Banning Richardson - East & West meet in The Maharshi #7, last

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I have said that this saint is the greatest contemporary

exponent of this age-old teaching. This is as true for the scientific

minded Western as it is for the Easterner. Elsewhere in this volume

Dr. Jung, who is unquestionably the doyen of psychoanalysts,

writes — “The identification of the Self with God will strike the

European as shocking. It is a specially oriental Realization, as

expressed in Sri Ramana’s utterances.” No doubt such

identification is shocking to the Western Christian or other

orthodox religionist, but as I have implied, it is consonant with

Christ’s teachings, if they are approached afresh without prejudice.

If one examines the New Testament carefully one finds

that Christ is trying to convince a fanatically monotheistic

people as monotheistic as the Muslims are today that God

could inhabit human form for a special purpose, and that

the nature of God was not something different from man’s

but that one could see the image of God in a perfect man.

And He proclaimed himself to be a perfect being who had

presided over human destiny since the world began. This in

itself was an overwhelming dose for the orthodox Jew to

swallow. One would not therefore expect that Christ would

go on farther and show that this Perfect Being is latent in

every man, because God is in every man. But in fact he does

say this by implication, and sometimes directly, throughout

his teaching. Take for instance – “The Kingdom of God

cometh not with observation; Neither shall they say, Lo here!

or lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”

(Luke, XVII, 20 and 21.) In other words His first lesson

was, “Heaven is within you and it is a spiritual state, not a

material place.”

 

Having made this clear, He goes on to say, “Be ye therefore

perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

(Matthew, V, 48). Thus He was saying in fact”God dwells within

you; you can become perfect like Him.” This was revolutionary

teaching, and its full implications are only understood if one

comes into touch with the teachings of a Ramakrishna or a Sri

Maharshi.

But Christ went even farther than this. In verses 33-36

of the tenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel we read”Jesus

answered them (the Jews), Is it not written in your law, I

said, Ye are Gods.”

“If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God

came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom

the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world. Thou

blasphemest; because I said, I am the son of God.”

 

The Authorized Version of the Bible is used in these quotations.

So we might ask today, “Do you accuse Sri Maharshi of

blasphemy for saying that the True Man within us is God; when

Christ was executed on the same charge by part of the Jews

2,000 years ago?” Just because the Church has petrified His

teaching, as Judaism before His time had petrified the teaching

of the prophets, do you expect those who feel God stirring within

them to join the mob who cry ‘Blasphemy’?”

 

And to pursue this arguement a little farther in order to

reveal the basic similarity of Jesus Christ’s and Bhagavan

Maharshi’s teachings, one remembers that Christ answered the

rich, young man who came to Him and asked, “Good Master,

what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life,” by saying “Why

callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God.”

(Mark, X, 18,). This, taken with the questions already

mentioned, clearly shows that He believed that God was in all

men and that all men could attain the perfection that He, Christ,

Himself revealed, through following His path - i.e. actively

loving God and one’s fellowmen and knowing that the Kingdom

of Heaven is within each one of us.

 

Finally, this view is reinforced by, “For it is not ye that

speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you”

(Matthew, X, 20). Could anything be clearer than this - that

Christ wanted men to realize, as does Sri Maharshi, that God

is not something apart from men to be worshipped and feared

at a distance, but the only true reality in each man; and that

man’s work is to discard the false, imaginary ego which he

has allowed to deceive him and so to separate him from his

true Self, which is God. If that is blasphemy, then let us

acknowledge ourselves, as Christ and His followers

acknowledged themselves, to be blasphemers in the eyes of

the world; for that way lies salvation.

 

..... (sanskrit)

 

On reaching the interior of the Heart through search,

The ego bows its head and falls.

Then shines forth the other I, the Self Supreme,

Which is not the ego, but verily the Perfect and

Transcendental Being.

 

But in addition to being in the true line of spiritual teaching

- the line that extends back to Gautama the Buddha and Sri

Mahavir, the tenth and greatest Tirthankar of the Jains, in one

branch; and to Mohammed, Plotinus, Christ, Plato, Socrates,

Pythagoras and Zoroaster in anotherI believe Sri Maharshi to

be the greatest living interpreter, and indeed, in a sense the

fulfilment of modern psychology and psycho-analysis and that

therefore he must be taken seriously even by Western or Eastern

materialists.

 

Dr. Jung recognizes this when he says, “The wisdom and

mysticism of the East have, therefore, a very great deal to tell

us, provided they speak in their own inimitable speech.... The

life and teachings of Sri Ramana are not only important for the

Indian but also for the Westerner. Not only do they form a

record of great human interest, but also a warning message to a

humanity which threatens to lose itself in the chaos of its

unconsciousness and lack of self-control.”

These words were written some time ago. How terrifyingly

they ring in our ears today in the ears of those who have to

watch the bestiality and spiritual poverty of a world that has

been through the purgatory of two world wars in scarcely more

than a generation? And still rumors of war and revolution echo

round the hollow shapes of bomb-blasted ruins.

 

Man is unquestionably at the cross-roads. He can choose

the path of materialistic phantoms, seeking only better social

and economic conditions, however desirable these may be

in themselves, or he can turn his face towards the old light

rising anew in the East, which, while by no means scorning

improved conditions of life for the masses, seeks to direct

man’s inquisitive nature primarily towards the realization of

his own being. Its aim is the same as Christ’s”Seek ye first

the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto

you,” which has been read weekly in countless churches every

week for nineteen hundred years. But faithless, worldly

minded mankind has considered this to be merely a pleasant

moral aphorism, not to be taken literally. Now men must

take it literally or be prepared for further destruction, and

indefinite chaos.

 

Today and for many years to come, one prays, this

message in the peculiarly beautiful metaphor of Indian

mysticism sings out from a small town with a huge temple

in the heart of southern India, which somehow has preserved

Indian thought and culture much more effectively than

northern India. Not everyone can make a pilgrimage to this

spot, hallowed for all time by the life of Sri Ramana Maharshi,

but everyone can follow the Maharshi’s precepts which are,

in a strange way, ultra-modern in form. Even the Maharshi

cannot convey permanent blessedness; that we alone through

our own strivings can do. But he is a guide to be trusted

absolutely, whether our background be Hindu, Muslim,

Christian, Sikh, Parsi, Jewish, Jain, Buddhist, Confucian,

agnostic or rank materialist. Each will find what he needs;

all essential questions are answered, if we have ears to hear.

It is the path of the Razor’s Edge we are called on to tread,

but in fact, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

.... (sanskrit)...

 

“He is bound to reap the fruit

who is fixed in the I-do-thought.

The sense of doer lost by the search in the heart,

Triple karma dies and that is Liberation.”

 

taken from Golden Jubilee Souvenir 1896-1946