Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-84

[Guest guest]

Help on the Quest for Self-realization-Reminders-84

 

REFLECTIONS ON TALKS WITH SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI

 

By S.S. COHEN, Pages 122 and 123

 

1-"Is Ishwara Prasad (Divine Grace) or the jiva's (individual's) own

efforts necessary to attain That whence there is no return to the

wheel of life and death?"

 

Bhagavan: "Divine Grace is essential for Realization. But this Grace

is vouchsafed only to him who is a true devotee or a yogin, who had

striven hard and ceaselessly for freedom." 24

 

Note: The inference clearly is that efforts are of the utmost

importance. Grace is granted only to him who strives — "hard and

ceaselessly." Thus Grace looks like a Provident Fund which is added

on to the wages of him who works and earns them, and not granted to

the one who does not earn. Earn more and you get a larger provident

fund; earn less and you get a smaller one. Nothing is given for

nothing, spiritual gifts least of all. Therefore Grace cannot be

equated with efforts, for it would no longer be Ishwara prasad, but

strictly earned wages, payment for the efforts themselves. Nor can

it be equated with non-efforts, as fortuitous, unmerited gifts; for

no such gifts are known to exist. God, in His infinite mercy, has

contrived Grace to be a grant, a sort of bonus for genuine exertion,

and as inducement to a greater exertion.

 

"Grace is vouchsafed only to him who is a true devotee, or a yogin,

who has striven hard and ceaselessly for freedom." Let this gem idea

sink in us. It comes from the highest authority about Truth in

existence, and thus will have to be treasured and ceaselessly

meditated on by the earnest seekers. Let him therefore, who listens

to preachers who boldly proclaim God's mercy and Grace to depend on

God's whims and fancies, not fall in their trap; for they are

ignorant dogmatists. They imagine God to be whimsical like their own

selves or weak-minded to listen to prayers. Nor should he listen to

those who preach effortlessness: their words are belied by the

experience and wisdom of the Master- Rishis, who, for thousands of

years, gave the world its most valuable heritage — the science of

Yoga.

 

Bhagavan calls Grace indispensable for Realization. So it is.

Provident fund, as it accumulates from day to day, year to year

becomes in the end a substantial pile, which is far more valuable

than wages, as it secures the ease and comforts of the subject for

the rest of his life. In the case of the seeker it hails in the

Supreme Guru and finally jnana (knowledge of the Self) itself, as

the cumulative reward of many lives of aspiration and deliberate

penance.