*POINTS TO PONDER*
A barrister from Bombay asked Bhagavan, “I have read the works of
Bhagavan and others and, though I can understand them intellectually, I
have not been able to realize anything in experience. I have tried
Bhagavan’s method for about six years and yet I have not made any
progress. When I meditate, other thoughts come. For people like me,
living in cities and doing our work and coming
here only occasionally, what sadhana would Bhagavan advise so that we
may succeed better than I have so far been able to do?”
Bhagavan: Your real nature is always there, your meditation, etc., come
only temporarily. Reality being your Self, there is nothing for you to
realize. All that is required is that you should give up regarding the
unreal as real, which is what all are doing. The object of all
meditation, dhyana or japa is only that, to give up all thoughts
regarding the not-self, to give up many thoughts and to keep to the one
thought.
As for sadhana, there are many methods. You may do
vichara, asking yourself ‘Who am I?’ or, if that does not appeal to you,
you may do dhyana ‘I am Brahman’ or otherwise, or you may concentrate
on a mantra or name in japa. The object is to make the mind one-pointed,
to concentrate it on one thought and thus exclude our many thoughts,
and if we do this, eventually even the one thought will go and the mind
will get extinguished in its source.
Visitor: In actual practice I
find I am not able to succeed in my efforts. Unless Bhagavan’s grace
descends on me I cannot succeed.
Bhagavan: Guru’s grace is
always there. You imagine it is something, somewhere high up in the sky,
far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your heart,
and the moment (by any of the methods) you effect subsidence or merger
of the mind into its source, the grace rushes forth, spouting as from a
spring, from within you.
-Ramana Maharshi
Day by Day with Bhagavan
