Ramana... More on Effort

[Guest guest]

Devotee: I want to be further enlightened. Should I try to make no effort at

all?

Bhagavan: Now it is impossible for you to be without effort. When you go

deeper, it is impossible for you to make effort.

Devotee: What is the difference between meditation and samadhi or absorption in

the Self?

B: Meditation is initiated and sustained by a conscious effort of the mind.

When such effort entirely subsides, it is called samadhi.

B: If you can keep still without engaging in any other pursuits, well and good.

But if that cannot be done, what is the use of remaining inactive only with

regard to realization? So long as you are obliged to be active, do not give up

the attempt to realize the Self.

 

Meditation is a fight. As soon as you begin meditation, other thoughts will

crowd together, gather force and try to overwhelm the single thought to which

you try to hold. this thought must gradually gain strength by repeated

practice. When it has grown strong, the other thoughts will be put to flight.

This is the battle always going on in meditation.

 

No one succeeds without effort. Mind control is not your birthright.. The few

who succeed owe their success to their perseverance.

 

Effort is necessary up to the state of Realization. Even then, the Self should

spontaneously become evident; otherwise happiness will not be complete. Up to

that state of spontaneity there must be effort in some form or another.

 

Editor: Sometimes right effort is referred to as duty.

Devotee: Why should I try to get Realization? I shall emerge from this state

of illusion just as I wake up from a dream. We do not make any effort to get

out of a dream when we are asleep.

B: In a dream you have no inkling that it is a dream and therefore no

obligation to make an effort to get out of it. But in this life you have some

intuition based on your experience of sleep and on what you hear and read, that

it is a sort of dream, and this intuition imposes on you the duty of making an

effort to get out of it. However, who wants to realize the Self if you don't

want to? If you prefer to be in this dream, stay as you are.

 

D: It is said that our waking life is also a dream, similar to our dream during

sleep. But in our dreams we make no conscious effort to get rid of the dream

and wake up; the dream itself comes to an end without any effort on our part and

we become awake. Similarly, why shouldn't the waking state, which in reality is

only another sort of dream, come to and end on its own accord without any effort

on our part, and land us in Realization or real awakening?

B: Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of a

waking state and your making effort to attain Realization or real awakening are

all part of the dream. When you attain Realization you will see there was

neither the dream during sleep not the waking state, but only yourself and you

real state.