Guru Tatvam ( source: The call divine) Who is a Guru? The literal meaning of the Sanskrit word Guru is that which is heavy or that which is of profound impact. Etymologically Guru means remover of darkness. Infact gurutatva belongs to the profoundest of the five divine functions (pancakrityas) vis.Srishti (creation), Stithi (sustenance), Samhara (destruction or devolution), Tirodhana (veiling) and Anugraha (grace). Gurutatva belongs to the anugraha mandala. What does anugraha mean? It is the power which makes a mature soul to come in contact with an illumined master. Its operation is infallible and it confers the greatest blessing on the jiva by kindling the inherent jnana (self knowledge). Thus through bestowal of Brahmavidya it releases the jiva from the hypnosis of maya. In most of the cases this power of grace manifests through the personality of an external teacher. This contact is similar to the phenomenon of lighting a lamp. As we light a lamp only from an already burning one, so too the disciple gets illumined from the enlightened master. Usually the guru is compared with the legendary Chintamani which can convert any metal into gold. But Adi Sankara says in his Satasloki that Chintamani is an inferior simile. Chintamani can only convert the metal into gold. It cannot convert the metal into Chintamani itself. But guru does that alchemy. He transfigures the disciple into his own likeness through Atmajnana. The experience of the self deals a death blow to the disciples ignorance and makes him transcend all dualistic perceptions; even the guru ceases to be an external phenomenon. The infinite self alone shines forth, neither the guru nor the sishya, neither the teaching nor the scripture, neither you nor me, neither this world. Only that ever auspicious self remains! The one without a second! That alone am I! (Dasasloki), roared Sankara that too right in front of Govinda Bhagavatpada. Guru and Maya Anything that takes the mind outward-away from the centre-is maya and the power which makes the mind turn back and seek the source is guru. Any person, place or thing that effects this inward flow was considered by our Rishis as sacred. The extroverted mind gets caught in the grip of avidya and loses its touch with reality. It gets constantly deluded by the dualistic experiences. The matterpower-jadasakti-completely possesses the mind and makes it unfit for Atmajnana. To get released from this illusory grip one needs tremendous inpulling energy or rather source energy which is called Sankarshana sakti. Guru is Sankarshana Murti-the embodiment of source energy. In the field of matter there are two powers viz. Akarshana and Vikarshana (attraction and repulsion). Sankarshana is the power which makes the mind transcend this dualistic plane of attraction and repulsion. Duality belongs to mind while Sankarshana is the direct descendence of the inpulling power of the Atman. This force effects the inflow of the mind. Externally it takes the form of the guru and pushes the mind inward (guru kripa) and from within the same force arises from the heart which pulls and absorbs the inturned mind into the self (Atma kripa). So guru rescues the mind from the mire of ignorance and makes it inturned and receptive to the irresistible fascination of the Self. At this stage the quietude of the Self wafts around the seeker and inundates him with deep meditative poise. The Attraction of the Guru Only a genuine seeker will know what it is to get attracted to an enlightened master. When we get attracted to a real sage we will recognize a new center unveiling within us which is neither the mind nor the intellect. We will recognize something which is deeper, subtler and profounder than the mind opening within us like a bud. This center will awaken only in the presence of an illumined soul. Hence the contact is unmistakable. This is the spiritual heart (hrudayam), the treasure house of divine experience. The mind will get replenished from this center. The mind will be hushed to a natural quietude and that silence is the greatest healing tonic. It heals all the hurts caused by self image. Hence Yoga Vasishta calls this silence born of sadhu sanga as the inner tonic - rasayanamayi santih paramanandadayini naanandayati kamnama sadhusangama chandrika Here the presence of a sage is compared to the comely moonlight. Through such repeated dips in the inner stillness the seeker will awaken to the fact that the treasure sought by him is within. Not only that, he will know that no amount of personal effort could have given him even a slightest glimpse of this inner silence. Here the seeker recognizes the greatest phenomenon in spiritual life i.e. GRACE. In SivaAdvaita they give greatest importance to this insight. They call it Kripa Sakshatkara. From here starts a constant undercurrent of manana and nididhyasana. The seeker again and again recollects and ruminates over the inner revelation that he got through masters grace and gets established in it. In Swami Chinmayanandajis life something like this happened when he visited Ramana Maharshi as a young wanderer. In Ramanas presence Swamiji experienced this overpowering grace. It made him enter into a state which he was not able to recognize then as his real nature. Later when he was prepared mentally and intellectually in the guidance of Tapovan Maharaj he recognized and cherished the glimpse that he got in Ramanas presence. (Refer to The Journey Of A Master by Nancy Patchen-pg.27&28) It is this power of grace that fascinates the seeker. This was the maddening and intoxicating attraction the gopis had for Krishna. This attraction was not physical because it led them to recognize Krishna as the inner self - akhila dehinaam antharaatmadrik. Even the emotions between them were transmuted as vehicles to carry grace. The writer had the rare good fortune of living with some great saints where he recognized that any emotion of a saint could become a vehicle to carry grace. Even scolding had the effect of erasing self image and infusing grace. Guru is God M.P.Pundit wrote about Ramana Maharshi as mighty impersonality. So too is every jnani. Ramana himself used to remark that Jnanam alone is, there are no Jnanis. When a person recognises his real nature he ceases to be a person. He is truth itself-Brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati. Such a person alone could be a guru. Through him Truth propagates itself. When Swami Rajeswarananda asked Ramana Maharshi how to propagate Brahmavidya, Maharshi retorted back with a question Who wants to propagate? The sage continued Seek the I which wants to propagate. Trace the I thought to its source. It will disappear in the infinite Self. There you will find yourself one with all-atmaivedam sarvam. In that natural state-sahaja stiti-propagation will also happen naturally. So the first duty of a seeker is to remove his own ignorance. Once the avidya is removed, the individual sense or the personal I also ceases to operate. Only in appearance the personality remains; experientially Brahman alone is. Such a master remains in the world serving two purposes, one is to show that jivanmukti is possible and the other is to remind the seekers the greatest Upanishadic dictum Tat tvam Asi (That you are). The world is constantly reminding us that we are the body. The entire society is built upon this foundation of misapprehension. A person of truth (jnani) is a walking danger to all that is falsehood. He keeps reminding us You are not this body, you are the infinite truth. Body is only an illusion, a mere appearance in the screen of consciousness. Know that. Seek Who am I? Investigate the I thought. The localised I will sink and disappear in the infinite bodhakasa. You are not this personality. You are the substratum on which this illusory personality appears. Waking, dream and sleep are all illusory. These phenomena constantly appear in you. You alone are the truth. Remain as the infinite Self. Do not identify with this waking ego. It is as illusory as the dream ego. Wake up, wake up. Such clarion call alone will awaken us from this sleep of ignorance. Such verbal confirmation from a sage will make the vague experience of the self to flare up. By mere listening to such teaching a mature seeker instantaneously recognises the self. Such recognition is called Pratyabhijna. (Kashmiri saivism defines pratyabhijna as akritrima aham vimarsha i.e. recollecting the real I by transcending the ego-I). Sraddha Sraddha is the most important element in spiritual life. Sraddhaavaan labhate jnanam says Bhagavat Gita. Infact it is the fuel for the inner takeoff. It alone will give us the escape velocity to transcend the body mind field. What is sraddha? Sankara defines it as conviction in the words of the sastras and the guru. He also adds yayaa vastu upalabhyate-by which one attains the vastu (jnanam). By gurubhakti the mind gets refined. As the crude oil is refined and made more powerful as kerosene, diesel, petrol and the fuel for rockets to transcend the gravitational pull of the earth, the mind by constant association with a Brahmavid slowly gets refined and transmuted as sraddha. With this power of attention the paradigm shift from the personal self to the infinite Brahman happens. The external teacher is there only to point out to you that the light is within. You have to behold. From here you are the teacher, taught and the teaching. Buddha said to Ananda , Atma deepo bhava (Be a lamp unto yourself ). Paroksha bodhana The need for constant association with a guru is a must for most of the seekers. Sankaracharya says in his Upanishad bhashya that the spiritual seeker must ignore all that is not the Self (anaatma pratyaya tiraskaarah) and remain established in the pure Self. But the world keeps hypnotising us in an indirect way. Infact this indirect (paroksha) way of putting it across is very powerful. If someone were to say directly, you are the body, we will become alert immediately. But the way the wrong suggestion reaches us is insidious. People are very solicitous and enquire about your health; How is your sugar level? Did you check your blood pressure? Eat well. Take care. Thus repeatedly they remind us that we are the body. They seem very affectionate and concerned about us. We are not aware of the virus of ignorance that has creped in. But after spending half an hour with them, when we leave, we have a feeling of insecurity, Should I go to the doctor and get myself checked? All our study of the Upanishads is negated in one stroke and we begin to identify with our body. This is Maya. It keeps drawing us outwards, from the Self to the non-self, from the centre to the periphery, from light to darkness! The duty of the guru is to dehypnotise you in the same indirect way (paroksha bodhana). He has to take you from darkness to light. He employs paroksha bodhana (indirect awakening) but it gives aparoksha anubhava (immediate experience of the self). He observes us carefully in our daily interactions and catches us during the right moment to strike home the highest truth. That is why constant association is a must. The Master sees you as perfection, as consciousness, as God. But you (the disciple) consider yourself as the puny ego. So you consider the Guru also as the body.You worship only his body, while his very vision of you is a worship of God in you. Ramana used to remark “If we teach them Tat Tvam Asi once they teach us back Atat Tvam Asi (you are the non Self) a thousand timesâ€. But fortunately his vision is the Truth and it prevails! Hence his Mahavakya Updesha even uttered once completely awakens us from the illusion of misapprehension. The Guru at work Every time we forget, the guru reminds us and repeatedly establishes us steadily in our true nature. We go to him with our problems and sorrows, and he reminds us that the cause of our misery is ajnanam (spiritual ignorance). There is no sorrow in our true swarupa. A lady went to Ramana Bhagavan, narrated all her sorrows and lamented that she had no peace of mind at all. Generally Maharshi would not answer immediately. He would be silent for a long time, till the person forgot even his own question. Maharshi would wait for the devotee to finish talking, and give enough time to let the thoughts in his mind settle down, so that the answer could sink in effectively. It was not enough to answer in a statement; he had to give them the beatific state itself! Sometimes silence would be the only answer. Sometimes the answer would come the next day, when the questioner was least prepared, had let go of his or her question. Bhagavan never answered the question, he always answered the questioner. He said to the lady, Who is this I that is suffering? Were these problems and sorrows there in your sleep?. “No, she said, “but the mind was not there in my sleep, she added. Were you there in your sleep? asked Maharshi. Yes, she said. Sri Bhagavan continued: All the problems are in the mind and not in you. Everything ends when the mind becomes quiet. They rise when the mind rises. Why dont you observe the place where the mind rises? You will find that mind is only an illusion. Self alone IS, remain as That. She sat for some more time and then left. No one knew whether she understood Maharshis words. But Maharshi knew that this is the only solution. The famous Kavyakanta Muni, who was greatly devoted to Maharshi, remarked: You gave the highest upadesa to this peasant woman. If she had asked me, I would have told her to do some mantra japa or nama japa. How can she understand Brahmavidya? Maharshi replied simply: This is all I know. I tell what I know. Each person can teach only what he knows. After another half an hour he said, Two persons were in a room. One of them was sleeping and dreaming that he was being robbed and he screamed in terror. Will the other man who was wide awake chase the robber? He will simply wake up the sleeper. In the same way, the jiva dreams that he has many problems. The basic element of dream is the jivahood itself, that itself being made of dream stuff. One dream cannot be an antidote to another dream. The only solution is to wake up and the problem is not only solved but it gets dissolved. Mental Preparation of the Seeker One can wake up only if one has the desire and the determination to wake up. When you go to sleep at night, deciding to get up at 4 o’clock you are mentally prepared to get up, but just in case you dont wake up, you tell someone else to wake you up. And when that person wakes you up in the morning, you get up immediately. However, someone who has not made that decision to get up, for example, a child during the school holidays, will refuse to get up even when someone wakes him up. There are instances of many who lived with the greatest of masters and remained crude. They were not ready to be awakened. They were enjoying their dreams. There was an ascetic devotee of Sri Ramana Bhagavan who did a lot of penance. Once he lived in a cave in the Arunachala hill doing tremendous austerity (chaandraayana vrata) reducing his food intake gradually till it was barely a mouthful a day. After finishing the vrata he came to the Maharshi and expressed Bhagavan, I have found that one could keep the body alive with only a mouthful a day. Bhagavan smiled and remarked You can be alive even without the body. Bodilessness is your real nature. The self is asariram. The disciple stood struck by the power of those words. Atma Vichara The only sadhana for a true seeker is to revert back to his real nature every moment Pratibodha viditam matam says Kena Upanishad .Moment by moment enquire into the nature of the I. Ask yourself what is this I. Pay attention. Hold on to this I,I. When thoughts parade do not fall into them. Seek To whom these come?’ The answer will be to me. Instantaneously stare at this me’, ‘me. Who is this me? Whence this I arise? If we seek, the I will disappear. The assumed I will not stand the light of enquiry. In its place the real I, the primordial truth will reveal itself as existence, awareness and peace. If one has reached this much one no more needs an external guru. Till that the guru and his teachings are the only antidote for the venomous effects of worldly contacts. Brahmavidya according to Sankara is vastu tantra (the knowledge completely depends upon the object of knowledge) and Brahman is bhuta vastu (ever attained). Jnana alone is the means to attain it.It cannot be attained through any amount of effort (karma). When we hear this, Brahmajnana seems to be an impossible goal. But Sankara himself gives us the greatest relief in his bhashya. Baahyaakaara nivrutta budheenaam tu labdha gurvaatma prasaadaanaam naatah param sukham suprasidham suvijneyam swaasannataram asti. Nothing is more simple, ever attained, easily knowable and nearer than this for those who are introverted and who have got the grace of the guru and the Atman. Hence the Sruti says Gurumeva abhigachet srothriyam brahmanishtam. Srothriyam means one who knows the Upanishadic truth. Brahmanishtam means one who is established in it. Hence a mere professor of Vedanta is not qualified. He must not only know but also BE. That is he should have the intuitive recognition of the undifferentiated consciousness and should be able to remain as it all the time. Just as the Self remains without the body, the mind and the personal ego in the deep sleep so too it is, here and now. The appearance of body, mind and the ego do not affect the self in the least. Asangohi ayam purushaha. The Self is not at all attached to anything. The appearance of body, mind, etc. are only like mirage in the desert. If you go and touch the water in a mirage you grab only the sand. So too if you investigate the body, mind or the ego minutely you will see them dissolving in the Self. This is Sruti jnanam. This conviction must be there in a guru. Then only he will be able to save the disciple from avidya. The guru must be able to dehypnotise the seeker from Mayas hypnosis. You are qualified to seek such a Master only at the stage where you have completely lost the habit of fruit oriented effort, only when you are disillusioned with karma and objective knowledge-“Nirvedam aayaa. Why? Because the process of Brahmavidya is entirely different from worldly education and the Vedic education. Here verbal knowledge (vaachyaartha) is only a pointer to recognise the ever attained experience (lakshyaartha). So this sastra is known as siddhabodhaka. In worldly knowledge and Vedic knowledge the seeker is searching a thing other than himself. Here the seeker himself is the thing in itself. Here the knower, knowledge and the known are one. It is his own self, the Aham padaartha (the implied meaning of I am). You are not what you think yourself to be. Your personality is only assumed. Ignore all that you are not. Attend to the essence of your I-sense. You will see the I dissolving in the blue waters of infinity, existence, awareness, peace and bliss. You are that - Tat tvam asi. This is the eternal song of Vedanta. From this recognition of the Self the seeker will have the joy of complete security, intimation of immortality, experience of changeless awareness and above all a deep experience of quietude hitherto unknown. This inner quietude arises not from the mind but directly from the natural state (sahaja sthiti). This jnana samadhi unlike the yogic trance abides for ever. Let us finish this topic by quoting the famous Kabirs song Guru kripa anjana paayo mere bhaayi Dear brothers and sisters seek the colliriyum of gurus grace. With that you will behold the ever attained freedom of the Self.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 17:11:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015