Speech delivered at "Gayathri", Sri Ram
Nagar, Madras-18, on 10th January 1968
It is well known that Raja Yoga is the method
followed by this system of Sri Ramchandra, but
it is a Raja Yoga that has been taken away from
the hands of monkery, I mean from monks, and
other people who have renounced the world and
are thought to make yoga their special way of
attainment of the Ultimate. I think that this
system radically tries to snatch away the
initiative that has been taken on this subject,
and on this method, by the monks (those ascetic
world-renouncers) and has sought to restore it
to its proper place in the life of the ordinary
man, the householder. That is not a small thing,
for, for nearly two thousand years, the monks
have specialised in certain odd techniques
called, apparently, yoga, but which had hardly
related man or his soul with the Divine being
who is the maker of all things in this universe.
The renunciation of life and its values might
have sounded very necessary to people accustomed
and habituated to that way of thinking, but it
has been discovered by some of the finest minds
of the Vedic period and of late that the way of
life, taught by the monks or the
world-renouncers, is thoroughly wrong. Firstly
because it denies that the Divine has any sense
in creating the world. It denies that the Divine
being, or God, or the original Reality is fully
and perfectly aware of what it is doing. It
condemns God to be the creator of a world
illusion. It says that life is fraught with all
sorts of miseries and, therefore, life itself
has to be renounced. Having been accustomed to
this way of life we have always sought to run
away from life in order to realise God. Well,
you know what the results have been. Yoga has
always been looked down upon not only by the
householders but also by the house-wives, and
every man who had some feeling for practising
yoga was looked upon suspiciously by his family,
and by society also.
During the last one-century we have had some
people denouncing the whole practice of vedanta
which centred on the twin principles of vairagya
and dhyana, whatever they mean. The correction
that was sought to be made by the Indian
reformers during the past one and a half
centuries was directed towards an attack on the
vedanta which counselled renunciation of life
and its values. Undoubtedly there has been a
strong movement which sought to defend vedanta
and the way of renunciation. We have, therefore,
had quite a number of institutions,
philosophical treatises, eloquent and powerful
speeches trying to defend an absolutely
unconvincing Vedantic way of life. I mean that
vedanta which tried to promulgate that doctrine
of world-illusion, and sought to attain moksha
or freedom by the renunciation of all world
values.
Now if this was the condition, and we found
ourselves defeated politically, and defeated
morally in our lives by the promulgation of
these doctrines of the vedanta of the particular
brand which I mentioned, it became clear to many
of us that we want a world-affirming philosophy
rather than a world-denying one. And we wanted a
philosophy which will connect us with God in the
aspect of his creative joy rather than his
uncreative misery and illusions. Now if we study
the tendencies in the several movements, on the
one side we have Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra
Sen, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo where you will find
the world affirmation more important, rather
than the world-denying Ramakrishna-Vivekananda
school on the other.
Today in a world where our world-values have
to be sublimated and divinised, it becomes clear
to us that we must try a way, which will put us
into direct contact with the ultimate Reality. I
can mention, in this context, the studied
efforts of many of these reformers, whether of
the rightist or the leftist variety, the
illusionist and world-denying philosophy, or the
realistic world-affirming philosophy-the fact
that they thought that man was more important,
and that the service of mankind is higher than
the service and knowing of God. Well, we know
what this can lead to. We have many people who
think that it is enough if you serve mankind in
order to attain the Divine. The specious reason
is that once you try to see God in every human
being it would be enough to cultivate the habit
of seeing God in everybody, and serve the God in
everybody. Theoretically it sounds well enough.
Practically, you do not know what service you
can offer to the soul of each individual. I do
not know what justification there can be for the
type of service we are trying to render to
mankind; and whether these several schools or
systems, or these eloquent versions of the
vedanta have uplifted man to a higher degree of
consciousness and concentration of universal
values. One idea has at least been missed -man
is NOT perfect, is NOT the embodiment of God as
he is at present; he has yet to become the
embodiment of God, has yet to become the temple
of God. A stone taken off the street has got
within itself the potentiality of God - and
therefore the worship of every stone in the
street, prostrating before it if you can! Would
it be an argument? If ever you have any fancy
for worshipping idols in the temples-well I
think there is a process of consecration or
deification of a stone. And so also unless you
can deify man you cannot worship him. And what
is the process of deification of man? I consider
we have missed our whole purpose in the
religions when we have taken man at his worst
and thought that he was God himself. We have yet
to develop man as the embodiment of God. We must
make it possible for every human individual to
be divinised, to become an abode of God. And how
this is possible by the service of man in the
hospitals, the service of animals in the
goshalas or in any of the pinjrapoles, or any
other leper-asylums I do not know. Whom are we
trying to sell, let me know. But that doesn't
mean that I am harsh. I don't want you to be
harsh, I want you to be kind.
Everybody must be taken on the higher way,
and the force that can be given to every person
or every bit of the universe is, to make it
Divine. Have you achieved it by your process of
serving, by your process of useless love, which
keeps men as they are and perhaps degrades them
by the humiliations that you inflict on them by
serving them? I don't know how you would relish
this phrase-the humiliation that you inflict on
every individual by serving him, by keeping him
down to the state to which he belongs rather
than lifting his vision to the state to which he
should aspire.
Now if you can take it in that way and in
that measure, yoga is not for the weakling. Yoga
is for divinisation of man; to make him more and
more worthy of his great heritage and
possibility, namely that he is, in fact, in the
process of evolving into, of unfolding himself
into, the Divine. And what is that process? What
is that alchemical touch, which can transform
man from the beast, he is, a man infirm in every
sense of the term, impotent, against himself,
and raise him to the level of a divine,
peaceful, harmonious, integrated Mahatma. Not
everybody becomes a mahatma by having one
virtue. One must have all the virtues to be
really called a mahatma. And that doesn't mean
that I have a criticism to make against the
series of names that are being given to all and
sundry. We have yet to develop the full
possibility of the human nature. And I believe
it was fully recognized by the great work of one
of our most illustrious men that all life IS
yoga, and you must practise yoga for life, for
infinity and the Divine. This was a voice, which
was spoken by Sri Aurobindo, and I have no
hesitation in saying that it was a profound
truth he told us rather very early at the
beginning of this century.
But I am afraid that the great promise that
his philosophy gave to us, and his yoga gave to
us, has not been as successful as it should have
been. Why? Firstly the reason is that he somehow
thought that a penultimate reality is more
important than the ultimate Reality, and that
the ultimate Reality will abolish our whole
being if it came to participate in the life of
every one of us. And the penultimate reality
which he had before him, what he called the
supermind he thought would do more work, and
also show gradualness in the evolution of the
divine man. I am not sure whether his optimism
was justified. I have every reason to think that
it has yet to be justified.
In the meanwhile the great founder of the
Shri Ram Chandra Mission who is seated by my
side has shown that really the ultimate Reality
is the only force that can lead us to the
Ultimate reality of our being. Any penultimate
reality will give only a penultimate result-an
imperfection which would have scored us out of
reality. And it could not have transformed us,
as we would have wished it to; as the great
Vedic seers wished it to. Despite the appeals to
Veda, I have my hunch that the ultimate truth of
that reality was not fully grasped by that great
seer. And so my search, I should now add my
personal note, led me to the feet of this great
personality who promised that we shall start
with yoga, but with a yoga that is more dynamic
in its nature, more perfect in its possibility,
more simple in its practice, and certainly more
profoundly elevating than any other. And that is
why he asked, what is the index of a
consciousness that has met the Divine? And I can
honestly tell you the first index is the calm
that settles on you, the silent mind. The silent
mind is said to be the most difficult thing to
attain. Well it was felt in the experience of
most of us; even the first initiate on the first
day might feel that the first is the silent
mind. And then a deepening, a widening, and a
certainly more illuminating mind begins to
operate. It is no longer with the human mind,
with all its dialectical contradictions, that we
are dealing. In fact, the first sutra of the
Yoga - "Yogascittavritti nirodaha"-happens at
the very first, and it is the very first sutra
of Patanjali! Which shows that the very first
thing, if you have had yoga, is to get this
silent and calm mind. And it is not an
unconscious mind, please note that. Nor is it a
purely conscious mind. It is neither. It is
something which hovers a little above the
unconscious and the conscious minds. A different
mind begins to operate in our consciousness. In
one sense if I were to be adulatory about the
achievements of some of us, I should have said
our mind is something very different from the
minds of other people, and we are quite a
different species already. But I wouldn't
harbour that peculiar claim. I would rather say
that we have started on the real journey with
the yoga which the Divine has initiated in us by
the specific principle which He has brought into
being, namely the principle of Transmission of
the Divine thought which would become our Divine
mind, and grow in that light and by that force.
Now, here, the service of mankind becomes
very different. You find that the moment this
mind is introduced into the consciousness of any
one of the persons who is suffering (it is
mental torture more than the physical, or as
Nietzsche would say, it is better to suffer
physically than mentally), if you can give
relief to the mind, remove it from its fearful
concentration on itself, and try to develop a
fearless life, then you find the starting point
of a real spiritual revolution. The spiritual
revolution is started by the introduction of
this new consciousness. It is not radically
different because it is the primal
consciousness, the Divine consciousness which,
somehow, by a series of degradations or
entropies has tended to become what it is;
materialistic, mechanistic, and certainly a
consciousness that is in holy fear of itself.
Why does a man become unconscious? Have you
asked that question? Why is he afraid of
remaining conscious? No wonder a large number of
people have dopes, night-pills and so on just to
become unconscious because they are afraid of
their consciousness. Have you ever seen this as
the type of man whom these people want to
cultivate in this world as the perpetual
humanity, which we shall have to serve? That is
not the humanity that we would like to have. I
have a greater ideal of humanity. I feel that
man is something that is essentially capable of
becoming Divine. I really hold that everybody
can become a temple of God. I would not say
'temple', because I hate the mechanistic concept
of life. I would say he becomes the body of God,
living and moving and having his breath and
being in God. A temple is too mechanistic a
conception for me, even just like an icon or
idol. I would like it to be something more
dynamic, more creative of happiness everywhere,
harmony everywhere. I would like to feel life
everywhere. And if necessary I would like to see
even the stones dance with life of a higher
order, which they can and do in the hands of a
real artist.
By what force can that be done, except by the
Divine force. And they have stated that to bring
down the Divine force all the Bhagirathas'
prayatna must be necessary. All of you have
heard that story, I am sure, of Bhagiratha
getting the heavenly Ganges after a large number
of years of tapas and penance and all that. In
Kali they said that the very name of God is
enough to make you realize freedom. I think
there is some truth in the second statement. But
what is the word of God, which you would like to
hear? What is the breath of God, which will make
you eternal in life? And which is easily
available? Which man has presented this
particular thing as the easiest thing you can
have, the simplest thing that you can possess,
receiving which it never leaves you, nor you
leave it?
I consider that it is to the merit and the
supreme glory of Shri Ram Chandraji that he has
been able to give to us in a simple, direct,
unostentatious manner, something of that light,
of that light or lightness which goes with
Divinity. And in the hearts of every one there
comes a new joy, a new delight. This I have
experienced, and I have shared with some of the
many very good people who are sincere about it,
and they know that this is not merely a claim I
make but a reality which they can also feel, if
they wish it. Now this simplicity with which the
Divine comes to us shows that ultimately the
Reality is simple - philosophers make it a
muddle. 'Ekam Sat Viprah bahuda vadanti' - the
Vipras, you know, are philosophers! Very learned
people whose dictionaries are full of multiple
names for the same thing. So much so that
translations are egregiously mistaken. So this
is how people have been very pompously learned,
without the simplicity that comes from the heart
and flows into Reality. Who is the greatest
illusion maker in this world except a man who
dabbles with words?
Now we are in touch with Reality. Even this
evening one of my friends petitioned my Master
to give a speech. He said, 'well, I have given
it to the philosopher who is seated by my side!'
I think I will just take a little liberty to
decry myself. Now here, I say, Reality is so
simple that it is beyond words, an act of Love
or self-giving, which is the meaning of love.
Giving of oneself and one's whole life breath
for the resuscitation of man into God. If that
can happen, what more miracle do you want? What
is there that you want greater than this service
which he is rendering to us. Shri Ram Chandraji
always makes it very clear 'Can I be of service
to you?'-That is the way he speaks, and to that
which is the real 'you', which can grow, which
can get the peace which is necessary for our
very sustenance and existence. And a continuous
process of self-giving of himself to every one
of us, not only to one man. It cannot be said
that I am the only chosen man of my Master;
everyone is chosen in this world who has chosen
Him. There is no partiality, there is no
hierarchy except one, namely, as is the
intensity of your aspiration, so is the amount
or the quantum of his help given to you. If this
can be understood, anybody can test him at any
time. Here is life, which is Yoga. It is a
connection with you, which he establishes. It is
difficult for you to establish a connection with
the Infinite, but it is easy for the Infinite to
establish a connection with you, the finite.
That is why he says, Yoga begins not with you
but with God. Who loves you? Not you, but He who
loves you. 'Anbe Sivam' they said! Well, I don't
know what they meant, but this is what I mean.
That love that purifies you, that sanctifies
you, that divinises you, that looks after you
morning, noon and night, as the breath of your
breath, as the life of your life, this is what I
feel to be the real Yoga, real union. A
permanent realization of His presence in you,
about you, around you, sustaining your very
life. I feel that this is the most important
contribution that this great personality has
made to us, and is doing to us. I have no doubt
that He has been so simple. No one can say that
he cannot be met. He is not cloistered in any
room. He does not want to speak much because he
wants to do all. Men who speak much hardly do
anything at all! And I don't know why he
practises it to perfection. But anyway if you
meet him, not at a public meeting but privately,
you will find him quite as loquacious as anybody
else.
So the service of humanity with which I
started embraces the largest amount of help that
we can render to man to get out of his misery,
the present misery of his mental conflicts and
complexes, and the future misery of a bad
destiny. You know, in this country, we all
believe that rebirth is one of the worst things
that can happen to us, not because it is bad,
but because we do not know what will come next.
And that is the reason why we are afraid of
rebirth. But there are many people amongst us
who are so cocksure about their next life, that
they do all wrong things now, hoping for the
best. I do not want you to take either course. I
believe we have a future. I won't say future
birth! And if there is a rebirth it need not be
in this particular condition again. It may be
possible for us to go beyond, and not come back
to this earth consciousness, and move towards
the Divinity as He is in Himself, for, all that
we get in the yoga today is the Divinity as He
is for us here. And that should give us a large
amount of aspiration to find out what He is in
Himself. That curiosity should come to us. Yes,
He has come to us. He is so kind, so gracious,
so much of everything. He gives us peace of
mind. He has put us into contact with the
universal consciousness or universal
unconsciousness, it doesn't matter which.
But what is He in Himself? Has any one asked
this simple question, what God is in Himself?
All of us speak of God as He is for us and what
He ought to be for us. Have we ever asked
ourselves what He is in Himself and for Himself?
Now that is the way of a higher evolution. When
you leave this body, or even when you are in
this body, if this curiosity or an aspiration to
know God as He is in Himself comes to us, we
find that we are led up to the higher and higher
consciousness till finally we reach the Ultimate
- the Divine as He is in Himself, and not as He
is for the last term in evolution, namely
ourselves.
Now, at that point, as Shri Ram Chandraji
puts it very clearly, you need not come back to
this earth once you have taken the human life
and gone beyond. There are many speculations
whether man will be born as an animal when he
dies, or can be born as an animal and it all
depends upon the aspirations and love that man
has for animals or others. If a man loved his
animal, then he may be born as an animal, and
the story is of Jadabharata in our own
scriptures. So we are asked not to have too many
pets about us, and to devote our whole time for
the upbreeding of those things. They are very
good, no doubt, some of them. They may be some
of the human beings who have taken that birth,
and be domesticated with us; but that is not an
ideal which you should have before you. Now if
you drop that point and you seek man in his
higher evolution, as one who is conscious of his
higher destiny, and that he should not return to
the human level, then his consciousness is taken
up by the Master. Not only in this life, but it
goes along with you till the last point of the
Divine is reached. It may be asked whether it
can be realised within this lifetime. That is,
can you know God as He is in Himself even in
this body?
According to Shri Ram Chandraji it is
possible to have the Ultimate experience of God
within this body. Because if the Yoga is to be
perfect, and is perfect, and if the force that
is introduced into you as the Divine thought in
transmission is really to fulfil its final and
perfect purpose, then it MUST lead you to that
Ultimate point. The ultimate truth must meet the
ultimate Reality. This is possible, and one of
his endeavours has been to show how that is
possible in the lives of some of us. I hold,
with all humility, that to a large extent he has
made it possible for my humble self to
experience that point. And of course I am no
exceptional man. Every one of us is exceptional
to God, provided we can dedicate ourselves to
that discovery and attainment. As he put it, 'I
am always waiting to serve people in the higher
reaches provided they give me the opportunity'.
They are written in his works, and I know that
he means it. Again and again he is looking out
for men who will give him the opportunity to
take them to the Ultimate point-The Divinity.
Well, here is a challenge to the human
consciousness. All that I can say is, he puts it
so humbly but so firmly that have no doubt that
he means it. If one could offer oneself to him
with all the love that he is capable of, which
may be just very much less than what he has of
his love for you, then the transformation of the
human nature into Divine nature, even whilst we
are in this body, is possible. Yoga, then, would
be complete in a double way; a union which you
have started with him by acceptance of Him, and
a dedicated endeavour on his part to lift you up
to the highest levels - the two things can be
side by side and operating simultaneously, and
would bring about the final supreme result. Here
there is no need for metaphysics, not much of it
at any rate. The assurances are, firstly your
goal must be there. You must be definite that
you want to reach the Divine nature and the
Divine state, which is a possibility within your
hands. Secondly you must accept, for what it is
worth in the beginning, the guidance of the
personality who can put you in touch with that
consciousness and guide you on. Who is watching
over you, whether you are before him or not
before him. Who practically demonstrates his
omnipervasive capacity. Distance or time or
condition do not seem to impose any limits on
his capacity for transmission. This is my own
humble experience about him. And in my work I
haven't found any restrictions on this
consciousness. Thirdly, you must know that this
guide is God Himself who has condescended to
take you up. And that is why he can take you to
God. The God alone is capable of leading one to
God. But don't impose any strain upon your
consciousness, at the beginning at any rate.
There is no question of your immediately being
told 'well your guide is a God, and you must
worship him as a God'. Please, your guide is a
guide he may be a God, but use him as a guide.
Now if you can take that practical attitude
without a metaphysical fear'complex about God,
His sovereignty, omnipotence, creatorship and so
on, you have a friendliness that comes with God,
an associateship with him, a fellowship with
God, and that makes it easy for you. There is no
imposition of any doctrine on you, or dogma.
There is only one demand, do you desire the
Ultimate? Do you wish to get rid of your
tensions? Would you like to evolve into a
greater and a higher life? Are you willing for
the adventure and experience into infinity? If
you can answer them in the affirmative it is
more easy for you to attain the Ultimate.
Here there is no need for us to criticise
others, for all of them are, in one sense,
included within us. But there are obviously
features in our practical life, or in our
traditions, or our habits and modes of thinking
that prevent us from accepting simplicity. We
think the simple cannot be true. We think that
which is had cheaply cannot be worthwhile. My
Master is anxious that he should be both simple
and cheap, in this sense that anybody can come
to him, no demands are made on him; in fact I
have known that he has been anxious to help
others and say 'well these things do not prevent
me from helping you'. So he has offered his own
services many times, he has been free with his
money and with his time, trying to go and help
people who are in need of him. That shows not
merely a natural generosity but an intention to
show that God, as in Tagore's poetry, can work
anywhere. It is only the proud scholar that is
afraid of moving anywhere. And since he holds
that he is no scholar but a practical man, he is
available to one and all. That makes it
difficult for many people to accept him as
really a person capable of leading us to the
Ultimate. But since we are discerning people,
and God has trained us in the ways of
simplicity, to a certain extent, we in India are
able to see that the most simple person is
likely to give us the truth, rather than the
most complicated man.
My own experience of my Master has been that
he is more simple than I ever thought simplicity
could be. And that is why he has endeared me
more than I could myself understand. And
sometimes I was really afraid whether his love
was a bondage to me. Well the word 'Bandhu' is
one who ties you up - a relation. Now I was
thinking whether my Master is a 'bandhu' in the
sense that he is binding me up. But one thing
that I realized was that there are bondages
which limit us, there are bondages which free
us. And all bondages do not fall into the same
class. Here is a personality that was out to
liberate me at every step, and if I felt
bondage, he was able to remove the bondage at
once, just as he removed my tension. But this is
a superior, Divine bondage to a man who felt
that it is through freedom that we realize
freedom, and not through bondage. The means and
ends must be of the same order. Liberation
alone, freedom alone can lead to freedom. Yoga
of freedom, as I may describe this particular
process, reveals to me that God is absolute
freedom, and that is why if I want liberation, I
have it the moment I touch God. In fact my
liberation started the moment he began to touch
me. I have never had after that any bondage,
bondage to idols or bondage to ideas. There is
only one thing that I had - freedom! And I feel
that this supreme simplicity of freedom is
necessary for every man in this world so that he
can make the world free, and a place where human
individuals can grow to their fullest Divine
stature.
We need this message of a peaceful, integral
transformation of human nature in terms of
freedom; at first realised in one'' self,
afterwards in the life of the community itself,
for which we lay, at the very beginning, the
foundation in the quality of our Satsangh, where
we train people, and we train them in freedom.
So the subtle way which is practiced in this
system really gives meaning to many of the rites
which you have locked with you, which have
become mechanical. And then we find naturalness
developing in us, a divine naturalness! It is
true that the highest of man may resemble the
Divine, but we do not merely say that the
highest of man will resemble the Divine, he CAN
become Divine. The transition to Divinity is
something natural to us. And we consider that it
is a naturalness that comes from above rather
than enforced from below. That is why I feel
this marga which is called 'Natural Path'
appears to me divinely natural, so natural that
it is imperceptible, also, by us. And here there
are no impositions from without, and sometimes
not even impositions from the Master. There are,
of course, in this system some 'don'ts', or
'do's' called the Ten Commandments, but if you
look at them carefully they are merely a
statement of what naturally we do when we accept
this Divine way of life. It is not necessary for
you to have the commandments before you. It
happens naturally and gradually in your life.
The acceptance of God in everything that you
do becomes so natural because the consciousness
that has been introduced into you begins to work
naturally in you, in the very blood of your
being. For it is introduced into the heart. So
you will see that this methodology which has
been given to us is, firstly, simple; secondly,
natural; thirdly, transforming; finally, Divine.
All this we owe to this perfection of the
technique of yoga which has been made by the
founder of this Mission, Shri Ram Chandraji
under the Divine guidance of his own Master Shri
Ram Chandraji of Fatehgarh called, otherwise,
Lalaji. So we ought to be grateful to these two
personalities for their continued guidance of
the yoga which has been so helpful to so many of
us who have had terrible mental and vital
shocks. It is there that we find the
pathological approach of this system efficient,
and almost instantaneous. Even as a mere medical
therapy for the mind diseased, it has been
profoundly transforming and calming in its
effect. So from the actualities or the practice
of this system I can firmly and confidently say
that it has a Divine future in the lives of men,
and the service of man is better done when this
service is done for the upliftment of the human
soul to the Divine nature. Any other type of
service may be good. It was well recognised that
the highest service that we can do to man is to
make him conscious of his divinity, or Divine
possibility. But since it was conceded to be
very difficult to convey this particular
doctrine to others, they thought it is much
better to feed the body and then, through the
body, get to the soul. Well, sometimes it
happens that it is putting the cart before the
horse. I don't say in all cases, but sometimes
it happens. To avoid that negative possibility,
we take the first stand that we shall serve with
the aspiration to serve man, atleast those that
have been given the capacity to serve, by means
of the practice of this transmission. These
people must make every endeavour that they can
to make for the transformation of man into his
Divine nature. This is a suggestion, of course,
to the Preceptors of this system. Let them not
lose sight of the fundamental work before them,
and on the part of the abhyasis, my earnest wish
is that they should co-operate with the
Preceptors in aspiring for the Ultimate service
they can get from their Preceptors. Well that
would help us in producing a real
'renaissance'-I won't call it revolution, for it
has got its own peculiar meanings in the present
context. I would say renaissance, or the
rehabilitation, or the enthronement of God in
the heart of every man and woman, and child, I
should add.
This is a great destiny, and I feel
profoundly proud that I am associated with it,
with its work, which I shall continue to do for
my Master.
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