Talks with Ramana Maharshi - talk 17 - a

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Talk 17.

Mr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, an English research scholar of Oxford

University, brought a letter of introduction from Mr. Brunton and

arrived on a visit.

 

He was tired after his journey and required rest. He is quite accustomed

to Indian ways of living, having visited this country several times. He

has learned the Tibetan language and helped in the translation of the

“Book of the Dead” and the “Life of Milarepa”, the greatest of Tibetan

Yogis, and a third book on the “Tibetan Secret Doctrines.”

In the afternoon he began to ask a few questions. They related to Yoga.

He wanted to know if it was right to kill animals such as tigers, deer,

etc., and use the skin for Yoga posture (asana).

 

M.: The mind is the tiger or the deer.

D.: If everything be illusion, then one can take lives?

M.: To whom is illusion? Find that out! In fact everyone is a “killer

of the Self” (atmahan) every moment of his life.

D.: Which posture (asana) is the best?

M.: Any asana, possibly sukha asana (easy posture or the half-Buddha

position). But that is immaterial for jnana, the Path of Knowledge.

D.: Does posture indicate the temperament?

M.: Yes.

D.: What are the properties and effects of the tiger’s skin, wool, or

deer-skin, etc.?

M.: Some have found them out and related them in Yoga books. They

correspond to conductors and non-conductors of magnetism, etc.

But it is all immaterial for the Path of Knowledge (Jnana Marga).

Posture really means location and steadfastness in the Self. It is

internal. The others refer to external positions.

D.: Which time is most suitable for meditation?

M.: What is time?

D.: Tell me what it is!

M.: Time is only an idea. There is only the Reality Whatever you

think it is, it looks like that. If you call it time, it is time. If you

call it existence, it is existence, and so on. After calling it time, you

divide it into days and nights, months, years, hours, minutes, etc.

Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge. But some of these

rules and discipline are good for beginners.

 

D.: What is Jnana Marga?

M.: Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge

and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal,

the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now,

and it does exist.

Therefore the Path of Knowledge tries to find out how viyoga

(separation) came about. The separation is from the Reality only.

D.: What is illusion?

M.: To whom is the illusion? Find it out. Then illusion will vanish.

Generally people want to know about illusion and do not examine

to whom it is. It is foolish. Illusion is outside and unknown. But

the seeker is considered to be known and is inside. Find out what

is immediate, intimate, instead of trying to find out what is distant

and unknown.

D.: Does Maharshi advise any physical posture for the Europeans?

M.: It may be advisable. However, it must be clearly understood that

meditation is not prohibited in the absence of asanas, or prescribed

times, or any accessories of the kind.

D.: Does Maharshi have any particular method to impart to the

Europeans in particular?

M.: It is according to the mental equipment of the individual. There

is indeed no hard and fast rule.

Mr. Evans-Wentz began to ask questions, mostly relating to Yoga

preliminaries, for all of which Maharshi replied that they are aids to

Yoga, which is itself an aid to Self-realisation, the goal of all.

M.: What is it that prompted the murderer to commit the crime? The

same power awards him the punishment. Society or the State is

only a tool in the hands of the power. You speak of one life taken

away; But what about innumerable lives lost in wars?

D.: Quite so. Loss of lives is wrong anyway. Are wars justified?

M.: For a realised man, the one who remains ever in the Self, the loss

of one or several or all lives either in this world or in all the three

worlds makes no difference. Even if he happens to destroy them

all, no sin can touch such a pure soul. Maharshi quoted the Gita,

Chapter 18, Verse 17 - “He who is free from the notion of ego,

whose intellect is unattached, though he annihilates all the worlds,

he slayeth not, nor is he bound by the results of his actions.”

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