Arthur Osborne - I become a writer...(9) & last

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Similarly, there is no harm in giving help and advice on

the path when the need to do so comes one’s way; but one who

makes himself responsible for the spiritual welfare of others is

turning his mind outwards, entangling it in worry and anxiety,

and thereby impeding his own progress.

 

Writing also is an activity into which a man normally

throws himself whole-heartedly and which therefore impedes

his spiritual progress. I felt that I should desist.

 

The same thing can be expressed in a more doctrinal way.

It is not actions that impede one’s sadhana or spiritual strife but

the vasanas, that is the deep-seated desires or tendencies giving

rise to the actions. Indeed, sadhana is sometimes represented

simply as the elimination of vasanas, since it is these which turn

the mind outwards, fling one into unnecessary activity, and

drag the consciousness back to re-birth after this life has finished.

Aloof or routine activity which does not nourish the vasanas is

harmless; only emotional activity is dangerous. This also explains

why unintelligent asceticism (not that all asceticism need be

unintelligent) fails of its purpose: it attacks the actions produced

by the vasanas instead of the vasanas themselves, which may

drive them to seek other outlets or to grow and fester in the

dark. Intelligent self-discipline, whether asceticism or not,

attacks the vasanas themselves. Self-enquiry, the most direct and

efficacious method, does not even do that; it dispels the illusion

of the ego which has the vasanas. Restricting activity is like trying

to kill a tree by picking off the flowers and fruit; attacking the

vasanas is like breaking off the branches; Self-enquiry is like

uprooting the tree.

 

The worst method is to try to destroy the vasanas by

gratifying them. That has the opposite effect, like trying to put

a fire out by pouring oil on it. Nevertheless, it may happen that

indulging it can finally exorcise a more or less innocuous

remnant of a vasana. I think it is Sri Ramakrishna of whom the

story is told that he had once desired a silk shawl and a gold

chain, so he asked for them and sat on the bank of the Ganges

wearing them; then, saying, “Now I have had my desire,” he

took them off and threw them into the Ganges. It is possible

that in a similar way the writing of these books extinguished

what vestige still remained of the urge to write. However, to

have continued would have fanned the flame again.

 

At the same time that I stopped writing, and for the same

reason, my wife gave up painting. She had not previously known

that she could paint. Indeed, when she was young it was music

that was her great passion and to which she would have dedicated

her life had circumstances been propitious. However, in Calcutta,

Frania, our youngest daughter, began to take art lessons and, in

order to encourage her and find out her difficulties, my wife

also began to paint and found that she could. When we returned

to Tiruvannamalai she began to see everything — mountains

and clouds, trees and flowers — with the eye of a painter, as

glorious arrangements of line and colour. Particularly she wanted

to make pictures of Arunachala and of our house and garden to

send to people. For a start, she decided to paint the garden as

seen from our veranda, with the hedge full of flowering cactuses

at the end of it and Arunachala rising up behind. Frania had

left for an art school in England by this time. She had left some

paints behind for her mother to use, but they turned out to be

inadequate and some of them dried up. Unwilling to relinquish

her project, my wife decided to use oil crayons — she had done

one or two attractive crayon paintings in Calcutta. Just when

she was starting she got a whitlow on her finger and had to

stop. When that was better something else interfered. When

the picture finally was completed a rat tore it up at night to

make a nest for its young. We took all this as a sign that she

should not waste her energies on painting. Housekeeping was

not a distraction from meditation; painting was.

 

This does not mean that I am a Puritan opposed to art

and literature. It depends what the alternative is. If the alternative

is a superficial or materialistic life, art and literature are an

ennoblement of it; but if the alternative is a more direct spiritual

effort they are a distraction. At the beginning of a religion (as

happened, for instance, in Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and

Islam) art and literature are normally either deprecated or

ignored, because the powerful wind that then blows turns men

to direct spiritual effort; but when the white heat has cooled

down to a coloured glow, art and literature come to be not

merely condoned but encouraged as a means of turning men’s

minds from worldly values to spiritual, leading them gradually

through harmonized form to the Formless. Therefore a wealth

of religious art arose in these same religions in their mediaeval

periods — the mystic power of Taoist painting and Mahayana

sculpture, the Gothic cathedrals of Christendom, the poetry of

the Sufi saints and the lace-like arabesques of Islam. For the

same reason, various forms of art and literature are not merely

encouraged but actually used as techniques of training on some

indirect spiritual paths; but on the direct path of Self-enquiry

they are a hindrance.

 

Before I stopped writing I still had two books to edit and

one to revise. However, this was work which could be done

aloofly; moreover, the editing involved constant preoccupation

with the writings and sayings of Bhagavan and was therefore a

help and inspiration on the path, not a hindrance. Bhagavan

had written little — two prose expositions and two in verse, a

few miscellaneous poems and the ‘Five Hymns to Arunachala’.

All of these had been translated into English and the ashram

had published them as separate booklets. Ever since the death

of Bhagavan I had been trying to persuade the ashram to put

them all together into one volume, so that it would be large

enough for booksellers to stock and newspapers to take notice

of. Soon after Buddhism and Christianity was finished the ashram

president told me that they had decided to do so and asked me

to edit it. This was published by Riders as The Collected Works of

Ramana Maharshi, while the ashram also brought out an edition

for sale in India.

 

Apart from the actual writings of Bhagavan, there were

various collections of talks with him and of his sayings, the two

largest being the 750-page Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi and

the two-volume Day by Day with Bhagavan. Both of these were

in the form of diaries and therefore contained a lot of repetition,

with no arrangement according to subject.

 

For the benefit of

the general reader I decided that it would be advisable to take

passages both from the various recorded talks and the written

books and fit them together according to subject. A certain

amount of editorial comment was necessary, explaining and

connecting the various passages, but it was kept to moderate

proportions and printed in a different type so as to be

distinguishable at a glance from the words of Bhagavan himself.

 

This book also, entitled The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in

His Own Words, was published both by Riders and the ashram.

The only other task remaining was the revision of The

Cosmology of the Stars, the book I had written in camp on

the philosophy underlying astrology. There was really no need

to bother with it, but I have a tidy mind and do not like

leaving loose ends, so I dug the typescript out of the cupboard

where it had been lying. To my surprise I found that it

required very little change in substance but had to be

completely re-written in order to eliminate the arrogant and

aggressive tone that had permeated my style under the

influence of Guenon. I sent it to Yorke, but he decided,

probably quite rightly, that there would not be sufficient

market for such a book, so it remained unpublished.