When I saw Him by Swami Siddheswarananda This direct experience of I is called aparokshanubhuti. It is distinct from all knowledge obtained by intellectual effort.,which always implies a connection between subject and object and consequently is limited by space-time and without any transcendental value. He who has had this direct experience of I is considered to be liberated even while he is still alive. One calls such a Jivan Mukta. The existence of such individuals who are living incarnations of the Truth, render this Truth demonstrable. The Vedantic realization of these great beings promises the possibility of a practical application,and their realizations raise the level of the human consciousness. In this aspect of Vedanta which has attracted the attention of savants towards its teachings. Vedantic research goes much deeper than all objective analysis of matter. It goes to the fundamental perception and as such gives us a synopsis of the Truth rather than a curtailed view. The interest in the West takes in the life and teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi proves the universal attraction of Vedanta, which one can see materialized in he Sage of Tiruvannamalai. It is not long since the outside world learnt the existence of the Sage, but thanks to the popular work of Mr. Paul Brunton and new section created by Mr. Jean Herbert in his collection of Hindu philosophy, people are now greatly interested in the philosophy of life that the Maharshi applies and teaches. In an article on the Indian Yoga, M. Lacombe of Paris University has written about the Maharshi. His person sheds a force consisting of intelligence and mastery of the self. A flashing eye, intense and fixed without hardness, Olympian softness of gesture, slender and delicate in an immobile body. He is taken by excellent judges to be a very authentic Yogi and to have reached the highest realizations. It is however very difficult for a European formed in the traditions of theology and Western philosophy to come to grips with the Maharshis conception of life.In another part of his study, M. Lacombe observes: Like many spiritual Indians he has, if I may say so, exalted the experience of the individual self in the experiences of the Universal Self. I would respectfully observe to the learned professor that the Maharshi is much rather a tattva-jnani than a Yogi, His conception of life embraces all life, which for an Indian embraces the three states of jagrat, svapna and sushupti. The Yogic is the experience of I as cosmic identification which takes the jagrat as the essential field of experience. If one would find example of this cosmic and universal experience of the I as M. Lacombe calls it,there is no lack of mystics in India who have reached sufficient realization on this basis of experience. But the Maharshi is before all a tattva-jnani. And the field of his search and experience is much greater than a mystic. The Sage transcends the limits of the three states which I have already inidcated. It is not exact to say that His experience is like that of those who magnify that which realizes the individual I. The Maharshi in effect goes to the root of of the individual I and touches there even the basis of the ego and all the perceptions and sensations which result from it, reaching their origin. Nor can I agree with M. Lacombe when he writes: It was only necessary to provoke in himself a psychological shock (by some hypnotic procedure for the artificial example) which would be equivalent of what for him was a sudden fear of death by which he was completely and literally turned back, introverted. In fact the Maharshi did not provoke any psychological shock because He had no preconceived idea of the result of what He did. He did not worry Himself in the least about the philosophic or psychological problems. He was hardly sixteen years old. The illumination which He attained was the indirect result of what He did in analyzing the fear of death. When I asked Him, Maharshi often told me that at that time He did not even know the most common Vedantic terms such as Brahman or Atman. He had had no religious education. He had passed no examination of catechism on the Hindu conception of life. His understanding was practically a blank page as concerns religious instruction and philosophical terms, which He started to use after people, attracted by His life, flocked around Him. When the young Venkataraman grew up and His experience was transformed into an instantaneous and permanent realization, He could see, thanks to a very lively intelligence, how others had given a literary form to the expression of this same experience.and the understanding of what he calls the process of the I,the Maharshi accepts the terminology sanctified by tradition and always employed by the sages of India since the time of the Upanishads. Whoever has the opportunity to know the Maharshi at first hand will know full well that he is neither an extrovert nor an introvert. He is the most normal man that one could ever find. He is in effect stithaprajna, a man whose intelligence is solidly founded. I have seen Him apparently plunged in Himself, when everybody believed Him to be absorbed in His own Self but when at any moment someone at the end of the Hall made a mistake in the repetition of certain Tamizh verses, the Maharshi opened His eyes, corrected the mistake, then again closed His eyes and returned to His former state. I have already stated that one cannot say that the exterior world does not interest Him. He has reached an extraordinary degree of concentration and as that concentration perpetually rests on an habitual state of life in Jnana, or the Sage calls it sahaja-stithi, He is neither an introvert nor an extrovert.Just simply He is. And by His knowledge of the ultimate reality, He is one with it in every expression of multiplicity in its manifestation,He is one with the universe as a whole. When I saw Him I found in Him a perfect example of the description which Sri Sankara gives in his Vivekachudamani, where he explains what characterizes a Jivan Mukta. In Verse 429 we read: He who, even when his thought is merged in Brahman, is nevertheless entirely awake, but at the same time free from the characteristics of the waking state, and whose realization is free from all desire, should be considered as a man liberated while still alive. The notion of introversion and extroversion cannot be applied to one whose philosophy of life reposes uniquely on the experience of the waking state. To say that someone has beyond the ego does not signify that he is dead to all feeling.In the process of realization one is not content with denying the false relative ideas of relativity; the positive element is the most important, and this is to recognize the place of the ego with respect to the All. This discovery of Vedanta is expressed in the formula Aham Brahmsmi, I am Brahman. The I considered as separate is the source of all ignorance. In the Panchadasi, which is an authoritative work on Advaita, we find in the verse 13 of Chapter 6, a statement which is extremely important on this point. The author Vidyaranya there says: The destruction of the world and of the Jiva does not signify that they should become unperceived by the senses but knowledge of their real nature should appear. If such is not the case, people would find emancipation without making any personal effort, as in dreamless sleep or in a swoon (when all perception disappears completely.) As the Gita says, Atman, forgetting its real nature, believes that it is the ego and the author of all actions, which is the cause of all misunderstanding. A man like the Maharshi, who has gone beyond the ego, or who in other words, has understood the process of the ego in reaching its origin, has touched, as the Maharshi says, the basis of Reality, from which all experiences spring. The Upanishads consider such a man to be the I of All. To understand the experience of the Maharshi from the philosophical point of view one must read and meditate on the Mandukya Upanishad and the Karika of Gaudapada with the commentary of Sri Sankara. In this way one can better understand what the Maharshi represents. A simple visit to the Asramam where the sage lives does not enable one to understand. One can see during such a visit His mystic aspect, because the silence in which He is plunged often exercises a profound influence on the visitor, even if he only remains a very short time. But this mysticism of the Maharshi has its effect on a profound and intelligent understanding of life and its problems. And to understand that one must place the Maharshi in His philosophical and cultural mileu. Source:Jayanti - 2013, Mountain Path
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 06:02:23 +0000
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