Ramana Maharshi's Teachings On The Guru - Session 9

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.

Page number 98 in the book.

I will read the last two lines of the previous question.

How can he who does not know his own self,

Perceive the real form of God or the real form of the guru?

How can he determine them?

Therefore,

First of all,

Know your own real form and nature.

So what is my real form?

That pure witness.

Yes,

I do not have any physical form that I think that I am.

This is Mithya,

Illusion.

Yes,

Mithya is very very clear now.

Not a satya,

It is Mithya.

And it is my Mithya that I am the mind.

Okay,

I understand I am not the body,

But I am the mind.

Lot of people have that.

That is also again Mithya.

Because if you go look,

Look for the mind,

Go find I,

The so-called I.

Mind is saying it,

Ego is saying it.

Look,

Look.

You won't be able to find it.

There is no I.

So find your real nature,

Find your real form.

Then you are progressing correctly.

Otherwise you are going to be lost in another spiritual conditioning.

Very clear?

So now the questioner is smart.

He says,

Isn't a guru necessary to know even that?

So Ramana says,

Yes,

Yes,

That is true.

The world contains many great men.

Look upon him as your guru with whom your mind gets attuned.

The one in whom you have faith is your guru.

Again,

Here faith,

The way we understand it today is not the way it was in the scriptures in those days.

In those days it was where I can see very clearly in my experiencing what the guru is telling me.

You can all see the witness,

Recognise the witness.

Simple.

If you recognise the witness,

Now you have faith in the Advaita scripture that this makes complete sense.

That is what was called faith in those days.

It gave me atma vishwas.

It gave me recognition of who I am.

So it gave me a faith in myself.

That was the true meaning of faith in those days.

Not blind faith.

Not because I say so,

So you believe.

I am great.

Put me on a pedestal.

Glorify me.

Put flowers on me and you believe me.

And all your life you worship me.

That is not faith.

Wrong understanding.

No.

Faith is very clearly whatever you are telling me,

I can experience it.

Even if it is one glimpse,

I experience it for one glimpse.

I lose it because of my own past habit patterns and conditioning and I totally accept that.

But that one glimpse has happened to me.

Only that one glimpse gives me a complete conviction that this is truth.

So there I would say you can replace that word faith with conviction.

Take that person as your guru but again this is only temporary guru.

The guru is there only for a short time.

His job is to vanish very quickly.

He is external to me.

Why?

Because I am so lost in the external world.

So I need something external to tell me look inside.

That's all.

His job is to guide me to look in and then I close my eyes,

Look within.

If I am ripe enough,

I get there pretty quickly and I recognize this pure witness,

That inner voice,

That intuitive power in me.

That is the guru.

So it is the job of the external guru positioning system to position your direction correctly.

And then his job is to disappear.

That is the guru he has spoken about in this paragraph.

So then the guy questions,

Then what is the significance of guru's grace in the attainment of liberation?

Again Ramana is being the perfect guru pointing inwards.

Liberation is not anywhere outside you.

It is only within.

If a man is anxious for deliverance,

The internal guru pulls him in and the external guru pushes him into the self.

This is the grace of the guru.

Repeating this amti in time that you are like a pot.

And Kabir says the guru is like the external hand that keeps shaping the pot into its shape on the potter's wheel and it's moving.

He keeps giving a chot.

Chot is the word.

Baharhat Chotmare means it's continuously telling you,

Hey look inside,

Look inside,

Inside,

Inside.

And the internal guru is the inner hand that pulls you and gives you support on the inside.

So this has been very beautifully expressed in different ways in different scriptures.

So Ramana is telling you the same thing that this full joint hand of the external and the internal together is called grace.

Grace is nothing like you will come to Ekta and do Ekta's puja and sing Ekta's songs and do seva.

So Ekta is going to give you special grace and the other people are neglected.

Wrong understanding.

Completely wrong understanding.

A true guru is not partial.

A true guru is like sunshine.

It shines on everybody equally.

A true guru waits outside your window so that you open the window and let the sunlight come in.

But if you are insistent that the window remains closed and the curtains remain drawn,

What is the guru going to do?

He is just going to wait quietly outside the window.

Yes,

That is a true guru.

Please recognise a true guru so you progress faster on the path and don't get stuck in another craving aversion on this path.

Not just craving for a guru happens,

Aversion happens.

If you remember,

If those of you who have watched the Advaita Q&A videos,

There is a person who says,

I don't have any faith in God or religion.

I am an atheist.

And such a person landed up in Advaita and you can watch that video where that person actually said,

Yes,

I can accept Brahman but I don't want to accept any God or any religion.

So the aversion also blocks our path until we find somebody who is right to again take us ahead.

So some people then close their windows and draw their curtains.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't stop your progress.

Because finally the journey is within.

I am going within.

Keep moving within.

Keep moving within.

Some people reported you two have said that there was no need for a guru.

Others gave the opposite report.

What does Maharishi say?

I have never said that there is no need for a guru.

Yes,

Very clear?

Ekta is also telling you the same thing.

Some of you really think that Ekta feels that there is no need for a guru.

No.

Ekta is again and again helping you look inward towards the internal guru.

I have never said that you don't need a guru.

Neither has Ramana Maharishi ever said that you don't need a guru.

Next question.

Sri Aurobindo and others refer to you as having had no guru.

So Ramana says it all depends on what you call a guru.

He need not be in a human form.

Dattatreya had 24 gurus including the 5 elements.

Earth,

Water,

Fire,

Air and ether.

Every object in this world was his guru.

So multiple gurus.

If you don't know about Dattatreya,

I would really suggest that you read Avadhoot Gita.

Dattatreya is revered not just as a guru but as a god in Maharashtra,

In Telangana region in India.

And he said he had 24 gurus,

Multiple gurus.

He was never attached to anything.

There is a part of you that is a sangatvam,

Not attached at all.

The guru is absolutely necessary.

The Upanishads say that no one but a guru can take a man out of the jungle of intellect and sense perceptions.

So there must be a guru.

Though he himself didn't really have one human form,

But very few people are like Ramana Maharishi.

Most of us will need somebody to just direct us in the correct direction.

We will need somebody.

And that somebody does not need to be in a human form.

It can be just a book.

So I have seen really some people who have never had a physical guru.

Just by reading the Upanishads,

By reading the Bhagavad Gita,

These people have attained it.

You must be knowing people in your life who are just happy,

Who just do good for others.

Genuinely good people at heart.

They don't do any puja,

Any worship or go to this organisation,

That guru or anything.

Just the doing good quality,

Just being beneficial to society is their internal,

Natural overflowing.

Such people have attained the highest.

But not everybody has the skill of expressing it and communicating it.

So then they express just by doing good and being good.

So you do not need to have a guru in the physical form.

Any guru is good.

And most of us started like that,

With a Krishna or a Rama or whatever,

Jesus.

Whatever idols that you worshipped as a little kid,

Whatever conditioning that we got from our parents,

We started that way on the path.

And then slowly it blossoms.

He knows,

The questioner knows that Ramana is again and again directing him to the internal guru.

So he is saying,

I mean a human guru.

Maharishi did not have one.

So then Maharishi says,

I might have had one at one time or other.

But did I not sing hymns to Arunachala?

Arunachala is the mountain.

Again he has gone to non-human.

It is a mountain right next to Ramana Ashram.

Those who have not been to Ramana Ashram,

That's one thing you can do on your next trip to India.

The Arunachala mountain.

It's a nice trek also.

What is the guru?

Now he is explaining.

Guru is God or the Self.

It's not three different entities.

This inner pure witness itself is myself,

I.

That only is the guru.

That only is the God.

So we did this slide last time where I explained the three functions of your inner self.

So now he says,

First a man prays to God to fulfil his desires.

Who is the man here?

The body,

Mind,

Intellect,

Memory and ego.

That is the man because this man considers himself to be the body and mind.

He has zero idea about the witness.

He is a beginner.

Take yourself back 20-30 years in your life,

40 years,

Whatever.

How you were?

You thought you were body and mind.

So that is the man.

And he prays to God.

Who is God?

He doesn't know that he is praying to his own witness consciousness.

He thinks he is praying to an external idol because that is what is the religious conditioning given to us.

Anyways,

All prayers that you tell the idol who is listening.

The pure witness within me is only listening to it.

A time comes when he will no more pray for the fulfilment of material desires but for God Himself.

Have you reached?

Has your time come?

May you realise that I need to get to the highest truth now.

The highest truth.

What is it?

Whether it is God or it is self or what is the meaning of this life,

The highest truth I want to know.

Then you have reached this stage where you are not asking for petty things like,

Please pass me in exams,

I will give you 4 laddus or I am going to get married to this handsome boy or I want to get married to this beautiful girl.

You are not asking these petty things from God.

You have matured to a level where you are asking for the highest truth.

Only then something happens.

What happens?

God then appears to him in some form or other,

Human or non-human,

To guide him to himself in answer to his prayer and according to his needs.

So non-human form can be a text comes your way,

Somebody,

A friend just shows you the Upanishads.

That can be a non-human form.

In some way you attract that to yourself.

Remember you are creating your own universe.

Because you have started praying for the highest truth,

You are attracting it to yourself and you created that.

And then whatever kind of guru came your way,

Even if you feel that that guru was not right,

Who is responsible?

I.

Because that is what I thought is spirituality.

Yes?

So,

Doesn't matter.

Move on,

Move on.

Primary school to middle school,

Middle school to high school,

We keep progressing.

No problem.

Again,

According to his needs,

I explained,

Need is your little understanding of what spirituality is.

So when I thought that spirituality was stones and gems,

That's what I got.

When I thought spirituality was yoga and pranayama and this falana or dimkana exercise,

I got all that.

When I started looking for more knowledge,

I thought that scriptural texts are it,

Then I got scriptural texts.

So according to my need,

The universe manifests.

When loyal to one master,

Can you respect others?

He is talking about multiple gurus here.

Can I have multiple gurus?

Can I respect them all?

Again,

What is Ramana doing?

Guru is only internal.

Guru is only one.

There is only one guru.

He is not physical.

Means he is not outside in a physical form.

So long as there is weakness,

The support of strength is needed.

This external guru can become your crutch and you need that only till you are not strong enough.

The moment I am strong,

I don't need the external guru.

Like your mother or father was your guru when you were a little kid.

Especially when you were learning to ride the bicycle,

They were holding your bicycle.

It was their job to hold your bicycle till you understood,

Oh this is the meaning of balance.

I have to balance my body equally on right and left.

Few times you fell.

Few times you hurt yourself.

You stumbled.

Yeah,

Doesn't matter.

Your mother let you fall,

Let you get hurt.

Again you sat on the bicycle,

Again she handled it.

But did she continue holding it forever?

No.

A point came when you learn to balance and then it's her job to leave.

Do you get it?

It is the guru's job to let you walk alone.

But what do people do if you can see the little cartoon that I have there?

The guru keeps pointing towards the moon.

What do you see?

You don't look at the moon,

You look at his finger and then you make his finger ka,

Nice statue and then you keep worshipping and you surrender to that finger.

And the guru is like,

What's going on?

What did I show and what are these people doing?

That is the true guru's problem.

And that is the sadhguru's problem.

Don't hold on to the external guru.

Guru is only one.

And which one is that?

Internal.

External is just helping you to look inside.

Very clear?

You respect the external guru,

You honour them but then don't get into either craving or aversion because again you will create a universe.

And then you know what your universe manifests into.

The only problem is the stories that I create in my mind.

You have to stop creating,

Withdraw from the conditioning,

Withdraw from the stories also and again and again just hold on to the part that is detached,

Detached,

Detached.

Very clear?

That is getting onto the bike and balancing on your own.

So every time you now stumble,

I am going to tell you only one thing,

A sangatwam.

You are already detached.

Unnecessarily you have come up with this big problem,

This story,

That story.

Prabh,

A sangatwam.

J.

Krishnamurthy says,

No guru is necessary.

Now this is very clear.

How did he know it?

One can say so after realising but not before.

So J.

Krishnamurthy had already realised and then he said,

Oh no,

Guru is necessary.

And there are people who walk that path but they don't take the scriptures as guru.

Here Ramana says even that is your guru.

Earth,

Air,

Water,

Fire,

Everything is your guru.

Just a different way of looking at the same thing.

Just a note here,

Ramana,

J.

Krishnamurthy,

Nisargadatta Maharaj,

These were all contemporaries.

At the same time,

You know,

At the same time they were very popular in India and people even from the West used to come to them.

So this is all happening at the same time.

But none of them you will see disrespecting the other.

None of them you will see saying anything bad,

Anything negative.

That's the quality of a guru.

He always respects and honours the other person because he doesn't do sankalpa yathi,

No?

He does not get into that story of creating an aversion and then the kama and then he also will manifest his universe then.

You will not find this thing in these people.

That's why they were like the truly enlightened saints of the last century.

Can Sri Bhagawan help us to realise the truth?

Help is always there.

Then there is no need to ask questions.

I do not feel the ever present help.

Now what help is he talking about?

Some magical help,

Ever present help.

Look at him.

So he says,

Surrender and you will find it.

I am always at your feet.

Will Bhagawan give us some Upadesha,

Teaching to follow?

Otherwise,

How can I get help living 600 miles away?

This is a Westerner asking this question.

The Sadguru,

The guru who is one with the being,

The internal guru is always within you.

Sadguru is necessary to guide me to understand it.

The Sadguru is within.

Are you seeing what's happening?

He is again and again holding on to the external guru and the external guru is saying,

Look within,

Look within.

The real guru is within.

So he says,

I want a visible guru.

That visible guru says that he is within.

Why is he telling you this?

He is helping you recognise that you have only manifested this.

You have created this universe.

You create not only your material world universe of people,

Situations and things.

You create your spiritual life.

You have manifested this and that God,

That guru is within.

The real one is within.

Look within.

Is success not dependent on the guru's grace?

Again,

Here grace,

It's not something magical again.

Yeah,

People have this wrong understanding.

Somehow that,

Oh,

Grace is when the guru looks at me 25 times and does not look at my friend even once.

Okay,

Then more grace on me and less grace on this person.

Then that is not a true guru,

Okay?

That guru is only looking for some name,

Fame,

He is doing partiality.

Okay.

Yeah.

You have to recognise real grace is like sunshine.

It's equally even on a terrorist as much as it is on a yogi or a sadhak walking the path.

He is equal in vision,

Absolutely equal in vision.

Yeah,

There is no partiality.

Yeah.

So he says,

Yes,

It is.

Means success is dependent on the guru's grace.

Now let's understand what.

Is not your practice itself due to such grace?

The fruits are the result of the practice and follow it automatically.

Which fruit follows automatically?

Karma,

Phalam.

Fruit follows automatically.

That is the grace.

There is no other special magical power called grace.

Forget about it.

This is another conditioning,

Another story that you have told yourself and you've heard it from somebody else who has been telling the story to himself and that person has heard from somebody else and it just keeps coming down like that.

It's a story that we have repeated a number of times.

There is no magical power.

Yeah,

Get out of that understanding.

There is a stanza in Kaivalya.

Kaivalya is the name of an Upanishad.

There is a stanza in Kaivalya which says,

Oh guru,

You have been always with me,

Watching me through several reincarnations and ordaining my course until I was liberated.

The Self manifests externally as the guru when the occasion arises.

Otherwise,

He is always quietly sitting within.

He is always within,

Doing what is necessary.

This is the definition of grace.

It's the same thing that we have been talking about since last week.

The creative function in you itself has sankalpas.

It manifests the guru.

Now it doesn't mean that you have some projector and you are projecting a guru.

Recognise this,

That this is all the Brahman consciousness and this universe is Mithya.

It's an illusion.

I just see it.

It appears to be there but it is not what Satyam is.

Satyam is only Brahman.

It is like a mirage.

When you walk in the desert on a hot sunny day,

Hot sunny day,

You keep walking,

Walking and suddenly in the distance you will see some water.

You will be like,

Aah!

There is an oasis there.

You start walking close to it and the oasis disappears.

There is no water.

Again,

After some time you see it.

Again,

It's not there.

It is nothing but the sun's heat on the desert sand that creates that shiny appearance that looks like water from a distance.

But there is no water there.

Exactly like that is this universe.

Your own family members.

You think they are real.

But it is not Satyam.

It is Mithya,

Just like a mirage.

It is an illusion.

It's a magician's trick.

And who is the magician?

I only.

I started the magic trick and suddenly something happened to me and I forgot about it.

I had this severe attack of amnesia.

I got lost in the trick thinking it is real.

And I just need to wake up and see,

Oh!

I am the magician.

I am not the trick.

Wake up and realize,

Everything in your life is formed or created by your stories.

Everything is nothing but bubbles.

Your own story bubble you create.

Every morning and every night the bubble bursts.

This knowledge can be attained only by self-exploration.

So keep diving within and recognizing these four points that we learnt today.

Sakshithvam,

Asangatvam,

Ekatvam and Mithyatvam.

These four are your ongoing self-exploration assignments.

Only with that will this reality of Brahman manifest in your life.

I am lost in the images of my life.

But the reality is not the images.

There is no reality in these images.

They come,

They go.

They are manifested because of my sankalpas.

The truth is the screen behind.

That is the Brahman.

That is who I am.

And really at the end,

You will realize there is no I there.

It is a universal field.

You stop saying I.

Actual exploration rhythm can help you recognize this.

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