Hello everyone,
This is a live podcast,
Broadcast from Koshi Radio Fresh as part of our ongoing program.
So I spoke a little bit yesterday,
Or a couple days ago,
About the yogic power of prayer.
And I really want to touch on this again because it's such a significant teaching and also understanding of what it takes to really be free.
Free of all the different circumstances,
The changing circumstances of your life and all of the associated emotions,
Right?
As we go through life,
We experience a wide range of emotions that can lead to intense suffering,
Right?
And prayer is not something that's really considered part of Ramana's teaching or essential for moksha.
And there's a big misunderstanding about the yogic power of prayer.
And it's really been kind of overlooked or never discussed,
But it was a significant part of Ramana's teaching.
It is a bhakti yogic practice which is part of the mountain path.
So you need to understand that the mountain path is jnana yoga,
Which is divine wisdom.
So it's not just knowledge,
It's wisdom,
Which means direct experience,
Right?
You're having the direct experience of the presence beyond all understanding that lives in your heart.
So wisdom is based on direct experience,
Not just intellectual knowledge.
And then prayer is bhakti yoga.
So this is the other aspect of the mountain path is bhakti yoga.
So the two sides of the path is jnana yoga and bhakti yoga.
And bhakti means worship,
Devotion to the divine,
But it's also surrender.
And it's the essential surrender if what you're interested in is moksha,
Liberation from all forms of suffering,
Physical suffering,
Emotional suffering,
The suffering nature of life,
Right?
So it's transcendence of what the Buddha described as the first noble truth that life is suffering.
And you have to have a direct recognition that life is suffering in order for you to even seek a solution,
Right?
The Buddha suddenly recognized that life was suffering when he finally escaped the palace,
Right?
Where his father basically imprisoned him to keep him from becoming the enlightened master that astrology foretold he would become,
Right?
So his father wanted him to be a king,
He didn't want him to be an enlightened sage.
So it's the famous story of Buddha running away to find the path,
The way,
The method that ends suffering.
So this initial realization has to happen for you.
You have to realize that life is suffering in order to even seek a solution,
Right?
And Ramana is one of the most profound solutions to this first noble truth of the Buddha,
Which is life is suffering.
So it leads you to transcendence of all suffering.
And suffering takes many forms,
Right?
There's the emotional suffering that most of us struggle with daily.
And then there's physical suffering,
Intense pain,
And the drama of living on this planet,
Which right now is in a major state of flux,
A major state of change.
There's earthquakes everywhere,
Violent weather,
A lot of unrest,
The heartbreak of what's unfolding in Afghanistan right now.
And then there's this peace that surpasses all understanding.
But the first step on the mountain path is to recognize that everything you attempted to do to make yourself happy,
Whether it was pursuing a career,
A relationship,
Finding your soulmate,
Whatever it was you thought would make you happy,
Failed and failed miserably.
You just simply recognize that this world does not produce any lasting happiness.
So this is the first step on the mountain path and the first noble truth of the Buddha,
Right?
Life is suffering.
So how do I transcend it?
Is it possible to transcend suffering?
So the nature of suffering is some of it we're very aware of.
You're very aware when you're sad or when you're anxious or fearful.
You're very aware that you're afraid of death or maybe you're afraid of rebirth,
Right?
But whether you're afraid of rebirth or you're afraid of death,
It's the same intense fear.
It can be actually experienced as terror,
Right?
And you see this unfolding in Afghanistan,
People clinging to the outside of an airplane is because of terror.
The terror of death,
The terror of torture,
The terror of pain at the hands of the Taliban,
Right?
This terrorist movement that we've been struggling for many,
Many years to try and resolve and clearly it has not resolved itself.
And this is the nature of this world and this is the nature of ego.
The ego always engages in the fight,
The fight to be right.
All war comes from ego,
On a personal level,
A national level.
This is really the root cause of it.
But Ramana's teaching is very different from many of the Asian teachings,
The Buddhist teachings regarding ego,
Right?
So most traditions look to destroy ego.
But Ramana was very different.
He wasn't trying to destroy ego.
That was not the focus of his teaching.
This is just another aspect of ego.
Ego wants to destroy ego.
But the presence,
The vast intelligence of God is unaffected by ego,
Has nothing to do with war,
Is the most sublime peace,
Indescribable love,
Unconditional love.
This is the nature of the presence of God,
Which is in you and all around you.
It's everywhere,
But it is unseen.
And so our natural tendency is to focus on what we think.
And we agree with those thoughts.
We believe that our perspective is right and the other person is wrong.
And this is the nature of the war inside ourselves and the war outside of ourselves,
Right?
And prayer is a significant aspect of Ramana's teaching,
Which is very misunderstood and mostly not even discussed in the Western perspective of Ramana because it's seen as dualistic.
But true devotion is not dualistic.
It's love,
Loving love.
This is the nature of true devotion.
Love,
Loving love.
Love,
Loving love is love.
It's the process,
The evolutionary process of realizing that in the core,
Who you really are is divine love,
Which is eternal by its very nature.
It is unending love.
But we're not in the direct experience of this unending love,
Because we give our attention to our mind,
You know,
Our internal dialogue.
We have a constant conversation unfolding in our mind.
It's a story that we weave constantly about what happened yesterday,
About what might happen tomorrow,
What we want to have happen,
What we don't want to have happen,
And all the complex strategies that we develop in our mind to protect ourselves,
Right,
From what we don't want to get things moving in the right direction,
Hoping that at some point we will realize pure lasting happiness,
Especially if you've been seeking moksha,
Or enlightenment,
Or bliss,
Right?
So prayer is a very important aspect of Ramana's teaching,
Because it represents surrender.
But it's not just surrender,
Or the act of letting go.
It's an invitation to the power of the universe.
The power of the universe.
This is E equals mc squared on steroids,
Right?
We're talking about the vast power of the entire universe.
So we're inviting that into our heart,
In the act of devotion,
The act of surrender,
The act of prayer.
And all mantras are prayers,
Right?
Every single mantra is a prayer.
It is devotional worship to the unseen presence of God.
It is worship of the divine and surrender to the divine in that process of loving the divine.
And all mantras are a prayer to the divine,
Asking for help,
Right,
Asking to that presence to reveal itself,
To burn through all the karmic tendencies,
The parabdha karma,
Which is your destiny,
The gunas,
Which are your deeply ingrained genetic tendencies,
To avoid pain,
Pursue pleasure,
Even seeking God is deeply ingrained in our genetics.
And then there is what's known as vasanas,
Which are completely unconscious tendencies,
Completely unconscious tendencies.
So if something is completely unconscious to you,
How can you possibly address it with what we call or describe as inquiry?
You know,
You can't inquire into something you don't know anything about.
And there's eons upon eons upon eons of incarnations that you have experienced as a divine force of nature.
You are divine energy.
You are electromagnetic energy,
A frequency of light,
An invisible frequency of light that is connected to the divine.
We are one with the divine.
So the power of prayer,
The yogic power of prayer is to recognize that you cannot liberate yourself.
You cannot liberate yourself from the powerful movements of your mind and ego.
And it's not about getting rid of your ego either,
Right?
It's recognizing the nature of ego is reflective consciousness.
It is the gateway.
You need your ego to survive in this world.
So it's not the enemy per se,
Unless you're a slave to your mind and ego,
Which means that you're just constantly bounced around by the power of your mind and ego.
You're on the emotional roller coaster of life.
If you haven't mastered your mind,
You are a slave to your mind.
And the way to free yourself from this immense power of mind,
The mind is infused with this energy field,
Right?
It's infused with that power.
And so is ego,
So is reflective consciousness.
So it's no small thing to overcome ego,
Mind,
To see through this grand illusion of you,
To discover the living eternal truth of you.
This is no small event in your life.
So to break free,
To go through the gateway of ego,
Part of the essential yogic practice is prayer.
It's asking the divine intelligence to not only guide you into this vast presence,
But help you to reside as that until all of the veils of consciousness have been removed.
Right?
So when we set out looking for enlightenment or bliss or moksha,
We think of it as a goal,
As something to go after,
To get.
But this is a wrong way of thinking of enlightenment or moksha,
Right?
It's not a goal.
It's not somewhere else.
The presence that you seek,
The bliss that you are,
Is hidden by layers upon layers of consciousness,
Some of which is based on eons upon eons of suffering.
And even if you don't believe in reincarnation,
You can look at your family tree and see the genetic reincarnation of your family.
Show me your family tree and I will show you a trail of tears,
The endless trail of tears that go back and back and back in time,
25 million years of genetic evolution.
So transcendence of states of consciousness,
Mastery of mind,
Requires surrender.
It requires prayer and mantras are prayers.
Now,
We don't necessarily understand the language,
The Sanskrit language of various mantras,
But the mantra is a prayer,
But it is also an energy.
It is a light force.
It is a light force infused with profound energy and silence.
And without the mantra,
It's virtually impossible to address the hidden unconscious tendencies known as vasanas.
There's no possibility for you to remove the vasanas because you are not aware of them.
So yogic mantras and prayers is an energy force.
It is a yogic power that aligns your consciousness with the living,
Eternal presence in your heart.
And the more you align with the presence,
The deeper and deeper your realization of that invisible,
Vast intelligence becomes.
Because it is a purification process.
Surrender is a purification process,
Right?
The mantra is a process of repetition again and again and again.
And one of the great fallacies of how many Westerners view the teaching of Ramana is this idea of instant,
Sudden enlightenment.
It's almost like everybody's chasing after bliss,
Hoping that that miraculous moment will someday arrive without any effort on your part.
And this sets a very false expectation,
Right?
That you don't have to do anything to realize your true nature.
And this is only true in the sense of awakening.
Awakening to the truth of yourself is easy,
Instant effortless.
Right now,
You can realize that you are pure conscious awareness.
This is the nature of awakening.
The energy shining through your face,
The light in your eyes is conscious awareness.
That is who you really are.
Deeper than name,
Deeper than form,
Past,
Future,
Whatever you imagine,
Whatever story you're telling yourself.
The presence is free.
So the Gayatri mantra is an example of a mantra that is extremely potent,
Right?
It's infused with this light energy,
This frequency of light that aligns your conscious awareness with the presence of heart again and again.
But not just on an intellectual level,
It's multidimensional.
Mantras are multidimensional.
It aligns you with the multidimensional aspect of this presence of God alive and within you and all around you.
So the yoga of mantras is an essential aspect of Ramana's teaching in the context of inquiry.
So all of Ramana's teaching is about confronting this reflective nature of ego and igniting the sacred fire that's essential to burn away the unconscious tendencies.
Right?
That keep these patterns of suffering happening again and again and again.
And you've experienced this.
You know that sometimes you're happy but then there's this pattern of sadness that overcomes you and overcomes you and it just keeps happening again and again and again.
And the reason it happens again and again and again is because you're a slave to your mind and you're a slave to reflective consciousness.
And I'm not talking about depression because depression is a biochemical imbalance in your brain.
And you really shouldn't use yogic practices to overcome especially severe chronic depression.
Right?
Because that is,
You have to address the biochemistry first,
Stabilize that.
And then once you're stable,
Then there is the space and the opening required to inquire.
Right?
To see through the reflective consciousness of ego.
So prayer is the mantra,
But prayer is the internal surrender.
It's surrendering within yourself to God and it takes a certain humility to realize that you cannot do this yourself.
You need the intelligence of the universe to address all the stuff you know nothing about.
And so prayer is the invitation to that intelligence to come into you.
So it's an inner purification,
An inner alchemy that occurs over time.
Right?
And prayers can be repetitive.
You know,
You can repeat a prayer for help.
A prayer,
Please God,
Let me be liberated in this life.
Help me to burn through all the stuff I know nothing about.
This is the nature of surrender.
It's diving into your heart as love,
Asking that love to burn away any obstacle,
Any veil of consciousness that hides your true nature so that you become the presence of God.
Right?
This is what happened to Ramana.
Ramana awoke to this living eternal presence,
Not as a thought,
But as an energetic shift.
He described it as a huge energy moving through his body.
Right?
And then he went through an alchemy,
An inner transformation over many years,
Over 11 years.
And Ramana himself said that that was not an instant enlightenment.
He remembered his previous incarnation where he had been practicing self-inquiry.
But he left his body before that process was complete.
So you must make a commitment to yourself if you really want moksha.
You must surrender to the divine.
This is essential.
And you must apply these yogic practices.
Singing the mantra is one practice.
Very powerful prayer,
Very powerful worship of the divine,
Asking the divine for assistance,
Right?
Asking for that divine presence to burn away these veils of consciousness.
And then silence,
Meditation.
You must meditate.
You can't discuss inquiry.
You actually have to practice inquiry.
You can't talk about silence.
You actually have to meditate.
You actually have to sit down and be quiet,
Which is not easy,
Especially if you're a beginner meditator,
Right?
You sit down to be quiet.
And the first thing you do is get up.
Right?
You look at your watch and like,
Well,
I don't have time for this.
I got to do that.
I got to do this.
Right?
So you pull yourself away from the meditation because the mind just goes berserk.
Until you really start to embrace the silence of the heart as an inquiry to see who is it that is sitting down to meditate.
This is confronting the reflective consciousness of ego.
And this is the true nature of meditation is to slide through the ego into the presence that animates your whole body.
The living,
Eternal presence of God alive in your heart and the direct discovery of this is bliss.
Right?
But it's not the bliss that comes and goes.
It's not the euphoria that we often associate with bliss.
This is the steady presence,
The bliss of pure conscious awareness and aligning with that is the power of yogic practice.
Right?
Whether it's singing the mantra,
Meditation,
Self-inquiry,
All of it is self-inquiry.
This is the great golden key for required for liberation from the suffering of life to transcend.
The first noble truth of the Buddha is to discover that you are the presence,
The vast intelligence of God.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om
