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We are supposed to be upbeat and full of optimism about how wonderful this world can be once we are liberated from all outer and inner bondage. And it probably can indeed be wonderful, but is that the point? How can I be released from bondage if I am not ready to face reality?
So what is reality? First of all it is the fact of Eternity with a capital "E". This has all been going on for millions and billions and quadrillions of time. It did not start and there is no way it can end.
Q: So one should not try to perpetuate blissful or ecstatic states?
Ramana: The
final obstacle in meditation is ecstasy; you feel great bliss and
happiness and want to stay in that ecstasy. Do not yield to it but pass
on to the next stage which is great calm. The calm is higher than
ecstasy and it merges into samadhi. Successful samadhi causes a waking
sleep state to supervene. In that state you know that you are always
consciousness, for consciousness is your nature. Actually, one is always
in samadhi but one does not know it. To know it all one has to do is to
remove the obstacles.
Q: Through poetry,
music, japa, [chanting holy names], bhajans [devotional songs], the
sight of beautiful landscapes, reading the lines of spiritual verses,
etc., one experiences sometimes a true sense of the all- pervading
unity. Is that feeling of deep blissful quiet in which the personal self
has no place the same as the entering into the Heart of which Bhagavan
speaks? Will undertaking these activities lead to a deeper samadhi and
so ultimately to a full vision of the real?
A: There
is happiness when agreeable things are presented to the mind. It is the
happiness inherent in the Self, and there is no other happiness. And it
is not alien and afar. You are diving into the Self on those occasions
which you consider pleasurable and that diving results in self-existent
bliss. But the association of ideas is responsible for foisting that
bliss on other things or occurrences while, in fact, that bliss is
within you. On these occasions you are plunging into the Self, though
unconsciously. If you do so consciously, with the conviction that comes
of the experience that you are identical with the happiness which is
truly the Self, the one reality, you call it realization. I want you to
dive consciously into the Self, that is the Heart.
Q: I
have been making sadhana [spiritual practice] for nearly twenty years
and I can see no progress. What should I do? From about five o’clock
every morning I concentrate on the thought that the Self alone is real
and all else unreal. Although I have been doing this for about twenty
years I cannot concentrate for more than two or three minutes without my
thoughts wandering.
A: There is no other way
to succeed than to draw the mind back every time it turns outwards and
fix it in the Self. There is no need for meditation or mantra or japa or
anything of the sort, because these are our real nature. All that is
needed is to give up thinking of objects other than the Self. Meditation
is not so much thinking of the Self as giving up thinking of the
not-Self. When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your
mind from going outwards by turning it inwards and fixing it in the
Self, the Self alone remains.
David Godman, “Be As You Are, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi”, p. 167-8
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