Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

VI OF SADHANA AND SIDDHI

If it is the Grace that causes the dissolution of the ego and founds in the jiva a true reflection of the self, a consummation which is called self-attainment atmclabha, the doubt may arise that human effort can be safely omitted and that the Shastras that point to the jiva the means and methods for his liberation are purposeless and futile. But the doubt is groundless. The egostruck jiva, as the apparent self posing himself as free, cannot stand still and refrain from effort until he realises his freedom in the Self. Human effort is inevitable and has its purpose so long as one experiences the sense of bondage and dependence. The Grace of the Conscious Light upon the apparent self jiva fulfils itself in an impulsion from within or compulsion from without for human effort. And effort takes various forms, such as meditation and concentration upon the true nature of the Self, absolute submission to a Higher Will and surrender to Him of all that one is and all that one has, as the only proper course for a human soul to take, and other disciplines or sadhanas, well-known or ill-known enjoined or unenjoined by the Shastras, or it may adopt any other method such as Raja yoga, Mantra yoga, Bhakti yoga, Jnana yoga, Karma yoga, the last three constituting the triple path of devotion, knowledge and disinterested action. Human effort adopts any or all of these means either for the Realisation of the Self, or for the attainment of the Nishkala, Impersonal, or of the Sakala, Personal God, the goal of all religions. Therefore human effort is not opposed to Divine Grace; on the other hand it is an instrument of the latter.

The great Advaita Acharya Shri Shankara and Shri Maharshi Ramana agree upon the central teaching of the Upanishads, the oneness of the self with Brahman. But there are certain points of difference between them. The passages stating the world as false, unreal or illusory do not leap to the eye in the Upanishads but are discoverable only by a close search and they are taken as affirming the illusory character of the world by some sort of interpretation; after all they do not affirm the illusoriness of the world in clear categorical terms. Maharshi holds that the statement of the illusory nature of the world is but a means of creating disgust for what is impermanent in the world, thus driving you home to search for thy Self, for what is permanent in you. Again in the authoritative works of Acharya Shankara’s school certain truths are either omitted or slightly touched, and if mentioned at all, they are expounded in such a way as to give room to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. In the works⁹⁶

One of such truths is the necessity of Upasana.⁹⁷

Such is the unconventional and rational attitude revealed in the works as well as in the life of Shri Maharshi.

Again just as there are⁹⁸

The conventional interpretation of dahara vidya is this: Since the Supreme Brahman is impersonal, nirguna, and beyond mind and speech, for purposes of meditation one has to form by the imaginative mind a concept of the Saguna Brahman or Personal God, and fixing it in the space called hrd-guha, the cavity of the Heart, meditate upon it. Of course this Saguna Brahman is meant for the weak, manda adhikarin, who cannot realise the supreme Brahman who is Nirguna, Impersonal. The HridayaVidya that Shri Maharshi teaches is different from the Dahara Vidya thus understood. Here is not indispensable an intellectual knowledge either of the Personal or of the Impersonal Brahman. Nor is it necessary to conceive a spatial symbol of the Purusha, or any cavity as the dwelling place of the Purusha. Nor is it suggested that the Saguna Brahman should be fixed in the imagined dahara akasa, the cavity of the Heart-centre and there meditated upon. As Brahman the All-Existence has become the self in every one’s being in the centre called hrdaya, Heart, and is there effulgent as the imperishable I-conciousness, a serious quest for the origin and support of one’s own being naturally impels the lifebreath or inspires the mind to move towards the origin of its own movement. And in this deeper movement of search for the Self, the root knot of ignorance in the Heart, the hrdaya granthi is automatically loosened, if not cut asunder; the soul is liberated from the bodily tangle and restored to the self in the Heart; and the origin and support of the I-thought or the ego-sense is realised in the Heart as one’s own real self. This self-attainment leads to the realisation of the truth that it is Brahman, the Self, of All-Existence, that is ablaze in one’s heart as the Self of the jiva and thus results in the experience of conscious union of the jiva with Brahman. Hence the secret of this Sad-Vidya or Hridaya Upasana is the truth that self-realisation culminates in the conscious union of jiva with Brahman

Great are the results of success or perfection in this Upasana. The knot of ignorance in the heart is untied, the soul is released from the hold of the body, there is a settled state, natural and unstrained, of the equipoised mind in the self, and there is an intimate realisation in the heart of the oneness of jiva and isvara. Therefore it is that in the exposition of the nature of sat-darsana we find it stated, “To live settled in the Reality (Existence as it is) by realising one’s identity with it is Sat-darshana, Realisation of Truth or Perception of Reality.” Again in describing the nature of atma-darsana or Perception of Self this Shastra states that the finite self or jiva must become the food⁹⁹

Thus the state of Realisation, the fruit of success in Hridaya Vidya, can be viewed from two different standpoints as Kaivalya and as Sayujya, setting in the Self as the sole Reality and the attainment of conscious union with Brahman. And because of this dual aspect of Truth-Realisation, we find Sat-Darshana explained in one place and Atma-Darshana in another.

Since the state of the jivan-mukta, of one who lives released from bondage can thus be understood and described in two ways, in the two opening verses of benediction, mangala slokas, Shri Maharshi mentions the niskala Brahman for nistha and the sakala Brahman as the sole refuge and subject of conscious union, sayujya.

Again, in the account of the difference between the bound man and the liberated, there is a remarkable verse revealing profound truths about the liberated life in the bodily existence. Referring to the Siddha, the perfected man who has his life and being in the Heart and who has learnt to live normally in and move and act from it, the verse says, “In his body, the self is awake and aglow in the Heart; by its own light it pervades, possesses, and overpowers the body, the environment and the world at large, and lives full.” When development comes upon the man in bondage and under its stress his bonds are shattered, the effulgence of consciousness of the supreme essential life-breath srestha or mukhya prana which moves covertly in the body like salt dissolved in water withdraws from the body and the bodily consciousness, and turns to the source of its own movement, the hrdaya, which is the seat of the ’I’. consciousness. Entering and retiring into the Heart, it is caught up in the grip of its Lord, the Lord of all existence, seated there as one’s own deepest being, the Self; and directed thence by Him it takes a different course in its movement and abandoning the habitual passage for bondage takes the path for freedom. As the light of the lamp pierces through the enclosure of the chimney, this conscious light of life streams out from the Heart through what in yogic parlance is called amrta nadi, atma nadi, brahma nadi, or mukhya prana nadi, and sweeping aside all obstruction overpowers the body and permeates the environment and the world. In lucid and unmistakable language it is stated in the Ramana Gita that though the Self has no motion the splendour of its light is an eternal active movement; itself of the nature of development, it hastens the development of others and it is not at all a stone-like inertness like the apparently static Inconscient.

“No torpor in the natural poise of the Self, sahaja sthiti.”

“Settled State in the Self, that alone is tapas unshakable."

“By that unremitting tapas (the ardour of creative energy) development takes place moment after moment."

“Whoever sees knowledge Jnana as divorced from power sakti, such an one knows not."

"sahaja nistha, natural settled state in Self yields a development by which powers saktis manifest.

“That state is the Supreme Power, that peace is the Supreme Calm."

“He is a jivan-mukta who in embodied existence lives liberated.”

"By the development in tapas, the jivan-mukta in course of time becomes intangible even while embodied, and still in the course of further development he becomes invisible, and that perfected one, Siddha, now but a sublime centre of consciousness goes about free in his movements."

Passages such as these from the teachings of Shri Maharshi throw light upon the greatness of the soul liberated alive, jivanmukta.