Q&A with Sri M ( Satsang at Dr. Patkars Farm, Coorg - Jan 2004) Continued... Q : No sign posts ? Sir : Hardly any sign posts. So, it is a good idea to walk according to the instructions of those who have walked before; or to walk according to someone who has touched It and who is walking forward, or who has walked across. The Buddhists say, ‘one who has walked across’ – Paraa Gati – ‘one who has gone beyond’. Such a person is called ‘Bodhi’ – ‘one who has the Bodh’. ‘Paraa Gati paraa sangati bodhi swaha’ – ‘May I also be like that Bodhi’ So that path which has been described by all the important teachers, unfortunately, happens to be narrow – not because of any narrowness in thinking but because the other paths are so wide and inviting that it is very easy to go off on those paths – they are all highways. This may be a small little path going up – a pugdandi raasta. So therefore, it is even better to have a guide and walk because you might stumble and fall in a hole or get stuck by thorns – there are many things on the way. Or there may be many attractions while on the spiritual path; because when you meditate and go deep within, your concentration powers may develop to such an extent that you are able to do what you want, at least to some extent. When that happens, there are dangers on the way because then suddenly you discover that you are better than some one else or you discover that you have some extra ordinary powers that others do not have. Now, these are all great distractions on the path. If you are taking a train to Banaras from Madras and on the way, you get down at a station because you see lovely food – puri masala – you get down and start eating it. You are so absorbed in eating it that the train is gone! So you don’t go to Banaras. Then you take another two days to book the ticket – no sleeper; then you go sleepless. This can happen very much in the spiritual path because as you proceed, suddenly you see that there are some faculties opening up before you. For instance, when you meditate for a long time, then the mind becomes calm. When the mind has become calm, what happens is, very often it becomes one with all the minds, at least to some extent. Then it begins to understand what somebody is thinking even before that person says it. Now, when this happens, suppose you start demonstrating it before everybody and then everybody says, ‘you are a great man’. Then what happens ? Two things happen – one is that you get caught instead of moving on the path and trying to find your true self, you try to concentrate on how to read other people’s thoughts. What for – I don’t know – because your thought itself is a nuisance (laughs) – but anyhow, it is an attraction. ‘If I read his thoughts, I will know where he has hid his millions’ – or whatever. So you get caught up in that and you are no more going to the real millions which are waiting for you, which is not far away – it is within your self. So that is one problem. The other problem is the ego, which begins to blow up and become swollen and I think, ‘Oh!’ and everybody else is also praising you that you are a great person! My Babaji – my Master – used to say, ‘as long as other people are thinking various things about you, its ok. If you start believing what they are thinking about you, you are lost! You are sunk.’ So the sadhak has to be very careful. I’m not trying to frighten anybody away from the spiritual path. But the spiritual path, the Upanishads have described as Surasya dhaara. That means it is like walking on the ‘edge of a razor’. It is dangerous and difficult. To walk on the edge of a razor ? You can get cut, or you may fall this side or that side. So therefore it is quite a serious affair. It is not entertainment. And it is not like .. ‘I have everything else, so I will also have a spiritual flower on my button hole’ – that doesn’t work!. One spends one’s entire life trying to find something. One spends one’s entire life trying to build one’s career. One’s complete energy is spent on have a big bank balance. I’m not blaming anybody on this , I’m just saying that as far as spiritual life is concerned – ‘I don’t want to put my life , my energy into it. That has to come by itself ’. Or ‘I have to find a short cut and there has to be something easy to do, then only – otherwise I am not prepared to do anything!’ That doesn’t work in the spiritual field. As you have to put your energy, in your own life, in different ways – that much energy you have to put in your own effort in this field too, to walk on the path. Everybody who has walked on this path, has walked with great difficulty. Nobody has fallen directly from heaven, realized! I said there are rare cases but then they have worked in their past lives. It’s not as if they are putting in their effort. Since many of us now understood that one needs a spiritual guide to move on the path, it’s a good idea to discuss the relationship between the teacher and the taught. I am deliberately not using the word ‘guru’ and ‘disciple’ because ‘guru’ is a loaded word. It has acquired, over the years, various manifestations, various images. So let us say, the relationship between ‘the teacher’ and ‘the taught’ – it is a better way of looking at it – that means someone is saying something and someone is learning about it. That is the description given in the Upanishads – the teacher is speaking about the Truth sitting close to the student and the student is listening to it – ‘the taught’. ‘The taught’ is listening and the teacher is teaching. And a stage comes when they so intimately understand each other that the ‘taught’ becomes the teacher, in turn. One who is taught becomes the teacher because his mind and the mind of the teacher have become one – there is no division between the two. That comes only with a great deal of work, a great deal of exercise – mind exercise; exercise of one’s thought process. Until one discovers that that permanent peace, which is within us, comes about only when this whole process of going round and round, trying to find solutions, stops and becomes still. This process can go on endlessly – for ten lives one can try to find an intellectual solution – it will never come. Because the highest function of the intelligence, according to the Upanishads is to realize its limitations. And , when it has realized its limitations, it just keeps quiet. It knows, ‘I’m very useful in this, this and this; but I’m not very useful in this.’ ‘I’ have to just pipe –down. When ‘I’ pipe-down, then ‘the other’ Is. So, it is more a question of the heart, not of the brain – ‘heart’, meaning not the physical heart; I am talking about ‘the center of feelings’ which is known as the heart. In yogic literature, it is called the Anahat Chakra or it is called the Hridaya. Hridaya need not be identified with the physical heart. Ramana Maharishi said that the Hridaya is on the right side of the chest – definitely the heart cannot be there. In some Upanshads, the Hridaya is also described as on the left. And the yogic literature is full of references to the Anahat as the heart center, which is in the center. The idea is not to fight and argue whether it is here or there. It is this thoracic area – it is this particular area which is the center of consciousness – the heart center. And of course, the eye center. Q : If such great people have differences in locating, then… ? Sir : No. Many people have this illusion that people have differed. They have not differed. This thoracic center is the area, and depending upon my background, my body condition and various other features, it can be anywhere there. For instance among the sufis – they concentrate on all the three centers. The Kabir panthis have their center a little below this – it doesn’t matter – not that they differ. And these great people, who have experienced it, they have experienced it there and therefore they say, ‘Here is where I have found it.’ Ramana Maharishi said that you start enquiring who you are. We all know we are the body- we think. And then, we begin to realize slowly that I cannot be the body because the body belongs to me – and what belongs to me, cannot be me. This is not me. Now it is me – now it is not. So, this is my body – what am I ? Who am I ? So one proceeds, looking into this question carefully and one pursues it. According to the Vedantic teaching or according to what Maharishi said – who was, I think, one of the latest contemporary teachers of Vedanta, who had the experience of it – he said that when you pursue this, trying to find out who you are, then you begin to think, ‘Maybe I am the mind.’ Then you say ‘Yea – I must be the mind’ – then ‘Whose mind?’ and so on. To be Continued...
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 01:33:08 +0000
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