THE MOUNTAIN PATH JULY 1964

[Guest guest]

Editorial

A Path And A Guide

'Sri J. Krishnamurti in one of his radio talks has stated that the Saints have brought in all the miseries in this world. He asks us not to follow any pattern of life and says that we should live moment to moment. He also says that we should not have any desire or aspiration in life. I feel that his statements are all confusing and in short a dry philosophy. Can you kindly enlighten me on the subject?' - R. S. Shivakumar, Madras.

 

I quote this letter at the head of the Editorial instead of in the 'Letters to the Editor' section because it goes far to explain the need for this editorial. It is characteristic of appeals for explanation that one receives, either orally or in writing, from people who are confused at being told by one who is regarded as a spiritual teacher not to accept any spiritual teaching or teacher, but to follow no path, strive for no goal, entertain no aspiration.

If, as maintained in my two previous editorials, Realization is the purpose of life, it follows naturally that its quest is the first and greatest call upon a man's efforts. If life is a path to be trod "from the unreal to the Real, from darkness to Light, from death to Immortality", as said in the Upanishads, and if, as the Masters have warned, it leads through unknown terrain and past dangerous pitfalls, it also follows that a guide is necessary to show the way. Questions of the choice of path and reliability of the guide will be taken up in later issues; first it seems necessary to dwell on this seemingly so obvious point of the need for accepting a guide and following any path at all. For although more people today than ever before can read about the consummation attainable, not a few do so as dilettantes without any intention of making the effort to attain.

Unfortunately this tendency, strong anyway owing to natural inertia, has been apparently sanctioned by the writings and speeches of J. Krishnamurti, who seems to have made it his life work to proclaim that no effort need be made and no guide followed. Some of his followers (how can there be followers if there is no guide?) do indeed explain that he does not really mean that no effort is needed, but that is the impression his books and speeches give, whether intended or not. If the impression is not intended it is a pity it is given; it is a pity it is given whether intended or not.

It is easy to see how some one could come to this conclusion, erroneous though it is. Glimpses of higher perception, even of complete Self-realization, glimpses called in Zen 'satori', do come to a person who is still on the path or even to one who has not consciously set foot on it and does not even know that there is a path. There are many instances of this. Whole collections of them have been published. A characteristic of them is that they occur spontaneously and most often at a time when one is not making conscious effort. On receiving such a glimpse a person unacquainted with the teaching of the Sages might say to himself: "So this is it! And no discipline was necessary, and no Master!"

However, such glimpses do not mean that one has attained Realization. The Maharshi was quite definite about this. "Can the ego, which is in bondage as the mind, become the Divine Self simply because it has once glimpsed that it is the Self? Is this not impossible without the destruction of the mind? Can a beggar become a king by simply visiting a king and declaring himself one?"1 And again: "Realization takes time to steady itself. The Self is certainly within the experience of everyone but not in the way people imagine. One can only say that it is as it is .... Owing to the fluctuations of the vasanas (inherent qualities), Realization takes time to steady itself. Spasmodic Realization is not enough to prevent rebirth, but it cannot become permanent as long as there are vasanas .... But if this is to be established further effort is necessary." 2

The brief eternity of such a glimpse may fail to be understood and assimilated, fail to absorb the mind and dissolve the ego, and may thus leave a man unchanged so far as he or others can see. An example of this is Tennyson. He wrote in a letter to a friend: ".... a kind of waking trance I have frequently had, right up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me through repeating my own name two or three times to myself, silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being: and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clear, the surest of the sure, the weirdest of the weird, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life .... I am ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words?" He further indicates a characteristic paradox of this experience in a pregnant line occurring in an otherwise drab passage of 'The Princess': "And all things were and were not." And yet even though, as a poet, he must be supposed to have had more intuition than most people, he never understood it and it seems to have enlightened neither his life nor poetry. A man may even forget and deny it. Koestler describes in his early autobiography how such an experience of certitude came to him when he was a prisoner in the Spanish Civil War, expecting to be shot; and yet years later, in his superficial investigation into samadhi in 'The Yogi and the Robot' he showed himself sceptical of the very possibility of it. Only in very rare cases does such a pre-glimpse become permanent and stabilised. One such case was that of Ramana Maharshi3 and he was quite insistent that when it does not remain continued, persistent effort is needed.

It is said by Krishnamurti that one should abide in the true state of effortless, choiceless awareness and that effort only disturbs this. But can one? About this also the Maharshi was quite definite. "Effortless and choiceless awareness is our real nature. If we can attain that state and abide in it, that is all right. But one cannot reach it without effort, the effort of deliberate meditation. All the age-old vasanas (inherent tendencies) turn the mind outwards to external objects. All such thoughts have to be given up and the mind turned inwards and that, for most people, requires effort. Of course, every teacher and every book tells the aspirant to keep quiet, but it is not easy to do so."4

If any one doubts this let him try for himself instead of weighing the statement of one teacher against that of another. Let him sit down and maintain effortless, choiceless awareness of being without allowing any distracting thoughts to come in and see whether he can keep it up for even thirty seconds. If not let him not speak of stillness as an alternative to effort. Stillness is only achieved through effort.

Another argument used is that one actually is the Self. Since there is no other, one must be. So why strive to be the Self? And, they add, the Maharshi himself said so. Certainly he did, but he also exhorted us to strive to realize this and not just understand it theoretically. Partly perhaps to guard against the Scylla and Charybdis on either side of the true path - on the one hand that no effort is needed and on the other that a man by his own effort can create or attain the true state - he sometimes represented the effort required as a negative process. "All you have to do is to disrealize unreality and Reality remains." This is a traditional explanation given by the Sages: if the clouds are removed the clear sky remains; if water-lilies have overgrown a pond they only have to be removed for the water to appear; it does not have to be created.

The attitude taken up by some Western exponents of Zen that all you have to do is to be spontaneous is another, more subtle example of the same error that no effort is needed, for spontaneity itself is not easy. Or rather there is a lower and a higher spontaneity. A child of three toddles into a room and bangs spontaneously on the piano and there is a hideous din; an expert pianist plays spontaneously and there is music; the difference between the two spontaneities is years of effort and discipline.

Much is made in Western Zen of sudden Enlightenment coming as a result of a blow or a cryptic saying. Enlightenment, of course does come suddenly in any religion, just as does the pre-glimpse I spoke of at the beginning of this article, but it only comes to one who has disrealized unreality to such an extent as to be receptive to it. One who has not may receive a hundred blows or have his nose tweeked daily without waking to Reality. As for spontaneity, a Master in any religion behaves with childlike spontaneity. As Christ put it, he is like a little child. The naturalness of Bhagavan was as striking as his grandeur. But to try to imitate this would only make one a poseur. Hanging apples on a tree does not make it an apple tree. What is needed is to attain the inner state that manifests outwardly as true spontaneity; and this can only be done by persistent and disciplined effort.

But even if effort is needed, why a guru, some ask. Once one grants that the Sages knew what they were talking about when they said it was an arduous path beset with dangers, it should be obvious that it is safer to be guided on it by one who has gone before and knows the way. That is one explanation; another is that the guru is a man of power. Grace flows through him to strengthen and support his followers. If you are serious about assaying a tremendous task, why light-heartedly reject aid which has always been considered necessary in all but very exceptional cases? If it has been found that oxygen is needed to climb Everest, why set out to do it without? And this is more than Everest.

Intellectuals are apt to consider only the first of these two explanations and to think of the Guru as one who explains the hidden mysteries and removes their philosophical doubts; but the infusion of power and removal of impediments is an even more important function and indeed may in some cases suffice with no theoretical instruction at all.

In illustration of this I will quote from a powerful but little known Guru of recent times, an almost illiterate Bengali woman who spoke no other language and yet had disciples who were not Bengalis and to whom she could not speak, that is Sri Sarada Devi, the widow of Sri Ramakrishna. "The power of the Guru enters into the disciple and the power of the disciple enters into the Guru. That is why when I initiate and accept the sins of the disciple I fall sick. It is extremely difficult to be a Guru." And on another occasion when someone protested against her allowing an unworthy person to touch her feet, since it would cause her pain, actual physical pain and burning, she said: "No, my child, we are born for this purpose. If we do not accept others' sins and sorrows and do not digest them who else will? Who will bear the responsibilities of the wicked and the afficted"5

In Christianity Christ is "He that taketh upon himself the sins of the world"; and in Hindu mythology Siva is represented as blue-throated from the poison of human iniquity that he swallowed.

I have taken the liberty in quoting these sayings, translated as they are from the original Bengali, of substituting the word 'guru' for the author's 'teacher', since the latter word would invite the very mistake against which I am protesting of equating the Guru with an instructor.

What then of the modern craving to be self-reliant? Who is the self on which you are to be reliant? That very ego, that very individual being, whom you believe to be a phantom and hope to dissolve into nothingness.

And who is the Guru? How can anyone outside you guide you to the Self of you? The Guru is not outside you.

The essential Guru is the Self in your heart. The Maharshi often reminded his disciples that the outer Guru exists only to awaken the inner Guru in the heart. When that has been done he ceases to be necessary. Can one then not dispense with the outer Guru? So long as you feel that you exist in the body, so long will the Guru also exist outwardly and his Grace strengthen and refresh you in your efforts. When you feel (not merely recognise theoretically but feel constantly) that you are not the body and feel inner grace and awareness surge up from your own heart, the Guru also will not need to be manifested outwardly in a body. But as long as you live in fact on one plane it is no use arguing from another.

 

1 - The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words, p. 177, Rider's edition, 228, Sri Ramanasramam edition. 2 - Ibid., pp. 178/228-9.

3 - For an account of this see Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge, pp. 18-19, Rider & Co., London.

4 - The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words, pp. 70/83.

5 - Holy Mother, being the Life of Sri Sarada Devi, Wife of Sri Ramakrishna and Helpmate in his Mission, pp. 171 and 172, by Swami Nikhilananda, Allen and Unwin.