Bhakti and Jnana

[Guest guest]

This is in response to a message by Hur Guler called " Devotional Advaita "

 

Guler wrote:

 

" i was thinking...

advaita is devotion without the imaginary Other.

for the advaitins though no fault of their own

this imaginary Other has disappeared

whereas for the dualist worshipper, this imaginary Other is still

present, though no fault of their own. "

 

Devotional Advaita? It might seem a contradiction but it is not. I found out for

myself it is true.

 

In the late 60's I had the good fortune to stay at a little ashram in Harriman,

NY, which became an outpost of the Divine Life Society

started by Swami Sivananda of Rishikesh, India. I was in my early 20's and had

come to a point where I knew that the spiritual path

was the road I wanted to take. The tiny ashram was on a beautiful piece of

property (rent) and run by a man named Hans Frenkel, who

was a disciple of Ramurti Mishra in Monroe, and his wife Sita, who was

personally initiated by Sivananda himself. I spent several of

the best years of my life there, becoming a yoga teacher, and mixing with

spiritually minded people and the occasional Swami or Yogi

that would visit. When Swami Chidananda, Sivananda's successor, came to dedicate

the little ashram he gave it the name " Bhakti-Jnana

Yoga Asram. " Thus from the beginning of my spiritual search there was this

coupling of the path of devotion and the path of advaita,

which is sometimes called Jnana or the path of knowledge. I came to understand

that all the paths lead to enlightenment in the end and

one chooses a path according to one's inner nature. I guess I chose both paths

at once, for that is how my life unfolded.

 

On my first day there (I was one of only two inmates at the time) we all

gathered in the gathered in the dining room of the 200 year

old house and a big fat book was placed in my lap and I was told: Start reading,

aloud so we all can hear. The book was called " The

Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. " It was gigantic, and all of it was conversations of

the great 19th saint (many say Avatar) with his

disciples. For months this went on every evening after dinner, and as I read out

loud the words of this amazing priest of the large

temple of Kali at Dakshineshwar, I fell in love with him, and began to worship

his picture in my room at night. I did not really know

any puja (worship) but I would just stare at the picture and talk to him until

the tears ran down my face. Ever since then I have

loved all enlightened beings with all my heart. You can see the famous picture

of him here:

 

http://www.prahlad.org/gallery/sri_ramakrishna.htm

 

Below the top picture you can see a very good blowup of just his face. The

picture shows a very high state of yoga called " bhav

samadhi, " or union with God through the power of love. He worshipped the Mother

of the universe who is called by many names, in his

case Kali, and who really is the power of maya, the illusion of the outside

world. Later I would visit his humble room in

Dakshineshwar, where I experienced the bhav samadhi state myself, as if it were

a gift of the great Master himself. I had to be pulled

out of the room by knowing friend, lest I fall down unconscious and hit my head

on the hard floor. For me Ramakrishna was the perfect

example of a bhakti yogi, the path of devotion and love.

 

Ramakrishna was not unaquainted with jnana, the path of knowledge and

realization of the One Without a Second. It was his habit in

those days to practice, one after another, all the main religions, to verify

that they all were true. Eventually he came to the path

of knowledge and took for his jnana guru a yogi named Totapuri, who closed him

up in a dark little shack and told him to keep his mind

completely fixed on the point between and above his eyebrows.

 

Ramakrishna failed at this time and time again, for his nature was pure devotion

and could not stop thinking of his beloved Mother

Kali. He reported to Totapuri that he could not keep his mind fixed on the One

because the Mother kept appearing before him, and he

could not stop thinking of her and keep his attention on his " third eye. "

Finally, while in the tiny shack complaining to Totapuri of

his inability of doing this jnana yoga, Totapuri grabbed a sharp piece of broken

glass that was lying there and ground the point of it

directly into the center of Ramakrishna's forehead so deep that the flesh was

cut badly there and blood began to flow. Totapuri said

" There, now you can keep your mind fixed there because of the pain and the

blood, " and left Ramakrishna sitting there in the dark.

 

This time it worked. His mind ascended to highest level of consciousness and

knowledge, which is called nirvikalpa samadhi, or merging

into the absolute where there is no " other, " no Kali, no God as another, the

state beyond mind, the absolute. He stayed in this state

for a long time. He had attained self realization.

 

After a time of this the Mother Kali appeared to him again. She said something

like " Now you know. But I do not want you to stay in

this state. For the sake of teaching the world I want you to go down again to

your previous state. " Can you imagine that? A man has

final self-realization and then is told to go back down for the sake of the

world. What a wonderful story.

 

So Ramakrishna tried all the paths and religion and found that they all led to

the same thing. He likened it to different people

coming to a well for water. Some called it " water, " some called it " pani, " and

some called it " jol " (Bengali) but water itself was the

same thing to all. So he practiced both Jnana and Bhakti yoga. He was the

essence of both.

 

Back at the ashram we later took up the study of another enlighted sage named

" Ramana Maharshi. " Probably many of you have heard of

him, for his teaching was nearly the same as that of Nisargadatta Maharaj. The

teaching was simply to meditate on the question " Who am

I? " or " What am I? " By doing this practice earnestly one goes within to the

source of the " I am " feeling, the Self beyond the self. At

this time I fell in love with Ramana, too. While we studied his words every

evening I began the practice of staring at his picture

now. As with Ramakrishna I just looked at his eyes with awe and wonder and tried

to understand what he was saying. How beautiful was

his face! You can see the famous picture of him here:

 

http://www.prahlad.org/gallery/sri_.htm

 

Look at his eyes! If you click on the picture you will see a better close-up of

his face. Ramana is one of the only cases I have heard

of spontaneous self-realization. It happened when he was 17 years old and

without being preceded by any spiritual practice. Simply one

day he suddenly felt frightened that he was going to die, immediately. He lay

down on the floor and went inwardly through the entire

death experience within himself. Without having done any spiritual practice at

all he suddenly just lay down on the floor and died.

And he found at the end of the death experience that he COULD NOT die, because

what he really was, was deathless. After that he could

no longer pay attention to his school studies, and finally, after hearing

someone speak of a holy hill called " Arunachala, " he ran

away to that place, the village of Tiruvanamalai. He meditated constantly for a

long time to fix himself in that transcendent state of

self-realization and eventually began teaching those who came to him, about

which there are so very many wonderful and thrilling

magical stories.

 

He was a jnani, yet through and through he became also a radiant source of pure

love. If you just look at his picture you can see the

incredible love in his eyes. I believe that that picture has immense power to

enlighten us. Later I would travel to the place where he

had lived, saw the caves where he had meditated so long and so naturally. And I

climbed the wonderful sacred hill called Arunachala,

and felt and saw the great light which it is. There are almost endless stories

of miracles of that small mountain. I felt that indeed,

as Ramana had said many times, the Hill was a mass of radient consciousness,

that it was really " alive " in a wondrous sense, and I

felt great love of the Hill, and vowed to return before I died.

 

So if we look carefully at these two men we can see that they are both bhakti

and jnana woven together. Ramakrisha on the outside was

all pure devotion and love, but within had the knowledge of Advaita,

non-dualism. And Ramana on the outside was the essense of Vedanta

( " beyond knowledge " ) yet on the inside was pure devotion and love.

 

So we can see that what Hur Guler wrote is true when he wrote:

 

'this devotion aspect often gets lost in the modern advaita books,

mainly because of editing. i remember reading the story of the

westerner who visited maharaj after reading " i am that. " when he

found maharaj doing bhajans, devotional rituals four times a day, the

seeker was confused. after all there was no mention of this in the

advaita books. when the seeker asked maharaj why he was still

involved with these rituals, maharaj responded, " i am the devotion. " '

 

My experience has been that they are woven together, and the path of the one is

the path to the other as well, and attainment of one

is attainment of the other. How wonderful to study the lives of sages and

saints! Each one gives a unique example that the state of

enlightenment is possible and real. Here are a few others to read about and

meditate upon:

 

http://www.prahlad.org/gallery/gallery_of_saints.htm

 

To study Nisargadatta we need great earnestness and love. We need to develop the

feeling of devotion as well as knowledge of the

truth. That is why I love Hur Guler's wonderful phrase: " devotional advaita. "

 

billym

wmorgan