THE MOUNTAIN PATH April 1964

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Fillers, Short Articles

 

Samadhi

By N. R. Krishnamurti

 

The enquiry 'Who am I?' plunges the mind into the Self. This is not the nescience of sleep. One can abide as the Self in Nirvikalpa Samadhi without the body-world dream or in Sahaja Samadhi with this dream simultaneously witnessed.

If the Lord Ramana-Dakshinamurti chose to declare the Supreme State by silence only, it is not for us to attempt a definition in words. It is the part of Wisdom to remain still, as our Lord Sri Ramana ordained.

 

A Raging fire - By 'Sein'

 

It is against the spirit of our age to flee samsara for solitude. Some even ridicule those who do.

Yet samsara is a raging fire and those who fall into it are destroyed. There is no merit in their destruction. It is not a sacrifice but the result of ignorance.

Some can remain near the fire without getting scorched, can even use it, but how few!

Whether we flee from it or not, the fact remains that it is a fire. How few can avoid its flames, how few can be like King Janaka!

To escape from it is absolutely necessary, yet in the present age Bhagavan has assured us that the escape may be an inward one. One way or the other, whether by inner aloofness or, by solitude, escape, we must!

 

 

The Guide On The Mountain Path

By Prof. K. R. R. Sastry

 

For us who take the mountain path the Maharshi is the guide. He came to Arunachala as a boy ascetic in 1900 and for fifty years lived there among us, showing us the way and helping us along it. On April 14th, 1950, at 8-47 p.m., a meteor lit up the sky as his mortal remains returned to dust.

The living Sage of scintillating stillness no longer draws us with his luminous eyes. The hand which fed the cow, the squirrel, the monkey, the crow and the peacock is no more visible. Yet thousands who recall his soothing stillness and his heart glowing with merciful love for all, still worship at his shrine, each at that level to which the Master has guided him.

No more need any doubt the presence of God, for hundreds, thousands, have been remoulded by Him manifested on earth in the form of Maharshi Ramana. Others who never saw Him in this form feel no less His Presence as Ramana.

He recalled us to "that larger dimension of Reality to which we belong," as Dr. Radhakrishnan calls it. Many of us found, when his eyes pierced into ours, that all our doubts dissolved and disappeared. He still continues to appear to some of us in dreams and visions, and to some also who never saw him in the body.

Once when I was enjoying the hospitality of a friend in America I called on him: "Oh Master! Ramana! You who rescued me midway on life's course!" And suddenly, spontaneously, all the wisdom of the Upanishads rose up in me in Silence.

 

 

Bhagavan In The Heart

(From a record kept by Ethel Merston)

 

I was torn as to whether to return to Europe to see my friends and relatives after nine years of absence or whether to stay on with Bhagavan ... I could not make up my mind. In the end I put the question verbally to Bhagavan himself. I sought him out on the hill during his morning walk and he replied in English that destiny decides where the body shall go; I couldn't.

But my real nature always stays everywhere with me, wherever I am.

"So be in it. Wherever you are, remember, Bhagavan is there in your heart watching over you."

 

Fighting Sleepiness - By 'D'

 

I was powerfully drawn to Bhagavan. His teaching, when I read about it, spoke direct to my heart and I felt that this was the only way for me. When I came to his Ashram at Tiruvannamalai I felt great peace there, not an idle, sleepy peace but vital peace with great beauty.

Only one thing distressed me: that whenever I sat in 'meditation' as we call it, enquiring into the Reality of me, as Bhagavan taught, an overpowering wave of sleepiness came upon me.

The annoying thing was that if I gave up meditation and started to do something else the sleepiness left me.

I asked one of the older devotees about it and he explained that this was just one of the ego's defences against meditation. What he said was: "Normally when we stop thinking we go to sleep, but the sort of 'meditation' Bhagavan teaches involves suspending thought while still retaining consciousness.

The ego fights against it in two ways by introducing thoughts even though we decide to stop them or by giving up consciousness along with them, that is to say by going to sleep as soon as they stop. We simply have to persevere and resist both."

I took this advice and after some time the attacks of sleepiness ceased to trouble me and I found that it really was possible to remain awake but undisturbed by thought, if only for a short time.

I am writing this now with the idea that it may be of help to other beginners who suffer from the same difficulty that I did.