Among the outstanding features of Bhagavan’s life is how available Bhagavan was to the public. Reading the chronicles of life in the hall, we see how day and night he was in the public view, living out every detail of his life before an audience, his every action observable by onlookers. We see in Bhagavan a being that was absolutely transparent, concealing nothing. In the night when he laid down to rest, he was not alone, as unvaryingly several devotees would take their rest in the hall as well. Even some of the surgical procedures in the dispensary in the late 1940s were performed before a small group of onlookers and on his last day, he offered up his emaciated form in darshan so that devotees might receive a parting blessing. Bhagavan once commented on the challenge of being constantly sought after:
Swamihood is very difficult. You cannot imagine it. I am speaking from fifty years of experience. [1]
It is hard for most devotees to picture what it would be like to be in the public view around the clock. How many of us could bear that kind of exposure even for a week much less decades on end? But then, one wonders where the need for privacy comes from. What underlies the need to be out of view? Who is this one that wants to avoid scrutiny? Who is this one that fears being seen? The English word shame means ‘to cover.’ But what is it we are covering?
In the Bereishith, the first of the five books of the Jewish Torah, is a fabled scene where God enters the garden and not seeing Adam and Eve asks, ‘Why are you hiding?’ They replied, ‘Because we are naked’. ‘Who told you that you are naked’? In other words, who told you that you were separate from God, separate from one another? Who told you that you should say ‘I’? God then asks, ‘Did you eat of the tree I forbade you to eat of?’
Prior to this Adam had lived in the innocence of the garden, at one with the garden, at one with his created nature in God. By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, however, he gained the sense of duality, the sense of self and other. Through the self-concept he had become an actor in the world and had begun to see himself as one apart from creation. Here we have an allegorical representation of the birth of ego, the birth of separation.[2]
It is the sense of separation that brings shame, and shame invariably causes us to want to hide. Imagining a small self within that is imperfect and flawed, we may want to conceal it. The need to hide from others comes from the fear of being seen. As one is, one is not enough, says shame. But in Bhagavan’s case, this illusion had evaporated entirely and there was no longer any confusion, no little man within, but only the Self. What need did Bhagavan have to hide? What could he ever be ashamed of?
As stated above, shame means ‘to cover’, but in its toxic form it can be seen as a projection of a negative self-image where we imagine we know what ‘they’ think of us. In other words, toxic shame (as opposed to healthy moral shame) is a kind of self-directed condemnation that makes use of others as surrogates for the all-seeing Eye, for God, who we fear would negatively estimate our ultimate worth. Stated another way, shame is inwardly directed blame (as opposed to scapegoating which is blame that is outwardly directed) and we may imagine shame as a form of self-correction and a sign of our humility. But actually, shame is a form of false humility that only more deeply entrenches our narcissism. Outward approval is the compensatory mechanism for the sense of lack caused by shame. Traditionally referred to as fame, this is the need ever to be acknowledged and affirmed by others. Yet, no matter how much acknowledgement is gained from without, it can never fill the hole within. Bhagavan was keenly aware of this feature of the egoic complex and addressed it once when commenting on the gifts of the talented artist:
For [a gifted artist,] Self-enquiry and realisation would be very easy to attain. But unfortunately, such people do not show much interest in the quest for truth…[Instead] the urge will always be to attain perfection in the artistic ability, and not to seek the perfection within. [3]
Regrettably, each of us is the artist, at least in one significant respect, namely, in fashioning an illusory separate self and trying to beautify and embellish it before the eyes of the world. Each of us is creating, re-creating, and sustaining this illusion moment by moment. Outer approval gives short-term relief for the sense of lack born of the illusion. But the gnawing sense of lack always returns, and one must perform attention-seeking behaviours afresh.
Shame is an inverted form of narcissism arising out of the need to improve. But to improve what? A non-existent entity? Indeed, our sense of insufficiency is well-founded—not because we are an ego that is imperfect but because we are not an ego at all, says Bhagavan. The ultimate insecurity comes in identifying with something that is non-existent. Then we magnify the dilemma by seeking to conceal this root insecurity. While our artistic creation is unreal, the pain it brings is tangible.
The Veiling Impulse
Theravadin monastics have a saying, to become zero, you have to become one. What does this mean? It means that to dissolve the ego, we must make whole the loose ends of the egoic nexus. We must first identify, uncover, and openly acknowledge them. To bring this about, there should be a willingness to see ourselves as we are and allow ourselves to be seen by others. But the drive to concealment precludes such an uncovering. ‘Putting our best foot forward’ or ‘being on our best behaviour’ are common idioms for legitimizing this veiling impulse. Here we actively avoid being seen as we really are, fearing that if we were to do so, our peers would turn away from us in disgust. We conceal what we perceive as our flaws to protect our public persona. Embellishment, exaggeration, secrecy, and outright fabrication may be brought in to moderate the fear of humiliation and feelings of insecurity.
Colleagues and acquaintances, if unconsciously making use of similar strategies, are often unable to identify the motive behind our vigorous efforts at public-image management. They may imagine that the desire to conceal ourselves from them means we distrust them. What had been intended to ensure meaningful connection and safeguard our acceptance by society may turn out to confuse others and set us apart from them.
If ego has extended its tentacles throughout the worldwide web in the hyper-digitized era, social anxiety has become an epidemic. Strategies to calm the fear and discomfort concerning our place in the overall scheme of things may include self-deception. Self-deception is tricky because, by definition, we cannot be aware of it at the time of its arising.
Plato wrote, everything that deceives can be said to enchant. What did he mean? Enchantment is the willingness to be deluded for personal benefit, and denial invariably pushes the delusion further down into the unconscious. Of course, these mechanisms can be appealing in the short term, but if our secrets make us sick, as goes a common therapeutic saying, what we hide away hurts us. Why? Because concealment stems from shame and what would not otherwise be blameworthy appears so by the act of concealing it. Most of what we attempt to conceal is not blameable at all but originates from a diminished sense of self-worth. The saying sin thrives in darkness really just means that consigning anything to the shadows of the unconscious makes it darker.
Of course, sadhakas throughout the ages have prized seclusion for the sake of following the path to God, and indeed, everyone has the right to privacy. But how we use it and our motivations for it are key. Rudolf Steiner once wrote that a single lie causes kundalini to close up. That is, transgressions, which would include the attempt to appear to others as more than we are, cut us off from the spiritual heart. Very often the need behind concealment and misleading behaviours is quite innocent. It is just the need to belong, to be accepted, and to that end, to present ourselves in the best possible light. However, only straightforward speech and action can help us discover what needs care and attention. If we use falsehood to conceal our pride stemming from a sense of lack, then we have no means of healing it. Concealed conceit is hazardous while revealed conceit, pride that is openly acknowledged, is benign.
Forests of the Heart
While walking in the woods, we invariably find trees that are knotty, crooked, and ill-formed. Beneath the bark, the tree’s inner make-up is likewise asymmetrical. Swirls in the grain twist about here and there. Nevertheless, we accept every tree no matter how distorted its shape and patterning. We understand it as nature’s way. How is it then that we are unwilling to grant similar license to the inner forests of the heart? If regions within us appear irregular and disfigured, we deem them unacceptable. Here begins the chain of samsara and here, Bhagavan’s vichara proves to be out of reach and his surrender, inaccessible. A fractured ego cannot be let go of. Fragmentation carries with it the longing for wholeness and anything we loathe has the power of continuance. What we wish away is hidden from view, amplifying our troubles. If ego comes from the impulse to resist, vichara thrives by the opposite instinct, namely, the willingness to differentiate the real from the hidden, the innate from the adventitious, and to behold conditions as they truly are. In taking the small step from refusal to acceptance, the habit-forces surrounding our denial lighten and the occluding veil of shame begins to disperse. Bhagavan says:
The seeker of liberation realizes his real nature by distinguishing the eternal from the transient, never swerving from his natural state. People think that moksha is somewhere yonder and should be sought outside. They are wrong. Moksha is only knowing the Self within yourself. [4]
The blind spot in the old paradigm is two-fold. First, we imagine that banishing our impurities frees us from them. And second, we imagine that what is leftover is the Self. Both assumptions are mistaken. In exiling the unwanted parts of ourselves, we are not in any way free of them but are simply relegating them to the unconscious. Secondly, what remains leftover is not the Self but an idealised virtual self. Idealisation, born of the comparing mind, is the root mechanism in the narcissistic apparatus and simply means crafting a self that takes on the appearance of the Self. But no matter how pristine its appearance, the idealised self is still just the ego. To make matters worse, we have complicated things by driving orphaned fragments of the psyche out of reach. If we employ magical thinking to keep what is distasteful out of sight, we unwittingly cut ourselves off from the penetrating insight born of investigation. We never arrive at virtue because of our unwillingness to take stock of our non-virtue. On the other hand, if we befriend our non-virtue, we begin to see our imperfections impartially. In allowing ourselves to behold our non-virtue—in openly acknowledging it and confessing it to ourselves and others—virtue begins to arise out of nowhere. How can that be? Virtue begins with disclosure, namely, bringing what is hidden into view. This might at first feel counter-intuitive because we really believe we are flawed and that the cure for our flaws is simply wishing them away. But when hidden behind the veil of denial, they work against us whereas if they are brought out into the open, we can work with them. Becoming intimate with the shadow by the light of our own simple awareness, the inner darkness is illuminated, and the urge towards concealment falls away on its own.
Dharmic Aikido
Ancient wisdom from cultures around the world tells us that greeting inner darkness and the chthonic forces of the unconscious leads to their purification. Fables from the West, for example, often centre on themes like the princess kissing the clammy wart-covered toad, an archetypal expression of assimilating what is ugly within us to make it beautiful. The kissed toad is transformed into a handsome prince, which here, symbolises the Self. Other themes may consist of a hero descending into a dark cave to battle a multi-headed dragon to rescue the captive princess. The cave represents the hidden realms of the heart, the dragon, unconscious egoic fears, and the princess, again, the Self. A line from Rilke speaks to this:
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our help.[5]
In the East we have the dramatic scene from the Devi Mahatmyam (Saptashatī) where Durga takes the form of Kali and sets out to vanquish the demon Rakthabij (‘blood-seed’) by making use of her long tongue to catch every drop of blood that spills from Rakthabij’s severed head. Overtly, we know that Raktheshwari does this to prevent any drops of blood from touching the earth lest a new Rakthabij spring up. But at the level of archetypal symbol, her action expresses a universal theme: the need to commune with what opposes you. You must befriend and become intimate with that which threatens you to overcome it, after all, whatever you pit yourself against, grows stronger, whatever you steadfastly resist, remains, and whatever you hate, gains authority over you.
The universal law is past actions bear fruit,[6] but when we resist the fruit-bearing within, it invariably comes to us from without. A revered Tibetan monk tolf that in Tibet it had always been part of the tradition to ceremonially appease the fiercest of the demons in a special annual puja. When the centuries-old practice was discontinued in the late 1940s, it was only a couple of years later that the Chinese invaded Tibet. For him, the two events were linked.
Blows from the Carver’s Hand
There’s a poem from the Welsh poet, David Whyte, set in Nepal. The poet comes to a temple guarded by the ‘fierce-figure’ Vajrapani (a half-male/half-female deity; vajra: ‘diamond’, pani: ‘water’) and upon entering the sanctum by lantern-light beholds on the temple ceiling ‘one hundred beautiful faces of Bodhisattvas carved in devotion’. He wonders at the monks who in some former century carved them, that they must have been made of the same ‘vibrant stillness’ otherwise how could they have brought out ‘such love in solid wood’. Then comes the following lines:
If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.
If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core.
What the poet seems to be talking about here are the fault-lines within us, our flaws, disappointments, and regrets. Rather than things that need hiding away, they are the portals to lasting freedom and point to the very essence of us, to ‘the very core’. Yet, many spend their lives covering them over, hiding them from others. The flaws that led his searching chisel have the power to guide us beyond the shoals of egoic delusion. Picking up with the previous line:
If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,
We would smile, too,
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.
When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself.
And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.
Fighting with our failing means being preoccupied with shortcomings, trying to appear as someone else, someone better, thinking we need something from outside to improve us. In fighting with our failing, we fall into quantitative striving. In denying our vulnerability, we imagine our flaws are the cause of our suffering whereas in fact they are the golden string that would lead us out from it. If embraced, our flaws could show us who we are. But fighting with our failing is ignoring the entrance to the shrine itself because the shrine is the sanctuary for the orphans of the heart, and the deity there is called, ‘Acceptance’. The poet concludes:
If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the Carver’s hand,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers
feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.
Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration
to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly,
wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the Carver’s hands.[7]
Gather our flaws in celebration? How would we ever celebrate what we most dislike in ourselves?
If overcoming illusory bondage finds its entry in investigating what is not yet perfected, the Ramana way begins with vichara. Vital and vibrant enquiry depends on a heart that is self-accepting. We gather all our flaws in celebration not just because they lead to the core of us—the Self—but in allowing ourselves to receive benediction, we are able to give benediction in return, thereby enlarging our capacity for acceptance.
If we extol a mother who cares for her children no matter how outwardly flawed they appear, why should we not extend the same kindness to ourselves? What has gotten into us that we imagine that shame and self-reproach can help us? The American poet, Galway Kinnell had this to say:
Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, until it flowers from within, of self-blessing. [8]
Reteaching us to flower from within is Bhagavan’s forté. Bhagavan is practised in getting devotees to favourably negotiate the fine line between heaven and hell. He brings this about by reminding us of what is already there within us. Kanakammal illustrates this point in a story from the hall:
Muruganar had seen devotees come before Bhagavan who were distraught and who shed tears about their life. They would sit before Bhagavan, morose in their grief, hoping Bhagavan might relieve their distress. The poet addressed them in a verse:
‘You are like ones digging a well on the bank of the Ganga crying out in thirst.’ Then, in the following line, he corrected himself: ‘No, you are like ones neck deep in the Ganga crying out in thirst’.
When Muruganar showed the verse to Bhagavan, Bhagavan said, ‘You forgot one further correction: “It is not that you are neck deep in the Ganga, rather, you are GANGA HERSELF, crying out in thirst.”’
Upon hearing and understanding the implication of these words from the Master, anyone in the hall suffering anguish at that moment would have found their difficulty dramatically diminished.[9]
Conclusion
Bhagavan’s two-pronged teaching—surrender and vichara—is simple. Surrender is disinterested action offered up to the Lord,[10] giving ourselves over to the hard knocks that come to us woven in the pattern of our destiny[11]. Vichara is investigating the one that stands in the way of this giving-over. If the practice of enquiry demands great care, it is because self-deception asserts itself at every turn. But such care will stand us in good stead for by it we build a rapport within, and the light-bearing power of Bhagavan’s enquiry can begin to illumine and restore all that lies hidden within us. As we penetrate the veil of denial, we uncover the disquietude behind it. When we allow ourselves to rest in the discomfort, we learn the art of adjusting to conditions. Here surrender and vichara begin to work in tandem. The apparent flaws in our created nature now appear as nothing before the light of the Uncreated Self and we find we have no further need for shame, secrecy, and dressing ourselves up in the guise of someone better. If earlier we imagined that perfection is gained when there is nothing left to add, now we see it is gained when there is nothing left to take away. What is it that needs taking away? It is simply the illusion that we are separate from others and separate from God.
The astonishing fact in all this is how easy it is to make inroads into this corner of the egoic complex.
If we don’t like what we see in ourselves or, for that matter, what we see in this strife-ridden world, then let us be the first ones to witness a new paradigm emerge within. Let the frequency of the higher vibration we manifest through Bhagavan’s teaching be our silent contribution to the collective, trusting it will ripple out and have its effect. Let us be the change we want to see in the world, to quote Gandhiji, because the cynicism and bitterness we imagine we see in the world only signals a corresponding cynicism and bitterness unconsciously hidden away within our own hearts. Let us recover our innocence using the healing power of enquiry, knowing all the while that when we illumine the shadow within, we break the shackles of shame and self-judgment. If the shackles within get broken, the shackles in the collective begin to break up too, and we end up being of service to this poor suffering world trying against all odds to become whole. —
Footnotes and References
[1] Day by Day, 28-12-45 Morning.
[2] The English sin is cognate with ‘sunder’ (from Norse synd and German Sünde) which means ‘apart’ or ‘separate’.
[3] T.R. Kanakammal, Cherished Memories, p. 119.
[4] Spiritual Instructions, Chapter II, §1; Talks §31.
[5] Letters to a Young Poet.
[6] Upadesa Saram, v. 1.
[7] ‘Faces at Braga’.
[8] ‘St Francis and the Sow’.
[9] Various versions of this sotry have circulated. The details of this one come from Aparna Krishnamoorthy.
[10] Upadesa Saram, v. 3.
[11] From Marcus Aurelius: What could be more apt for our needs than that which comes to us woven in the pattern of our destiny.
