Category Archives: TEACHERS
Three Methods for Self Realization: By Sri Ramana Maharshi
Bhagavan Ramana explained the three approaches or methods to strengthen Self-Inquiry and gain Self-Realization. Continue reading
Conscious Yoga Dance: Meeting of Two Sacred Expressions
Conscious Yoga Dance is for me a Dream come true. By joining Yoga and a creative inner expression, Dance, I have reached another level, finding freedom in the discipline.
I designed Conscious Yoga Dance as a connection between Yoga and Dance to tune our mind to our inner flow.
Conscious Yoga dance allows your body to come fully alive and express itself, building an energy field and breaking inner boundaries. It allows us to become more and more in tune with ourselves, expressing the body connection to the universal flow of life through music and movement.
After practicing Yoga for several years I have experienced a deep inner peace, harmony and flexibility in mind and body. The inter-connection of mind-body-spirit has become a reality for me feeling oneness. Learning how to spread this feeling of Unity is what brings me to study, practice and teach yoga. It has leaded me to find the way in which I can fulfill others and myself in a magnificent way. Continue reading
As I Saw Him: By S.S. Cohen
THE THIRD OF FEBRUARY 1936, early morning, saw my horse cart rolling on the uneven two-and-a-half mile road from Tiruvannamalai railway station to Ramanasramam. Two sleepless nights in the train from Bombay found me tired in body and mind. My head was swimming and my senses confused. I had hoped for some rest at the Ashrama, but when I arrived there at last there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Continue reading
Essential Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
In the following extract from Gems from Bhagavan, we are reminded of the essence of Bhagavan Ramana’s teaching and inspired to realize the True Self. Continue reading
As I Saw Him: By Sadhu Arunachala
The most authentic sources for Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi’s teaching are Bhagavan’s own words and also the recollections of Bhagavan devotees. How Bhagavan spoke and acted in the world also is noteworthy as the purest teachings of the Self emanated from his very being. I will be sharing some of my favorite stories of Bhagavan as told by the devotees. Continue reading
The Journey of the Soul – II
This is in continuation of a Journey of the Soul – I
That is how it comes about that in scientific terms, one cannot prove that energy. What can be proven is only that which has motion. Yet motion is such that at the moment you view it, it changes, and you do not have a true picture of that motion at its most subtle level. That is why we know so little, from laboratory experiments, of the mind. Yet a whole vast range of the mind, over 90 percent, exists which is unexplored. As technology develops, there will be instruments or certain inventions which will probe a bit deeper into the mind. The 10 percent, explored, can become 15, 20 or 30 percent. But we want to know here and know the entirety of the mind, and the mind, being so involved in itself, cannot know itself.
When you are involved in a problem, an emotional problem, you cannot think straight because you are involved. But if you separate yourself from the machinations of the mind, you can view the mind from a different perspective altogether. That is why we have counselors, so that when you are in a rut (someone told me the other day, a rut is nothing else but a coffin with both ends open), you can go to a counselor who can view the subject or the problem objectively, because he is not emotionally involved. Many times people involved in a business deal will say, “let me sleep on this” That means that at this moment I am so involved in this problem that I need to let my mind rest. Tomorrow I shall look at the proposition with a rested mind, more objectively. In this process what travels from point to point is nothing else but the mind.
Now, where can the mind travel to? That is the other question. We have said that the spirit within a human being, or the spirit which pervades the universe, is omnipresent. If the manifestor is omnipresent, then its manifestation must be omnipresent too. Where is there a place for the mind to go? What happens is this: There is just a shifting of energies in the mind. Because there is contraction and expansion going on all the time in the universe, polarities are created. You lift the weight from this side of the scale, and you add some weight on the other side of the scale. The pendulum is forever swinging from one end to the other, and that is happening in the universe. That is what is known as contraction and expension. So the mind goes from nowhere to nowhere, while the energies are just shifting.
Through spiritual practices, we are also working with energies. We are also activating energies, but activating grosser energies and very systematically leading those grosser energies toward the more and more subtle energies which are in the mind. The mind has the conscious level, various strata of the subconscious level, and the superconscious level. All this falls under manifestation, and all manifestation is relative. It is relative to the Absolute.
Within the confines of this whole scheme of things, relativity has its gradations: The conscious mind, which is gross; the subconscious mind, including the various subtler levels of the subconscious mind (psychiatrists and psychologists only delve 10-15 percent into the subconscious layers) and beyond that vast subconscious field, the superconscious mind. So we start with the subconscious mind and lead it gently through the layers of the subconscious to the superconscious until we experience the finest, subtlest relative. When we experience that, we can safely say that we have the universe in the palm of our hand.
So there lies the movement from grossness to its subtler levels; yet it is standing still. All the movement in the ocean you see is surface movement. Really speaking, the ocean is not moving. It is there. So, if we think of movement and that which lies between the area of Silence to Silence, nothing has moved. Silence reamains the same and the superimposition remains the same. So, traveler, where do you come from and where are you going to? Nowhere.
It is all here and now. Of course, there are the theories of reincarnation and karma and “reap what you sow.” They also are true at certain levels. But in reality, a person moves nowhere, and the apparent movement is only the mind experiencing itself at its subtler and subtler levels. That is the greatest illusion: By thinking that I move, I sit still.
For the mind to experience the subtler states, various forms of evolution are necessary, and this evolution from very gross matter to the present stage of humanity has taken millions of years, proceeding through various forms. Yet the substance of all those forms is not different. The substance that makes up the vegetable kingdom is the same substance that makes up the animal kingdom, which is the same substance that makes up the human kingdom. In essence, the substance remains the same. What is this body? It is nothing but food.
These very same substances, assuming different shapes and forms are given names. This table and I are not at all different from each other; we are of the same substance. This table is at a grosser level, and I, having developed the power of thought, am at a more subtle level. That’s the only difference. This table cannot think, the animal cannot think, but I can think; it is just a matter of degree, not of difference in substance. The molecular and atomic structural framework of this table is the same that structures me. The great illusion is accentuated in human beings, because people have reached that certain evolutionary stage where they are thinking.
The great illusion comes about because a person thinks that he thinks, while he is not really thinking. The less a person thinks, the more he experiences. The very process of thought, if wrongly used, can be the wall between the changing unreality and the unchanging reality. That does not mean that we need to destroy the mind – the mind is a great instrument and is to be used.
A sharp knife given to a delinquent boy can be dangerous. But the same sharp instrument in the hands of a surgeon can help perform an operation. So the mind has to be consciously directed. The power and force of the entire universe is contained in the mind, but it has to be directed.
If the mind tries to direct itself, then many things can happen, including misdirection, because the instrument is trying to work upon itself. So we use meditation and spiritual practices to go deep to the superconscious level, which is the closest to the manifestor. We let those subtler energies remodify the thought patterns of the conscious mind, for the conscious mind is a conditioned mind, and we’ve got to use a subtler force to be able to repattern and overcome the conditionings of the conscious mind.
Most of our troubles are of the conscious level. These are in turn pushed forth from the subconscious level. The left hemisphere of the brain, which is said to control thinking, analysis, verbalizing, and symbolizing, is connected to, not apart from, the right hemisphere of the brain, the part that is said to be a link to the intutive ability and the universal mind. Through meditation and spiritual practices we enliven this connection, first in the organ of the brain, and then in its subtler layer, which we call the mind, it’s subtler self. The entirety of the mind has been grossified into the organ called the brain to give us the individuality that we have. Of this brain, three pounds in weight, containing twelve billion cells, we use only one millionth part.
So, by activating the right hemisphere, we are energizing the left hemisphere, and therefore there is greater clarity of thought, greater concentration, and greater one-pointedness: and all these qualities plus others make one’s life successful. Not only we are using the energies of the left hemisphere, but, as a result of spiritual practices, we are also drawing upon the intuitive level. If we combine the analytical with the intuitional, how much more forceful our actions become, how much more truthful our thinking becomes. In this way we are led to right thought and right action.
So after practice, over a period of time, the mind gradually starts functioning in a spontaneous manner, to do that which is right. Then thinking is not necessary; you just do. You would, for example, come to a fork in the road, and you would just ver spontaneously take the right road. Your analytical mind will not tell you why or how you did it.
What is working is that intuitional level, which fulfills your every need, not your every want. With “want” the left hemisphere comes into play: “I want a million pounds, I want a 50-room mansion, I want this, and I want that.” That kind of analysis leads only to ego-boosting.
Now, all this exists within the framework of the traveling from Silence to Silence. This is the motion that is created. When that which we are calling the left hemisphere dominates us, we are enmeshed in our ego-selves, which know only this: me and mine.
If the mind is empowered by what we are calling the right hemisphere, the intuitional level which has its roots in the core’s of one personality, which we also call the heart, then “me” and “mine” disappears and it is “thee” and “thine.” For the core of the human personality, though outwardly seeming individualized, also exists in its universilezed form. So what happens to a person is this: He can exist as an individual and yet at the same time be universal, for he has now realized, through his spiritual sadhana , how vast he is. When this happens, a person, being divine, recognizes and experiences this Divinity.
to be continued in Journey of the Soul – III
Soon coming.
We Did Not Go To Him For Profit: By T.K. Sundaresa Iyer
Note: T.K. Sundaresa Iyer (T.K.S) met Sri Ramana in 1908 when T.K.S was only a twelve year old boy. Bhagavan, although a full blown Self-Realized sage, was also quite young and in his late 20’s. Many early devotees have described how Bhagavan by his sheer look would give them experience of the Self. However, this was not true in every case.
T.K.S’s cousin Krishnamurthy had been visiting Bhagavan Ramana regularly and would sing songs of devotion to him. One day T.K.S asked his cousin where he went every day. Krishnamurthy told him about Ramana and said, “The Lord of the Hill Himself is sitting in human form, why don’t you come with me.” Both of them then climbed the Hill and went to Virupksha cave to visit the Sage.
Now the story in T.K.S.’s own words:
I too climbed the Hill and found Bhagavan sitting on a stone slab, with about 10 devotees around him. Each would sing a song. Bhagavan turned to me and asked, “Well, won’t you sing a song also.” One of Sundramurthy’s songs came to my mind and I sang it. It’s meaning was, “No other support have I, except thy holy feet. By holding on to them, I shall win your grace. Great men sing your praise Oh, Lord. Grant that my tongue may repeat Thy name even when my mind strays.”
“Yes. That is what must be done,” said Bhagavan, and I took it to be his teaching for me. From that time on, I went to see him regularly for several years without missing a day.
One day I wondered why I was visiting him at all. What was the use? There seemed to be no inner advancement. Going up the hill was meaningless toil. I decided to end my visits on the hill.
For one hundred days exactly I did not see Bhagavan. On the hundred and first day I could suffer no longer and I ran to Skandasramam, above Virupaksha Cave. Bhagavan saw me climbing, got up and came forward to meet me. When I fell at his feet, I could not restrain myself and burst into tears. I clung to them and would not get up.
Bhagavan pulled me up and asked: “It is over three months since I saw you. Where were you?” I told him how I thought that seeing him was of no use. “All right,” he said, “maybe it is of no use, so what? You felt the loss, did you not?”
Then I understood that we did not go to him for profit, but because away from him there was no life for us.
From “At the Feet of Bhagwan” by T.K. Sundaresa Iyer.
Surrender and Salvation: By Voruganti Krishnayya
Voruganti Krishnayya was a great devotee of Bhagavan Sri Ramana. He has narrated many incidents that he observed while in Bhagavan’s company. The following story is one of my favorite.
Bhagavan Ramana
Bhagavan was most tender with people who thought themselves for some reason or other to be miserable sinners and who went to him torn by repentance.
During summer evenings we used to sit in the open space near the well. We would collect in the dining hall for dinner and come back to the well. Suddenly, one day, a visitor started weeping bitterly, “I am a horrible sinner. For a long time I have been coming to your feet, but there is no change in me. Can I become pure at last? How long am I to wait? When I am here near you I am good for a time, but when I leave this place I become a beast again. You cannot imagine how bad I can be – hardly a human being. Am I to remain a sinner forever?”
Bhagavan answered: “Why do you come to me? What have I to do with you? What is there between us that you should come here and weep and cry in front of me?”
The man started moaning and crying even more, as if his heart were breaking. “All my hopes of salvation are gone. You were my last refuge and you say you have nothing to do with me! To whom shall I turn now? What am I to do? To whom am I to go?”
Bhagavan watched him for some time and said, “Am I your guru that I should be responsible for your salvation? Have I ever said that I am your master?”
“If you are not my master, then who is? And who are you, if not my master? You are my guru, you are my guardian angel, you will pity me and release me from my sins!” He started sobbing and crying again.
We all sat silent, overcome with pity. Only Bhagavan looked alert and matter-of-fact.
Bh: “If I am your guru, what are my fees? Surely you should pay me for my services.”
D: “But you won’t take anything,” cried the visitor. “What can I give you?”
Bh: “Did I ever say that I don’t take anything? And did you ever ask me what you can give me?”
D: “If you would take, then ask me. There is nothing I would not give you.”
Bh: “All right. Now I am asking. Give me. What will you give me ?”
D: “Take anything, all is yours.”
Bh: “Then give me all the good you have done in this world.”
D: “What good could I have done? I have not a single virtue to my credit.”
Bh: “You have promised to give. Now give. Don’t talk of your credit. Just give away all the good you have done in your past.”
D: “Yes, I shall give. But how does one give? Tell me how the giving is done and I shall give.”
Bh: “Say like this: ‘All the good I have done in the past I am giving away entirely to my guru. Henceforth I have no merit from it nor have I any concern with it.’ Say it with your whole heart.”
D: “All right, Swami, I am giving away to you all the good I have done so far, if I have done any, and all its good effects. I am giving it to you gladly, for you are my master and you are asking me to give it all away to you.”
Bh: “But this is not enough,” said Bhagavan sternly.
D: “I gave you all I have and all you asked me to give. I have nothing more to give.”
Bh: “No, you have. Give me all your sins.”
D: The man looked wildly at Bhagavan, terror stricken. “You do not know, Swami, what you are asking for. If you knew, you would not ask me. If you take over my sins, your body will rot and burn. You do not know me, you do not know my sins. Please do not ask me for my sins.” And he wept bitterly.
Bh: “I shall look after myself, don’t you worry about me,” said Bhagavan. “All I want from you is your sins.”
For a long time the bargain would not go through. The man refused to part with his sins. But Bhagavan was adamant.
Bh: “Either give me your sins along with your merits, or keep both and don’t think of me as your master.”
In the end the visitor’s scruples broke down and he declared: “Whatever sins I have done, they are no longer mine. All of them and their results, too, belong to Ramana.”
Bhagavan seemed to be satisfied. “From now on there is no good nor bad in you. You are just pure. Go and do nothing, neither good nor bad. Remain yourself, remain what you are.”
A great peace fell over the man and over us all. No one knows what happened to the fortunate visitor; he was never seen in the Ashrama again. He might have been in no further need of coming.
Bhagavan Ramana
The Journey of the Soul – I
Gururaj Ananda Yogi used to speak in his satsangs about the path of unfoldment, to emphasize the fact that there is no development, the soul is completely developed, there is just an unfolding. But in this path, that goes from Silence to Silence: What is traveling? Have we traveled a path or have we not traveled at all. And if it has been a journey: Who experiences this journey?
We “know” that the spirit of the human being, or the universal spirit, is omnipresent. It has nowhere to go and nowhere to come from. It just is. So what journeys? Is it really and experience, or is it an illusion? Even if it is an illusion, then how is illusion experienced? All illusion or delusion is just a counterpart of reality, as it’s own “non-existence” exists within that It that we call reality.
We come from nowhere and we are going nowhere, but just give a little space between the “w” and the “h”. You are now here and that is the important factor to recognize in practical life. Nevertheless, the mind has a habit of inquiring.
IFSU Flag
The mind is conditioned through the process of evolution into going through various stages whereby it gains these experiences. Who gains the experiences? The mind gains the experiences.
A HUMAN BEING HAS THE CAPACITY TO EXPERIENCE THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE; THE SPIRIT CANNOT
So, the experiences having been gained by the mind, of the mind, and from the mind bring us to a simple idea: There is nothing outside the mind. The human mind is as vast as the entire universe, and if you individualize it, it only means that you are viewing one bubble in a vast pond. And that bubble has no separate existence from the pond. A human being has the capacity within himself to experience, with the mind, the entirety of the universe; while the spirit remains aloof, for the spirit cannot experience this journey. Therefore we say, “From Silence we proceed, and we return to Silence.” It means that the mind that has been manifested, as fragrance is from a flower, goes through this journey, be it illusion or not, and then finds itself at total “at-one-ment” with the spirit. That is the journey, so in reality there has been no journey.
But the mind assumes that this is a journey, that there is a journey. What are the reasons for this? The spirit just is, while the mind travels thinks it is traveling from here to there. From the beginning of the present cycle of this universe there is a manifestation, wrongly called creation, because creation requires a will behind, while manifestation is just an emanation. It is the nature of the manifestor to manifest, like it is the nature of a flower to give off fragrance, but there is no will involved. The powers in the manifestation are known in sanskrit as the three gunas, tamas rajas and satvas. It is this interaction between darkness and light that operates in the manifestation of this universe, which is the Universal Mind also.
THE MIND CREATES EXPERIENCE
The entire mind, or the universe, is nothing else but a propulsion which seemingly goes forth in our concept of linear time and space. In the third dimension that we exist in, we find this movement proceeding from A to B, while beyond the mind there is no space and no time. Like Blake said, “Eternity in an hour”, we would rather say, in a moment.
Gururaj Ananda Yogi and Raman in Cyprus
In this process put forth through manifestation in which the three gunas operate, the mind feels itself traveling. Why does it feel itself traveling; why does itself feel mixed up in the process of evolution? In this process of contraction and expansion generated by the three gunas, matter and it’s various atomic structures is always in motion. The mind enmeshed in this process of contraction and expansion thinks it is moving.
If you watch a wave in the ocean, you think the wave is coming from a distance and going to the shore. This is not so. There is a rhythm in the ocean created by currents where each wave is bobbing up and down where it is, and the next then bobs up and down, and so on so forth giving us the illusion that the wave is moving from that end to the shore. Likewise there is the flux of the universe, the perpetual motion that perpetuates itself, within itself, by itself, because its nature is motion. What we are trying to find is that which is silent behind all the motion: for that which is motion cannot be silent, and that which is silent can have no motion. Very simple.
The mind because it has the ability to act and interact within its own components, becomes more and more complex, and it is this very complexity that adds onto the motion of the mind. The mind creates the experience, and the mind itself is the experiencer, for the eternal spirit within humanity is beyond all experience of motion or anything else. It just is. Here it is a question of a superimposition.
Heat rises from the sun. The sun does not intentionally create the heat: it is the nature of the sun to give off heat. Similarly, that eternal energy, in its very silent form, first manifests itself as mind.
When mind assumes this motion, it also finds a direction, and this direction is what we term as will- Divine Will. Because there was Divine Will, all this you observe, including our individual wills, has come about.
This is very true from from the theological point of view and the philosophical point of view. But from the mystical point of view, this truth assumes a totally different approach: In the manifestation which one could call Divine Will , the Will itself becomes the individual mind. Here there is no differentiation between mind and will. Ordinarily it is the directed activity of an individual mind, which is self-created, that is called will.
When manifestation occurs, this divine force, in the process of manifestation, has to grossify itself in the form of matter, or grosser energies. From the subtlest level of that silent energy, ever inaccessible like in limits in mathematics, this divine force assumes the form of activated energy, and the more that energy is activated, the grosser and grosser it becomes. This is why science today can neither reach nor explain the entire structure of atoms. Scientists talk of sub atomic matter and sub-sub atomic matter, but when coming to experimental experience it will be impossible to capture the nature of that energy, as the very test-tube they are using is made of the same energy in which they are trying to trap it in.
What can be proven is only that which has motion. Yet motion is such that at the moment you view it, it changes, and viewer in it’s own changing cannot have a true picture of that motion at its most subtlest level. That is why we know so little, from laboratory experiments, of the mind. (to be continued…)
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