Meditation and concentration - #1

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This is the beginning of chapter 10: Meditation and concentration - taken from BE AS YOU ARE - THE TEACHINGS OF SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI - edited by David Godman

 

 

 

 

 

The best meditation is that which continues in all the three states. It must be so intense that it does not give room even to the thought `I am meditating'.

Having made the liking to see through the deceitful senses subside, and having thereby ended the objective knowing of the mind, the jumping ego, to know the lightless light and the soundless sound in the Heart is the true power of yoga [yoga-shakti].

 

 

 

 

 

Sri Ramana's insistence that awareness of the `I'-thought was a prerequisite for Self-realization led him to the conclusion that all spiritual practices which did not incorporate this feature were indirect and inefficient:

 

"This path [attention to the `I'] is the direct path; all others are indirect ways. The first leads to the Self, the others elsewhere. And even if the latter do arrive at the Self it is only because they lead at the end to the first path which ultimately carries them to the goal. So, in the end, the aspirants must adopt the first path. Why not do so now? Why waste time?"

That is to say, other techniques may sometimes bring one to an inner state of stillness in which self-attention or self-awareness inadvertently takes place, but it is a very roundabout way of reaching the Self. Sri Ramana maintained that other techniques could only take one to the place where self-enquiry starts and so he never endorsed them unless he felt that particular questioners were unable or unwilling to adopt self-enquiry. This is illustrated , by a conversation in Sri Ramana Gita (an early collection of his questions and answers) in which Sri Ramana explained in detail why self-enquiry was the only way to realize the Self. After listening carefully to Sri Ramana's explanation the questioner was still unwilling to accept that self-enquiry was the only route to the Self and so he asked if there were any other methods by which the Self could be realized. Sri Ramana replied:

"The goal is the same for the one who meditates [on an object] and the one who practises self-enquiry. One attains stillness through meditation, the other through knowledge. One strives to attain something; the other seeks the one who strives to attain. The former takes a longer time, but in the end attains the Self. "

 

Not wanting to shake the faith of a man who had a known predilection for subject-object meditation and, having already ascertained that he was unwilling to take up self-enquiry, Sri Ramana encouraged him to follow his own chosen method by telling him that it would enable him to reach the Self. In Sri Ramana's view any method is better than no method since there is always the possibility that it will lead to self-enquiry. He gave many other similar replies to other people for similar reasons. These replies, which indicate that methods other than self-enquiry or surrender could result in Self-realization, should not be taken at face value since they were only given to people who were not attracted to self-enquiry and who wanted to follow their own methods. When he spoke to other devotees who were not attached to what he called `indirect methods', he would usually reaffirm that self-attention was ultimately indispensable.

Although Sri Ramana vigorously defended his views on self-enquiry he never insisted that anyone change their beliefs or practices and, if he was unable to convince his followers to take up self-enquiry, he would happily give advice on other methods. In the conversations in this chapter he is mostly answering questions from devotees who wanted advice on conventional forms of meditation (dbyana). In giving this advice he usually defined meditation as concentration on one thought to the exclusion of all others, but he sometimes gave it a higher definition by saying that keeping the mind fixed in the Self was true meditation. This latter practice is really another name for self-enquiry, for, as he explained in one of his early written works, "Always keeping the mind fixed in Self alone is called self-enquiry, whereas meditation is thinking oneself to be Brahman."

 

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