Lecture delivered at the Dakshin Bharat
Hindi Prachar Sabha Hall, Tennur,
Thiruchirapalli on Saturday the 28th January,
1967.
As Dr. Radhakrishnan has stated it, firstly
we have to know the past and then secondly we
have to forget it.
I have had a philosophical past. I just now
have a human present. So all that has been
spoken about those things, which I had learnt
and acquired so far, has been a preparation for
renunciation of all of them. We have to enter
the kingdom of Grace. Rightly he has said that
the most important path for a natural life is to
love all. To be able to love others out of the
fullness of one's heart, out of a great sympathy
for the sufferings of ills of others, that is a
great thing no doubt. As Prof. Sarma has rightly
said, to love is something terrific. To be the
thing to be loved is much more difficult. God is
Love, it is said, and Love is God. "Anbe Sivam,
Anbe Deivam". But the misfortune with us is that
the world is full of sorrow and misery, of
troubles and sufferings and miseries. Then where
is God's love, which is supposed to be enfolding
me till death?
If anybody asks me if I love, No! How many
can die? If every girl is fascinated by a bright
boy or if every boy is fascinated by a bright
girl, my first question is can you die for me.
If God loves me, He dies for me. And if I love
Him, I must die for Him. Therefore we see the
impossibility of Love. Yet we are told in
sweeter and sweeter words that God is Love and
Love is God, and Love conquers all, and all
that. All this of course does some good, but not
enough.
What took me to this particular system is
what you will be hearing about. I have done my
work in a small section, entirely that of God
Realization. As Sri Ramanuja has said, I found
that what Sri Ramanuja taught me was that the
union with God is the most important, and you
must be able to establish it. Swami Vivekananda
has written most beautifully about it. He has
said that man is the temple of God!
"Bhaktya Tvananyaaya ........"
So he asked me to practice real Devotion. It
does not come by mere repetition or chanting of
mantras, or by Nama-japa; nor does it come by
the acquisition of knowledge. It can come by
none of these things but only by surrender. I am
willing to see the end, therefore one must
surrender to the ultimate. If the ultimate is to
be described as Love, then I am prepared to
attempt the challenge of its acceptance. I agree
that God is Love. I agree that I do not know
whom to love, and that I want of God the
capacity to love. This has been my main
objective in the study of European Philosophy
and also of Indian Philosophy. I have read all
the different Philosophers, both Indian and
European. I have also taught Philosophy to
students to enable them to pass their
examinations, to acquire higher degrees. But I
also know that to absorb the Highest mind you
must have humility and the ability to penetrate
the inner rather than the outer garments. It was
with that approach that I read and studied every
philosophy, but none fully satisfied me.
Yet the world is full of Grace. So when I
began to study the western philosophers, and
when I found people criticized even a Descartes,
a Spinoza, then it has been surprising to me to
see the degree of ignorance of the people who
wrote, and the spirit of their writing. I do not
understand Law or Engineering; and so you cannot
understand Philosophy! Every science and every
subject has a technique of expression. You are
sincerely plunged with me into the use of words.
Now philosophy, or rather a philosopher, has
been described as a lover of words without
knowing their meaning! But that is not the right
way. Long ago the Mimamsakas and the Naiyayikas
knew the use of words. The great Panini has
definitely stated that the words must be known
by their roots and their usage. You will see
this if you look at the Sanskrit language, the
meaning of what Panini said. The words are built
around roots, 'Dhatus' and there are some words
which may have as many as a hundred different
meanings. Therefore multivocality seems to be
the basic thing. So you must define every word.
The meaning of every word you use must be fixed
first. If you read Descartes, or Spinoza, you
will find that they first lay down a broad
vocabulary, that is they define specifically the
words they use. You will see therefore that we
have to be guided in the meaning of words in
philosophy. So I can understand why some people
who merely love words cannot penetrate the inner
sanctum of philosophical experience.
But then all the time we wander, and we must
come back. After all our wandering around, and
after experiencing multifarious things, we have
ultimately to come back to our position. That is
the only virtue. In fact you all know the saying
"Vriddha Nari Pativrata"! So I wandered, and now
I have come back. Now arises the necessity for a
dedication to the goal; we must dedicate
ourselves-we must have 'Diksha' and that is, for
Realization, a cardinal thing.
The Kenopanishad, that noblest of the
Upanishads, asks kenesitam patati preshitam
manah ..... and it immediately answers:
Srotrasya Srotram Manaso Mano yad
Vacho ha Vacham sa hi Pranasya Pranaha.
When you ask these simplest of questions,
with what do I see? With what do I hear? With
what do I speak? The answer immediately comes:
Chakshushaschakshur Atimuchya dhirah
Pretya Asmallokad Amrita Bhavanti.
When the Kena puts it in this definitive
form, they, the Rishis, are asking you to
experience and feel the very pulse of your
being.
Who can inject this into you? That is next
question. We have wandered away from the centre.
Who can take you back? Arjuna, after having
listened to the eighteen chapters of the Gita,
in the ecstasy of listening to the Master, heard
more than what he heard with his ears. He
understood much more than what he could have if
he had only heard with his ears, and seen with
his eyes. And all because of the Love of God,
which made it possible for him to do so. Arjuna
says 'I have to go back to the centre. I can't
do it by myself. You must help me.'
Therefore somebody who has reached the centre
already, and who has experienced it, he alone
can do it! First you must hear of it; then
having heard of it, you must speak of it,
practice it and finally grow into it. As a
Visishtadvaitin I may surprise you all by saying
this, but I like it better, and I am willing to
follow it up to the last. I gain nothing by
being here.
This 'Pranasya Pranah' was the one thing
called initiation. It was the breath given for a
return to life. God gives this very breath to
help you to get back to Him. This is the most
important thing in the Vedic path, this
statement of the "Pranasya Pranah". If pranayama
means anything at all, it is not the inspiration
and the expiration and the retention of breath;
not the puraka and the kumbhaka and the rechaka.
It cannot be this. For pranayama it may do
something, this breathing in and out, but not
for the inner development. Of course, if
pranayama meant that you could inspire the
Divine and expire the dross, which is within
you, then that would have meant a great deal.
But that can't be done. As you all know every
yogi had to go through hell! Yogis have always
been in difficulties, and even the devas. Even
Indra himself is said to have distrusted the
rishis. If you sit in a corner and contemplate,
then everybody begins to be worried. The family
members, father, mother, wife, they all begin to
think that you are going to run away from them.
And so they are worried. Others think that you
are conspiring and plotting to do some evil, and
so they also worry. Yogis are thus thought of as
demented persons, or as neurotics. Now what do
you think of a yogi brought to this level by a
large number of people from eternity. What are
they to do?
You see, we are inheritors of the past. But
we must remember we are also the progenitors of
the future. Whatever may have been our past, we
must so model our present as to shape our
future. I have often said that even if we cannot
be gods, or become gods ourselves, let us at
least aspire to become the fathers and mothers
of gods. We must be producers of gods.
That is why when I became devoted to Sri
Aurobindo, it was for this creation of a Divine
race of beings. A race of men and women nobler,
bigger, more spiritual than what we have today.
A "Brahma-Vit" becomes a Brahmin, one Divine in
Life. God pours Himself into such a one and he
is a Brahmin. You see that the conception of a
brahmin was something very different from the
hereditary ideas that we have today. Not that I
differ from it - please note that, but they
arose by this flame and fire and the very breath
of God.
People come to look upon the past as a
nuisance. Ideas arise and die, or are mutilated
or destroyed. We see philosophers murdering each
other, sects fighting one another. Then there
are the multitudes of people who say that Yoga
is not for all of us! Who told you that? What
can I do with such people, that is my problem.
This is how we have scandalized ourselves.
Hindu thought had to be rethought. Take
Kanada, or Kapila, or Badarayana, or Jaimini.
What lives on in the most secret places of my
heart is not their scholarship, abundant as that
is, but the spirit of their teaching. It is so
easy to laugh at their systems. But has anybody
studied the six darshanas? How many of us have
taken seriously a Patanjali, or a Kapila, and
really considered their teachings? And it is
these same people who have been abusing even the
Buddha and Mahavira with this same
intelligence-I mean their colossal ignorance!
Therefore, these darshanas have become
meaningless to us. But do you think that there
was a time, or rather that there was not a time
when these darshanas were not living to us?
But what has happened today? Where is
Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa speaking of gods and of
supramental powers? We do not know. We think
only that a Naiyayika will be reborn as a jackal
in his next life. We think of the mimamsakas as
those eating mamsa. Of Badarayana, we think he
is a wool-gatherer!
How many have seriously thought to what
comical postures we have reduced these
darshanakaras. This has made me miserable, this
extraordinary ignorance we have produced.
I don't want to go into details, but to tell
you the need for a new darshana.
Are you alive, or are you dead? Please answer
this question. Are you satisfied that you are
alive? How can I say 'I exist'? Some only exist
if they have a car. They must have a car to
exist! Others exist only if they have objects of
their desires. Remove these objects, and they
cease to exist. Some exist by jobs. If a man has
no job, or has lost his job, what does he say?
"Please give me a job, so that I can exist". If
such people have no jobs, they don't know what
to do and how to exist! People spend time and
money on all these, but why can't you spend some
time and find out if you exist? Is this the way?
What is the meaning of existence? This is a very
serious problem in Europe, this one of
existence. They even have existentialists! But
what is it, how do I exist? Reality means that
if you attain to that Reality, you exist. To
exist you must begin with the practice of truth,
satya. Satya-it is sat, makes for sat. 'Ya' the
'ya' shows that it is something to be achieved.
This is the greatness of Panini.
Therefore if you want to exist, you must
speak the truth. Always speak the truth. You may
ask 'what of those situations when I cannot
speak the truth?' You must. Pray to the Master
and you will find that such situations where you
cannot speak the truth are avoided. You are not
thrust into such situations. One who speaks the
truth exists. Anything that passes away does not
exist.
Now the Jiva or Reality of your existence is
the Pranasya Prana! The first thing is to
practice a life of truth-a niyama.
The Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga is a purified
version of the ancient system of Raja Yoga. The
Raja Yoga of books have undergone an
extraordinary amount of demotion. Handled by
people who did not know what they were handling,
or what they were doing, it has become
distorted. But they don't know that Patanjali
could not have said what he did without 'Ishwara
Pranidhana'. His name itself indicates it.
Patanjali-Pat-anjali-surrender. Therefore,
surrender is first. We don't care whether God
is, and how and what He is. We want to know God
only as a Master. If you approach God as a God,
or a Divine being, He runs away from you, but if
you approach Him as a Guru, then He runs after
you. You must choose God for your Guru. Any
lesser one is meaningless. You must choose God,
as Arjuna did, for your Master.
"Sarvam Samapnoshi..."
Why can't you try it? Accept Him at any
point. The acceptance of God is primal in Yoga.
No less a person than God Himself will do. In
fact I feel that God cannot relegate this
function of a Guru to anyone else. Artha, Kama,
Dharma, these are all right for others. Not
Realization. You see here if you can have God
and surrender to Him, He shows the path. As Sri
Krishna himself said, if you choose me -
"Kshipram Bhavati!" You will "become"
immediately!
So I start with God, in the simplicity of my
faith, in the belief of my faith. So you see
that when you take up this particular Raja Yoga,
you have to be a suppliant seeking existence
from the Ultimate Guru we call God. God is
thought to be difficult of access. That may be
true of God if you take Him as a king or ruler
of the world, that is, in his political
function. But if you take Him in his hermitage,
then direct contact with God is possible. This
desired contact has been one of my earliest
personal experiences. You may have heard of
Thirumangai Alwar. He was wandering all over to
find a guru, but nobody would take him up, or
teach him. In despair he went to a temple, and
not finding the archakar, went directly in and
prostrated before the deity, saying 'Om Namo
Narayanaya'. And that was all! I got this
inspiration later. My training later was taken
over. I was not very conscious about it. It is
only in retrospect that He seems to have had a
guiding hand in my development.
When I came to Shri Ram Chandraji I did not
know him earlier. I never went to Shahjahanpur,
except much later. He came! Even then I wanted
to test him. I said "You claim too much that you
can put me in direct touch with God. How can you
do this? Can you explain the process by which
you make such a big claim". These were the
questions, I asked him.
"I cannot talk. I am not a learned man like
you, but sit before me; we start at the point of
the heart. Secondly, I put you into direct touch
with God. This process is the offering of that
life force into that of the abhyasi to commence
his spiritual journey". That is what he said.
I am a doubting Thomas. Even now I am one. I
am afraid that God is a great deceiver. If I
take Him as God, He deceives. If I take Him as a
Guru, then he comes to me and satisfies me. This
is a great ambivalence of God. I want you to see
this distinction. Patanjali said that God is the
Guru. Badarayana on the other hand said that God
is the creator, the preserver and the destroyer
.... Janmadyasya Yatah! There it began! But as
Sri Krishna said, "Svalpamapyasya dharmasya
Traayate Mahato Bhayat".
In India we all talk. We are great talkers,
we Indians. We are fascinated by oratory; by the
voice. We do very little. That is our main
difficulty. Take Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. His
voice, his oration. We are all carried away by
it. So it is with others. I used to be
fascinated by Satyamurthy. He had a grand voice
and manner. I used to be just fascinated. So you
see, the voice is a dangerous thing.
Mana therefore is a very important thing. I
tell my Master "you speak silence!" You will see
that Yoga is the real induction of the Divine
consciousness of God.
To recall my experience with my Master, on
the second day the unbelievable happened! I
found myself in contact with the Divine. I
didn't believe it. I thought it was hypnotism.
But my Master said that it wasn't false. I found
a great peace! The Pranasya Pranah ... it had
become the eye of my eye, the ear of my ear.
Here I must tell you one thing. What is
natural to an animal is unnatural to me; and
what is natural to a God is unnatural to me.
What is the Real nature? It is a spark of the
Divine! You have to gain that status of the
spark of the Divine, the Sesha of the Divine,
the Shakthi of the Divine!
Your goal is to become a zero, an akinchana.
Have nothing! Become nothing! If you can face up
to it as Buddha said, you will find that the
more you empty out yourself, the more the Divine
will enter into you. You are a patra, a vessel.
If it is empty, He can enter. You will then be
told, "you do not exist, I exist".
Francis Thompson, in his "Hound of Heaven"
tells the story of a wood-cutter, who kept
dropping his load as he was going through the
jungle, and God was following him, and kept
picking up the dropped lumber, and He carried
all his lumber for him. The wood-cutter turned
and saw him, and called Him a robber. "I am no
robber, you are my robber,' said God.
When you can place yourself in the natural
path of the Divine, then the Divine Life is your
life. "Asat" is what all of us are. That is why
the Vedas say "Asato ma satgamaya". But then we
have "Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya", from darkness
lead me to light, and this gives us difficulty.
Who knows that the light is darkness? "If light
can thus hide, why not life," said Blanco white!
We all know that sunlight hides the stars. When
night comes and the sun has gone down, then it
is that we see the beauty of the heavens above
us!
We have got to develop this direct contact
with God in order to realize ourselves as part
and parcel of the Ultimate. Let us start this.
It is possible that I may go up, and then come
down and not in His middle. Or I may go down,
and then go up, or I may start at the middle and
go up or down. All that does not matter. But let
us start this, with energy and sincerity, to
bring down this force from above. Can God be
brought down? Yes, in my personal experience! I
felt deeply light and most of my thoughts were
stilled. I reached the thoughtless condition.
If only my friends who are seekers will read
the Bhagavad Gita from back to front, all our
troubles will be over. That is how it should be
read. Surrender first to the higher
consciousness, so that it can then reveal to you
the meaning of what you read. Please do the
saranagati first. After you have done that, you
may not read the first few chapters of the Gita.
Please do the saranagati first and then see.
You want to achieve God. Why not let God
achieve you? As Sankara said, this is a
pratibimba, an image. Or as Plato said, the
world is a mirror. Therefore, the only way to
read the Gita is to start with the last chapter
and digest it, the first few need not be read at
all!
As in the Veda it is necessary to give up
this way of looking at life as an abnormal
specialization. Brahmacharya means life of
Brahma, or life dedicated to the Brahman, that
is, in union with Brahman. It is a simple word
with a perfectly simple and clear meaning. But
latterly it has been made a peculiar doctrine of
non-sexuality! This is our modern difficulty. To
practice yoga, they think, needs denial. First
get into touch with God.
Then we have to know that Yoga is for the
grihastha. This I must emphasize. Have we here a
Vanaprastha? Leave alone a Sannyasi! I have not
found in the whole range of the Yoga Sutras that
you shall not practise yoga at home. There are
of course a few yogas which are sannyasa yogas,
and as such are not meant for all. But others
are for grihasthas. In fact, I may say that
there are as many yogas as there are subjects!
There is a yoga of art and a yoga of science.
There is a yoga of money and another of poverty;
a yoga of love and a yoga of hate. Take what our
forefathers have done. The 64 kalas, the
graceful and immortal sculptures; their mastery
of languages; their discernment of the chakras;
the movement of the kundalini; their discovery
of the 3600 nadis ... all this and much more.
How did they do all this? Please think of that.
As Sri Krishna said "Yogah Karmasu Kausalam".
Kausalam means easy. That is one meaning. That
is, in Yoga everything became easy. But kausalam
has another meaning also. It means useful to
all. That is, whatever is done in Yoga is
productive of welfare to all.
In yoga we must be untiring. The results are
grand and universal-mahat virya, mahat aisvarya,
brhad Isvara. What jnana extended all the
frontiers of the knowledge, the Siddhi! But
there was an anonymity about it. I want to
emphasize that. Yoga produces an anonymity, and
not a synonymity with God! Their greatest
mastery was the abolition of the self and of all
identity. That was Real existence, they said.
What you call non-existence is real existence;
and what you call existence is really
non-existence. Yours is a language of
non-existence. Every parent knows that anonymity
launches a child, and it is anonymity that
brings it into this world. Most of the great men
are anonymous. They come and having done their
work, they go. About some of them, we don't even
know when they were born, to whom they were
born, and even how they were born. Some are said
to have been born of flowers, others were found
in trees. This is common. They were Adityas!
This is a great discovery. The normalcy of
this is that the greatest force can be brought
into your life if this "Pranasya Pranah" can be
brought into your life, if this " Pranasya
Prana" can be brought into you. It can be done
if you offer yourself.
What Shri Ram Chandraji says is that there is
a very easy way by which I shall be able to give
you this by a transmission. The very first thing
is the contact with God-consciousness. For the
last 7 or 8 years I have been doing this, trying
to put this force of God consciousness, by the
Grace of my Master. A quietness of self
abolition, a calmness, a de-tensioning takes
place. This I have been trying to do for the
last seven or eight years. They are now much
more normal. They are brought to a state of
normalcy. Strains seem to fade away. This has
been again and again tested under the most
serious crises which I have undergone.
I came to this because a test must be carried
out when a challenge is thrown. This is for the
grihastha. It is slightly different from the
yoga for the sannyasi. Sannyasa Yoga is
misleading for grihasthas. What is to be
removed? Bad conduct! You will see that the
great Upanishads were written by people who were
not sannyasis. The great Yagnavalkya had two
wives, rather than one! One for this world and
one for eternity, he said! The sage Vasishta is
an eternal grihastha. Now do you see? Where is
the necessity for sannyasa? There was therefore
a period when people rebelled against sannyasa.
Wives were afraid, fathers and mothers were
afraid. What I ask is, can't you practice yoga
in your own home? Can't you make your house
holy? I would say when a sannyasi enters the
house, he pollutes it, in a different way of
course! The Laws and the ways of a sannyasi are
quite different from those of a grihastha. They
have different duties, different
responsibilities.
Unless I reach the Divine consciousness I
cannot produce a God. This came to me at
Calcutta during an Aurobindo lecture some years
back. It came to me that if you cannot be gods,
at least try to become the fathers and mothers
of gods! You all know the story of the rishni
garbha, where He was born as Vamana and then
again as Sri Krishna. There you have a grihastha
trying to be born as a God for the saving of
humanity. Therefore it is up to you as
Grihasthas to realize your responsibility for
yoga, the perfect living for God, by God, in
God! Is there any one system which offers this
dynamic way for living in that consciousness and
for growing in that consciousness? Yoga is going
into life to deepen it, to make it more full.
God is not so distant as some people think.
Tadejati Tannaijati Taddoore Tadvantike (Isa)
Whether distant or near, He is in each one of
you. This dynamic message of the Rishis is with
us.
The work of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga is that
of re-elevating each soul to the Ultimate. Here
is a message of the Divine who is prepared to
walk into your house and to initiate you. This
is the message of a normal life.
Man is one who is said to be a thinking
being. Man is said to be one who is proud, who
thinks that he is a superior being. If you take
'Man' as from the Sanskrit root, as from the
supreme force of the Divine, then you will see
that the first thing that came out of the Divine
is 'Manas'.
Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga offers you a new
method in a new dimension. You will find the
great lights of the supramental will be
available to you. I don't want to flatter or to
give undue prominence to the work which my
Master has given to me. But if you will practice
it, the ujjivana you are looking for, the uplift
of the soul to the Ultimate, will be common to
all men.
Forget all differences of caste, creed and
race. Not one of these things will help. Being a
Hindu, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or
anything else, none of these things will help.
Man has to become a universal being-rightly or
wrongly. You must therefore make up your minds
to take up the opportunity offered to you. A
little bit of practice is worth much more than a
ton of theory. Lenin is said to have told Marx,
"I have read the Das Kapital, what next?" Marx
said "struggle"! But to avoid struggle is to
give yourself to God. "Which god," you may ask,
as the Vedic "Kasmai Devaya Havisha Vidhema."
Which god to worship is the question. We have
too many gods in India. Arundel said we are gods
in the making. I agree. But we are such bad
avatars! We do not have the vitality of the
Divine.
We are told "Ekam Sat Viprah bahudha
vadanti"-but I used to translate 'vipra' not as
wise men, but as fools! 'Vi' is a negative! Now
which God to worship? I say, the Ultimate. The
Parabrahmam! It is not something you can grasp.
As the Kenopanishad says "Na Cakshus Pasyati".
No lesser god will do for this purpose. Please
take note of that! Not the vyuhas, the three
murtis with their dampatis. Not even these gods
will do. As Sri Krishna said, if you want to
conquer your ragas etc., then only the Ultimate
must be sought, for "Param drishtva nivartate.".
Otherwise partiality, neglect, all these
theories and difficulties come in. One god for
this, another for that, and a third for yet
another; where is the end? To how many gods can
we pray? Our desires and needs are endless. You
see the impossibility of this? We have nothing
to do with these gods. They are only officers.
Then came the avatars, ten or twenty-four of
them. Which of these shall I worship? There are
personal favourites. One likes one, another
likes another and so on. Then there are
geographical loyalties. In Mathura Sri Krishna,
in Ayodhya it is Sri Rama. This is the way our
people have worshipped their gods. As the
occasion, so the god! This is where we are. So
no avatar. On the path of yoga, no avatar.
Then the Antaryami. Each one has an
antaryami. Please note. Mysticism is in
loneliness. You must develop the consciousness
of living alone with your God-your Antaryamin.
So it is only the antaryamin to whom you must
turn. You have only two Gods, as a matter of
act, the antaryamin within you and the one
above! "Agreravamaha Vishnor Paramaha!" as the
Aitreya Brahmana states.
The inner connects you to the Higher. This
way is open to everybody. Nobody can be denied
this. And the only way to discover the
Antaryamin is to practice truth. The simplicity
of this method is that a sympathetic love can
arouse the God within you. You will be able to
get yourself put in contact with God.
I only pray that our wisdom will enable us to
cut across all those oblique things. We have to
practice. Once we are able to develop this
instrument of knowing God by God, through God,
then as Spinoza said "Sub Specie Eternitatu!"
you will see everything by insight, not by
biological processes of perception.
Philosophy means the love of wisdom. But it
fell on evil days. So you see, we have something
to do. I pray that in this sacred place, His
sacred Grace will produce men of the highest
levels of spirituality for the good of humanity. |
