Talk delivered at Vijayawada on 25-2-1968
I have been asked to speak to you on Sri
Ramchandra's Raja Yoga. I have had a strenuous
philosophic and academic life, running alongside
my spiritual aspiration for realizing the
Ultimate truth or reality. Therefore it has
become very important for me to express myself
very clearly on this new methodology by which
the Divine can be known in the most easy and
simple manner. The Lord Buddha, at one stage in
the evolution of our country's religion, stated
that his path was sweet at the beginning, sweet
in the middle, and sweet in the end. Similarly
the Sri Ramchandra's Raja Yoga is simple and
sweet in the beginning, simple and sweet in the
middle and simple and sweet at the end. For the
realization that has been promised by this
simple system, it does not ask you to break your
head with metaphysical words or technical
phraseologies so commonly used by our learned
people and philosophers. This is particularly
absent in this system. We hold that speech and
talk have to be thoroughly disciplined and made
to be appropriate to the great subject of God.
God, in the English language at least, consists
of only 3 letters and our "Omkar" again consists
of 3 letters. They are very simple to utter,
simple to remember. But such a god-head has been
made complicated, and we are today witnessing
the clash of philosophies and cults devoted to
God in his manifold form or appearance. But
suppose you spent all your lives in turning
towards understanding the nature of God in his
infinite multiplicity, you must certainly spend
a crore of lives before you exhaust the
inexhaustible. Therefore, that path of trying to
get God in his manifoldness is fraught with
great ignorance and even conflict. I will not
enter into the important divergences which have
happened in our own cultural patterns.
So, I shall now speak about Sri Ramchandra's
Rajayoga as a natural path of yoga. We have had,
as I told you, these religions and these
philosophies which are facets of culture. The
adaptation of man to the cosmic processes of
nature was by naming them, and by taking each
one phenomenon of nature as being governed by an
aspect of God. So, we have got as many gods as
we could desire. Perhaps there are also many
other gods in the making. Anyway, that has only
led us to an artificial society of cultural
nature. So Indian culture is rich with variety,
and many people claim there is unity, or that
there ought to be unity; but unity is not easily
arrived at by that route of pursuing the
diversity. Therefore, we have to return to what
is called the original datum of experiencing God
himself and to discover how, firstly, to go
about connecting ourselves with God. Secondly, I
will say that our present situation is such that
many people ask me the simple question, "Why do
we want a Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga when our
great people have already given several margs?"
For example they have stated that we have Karma
Yoga, that we have Gnana Yoga, that we have
Bhakti yoga; you may add even Hatha Yoga or
Tantra Yoga and any other number of yogas. If
each one of them could be multiplying then this
is one more such thing which we are making today
and the process is going on. Some people combine
two yogas and speak about
gnana-karma-samujya-yoga or gnana - bhakti -
samujya - yoga. And then we have got the purna
yoga which Sri Aurobindo has himself claimed as
a unique integral yoga combining the best of all
the yogas. This being so, why do you want a Sri
Ramchandra's Rajayoga?
Now this Raja Yoga is claimed by Sri Ram
Chandraji, the founder of this particular Yoga,
to be a purified version of the original version
of Raja Yoga, and therefore he said the most
natural thing to man is the Ultimate mind which
is that of God. If we can use the Ultimate mind
of God for the transformation of the nature of
our little minds, or diversified minds, then it
would be the simplest way by which we can
transform our life of misery into a life of
divine happiness and gratitude. Therefore all
that is needed is somehow to secure the approach
to the Ultimate mind or the mind of God, and
connect it with our little mind which is
resident in our hearts and expresses itself
through our emotions and such other feelings,
ideas and thoughts. This process by which we are
trying to get the Ultimate mind to have a place
in our mind and do the work of transformation of
our consciousness and mind appears to be easy on
the face of it. But it may be held that it is
most difficult to get God's mind to come into
us. So much so, the other yogas which I
mentioned earlier have reversed the whole
process and said that firstly let us do some
duty or some karma which comprises, according to
our ancients, yagas and yagnas and other tantras
and yantras, worship or manipulating them. By
that process they say you can connect yourself
with God, and after the connection is made then
you will get God to play in your consciousness
and modify you.
The gnana yogin, on the other hand, says if
you study the scriptures and know the relation,
as stated in those scriptures, between you and
God, or if you know the tattvas and if you
merely can go on contemplating on, or reciting
or repeating those sacred texts, you will get
the connection with God, and after that
everything will be easy. According to bhakti
yoga, they say, if you can do the devotionals
like - Sravanam, Keerthanam, Mananam and
Nivedanam and so on, you will get connection
with God however blind you are in respect of
other matters. And once the connection with God
is attained then I think our problems are
solved. Some others say, like the Hatha yogis,
that if only you can control your body, its
postures, and perform pranayama and the other
mudras, then you will get connection with God;
of course it is a difficult path, but nothing
great can be attained without some difficulty or
effort. And so we have been accustomed to very
effortful individual paths. So much so, by the
time we ever think of attaining the goal, we are
so tired that we think of leaving the whole
thing and leave ourselves to fate and seek what
is called Saranagati or surrender. So individual
efforts, even when fully undertaken, had to be
performed for quite a long time and perhaps for
several generations and several lives. Bahunam
Janmanam Ante Gnanavan mam Prapadyate". A man
must take several lives before he becomes a
Gnani and then alone he falls prostrate before
God and surrenders unto Him. But if surrender
can be taken at once, then most probably you can
give up these karma yogas and gnana yogas and
bhakti yogas because you would have got God
almost by the time you surrender to Him.
So this path of Saranagati was discovered by
the ancients as the simplest path, provided you
are Gnani enough to realize, or intelligent
enough to realize, that if you can surrender to
God directly (at once) and if you can fall at
his feet, then God is to be had without all
these human egoistic efforts involving so much
of trouble, money, expense, and even life. But
you know again this Saranagati which was such an
easy method did not follow it up. You did
Saranagati but there are somethings required.
God was willing to enter into you, but you did
not receive God into your heart. You tried to
escape from your misery but would not receive
God in your heart. In fact you are satisfied if
your fears are removed, depending on God's
assurance in Srimad Ramayan. If only you
surrender once
Sakrudeva Prapannaya Tavasmiti Yachate
Abhayam Sarvabhutebhyo Dadami Etat vratam Mama.
But then you did not follow it up. Saranagati
became just an instrument, not a Yoga. But it is
a Yoga, it connects you with God at once. Now,
if we can use that technique in our Raja Yoga by
which we can begin to have God's consciousness
or mind to play into our heart, and if God
consents to do that, consents to descend into
our heart through his thought at first, and by
his being later on, then our problem is solved.
This is the crux of the matter. The artificial
way by which we connect ourselves with God after
arduous work and effort, in the process develops
our ego to a very great extent. It is the most
unnatural way by which you can connect yourself
with God, it is artificial. It may be that all
our culture only registers this process by which
man is being more and more alienated from
nature. Man thinks he is apart from nature,
other than nature, and has to fight with nature,
struggle against her. And then our modern
scientists are making efforts, as I may put it,
to make nature yield to our will for the sake of
our comfort, for our pleasure, for our needs and
so on and so forth. So we are in a sense pitted
against nature, and equally we are pitted
against God, because we do not want to reach God
naturally but unnaturally, artificially. So, as
against that, it was proposed that if we could
somehow get that Supreme consciousness of God to
enter into us and to shape us to become at one
with nature, at peace with nature, in harmony
with nature, it would be the most natural thing
possible. For this a pure heart is needed, a
heart that is anxious to realize that it is one
with the Divine or God; that is aspiring finally
to see God, to know God and to enter into God;
that has as its final destination a harmony with
the entire nature including all humanity and all
life. That is a consummation, I believe, which
every body would desire.
That is why some of our great modern prophets
like Rousseau were saying that we are to
cultivate a natural life. In America, Walt
Whitman and Thoreau, and in Russia, Tolstoy, all
of them pleaded for a natural life, not an
artificial sophisticated life that has come into
being, or was coming into being even in their
times in America and in Europe. Today that
phenomenon is occurring in India. The same
sophistication, the same unnaturalness, the same
rigidity of mechanized existence is with us. We
are an unnatural people today, despite all the
religions, which have already produced their
quota of unnaturalness in our lives. So it is
that Sri Ram Chandraji the elder, I will call
him the elder, thought that it was an easy way
which should be presented to our people, who are
fitted to receive it, thanks to the great
heritage of the past. So he said, "I can bring
back that consciousness of the divine mind and
connect it with your heart." Well, you might say
it is a great claim, and from what our Rishis
and other people have said, it must be
considered to be a fantastic claim. I have no
doubt, I myself thought so too. We could reason
and argue with something one could do. But how
to believe that God Himself will come and enter
into our hearts just for the asking. It is
impossible. Some people wanted lot of money so
that they can bring God to you. Some people
wanted properties to be given to them so that
they can make the effort to bring God to them.
Well what I think is that while people were
bargaining as to how much they can pay to God,
or pay to the person to bring God to them, God
Himself came by the backdoor. And I think he
cheated these great people who were trying to
invest in God. So like that, Sri Ram Chandraji
of Fatehgarh thought it was most easy to get
God, and he showed that He can be got almost in
silence and without fan-fare and trumpets and
without garlands. And that was what I found when
the present President of the Sri Ram Chandra
Mission and its Founder, Sri Ram Chandraji by
name, came to me and said "well, I will do the
job!". Looking at him I never imagined that he
was capable of that. That was my sophistication!
I had the feeling that realized souls must be
extraordinarily good looking like this or like
that, enchanting people and so on, But here was
a very silent, unobtrusive man, who I think,
cannot be recognized in a public place as
anybody different from anybody else. And yet
such was the man who promised to deliver the
most important secret of being to me; not only
to me but to everybody afterwards. So I had
merely to ask him to do the job.
He said that Transmission, or Pranahuti as he
called it, is the most important thing that
happens, and explained to me that this Pranahuti
or giving of Prana to you is, in fact, the way
by which the transcendental, or the Ultimate
thought or consciousness, the sovereign
principle in man, can be given to me in its
purest state in the heart. All of us know
according to our own sastras, that God is the
breath of breath, "Pranasya Pranah.". If that
Supreme being or Prana is given into our heart,
that is what is called 'Ujjivanam,' upward
movement of the soul, a new life is got. The
spiritual life, this Ujjivanam, he said he would
do. It is like a tonic administered into the
system, or in the language of Homoeopathy, very
highly potentised Divine force is introduced
into the heart, which makes the thought within
us of the same nature as itself, though
poisonous now. It converts our mind into an
efficient, wonderful, creative force or
life-giving force.
All of us are said to be suffering from
'mind', now a days. Everybody wants that his
thought should be controlled. And we have got
all sorts of thoughts, the most material. I
mean, even the most cruel thoughts are within
us, hatred, cruelty, desire, avarice, delusion,
fantastic notions. All these things are within
us. Now these things could be immediately
changed by the introduction of this highly
potentised stuff of God's thoughts. The idea is
that that Supreme thought has become grosser and
grosser till it has become what it is, a poison.
When it became centred in your mind and in mine
and has become the instrument of our thinking
itself, our thought has become vitiated,
corrupted by our own perverse or inverse
desires.
So the only cure is God, and it was realized
by many people, saints, and the Bhaktas, who
said God's name is the one thing that will make
everything else go out. But, how to utter the
name? Not by repeating it will you get that
state. The name must mean something to you for
transforming your inner consciousness or
thought. For some time we thought in the hands
of some great men the name did work, but later
on, as you find it, even if you write a thousand
or a crore of times the name Sri Ram nothing
happens. The mystic charm with which it was
working like a talisman in previous ages refused
to work, even though it was told that, in
Kaliyuga the name of God is quite enough. But
what happened? Therefore our people said that
the man who gives the Diksha or mantra must be
of the highest calibre. And then what is more
important is not the mantra but the force with
which he introduces or gives it to you. But if
that force has become gross and not highly
potentised, as I put it, it is not the highest
thought of God. Then what happens? It becomes
useless, ineffective and then you complain like
many people, "Sir, drug has not worked", because
you have not been given the highly potentised
one, and the potentised nature of the drug is
what is necessary. You want the most subtle
thing to come in. So the Master said, "Other
people might have given less subtle things, but
that has not changed us. Let me now try the
Ultimate". Therefore, he must have done enough
penance, I believe, or he must have got enough
grace of the Divine to have permitted him to use
His force. All that is what I can conjecture. Or
else it is impossible for anybody.
So almost at the very first introduction of
that consciousness into me, perhaps on the very
first occasion I met him during the 3 days he
stayed with me - thanks to his grace, perhaps,
thanks also to my good luck, I was able to see
something of the Ultimate, But I shall not
exaggerate. This I knew, that it was capable of
working. During the past 12 years I have been in
this particular work of realizing God more and
more, I found the efficacy of this transmission
from above. Now this is so natural, I was not
expected to leave anything of my own accord, by
my own effort. Automatically everything seemed
to change, slowly of course. No dramatic changes
were there, but slow change as all natural
processes are slow, but gradual and steady
uninterrupted, unarrested; and the hand of God's
activity or His thought within me was persistent
through day and through night. It was not
necessary even that the Master should be before
me. Once it had begun to work, it began to work
automatically also. This is what I call
naturalness. I was made to become calm, not by
any coercion or saying 'Be calm'. No orders
please, but by quiet performance! Something
happened which prevented me from being otherwise
than calm. Slowly the Arishadvargas (six-fold
enemies - kama, krodha, moha, lobha, mada,
matsarya) began to yield. Slowly the controls of
my consciousness became freedoms, rather than
controls. So this natural process of
transformation of the human being and nature,
which is a prelude to the final and culminating
transformation of man into Godliness or Suddha
Satva - being or divinised nature, was achieved
by the simplest process of introduction of what
is called the divine consciousness into me and
into so many of my associates during the last 10
years all over this country. So I said to
myself, 'here is a method which is natural to
man. Man is bound to become divine by the
process of this spiritual evolution."
If one does not believe in the theory of
evolution, man has to return to God's nature and
that is his destination, sooner or later. It is
true a few people hold that if you do not turn
towards God but turn away from Him, you might
become an Asura or go to hell. But many others
realize, even those persons will have to turn to
God when they meet with the ultimate crisis of
their lives. Therefore even to such men it is
possible that the grace of God can be sent in.
So this Pranahuti or the introduction or
offering of the divine Prana into each
individual man, so as to effect his individual
transformation, and ultimately the
transformation of the society or the family in
which he is, is the most natural way and the
simple. In the other systems, as I may put it,
the problem of renunciation of life arises. If
you want God you must renounce nature. If you
want the spirit, you must deny matter. If you
want God you must deny yourself also. Unless you
merge into non-existence and into God, there is
no realization. That type of renunciation is a
turning away from nature and therefore it is, in
a sense, unnatural.
Now what does this system do? This marga
says, if a real consciousness of the divine can
come here, the very environment will also begin
to change and you become reconciled to nature,
and in fact you become the principle by which
nature and God are once again restored to their
unity. Nature is said to be the mother, God is
said to be the father, and you are said to be
the son. The son cannot go about separating
father and mother as some persons try to do. I
believe, if there are differences between the
father and the mother, it is the child that
brings them together. Is it not then the
business of the child to make his father and
mother live together and grow together, and be
proud of the children that they have? This view
is there in our ancients, I may tell you. But we
have, as I said, tried to divide what is united,
or keep things divided that tend to get united
even. If two persons are willing to join
together there are some people anxious to divide
them, and we have got enough stories going about
for that purpose. So here that unnatural way of
human relationships has to be resolved only by
an appeal to the Divine who unites what is
separated. Therefore this Pranahuti, the
Ultimate principle by which everything lives and
moves and has its being, has to be practised by
everybody. It is now possible, thanks to Sri Ram
Chandraji. He has been able to train many men to
do this job of Pranahuti to anybody who comes
and offers himself for spiritual upliftment and
divine evolution. This again is an important
thing. Previously only one man perhaps was able
to give Mantra Diksha or Tantra Diksha or Yantra
Diksha, and though there had been many people
who have been reciters of the Veda, they
themselves never got the permission to transmit
this force of the divine consciousness or the
Pranava or the Pranahuti. Or if it was ever
available it was restricted to a few people of a
particular caste or a particular religion. Or
else it became esoteric or Rahasya.
Now this path of naturalness has not even the
esotericism, which is said to be very necessary
for getting God or God's consciousness into you.
Here we do not have mantra because that has
failed. There is no tantra I am sure, there is
no yantra even. But what is here? A direct
spiritual offering of the highest consciousness
into your heart, which begins to set in motion
your whole spiritual journey or Ujjivana till
you reach the ultimate stature of God-head or
the nature of God. You receive as a blessing in
this, Sayujya; you receive as a blessing in this
particular path Sarupyata also; and you have the
vision, which is Salokyata with the Divine. As I
said, the last hurdle of getting God himself to
do the job has been crossed in this system. It
has been made easy. God is simple, therefore he
must be only achieved by simple means. God is
sweet, he cannot be tasted by bitter things. God
is omnipotent, omnipervasive, he cannot be won
by impotence and privateness. This being so, I
consider, after due deliberation and practice
that this is what can be accepted by one and
all, high or low, rich or poor, for, all of us
are subject to our own individual private minds
which are struggling against their privateness,
and against their own irremediable fatigue.
We are all tired people, and to get zest for
life, zest for being, zest for higher and higher
realization, a divine union is one thing that
this transmission of Pranahuti from God does.
But it is a practical path, very practical. As I
said there are no dogmas, there is only the
acceptance that there is such a thing as a
divine thought, and that it can come and enter
into your heart; and then it asks you to observe
yourself day by day and see whether your
tensions are not removed, whether your life is
not made easier, and harmony with the world is
not more secure, and whether all the obstacles
before you do not fade away like the mist in the
morning sun.
This is the message of my Master, so easy to
practise, so easy to get. There is nothing here
with strings attached to it but love for the
Ultimate life and aspiration for spiritual
evolution and growth. In my humble opinion this
is a message for the whole Universe; but I
should say, in the words of my Master, unless
India is made to accept this fine Yoga of
harmony, it would be difficult for the World
ever to rise far beyond. Our present cataclysmic
age, atomic age or super-nuclear age has only
posed before us the threat of Nature which is
now rebelling against man, or against man's
misuse of her. So before nature finally
annihilates her children, let us awake and make
use of this Divine weapon for security of
ourselves, and peace and prosperity for all
mankind and for the glory of nature herself.
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