Kenneth Grant - at The Feet of The Guru (2006)

Starfire Publishing Ltd BCM Starfi.re London WClN 3.XX, U.K. [emailprotected]

Other titles by the a uthor: The Magical Revival Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God Cults of the Shadow Nightside of Eden Outside the Circles of Ti.me Hecate's Fountain Outer Gateways Beyond the Mauve Zone The Ninth Arch Remembering Aleister Crowley Images & Oracles of Austin Osman Spare Zos Speahs! Encounters with Austin Osman Spare (with Steffi Grant) Hidden Lore: Hermetic Glyphs (with Steffi Grant) Against the Light: A Nightside Narrative Snahewand & The Darher Strain Gamaliel & Dance, Doll, Dance The Other Child and other tales Convolvulus and other poems Forthcoming: Monolith: A Further Nightside Narrative

Twenty-Five Essays

Starfire Publishing Ltd LONDON MMVI e.v. An.102

A Star fire Book First published in Engla nd at the Spring Equinox. 200 6 by Starfi re Publish ing Limited BCM Stnrfire, London WClN 3XX, U.K. Published in an edition of 1000, of which 97 copies comp1;se a deluxe edition bound in quarter cloth and Himalayan ha ndmade paper. signed and numbered by Kenneth & Steffi Grant. Deluxe: ISBN 0 9543887 5 5 Standard: ISBN 0 9543887 6 3 Both formats copyright © Starfire Publish ing Ltd 2006 Text copyr ight © Ken neth Grant 2006 Cover illustration by Steffi G rant copyright© Steffi Grant 2006 All rights reserved. The reproduction of any porti on of t his book, othe r than for review purposes, is strictly forbidden, withou t the prior written consent of the publish ers and t he a uthor. Designed a nd produced by Starfire Publis hi ng Ltd. Printed by Manor Creative, Eastbourne. [emailprotected]

For my friend Ruth Baur With Prem

Contents Introduction .... .... ........ .... ... ............... ... ............ ..... .. ...... .... .. .... 13 Arunachala Shiva, the Void Nature of the Self.. ...... ...... 15 The Call Divine, Volume I Number 9. Bombay, May 1953.

The Cult of the Hill. .. ................ ...........................................19 The Call Divine, Volume I Number ll. Bombay, J uly 1953. The Mountain Path, Volume 20 Number 2. Tiruvann amalai, 1983.

The Bodiless Presence ................ ............................... ........... 22 The Call Divine, Volume II Number 1. Bombay, September 1953.

The Great Solvent ..... ....................... ............ ..... ...... ............... 26 The Call Divine, Volume II Number 3. Bombay, November 1953.

The Message Enshrined in Silence ............................... ..... 30 The Call Divine, Volume II Number 5. Bombay, January 1954.

A Dream (by Steffi Grant) .......... ........ .............. ............. ... ....... 35 The Call Divine, Volume II Number 8. Bombay, April 1954.

The Adamantine Way .............. .................... .......... .. .............. 38 The Call Divine, Volume II Number 9. Bombay, May 1954.

One and the Sam e : A Note on the Tree of Life ........... ... .44 The Call Divine, Volume II Number 11. Bombay, J uly 1954.

Nothing Manifests Itself in Any Form ..... .. .. ... ..... ............. 49 The Call Divine, Volume III Number 1. Bombay, September 1954.

Mother's Home is the Heart ............. ..... ......... .. ... .......... ..... .54 Ananda Varta , Volume II Number 3. Banaras, November 1954.

I Am Always I: A Note on Reincarnation .. .. ......... ...... .... ... 58 The Call Divine, Volume III Number 5. Bomb ay, Janua ry 1955.

Quicksand .............. .... .................... .. ........................................ 62 The Call Divine, Volume III Number 12. Bombay, Au gust 1955.

Resignation ............ .... ... .. .......................... .. ..... ...... ................. 66 The Call Divine, Volume IV Number 1. Bombay, Septembe r 1955.

The All-Pervading Presence of the Mother ............ ...... ... 70 Ananda Varta, Volume III Number 3. Ba na res, Nove mbe r 1955.

Thakur Haranath: The Prem Avatar of Sri Krishna ..... 72 The Vision, Volume XXVIII. Kanhangad, December 1960.

Kusuma Haranath: The Lila in the Lotus of the Heart ... .. 80 The Lord Supreme, Volume I Number 2. Sona mukhi , March 1961.

Anandamayi Ma ........... ................. ............ .. ........ ..... ............ ..86 Man, Myth & Mag ic, Number 3. Purnell-BPC, London , 1970-71.

Haranath ...................................................... .. .... .. ......... ....... ... 91 Man, Myth & Magic, Number 43. Purnell-BPC, London , 1970-7 1.

Ramakrishna ..... ................ ...... ............. ........ ..... .. ........... ... ..... 96 Man, Myth & Magic, Number 83. Purnell-BPC, London, 1970-7 1.

Ramana Maharshi.. ......... ...... ............. ............ .. ......... ......... . 100 Man, Myth & Magic, Number 83 . Purnell -BPC , London, 1970-7 1.

Sai Baba of Shirdi ......... ............... ............ ....... ................... 104 Man, Myth & Magic, Number 88. Purnell-BPC , London , 1970-7 1.

Sivananda .... .............. ....................... ....... ....... ..... .......... ........ 108 Man, Myth & Magic, Number 92. Purn ell-BPC, London , 1970-7 1.

The Radiant Name ............................... ................................ 112 Sri Haranath Jayanthi Magazine. Gujerat, 1990.

Anusaya Devi, the Mother of All ...................................... 117 Ma.trusri Magazine, Jillellamucli, S. India (no date).

Kusuma Haranath .............................. ................................. 124 Jna.na Lehhani , H aranath Magazine, Sonamukhi, ·India, 2005.

Glossary .............. ... ............................................................ .... 127 Bibliography ............................................. ............... ............. 133

Plates 1. Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

2. Bhagavan Sri Ranwna Maharshi 3. Bhagavan Sri Ranwna Maharshi 4. Bhagavan Sri R amana M aharshi

5. Srimati Anandamayima

6. Sri Thakur Haranath 7. Sri Thakur Haranath

8. Sri Thalwr Haranath and Srimati Kusunia Kumari Deui 9. Sri Ramakrishna

10. Sri Ramahrishna 11. Sai Baba of Shirdi 12. Srimati Anusaya Devi 13. Sri Sivananda 14. Sri S.P Reddy, Garu, of Sri Haranath A shram,

Bangalore, with the author (March 6th 1984)

Introduction

hen we wake up in the morning, we take it for granted that we wake up to a world that is somehow more real than the shifting world we encounter whilst asleep. We think also that the world to which we awaken is a mere continuation of the world we left behind wh en we entered sleep the previous night. But who is the sleeper, the dreamer and the Self who · wakes up and claims this world as his own and not another's? Thi s question has perplexed many individuals who have surrendered all to discover the answer to this riddle. For it is obvious that before we understand and identify the true nature of this Self, in both its dreaming and its waking states, we are mere ly carried along by the seemingly chance experiences that arise in our conscious ness. Be it understood that the latter is the basis of a ll our experiences - in both dreaming and waking. As the form er, it is vague and seldom under our control; as the latter, it formulates wh at we know a s our mind. But what is mind? It is the identification of a limited, individua lised consciousness-of-existence, as 'my existence', 'your existence', a nd so on, themselves but the figments of dreaming. It is the same with consciousness. 'Things' spring into exjstence; without consciousness we seem to experience pure non-existence - a void so far a s we a r e concerned , although there is no 'we' to experience it. Notwithstanding, it is the basic Self, and it supports both con scious ness and mind. The full appreciation of thi s fact

At The Feet of the Guru

constitutes Self-realisation, the supreme state of being-nonbeing, which is experienced by the Sages, as by other embocliments of fully illumined consciousness, such as those that form the substance of the following essays. The gods and goddesses, temples, images and icon s that form a backdrop to the stage whereupon many of the li ves mentioned herein were enacted, need not mislead the r eader into according to them any but a purely incidental element, consonant with the nature and habits of the inclividuals h ere con s ide red. The scene is India, yes; but the Players are beyond n a tion a lity, in that they arejivanmuktas - a term signifying 'liberated whils t yet incarnate'. So, whether it be the repetition of a pa rticular mantra specified by the Guru, or the profound study of sacred texts with Guru's guidance - or even the touching in reverence of the feet of a divine statue, or those of a living Guru - no distinction is made by either the Guru or the chela - for all are One and Not-One. The author's thanks and acknowledgements are due , and gratefully given, to the Editors of the various publications which appear in the bibliography.

Ke nneth Grant, London , 2005.

Arunachala Siva The Void Nature of the Self n Sri Narasimhaswami's book Self-Realisation, The L ife and Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi , it is described how Bhagavan appeared to a devotee in his true form. The devotee h a d asked Sri Bhagavan: "Will you please enable me to see your Real Form, if I am eligible to see it?" In the words of the devotee: "He silently gazed on as usual and I gazed into His eyes. Then his body and also the picture of Dakshinamurti disappeared from my view. There was only empty space, without even a wall, before my eyes." A month after this mysterious incident, Bhagavan said to the devotee: ''You wanted to see my form. You saw my disappearance. I am Formless. So, that experience might be the real truth. "

Now if we pause to consider the significance of this marvellous occurren ce, we are struck with the astonishing fact that this is what happen s to each one of us every day. Each time we enter into t h e s tate of Sushupti, or deep and dreamless sleep, objects vanish as mysteriously as they vanished for the devotee in the above quotation. The difference, of course, being that the devotee - by the incalculable Grace of Bhagavan - entered into the forml ess or deep sleep state while yet awake! But, nonetheless , the message enshrined in the incident is one which can and

At The Feet of the Guru

should have far-reaching consequences in our d aily lives, for we should strive always to realise the Void nature of things and to merge into that state of formless awareness where things are revealed in their truth , their r eality, their essence. We should remember in this connection verse 4 of 'Ulladu Narpadu' wherein Bhagavan writes: "If oneself b e with form, the world and God too will figure accordingly. If one b e formless, who is it that sees those forms, and how? Without th e eye, can there be the seen? Verily oneself is the Eye, and that too t he Eye Infinite". If we identify ourselves with the body, th en the world unfurls about us in concrete bodily form. And so on for each type of body through which we look, for according to the nature of the instrument we use so will the corresponding projection of the world therefrom b e in complete accord. Yet we are told by the Rishis that the Real may never be seen. And so it was not Bhagavan who changed when th e devotee failed to see his real form, but the devotee himself. The latter's consciousness apprehended itself in all its fullness and truth , and the form therefore disappeared; for the Void alone is true and underlies the world-appearance. So it is not a question of a ltering the world, but of altering one's point of view, of shifting the seeing eye from the physical organ, which can only project bodily mass, to that Eye of the Infinite which a lone cognises massive Bliss and which sees the Void alone, for It is Itself of n ature Void. It is quite clear from many remarks which Bhagavan m a de from time to time, that He did not hold his b odily form to be any more real than a painting or photograph of Him. When a devotee once took leave of Bhagavan carrying away a portrait of Him, Bhagavan remarked "He is ta king Swami w ith him". And when the moment of the Mahanirvana drew nigh , He insisted that Bhagavan was not t h e body. Also that He would abide eternally where He always was, for wh er e e lse could He go, being for ever the Void a nd spaceless Arunachala Si va in the Heart of the devotee. And thus a gain did He in s ist upon t h e identification of the Real with the Blissful nature of the Void.

Arunachala Siua

Bhagavan h as declared the only mode of discovering the Real ; for wh en all is said and done, one is forced back to the question: To whom do all these objects appear? Who is it that sees t h ese t hings of the world? And it is plain µp on very little medit ation th at a ll - without the least exception - occur only to the body and t he mind, a nd are therefore worthless, because imperman ent a nd so unreal. There is no other way left to us who love Bhagavan a nd the way He taught, but to determine now t o disca rd inter est in all that occurs to this body and mind, and t o seek and merge in the Void nature behind all appearances. We can n o longer deceive ourselves into thinking t hat one way is as good as another, for this is m anifestly not the case, as all consideration s depend ultimately upon the identity of the experiencer a nd not upon what is experienced. Bhagavan has said tha t A tmauichara is the only S a dhana not dependent upon men tation. To wor ship any form , divine or otherwise, is but to beg t h e question and delay the issue; for once again, Who is it t h at wor ships? The way of A tmauicha ra is for those who can no longer be enchanted by the glamour of May a , but who steadfastly refuse to enter into a ny consideration of worldly issues. Economics, Progr ess, Civilisation , are pet foibles and base illusions as m eaningless as they a re pernicious, for they per tain to a t ot ally u n r eal stat e of things which can never be anything but replete wit h mi sery and deception. Bhagavan h as cleared the gr ound on all such issu es; we cannot know the nature of the wor ld until we know t he Self, and any help we may presume to render the world until the Realisation of the Self has been achi eved, is but fresh fuel to th e seething ca uldron of chaos and disorder that some would h ave u s believe a lready prevails. When Bhagavan was br oach ed on such matters - as He often was - He denied th e dish a r moniou s n a ture of the world, and pointed to the root of the t rouble in t h e questioner 's ego which alone originated, su stained a nd fed a ll the trouble h e thought he saw outside him. Furth er, H e asks if these troubles appear in deep and

At The Feet of the Guru

dreamless sleep, and one is forced to admit that they do not; thus is the true nature of these apparent troubles made m a nifest even to the most stupid of u s. And so all is resolved into the single question : Who a m I? In Bhagavan's books, the ultimate Truth is presented in a manner of sublime simplicity and ineffable beauty. After perus ing these books and meditating upon their contents, if one ask s further questions, one merely confuses the issue a nd prov es oneself incapable of comprehending even the simpl est stat em ent of fact. So then, let us endeavour with a ll the one-pointedness of which we are each individually capable, of so tracing the thought to its source that the world disapp ear s from our vi sion. Then we shall know at last the true significa nce of the m arvellous incident related of Bhagavan's bodily form which seem e d to vanish from before the gaze of the devot ee. Let His Divine Grace work within us to this end, that we a lso m ay see His true form and become one with t he Void, the Self, the Brahm a n or Pure Consciousness, forever bereft of thou ght-con structions, ideas and forms . The Call Divine, Bombay, M ay 1953.

The Cult of The Hill

f the outer symbol of Sri Arunachala on earth, Lord Siva says; "Meditate on the fact that in the Heart of the Hill surges th e Spiritual Glory within which the whole world is contained. " It is in fact this h oly hill - the Mount Kailas of the sou t h , the very embodiment of Siva - that is the visible and manifest Guru of Bhagavan Sri Rarnana Marharshi. It behoves us therefor e to remember that now the beloved master is no more with u s in the fleshly garment of frail humanity, his holy Guru is noneth eless visible and accessible to all those whose eyes are open ed to the spiritual glories which Siva describes as surging within its Heart. Here is the tangible focus of the tremendous spiritual energy which bmned with unabated strength in the form of Ra mana; thus is the symbol supremely sanctified for u s today by the certainty of Liberation, which Bhagavan himself taught u s was the reward of the unflinching surrender of the ego in the flames of its all-consuming embrace. Those who feel di sturbed within themselves a t the great loss of the body of Bhagava n , sh ould inst antly redirect their minds to the contemplation of the Hill of th e Holy Beacon which, Bhagavan has told us, only waits to respond eagerly and tenderly to even our weakest yearning t owards it. Th e Hill is verily the gr eat est of all physical supports of Grace . For did it not bear upon Its sacr ed surface the earthly tabernacle which was th e physical form of Bhagavan? Yet, for

At The Feet of the Guru

those who are unable to live within sigh t of the earthly Arunachala, there need be no regrets, for the hill itself is but a thought construction, the same as any other object. If we would grasp the inner significance veiled by the 'dull', outer form of Its simple contour s, we must search within the H eart, a nd establish contact with that regionless Bliss, void of a ll conceptions which the mind is capable of formulating. F or Arunachala is the symbol of the void nature of the self m anifesting in so simple a shape as the Hill of the Holy Beacon. This is that form ofRamana that lasts longer than the huma n garment wh ich he wore for our sakes, which nonetheless is not etern a l, since no matter can be that. But so long as the world-appearance lasts for each aspirant, so long will endure t he Hill , to symbolise to us the perfect void, the All-full Self that lies as t h e h eart in spaceless and timeless eternity. Sri Ramak.iishna Paramahamsa sa id: "Is Ka li , m y Divine Mother, of a black complexion? She appear s black becau se S h e is viewed from a distance; but when intimately known Sh e is no longer so. The sky appears blue at a distance, but look at it close by and you will find that it has no colour. The water of the ocean looks blue at a distance, but when you go near and take it in your hand, you find that it is colourless." And so it is with the Hill of the Holy Beacon; go near to it in spirit and it is without shape, without colour, with out attributes of any ltind. It is only 'distance' which lends It t he illu sory qualities It seems to possess. Really, we impress t h e Void it essentially is with the attributes we seem ourselves to possess, and t h en we imagine we ar e seeking what is not truly t h e r e. Thus it is our attributes we would have to slough off if we would come close to the sacred symbol and know its real s ign ifican ce. And our everyday life can help us insofar as we r egard a ll t hings that occur to us in a new light. For instance, ins t ead of viewing circumstances and conditions as isolat ed phen om ena occurring to us for no reason at all, we shou ld strive to r egard eac h e vent as a stone upon the slopes of Arunch a la, each trivia l r epe tition

The Cult of the Hill

of which event constitutes at last that sacred Mount of the Spirit which is our true nature. Thus we can worship Sri Bhagavan in and t hrough our ordinary mundane life; it is merely a matter of reorientation and of determination to accept as deeply significant in a spiritual way all the seemingly trite and disconnected incidents which constantly occur to us. Yet is this but a preliminary to the final process of knowing truth as it really is; for when Arunach ala has been thus truly built into the fabric of our hearts, we shall need to view each separate part no longer as separate from the divine edifice, but as the structure entire in its sublimely simple shape of the Holy Hill. And then, entering into t h e Heart thereof with understanding, we shall know the whole as the embodiment of that Spirit of grace and compassion which eternally broadens our hearts. In this way it is possible for the less advanced of us to perform a spiritual di scipline while living in the world - even though far removed from the outer symbol of divine grace in Tiruvanna malai. It is only when we realise that it is we who clothe the formless Arunachala with form , because we view it with the eyes of the body, that we shall begin to search within our hearts for the formless Reality which that form veils. Until then we sh a ll not penetrate and comprehend this miracle, nor shall we under stand why Bhagavan Sri Ramana made no difference between h is human form and his hill form. It is the Guru in hill form who is an everlasting beacon of hope for those wh o inhabit th e earth (or body); as soon as the body is dissolved into a s hining mis t , so a lso does the Guru's hill-form dissolve and we are no lon ger deluded by other concepts - our own form or t h e hill-form - for these twain are no more; and the underlying reality shines forth as the Pure and perfect void, conceptless and ever Blissful. The Call Divine, Bombay, July 1953. The Mountain Path , Tiruvannamalai, 1983 (reprint).

The Bodiless Presence n that truly illuminating book called Maha Yoga by 'Who', there appears a singularly important pass age re cord ing a short conversation concerning the tru e n a ture of God , which took place between Bhagavan Sri Ramana Marh arshi and a questioner. The passage is as follows: 'Some one that had not studied the Sage's teachings, nor even the ancient lore, put to him a seri es of questi ons, one of which was this: "Have you seen God?" The Sage answered, laughing mildly: "If anyone had a ppeared to me and said 'I am Shiva' or 'I am Ram a' or 'I a m Krishna', I could know I had seen such a one. But no one appeared to me, telling me who he was."'

It is a failing common to many of us that we, like the ignorant questioner in the above quotation, seek to prove to ourselves the existence of something by trying to make it a n obj ect of knowledge. We know not what the sky is , what t h e mind is or what we ourselves are, and so we proceed to qualify these concepts by limiting them to a few - or many - characteris tics which we can easily grasp with our minds . Yet we n e ver s eek to ques tion the nature of the supposed knower of these things . Whe n it comes to the question of God, or the creator of the worl d, we, like the questioner, expect to be told by a S a ge w h o h a s experienced communion therewith, that He is t hi s or H e is tha t. And if the explanation given us does not accord with th e limite d and fanciful picture conjured up by our mind s , we turn a w ay e ither

disappointed with God or su spiciou s of the Sage, who thus fails to fulfill a ll we expect of him in the matter of furnishing the details about God, which we ourselves secretly cherish, and which we wish to h ave confirmed. There a r e som e wh o, even in the loftiest flights of mystical experie nce, s till insist on m akin g of God a n object of knowle dge, as when t h e 'serva nt-ego' is retained for Bhakta, or the 'knowledge- ego' for J nana. But Bhagavan emphatically declares that no one s poke to him and proclaimed himself God. And the reason is t hat God is devoid of all these concepts which t h e mind des perately endeavours to at tribute to him, for h e is God solely because H e is unlimited by any form or concept; in other words: He is not, and never can become, a mere thought construction . If we ponder Bhagavan 's words at all deeply, we are surely struck by the peculiar quality of underlying positivity contained in what appear s at first reading to be a curiously negative r ema rk. In a ctual fact, however, the reader 's mind is led on past the names of Shiva Rama and Ki.ishna until he is suddenly confronted , not by a giorified and elabora te synthesis of the poten cies of all three of these Gods, but with a great Void, which opens at his feet a nd stretches forth to Infinity, containing no God a nd no Thing. And wit h an ease and subtlety peculiar to all of Bhagavan's Sayings, one is led from this point of abrupt encounter with the void, to question the identity of the person wh o finds himself thus standing on the brink thereof. For in his ide nt ity is God's identity realised: not by the sight or by the touch or by cognition or by a ny of the senses, but by God alone who is thus self-realised as the void nature of Pure, Unfragm ented Consciousness. It is this unbroken flow of Pure Consciousness which is God and t he Self, and It may not be a ppreh ended by the con sciousness of even the highest God, let a lone by the mind of man, for ther e is no one to whom it can be an object of knowledge, subsisting as it does in a regionless Void of form less Bliss.

At The Feet of the Guru

It is evident from the reply that Bhagavan made to the question "Have you seen God?" that he neither saw, heard, touched nor apprehended God in any way. The reason is quite simple, yet difficult for the mind even to vaguely sense: Existing as h e does in the Supreme State, he sees, hears, and is a ware of nothing, because the Self is identical always with what It sees; a nd the true nature of the Self being one with the Void, the All -full, It subsists without a second in the ocean of Infinite Consciousness, all-pervading and instinct with bliss , bereft of all form. And so it is that Bhagavan in his simpl e yet cogent reply identifies the Self with the Void, wherein even the highest God cannot exist to be seen or known in any way other than the full self-realisation that reveals God at last to be one with the Self. And this Void is the cavity in the H eart in each se parate and individual formulation which Maya, in Her Mysterious manner, imagines into being. If that cavity is entered , the individual jiva is merged in the Void and , like Bhagavan, he sees no God, hears no God, knows no God: for he is That truly in the spaceless, timeless and blissful abode of Arunachala Siva, which is the Void nature of the Self. That the conceptual idea which we call God ha s to be surrendered if we are to enter into and merge with the Self in the cavity of the Heart, is stressed by Bhagavan. In verse 26 of 'Sad-Vidya', this is emphatically expressed as follow s : "If the ego is, all else also is. If the ego is not, nothing else is . Verily the ego is all. Therefore only the enquiry as to what this ego is, is the giving up of all." And to give up all is to relinquish forever the false conception of God to which Bhagavan, in the saying quoted at the beginning of this article, so beautifully denies reality outside the illusory realm over which the ego holds sway. If only this great truth were grasped and never lost sight of- better still if it were realised by each one of us - a l I sc hisms would cease, all differences be resolved and a ll worries dissolve into a shining lustre of glory, wherein the Void nature of a ll these concepts would be known a nd understood. As long as we con-

The Bodiless Presen ce

tinue to give precedence to any one illusion above any other illusion - whether it be God, Society, Progress, Civilisation, or whatever our pet foible may happen to be - we are storing up mountains of trouble and still more reasons for not harmonising with our brothers and sisters who in their multitude appear to exist outside omselves. Realisation of the Void natme ofall these separ ate concepts , either individually or in mass, must at some time be accompli shed; to cling to any one of them and exalt it above the others is the way to a narrow fanaticism which breeds that division which is supreme blasphemy. For there can be no division of the Real, since therein is Nothing which may be divided. The Call Divine, Bombay, September 1953.

The Great Solvent ""l"XThoam I?" is the magic question which dissolves a ll things

VV into the Clear Light of the Void. It scatters the stru ctures of conceptual thought, and leaves in t hei r stead t h e Great Peace which no words may describe. Such a powerful formula for the instant dis per sal of care and anxiety should be regarded by all as a great b alm and a mighty elixir for allaying the qualms and quelli ng the fears which are the inevitable concomitants of our ego-ridden a nd duality-bound existence. ''WHO AM I?", when asked with determined one-pointedness, banishes all t h ought from t h e mind, and it is in the absence of thought th at there is fe lt the subtle and luminous presence of the Inconceivable Rea lity, which is void of all limitations imposed thereon by t h e human mind. In unambiguous terms, Bhagavan Sri Ra rn a n a h as given u s the certainty thatAtmavichara is the best and h igh est form of Sadhana, and that it is entirely free from a ll me n tation. We are further assured that once the power of the e nqui ry h a s penetrated to a certain level, it is continued in r egion s transcending our conscious control. The entire Quest is aimed a t the s undering or dissolution of the knot of ignorance which causes u s to identify ourselves with the workings of our minds. To the devotee, the fact that Atmauichara is the Great Solvent; the fact that such h as been decl a red to be t h e case

Th e Great Solvent

unequivocally by Bhagavan Himself, is sufficient to release the Aspirant from all the doubts and bewilderments that must have previously beset and engulfed him. So what is it that holds u s back and causes us to hesitate in the free use of this tremendous weapon of dissolution, this certain conveyor of Bliss? It is, probably, because Atmauichara instantly strikes at the very root of all our problems, which suddenly evaporate before our eyes so to speak, leaving us vaguely aware of the possibility of the sudden and irrevocable annihilation of the world we know. And it is this mere emptiness whkh , for those who confuse it (at least, intellectually) with the Clear Light of the Void, ca u se s them to fear and misunderstand, and therefore to hate, the latter. For this emptiness, like Space itself, is illusory, and is a mere mental concept - the concept of an almost utter vacuity. Bhagavan told an aspirant who had reached this state to press on with the Quest, and enquire: "To whom is the emptiness?" It is only when awareness is fixed once more s teadfastly within, and identified with, the Witness, and no longer allowed to roam at random in this emptiness, that the fear is checked and the stage of uncertainty is duly transcended. Far beyond this fairly initial experience is the true and perfect experience of the Void which is the Ocean of Bliss into which Atmauichara - as th'e Great Solvent - silently plunges the purifi ed mind; or, in other words, the Ego, traced to its source, is m erged with that Source which is infinite, blissful , and void of a ll thought. It is difficult in mere words, perhaps, to try to adumbrate, howe ver dimly, the vast import of this unutterable dissolution; yet we must strive to push the mind to its extreme limits until it strains t enuously and earnestly after that which allows a glimps e to be had of the immense possibilities latent within even the limited awareness of the mind's arena. Of course, it is totally impossible to think about a state or region which is void of all attributes, qualities, and so on; and that is why

At The Feet of the Guru

Atmavichara has been said to be the only pure ly non-me ntal approach to the spaceless and timeless Bliss of the Void. For, somehow, the question "To whom does a ll t his occur ?" etc., sidetracks the mental activities and shoots its swiftly-burning darts into the very region of pure awareness which lies, waiting like a tranquil lake of utmost purity and silence, to declare its continuity in terms of unfragmentary and illimitable Consciousness. Once we, in the form of the E go, draw nigh unto this placid lake, we see no reflection of outer or inner form as we stoop and peer into the shining surface of its mirror-like luminosity; for there all is void, and we wh o have a pproached thereto are, by that time and by that r esolve, void a lso of a ll we once supposed to be our little, illusory selves. The True Self is not anything positive, nor is it anything negative. It is void of either positive or negative attributes; it is neither. Yet it may not even be said that it is this 'Neith er '. The Self is void of all concept which the ego m ay attribute to it, but this is not to say that it is impossible of a pprehen sion by that vast part of our nature which lies outside, beyond, or - better still - behind, the small pulsating ego which, at first, we imagine to constitute our entire being. And for the purpose of understanding this the better, it is only needful to recall that even in the state of Sushupti we do not cease to be, even alth ough the mind a nd its creation is in total abeyance. It is, Bhagavan tells us , because we erroneously identify the Self with the mind and its myriad creations, or thoughts, that we do not con scious ly partake in the bliss of S ushupti with our entire being. If we could only reject each thought as it arises, thereby mer gi ng with , and remaining st eadfastly in, the infinite substrat um from wh ence arise all thoughts, we would realise the Clear Light of th e Void which shines as the Self of All, mindless and instinct w ith bliss. And to this end - the only true end, if end it m ay be called - the Great Solvent (Atmavichara ) should be empl oyed unceasingly by each one of us throughout all our waking hours, so that in due time even in dreamful sleep a nd s leep itself t hi s

The Grea t Solvent

subtl e enquiry will pers ist until the Self is realised. Nothing else matters, for a ll else is illusory and merely staying the time of our earnest resolve to commence th e enquiry that can tear away th e veils of ft!faya from before the eyes of the Self, and r ealise the latt er in its fulness and perennial bliss. ''WHO AM I?" call s forth no answer from th e domain of mind or ego, because t he m ind and ego do not obtain in Reality where all is void of fo rm and ber eft of conceptual thought.

The Call Divine, Bombay, November 1953.

I I

The Message Enshrined in Silence magine a vast canvas peopled with countless individuals and teeming with events too ramifying and varied to enumerate, but which all fall into such broad categories as scenes of h a tred and animosity, of pleasure and sorrow, of elation and despondency, of crime and black lust. And follow one figure only of the throng: follow it through its narrow career, through a ll the mighty concourse of human and animal forms , noting th at from the small and very limited confines of its minu te structure, only the very tiniest fraction of the entire picture may be seen and tasted, imbibed and comprehended. Imagine that you h ave identified yourself so thoroughly with this one insignificant creature that you actually feel and move in the depths of the canvas; feel it growing around you with all its clamour and wealth of sound, its infinitude of beauty, horror, ecstasy a nd pulsing anguish; and when you have accompli sh ed this t en-if)ring identification you will realise indeed that t hi s is in fact the fate of each one of us, for we have been t hus identifying ourselves with some one form on that canvas since we first drew breath in the human body, and this identification h ems us in and limits the vision of the Whole.

Now, as that canvas is void of real content, but only represents the fevered dreams of the artist wh o committed the complex scene to its surface: so also is the world around us s uch a mental picture, void of all reality and all mean ing except that

Th e Message En shrined In Silence

which we, as limited and fragmentary expressions of the whole - as J ivas in fact - read in it. Bhagavan taught us that however hard we try to extricate ourselves from this tangled web of deception, from this glorious and terrifying labyrinth of Maya, we sh all n ever su cceed so long as the void nature of the forms we see around u s is not utterly realised. Then will all dissolve into the void s ubstratum of all t hings, the pure and faultless Self which emanated the dream for Its delight in Its role as Jiva . To do this we have to step outside the clamour and the noise; we have to reject the cacophonous Mantra of the Samsara which is m eaningless noise, or else a symphony of merely human perfection , a nd merge with the Essence of that Silence whi ch is the Mantra of the Void. In the still, unfathomable regions of our being there lies the common ground of all; the ground from wh ence all images spring, from whence all desires and dreams find their ori!rin and soW'ce. And this base 0 of t he universal and eternal life is Perfection itself, for it is void of all conceptua l t h ought, of a ll form, and of all that we know as pertaining to t h e Samsara. Beyond even the tranquillity of Sattva , t his one Indestructible Gr ound of all shines as the Self of All, and may be enter ed through the Silent and Unmindful r egions of the Heart, wherein lies coiled the Adamantine secret of Its glorious uniqueness.

It is to the end th at we may free ow·selves from the glistening webs of thought whereby we have so surely chained o~rs~lves, that Bhagavan brought us the incalculable gift of His h_fe on earth as Sri Ramana. Asking ''Who Am I?"; stepping outside of the can vas a t a ll times with unceasing vigilance and watchfulness; we may bring to birth that Unutterable Compassio~ _for all being which He manifested before the eyes of all, thus hvmg the truth of Sage Milarepa's words: "If ye r ealise the Voidness, Compassion wi ll a ri se within your hearts". Nowh ere before in all the world has so perfect a proof of the truth of these words been evidenced by the common man; nowh ere befor e has th e complete merging of Bhaliti and Jnana

At The F eet of the Guru

been demonstrated before the eyes of the myriad throng. And if we, in the life of the seething canvas, yet fail to see t he t~·uth and endeavour to extricate ourselves from the s ui ci dal cham of thoughts and events, who is to blame? Yet it was through Silence rather than throug h s p eech that Bhagavan conveyed to us the supreme token of Hi s inestimable worth for us today. His words as emitted through the physical frame of Sri Ramana were destined to pass away in accordance with the very nature of the Samsara of which they formed part; but His silence His Ineffable Mantra of the void places of the Heart, vibrate~ now and forever for all those w ho - for one moment even - step beyond the pale of the disconnect ed picture of events and plunge within: past thought, past action, past all that characterises what for want of a better phrase we call the outer and limited life of the Jiva. In Bhagavan's Silence, as it abides at the core of each of the various manifestations of the one Self, may be found the priceless jewel which He secr eted for us in the lotus of His rapturous life. This Ma ntra - vibrating in tune with the Heart of the Hill which stands s ilentl y witnessing the passing of civilisations, of hopes and dream s, of sorrows and joys -is potent to reap the rich harvest of enlightenment for those who, instead of bickering a nd squabbling over trifles, withdraw the mind from its extroverted function of thought and fix it firmly on the void nature of things, which are then seen to pass by as a dream on the canvas of the unattached mind. This is no matter of making the mind a blank, or stopping forcibly the thinking processes, but merely of st e ppin g aside and watching t he endless stream flow by, while realising constantly the void nature of all the ideas and thoug hts that take shape in the mind's workroom. Contact the substratum of these myriad images and there will be found th e pure river of the One Consciousness, irresistible in its adamantine might , calling to the Jiua to merge again with its source, to let th e s h a dows and scenes be mirrored on the shining surface of its un surpass a bl e brilliance , a nd to fathom the depth s from whence t h ey spring

The Message En shrined In Silence

to take on their pha ntom life, before once more melting and merging in the mighty current that bears life endlessly on. Nor is it a m atter of m er ely stopping the ears to the din and the roar of the torrent a s it flows and laves about us, but of understanding the void nature of noise, as when a word that is uttered incessantly again and again becomes inane and void of all m eaning, thus liberating the mind temporarily from the shackles of conventional significance. It is only when the senses, each in turn, are thus realised to be founded on a non-real basis, tha t the mind is free to return to its pristine, natural state, and mirror the Pure Consciousness which it verily is, bereft of all th e meanings and significations which we, as limited Jivas, put upon things for our own selfish advantage. Thus, a nything pertaining to the Samsara is always and utterly u seless for th e ultimate Quest, which denies validity to even the most gigantic of man's conceptions. No amount of talk or thought about Civilis ation and Ethics, Education, History and so on and so forth, will ever get man one jot nearer the Ultimate State, which may be gained only by the realisation of the void n ature of all such ideas and concepts, which spring up and are n ourished by the Arch Enemy - the Active FormProducing Mind. Wheth er one Sadhana was good and one bad n ever concern ed Bhaaavan who unveiled the truth that all b ' Sadhanas eventually subside and give way to Atma Vich~ra, which, He says, is the only Sadhana independent of mentation. All else is a sn a r e, the more subtle the more logical-seeming it is. To eschew all enquiry beside t he one enquiry as to WHO experi ences the m a nifold events of Samsaric life, is the message H e str essed and the Doctrine He lived to the full in His miraculous yet truly natural life on earth. And what remains of that Teaching, alive today as it was when He as Sri Ramana moved a mong u s as a man, is the Unequivocal Silence which is the Undying Mantra of the Void. To enter into that Silence, to melt away in its unfathomable Bliss, is th e aim of a ll who would partake of the holiest sacrament and r eceive the full influx of Grace which, as Arunachala

At The Feet of' the Guru

Siva, flows evenly in realms where the Jiva may not enter until it is understood what the senses are and upon what basis they ultimately rest. Amongst those, then, who cannot consciously pursue the ceaseless and iigorous Atma Vichara, there may be some who can sense - at first vaguely and dimly - that ocean of ineffable Silence, the ultimate veil about the One Inde structible Consciousness, which defies all the adjectives, all the concepts of the human mind. Imagine once more the vast canvas, stil1 peopled with a teeming throng, but this time realised as the expression in multiple of the One Adamantine Consciousness which forms the substratum of the Whole. Now each form is alive to its own destiny, its own origin, its own special part in the plan of the Whole; each manifestation of the spark realises at last the delight and the joy with which the artist has created the picture for the delectation of his silent musings , for the r apture which creation brings, and which the beauty of endless and infinite life arouses in the detached and indifferent mind. And as the picture is not other than the artist who gave it life , so we are not other than each form depicted with such minute skill , each event described with such consummate power. For we are the Infinite Consciousness, the One Self permeating all thing s with the tender compassion which the artist feels for his own Creation, and which springs from the knowledge of the void nature of the sufferings and delights , the victories a nd tragedies, of the little throng on the canvas .

The Call Divine, Bombay, Janua ry 1954.

A Dream (by Steffi Grant)

A fte1· .lo~g hes itation I have decided to put down the followfiing mc1dents. Being possessed - when all goes well - of a mild, analytical, critical mind, and not at all of a devotional temperament, I feared ridicule if I admitted having prayed to Bhagavan about trifling matters, instead of asking for spiritual boons. But as I have read about so many instances when He fulfilled the desires of His devotees, and as He graciously a ppeared to me in a nswer to my prayer, there is really no justification for such sentiments. Also it might be of interest because I never met Bhagavan in the flesh, and only learnt about Him and His teachings after His Maha-Samadhi. This is my tale. About two year s ago, five warts developed in the palm of my right ha nd. Being in such an awkward place, they were very irritating , and I often worri ed about them. They must have been quite harmless; but when eighteen months had gone by and they ha d not disa ppear ed, and several new ones seemed to be growing, I awoke one night, thoroughly terrified, and - like a child to its father - I prayed to Bhagavan to heal them. Next morning, in bright daylight, the matter seemed less frightening, a nd sank into the background. A few nights later I ha d a n intensely vivid dream, the only one in which Bhagavan has ever appeared to me. I was standing with ma ny people on a large stage, the background representing

At T he Feet of the Guru

yellow rocks and a town. I was suddenly confronted by Bhagavan, who was facing me, dressed in white. H e s poke to me looking straight at me. The purport of his words was that I should seek the Self within and not without, "by travelling to strange cities". His words at the tim e h eld a profound meaning for me, which it is not possible to put down on paper. Then He showed me the open palm of His right h and. In it h e h eld various small white and black pebbles, which I unders t ood t o be uncut gems, not just ordinary stones. As I was watching th e se, they suddenly merged and grew into one large stone , of the size and shape of a small hen's egg; and this s tone had a m ost b eautiful, luminous , glowing, rose-red centre. I awoke feeling very h appy, and t hought it ver y a u s picious that Bhagavan should have appeared to me thus . I interpreted the dream as follows : the stage on which the action was set , was the world, and the rocks of the back-drop , the visible Arunachala Hill. The pebbles in Bhagavan 's palm I associated with some small stones from the Hill which a de votee h a d sent to my husband some time ago, a nd 'which are now ly ing h ere before Bhagavan's picture. The luminous Stone into w hich they grew I took to be the Philosopher's Stone, the World-Egg, the heart with the glowing rose-red Centre. Still, what ever may have been the true, the spiritua l purport of this experience, there cannot be a ny doubt th at t h e war ts on my hand began to h eal a week after I h a d dreamt thi s dream; and now, five months later, the last one h as di sappea r ed. Only, wher eas His palm transmuted its load of pebbles into th e Sto ne of the Wise, my own palm only r epaired and r e n ewed the old , involved patt ern of its skin , in which - so it i s said - can be read all kanna of t hose who persistently ide ntify th em selves with the fate of the body. My husba nd is in the h abit of k eeping a di a ry, each page of which is h eaded in order of sequence by a ver s e from Bhagavan's Sri Arunachala Akshara- mana- moloi. Th e day on which the dream h ere rela t ed was recorded - Ju ly 17 - was

A Dream

headed by the following verse: "Unless Thou extend Thy hand of Grace in mercy a nd embrace me, I am lost, 0 Arunachala!" The Call Divine, Bombay, April 1954.

The Adamantine Way ne of the fundamental tenets of Sri Ramana's Teachings is all dharmas are essenceless and that Pure Consciousness is the sole R eality, being adarnantine, immutable and eternal. This sole and a ll -pervading Consciousness, wherein mentation occurs and concentrates an ego, is Itself void of the notions of subjectivity and objectivity, perfectly pure, and instinct with the Highest Bliss. Each momentary thought appearing on the su rface of this Consciousness has attached to it an illus ory ego which t hinks that thought, and this ego is one of an infinite seri es which has its birth and death with the beginning and end of t h e thought it thinks. Bhagavan has said with r egard to the eph emeral nature of the ego: "'I's are born and di e every moment". These thoughts appear as on a cinema screen, the whi ch screen r epresenting the substratum of Consciousness which is utterly unaffected by images being thrown upon it, or by im ages not being thrown upon it. In other words, it is of no consequence to the screen whether or not images appear on it; the screen remains immutable and void of content, and bea r s no rela tion whatever to the images, which can never at any time a ffect it. Likewise, whether thoughts appear in the mind , or w h et h er they do not so appear, is of no consequ ence to the One Reality whose substance those thoughts ultim at ely a re. But as this 'subst ance' is no subst ance in the sen se in which thi s word is

Othat

The Adamantine Way

u su a lly con s ide red , t h ese t houghts also are essenceless and have no real origin ation. As th e letter 'a' i.s t h e first of a ll letters but is itself uncreate and forml ess, free from a ll m odulations, so also is the One Pure Consciou sn ess likewise the formless source wherefrom Samsara appears to arise. Of all the letters, Sri Kr ishna, in the Gita, claim s identity with the letter 'a', since this letter signifies the void a nd contentless vast of Consciousness, which is bereft of all con cept a nd a ll ideas of subjectivity and objectivity. As ked wh er e abode the tathagata dhannas a nd from whence they a rose, the Buddha replied: "They abide in the body, speech and m in d of the Tathagata and are produced th er efrom ". Ask ed where the body, speech and mind abode, the Buddha r eplied : "In t h e void". To th e final question as to where the void abode, t h e a n swer came: "Nowhere". This answer r em ai n ed t hus, blun t ly unqualified in any way, merely because to amplify would h ave been to distort and therefore to inhibit t h e free flow of intuitive under standing which it was intended to set in motion in the querent. And it is because of the entirely supra-individual , or metaphysical, nature of Consciousness that it is impo ssible to convey by mere words an intimation of That which h as essentially no nature and no existence in the categori es of which we, as limited Jivas, are aware. Words may, however, in some special cases, help to supply the spark neces_s~ry to ignite the Fire of True Understanding - of lntmt1ve Reali sation - and thus to consume all notion of duality in the conflagration of Abs olute Knowledge. It is with this reservation regardi ng t h e in a dequacy of words to express the Tra n scende ntal, tha t these and following remarks are made. Consciousness is One, Eternal, and All-Pervading. There is only Con scious ness. All things rise and set in this Con scious n ess; are of the fabric and na ture of t his Con scious ness; are so many expressions a nd forms thereof. We never lose this Consciousness; it is only the body and mind which are deprived per iodically of its full illumination. It

At The Feet of th e Guru

is in truth an error to a ssert that we have this Con sciou sness at all; we are this Consciousness; and our bodies and minds, which we vainly imagine to possess a consciousness of their own, do not in fact do so, as they are illusory phantoms produced by the mind, the which ignorantly appropriates the Consciousness for its ovm purposes and formulates It in term s of n ame a nd form, thus distorting It and making It imperfect, in complete, and therefore false. In Sushupti neither body nor mind are illumine d by Consciousness; the Perfect State is unremember ed because memory is a faculty of mind, the which does n ot exist in Sushupti, any more than does the body which gives expression to that mind. So it is not a matter of trying to en ter the DeepSleep state fully conscious, but r ather of e ndeavouring to r ealise that the Self is Consciousness a lone, and that the states of wake and dream are illusory manifestation s in that Consciousness, produced by the mind's false assumpt ion that it has a reality and an existence of its own. The Maharshi stressed at all times that t h e process to be adopted was one of removing the veils of ignorance from wh a t was already there - eternally self-existent as pure, r a dia nt Consciousness - and not of striving a fter some state or other which did not exist at the time, but which could be cr eated by religious or metaphysical endeavour. Maha Yoga, H e said , was a process of unlearning, not of learning or a ttaining something new. If Consciousness is the sole Reality, the basis of a ll the m yria d illusions as a desert forms the base whereove r the Fa ta Morgana hangs, how is it that the illusion s a r e so powerful as to cause us confusion, so that we iden t ify ourselves compl etely with our bodies, or minds, or both? Th e question is a d iffi cult one to answer, but an analogy may serve as a base from which int uitive understanding can, perhaps, spring. Im agine an artist seated before his canvas, brush in h a nd, absorbed in hi s work of creation to the point of total forgetfulness of him s elf

The Adamantine Way

and h is abode. So intense is the stream of energy flowing from him to the canvas; so real appear the scenes and figures depicted by his unerring brush, that h e moves and breathes within the narrow confines of the small canvas and identifies himself, almost wit hout knowing that h e does so, with the creatures his mind and h a nd are producing. Such, too, is our state. We have become immersed in the scene we have created around us, to the total exclusi on of all awareness other than of those immediate surroundings - our bodies and their composite functions. When, however, we m erge in Sushupti, it is as if the artist suddenly aware of the world around him - rises from his chair and goes about hi s business, even as he did prior to his absorption in his art. The r eason why we create such an universe of name and form is as inexplicable as why the artist paints his pictures. It may be sheer joy; a compulsion springing from unknown depths ; it may be tha t as art is the nature of the artist, so also the production of n am e and form is the nature of the mind. And so events, peopled with infinite individual and illusory selves, unfold upon the screen of the One Consciousness and imagine a cycle of life and death until th ere is realisation by these illusory selves of the real s~bstratum of their evanescent being. It should be r em embered that such an answer as this springs from the r easoning mind, and so from the start it is a part of t h e illusi on it sets out to explain; so also is the question, which likewise rises from the ignorant assumption that there is such a n ego with its desires and vasanas to explain away, whereas in fact there is no s uch thing. The illusion is dispersed even intellectually by the probe of Atnw Vichara, for as soon as it is asked: "To whom do all these various phenomena occur?" the whole fabric of the situation vanishes like a dream and one's feet a r e firmly set upon the Adamantine Way.

This question "Who am I?", we are t old by Bhagavan, leads to the very r egion of the One Consciousness which is supra-indi vidual , a nd therefore incapable of access from levels

At The Feet of the Guru

which themselves subsist in the general ill usion s u mmed up by the t erms Mind, Ego, or any other t erm indicative of t h e s umtotal of the bundle of vasanas which appear s to have a durable existence. But whatever reason we may give ourselves t o satis fy our search after the answer to the above question , the fact r e mains that the illusion of egoidal existence is a play, a lila, a n act, a mirage, which, although it keeps u s plea santly am u sed at times, causes ultimate anguish and woe; for there com es a time when the powers of the artist begin to wane a nd h e h as to resort to artificial stimulants to assist him in the produ ction of fresh illusions; he dies, bitter, frustr a t ed, a n agonising death, more often than not, having a dded - if h e is considered 'great' - yet another illusion to the world of na me and form. Th e t r uly great are those who show us th at all this u niver se is vain a nd fraught with inevitable misery; that it is an illus ion fos ter ed by ignorance, and that only in Pure Consciou s ness is there Absolute Bliss. Such luminaries of the Life Spiritual as Sri Ra m a krishna Paramahamsa and Bhagavan Sri Ra m ana h ave, each in t heir own way, revealed a pathway through t h e illusion, which arrives in the end at the complete Realisation of the S e lf as the Sole-Existent Reality, undefiled by n a m e a nd form , void of the notions of subjectivity and objectivity. We are more concerned here with the particular Sadhana revealed by the last named Sage, Whose method is wholly free from religious, ethical or philosophi cal implica ti on s, but is purely metaphysical and supra-in dividua l in its a pproa ch , being the only sadhana not involving m entation . By ceaselessly enquiring as to the nature of the 'I' which experiences waking, dream and dreamless s leep , Bhagavan has shown the way out of the complexity of Samsara to the steadfast abidance in the Adamantine Consciousness which underlies all notions whatsoever, be they either of Sa msara or of N irvana. It is insufficient to decla re Samsara void of reality

The Adama.ntine Way

and to seek to enter into Nirvana, which latter is but a notion engendered by and in the mind, still defiled by dualistic concepts. The Place of the Self, which is not a region in Time or in Space, is not related in any way to the twin and opposing notions of Samsara and Nirvana . Pushing the enquiry to its farthest and most t enuous limit, Bhagavan has declared that a subtle interior power picks up the thread and, surpassing the mind, penetrates the final veils obscuring the radiance of the Self as the One Supreme Consciousness. This Consciousness is beginningless, without middle, and endless; abiding and not abiding; other than mind; other than all we can conceive with soul or mind or brain; incomprehensible - a shining and everlasting Mystery. The Call Divine, Bombay, May 1954.

One and the Same: A Note on the Tree of Life

o those who are intent on realising in all tru e systems. of religion and metaphysic the underlying sameness w hich appears veiled in diversity of form and expression, the Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana are surely of the utmost value. In the following remarks it is the writer's endeavour to show, albeit briefly and not in detail, how a flood of lig ht is cast upon one particular system of m eta physical tho ught, viz., the initiated Western Tradition, which has as the cor e of its esoteric Teaching the schematic representation of the World-Process which it calls the 'Tree of Life'.

It would be impossible in the space of a short article t o enter into details concerning the ramifications of thi s syst em , a nd it is not at all necessary, for to those who under sta nd the system it will not be necessary to discuss a ny of t he Paths or Seph iroth below the Abyss. The Regionless Void of the Limitless Light is the s ubstratum of Reality wherein the 'Tree' has its roots, the conte nt less Con sciousness which Bhagavan has said is the sole Rea lity. This Light concentrates itself in a manner mysterious to us, but the result of thi s Massing of the Light is that a Bindu , or Point, appears upon the sur face of consciousness, or appears t o

One and the Same

do so, rather in the same way as the seed-state of the Ego appears in the deep layer s of Sushupti, the void or chaos which Is prior to 'creation'. In the Western Tradition the Point, or Bindu, is termed Kether - 'the White Head'. Its meaning is the First Point or Root-Seed from which springs forth the two opposite currents of P ositivity and Negativity, known as Chokmah and Binah respectively. These currents are, in the East, referred to as Shi va a nd Shahti - the passive and active attributes of lshvara (Kether). These twin poles of awareness are the result of massive bliss , com pelling separation of the two component parts which go to make any idea whatsoever at all possible. Thus, without I shvara , or Kether, ther e could be no separ ation of these tv.rin poles into separate entities of passive and active potency. This Shiua-Shahti offshoot of the original Bindu, produced by the Self-Realisation or Concentration of the Void, represents the Suapnic stage of Awareness, as Kether represents Sushupti, and t h e Limitless Light, or Void, represents the Fourth or only true State - Turiya. With the formation as it were of the dual aspect of the Lord, there comes sim~ltaneously i'nto being the peculiar phenomenon, known as Daath in the Western Tradition, which is in fact exactly what Bhagavan has described the Chit Jada granthi to be. It is that false link between the Void and its realisation in terms of motion which lends its air of reality as a limi ted a n d individual entity, and it is significant that in the Western Tradition this Sephira is described as Accursed, being a false Sephira added to the glyph to make its comprehension possible ; for t h ere are in actuality ten Sephiroth and not eleven, yet this false Sephira - Daath - is, from the point of view of the mind of man, the most important of the series, for it is the key to the comprehension, in terms of intellect, of the whole system . Schematically represented, this remarkable system, illuminated fully at last by the light of the Teachings of the Sage of Arunagiri, may be set forth as follows:

At The Feet of the Guru

The Void, or Self, or Sole Reality, equals the limitless light of the Western Tradition. The Self-Realisation of this Void nature of Self in terms of Time and Space (Shiva and Shakti inherent in Kether) manifests as a Point or Bindu, which bifurcates its latent and opposing twin tendencies into patent and actual opposites called Chokmah and Binah, or Shiva and Shahti. Simultaneously with the projection of these twin concepts, there appears to be produced a synthesising agent w hich assumes the twin powers to be real and separate forces; so that the Jiva or individual Soul is produced, which then proceeds to 'create' the worlds below the Abyss (or chit jada granthi), which fall into the schematic divisions of the Ten Sephiroth, and the Tattvas of the Eastern Systems. It is interesting to note that the Jshtadevata , or Chosen Ideal, is formulated by the Jiva in terms of its own limited functioning, i.e., below the Abyss, or after the waking state of the exteriorised Self has identified itself with the objects it has itself created. A great gulf separates it from the Sole Reality, or the Void, from whence it originally seemed to spring, by virtue of mechanics too mysterious for the human mind and intellect to fathom. Thus, briefly and tentatively, the two systems may be seen to be identical as follows:

= The Void = The

Sole Reality = The Self = The Limitless Light of the Western Tradition. Sushupti =The Seed = State of two potentials concentrated as a Massive Bindu, or Point of Light, radiant with interior bliss = Kether of the Western Tradition. Turiya

Svapna = The first internal and latent stirrings of the Light and Its splitting into the active dynamic Will and the passive fluidic Imagination (Shiva and Shakti ) = Chokmah and Binah of the Western Tradition.

One and the Same

Jagrat

= The

s pontaneous feeling of individuality expe1"ienced in the constant conflict of the two opposing poles of consciousness, or forces = Chit Jada granthi = the Ego, or Jiva = Daath, or the 'false' Sephira of the Western Tradition.

And it is in respect of this last Sephira (Daath) alone, that the 'creation' of the worlds may be said to exist at all, even as Bhagavan h as shown that it is only because of the apparent existence of the Ego that the concepts of subj ectivity and objectivity have at a ll appeared in the One True Consciousness which is contentless, ever-blissful and Void: "When the mind is absorbed in the Pure Light of Consciousness [i.e. the Limitless Light of the Western Tradition, or the Void] the world ceases to exist as a n objective r eality" (Sri Ramana the Sage of Arunagiri , page 83). Also, and with respect to the projection of the twin currents of en er gy into the channels of the individualised Will and Imagination, see the following: Thou art Thyself the One Being, ever aware as the selflumi nous Heart! In Thee there is a mysterious Power (Shahti), which without Thee is nothing. From it proceeds the phantom of the mind emitting its latent subtle dark mis ts, which, illumined by Thy Light (of Consciousness) reflected on them, appear within as thoughts whirling in the vortices of prarabdha, later developing into th e psychic worlds and projected outwardly a s the mat erial world transformed into concrete obj ects wh ich are magnified by the out-going senses and move abou t like pictures in a cinema show. Visible or invisible , 0 Hill of Grace, without Thee they are nothing!

(Sri Arunachala Ashtalwm, verse 6) This verse resumes in its entirety the Teaching of the Western Tradition as en shrined in the schematic glyph called 'Th e 'free of Life'. But the latter only really becomes a Tree of Life, a living truth a nd not a mere dead mechanism , if infused with the Light of t h e Mah a rshi's Teachings, or the Teaching of any r eali sed Sage (for they are all One) Who has Himself dis-

At The Feet of the Guru

solved the false Sephira (Daath) and awakened to the Truth that the Self is in essence void of concept; of a ll ideas appertaining to objectivity and subjectivity; of t h e sli gh test stress either active or passive - for It is that Stillness which is Absolute Bliss. The above is a tentative interpretation of the m ajor Key of the Western Tradition in the light of the ini tiated Eastern Wisdom, and to the writer's mind no gr eat er h elp of soldering the love of East for West, and vice versa, may be giv en than the demonstration that differences appear only upon t h e s urface of the two traditions and not at the Heart, where a ll is One a nd the Same. A word may be added to show that in the West much emphasis is laid upon the Ishtadevata aspect of religion , in t he form of Jesus. In the light of the identification of the Ishtadevata of Eastern Systems with the Sephira Tipher eth of t h e 'Tree of Life', it will be seen that this is but a stage in th e spiritual development of the West, which has not matured to the extent of her Eastern brother who has gone a bove th e Abyss, a nd dissolved his Chosen Ideal, even, in the Pure Ligh t of the Void. Of this aspect of the matter more may be said in future. Here it will merely be remarked that it appears th a t thi s st age is already being superseded in the West by a di ssolution of the Tiphereth principle into the Abyss itself, wh ere a ll concepts undergo a process of destruction and purificati on , to re-emerge in fresh a nd higher veils of scintillating truth. Th ese veil s may only be fin ally torn apart by the method Bh agavan h as given us; but whether or not this will be incorporated in the recrea ted system of the West after the dissolution of the old, remains to be seen, and depends equally upon both the East a nd the West and their mutual love and understanding of a nd for each oth er. The Call Divine, Bombay, Ju ly 1954.

Nothing Manifests Itself in Any Form

h agavan teaches that the Self alone is real and that the manifested Universe is unreal as Universe b~t real as Self It is a thought-construction springing from the One Mind which, in its pure and ultimate nature, is undefiled by concepts of subjectivity and objectivity, and which remains as the void s ubstratum of all things when all thought is at last dissolved in the perfect Knowledge of its true nature. Yet this Nothingness, or Void, has shades or degrees of meaning for us so long as we remain ignorant of the illusory nature of the manifested univer se, or of Thought. Even as the sky differs, or appears to differ, with the changing modes of dawn, noon-day, dusk and night, so also may this Void be understood to have t he a ppearance of difference according to the viewpoint of the Jiva, or unrealised Shiva. Thus the Void may, for purposes of convenience and for assisting in a deeper unders tanding of Its nature, be conceived as having four degrees or variations of Its voidness. In the final a nalysis all is resolved into the Sarva -sunya, or All-Perfect Void; yet from this state, which is really no state imaginable by the mind, m ay be sa id to depend the threefold states of deep dreamless sleep, dream , a nd waking. The Maha-sunya, or state equivalent to Sushupti, is a nalogous to th e union of Prajna and Upaya, which un ion exis ts in seed-state or massive potential in the first Sephira of the 'Tree of Life' of the Western Tradition. The

At The Feet of the Guru

All-Void wherein this inconceivable Union occurs is the Ain Soph of the Qabalists, or the Limitless Light of Nothingness which illumines and supports all that proceeds from the manifestation of the Union of Prajna and Upaya. This Union or Unity becomes twain in t h e Svapnic s tate and manifests in the two-fold concept of Will and Imagination , Imagination being the crystallised exteriori sation of the essences appearing in the dream state. Thus do the four-fold phases of the Void - Sarua-sunya, Maha-sunya, Ati-su.nya and Sunya - glide one from the other in an illusory a nd incomprehensible fashion. Bhagavan teaches that if we keep the mind perpetually fixed to the All-Perfect Void, or Self, from w hi ch the Lila of four-fold activity proceeds, we sh all realise the r eality of t he Universe in terms of that Self and see it n o m ore as Universe, as Maya or Illusion, but as the Play of t he One Lord wh o is Saruasunya, the One Indestructible Con sciou sn ess w hi ch is the Sole Reality. The Union of Upaya and Prajna h as been represented variously by the symbolisms of different sects and reli gions, for this is that Union of Shiva and Shakti which is incompreh en sible to the uninitiated mind. It is the perpetual Union of the mind of the Sadhaka with the Void nature of the mind's ori gin. S hiva is this Void origin , and Shakti is the evolving power called Mind which can conjure out of th e Void a ny n ame or form She chooses. It is a well-known practice resorted to by certa in Sadhakas that is h ere symbolised, in the imagery of a Union which has not altogether been grasped by even so-called initiated thinkers. It is easy to mistake th e symbol for t h e r eali ty, even as it is extremely easy to mistake the Universe for r eality as Universe, instead of as Self. But by constan t m ed itation on the void nature of the mind, Bhagavan sh ows how i t is possible to realise the source of mind and therefore of everything dependent thereon, such as Universes, Gods, States of Be in g, After-Life , etc., for all are mer ely conceptual id eas ge n erated in the

Nothing Manifests I tself in Any Form

origin al Void by the active aspect of its Shakti or Mind. The Goddess Nairamani says: "I am free from all hopes and desires and the void-mind is my husband- the nature of the realisation of bliss that proceeds from me cannot be expressed." This shows in wh at manner the Union is to be understood, and this also expresses in poetic imagery what has often been portrayed in sculptural imagery, viz. the Union of Shiva and Shakti in Mith una. This Mithuna is best expressed in this manner becau se the component parts are symbolical of Prajna and Upaya, or Wisdom and Method, the which, in union, resolve themselves into t hat All-Perfect Void which is Pure Consciousness. The Union involves a symbolic act of Love which is so inten se as to fix the mind entirely upon the object of union ; thus, if the Sadhaka firmly embraces with his mind the void s ubstratum whereon the mind has its abode, then will that Bliss be his which is designated Mahasukha. The u se of Mant ras for the realisation of the Void, or Self, is based on a like doctrine of enthusing the mind of the S adhaka to so intense a pitch of inner awareness, that he loses the outward consciousness and his thoughts withdraw into the Pure Mind from whence activity stirred them. Bhagavan says: "Be still. Wh at could be easier than that?" This stilling of the Mind and all its activities reveals the void and shining purity which is its real n ature; it is only when the mind stirs itself as Though t that Name and Form emerge, and from the depths of the illimita ble storehouse of Mind proceed those images, gods a nd goddesses, which people the myths of man. Mantras are used for stilling th e mind by turning it within and eschewing t hose thought-constructions which form the external world. If the M antra is m eaningless even, the goal is still achieved; for it is not in a ny positive attribute of the Mantra that the power lies, but in it s ceaseless repetition which finally stuns the mind into qui escence and allows its purity and stainless vacuity to be fully realised. Thus , the two concepts of Compassion (intense all-pervading Love) a nd Knowledge (which is Pure Consciousness underlying

At The Feet of the Guru

all the mind's activities) merge in an in de s criba ble Nothingness which is characterised by inten se B li ss. Bhagavan lived and moved in that Bliss all the m om en ts of His great life upon earth, and still so abides in the One H eart of AJl from whence He never really emerged. Only through intense love towards u s did H e seem to mani fest, a flamin g Beacon of splendour. And this is the greatest, most s hining example of that intense Union which occurs when the mind is lost in its source, and all activity merges in the tranquil la ke of unutterable Knowledge. Bhagavan's Life and Teachings sh owed the complete nondifference between the twin polar ities which are s uch constant problems to th e unenligh tened mind. Between man and woman He made no difference; between sleepin g and waking He made no difference; between any of the so-call ed opposites was there no difference made. To attain that Sam uit or Consciousness with all the forms that Consciou s ness ass umes , is the example which Bhagavan sets before the eyes of His devotees. And it is only by insisting on t h e s ameness of all things and not on t heir differences - which are purely illus ory because mind-made - that we shall weld into a single Whole the myriad conflicting tendencies which estrange u s a ll a nd make of our lives a burden and a verita ble hell on earth. To realise that Nothing manife st s itself in a ny form is to realise either that the Self is the Sole Rea lity a nd the Univer se illusion; or, equally truly, t hat t he Self is all t ha t it form s itself into, by modula ting the mind and causing Nam e a nd Form to issue forth from the deeps of its secret H eart. Eith er wa y we reach the truth which Bhagavan t each es u s in His life a nd in His conversations with devotees. If we take to he art w h at He says even intellectually, t here will be no room for d iffer e nces of opinion, clashes of interest and t h e eternal squabbles and rancours which mar the otherwise void and s hining serenity of t he infinite ocean of Bh ss. In the word s of' the Sacr ed Sc1iptures:

Nothing Manifests Itself in Any Form

"He who contemplates on the Void while walking or standing, dreaming or eating, becomes altogether ethereal and is absorbed in the chidalwsha." Sri Ramana interpreted this truth for us in the living reality of His own sojourn here with us upon earth. Let us strive ever to so regard every experience as a particular and sacred Mithuna , or Marriage, of the mind with its void substratum, that the Universe becomes for us as transparent as crystal. And let us hnow that we are indeed that ever-vacuous Bliss that throws these thought-shadows out of its heart to people the Cosmos with rapture.

The Call Divine, Bombay, September 1954.

Mother's Home is the Heart other's glories are not unknown t o h er devotees in England, because through Her inca lcu la b le Grace , Sri Bhaiji's book has found its way t o t h ese sh or es. The rein is unfolded a tale of such rapture a nd wonde r that the heart melts into bliss at the contemplation of Mother 's words and the sight of her physical vehicle which ens hrines th e Light of the Spirit.

Her radiance and splendour are boundless a nd not confined to India alone, for she abides verily in the H ea rt a nd not in time or space. It is in the Heart that one finds Mothe r ever responsive to one's yearnings towards H er. She s tre tch es forth Her all-merciful hand to the least of h er devot ees a nd cons ol es them with the doctrine of undecaying Bliss. It is difficult to describe what Mothe r m eans to on e, for s he is too deeply identified with one's inmost h ear t , wit h t h e core of one's being, to be objectifi ed su ffic ien tl y for description in common. Yet one may express the m a tter as near ly as possible by saying that she is that infinite void beyond the r each of conceptual thought which shines r espl endent as th e s un a t noon day in the clear unclouded sky of Azure e mpt in ess. Sri Bha iji puts it in a supremely beautiful way when he says in on e of his songs to Her: the Sun and the moon, Mothe1; are thy twin ea r-drop s, the deep blue of the immense shy

Mother's Home is the Heart

Thy hair and the universe T hy glorious B ody. And t his "glori ous Body", I think, means the Body of Bliss, the Body of the Ada ma ntine and Eternal Consciousness assuming t h e m ind-sh a pes ofrapture which constitute the univer se as we know it, and not th e mere physical vehicle of Mother, beautiful as it is. But h ow m ay a Bhahta of Ma describe the Bliss which is ~other? S h e is all -embracing and includes all things in Her m1men si ty, even as t he ever-vacuous sky contains the planets a nd t he clouds and the star-dust and the untold millions of worlds in its illimitable and vaulted body. How can anything express t hat wonder? Nothing can , for She is Nothing that we can wonder a bout, sing about, wTite about or know about; for to know H er is to /mow N othing , which is the void substratum wh ereon a ll t his universe has its illusory being, its incompreh en sible L ila. But for Moth er's L ilas we would be unable to envelop Her image in our minds at all: it is through her immeasurable Grace a lon e t h a t we a re imbued with the lmowledge of Reality through t he veils of Her shining words, which breathe the echoes of truth on the breezes of our lives which ar e mer e dreams and re fl ection s in t he tranquil lake of Her unruffled Mind.

It is only through the doctrina l approach that we may come near to expressin g Mother in words, for She teaches that Truth which h as existed from all time and beyond all time: that the Self a lon e is real and a ll else unreal. Mother helps us in realising this trut h by bringing clearly t o our minds the inexh austible store of Her Lilas, t ha t we m ay contemplate them and derive rich s pirit u a l benefi ts t h erefrom. Through Sri Bhaiji's words we come to a close intimacy with Mother, because She manifest ed a litt le of H er infinite Light in him, and by Her Grace he was enabled to write in words some echo of Her own spontaneous a nd unutter abl e Realisation.

At The Feet of the Guru

One of Mother's characteristic sayings is: "This body is like a drum; just as you will beat it, it will produce a corresponding sound. I find that there is but one playful m aster-t une ringing through the whole universe ." And this m ean s , I think , that each devotee can see in Mother only the im age of hi s own degree of attainment, exteriorised in a vehicle perfect in its ability to express that attainment in modes of spiritua l consciousness operative on the dua listic planes of conceptual thought. This is the reason no one devotee can embr ace Mother entirely by his verbal descriptions or intellectual comprehensions; for as soon as he knows Mother as She is, he h as already become Mother and exists in pure Being where only the Adamantine and Aduaitin consciousn ess a bides as the Sole Reality. Thus has Mother declared Herself to be the void s ubstratum of all ideas and form s, the pure a nd undefile d and ever-shining vacuous Consciousness which a lone is real a nd which is instinct with undecaying Bliss. Mother 's words, whatever they may tell us, do but s how the way to merge with Her. They guide u s with their s ubtl e and beautiful power to ever more rarified strata of Be ing, where the world about us is seen as a shimmering veil concealing r ealities of which individuality can never be a part. Only by s urrendering the individuality, or ego, may we pa rtake of Moth er's Supreme Sacrament, which is the full r ealisation of the void n a ture of all dharmas. Set as a jewel of burning flam e - the fl a m e of everl asting Consciousness - Mother abides , constan t ly ca lling to u s H er devotees to seek Within and consum e our individua lities on the pyre of Her brilliant purity. And if we die to the body a nd to the mind , to the indi viduality as well as to hopes of future lives on earth , or e lsewh ere, then we shall be taken up into that flame - th e outer veil of the Pranava Om, which merges in that undying Silence which is the mantra of the Void.

Moth er 's H ome is the H eart

That fl ame is depicted on the cover of Ananda Varta, and it is the humble prayer of this devotee that Mother shall absorb u s all in Her infinite Compassion and consume us utterly, so that we at last may come to the knowledge that Mother alone is, and that there never were any separate existences apart from Her; for it is Her Lila that She divides Herself in twain as the Mother and the wayward child. We are all Her children. Let us return to Mother now . Ananda Varta, Banares, November 1954.

I Am. Always I: A Note on Reincarnation "I 's are born and die every moment." With this utterance Bhagavan illuminates the much-discussed question of Reincarnation and places the matter in a refreshingly new and simpler light. Some of us have been altogether too accustomed to viewing Reincarnation in a somewhat crude and cumbersome manner, not in any way satisfactory and yet irreplaceable by a more lucid concept. Bhagavan has given us such a concept and we should endeavour to understand its full purport and significance.

In the first place, Bhagavan attributes no continuity of consciousness to the Ego, for He says that every thought that rises in the mind has an Ego which t hinks t h at though t. So, in effect, the Ego does not die after a span of a few scor e year s, nor at t he end of each day when it sinks into deep dream less s leep, but at the end of every thought. Each and every though t wh ich arises is not connected to any other thought; but as beads on a length of string, each thought appears sequenti a l because of the underlying thread of Pure Consciousness wh ich appear s to string all the beads of thought together. So, the Ego is constantly undergoing a process of birth and death; in fact a myriad Egos constantly undergo such a process in th e s pan of one socalled life-time on earth.

I Am Always I

It is essen t ial that we re-orientate our conception of this Ego and th e body it appears to inhabit, or rather, which it creates for its expression and u se. I do not suffer any diminution of consciousness because of the constant deaths of the myriad Egos which spring into being with my every thought. Then why should I be at a ll affected by, or distressed about, the death of this body which dies for an infinitesimal fraction of time each time every single thought of mine vanishes into its source - the Self - wherefrom it originally appeared? For I am always I, whether awake, asleep, or dreaming; whether 'alive' or 'dead' or in a ny intermediate state; and in whatever sphere I function th ere is a body a ppropriated by the Ego for the fulfilment of its desires or thoughts; and wh en t hese desires and thoughts cease, so do the vehicles of t heir manifestation also cease. A dying from one plane is but a birth to and upon another, and it is only th e Jiuanmuhta - or the I-Supreme - which suffers neither birth nor death , dream nor waking, nor any of these special, limiting states. The problem which suggests itself very forcibly is : Why do we im agine there to be a particular birth and a particular death for an E go which we vainly imagine to be coherent or continuous for the space of a few score years? The answer lies in a further question : Who says the Ego endures as an entity possessing continuity of consciousness at all? Answer: The Ego says so. Does it say so in Sushupti? It does not - yet I remain in Sushupti , for I am always I, apart from Egos, births and deaths. We ask the question from one level (i.e. the waking state), a nd with one faculty (i.e. the reasoning faculty) and expect the answer to satisfy all levels and all faculties, whereas in actual fact we are only conscious of Ego in wake and dream life; it does not exist in deep sleep , or in death; but I exist in deep sleep , as a lso in death , and I r emain forever unaffected by these constant births and deaths of the thoughts I think, or the Egos I continually become.

At The Feet of the Guru

Bhagavan teaches that there is an infinites ima lly minute period of time existing between the death of one t hought and the birth of another; or - if we prefer it - between the death of one thought and its almost instanta neou s rebirth. And if we could only enter into that split-second voi d between thoughts, and abide at rest therein, Bhagavan says we should know the Self, the Unfragmentary Consciousness back of a ll the Egos and thoughts which our vasanas call into being. The continual appearance and di sappear ance of the Ego is somewhat analogous to the light of a neon lam p: it appears to be a continuous light but this is an illusion based on faulty vision, on ignorance in fact. Actually, this ap pearance of continuous light is effected by an exceedingly swift series of illuminations which flash on and off faster than the eye may notice. And so it is with Thought, or the Ego (for Thought and Ego are identical terms). If we can penetrate t h e fl eeting interstices between thoughts, then would it be possible for the Self to realise its identity with pure undiluted Con sciou sness whereon flash on and off the neon lights of our thoughts. The Goddess Nuit who is depicted by the Andent E gyptians in the form of a beautiful woman arched over the earth , domed as the night-sky, Her body sown with stars, is ask ed by H er Priest the same question: Who Am I? And H er reply is: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecs tasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence , t he omnipresence of my body.

(The body here referred to is th e a dama ntine body, or body of pure Consciousness which is eternal and omnipresent - the Dharmakaya.) And in this utter ance the Goddess equates Herself with the dark night of the off-moments in our neon a n a logue, the Pure Substratum of Consciousness - base of a ll though ts - which Bhagavan calls the Self. Further on in the Ritual the Priest hymn s the Goddess as follows:

I Am Always I

0 N ui t, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that m en s peak not of Thee as one but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!

And so, if we a r e able to r em ember constantly that the infinite series of E go-thoughts flash forth from the deeps of Consciousness Universal, and only appear to have individuality, time and dimen sion - because of our faulty vision - then we sh a ll realise consciously our union with that 'Continuous One of H eaven' Who is the Self, the only Reality- adamantine in its eternity, its bliss and its beauty. We shall also comprehend the true m ystery of R eincarnation, for we shall know that it is the E go alone which undergoes all these changes, while I do not change at a ll, for I a m always I.

The Call Divine, Bombay, J anuary 1955.

Quicksand evotees of the Bhagavan often put the question - amongst themselves - "Do you follow the life of the Bhagavan?" especially if they are meeting for the first time.

I have been asked this question more than once, a nd although I now forget how I replied or evaded the issue, nonetheless it initiated a train of thought which developed in this wise: By following the life of the Bhagavan is meant, presumably, and on the surface, the life of Sri Rama na of Tiruvannamalai; obviously, otherwise the question would be meaningl ess when asked of an individual introduced to one in connection with that particular Maharshi. And one's own way of life is the mute reply that one does not follow the life of the Bhagavan; one does not - at least in the West - abide m editatively in th e fas tness of a sacred hill, nor does one possess freedom fro m possessions and have but a st aff, a loin-cloth and an a lms-bowl. One does in fact show not the slightest resemblance in an y way wh a t ever to the Life of the Bhagavan, if by the Bhagavan is implied the particular Sage called Sri Ramana wh o once lived , and who is said still to abide, in the fastness of the sacred Aruna chala. And so, examining oneself with care, one discover s almos t as a revelation that this figure of Sri Ramana , endowed with sanctity by countless devotees, is not t he Bh agavan at a ll but an ego-engendered concept.

Quicllsand

Going yet deeper, one is struck by a further realisation which is, that a ll that on e supposes to be one's self is, in fact a nd in truth, its very opposite - the not-self; for all that can be embraced by thought is of the ego, that treacherous quicksand wh erein are lost alike the finest conceptions of human thinking as a lso the basest. And so, one cannot even truthfully reply to the question "Do you follow the life of the Bhagavan?", "No, but I endeavour to be my self', for this 'self' which I have posited as belonging to nie is in r eality, as has been seen, anything and everything but the Self, i. e. it is the not-self. And so, Silence is always best, and it is in the nature of a further revelation that one r ealises the fact that this Silence is not the mute inability to answer the question, not the impotent a nd baffled r ecoiling from the problem, but the only positive a ffirm ation of the existence of that Awareness, any definition of which must forever be false. Thus, in the cage of the ego and in its subtle quicksand we sink deeper and deeper, the more we talk and endeavour to explain ourselves and why we are the Self, although seemingly so remote from the life which the Bhagavan as Sri Ramana once led amon g us. The outcome of this introspection is that Sri Rarnana never intended that a ny one should follow his way oflife or even their own way of life: his silence vibrated with a positive message which , being t r anslated, might read: "Be what you are without though t of being at a ll"; and his apparent inactivity spelt the furt her message: "Do not imagine that you can do anything: there is no doer , nothing to be done: mer ely be, as a child, unconscious of being this or being that, of following this way of life or that; for however hard you try, the you that is trying is always the ego, the not -self, and no amount of effort will transmute it into the Self."

It seems hopeless: there appears to be no way out; and yet, when we look into the matter r eally deeply and earnestly, we

At The Feet of the Guru

find there is no 'we', no 'matter', no 'earnestness', nothing at all but - that pernicious quicksand of the mind, forever tempting us to believe that we are guilty of every offence, devoid of grace, falteringly slow in our ascent to the summit of the Self. And all these things ar e surely not the Self: th erefore, tak e n o heed but merely BE. The difficulty which then becomes a pparent may be voiced as follows: "Am I then to follow no way, not even my own way; is all illusion and we ourselves m erely a dream in a dream that is both meaningless and absurd, even if at times unsurpassingly beautiful? Am I to live , then, as a brute lives, mindless of any and every thing? Should I not do good , succour the weak , the poor, the afflicted?" And I think that out of all this vain yet anguished questioning of the hopeless and s ick spirit, one fact em erges brig htly, transcending all other facts in its brillia nce and in its utter perfection. And it is this: that there exists a certain precious alembic - call it the Self, the Atman, call it what you will - that has the power of transmuting this dream of ours into a vision of Beauty, of Wonder, of everlasting Enchantment; so that, when viewed as a perfect and complet e picture, each fragment thereof - the most trivial as the m ost portentous-seeming assumes a significance other than it appears to h ave upon the surface: that the most common and familiar things are words in the language of a mystic speech which is verily the High Mass of the Ineffable, and that throu gh Art - that is , t hrough our power of acquiring or realising this transforming vis ion we each of us dissolve the ego in the a lembic of Self unti l that which remains shines resplendent - the very Stone of the Wise, the Elixir of Transcendent Wisdom, Beauty and Peace. Did not the Bhagavan as Sri R amana perform each act of his great life, the common-seeming as the most profound, with a consummate artistry which betokened hi s a ll-embracing knowledge th at all these various facets of our earthly a nd particular existence are verily necessary to the whole, a nd utterly

l. Bhag a uan Sri Ramona iVlaha rshi

2. Bhagauan Sri Ramana Malwrshi

3. Bh agava 11 Sri Ramano i\1aharshi

4. Bhagauan 8ri Raman o M a lwrshi

5. Srimati Ana11da111 ayima

6. Sri Thalwr /-lorc111ath

7. Sri Thalwr Haranath

8. S ri Tha lwr Haranalh and S r imat i /(u sum o f(umari Dei·i

.9. S ri Ramakrish11a

10. Sri Ramakrishncr

ll . Sa i Bcrhcr of S hinli

12. Srimali Anusaya Dr'L'i

/ .?. S ri S ii·anw1da

14. Sri S.P Reddy, Garu, of Sri Haranath A shram. author (M arch 6th 1.984!

Ban~afon'.

u •1th the

Quicksand

splendid when viewed without greed, attachment, hatred or fear? And even these latter, may they also not be veils concealing th at h oly yearning towards True Happiness, the Summum Bonu.m, which the ego has playfully put away from the Self? Sri Ramana has seen in the basest acts of meanness and greed, of lust and envy, this incessant searching for a dimly remembered region of bliss, a paradise of joy unmarred by the inability to behold the Vision in its entirety. But in order to regain this state one has to forget the personal universe, and, stepping out of the quicksand of the ego, realise with the Poet: The kingdom of I and We forsake, And your honie in annihilation malie. The Call Divine, Volume III Number 12. Bombay, August 1955.

Resignation "L

:he

et things take their course". These fi ve words resume entire mystical philosophy of the East. The Maharsh1 of Tiruvannamalai is often quoted as using these words to seekers who came to him for advice and guidance on widely varying matters. It is, on the face of it, a peculiarly negative doctrine t h at is implied by these five words; and yet, if we investigate the matter closely, we sh all see that it is identical in spirit an d - ultimately - in actual practice, with its seemingly opposite doctrine: "Do what thou wilt shall be th e whole of the Law", t h e which eleven words fairly r esume the 'Western' count erpart of the mystic utterance of the East.

In the one case ther e is a negative str ess, as evidenced by the word "Let'', while in the other case there is a positi ve s tress, implied by the word "Do". The one word is of apparent inactivity and mystico-passive waiting, while the other is of apparent activity and magico-positive performance. It will , it seems, be a great st ep towards a closer ha rmony and understanding between Eastern and Western points of view if the two apparently different a nd opposite precepts a r e carefully if briefly examined.

In th e first place, as is almost too well-known to require detailed mention, the East has come to represent a certain negative or myst ical attitude in matters of th e Spiri t, w hil e th e We st

Resignation

would seem to be set up as the champion of what may best be described as a magically directed, purposeful, and very positive application of those power s or shaktis of Nature which are the attributes or dynamic stresses of the One pure ShivaConsciou sn ess. But that the doctrine of resignation is concealed at the heart of the West ern precept, no less than that it forms the obvious and outer veil of the mystic utterance of the East, is easily recognisable when we consider the nature of the Will and the varied m eans of its expression. The precept "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" is not to be confused with the spiritually empty and meaningless, a nd apparently identical statement "Do whatever you like'', for it is as rigid an injunction as the law of gravitation or th e attraction of opposites. No true law may be broken, however much we dodge t he issue by pretending that if we step into a mech anised vehicle of some sort or another we can defy the waves, the air, the very laws of Nature herself. This is all nonsense and ma nifestly absurd when it is realised that all we have done is to master the theory of a particular natural law, its underlying principle, and applied ourselves to construct a machine capable of so h armonising with this law, as appar ently to render it obsolete, if not a ctually flout it altogether. We still cannot jum p over the Moon, and n ever will be able to do so; and in the moral order of things it is just as impossible for certain people to commit murder as it is easy and seemingly natural to others to do so. And so, however we look at it, we cannot do other than 'our will ', i.e., follow out th e specific line of development laid down for u s, and - incidentally - by us. The world at large is subj ect to gen eral laws , and each individual unit of that world is likewise subject - absolutely - to its own immutable laws, gener ated , as it were, by its own karmic and inner necessity. To obtain r elease from the function of these laws is not possible to the ego; but, by resignation to the 'true will' or pattern of the life-wave as a whole , such relea se may be obtained, and it is

At The Feet of the Guru

this resignation which is indicated by the two seemingly contradictory precepts of East and West: "L et things take t h eir course", and "Do what thou wilt sh a ll be t h e whole of the L aw." No Easterner raised in the true tradition believes that he can in any way alter or transform the 'laws' in wh ich hi s ego has enmesh ed him, and nor does a ny truly initiat ed Westerner; but they both believe that by adopting the attitude of t he 'Witness', and observing the effects a nd workin gs of these 'laws' as if they occurred to 'another ' individual , they can , by this method of supreme resignation , gradually separate the wheat from the ch aff, become conscious of the ego's falsity and realise liberation from illusory subj ection to t he laws w hich su ch egos must necessarily evolve. Next to Atmauichara itself, Bhagavan h as said t h at 'selfsurrender', 'resignation' or 'letting th ings take their course' letting them, in other words, fulfil their allotted des tiny wh ile the Self looks on detachedly - is the highest a nd m ost perfect means of locating the deceit of the ego a nd bringing a ll its 'works' and all its 'laws' to nought. We cannot influence events however much we im agine t h at we can, but we are free to stand a part and watch these events as if they occurred to anoth er entity or being. By such Resignation a dichotomy is establish ed whi ch gradua lly reveals the ego as an illusory superimposition, a ph a ntasmagoria of imaginings, da ncing upon the surface of th e wat er s of the One Unsulli ed Consciousness. And so, the Eastern method (of Aduaita) contempl ates the ever tranquil and Immutable Shiva by the resignation implied by the words "Let things take their course", while the h ig hest initiates of the West - now as ever - contemplate t he ever-rest less stirrings of Shakti by th at same r esign a t ion which is equally implied in the precept "Do wh at t hou wilt s ha ll be the whole of t he Law"; for by 'doing t he true will', i.e., letting all parts of the picture fulfi l themselves evenly with out let or hindrance, we come to see t he ill usoriness of th e picture a nd its

Resignation

mirage-like beauty cast in the shining waters of the Unmoving Shiva. For only by withdrawing to a coign of vantage without the picture itself, a nd refusing to identify the Self with the ego playing th erein, can the picture be seen in its entirety and as a limited a nd separate a nd wholly illusory representation of the th oughts and desires wh ich form a perpetual river of unhindered dream. The Call Divine, Volume IV Number 1. Bombay, September 1955.

The All-Pervading Presence of the Mother t is, perhaps, not a matter for remark that extr aordinary thing~ sometimes occur in circumstances involving Sri Anandamayi Ma, but I would like to place the following event on record as showing Mother 's omniscience and omnipresence con cer ning one who has not contacted Her in the physical at all, not even through correspondence.

The following event may seem trivial t o those for whom long association with Mother has revealed m any such even ts of a truly miraculous and marvellous nature. It mus t be r e member ed, however, that to one living in England where these events ar e conspicuous by their absence, and which is as remote from Mother's physical presence as may be, such an event sta nds out as a singular and inspiring witness to an occult order of things which no amount of materiality may afford even to deaden , much less then to destroy. Having spent an evening perusing and contemplating certain numbers of this Magazine, Ananda Varta , I had retired for the night, my mind quite naturally attuned to thoughts of Mother and Her infinite Grace. Having a particular and distressing probl em a t t h e back of my mind which welled forth into the for ecou rts of consciousness in the lucidity preceding sleep, I decided that I would s ubmit my perplexity to Mother and seek H er a dvi ce.

71 It is to be noted that there was no conscious formulation of prayer designed with the purpose of creating a link or channel between Mother and myself, through which She might pour the healing streams of Her Grace; on the contrary, there was a distinct feeling, or decision, of postponing the matter until the morrow when I would either compose a letter describing the problem; or, more subtly, ask directly of Mother, and within myself, that She give me the strength to dispel my perplexity, enshrining my plea in some sort of prayer or formula or incantation , I had not even made up my mind which it was to be. Imagine my amazement, then, on waking next morning to receive a letter from one of Her devotees in India, one whom She has Herself named Shuddha Priya, wherein was contained an answer to my unformulated plea - an answer, note well, that must have been given long before I had thought even of approaching Mother concerning my problem, an answer somehow implanted in the mind of another devotee with the express purpose of h aving that devotee convey same to me in the manner in which it happened. Needless to say, my correspondent had not been informed in any way, either by Mother or by myself, as to the state of my mind which was known to none other during the time the letter was conceived , written down and despatched. Moth er's ways are truly mysterious. Such an event, quite a part from the problem or the answer thereto, has had the effect of conferring that most valuable of all boons, the certainty of the unity of existence. That is, the absolute conviction that Guru and Chela are one and that if we could only and at all ' times enter and a bide in the deep recesses of Being, where alone is the true Undifferentiated Consciousness, we could always know That which, being known, everything is known. And whether a problem is trivial or great, such distinctions of degree altogether vanish in that union of the individual soul with the Infinite Life which, for the sake of convenience and of our limited and finite understanding, we lovingly refer to simply as ... Mother! The All-Peruadi ng Presence of the Mother

Ananda Varta, Banaras, November 1955.

Thakur H aranath: The Prem Avatar of Sri Krishna ord Krishna is manifest everywher e, a nd always has been so; but India is especially associated with His Name, for in India He has appeared in some of His most endear in g forms . One of these forms - Thakur H aran ath - is t he su bject of t he following observations.

In order to appreciat e such a m anifestation, or avatar, however vaguely, it would be inadvisable to isolate a nd s tudy Thakur Har anath only, without sayin g something a bout avatars generally. An avatar, though appearing in huma n form a nd seeming to possess human attributes, is not a huma n entity at a ll , but a divine one. The body which forms the sh rine of Krishn a at a ny particular time is made, not of flesh a nd blood but of pure prem, or divine love, crystallised as a body or focus fo r its tran scendental activities. Tha kur Haran ath has said: "Know t hat t his body whi ch you now see is not woman-born. If it h ad been so it would have been shattered into atoms long ago, wit h the s ins ofothers it is ma de to bear". Su ch a body is t he n atu ra l expression of Lord Krishna's divine love, a nd it crystalli ses periodically as tears crystalli se in the eyes of a devotee who is bath ed in divine ecstasy; and for simila r reason s. Th e preni blwu, or t he highest emotion of di vine love, is exalted in t he de votee of Krishna and tran sforms his physical body t hrou gh t he purifying

lustre of the t ears which he sheds, owing to the absence of the Beloved. Gradually the physical body undergoes a transformation until it loses its physical charact eristics and becomes a body of p rem. Wh en this occurs, the devotee becomes what is known as a gopi, th at is, an anta rangh a (intimate devotee) of Lord Krishn a, a bl e, by virtue of this body of p rem, to enter the rarefied r egion of divine love which is the Kingdom of Krishna, known as Vrindavan . But some times Krishna Himself comes down among His devotees a nd dispenses the boon of His incompar able presence. Such occasion s h a ve been commemora ted in the great Indian shastras which a re r evered and celebrat ed not only by the Vaishnavas, w ho a re the especial devotees of Lord Krishna, but also - in such n otable instances a s the Mahabharata - by the whole of India . Over a nd above the proof afforded by celebrated historic documen ts concerning Krishna's appearance upon earth am ong men , as for instance in the case of Shri Chaitanya of Bengal, we h ave in recent times and within the living memory of m an , the case of Thakur Haranath Himself. And because His life is the fulfilment of Shri Chaitanya's we should examine it in rela tion ther eto. Shri C haita nya , th e gr eat saint of fifteenth century Bengal , took th e vows of sannya s and r etired from worldly li fe. His was th e spir it which permeated the k irtan and devotional ecstasies which swept through Bengal, and other parts of India, when the wor s hip of Kris hna was proclaimed from every street and hou setop, a nd when th e converted robber brothers Madhai and J agai , even , were t hrilled through with bliss of divine love. All this is well kn own ; but what is not so well known is that several cen t uries later, in the year 1865, at Sonamukhi (also in Bengal), t hi s same s pirit of divine love manifested again as Tha kur H a ra n ath , wh o said: "Four hundred years ago I came h er e a s Go ura nga (C haitanya) . Now you see me as Haranath." Wher eas in the former ma nifestation He taught renunciation of the world and devotion to Krishna in a highly specialised form suitable only to vairagis - or those who had given up all

At The Feet of the Guru

attachment to the forms of worldly life - in t h e latter manifestation He carried Krishna's name right into the heart of everyday existence. He taught how man, even though remaining in the world, might attain entry to the b liss fu l realm of Vrindavan. The key to this realm, He taught, lay in the chanting of the Lord's Name; and by the Lord's Name He meant "any divine Name that melts the heart", wh ether it be Krishna, Rama, Hari, Shiva, Kali, Jesus, Gautama , Gouranga and so on. The chanting of Krishna's Name in bhajan and hirtan (song and dance) was the principle means, a lso, by which Shri Chaitanya brought a host of souls in direct conta ct with the ocean of Krishna's love. The effect of these hirtans was contagious; it swept great multitudes into a mood of s piritua l fervour which in many cases was intense enough to cause, in the devotional, r enunciation of worldly ambitions. Tha kur Haranath likewise instilled a longing for Krishna by similar means, exalting the repetition of Name to this end. Whether in private or in public, whether mentally and therefore sil ently, or vocally and aloud, He exhorted His devotees to sing or ch ant as a mantra the most sweet Name of Krishna, a nd of His hladini shakti, Radh a. In the vast repositories of Hinduism is to be found a veritable science of Name. It is claimed that the Lord and Hi s Name are not two separate things, but one only, and th a t h e who takes Name (any divine Name) will be merged with its vibration , will be absorbed in the current of divine ecstasy whi ch it s r epetition engenders, and caught up as it were in a vast wave of sweetness, mounting to the most exalted form of heave nly love. In biblical phraseology also, we find the same veneration for, a nd belief in, the tremendous efficacy and di vine potency of the sacred word, or Name: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ." Note the identification of th e Name or Word with God or the Lord Himself. So great was Thakur Haranath's evaluation of the Name that He held it to be even dearer than that with which i.t was h eld to be identica l, that is - Krishna Himself. "Shri Kri s hn a's Nam e is

Thakur Haranath

much bigger and weightier than Shri Krishna Himself. In the Name there is only unalloyed sweetness. In Shri Krishna Himself there are qualities which inspire awe and even dread. Krishna's Nam e alone is capable of offering Krishna's Prem. It is a matter for consideration whether Krishna Himself is capable of granting it. Rather, there is no harm in forgetting Kris hna ; but pray do not forget His name. Krishna Himself would not h ave been able to do anything for th e gr eat sinner Ajamil, but by unconsciously uttering His Name he became the most holy (of men ) and devoid of fear." Further, it is claimed that we may approach the Lord only through som e suitable agency, or shahti. By taking Name and repeating it constantly, we are in effect u sing Krishna's shahti, Radha . Without Radha, Lord Krishna would remain unknown. Ther e is a saying to the effect that Shiva is Shava without shakti; that is to say, Shiva is inert, or like a corpse, without shakti. One interpretation of this saying is that Consciousness (Shiva) is undifferentiated and undifferentiable without a manifesting agency, in much t he same way that electricity remains unnoticeable in the absence of a bulb through which it may appear, as light. As Thakur Haranath has said of his own s pecia l shakti, manifest ed in the world of matter along with Himself: ''You ar e conscious of the univer se; when you forget anyone, h e becomes unconscious ." He here identifies His shakti as Consciou sness or chit·, she bore the Name Kusuma Kumari Devi , and devotees of Thakur Haranath u sually combine the two h oly Names - Kusuma a nd Haranath - when doingjapa, or repetit ion of Name. Note that Kusuma's Name is put before t h at of the Lord's, for it is through the Name of his shakti that H e m ay be approached a nd ultima tely known. The difference bet ween these t wo aspects of chit seems to be that Haranath is Consciou s n ess Absolute , while Kusuma is consciousness of the univer se as H is own loving creation, the st age of His sweet lilas or activities. Therefore, by performing japa of both Names Kusuma Haranath - r ealisation of t he identity of the Self with th e World is duly a ttained. In other words, nirvana and sani-

At The Feet of the Guru

sara are then known to be identical. This constitutes THE essential Hindu realisation, both of the Jnana (Advaita) and the Bhakta (Vishishtadvaita) schools. The world is unreal as world, but real as the solidified love of the Lord, which again is identical with Atman (the SelD. The world cannot be said to exist apart from the Self, even as Krishna cannot be said to exist apart from Radha, or Haranath apart from Kusuma: "Of all objects, Krishna is the form while Radha is the expression. The mingling and mixing of these two h ave decked the universe in all its beauty. It is this that is called Jugal Milan of Radhakrishna. Every kind of beauty manifes t in the universe is my Radha. Entwined Himself on the fram e of Kris hna, my Radha fills the universe with Her beauty." So great and potent was Lord Krishna's manifestation in Thakur Haranath that the taking of H aranath's Name is regarded as swifter and more certain in effect, even , than Krishna's own. A man possessing much gold is a wealthy man, but before he may purchase anything h e must first change some of the gold into current coinage, then h e may obtain the object of his choice immediately. Similarly, Krishna 's name is as pure gold: wealth in an absolute s ense . By transmuting it in to current coinage, by altering its vibration into Kusuma Haranath, it achieves everything immediately. So ther e is, in effect, no more powerful nwntra in this present Kali Age than the divine name of Kusuma Haranath. As the hladini shakti (bliss-conferring form) of Kri s hna was Shrimati Radha, and a s He could be known only through His Union with Her maya - as in the mantra 'Ra dhakris hna' - so also Shrimati Kusuma is the hladini s hakti of Thakur Haranath; and by joining the t wo concepts in the maha-mantra 'Kusuma Haranath ', and by doing japa th ereof, th e devotee reali ses Thakurji as Lord Krishna, in his body of Prem . The theme of Thakur Haranath's life on earth is the mystery of divine love as exemplified of old in the Ra sa -lila of Vrinda van. It is impossible to und er s tand thi s lila, or divine

Thahur H aranath

activity, without first becoming a gopi , which means acquiring a prem body. The word gopi has a mystic significance over and beyond its u s ual meaning, which is a 'milkmaid' or 'cowherdess'. It signifies a special relationship with Kiishna (the Infinite), wherein, for the sake of the lila, the devotee plays a passive, feminine r ole. Ki·islma, being absolute consciousness and the only reality, is considered as the sole male force in a universe of His own creation. In order to enjoy the bliss of His own activity, He inspires Nature (or Maya) with a yearning toward Him and a longing for Him to indwell and vitalise its massive beauty. A devotee of Shri Ki·ishna, in order to feel t he influx of His divine consciousness and experience the inflow of His sweetness, must surrender his own small reflection of cons ciousness (the ego), and, becoming thereby feminine or without a centre, yearn for absorption in the source of Love itself. This symbolism of male and female attitudes resolves itself into a simple yet sublime concept. As Consciousness is all that exists, it is regarded positively, that is, in a masculine or creative sense , as purusha or Krishna. All so-called objects of Cons cious ness are consequently regarded in an opposite sense, i.e. as passive, feminine, as prahriti or Radha. Yet it is this very passivity or rather objectivity that REVEALS the nature of Consciousness to be what it is. And so it is said: "Krishna can be had for nothing by worshipping Radha", meaning that if we worship the movements of this shahti (power ) of objectivity, we s hall b e led to discern the source from whence she arises, and fin a lly reali se h er identity with h er Lord (Krishna, or Consciousness). The lila goes on eternally. Every time we think a thought or see an object and are not reminded of Ki·ishna, then each time Radha is exerting Her Mayic or magic shahti (power of illusion ) and playfully leading u s away from the Lord. This perpetual hide and seek is the lila of the Lord; an activity in which H e ever indulges, to His gr eat delight and to the great joy of all those who h ave realised Him. Thakur Haranath came to show us that by remembering Lord Krishna constantly, we shall finally overcome the tendency

At The Feet of the Guru

of the mind to identify itself with the external world and the objects within it, thus turning it inward to contemplate the true form of the Universe, which is Con scious n ess (Kri s hna). The method He taught was mantra japa of Krishna's or Hari's Name, verbally to begin with; and then, when a certain intense longing has seized upon the devotee, to go on savouring the sweetness of Name, mentally and inwardly. It will be understood from the above quotation concerning the sinner Ajamil that even the unconscious or unintentional utterance of Krishna's Name is potent to bring about r ealisation of the Lord's divine nature. Incidentally, the quota tion referred to answers - in a most positive fashion - the question as to the efficacy, or not, of a merely mechanical utterance of Name. "Maya scampers away at the mention of Krishna. A place devoid of Maya is Krishna's abode. And therefore H e is s urely present wh en His Name is repeated . So, those who repeat Name always live in the Kingdom of Kris hna. This truth admits of no doubt." The path of mantra japa is particularly well adapted to the requirements of present-day aspirants since it requires no Guru or Teacher other than Krishna Himself. Thakur Haranath has st ated in this connection: "There are other r emedies (for niaya or worldliness) as well, but none so safe. Hari-Nam is infinitely more fruitful than sacrifices, austerities, penances . The Nam e itself will show you the right path; you will have to ask nobody for help or guidance." And so, today, wh en so m a ny Europeans are finding an overwhelming need for some practical participation in the life divine, mantrajapa constitutes the safest, most certain, and surely the sweetest path. The Thakur taught Name as no other inca rna tion of Lord Krishna before Him ; and what is more, H e dis pen sed with the over-speciali sed concomitants normally associated with s piritual endeavour. He says unequivocally: "Name covers mystical ceremonies and charms and is identical with the Lord Him self. Th ere is no necessity for any ceremony save the N am e. Remain a householder and take the Name of Kri shna . You will get more

Thalw r Haranath

ben efit th a n a Sannyasi.". And again: "The result of austerities is som ething supernatural, while that of Name is Prem." Thus, in a few simple words He reveals the emptiness of ritualism, asceticism, and those seemingly time-honoured modes of sadhana (r eligi ou s culture) which lead only so far, and no further. "Even the attainment of Nirvana is no better than a piece of mer e glass before Name."

The Vision, Volume XXVII, Kanhangad, December 1960.

Kusuma Haranath: The Lila in the Lotus of the Heart ew h ave been so fortunate as those who were pri~ileged_ to catch a glimpse of the Kusuma Haranath Lila which occurred so recently and which embodied all the sweetness of the eternal Rasa-lila of Vrindavan. If thi s Kali Age is condemned as solely malefic, it may be said in its favour t hat not since the time when Radha and Krishna them se]ves appeared among mortals, and certainly not since the time of Sri Gouranga, has so great a wave of prem been set in motion , flooding the subtle atmosphere of the earth with its divinely ch ar ged bliss .

Srimati Kusuma and Thakur Hara na th embodied a nd focused in t he fullest mea sure a nd in the deepest sen se th e Infinite divine love of Radh a and Krishn a r espectively. The great event wh ich ushered in this brief er a of di vine love occurred in July 1865, when Thakur H aranath was born. However fleeting this era may h ave seem ed in earth-measured time (it endured till 1956 wh en Hara na th's hladinishahti withdrew into the Unmanifest) it nevert h eless r e-establi sh ed the current of bliss which was inaugurated by Sri Kri s hna in Vrindavan and which was r evivified again in the fifte enth cen tury in th e life of the Bengali Sain t - Gouran ga or Chaitanyamah aprabhu.

Kusuma Haranat h

P erha ps the most r emarkable point about the more recent marufestation - which also occurred in Bengal- lies in its corning now, at a time when dharma itself seems in danger of total annihil ation. Lord Krishna promised - in the Gita - that when righteousn ess dwindled He would Himself appear and create a fresh wave of s piritual yearning in the h eart of humanity to counteract a ll ba leful influences. Perhaps the full impact of the new Lila h as not yet travelled far enough to make itselffelt outside the place of its origin, but there are signs that it may soon break through the thin crust of Smnsara , revealed by its own self-effulgent power. For the place of its origin is not in India alone, but in Vrindauan, which is as near to and as far from each indi vidua l soul as accords with karma . Vrindavan is the lotus of th e Heart whereupon the images of Rad.ha and Krishna delight perpetually in their age-long lila of divine ecstasy. Insofar as Thakur Haranath is the prem avatar of Lord Krishna, H e is a lso the incarnation of Kripa and His infinite mercy di ssolves even the ties forged by karma itself. Out of compass ion for the creatures of the earth (and this includes humanity a lso), Haranath not only took it upon Himself to era dicat e the sin s and other evils which obstruct the path of Krishna 's devotees, but He is still accomplishing this selfimposed mi ssion of mercy. H a r a n ath once said "The world will know aft er I pass away wh at pote ncy t h ere is in my Name." The name of Haranath is charged with in vincible and infinite spiri tual energy and sweetn ess. Repetition of the name, Kusuma Ha ranath , even mechanical ly and unthinkingly, releases vast quantities of this energy a nd swee tness; that it is the most positive facto1· in the life of every devotee of Haranath h as been well attested, and m a ny h ave experienced it as a vehicle of indescribable beatit ud e. When taken with ardent longing for Krishna's divine love and a sincer e desire to taste the nectar of His presence, it causes a fu lguration of p r em in the lotus of the h eart. Unlike the Form aspect of the Lord's embodiment in Kus um a H a ra na th, which changed with the passage of time,

At The Feet of the Guru

the Name aspect remained and r em ains immuta bl e. Different photographs of the Thakur and Matushri Kusuma , taken at different t imes, exhibit marked changes due to t h e advancement of age and other factors; whereas their respective Names r emained totally unaffected, even when the bodies themselves wer e finally r elinquished. Mother Kali, the embodiment of time, was foremost among the divinities present at Haranath's birth. She it is who, with the red veil of m atter concealing Her mouth, gave the name - Sonamukhi (r ed or golden-mouthed) to t he Thakur's birth place in West Bengal; thus it comes under her especial aegis. But even Sri Kali h as n o power to affect the immutability of Name which is everl asting, for it is t h e Lord Himself. Yet both Name and Form are equ a lly immutable, so it should be realised that the real Form of Kusuma Hara nath is not the one connected with their m ateria l bodies. The real Form, Kusuma Haranath, being identical with Radha-Krishna, is indeed as deathless and changeless as the Divine Name itself. When taking Name it is this deathless Form, th is real Form of Kusuma Haranath, which responds to the vibrations engendered by the constant repetition. Taking Name continuously releases the store of prem enshrined in the Form (or Yantra) of which Name is the sound Form, or mantra. Consequently Haranath exhorted His devotees to take Name as often as possible. His Form is vibrant with a ll the bliss of Vrindavan (the consolidated atmosphere of Krishna's presence), and this flows through and vitalises t he mantra when His Name is taken with deep and sincere yearning. Thakur Haranath embodies the prem of Krishn a; H e is in fact the prem avatar of the Lord. In the Haranath lila t he Lord disguised Himself as a mortal, a householder bereft of all the shaktis or potencies a ssociated with His lordl y aspect. Haranath is not t he Krishna of Mahabharata, the resident of Mathura, the God of innumerable awesome powers; H e is the Eternal Beloved of the woods of Vrindcwan innocent a nd fre e, ' beguiling, as revealed in all His naive and graceful charm in the pages of Srimad Bhagauata. His hladini shali ti in this Lila

Kusuma Haranath

of prem, Srimati Rad.ha, became embodied in the form of Kusuma Kumari Devi, and t his is the only shakti He displayed or brough t down with Him in this recent avatar. Yet, surrounding Him on every side, the gopis or antaranga bhaktas of the arch etypal lila en acted eternally in th e Vrindavan of the spiritual sph eres (the lotus of the H eart). The true identity of these gopis in their r ecent r oles in Sonamukhi and elsewhere, is not elucidated ; but those who read the Letters of Pagal H a r anath and the several books about Him which were published during a nd after His lifetime, will find therein abundant hints. H e deliberately withheld the activity of the innumerable shaktis which accompany Him as Sri H ari so that He could play with His companions as one of th em, without embarrassment, and so th at He could show those with whom He came in contact h ow an ordinary mortal sh ould love the Lord through His creation and surrender himself utterly to th e will of the Lord. H e sh owed how man should rest content with whatever the Lord sends him in the shape of relatives, friends , events, and the general circumst ances of life, realising in fact that these are no oth er than Krishna Himself in various masks and disguises. Although there are related many incidents of an apparently m iraculous n ature connected with His life on earth, these incidents none t h e less pale before the miracle of sheer resignation to the will of the Lord which He displayed throughout His life. The intensity and str ength of His devotion equalled t hat of Sri Gouranga who lived to spread Krishna's Name n early five cen turies prior to H aranath's advent; nor is this surprising when we recall Haranath's words: "Four hundred year s ago I came here as Gouranga (Chaitanya). Now you see me as Haranath. " The two avatars differed only in the manner in which the Divine Name was spread. In the Gcmranga Lila it was as a sannyasi that Krishna played with His chosen companions; in the H aranath Lila it was as an apparently ordinary man, as a householder, that H e played with all who came to H im , giving freely of the inexhaustible treasury of Prem, which

At The Feet of the Guru

welled up within Him as a natural product of His being. He was, indeed, made of prem. This statement may sound highflown, but it i s an actual fact. The Thakur said that H e was not woman-born· t h at were He a mere mortal H e would quickly h ave su ccur:ibed beneath the burden of sins which He took upon Himself, in order that His devotees might go freely and joyfully to the region of divine bliss CVrindavan). In order to achieve entry into Vrindavan, the lotus of the Heart where R adha and Krishna perpetually en act the celebrated rasa-lila, the physical body of the devotee has to undergo a critical transformation. That is to say, it has to change its material nature and congeal around the naked soul a bhav-deha or ethereal body composed of prem itself. When the physical body h as been regenerated and refashioned in this divine su bstance, then only is it able to enter t h e secret bower called Krishna-Kun}; th en only may it beh old and partake in t h e bliss of the rasa-lila which is illumined by the splendour of the cool full moon (the serene light of Full Consciousness shining in the three worlds with an even and calm radiance). The production of the bhav-deha is effected mainly by vibrations resulting from mantra japa, by taking the Divine Name Kusuma Haranath ceaselessly and with an attitude of profound and exclusive devotion to Lord Krishna. What was once a mortal, and compounded mainly of material elements , becomes a gopi, or an immortal possessed of a divine body capable, by virtu e of its peculiar components, of merging with the essence of Selfhood which is the atmic seed of divine bliss _ Sri Radh akri shna. The many letters which the Thakur wrote to friends and devotees, as well as to the innumerable individuals who wrote to Him in an agony of mind or bodily sickness, are all surcharged with prem, steeped in p r em, redolent of prem, so that their mysterious exhalations have the power of entering directly into the lotus of t he h eart, there to begin the work of transformation. No one can read the letters without some subt le change of heart, some subtle transformation occurring in his

Kusuma Ha.rana.th

inmost nature . The insidious tones of Thakur's love-laden flute-like words haunt t he innermost recesses of the soul, and as deep calls to deep, cau se an upsurge of divine motion, an answering response of the same nature - prem calling to premever seeking itself out, adding to itself as a bee garnering honey from every flower. That there is no s impler, safer or more certain way to Vrindauan H e often assured His devotees; and what indeed is more simpl e and more blissful than taking the sweet Name Kusuma Haranath? What vision more exalted, more ecstatic, more utterly endearing, than t h e bi-une image of Radha Krishna vitalised by burning love toward the Lord, dancing the blissful rasa-lila on the lotus of the devotee's heart?

The L ord Supreme, Volume I Number 2. Sonamukhi, March 1961.

Anandamayi Ma arly one morning in spring 1896, a girl was born in a rural village named Kheora, situated in what is now called East Pakistan. Her parents named h er Nirmala D evi. She received no formal education and as a child began to experience peculiar states of intense and brooding abstraction. As sh e grew older these moods often developed into positive ecstasies of mystical exaltation. She was married at 13 and sometimes, w hile preparing meals for h er husband, her consciousness would be slowly indrawn to such an extent that sh e became totally oblivious of her surroundings.

By the time she was 18, it was felt by many who met her that her freshness and simplicity concealed a strange a nd unpredictable personality which seem ed to come a nd go unaccountably. It was not long before the power that appeared to use her body as a vehicle through which to show itself, was r ecognised as being not only charming and benignant, but a lso peculiarly solicitous a nd motherly in its attitude to th ose it attracted. Nirmala drew people to h er by the sheer m agnetism of this radiant and indwelling presence, and some people fe lt they discerned in her an embodiment of divinity. Among these was a saintly m an na med Bhaiji, who became one of Nirmala's first devotees. He was the first to cal I her

87 Anandamayi Ma , or Blissful Mother, the name by which she is now generally known throughout India and in m any other countri es. Anandamayi Ma

Most of the great mystics of whom we have reliable record are known to h ave had spiritual guides, some of whom a ppeared in ordinary human form, and some not. Unlike them, however, Anandamayi Ma - or Mother as she is often called claimed no direct initiation from a particular Guru or spiritual guide. Wh en asked about this sh e said, "In earber year s my parents were m y guides; in household life, my husband; and in all the situations of life, now, all persons and things of the world are m y Guru. But know it for certain; the one Supreme Being is the only Guide for a ll. " And, som ething which is probably unprecedented among India n h oly sages, Anandamayi Ma says she has not undergone any previou s births. Which means that she does not claim to be the ou tcome and final flowering of a series of human incarnation s in which she has striven to arrive at spiritual perfection. On th e contrary, she has stated on various occasions that she h as appeared on earth as the direct result of the profound yearning for God on t h e part of certain individuals, who - in their ardour to know God a nd realise their spiritual identity with the S upreme Being - have caused that Supreme One to respond and assume human form.

It is a tenet of orienta l belief, particularly in India, that su ch yearning creates a s imila r yearning in the Supreme Being; and becau se of t he limitations of his devotees, he (the Supreme ) shows himself to their external senses in a seemingly human embodiment. Thi s m a nifestation of divinity is not confined in Anandamayi Ma to the appearance of a single human embodim ent. Whichever god or goddess has been worshipped intensely by a ny of h er devotees, that particular image or aspect of divinity appears to them to play through Mother's form. The spectral

At The Feet of the Guru

semblance of one deity after another h as been seen by them to flow out of her being, each image the perfect ori gin a l of s ome traditionally r ecognised god-form. Kali , Kri s hn a, Shiva, Brahma, it matters not which aspect of divinity; its form duly appears when Mother enters one of her moods of m ystical ecsta sy. She once said, "The personality and figures of gods a nd goddesses are a s real as your body or min e." Some time in 1925, while in Dacca (about 200 mil es northeast of Calcutta) Mother was asked to perform Kali Puja, the worship of the image of Kali. During preparations for the ceremony, which r e quire d an image of the goddess, flowers, incense and sanda l p aste, Mother saw - about 130 yards di stant - the ethereal form of the actual goddess, floating in the air towards h e r , with hands outstretched as if eager to come to Mother's lap. L ater a nother apparition appeared to Mother as a little girl of infinite sweet ness. This a lso was Kali, she said. During the rite itself the celebrants not on ly noti ced the unusual effect which these occult exp eriences had upon Mother, but they were also swept by a wave of bliss which so engulfed them that they lost conscious n ess of externals. E ach felt divine emotion gr eater than h a d been exp e rie n ced w h en the ceremony h ad been performed by priests. In earlier years, during the celebration of kirtan (1·eligiou s cha nting and dancing), Mother would often go in to a s tate of trance during which h er body under went the most a m azing contortions. Her d evotees claim ed that h e r body, roll in g on the ground, would appear to grow unus u a lly large a nd then, as s uddenly, contract almost to nothing . At other times h e r body behaved as if it were boneless, bouncing up and d ow n like a rubber ball. These and similar powers are m e ntione d in certain s tatements in manuals of yoga, particularly the Shi va Sanhita , wh ere they a re listed under the Eight Siddhi s, or Magic

Anandamayi Ma

Powers, t h at may be developed by yoga practice. But since Mother did not practise yoga, it was claimed that these supranormal powers manifested themselves in response to the thoughts and emotions of her devotees,. being, so t o speak, the visible outer tokens of intense inner devotion. On one occasion a devotee of Anandamayi Ma said to her in all good humour: ''You are credited with great power. If you have such power, just burn m e to ashes." He then set out to return to his own home. It was an extremely hot day and he had put up his umbrella. Anandam ayi Ma suddenly decided to join him and they walked a few paces together. The devot ee then becam e conscious of a fierce and unbearable heat beating down on him, despite the umbrella. He panicked and said: "From where is the fire raining on my head? Please stop the fire . I have ample proof of your power." He lowered the umbrella just as the overpowering heat abated. But he noticed that some of the fabric had been consumed, as if by flame. Anandamayi Ma is famous throughout India for her untiring devotion to the poor and the helpless. She has helped many homeless and starving people. She teaches that knowledge of God alone constitutes true knowledge; that God alone is real , all else unreal ; and that by knowing God one comes to a knowledge of all else besides. In 1931 Bhaiji decided upon a site for the construction of an A shram , or pl ace of worship, centering round Mother, where h er devotees could meet t ogether, r eceive her blessing and conduct divine service in her name. When a trench was dug so that foundation s could be laid four or five tombs were uncovered. They each contained a h~man skeleton, and Mother declared these to be the mortal remains of Sannyasis (saints or holy men) who had once formed a community which had been housed on that particular site. One of them, she said, h ad been Bhaiji himself in a former incarnation.

At The Feet of the Guru

Since the establishment of that first Anandamayi Ma A shram in Dacca, more t h a n 20 other s h ave been built by devot ees in Mother's name. Man, Myth & Magic Nu m ber 3. London, Purnell -BPC, 1970-71.

Haranath T he r ein carnation of Gouranga, t~e 16th-century s~int who was r enowned throughout India as an embodiment of Krishna , was prophesied in 1592 by Manohardas Goswami, a Bengali sage. Exactly 273 years later, on lst July 1865, Sri Harana th w as born at Sonamukhi - which means 'Golden Mouth' - in western Benaal the son of a Brahmin. His disciples b ' believe th at he was the reincarnation of the saint and that he came, as h e had come before , to distribute Krishna prem (di vine love) on a vast scale. It is rela t ed that Ha r a nath's father, Jayaram Baneiji, while on a vi sit to Calcutta, had a dream in which a sadhu (holy man) visited hi s house a t Sonamukhi and requested hospitality of his wi fe , S unda ri Devi . Being overwhelmed by the radiance of the sadhu, s he a dmitted him to a magnificent temple of Shiva which J ayaram h a d built be fore leaving for Calcutta. There she served th e sadhu devotedly and locked the outer gates of the temple a fter t he evening i·itua l. Next morning there was no trace of the sadh u, a lthough the temple walls were too high to scale. So vivid was the dream that J ayaram returned immediately to Sona mukhi a nd r ela ted it to his wife. He was astonished to learn th a t a sadhu h ad indeed been r eceived by Sundari the previou s evening. Soon a fter these events, Hara nath was born. His unusu a l l.ife a nd, la ter, his a ppearance, suggested th at he a nd the sadhu were identical.

At The Feet of the Guru

The saintly Gouranga (or Krishn a Chaitanya, as h e is sometimes called ) had fired all India with hi s ecstatic chanting of Krishna's name; but his mission had not been wholly fulfilled. Being a sannyasin (celibate sadhu ) his life was incomprehensible to the mass of the people. Consequ ently, as the centuries passed his influence waned, and a n ew impul se becam e necessary. This was initiated by Haranath. H e li ved th e li fe of an ordinary householder engaged in worldly activiti es . H e married Kusuma Kumari Devi when he was 14 years old, s he being nine at the time. Later in life h e impli ed th a t Kus uma was Vishnupriya, who h ad been the wife of Gournnga be fore he renounced all worldly ties to tread the a u s ter e p ath. Very early in life Haranath is said t o h ave m a nifested strange power s. His mother would con ceal vari ou s obj ects in fun and he would locat e them immediat ely, unerringly, no m atter how far from the house she hid them. H e frequ e n t ly wen t into trances and, while studying for his degree at t h e Burdwan Raj College, Calcutta in 1889, fell into su ch profound ecstasies that he could only be aroused with difficulty. H e would the n roam the Calcutta streets , unconscious of his surroundings. His college days were spent listlessly. He had no real inte rest in worldly knowledge; his mind was continually being a bsorbed by a mysterious inner power and he spent most of hi s waking life in th e contemplation of spiritual truths . Because of thi s he did not pass his B.A. examination, for which he sat three times. With characteristic resignation to the will of Krishn a he told a devotee: "I could not possibly h ave passed if I had a ppea red a lakh [100 ,0001 times more, because no worldly object could then attract me." When not lost in meditation, h e was busy organising parties in which the chanting of Krishna's nam e a nd t he commemorating of Krishna's divine activities were t he dominant features. Haranath earned his living in governm ent service in Kashmir. He raised a family, th ereby fu lfi 11 ing one of the chief

Haranath

duties of a householder according to Hindu tradition. But his love wa s seen to flow out to all beings, and his small family soon increased to embra ce many tens of thousands in India and other pla ces. Although living a t a great dist ance from his wife and family during the 20 yea r s of his service in Kashmir from 1893 to 1913, h e ask e d his devotees always to couple her name with his, thus forming the s acred incantation or m antra 'Kusuma Haranath'. The full a nd tremendous potency of the mantra would, h e said, be discovered only after his death. Hara n ath exercised superhuman powers that affect ed all kinds of people, many of whom were per sonally unknown to him. Ther e a re cases on r ecord of his conversion of vicious people into saints, of ferocious a nimals int o harmless a nd affectionate compan ions. He could lea ve his physical body at will and t ravel on the astra l plane in order t o warn his devotees and friends of impending dangers, s a ving their lives or enabling them to a void agon ies of mind a nd body. He had the power of hearing spirit voices a nd communing with divine beings, of seeing through opa que bodies, and of visiting the abodes of Vishnu, Krishna a nd other gods . He also possessed the power of clairvoyance t o a very high degree . He n ever claimed any of t hese powers as h is own, a lways r eferring them to Krishna alone. During t h e time of his service in Kashmir there wer e some who r ecognised him as a n avat a r (direct incarnation) of Krishna, but to the m ajority of his devotees he was Pagal H a ranath , so call ed becau se h e was crazy (p agal) with the love of God. H e impa r ted his m ood of divine j oy t o all, regardless of caste, age, sex or creed . H e wrote t housands of lett er s during his life ; they a ll extolled the efficacy of 't aking name' (repeating a divine n a m e) and showed the way in which Krishna himself could be en snare d by his devotee in t h e net of love and longing. H a r a n a th said of the s age N ar ada, that he gave salvation t h r oug h hi s harp ; of Krishna, t hat he gave salvation through his flute; w hile h e cl a imed hi s own pen to be sufficient means

A t T he Feet of the Guru

of salvation in the present age. The first volume of his letters appeared in 1910 under the title Pagal Harana th , and it is today the main devotional book of his followers . Like all the le:ters which flowed unceasingly from his pen, P agal H aranath is steeped in divine love. Haranath h ad no equal a s a h ealer , and r elieved sufferers by absorbing diseases into his own body. For hours a nd sometimes days afterwards his body r egi stered the symptoms and agonies of the sufferer; yet he described the sen sation s a s blissful. Such was his overwhelming love for humanity, especially the weak and the vicious, that he wa s willing to a ssume all their burdens . The only fee he ask ed was t h a t t h ey should chant aloud, or repeat mentally, "any divine name th a t m elted their hearts", such as Radha-Krishna, Rama, Vis hnu , Christ or Gouranga. It began to be customary for those he h ealed or enlightened to r epeat the name Kusuma H aranath , a nd this is still done by multitudes in India and elsewh ere t oday. The most critical experience in Haranath's life occurred in April 1896. He was about to journey from Jam mu t o S rinagar, but on stepping into the carriage h e lost consciou sn ess. This occurred at three in the afternoon. He remained a bsolutely inert until one o'clock the following morning and w as given up for dead. His heart had stopped beating, all sig n s of life had disappeared, and his travelling companions m a de a rrangem ents for the body to be crem at ed. During the t e n hours of death, however, Haranath claim ed to have experien ced th e most intense interior activity. Thi s included communi on with a Mahapurusha (Great Being) whom h e had seen before as a child of five while out walking with his elder broth er. On this first occasion a vast form had hover ed over them , as high as a two-storied building close by. H e h ad at that time been mysteriously a bsorbed into the M ahapurusha; now it was the la tter's turn to be a bsorbed into Harana th. This great being was none other than Haranath 's own s elf - Gouranga ; and when he returned to life at on e o'clock the

Haranath

following day, the merging had been accomplished. Haranath remained silent about the full significance of this experience. But his complexion under went a permanent change to a fair golden h ue (Gouranga means the golden one). Haranath became literally the 'one who spoke golden truths from a golden mouth', as Manohardas had prophesied centuries earlier. During the period of 'death' it is said that the Mahapurusha dismembered Haranath's body into 64 parts. This he did in order to effect some kind of spiritual regeneration. On reassembling them, three were found to be missing. Haranath urged that these would not be n ecessary. He was anxious to re-enter the body again, not because he feared death or what might follow, nor because h e car ed particularly about living in a bodily form , but because of the anxiety which he knew his mother felt at that moment, having become telepathically aware of his sudden 'death'. The Mahapu.rusha therefore made up the missing parts with "earthly matter taken from the hills", and Haranath revived. Haranath left his reconstituted body permanently in May 1927. His followers explain that his devotees had become too numerous for individual attention and he consequently ' became universal once more so that he could appear to all who n eeded him , as Krishna himself h ad appeared to each of his devotees, intimately and uniquely. Man, Myth & Magic, Number 43. Purnell-BPC, London, 1970-71.

Ramakrishna ne of the world's great mys tics, Ramakrishna wrote little or nothing himself, but his sayings and parabl es are recorded in numerous collections. F ar from sch ola rly, he was sought out by some of the best scholars of Indi a. H e did not set out to create a new r eligion, yet ended by reforming one of the oldest religions in the world. The missions founded in hi s name extend from Calcutta to San Franci sco: there a r e twelve Ramakrishna Missions in the United States alone.

He was born in 1836 of orthodox Brahmin parents in an obscure village in Bengal , hi s father being the vill age priest. Later he was said to have been miraculously con ceived and fabulous tales grew up concerning hi s birth , as indeed much of his life. He died in 1886. Ramakri shna's first mystical experience came to him when he was seven. It h appened just before a heavy dow npour a nd black clouds were massed in the sky, when he su ddenly saw a flight of snow-white cranes wingi ng t heir way across t he dark background. Dazed by the sight, he fell into a trance and lay unconscious for sever al hours. From then on throughout his life he remained precariously poised on the thrnshold between normal and trance states. At the age of nine, while appearing as t he god Shiva in a village play, he was so carried away by his exalted role that he fell into an ecstati c condition a nd r emain ed enraptured for three days.

At The Feet of the Guru

When h e wa s 20, Ramakrishna was appointed chief priest a t the D a k s hinesh war temple n ear Calcutta, dedicated chiefly to the goddess Ka li. In the Hindu pantheon this deity is one of the m a nifes tations of Shakti, the great moth er goddess, in whom are compre hended a ll the power and majesty of the cosmos. H er wors hip now became the focus of Ramakrishna's undivided attention, a nd su ch was his ardour that he began to neglect hi s other t emple duties. Hoping t h a t the responsibilities of married life might stabilise h im emotionally, his par ents arranged a marriage for him three years later. His bride was a girl of five. Ramakrishna a nd his chi ld bride did not li ve toaether after their marriage: s he we nt b ack to h er parents and "' he resumed as best he could the work a t the temple . He continued to abstain from sexual intimacy for t he r est of his life. One of the gr eat obstacles to the high er life, as h e saw it, was the aggregat e oflustful and volupt uous se nsations inevitably associated with the sexual act, and h e could not r econcile this all-consuming, though transient, passion w ith the decision he ha d taken to devote himself completely to t h e service of t h e goddess. Ram akrishna had no illus ions a bout human nature. Some of his parables in simple h omespun language are wonderfully t o the point. T h e foll owing example a ptly conveys the irony of the huma n situa tion . 'Two friends were walking past a place w h ere t h e word of God was being preach ed. One said, "I must go and h ear this sermon and join th e pious congr egation in the wor s hip of God ." But from acr oss the road came the sounds of revelry a nd the second friend said , "I think I prefer to join the m e rrym a k e r s a nd flirt with t he dancing girls." The two friends pa rted compa ny, one to enter t he temple, the other to sport with t h e revell er s . In a sh ort while the one who had chosen the h ou se of pleasure t ired of his a musement and was struck by t h e fol ly of w ha t was taking place around him. He said to himself, "Wh a t a m I doing? Why have I come h ere when I could h ave joined m y compa nion in hearkening to th e word of God?"

At The Feet of the Guru

Across the road his companion, bored with the monotonous drone of the preacher, said to himself, "I wish I h a d joined my companion in his fun instead of listening to this rigmarole." Which of these t wo, the sage might well ask, was the bett er man? Or were they not both the same per son? Two beings th at dwell in each one of us.' The conviction grew upon Ramakri shna that on ly through personal experience could m an perceive the t ruth: otherwise truth was impossible to grasp , since it was severa l removes from the phenomenal world we see a round us. To illustrate this, he gave the tale of the blind man wh o wanted to know what milk looked like. "White, like a cr a n e," h e was told . "Wha t is a crane?" he asked, a nd received the r e ply, "Like a sickle". And in response to further questioning, he was told that a sickle resembled a bent arm. "Ah!", he exclaimed a s thou gh suddenly enlightened, "milk is like a bent arm." While in service to the goddess Kali, Ramakrishn a's ecstatic ra ptures increased and he remained for long pe riod s wrapt in contem plation before her image. H e came to believe that the idol breathed and was alive, a nd that it h eard and underst ood him as he spoke a nd sang hymns to it. Afte r some months his fervent devotion was apparently r ewarded for, he d ecla red , one day the goddess revealed herself to him face to face. Desirous of seeing the god Krishna, h e dressed like a woman and imagined himself to be K.rishna's favou ri te milkmaid, Radha. While immersed in this role he had a vision of the god. Similarly, in order to induce a vision of Ra m a, a n incarnation of Vishnu, he took on the part of Ra m a's favouri te gen eral, the monkey god Hanuman, and lived on nuts a nd climbed t rees. Ramakrishna h ad lit tle time for ascetici sm and th e a ll eged powers it bestowed. H e said , "If twen ty years of asceticism merely enables you to walk on water, better pay the boatm a n and save your time". Nor had he any patience with 'theore tical' religion. He felt that religion was not a matter of creed a nd ritual but of inner experience, and was convi nced tha t actua l s piritual

Haranath

participation in other faiths was necessary for his own understanding of other people's beliefs and so ultimately of his ovm. He held that however God may be worshipped, he is still the sam e Supreme Being, just as water is called by various names in different climes, a nd may be drunk from silver goblets, from earth enware, or s traight from the cupped hands, but it r em ains the sam e water and has the ability to quench man's t hirst in w h atever manner it is drunk. After having personally experienced the presence of God in various faith s, Ramakrishna concluded that all religions were true and t h at fundamentally a ll were one, each tracing a different p ath to t h e same great goal.

Man, My th & Magic Number 83. London, Purnell-BPC, 1970-71.

Ramana Maharshi A t the south ernmost tip of India i s _a ~oly ~1oun~ai n named rtA.runachala; the very thought of it is said to liberate the soul from bondage. At its foot nestles the great temple of Arunachaleswara (Lord of Arun ach ala). From remote a ntiquity this hill has been reputed to be the earthly embodiment of Shiva the Auspicious One , the Lord of Perfect Knowledge and Supreme Bliss. Sometimes it attracts to itself a huma n form which it indwells as Shiva; such a form was S ri Ramana Maharshi, wh o heard and responded to the hill's compelling call. Born in 1879, in the village of Tiruchuzhi in South India, as a boy Ramana showed no indication whatever of his future greatness. His father held a respected position in th e village and Ramana's prospects were good in a worldly sense. But Shiva decreed otherwise. Shortly before his 16th birthday, Ramana ask ed a rela tive where he h ad just come from. "From Arunachala", came the r eply. This information affected t h e boy strangely. H e knew that Arunach al a was believed to be Shiva in the form of a hill , but he did not realise that it was an actu al hill. When he found that Arun ach ala was merely t h e San s krit form of Tiruvannam alai - a district not far distant by rai l - his interest evaporated. But from that time on, the name Arunachala began its work of transformation. A current of awa re ness began

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vibrating within him; it was not awareness of any 'thing' by any 'person', but a subtle sense of identity with something nameless and formless, something that was more himself than anything he h ad ever known. It was a foreshadowing of the Supreme Experience: total awareness of the Atnwn (SelO, the eternal Self as di stinct from the impermanent ego. He became less keen on boyish pastimes and his interest in school-work vanished. Spells of prolonged introspection possessed him; he sat motionl ess for hours, oblivious of external things. After the death of his father, in 1891, Ramana and his brothers went to live in an uncle's house in Madura, and it was here that he underwent a decisive spiritual experience. He was alone in his uncle's house when the dread of death assailed him. Characteristically, he did not think of getting help, but simply went into his room, lay down and awaited the end. Something made him slow down his breathing; then a power within him took charge of what followed. The violent shock had introverted his mind so intensely that it penetrated an entirely stran ge region of consciousness. He asked himself what it all meant; his breathing stopped completely and he sensed the imminence of death: "All this was not a mere intellectual process," he recalled, "but flashed before me vividly as living truth; something which I perceived immediately, without any process of thought. 'I' was something very real, the only real thing in that state and a ll the conscious activity that was connected with my body was centred on it. The 'I', or my 'Self' held the focu s of attention by a powerful fascination from that time forwards. Fear of death vanished at once and forever. Absorption in the Self has continued from that moment light up to t he present."

In 1896 h e decided to leave home and go to Tiruvannamalai. When h e entered the precincts they were empty, which was strange, for the temple normally hummed with activity. Stranger s till, the doors of the inner sanctum lay wide open as if Ramana's coming was expected. He entered, and with tears

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of joy str eaming down his face declared to th e H oly of Holies that he ha d come in answer to a n inner call. Ram an a began his life-long stay a t Tiruvan namala i by m editating in th e thousand-pillar ed mantapam (stone h all) in the t emple grounds. At this period his youthfulness made him the butt of pr actical j okes and offen sive atten t ion s from ignorant people. An aged recluse named S esh adriswamy t ried to ward off the hooligan s, but it did not ease t h e situation fo r he was though t to be crazed. Ramana therefore left t h e 1nantapani for the dank cave hollowed out ben eath it. H ere again h e steeped himself in meditation. He beca m e em aciated, h is h a ir gr ew long and his nails curled. Vermin attack ed t h e fl esh of his body and drank his blood. He ate only the little which t h e old r ecluse managed to force between his lips. T h is wen t on unt il a m endicant , horrified by his appearance, fetched a sadhu (h oly m an ) to h elp him carry out the Buddha -lik e figure, which they r everently placed before a sh1ine of Shiva. The uncanny silence of the youthful sage attr acted atten tion, and people flocked to receive his darshan (spiritua l blessing). They sensed a tr emendous concen tr ati on of di vinity. Ra m a na then moved away t o Pavalakunr u , high up t h e hill , wher e, in 1900, his mother and elder brother found him a fter much searching, but failed t o persua de him to return h ome . Ramana was regarded as a j ivanmukta , one who h a d realised identity with the Su prem e wh ilst still in the bod y. By 1916 crowds of people assembled daily. H e was call ed Bhagavan (Lord) and Sri Maharshi (Great Sage) by t hose who sought spi1itual guidance. An ashram (spir it ua l colony) g1·e"v around him ; visitors sat in a large ha ll wh ere he gave darshan and answered question s a bout yoga and e nlig h ten men t. Sitting in the ha ll, or perfor m ing daily pradaksinam (ri t u al circumambulation) of Arunacha la, Bh agavan gave peace, h ope a nd h appiness to all who a ppr oached him, r egardless of sex, age, st atus, r eligious or political beliefs. H is fi eld was the wh ole of humanity; hi s t eachings a unique inte rp retation of t he age-old wisdom of t he Upanishads.

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In 1948 a ppeared the first signs of the cancer that was to deprive his devotees of the beloved presence that for more than 50 year s h a d radiated happiness. Yet throughout his illness his spirit glowed even more serenely, more brilliantly, t han ever before. Right up to the last day he insisted on giving darshan to the stream of visitors. The end came in April, 1950, when Ramana was reabsorbed into Arunachala-Shiva - the Source of All. But people who visit Tiruvannamalai today declare that Bhagavan's presence is as potent as it was during his earthly life, and that his grace still flows swiftly into those who open their hearts and surrender to the spell of Ramana-Arunachala.

Man, Myth & Magic No. 83. London: Purnell-BPC, 1970-71.

Sai Baba of Shirdi obody ever knew t he real n am e of the Indi a n saint known as Sai Baba, which mean s 'Saintly F ath er', or his age or place of origin. Nor was it kno w n w h ether h e was of Mohammedan or Brahmin ancestry. He appeared suddenly, in 1855 or t h ereabouts, in the small village of Shirdi in the Bombay Presidency. Shortly after wards, he disappeared mysteriously for three years, a nd t h en returned to Shirdi where h e remained unti l hi s death 60 years later. In that time he attracted t hou sands of soul s by t h e m agnetism of his presence; his follower s bell eved him to be an avatar of th e Absolute, God in huma n guise. Sai Baba was one of the most eccentric a nd unpredictable saints known t o history. He performed m iracles openly; sm oked foul clay pipes which seemed to play a n im portant pa rt in hi s scheme of spiritual culture; and abused and eve n beat hi s devotees, sometimes flying into rages in which h e h urled im precations at invisible presences. He lived in a dilapidated mosque which h e ca ll ed D varaka Mayi, literally 'Mother of Dvaraka', the name of a h eaven of Krishna. Because he believed that he embod ied the spirit of Divine Motherhood, he gave this nam e to the m osq ue a nd said: "Highly merciful is this Dvaraka Mayi. She is the Mother of those who place their entire faith in h er." It was in this mosque that he lived and died. He described it, a ptl y, as a Brahmin's

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mosque, for it contained an ever-burning fire, sacred to Hindus and P arsees, and a nich e set in its western wall represented t he K aaba of Mecca, which made it equally holy t o Mohamm edans. The reconciling of Hindu and Moslem was one of the major features of Sai Baba's work, and Christians too felt at home with him. One day, a devotee named Nanasaheb brought Baba a wooden plank to s leep on. Ins tead of keeping it on the flo or, Baba suspended it from the rafters with old rags, and slept on it, hammock-wise. The rags were so worn that it was doubtful whether they would bear the weight of the plank, let alone Baba a s well. However, he lighted a lamp at each of its four corners, then mounted it for his night's repose. Although many people watched closely to see just how he got up there, not one of them ever succeeded in doing so. One moment Baba was on the ground; the next, h e appeared to be sleeping on the plank. This soon attracted great crowds and relays of observers were posted b ' to see if the mystery could be solved. These feats generated faith among people who wer e unable to accept divinity unaccompanied by 'miracles'. Baba's devotees frequently sought permission to renovate the mos que, but at first he adamantly r efused to give it. One day, h owever, h e declared that work could begin. But during the r econ struction h e would often pull down what had been erected a nd hurl away the stones, together with building material. S uch actions appeared insane to those unacquainted with his methods; but his intimate devotees understood that they h ad symbolic meaning, and that Baba was operating indir ectly upon their spiritual n atures. He was, in fact, moulding them according to a divine plan, using the stones as symbolic substitutes for them selves. When the work was finally accomplished, a great h oly day was declared in Shirdi, and Sai Baba was carried in procession to th e new mosque. Th e sacr ed fire which h e lit in about 1858, he tended through out his life , and it burns to this day, having been main-

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tained by those who survived him, and by the many newcomers who were drawn to his tomb. The ashes of the fire are said to have miraculous healing properties, and Dvaraka Mayi has become a place of pilgrimage. Unlike many saints, Sai Baba encouraged people to ask for the fulfilment of earthly desires; in fact, he rebuked those who refrained from asking, knowing that they inwardly cherished such feelings. His ideal was, no doubt, to make people realise the futility of earthly satisfaction. H e gave them a surfeit, and they realised that happiness and peace did not accompany the acquisition of objects or the fulfilment of desires. He said: "I give my devotees what they want so that they will come to want what I want to give them." He wanted to give them true self-knowledge, but this he could not do unless the yearning for it was stronger than for all else. To the few h e taught the highest doctrine of Aduaita (non-dualism , t h e doctrine t hat the Ultimate Principle alone has real existence ), but people rarely came to him for purely spiritual guidance. He waited patiently, sometimes for years, sometimes altogether in vain, for people to want what he really wanted to give. This is not to say that he always and in all cases gave people what they asked for, or imagined they wanted - far from it· but h e conferred th e natural human blessings of children, and relief from suffering and poverty. His granting of these blessings, however, depended upon the will of the Lord, or the Great Fakir as he called him. Like other great spiritual luminaries, Sai Baba 'died' and was reborn into everlasting life while still in his earthly body. In 1886, when he was about 4 7 years of age , h e said to a close devotee named Mahalsapathy, "I am going to Allah. Take care of this body for three days. If I return I will look after it myself. If not, bury it in the open land ... " Shortly afterwards he was pronounced dead by the civil authorities, and Mahalsapathy was ordered to bury or cremate the body. This he refused to do, and on the third day breath returned to Baba's body, his eyes opened and he r eturned to

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life. From this time on his fame began to spread. From 1910 until hi s death , stream s of visitors descended upon Shirdi, laden with gifts and money which Baba gave away as fast as he received it. He died in October 1918.

Man , Myth & Magic No. 88. London: Purnell-BPC, 1970-71.

Sivananda orn on 3th September 1887, in th~ s:nall vill age of Pattamadai in south India, Sri Swami S1vananda was a descendant of the 16th Century h oly m a n Appaya Dikshitar, who wrote 104 works on Vedanta a nd t he Sa n s krit la nguage. Named Kappuswamy by his par en ts, he m a triculated from the Rajah's High School at Etiapura m in 1903, a nd short ly a fterwards took a course in medicine at the Ta njore Medical Institute.

In 1913 he was a ppointed doctor-in-ch a rge of a h ospital on a rubber estate near Saramban in Mal aya, where he worked for nearly seven years. He then joined the Johore Medical Office, where he served for three year s, un t il h e experi enced , in 1923, what Western mystics have r eferred to a s t he 'da rk night of the soul'. He suddenly realised that h owever many people he might help by r em aining a doctor, he could all eviat e th e sufferings of only a few. Kuppuswamy withdrew from medical practice a nd s unk himself in deep meditation, striving to sol ve the problem of how he might bring r eli ef, not to the few, but to a ll ; not temporary bodily relief, but permanent spiritual peace. The solution came as a revelation whi ch full y enlig htened him ; h e would becom e a doctor of the Spirit. He would heal th e entire uni verse of its worries and woes; or, failin g thi s, he would give people the means of healing t hemselves . Kuppus wa my h a d becom e

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Sivananda, the name by which he was soon to be known. He renounced the world and became a mendicant; he visited many sacred places in south India and stayed at the ashram (spiritual colony) of t h e celebrated sage Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. Shortly afterwards, Sivananda met his own personal guru. He travelled to north India and came to Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges in the Himalayas where, on 1st June 1924, he was initiated into the Order of Sannyasis (celibate monks) by Paramahamsa Visvananda Saraswati. Finding Rishikesh alive with spiritual power, Sivananda engaged in intensive sadhana (spiritual culture). He made his home at various places in the r egion for the next 35 years. H e settled at Swargashram and lived in a small hut where h e meditated deeply, gradually piercing the layers of illusion until he realised the Atman, or impersonal Self of the universe. It was here that people first flocked to him. On 12th June 193 1 he began an arduous pilgrimage to Mount Kailasa in western Tibet, considered by millions to be the physical form of the God Shiva himself. He was accompanied by several saintly men and walked barefoot every inch of the 475-mile journey, despite chronic lumbago. Swargashram swarmed with devotees and the regional authorities were soon unable to cope with them. Sivananda therefore decided to leave. He moved to a small and dilapidated hut nearby, whe re he stayed for eight years. It was here that he founded t h e Divine Light Society in 1936. Subsequently 300 branches were establi shed in large cities, and by 1960, shortly before hi s death, the Society was in a position to maintain about 400 persons. One of Sivananda's most important contributions to the science of the Spirit was Nanwpathy, healing by name; that is, by any name of God, or by a mantra 1, a form of words or sounds whi ch are believed to have a magical effect when uttered with intent. To perform Namapathy he composed a special ritual so 1

See essay 'H a r a nath', page 91 supra.

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that new life could pour into sick persons a ll over the world. Several Western centres of spiritual healing were modelled on the ashram in Rishikesh. Sivananda's per sonal experience of a ll form s of yoga and r eligions en abled him to combine t he m for the rapid development of widely differing types of studen t s. H e r edu ced to their essentials all systems of spilitual attainment and called the result 'Synthetic Sadhana'. The Divine Life Society, the Yoga-Vedanta F orest Academy and the Sivananda Ashram, all of which h e founded and imbued wit h powerful spirit u a l impetu s, attr acted aspirants from all parts of the world . H e str essed t h at work without thought of personal gain, and selfless service, were vita l factors in development; and maintained that even a single sincere student could move the world by the power of hi s devotion. He advised his helpers against r efusing money from sympathisers on the grounds of non-attachment t o worldly things. Money was needed for the work of printing and publishing great spiritual truths; for buying m edicines for t h e s ick; for clothing the poor and housing the homeless . He treated women with the sam e courtesy, affection and generosity that he extended to men. Although h e warned his male disciples against the wiles of wom en , and described them in some of his books as epitomising uncleanness, h e did so to obviate disaster to immature aspira n ts. H e knew t h at it was not easy to acquire samadrishti (equ a l vision with regard to all) that enabled him and those of his st ature to n eutralise the glamour of women or, alternatively, to r ecognise them as channels of spiritual power. His own attitude was characterised by that supreme r everence to the feminine aspect of divinity t ha t is one of the redeeming features of Hinduism . Sivananda converted th e villainous, lazy and ill-tempered into ardent and cheerful workers who performed u seful work in the ashram . Other, less su ccessful g urus wh o cla im ed astonishin g occult powers, r eferred t o him as "a guru for thieves a nd

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rogues". In fact h e welcomed thieves and rogues as cheerfully as anybody else, k n owing they would eventually become dynamic yogis after being transformed in a place charged with spiritua l vibrations; and he r egarded the quip as a sublime compliment. However, he deprecated th e use of the term 'guru' in connection with himself, and asked his devotees never to describe him as a master or world teach er, but always as an ordinary sadhu (seeker). H e never attempted to monopolise anyone who sou ght his help; on the contrary, he recommended their visiting other ashrmns and other gurus, if he thought it was n ecessary. The m ass of people he imbued with the spirit of devotion. He a dvocated kirtan (devotional singing a nd dancing), but likened its effects to the intoxication produced by drugs: "Just as the intoxication from hashish , opium ' or alcohol lasts for some h ours, so also this Divine intoxication you get from kirtan will last for many hours during the following day, and at night also during dream." By this a n a logy h e implied that there is a path, the effects of which are everlasting. This is the J nana Marg, or path of Pure Wisdom, which he embodied and exemplified. But, a lthough h e h ad r ealised t he Ultimate Truth of One-Self-in-All, h e taught this interior science only to those who had pierced the last veils of illusion.

Man, My th & Magic , No. 92. London: P urnell-BPC, 1970-71.

The Radiant Name

his special anniversary of the Shri Kus uma Haranath Mission brings to mind t he occasion of Thakur's Dia mond Jubilee celebrated at Puri in 1925. In the light of subsequent world events, Thakurji's message at that t ime h as taken on a sinister import. "Now th ere is no time to waste in smiling smiles of falsehood. Do not remain mistaken, s till there is t ime. It would do even if you are careful from now. My only desire is that you throw your respective burdens on me and move on still faster."

In Thakur's final message, delivered before devotees at Midnapore in 1927, and as if to clear their doubt s, h e declared: "You are my own, therefore you have no reason to be anxious." Not long afterwards, Shri Haranath withdrew from manifestation. Perceptive individuals sense today the imminence of catastrophe, as well as the fact - as H a r an ath hin ted - that time is short. Since Thakur with drew, innum e rab le sig n s have appeared, all emphasising t he note of u rgency which H e sou nded nearly half a century ago. Th e gloom that is said to have descended upon him from 1924 to the end: is t hi s not a lso significant? We stand upon the brink of di saster, and t h ere seems nothing we can do to avert it. The ego of humani ty has swell ed to s uch proportions that its bursting will s how er lrnm a ni ty with a

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venom for which there is but one salve, one medicine. Its nature is n ot only to save but also to transport him that takes it, to a region beyond the sphere of contamination. In ancient times, Noah, Xisusthrus, Deucalion, and others, preserved r emnants of humanity from great deluges resulting from a simil a r cause; the allegories are universal. But Haranath h as said that if we will only lay our burdens on his shoulders, a nd take the medicine of Name, He will joyfully transport u s to the region outside Time and Space, to Vrinda uan, where Radha and Krishna play perpetually at the h eart of th e world lila that has changed again, from a pleasant dream to a breathless nightmare. It is time, therefore, to be a little firm , a little more positive than is u s ually acceptable in polite society - which is an indifferent society, a self-condemned society - and to repeat boldly Haranath 's words: "There is no time to waste". Furthermore, there are few a rks on this turbulent ocean, and those who are n ear one should embark without delay, and cling to the raft of N ame as the waves submerrre all that remains unchanged by b the saving power of its vibrations. Those that a r e awar e of Kusuma Haranath, and of the Mission we are celebrating today, will lmow that it is a matter, ultimately, of vibration, of attuning the heart to the silent pulsations of the secret Heart of the Creator and sustainer and Absorber of thi s bewildering world-lila. Vrindaua n is th e Abode of Light, and from its leafy bowers glance radiant beam s. More than a century ago a beam entered through the Gate of the world-Mother, and appeared upon earth as H ar a n ath. But the light was at all times only partially veiled. As a child of five years, Haranath-Gopal was walking one day with hi s elder brother \.vhen the two of them encountered in their path a gigantic Being. Its head appeared as high as the balcony of a two-storey building, and in the pit of its stomach revolved a dazzling light. The experience overwhelmed the two brothers, a nd one of them fled. A few years later the Radiant

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Being again appeared to Haranath. We do n ot know what were his sensations at that time; but after sever a l more year s , at the age of thirty, He experienced a third encounter which r esulted in a profound tran ce of death. It last ed for t en hours a nd we are told that He saw "wonderful flash es in th e E ast ern horizon which sent down beams of light in t he form of a la dder". Down its luminous steps the Radiant Being descended a nd established itself with Haranath's physical body until its death in 1927. It was, therefore, this Shining One tha t utter ed at Puri the warning words, and the message rings again today with clarion urgency. It is surely this : That to be tran sported to Vrindauan one has to vibrate in unison with KusumaHaranath, for this Name, this suprem ely liber a ting current of Energy, is the key to the realms beyond deca y. As above, so below; as within, so without. P erha ps thi s J ourney may be accomplished not only in Inner Space. The "wonderful fla shes in the Eastern horizon" have been seen by many s ince Haranath's strange experience with the Radiant Being , a nd it is not altogether inconceivable that there are oth er worlds more refined than that of earth in the vast cosmic syst em s of st a r s and planet s. But not all will ascend the ladder t o t he abode beyond the stars. Taking Name is surely placing one's foot on the bottom rung and ascending in the steps of the Ra diant One , leaving one's ego behind. The Light is Pure Cons ciousn ess, a nd It shines resplendently only in the absence of ego. A description of the mysterious working of Ligh t after it h a d regenerated and resurrected the body of Sri H a r a n a th , would require a biography well beyond th e scope of t his a rticle and the ability of the present writ er. Th e percepti ve reader may, however, r ecall parallel m yst eries. An exa mple t hat s prings immedia tely to mind is the possession by t h e spirit of Aruna chala (the ancient Lemur ian hill ) of the young Venkat a r am an - later to be the M ah a r s hi , Ramana , of Tiruvannamalai - who, during a death-t r a nce, was also prepared for a great mission.

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The renowned India n epics (Mahabharata, Ramayana, etc.) contain allu sions to calamities that overtook races guilty of perverting the subtle currents of the Ligh t. But, unfailingly, Sri Krishna appeared to save those unwilling to lend themselves to t h e abuse of such vibrations. A similar state of disharmony cha racterises man's present-day inability to discriminate between the deficient pleasures resulting from personal desires, and the genuine Happiness that abides at the heart of the Lila in the absence of these desires. For this reason the real medicine, or more correctly the medicine of the Real, has been provided for u s a nd concentrated in the divine Name KusumaHaranath. Krishna said in the Gita: "Fixing thy heart in Me, thou shalt, by My Grace, cross ove1" all difficulties, but if from egotism thou wilt not hear, t hou shalt perish." (XVIII-58). It m ay interest readers conversant with certain occult a spects of t h ese matters to n ote th at in a very ancient tradition, that of the Ch a ldaean Qabalah, the Vibration KSM (Kusum) has the numerica l value of 360. This denotes the full circle, or niandala, symbolic of the Mother-source of all Appearance. Is it not for the dispensing of the salve of Name that this KusumaHaranath mandir was established in Gujurat ten years ago? It will flouri s h becau se Kusuma is the full flowering, or P erfection, symbolised by t he Circle of Eternity. By the same qabalah , the name 'Har anath' yields 656, the number of 'Messias' t he Messiah or Divine One. It is also the ' number of the Rose and the Lily, which are the Western equivalents of the Lotus, thus identifying Haranath with the mystical Kusuma-flower. . In the bower of Vrindavan , which is a place of flowers and a ll-sweetness, shines t h e Light of Radha-Krishna, the Radiant One who assumed human form as Thakurji and who r adiated waves of Prem within t he immediate circle of his antaranga bhaktas . The present Mission is the terrestrial Mandala of the

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celestial Vrindauan. May the Circle of thi s Light constantly expand to capture and to illumine a ll hearts, that they may open as flowers to receive its vivifying rays, by th e Grace of Thakurji. Sri Haranath Jayanthi Magazine, Umreth, P.O. Dl. Gujurat, 1990.

Anusaya Devi The Mother of All

n the small South Indian village of Jillellamudi, seven miles from the nearest town of Bapatla, lives a god-realised soul in the form of a middle-aged housewife. She is Anusaya Devi, known affectionately to her devotees as Amma, Mother. She w as born on March 28th, 1923, at Manaeva, not far from Bapatla. Anusaya has no special teaching ("not teaching anything is my teaching"), but she advises everyone to do what comes to hand cheerfully, and with awar eness that whatever has to be done is an essential a nd unavoidable duty of the person whose lot it is to do it. When someone asked her by what spiritual or yogic practices s h e h ad developed her never-failing powers of clairvoyance, mind r eading, total immunity to pain and mastery of bodily function s, sh e m erely said th at she had not performed any practices, except the usual . Sh e defined the usual as the everyday routine which is everyone's lot in life. At another time she said that she was born with these powers fully developed. Anusaya, in common with certain other self-realised souls, once engaged h erself in an intense enquiry into the nature of death; so inten se t h at sh e discovered its illusory nature. Sri Sai Baba, the Sage of Shirdi, experienced actual death for three days before returning to this plane and carrying on his work of universal spiritual r egeneration.

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Similarly, Thakur Haranath of Sonamukhi 'di ed' fo 1· several hours, during which his body under went t h e s ubt le tran sformation that prepared it to incarnate the spirit of Lord Kri shna; and it was the urgent atma uichara (self-e nquiry) practiced by Sri Ramana Maharshi that freed him foreve r from the fear of death and est a blis hed him pe 1·m anently in Cosmic Consciousness. Incessant enquiry into t he nature of death is also the classic Buddhist Meditation ; by it Siddha rtha himself attained Enlightenment. Some Indian Sages, such a s Satya Sai Baba of Putta parti, perform numerous miracles quite openl y; but Anusaya , although she too performs miracles, rnrely does so openly, nor does she encourage her devotees to get too interested in this aspect of her life. She recommends no sadha na, or spi1·itual practice, beyond the full awareness of doing what h as to be done in a s piri t of service to the Divine. This a ttitude frees t h e doe1· from the karmic consequences of action a nd is the true formul a of nonaction . But although Anusaya does not exhibit miracles to all and sundry, many devotees testify that sh e frequently performs them in connection with the spiritua l development of asp ira nts, to succour the sick, or to protect her devotees from sudden da ngers. During her childhood an aged ascetic once hung round her neck a particularly poisonous h erb , as a tali sm an against disease. He warned her repeatedly not to eat it. Anusaya objected to wearing it, but the old ascetic would not let her take it off. She began chewing it, the n ate it with impunity, declaring that herbs could ne ither save n or ki ll anyone for whom the Lord had desti ned oth erwi se. The old man was stupefied and had to acknowledge th at s h e possessed superhuman powers. In the early years of Anusaya's m iss ion a n u nscrup ulous person joined her service. One night w he n he thought Anusaya was alone, h e a pproached st ea lthi ly with ill inte nt. He was peering into her room wh en he beca m e co ns cio us of a m ove-

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ment at h er feet. He was horrified to see an odd-looking serpent with a n enormous hood gliding over the floor towards her. It suddenly rose in the air and began circling round her, high above the ground. It seemed as if Anusaya were magically compelling it, or receiving homage from a king of dangerous reptiles. Then , as abruptly as the performance had begun, it ceased; the serpent dropped to the floor and slithered away, harmlessly. The servant was so impressed that he fell at Anusaya's feet, confessed hi s pas t misdeeds , and from that day forward all evil tendencies relinquished their hold over him. He is still with her today, having dedicated his life to looking after the needs of her num erous visitors. On many occasions visitors bring personal presents for Anusaya, s uch as saris, blouses or bangles. They are acutely disappoin ted wh en their gifts turn out to be too big or too small for h e r. Yet s he accepts them all with a smile, goes to her room and appear s a few minutes later wearing the garment or ornament, a nd it appears to fit her perfectly! To an astonished donor sh e once said: "No one knows my measure. I am the meas ure of a ll ". Con stant ch anges in her size, shape and complexion are often note d a nd discussed. Once, a devotee was so convinced that the changes were a ppare nt on ly, that he resolved to take a series of photographs to prove that h er physical form r emained unchanged. To his u tter confusion h e found that each photograph showed not only marke d differences in h eight, shape and size, they also showed h e r as youthful , middle-aged and aged! This miracle is vouched for by re liable devotees and the photographs are extant. Anusaya's ambience is so charged with Prem (divine love) that cobras a nd scorpions cats rats and birds exist side by side ' in pe rfect harmony in h'er presence. Like many magicians, proph e ts a nd sages, past and present, Anusaya has complete control of the elem ents . She h as often been known to make r ain fall out of sea son a nd under the most unlikely circumstances.

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But one of her most characteristic miracles - reminiscent of Sai Baba of Shirdi - is t he helping of devotees at a great distance, often outside India. At such times, Anusaya (who n eeds no food and eats only to please those who offer it to h er ) is som etimes seen to eat at odd times and under peculiar circumstances. When this happens it always turns out that some h elpless supplicant is in distress, unable to survive unless he gets food or drink immediately. At such times, she says t o those a round her: ''You can buy and eat anything you want from a nyone. But who will look after those who have none to turn to , Jiving in far-off forests? Who will look after them?" H er devotees understand by this that Anusaya, the Mother of All, knows of t h eir need and supplies what is required. She is totally impervious to pain. During a great humbhamela (religious festival held in h er hon our), sh e received a jug of scalding milk on her head, the homage of an over-zealous worshipper. Another felt like worshipping h er wit h stones; he began pelting her until her devotees stopped him. Anusaya merely smiled; not one of the stones injur ed or even m arked her, yet she is normally extremely sensitive and even slight pressure on her body will cause a flush on the flesh th at persists for some time. Although she can argue points of a bstruse metaphysical doctrine with the most learned pandits (professors ), s he never initiates an argument, clearly preferring that people should make themselves receptive to t he waves of Grace t h at emanate from her. To open oneself to this r a diation , not obstruct ing its flow by barren intellectual speculation or emotional bias, is the most beneficial way of approaching h er. This is unconditional surrender and it is a sure way of attaining s pirit u a l enlightenment. She herself says th at "Seeing Moth er I S Attaining". The word Mother (Amma ) h as in India a m etaphysical connotation that is indissolubly linked with the loving a nd in timate associations which the word evokes in the minds of peoples, East ern or West ern. A.nusaya expl ain s t h at "Mother does not stand for mer e womanhood; Moth er is the Infinite, Eterna l

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Basis of a ll Existence. Mother is not the one who is merely sitting on a cot at Jillellamudi. Mother means the One without a beginning and without an end; the One who is the Beginning and the End". In other words, Mother is a term denoting the Self, Atman or Brahman, i.e. Pure Consciousness uncontamin a ted by individualisation. Mother is both the means of manifesting the universe, and the universe itself. This means that Anusaya Devi is the embodiment of Siva, Vishnu or Krishna, in exactly the same sense as are Ramana Maharshi, Thakur Hara n ath , Sai Baba, and other Sages. An ashram or s piritual community is growing fast around Anusaya; it is known as Annapurna, the House of All. Anyone can go there and it is visited by a great number of people from a ll pa r ts of the world.

There is a very good reason why Anusaya's name and fame is swiftly s preading - even in the West - for she embodies a particular message of hope and comfort for the present rootless generation. S he herself had an unsettled, nomadic childhood. H er pa rents were not particularly pious; on the contrary, the loss of fi ve children in succession had so upset her father, Sitapa thi , that he had lost faith. When his daughter was born, even though a wandering holy man had prophesied the birth of a Divin e Being in his family, and even though his wife had e njoyed almos t continuous ecstasy and seen glorious visions from the moment of the child's conception, Sitapathi was too dazed to 1·ealise the si!rrlificance of what had occurred. b Before s he was three years old, Anusaya got down from a cart in which she was travelling with her mother, and said: "Thi s pl ace is good, let us stay here!", to which her mother re plied: "T here is no house here, how can we stay? Can little childre n st ay with out their mother?" "Why not?" queried An usaya, "when you are no more, I will be the Mother". She had a lready determined to establish a free lodging and boarding house - the House of All - as well as a Sanskrit School and a Templ e.

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Within a year or two of this inciden t h er mother died; her father - unable to face the prospect of looking after Anusaya and two other children that had been born in the meantime was relieved of the burden by various relatives. They seem ed strangely indifferent to Anusaya, and s h e spent the remainder of her childhood in such towns as Bapatla , Guntur and Chirala. Very little is known of her life during these early year s. We do know that she had no formal education, and did not need any. Anusaya herself, who periodically proves by some stray remark that she remembers every incident that h as occurred since - and even before - her birth, is reticent a bout thi s early period. She merely says that it was a time of grea t a nd carefree h appiness when she communed freely with all creation , a thing she can no longer do openly owing to the ever-pressing n eeds of those who flock to Jillellamudi , eager for comfo rt an d advice, or simply to bask in her presence. She settled in Jillellamudi in 1940, four yea rs after h er m a rriage to Nageswara Rao. She has had two sons and a daughter, Hyma, a sere ne a nd sensitive girl who died recently aged twenty-fo ur, h er on e wish being to reunite with the Mother of All in h er forml ess, cosmic aspect. Hyma's brief life was characterised by ge ntleness and inspired by the spirit of non-violence. Her devotion to Anusaya was absolute. She shed the body with out relucta nce a nd m elted into oneness with the univer sal matrix. A death such as Hym a's is not t he only gateway to Liberation . Reunion with the Lord is a lso atta in able thrnugh marriage; by treating th e husband - however imperfect h e may seem as an individual - a s if he were th e Lord (Kris hna) Himself, while t he wife is regarded as Krishn a 's consort, Radha. This is not a new doctrine; it is fundamental to Hindui sm , especially in its Tantric a nd Vaishn avite ph ases; and , with varia tion s, it inform ed t he spiritua l culture of sever a l G nostic

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sects . It is, however, n ewly and beautifully expressed by Anusa y a in h er own life with Sri Nageswara Rao. It is the Divine Couple - Radha and Krishna - incarnate in the two human protagonists of marriage that attains Libe r ation , throu gh and with each other. In such an earthly union it is not the man or the woman that seeks Liberation individua lly, from a merely material situation. Nor does it invol ve the s tultifying a nd sterile isolation of the individual b ased on t h e ultimately illusory and absurd fiction of sexual differentia tion, like the present "women s' liberation" movem ent. Anusaya says "To a woman, husband is God in human form . That fa it h is the easiest mean s for Liberation. Creating the form of a n invisible God in the mind, worshipping it in m ountain fastnesses , falling a prey to suppressed [not conqueredl desires, even a Mu ni (Sage] cannot accomplish what an ordinary housewife can ea sily accomplish; and she needs no special nwntra [prayer] or sadhan.a [spiritual cultm e] for it".

Matrusri magazine, Jillellamudi, S. India. No date.

Kusuma Haranath

ri S. P. Reddy, Garu, has ask ed me to a nswer the question he poses for me - why I h ave ch osen Lord Kusuma Hara from other great A uataras or Manapurushas - as t he subj ect of my present ar ticle. This is not ea sy, becau se on t hinking deeply on the subj ect I find that the 'choice' was not really my own. It is rather like choosing (for example) a scar f or a necktie from among many others. The choice is, ultim a tely, for th e object that attracts one. In other words, the scarf or the tie is t he positive element in the transaction. So it was with m e one day when , visiting a friend, I found on hi s book-shelves a book entitled Sri Haranath: H is Play and Precep ts, by a n a uth or n a m ed Vithaldas Nathabai Mehtha, who was also t he book 's publi sher. I read a few pages and was spellbound by its con te nts, so much so that I wrote to the a ut hor at th e address in Bombay given in the book. It was the book that a t tracted m e, t h at 'chose me'. I had no sense of choosing it; it was as if Sri Ha ra n ath whi s pered to me "Here! Read this!" I h ad no sen se of ch oosing it, this I must repeat.

I had previously r ead about m a ny saints a nd sages, s uch as Sr i Ra makrishna of Da kshineswar, Sri Sai Ba ba of Shirdi , Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi of Ti ruvann a ma la i, S ri Meher Baba of Poona, SriAtmananda ofTrivandrum, a nd m any more. Yet these Mahapurushas , and even A vata rs, a r e one; a nd t heir message is one, though suited to different kinds of devot ee.

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Those who love any one of them and many others, love them a ll , for a ll are one. An overwhelming spirit of premabhahti permeates the life a nd letters of Sri Haranath, and it is irresistible. The upshot of my enthusiasm was such that correspondence with Sri Vithaldas quickly escalated into a voluminous exchange of letters. Came the clay when he entrusted to me, here in England, the dishibution of the remaining copies of Thakwji's Life and Lilas. In consequence I des patched to libraries in many parts of the land the free copies of the book. Many of these were acknowledged and accepted both by private and by public libraries; only a few remained unacknowledged, or called forth acrimony and refusal to include the book in their collections. I took these reactions in my stri de, believing that - by Haranath's Grace - these books would eventually find their way into the hands of those for whom they were intended. Thakurji would, in other words, attract His own into His fold. Through one of the libraries the book was read by a lady call ed Ruth, who had come from Germany to England to obtain a professional qualification. Ruth eventually quitted Europe to join the Sri Haranath Ashram in Bangalore administered by Sri S. P. Reddy and Srimati Vinutha Ma - the present embodiments of Sri Haranath and Mathrusri Kusuma Kumani Devi. It was due to the infectious mystical fervour of Vithaldas Mehtha and of my friend Ruth, that I was attracted to the Lord and hi s L ilas. As is well known to readers of 'The Divine Pen', S1i Hara nath 's way involves incessant mantra japa or the divine nam e of God, any s uch name that 'melts the heart'. In the case of Sri H a ranath the name is, inevitably, Kusuma-Haranath or Kus um a-Hara, which combines in Jugal Milan the Names of Lord's Shakti - Kusuma Kumari Devi and Thakur Haranath.

The chanting or the mental repetition of the mantra, Ja.i Sri Kusuma I-I.aranath (or Jai Sri Kusuma Hara ), initiates in the hum a n psyche a powerful vibration that unlocks many doors, chie f' of which is the Door of the Heart. For in the heart, Radha

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and Krishna eternally sport. Within the Circle of their RasaLila, or Divine Play, the devotee joins the antaranga bhahtas of the Lord in their ecstatic dance. The rhythm of the dance dissolves the human per sonality and brings to birth, on r iver s of purified emotion, the Prenw-deha or body of divine Jove, which transforms the human soul into its divine parent. To this end the physical body is made so light that it becomes virtually without weight (grossness), i.e. pure light, the Radiance Divine. Those who had the great fortune to see Sri Ramakrishna, a nd those who today have the good fortune to witn ess Sri Reddy dance and leap with joy of divine bliss, will have seen a wholly wonderful manifestation of the human spirit transformed into the body of prem. The prem deha enables its possessor to become One with the Lord locked in bliss with the Mother of the Universe Srimati Kusuma Kumari Devi. Such ra pture is seen to be subtly contagious, for it has the power - beyond all earthly rapture - of opening the gates of Vrindauan, where the archetypal pair Radha Krishna - dance in the wooded groves of P ar adise. On taking name with single-minded devotion, th e entire planet can be washed clean of its past and present maladies of hate and greed and the detestable cults of personali ty that threaten to devastate the globe. At such time - and th er e have been many throughout history - an Avatar arises who turns the tide of imminent destruction . Sri H aranath brought and left his divine NAME as the supreme antidote, th e medicine of medicines, for as He himself declared at the celebrat ion of His Diamond Jubilee in Puri, in 1925: "Now there is no time to waste in smiling smiles of falsehood. Do not remain mi staken, still there is time; it would do even if you are careful from now. My only desire is that you throw your respective burdens on m e and move on still faster". The m essage is perh aps even more cogent today than it was nearly eighty years ago. The rem edy: TAKE NAME - it is the medicine that heals a ll ill s - even the World's. Jnana Lekhan.i, Haranath Magazi ne, Sonamukhi , India, 2005.

Glossary H ere follow anglicised Sanshrit and Hebrew (Heb.) terms used in the various articles collected together in this booh.

Advaita: Non-Duality (lit. 'Not-'l\vo'). Antaranga Bhakta: Close Devotee. Ashram: Spiritual Colony. Atma, Atman: The True Self; the non-ego. Atma Vichara: Self-Inquiry. Aum: Th e first manifested Sound. The root mantra of creation. All other letter s (sounds) arise from it. See Orn. Avatara: Hum a n embodiment of the Highest Spiritual Principle. Bhagavan: 'Lord', a term of r everence applied to a fully realised Sage. Bhajan: Sacred Song accompanied by musical instruments and dancing. See Khirtan. Bhakta: Devotee.

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Bhakti: Loving Devotion. Bhav-Deha: Divine Body; Bliss Body. Binah: (Heb. ) Understanding. Title of Third Sephira on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Bindu: Point, dot, seed. The Speck of Conscious ness, from which arises the illusion of subjectivity becoming objective, i.e. the Universe. Chit: Consciousness. Chit-Jada Granthi: The knot which a ppear s to bind Consciousness to inert Matter; h ence the condition of bondage from which Atma-Vichara can liberate. Chokmah: (Heb. ) Wisdom. Title of Second Sephira on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Daath: (Heb. ) Conceptual Knowledge. Title of the Eleventh , so-called 'false' Sephira on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Darshan: Divine Wisdom (lit. 'seeing God' J. Dharma: Law. The innate nature of things. Gopi: 'Milk Maid'. A poetici sed appell ation acco rded to the devotees of Krishna-Consciousn ess, as typified in the 'Bhagavad Gita'. Guru: An exponent, by example and by doctrine, of t he Spiritual Quest.

Hladini Shakti: Bli ss-Conferring Power.

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Ishtadevata: The inner Ideal externalised (objectivised) and worshipped. J agrat: The waking state of consciousness; full objectivity.

Japa: Repetition of a mantra or mantras. Jiva: The individua lised self. Jivanmukta: One wh o while yet embodied is no longer identified with an ego. The ultimate goal Jnana: Wis dom. The ultimate spiritual insight. Jnana Marg: the Way or Path of Wisdom. Karma: The inevitable reaction resulting from action or actions performed by conscious deliberation. Kether: (Heb. ) Title of the First Sephira of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Kirtan: Ecstatic Dan ce induced by spiritual exaltation. Kripa: Divine Grace. Lakh: One lakh

= 100,000.

Lila: Divin e Play. Mahapurusha: Great Being. Mahasamadhi: T h e Great and Ultimate Bliss concomitant upon t h e bodily death of a Jivanmukta. Mahasukha: Gr eat or Supreme Bliss.

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Mahasunya: The Great Void or Emptiness which characterises liberation from the bondage of a limiting agent such as form, body, mind, thought, etc. Mantapam: A many-pillared enclosure. Mantra: A Divine name or invocation repeated in conjunction with mental absorption in the form of a deity or a sage . Marg: Path; Way. Maya: Illusion. All created or imagined things; objectivity and that which objectivises. Mithuna: A coupling; often symbolised as sexual congress. OM: The Pranava. The supreme Mantra. Pradakshinam: Circumambulation; of a Sage, of a Temple , of a Holy Image or other revered object. This obj ect is always to the right of the circumambulator. Prakriti: Nature. The 'Many'. S ee Purusha. Prajna: Wisdom. Pranava: The root vibration of creation, Aum or OM. Prem: Divine (i. e. pure ) Love una lloyed by attachment. Purusha: One, not Many. The unique Witness of th e transformations of Prakriti. Sadhaka: One who follows a sadhana. Sadhana: Method of S piritual Culture.

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Sadhu: One who follows a Sadhana. Also known as a Sadhaka. Samadhi: Lit. 'Together with the Lord'. High State of Trance wherein the Universe is dissolved in the Self. Samadrishti: Lit. 'Equal Vision', i.e., Vision of Sameness applied to all objects. Samsara: The illusory world projected by the mind. Sannyas: Total renunciation of Samsara. Sannyasin: One who adopts Sannyas. Sarva Sunya: Lit. 'All Empty'. The Great Void ofMahasunya. Sephiroth: (Heb.) The 'nerve-centres' of the Qabalistic Tree of Life to which are attributed the numbers 1 - 10, plus a 'false' sephira 11 (conceptual knowledge). These constitute the totality of human awareness. Shakti: Power. Usually typified in feminine form. Shastras: The Hindu Scriptures. Siddhas: Magical powers. Sunya: Void. Empty. The true nature of the Self which is nonobjective . Sunyata: Voidness. Emptiness. The non-objective nature of Atman. Sushupti: Deep, dreamless sleep. Pure consciousness; nonobjecti vi ty.

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Svapna: Consciousness in the dreaming or im age-making state, prior to projection in Jag.rat. Tattvas: The qualities inherent in things; their 'truth'. Turiya: The state of consciousness in Samadhi , sometimes known as the Fourth State (after the three states of Jag.rat, Svapna, Sushupti). Tree of Life: See Diagram. Upaya: Method. Vairagi: One who has renounced worldly existence. Vasanas: Tendencies induced by habit which have to be overcome by the Sadhu. Vichara: Inquiry. See Atma Vichara . Yantra: The linear form of a Mantra .

Bibliography The re a r e numerous publications about these Sages. A few titles, con temporaneous with the essays reprinted here, are as fo ll ows:

Anandamayi Ma M other as Seen by Her Devotees, Anandamayee Ashram, Indi a, 1956. Mo ther as R evealed to nie, by Bhaiji. Sri Sri Ma Anandamayee Ashram, India , 1952. A na ndanwyee, by Richard Lannoy, Element Books. Dorset, 1996. Thakur Haranath Sri Hara nath, H is Play and Precepts, by Vithaldas Nathabhai Mehta . 1954. Ramakrishna Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master, by Swami Saradananda, tran slat ed by Swami J agadananda. Sri Ram a k rishn a Math, no date. The Gospel of Sri Ranwkrishna, by 'M'. Sri Ramakrishna Ma th , n o da t e.

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Sri Ramana Maharshi Ramana Maharshi a nd the Path of S elf Knowledge, by Arthur Osborne. Rider & Co., London , 1954. The Collected Works of Ramana M aharshi, edited a nd annotated by Arthur Osborne. Rider & Co. , London, 1959. In Days of Great Peace by Mouni Sadhu, 1952. Self-Realisation, The Life and Teachings o/ Sri Ramana Malwrshi, by B. V. Narasimha Swami. V.N. Venkataraman, Tiruvannamalai, India, 1953. A Sadhu's R eminiscences of Ramo na M aharshi, by Sadhu Arunachala [A.W. Chadwick ]. Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, India, 1966. Sai Baba The Incredible Sai B aba, by Arthur Osborne. Rider & Co., London, 1958. Sivananda A utobiography of Swami S iuananda. The Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy, Ananda Kutir, Ri shikesh , Indi a, 1958. Swami Siuananda, the Sage of Practical Wisdom, by MajorGeneral A. N. Sharma. The Yoga-Veda nta Forest Academy, 1959.

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