EFFORTLESS THROUGH EFFORT

January 28, 2005

"The Self, is it ever attained?"…Can you realize the Self?"…"All are

Self-Realized."…"Be as you are.Be still and know that you are

God." These are one set of statements made by Ramana. He had also

said "Grace is always there but what is needed is practice.The

solution is practice."…"It is necessary for you to strive and wait

for the Guru to help."…"As soon as they come they want to be

jnanis.They ignore the effort involved".

These statements seem to contradict each other. Only apparently so.

Sadguru Ramana speaks and guides from direct experience of steady

Self-abidance. Every word of his has therefore to be true. It is for

each one to understand their correct import in the light of his

constantly available guidance.

The first set of statements of Ramana, about the availability of

knowledge here and now applies to one's natural state from which one

has been alienated by one's sense of individuality, by the false

notion of separate identity. As long as one mistakes the rope for a

snake, there is only the snake which has been superimposed falsely

on the rope. The rope and the snake cannot co-exist.

Ramana gives several examples to illustrate the point. Ramaswami

Pillai a long standing inmate of Sri Ramanasramam keeps the key in

its usual place. He forgets his having kept it there and searches

all over the place and finds it. The loss of the key and finding of

the key were both real. A lady is wearing her necklace. But she

wrongly imagines that she has kept it in her locker. She looks for

it there and is dismayed at not finding it. She searches high and

low, enquires of her relatives and friends. She is in grief at the

loss until a friend points out that she is wearing it. The lost

necklace is found and she is happy. Ten men are crossing a river in

spate. On swimming across they wish to check whether all of them

have crossed over. Each of them omits to count himself and therefore

counts only nine. Presuming that one of them has drowned they begin

to lament loudly. A wayfarer passing by notices their plight,

strikes each one of them on their shoulders, counting numbers 1, 2,

3, and so on. Lo and behold, the last man shouts "ten". The drowned

person has been rescued! From this it would be apparent that the

reality, the truth which is always there, remains covered up by

one's experiential ignorance of its existence.

The same holds good for the Self and Self-knowledge. Though Self

alone exists one is unaware of it as a fact, as one's own experience

until ignorance is removed. The effort referred to by Ramana is not

for attaining the Self but for removing the obstructions for one's

awareness of it. For, we first foist the false notion of "I am so

and so", the ego on the pure "I am" and then keep continuing this

error through a series of related identifications with our people,

ideas, bank accounts, associations in life and so on. One is caught

in the constant movement of thought, in the varying identifications

of the ego with multifarious thoughts which arise on the mental

horizon. They depend on external stimuli of the objects and the

internal thrust of tendencies, residual memories. The movement of

thought is faster than that of a thorough-bred race horse, the

fastest human or even the wind. The vast storehouse of memories of

action keeps the mind working feverishly with its outward thrust.

Effort is needed to check this flow of thoughts. Otherwise you will

always be running with the running mind.

While talking about effort several doubts are bound to arise. Does

not effort imply a goal to be attained? Would it not distance the

goal when it is available now? The way to avoid this is to be

conscious all the time that the effort is only to remove the road

blocks, to turn the mind away from its fascination for objects from

its obsessive belief that happiness can be found in objects.

The other doubt is about the validity of using the mind. Would we

not be limited by its circumference, its innate limitations? Here it

is important to remember that the only instrument one has is the

mind. Presently, its energy is wasted in the maze of the fast track

thought world. If one recognizes the importance of the prime mover

of the thought world, the individual's attention, then the mind's

power is gathered together in oneness. Much of spiritual effort has

been misdirected towards pruning thoughts, towards cultivating

goodness, towards substituting one set of desires by another. All

this of course till Ramana came along to turn our attention directly

to the thinker, to the originator to whom all this world of thoughts

belong. Self-enquiry with its focus on the individual takes one away

from looking without, away from thoughts and their movement. The

effort here is to hold on to the "I am", the core. The effort is

needed as long as one does not have a firm hold on the "I am". How

does one know whether the attention is firm or slipping back to the

usual thought patterns? If thoughts subside and one is fully awake

then one has held the attention on "I". When thoughts re-emerge it

means that attention has strayed and gone back to its usual pastures

of grazing among thoughts.

Ramana explains that self-attention has the advantage of turning the

mind within to its source. For individual consciousness is only the

reflection of the fullness of consciousness of the Self. This

practice is like a dog tracing its master through his scent. It does

not know his height, color, age or any of his individual

characteristics, but it knows surely his scent and it returns home

by that single faculty.

Gradually there is intermittent subsidence of thoughts, and the

inturning of the mind to its source. For, the limited use of the

mind, to pay attention to its core, destroys its tendencies to be

externalized. Ramana asks, "Does not the stick used to stir the

funeral pyre itself gets destroyed in the process?". By steadily

abiding in fullness of consciousness one would discover one's

natural happiness. The truth would be revealed. Thereafter no effort

would be possible. The one who is to make the effort has ceased.

Ramana says about this state "Here it is impossible to make effort,

there it is impossible to be without it". The "here" refers to the

state of steady Self-abidance and "there" refers to ego-centric

life. Then the real beauty of life unfolds when ego rests at its

source, the fullness of consciousness. In that state one would be

active without the burden of anxiety and fear. Joy abounds, one's

wholly free of dependence, of pain and sorrow. Who can describe this

state which in the days of yore could only be indicated even by the

primal guru Dakshinamurthi, Siva, by his potent silence?

NOTE: TAKEN FROM "RAMANA MAHARSHI, THE LIVING GURU", BY A. R.

NATARAJAN, 1996 EDITION, PAGES 42 TO 45.

January 28, 2005

BEAUTIFUL!!! Thank you for this posting. How blessed we are to even know of

this teaching......such gratitude is here.

----Original Message Follows----

"saikali6362" <saikali6362

RamanaMaharshi

[RamanaMaharshi] EFFORTLESS THROUGH EFFORT

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 13:27:23 -0000