Ramana Maharshi's Teachings On The Guru - Session 7

Listen to Ektaji talk about Ramana Maharshi's teachings on the Guru. These teachings are aimed at the experiential understanding of the true nature of the self and that consciousness is the only existing reality.

Transcript

Salaam.

Salaam.

Salaam.

Salaam.

Salaam.

How can I find my own guru?

By intense meditation.

Again,

On Ramana's path,

There is no real meditation.

He does not give you any techniques.

What does he mean by meditation?

By going within.

By finding the source,

By finding out who am I,

That is meditation.

Going to the source is meditation.

Just going to that quiet background that expands behind the one that I truly am,

That is meditation.

So that is what he is telling you,

That by only intense meditation,

By going to the source,

Will you really find your guru.

So which guru is he talking about?

Internal guru.

The one inside.

Whenever you ask Ramana the question about the guru,

First he will guide you inside.

But if you are just not getting it,

You are just not getting it.

So what will the teacher do?

He will give you some ideas about the external GPS but again finally he will try to take you in.

The true teacher,

Sadhguru,

Does this.

He tries to take you in.

Sadhguru.

The true guru.

Sat is inside.

He wants to take you to the Sat.

That is why he also given the word,

Named Sadhguru.

He is supposed to take you to the Sat.

Not to take you to him,

Not to get attracted to him,

Glorifying him,

Putting him on a pedestal.

No,

No.

Ramana was not interested in all that.

Ramana said,

Turn inwards,

Inwards,

Look inside.

Now this person still doesn't get it,

Okay?

And it's good he doesn't get it.

Some of us are there in our group who still don't get it.

So there is quite a lot of repetition in the question and answer.

He is just like Arjuna.

How much ever Krishna says the same thing from this side,

From that side,

He is not getting it.

Why?

Because the mind,

The ego is not ready to understand.

It's not ready to still let go of its attachments.

We have attachments to our Guru,

To our spiritual path.

All good.

Nothing wrong with it.

It is our stepping stone.

You remember your 10th standard farewell or 12th standard farewell?

When you got out of school and you were moving to college,

You were so attached.

You were so attached to your teachers,

To your friends,

To your school uniform.

You wore it for 10 years,

12 years.

You didn't want to let go of your uniform.

Do you remember that?

It's not easy.

I know it is not easy.

Yes?

And any teacher is compassionate about this attachment.

Ramana is very compassionate.

He sees that you love your uniform.

No,

I am not giving you my uniform.

You are saying my uniform is not good enough.

Yes,

It's not good enough.

In college there is no uniform.

This freedom.

No,

But I don't want to give away my uniform.

That's what you are doing.

So Ramana says,

Okay,

I will explain more and that's what you are going into.

More explanation of the same.

If it is true that the Guru is one's own self,

What is the principle underlying the doctrine which says that however learned a disciple may be,

Or whatever occult powers he may possess,

He cannot attain self-realisation without the grace of the Guru.

He answers,

Although in absolute truth the state of the Guru is that of oneself,

The self,

It is very hard for the self which has become the individual jiva through ignorance to realise its true state or nature without the grace of the Guru.

Without the grace of the external GPS,

It becomes very difficult for this jiva.

Now what is jiva?

Pure witness plus mind,

Ego,

Intellect,

Memory.

That identification,

That is called jiva.

That takes on the body.

This we have learnt in the Yogavashishta.

That takes on that body and then thinks I am this body-mind complex.

Now that understanding of I am this body-mind complex is so ingrained,

It is very difficult for this jiva to break this ignorance and recognise,

No I am not the body,

I am not the mind,

I am this witness.

Oh the one that is knowing right now that I am listening to Ekta.

That quiet silent background which is a witness of the mind saying yes and no.

That is who I am.

That is the real meaning of I.

But I have gone and removed that I from there and attached it to this body.

I have labelled this body as I and I have a firm belief after 50,

60,

70,

80 years,

I am going to die.

The moment you say I am going to die,

What does it mean?

I think I am the body.

I have believed I am the body.

And I have made a very firm resolution that this is it.

Entire spiritual path,

At least Ramana and Sarthadatta,

Maharaj,

Atman and Krishnamen,

All the people on Advaita Vedanta path are just doing one thing,

Helping you break this wrong identification,

Removing the label of I from the body and putting it back in its correct place.

That is what they were.

Every teaching in this book or any of these scriptures is only one.

The I is attached to the wrong place.

The label is at the wrong place.

It's like labelling the table as TV.

It's not going to perform the function of the TV.

Similarly,

This body is not I.

Mind is not I.

That absolute awareness,

That witness,

For some of us it feels like the background.

Some of us have progressed to that stage where it is everywhere.

Oh,

It is that awareness.

Some of us have progressed to a stage where we actually see that,

Oh,

This entire field of awareness,

This is what is real.

This is what is true.

And I consider this to be true because I am again thinking I am the body mind.

The moment I go back to the awareness,

I realise,

Oh,

It's just an illusion.

And again I come back to the body.

I forget I am the awareness.

And again I think it's true.

And again you shuttle back and you see,

Oh,

It's an illusion.

And a shuttling is happening.

Some of us are there.

And some of us have gone beyond.

It doesn't matter at what stage we are.

Each one of us has a second,

One second glimpse at least that I am the witness.

Yes?

Are you the witness right now?

The one saying yes.

Are you observing the mind saying yes?

The body nodding.

You are the witness.

You are the knowingness,

The awareness.

You are that.

And the spiritual path is only about putting the label I at the correct place.

So although in absolute truth,

The state of the Guru is that of oneself,

The self,

It is very hard for the self which has become the individual Jeeva through ignorance to realise its true state or nature without the grace of the Guru.

So now obviously the next question is,

What are the marks of the Guru's grace?

That is beyond work.

In me only,

That God which is the pure witnessing,

That only sees that this devotee,

This disciple,

The body-mind-intellect-ego-complex is craving,

Learning to know itself.

It wants to know itself but it is looking outside.

So this only God manifests as the Guru,

An external image that tells him point inwards,

Point inwards,

Turn inwards,

Turn inwards.

This is grace.

Only you can recognise it.

Only you can see it when you start recognising,

Oh I create my world from sankalpa to kama to karma to karma phalam.

Sankalpa,

Kama,

Karma,

Karma phalam.

This Advaita session itself is your karma phalam.

You are creating it moment to moment to moment to moment to moment.

If that is so,

How is it that it is said that the disciple realises his true nature by the Guru's grace?

By the Guru's grace only.

How is it said?

Most of us have come from that tradition where we believe,

Oh only Guru's grace can take me to the other shore.

Listen,

Listen.

He says,

It is like the elephant which wakes up on seeing a lion in its dream.

Even as the elephant wakes up at the mere sight of the lion,

So too is it certain that the disciple wakes up from the sleep of ignorance.

Into the wakefulness of true knowledge through the Guru's benevolent look of grace.

Dream world,

Huh?

You are sleeping and dreaming.

In that dream,

There is a talgar following you and you are like sweating and you are in fear and fear and you are so scared,

You wake up from the dream.

Doesn't that happen?

We've all experienced that.

Exactly the same phenomena happens.

Exactly the same phenomena happens when the right,

The correct GPS tells you,

Look within.

You are the Self.

Look within,

Look within and you wake up from this waking dream,

From this jagrid swap now and you realise,

Yeah,

I am the witness.

What was I thinking all this while?

How did I not know that I am that knower?

It's waking up like that.

It's waking up.

That's it and you wake up in a moment.

It doesn't even take a moment to wake up.

And most of you have recognised I am the witness but you love going to sleep,

You love dreaming.

That is your problem.

You love dreaming because you know that every time the tiger is not going to come in my dream.

It will be a nice rosy dream next time.

It will be a happy dream.

Oh,

This dream is delicious.

The deliciousness,

Expectations of dreams again pulls us back into the jagrid swap now.

And the tiger in the jagrid swap now again makes me wake up.

Again I go to the pure witnessing,

Pure consciousness.

I recognise who I am.

And again the deliciousness,

Again the expectation of deliciousness of the dream pulls me in.

This is why you are shuttling.

And that's okay.

Very normal.

No need to blame yourself for it.

Very normal.

It is a natural progression.

A very important step happens sooner or later.

You start seeing the truth that it is nothing else but rope.

There is no slope there.

Means you start seeing truth as the truth.

Viveka this is called.

Very important on the path of Advaita.

You start distinguishing between what is real and what is unreal or the dream.

For me to distinguish several times I go back and forth,

Back and forth,

Back and forth and I realise this is different,

This is different,

This is different,

This is different.

There has to be some meaning.

I have to be one of them.

I cannot be both.

I have to be one of them.

Which one am I?

This is called the sprouting of true viveka,

The power of discrimination.

I haven't written it down but viveka.

The power of being able to discriminate whether I am this witness or am I this body,

Mind,

Intellect,

Ego which is lost again and again in this dream world.

When it becomes clearer and clearer,

It can happen through reading more Advaita,

Doing more sessions or really doing more exploration on your own.

The shuttling will continue and a point will come when there is an absolute clarity.

Oh I am the witness.

I am just getting lost in the deliciousness of this dream.

I am the witness.

I am again and again getting lost in the deliciousness of this dream.

But it is a dream and this is real.

Once this viveka develops automatically a vairabhya,

A dispassion towards that which is unreal also develops.

You don't have to do anything.

It's a natural blossoming and you cannot take it away.

Don't try to run away from it.

It's happening to you naturally and you are trying to push it away.

It cannot go away.

The vairabhya is a natural blossoming of viveka.

You cannot stop a petal from opening and you are resisting it.

Recognise this.

A lot of people have started becoming dispassionate to the deliciousness of the dream.

Some of you become dispassionate towards things that you used to do,

Used to like to go out here,

Go there,

Do this,

That.

It started dropping off and now you are trying to fight it.

No,

No,

I have to be.

I have to be and then again but that's not me.

I don't feel like it and that inner war has started.

You have reached level 2 which is called vairabhya.

Happens very naturally,

Very naturally only because I have recognised that I keep getting lost in this deliciousness and this deliciousness is not real.

It is a mirage.

In the desert when you keep walking,

We went to Sahara desert recently and really in the distance where the golden sand is shining because of the heat,

You can actually have the illusion there is water and you are attracted very naturally to go towards water.

You feel,

I feel cooler there.

Even if now you feel that,

Oh I don't drink water from an oasis.

I have my own bottle but you feel that I feel cooler near the water and you want to go there.

You walk a little bit closer and you realise,

Oh it's gone further.

It's gone further.

You keep walking and the mounds are not of a particular shape to give the illusion of little water in between the mounds and you come to a flat kind of level of the desert and you see it's disappeared.

There is no water.

That is called a mirage.

Exactly the same thing will happen with this world.

This created reality of mine which I was so attracted to,

So interested in,

That which was pulling me to itself suddenly is not so delicious.

It is a mirage.

Now I know.

Initially I did not know it was a mirage and I kept walking towards the mirage in the hope that I will find water.

But any joy,

Money,

Name,

Claim,

Family,

You have all realised now.

You have tasted the futility of it all.

So now it started becoming very clear,

Oh it's a mirage.

I don't need to get fooled and you keep going your way.

You don't go towards that anymore.

And that's normal.

Absolutely fine.

It's a sign of progress on the spiritual point.

So keep walking,

Keep progressing.

As we go I will tell you each step.

Viveka and Vairagya are just the first two steps of a nine step process which happens naturally on the path.

So as we go we will start seeing the others and you will be able to identify,

Yeah this has happened to me,

This has started happening to me.

So you will wake up.

One day you will wake up and you will see.

And when you wake up,

That itself is the Guru's grace.

That inner Guru's grace.

That glimpse of the pure witnessing is equal to Guru's grace.

If you want a one short sentence,

Guru's grace is equal to the glimpse of I the awareness,

I the pure witness.

Even if you've got one glimpse of it,

Guru's grace is showering on you.

Now you cannot escape it.

Even if you want to run away,

There is no way to go now.

One way street.

You already entered the one way street.

You cannot step back.

You can stop there for a long long time.

You can get trapped by your own deliciousness,

Attraction to the maya but you will not be able to go back now.

Now you've started walking in the right direction.

The glimpse of the pure witness is what will take you home.

Glimpse by glimpse by glimpse.

And what is the significance of the saying that the nature of the real Guru is that of Supreme Lord,

Sarveshwara?

First,

The individual soul or the self which desires to attain the state of Godhood or the state of true knowledge practices incessant devotion.

Means a body,

Mind,

Intellect,

Ego.

That is the jiva.

That practices incessant devotion.

You can see a thirst develops in you to know the truth,

To know something higher.

And because you don't know,

Maybe because of the religious conditioning that happens in everybody's family,

You start worshipping the idols outside and start thirsting to know more.

Then the individual's devotion has reached a mature stage.

The Lord who is the witness of that individual soul and identical with it manifests.

So that pure witnessing saw this devotee yearning.

It again says,

Okay,

He's not looking inside,

He's looking outside,

So let me manifest outside.

That is the GPS,

The Guru Positioning System.

He tells you,

Now look,

He did.

He appears in human form with the help of Sat Chit Ananda.

He did Sat Chit Ananda.

Sat is truth.

Chit is consciousness.

Ananda is bliss.

We did this in Advaita level 1 also in detail and I explained a little bit yesterday also.

So this nature of your consciousness is Sat Chit Ananda.

With the help of this power,

I create the Guru outside.

I have projected him.

His three natural features.

And he has a name and form which he also graciously assumes.

He has a name and form,

Whoever your GPS is outside.

In the guise of blessing the disciple,

He absorbs him in himself.

Not in the Guru outside,

In himself.

He absorbs this jiva into the pure witnessing.

According to this doctrine,

The Guru can truly be called the Lord because it is nothing else but a projection of my own self.

It is my own creation.

Even if your Lord is giving you Dukkha,

You created him.

He is the Lord that comes with that big mashar and then hits you in the chest.

Still,

Such a Lord is there in our mythology.

My only creation.

He did it to me because I was looking for that kind of a Lord.

How then,

Will some great persons attain knowledge without a Guru?

This question comes to us also.

To a few mature persons,

The Lord shines as the formless light of knowledge and imparts awareness of the truth.

So,

He is talking about himself.

Ramana was only 14 years old when he awoke to the awareness.

He didn't go to an Advaita Vedanta class like you at the age of 14.

He didn't go anywhere.

From his own self,

His own jiva,

The body-mind-intellect memory,

Ego complex,

Had a fear of death.

And he wanted to explore,

Who am I?

Am I this body that I think is going to die right now?

And he explored.

He looked within.

He looked within.

He dropped the body.

He dropped the mind.

He dropped the ego.

He dropped the intellect,

The memory.

And he looked deeper.

He went to the source and he came to the awareness and recognised,

Oh,

I am the pure awareness.

I do not die.

So,

In Ramana Maharshi's journey of enlightenment,

His first revelation was a bhaya.

This is so amazing,

No?

First it was a bhaya,

Being devoid of the fear of death.

That is why his realisation,

His enlightenment is so strong and it is so glorified and popular all over the world,

Not just in India.

He is known all over the world without having a multi-million dollar ashram,

Without having a zillion followers,

Without having a major publicity thing going on.

No,

No.

He was not interested.

In fact,

Most of his talks have not even been properly recorded.

They have been written down,

Like you write down notes in a session,

Like that,

Just written down by the devotees and those have been connected together from this person,

This person's notes,

This person's notes and they have been printed into a book.

That kind of dispassion,

No interest in followers,

No interest in name,

No interest in fame.

He had reached that level.

The truly enlightened masters of the past century are three.

Ramana Maharshi,

Mr.

Arghadatta Maharaj and Atmananda Krishna Mahara.

These people were in poverty and did not crave for money,

Name,

Fame.

So that level is of Ramana,

That level,

Beyond our worldly level.

And he reached their automatic level.

He just looked within.

He did not need an external guru.

How is one to decide upon a proper guru?

What is the Swarupa?

Swarupa means nature or real form of a guru.

He is the proper guru to whom your mind is attuned.

So if you found an astrologer as a guru in the beginning of your spiritual journey,

Your mind was attuned to that.

You created that.

And then he told you things and according to that you did.

Then you had some person who came in and told you,

Oh I will do this magic and that magic and that miracle.

Your mind created it.

Your mind was attuned to that.

Understand the meaning of attuned?

I created it.

Yes,

My mind was attuned to it.

I attracted that kind of energy in my life.

If you ask how to decide who is the guru and what is his Swarupa,

He should be endowed with number one,

Tranquillity.

Tranquillity again means his mind should be very calm,

Very calm minded.

Tranquill literally is translated as devoid of ripples,

Devoid of turbulences.

A very tranquil minded person.

Second,

Patience.

He needs to have patience.

Forgiveness.

This you can gauge.

You cannot gauge the inner state of tranquillity or patience but forgiveness you can gauge.

If there is a forgiving kind of attitude in that person or does that person have vengeance?

Does that person say,

Oh that.

.

.

Because spiritual gurus will have their level of vengeance,

No?

Spiritual teachers?

Oh that teacher is not good.

That teacher,

Don't call that teacher Sadhguru.

Okay?

Sadhguru means the one who takes you to Sat.

Don't call that teacher Sadhguru.

These things are again showing that that person has not reached that virtue of forgiveness.

Don't go to Buddha or don't go to Ramana.

You stay only with my Krishna.

No,

No,

Jesus is not good.

Again you know that person has not reached that level.

And other such virtues.

Other such virtues you can gauge.

So the other virtues,

What he means is you have to look within and find what virtues do you want to inculcate in yourself which are not there now,

Which you think that you need to get to.

And the next one he says,

He should be capable of attracting others even with his eyes just as a magnet attracts a young.

Recognise these things very clearly if one person can attract only a bunch of people while the others are not attracting.

It's very clear,

Yes?

Only somebody who has reached that highest level of oneness can attract everybody and embrace everybody as one.

There is no Hindu-Muslim,

There is no Buddhist and Christian,

There is no divide on religion,

There is no divide in super rich millionaire and apothecary.

A billionaire and a poor rickshawala.

Rickshawala,

It's a little three wheeler auto that they drive in India.

All equal.

No special preference to VIPs or politicians or Hollywood and Bollywood stars and all others are mere mortals.

They don't deserve this knowledge.

No caste system.

This is one quality that attracted me to Buddha.

For the longest time I noticed that there is this caste system in India.

Even today,

Malwar,

Ajasthan.

You go to this gaur,

This little village,

The main village compared to your downtown,

The main village only Brahmins live.

And the temple is in the main village and the other castes are outside the village.

They cannot really come very easily into the village and they are not even allowed to enter the temple.

This distinction I noticed very clearly in some of the teachers.

That is their event today.

It's hidden.

They want to appear secular but you catch it.

If you are very astute in your observation and not all gather over them,

You will be able to catch it.

So one who has reached the highest,

He treats everybody as oneness.

Why?

Because he has recognised we are a field of oneness.

This is just a creation.

Creation of my own mind.

This highest truth very few people have realised.

Very very few spiritual teachers are out there who have come to the highest truth of oneness.

So this is the way a teacher attracts through his or her eyes.

And he should have a feeling of equality towards others.

I will give you an example.

Nisargadatta Maharaj has said he was a contemporary of Ramana.

You understand contemporary.

Like you have a competitor at work or competitor in your neighbourhood as smart and as rich and all that.

At your material level,

There is spiritual level competition also.

Spiritual gurus,

Spiritual teachers.

So Nisargadatta Maharaj was at the same time as Ramana Maharshi as well as JK Krishnamurthy.

It was the same time and very beautifully the simple man Nisargadatta Maharaj said,

Oh we all three are brothers.

We teach the same thing in different languages.

Why is it different languages?

Nisargadatta Maharaj spoke in Marathi,

Predominantly JK Krishnamurthy in English and Ramana Maharshi in Tamil.

Oh we are brothers.

We teach the same thing in different languages.

There was no spiritual competition.

There was no I am greater than him.

He is not your guru.

I am your guru.

Don't go there.

Come only to me.

All this was not there in these people.

That is the meaning of equality towards all.

He who has these virtues is the true guru.

But if one wants to know the Swarupa of the guru,

One must know one's own Swarupa first.

What is Swarupa?

That true name and form inside.

He is talking about the interior guru,

The real essence of the guru.

That is the real guru.

But if you want to know that,

You have to first find yourself.

You have to find the witness.

Then recognise that the witness has three functions.

That witness itself is the self.

That witness itself is God and that God only manifests a guru outside.

When you are ready.

The true guru is the one internal.

So one has to know himself first to know the true Swarupa of the guru.

How can one know the real nature of the guru if one does not know one's own real nature first?

Not possible.

If you want to perceive the real nature or form of the guru,

You must first learn to look upon the whole universe as guru-rupam.

What does this mean?

Not distinguishing between anybody and anything.

It's very tough at the level of the Jiva.

It is only possible when you come to the level of pure witness and you see,

Oh it is my creation,

It is her creation,

His creation,

His creation.

At the core we are the seen nothingness,

The background,

The black background.

We are that seen nothingness,

That same silence.

Looking at everything,

Not only as the guru,

You must look upon all objects as God's rupa,

That's the form of God.

That only.

Pure witness is again the God.

The pure witness is the guru.

How can he who does not know his own self perceive the real form of God or the real form of the guru?

Not possible.

How can he determine them?

Therefore,

First of all,

Know your own real form and nature.

You are the silent,

Quiet,

Yet missing background.

It's not just a background,

It's a foreground,

It is a space.

Oh,

It is everywhere.

Slowly,

Slowly explore it and figure it out.

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