowing wind join together, they play wonders. Likewise, when the glowing fire of love for Self-knowledge and the blowing wind of the Guru’s Grace join together, a great wonder takes place. During one of his fresh attempts, the aspirant will be able to turn his attention a complete 180 degrees towards Self (that is, he will be able to achieve a perfect clarity of Self-awareness, completely uncontaminated by even the least awareness of any second or third person), whereupon he will feel a great change taking place spontaneously and without his effort. His power of attention, which he had previously tried so many times to turn towards Self and which had always slipped back towards second and third persons, will now be caught under the grip of a powerful clutch which will not allow it to turn again towards any second or third person. This clutch is the clutch of Grace. Though Grace has always been helping and guiding one, it is only when one is thus caught by its clutch that one becomes totally a prey to it. If one once turns one’s attention a full 180 degrees towards Self, one is sure to be caught by this clutch of Grace, which will then take one as its own and will forever protect one from again turning towards second and third person objects. This state in which the mind is thus caught by the clutch of Grace and is thereby drowned forever in its source, is known as the experience of true knowledge (jnananubhutl), Self-realization(atmasakshatkaram), liberation (moksha) and so on. This alone can be called the state of unceasing Self-attention.

Significant ebooks who needs support on their path to Self-Realization

 Sri Sadhu Om: The Path of Sri Ramana PART ONE: The Jñana aspect of the teaching:
 http://www.happinessofbeing.com/The_Path_of_Sri_Ramana_Part_One.pdf

 Sri Sadhu Om: The Path of Sri Ramana PART TWO: On God, World, Bhakti and Karma:
http://www.happinessofbeing.com/The_Path_of_Sri_Ramana_Part_Two.pdf

Listening to voice of Anandmayi Ma.

Live Fully Now - Alan Watts

How the tribes in Africa brought the newborn child in the world

There is a tribe in Africa called the Himba tribe, where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they were born, nor from when they are conceived but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind. And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.

And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty, then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song.

In the African tribe there is one other occasion upon which the villagers sing to the child. If at any time during his or her life, the person commits a crime or aberrant social act, the individual is called to the center of the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them.

The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.

And it goes this way through their life. In marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person.

You may not have grown up in an African tribe that sings your song to you at crucial life transitions, but life is always reminding you when you are in tune with yourself and when you are not. When you feel good, what you are doing matches your song, and when you feel awful, it doesn’t. In the end, we shall all recognize our song and sing it well. You may feel a little warbly at the moment, but so have all the great singers. Just keep singing and you’ll find your way home.

The Mind Unleashed
www.themindunleashed.org

Living in the Eternal Now - Amma

To begin to work toward establishing yourself in the eternal now, first limit time and space by not thinking about or discussing events that happened more than four days past or will happen more than four days in the future. This keeps awareness reined in, focused. Be aware. Ask yourself, "Am I fully aware of myself and what I'm doing right now?"

Once you have gained a little control of awareness in this way, try to sit quietly each day and just be. Don't think. Don't plan. Don't remember. Just sit and be in the now. That's not as simple as it sounds, for we are accustomed to novelty and constant activity in the mind and not to the simplicity of being. Just sit and be the energy in your spine and head. Feel the simplicity of this energy in every atom of yourself. Think energy. Don't think body. Don't think about yesterday or tomorrow. They don't exist, except in your ability to reconstruct the yesterdays and to create the tomorrows. Now is the only time. This simple exercise of sitting and being is a wonderful way to wash away the past, but it requires a little discipline. You have to discipline every fiber of your nerve system, work with yourself to keep the power of awareness expanded. Regular practice of meditation will bring you intensely into the eternity of the moment. Practice supersedes philosophy, advice, psychology and all pacifiers of the intellect. We have to practice to keep awareness here and now. If you find yourself disturbed, sit down and consciously quiet the forces in yourself. Don't get up until you have completely quieted your mind and emotions through regulating the breath, through looking out at a peaceful landscape, through seeking and finding understanding of the situation. This is the real work of meditation that is not written much about in books. If you can live in the eternity of now, your life will be one of peace and fulfillment.

Amma.