We left off in the last issue with a scene from the Hall at the end of August 1936 where the Maharani Saheba sits before Bhagavan. Her Highness laments her destiny, feeling it to be permanently fixed, preventing her from taking the steps Bhagavan is calling her to. Bhagavan asks her, ‘What is destiny [after all]? — There is no destiny.’[1] Here Bhagavan would seem to be saying, there’s no karma. But from the Maharani’s point of view—and, for that matter, the rest of us stuck with the limited ego identity—there must be karma, otherwise, where would all this trouble come from?
From Bhagavan’s vantage point beyond the veils of ignorance, karma is related to the limited self. In glimpsing the ether—the resonant stillness beyond the veils—, this small ‘I’ is momentarily disengaged, and karmic afflictions linked to the small self fall away, allowing the world in its natural condition to reveal itself. Bhagavan urges the Maharani:
Surrender, and all will be well. Throw all the responsibility on God. Do not bear the burden yourself. What can destiny do to you then? [2]
In a voice choked with emotion, Her Highness replies, ‘Surrender is impossible!’ — And don’t each one of us know just what she means. How can we suddenly be free of the only world we have ever known, namely, this small self and its attendant encumbrances? How can this small self built on hopes, dreams, fears, worries, laments, distractions, regrets, confusion, and disappointments just be abandoned all at once? If the small self is the name we give to the collection of these endless, mostly disadvantageous, mental states, who would we be apart from them? With such an array of impurities in the heart and mind, who are we to aspire to such lofty heights anyway?
If we tell ourselves, ‘I am not worthy of the realm beyond the veils’, it may sound like we are being humble. But Bhagavan tells us that this way of seeing things is the veiling power of ignorance already at work in us, expressing itself as resignation.
Clear Vision
The Maharani acutely feels her inability to surrender. Bhagavan urges her to surrender incrementally, in other words, to look to see if an eyelet through the veils of inherited suffering and misery might offer a brief glimpse of their root. Though we imagine karma as fixed and permanent, for Bhagavan clear seeing is the way out of the karmic bind. The angels of our lesser nature thrive in darkness, i.e. in the unconscious, hidden from view, behind distorted perceptions and illusion, causing us willy-nilly to stumble into further karmic liability. But that which is brought into the light of awareness under the open sky of clear vision can no longer harm us.
Clear seeing is a force-multiplier—a little investment brings a big return. Here we use less effort to achieve the same task. Clear seeing multiplies our ability to adjust to conditions and enhance our resilience in the face of life’s hardships. This is discoverable in numerous ways, but none so evident as in expanding our capacity to drink deep from the well of Being. What does this mean? It means that stillness beyond the veils, even if glimpsed only momentarily, brings happiness unlike any we have known before. Inner happiness surpasses momentary pleasures gained from the body and mind. It is purifying because it tempers the veils and calms the agitating influences of the mind. More than that, spiritual happiness is cumulative—it sharpens and grows with use. It brings added depth, meaning, and fulfilment, causing us to lose interest in the world and to shed hollow seeking in externalities. More importantly still, spiritual happiness sets the stage for deeper stillness in turn giving rise to clearer seeing, which allows for a further rolling back of the veils in order that we gain insights that are transformative and lasting.
The Agglomerations
For Bhagavan, clear seeing begins in overcoming the illusion of a small self. But if there is no small self, then to whom do these mental states belong? The true Self has no will or wants, Bhagavan tells us, is not given to ups and downs, has no preferences and is free of every form of reactivity and desire. What then are these fleeting feeling states? They are states born of samskaras, Bhagavan tells us. What are samskaras? Here, samskaras (‘putting together’) would mean formations born of volition that spawn thoughts, images and feelings in the mind and heart. Reinforcing the strength of the veils, samskaras function as agglomerators giving rise to thought, mental images and feeling states. Originating as agglomerating impulses of the mind, they are born of wants and intentions conditioned by unresolved past actions. Bhagavan says, samskara is samsara.[3] What does he mean? He means that wanting and willing born of predispositions are the roots of further action. Doing and the doer are only real this side of the veils. In stillness, there can be neither doer nor destiny. This may be experienced directly even in beginning meditation practice during occasional periods of intense stillness where wanting and wanter seem to drop away.
All agglomerations whether of thought, images, feeling states, mental states, or the veils, are born of intentional actions from the past. Nevertheless, they are unaligned with anything like a self. The yearning contained within unassimilated karmic residues takes the form of mental states and is perhaps an expression of prarabdha trying to overcome the non-acceptance we show it. In other words, disadvantageous mental states are orphaned fragments of a psyche longing to be whole and integrated. Karmic residues which have always been resisted and denied, now seek their release through surrender. Until their release comes, wanting and resisting will likely be present in the mind and heart, fertilising the ground for further veils to arise, making inner stillness difficult.
But karma cannot be permanent, Bhagavan says, unless we give our assent through ongoing non-surrender. He tells the Maharani: ‘Complete surrender is impossible in the beginning [but] partial surrender is certainly possible for all’.[4] In other words, everyone is capable of knowing Reality free of samskaric filters and the distorting influences of unresolved past actions. Destiny is thus alterable. They continue:
The Maharani: Partial surrender, can it undo destiny? Bhagavan: Oh, yes! It can. The Maharani: Is not destiny due to past karma? Bhagavan: If one is surrendered to God, God will look after it. The Maharani: This being God’s dispensation, how does God undo it? Bhagavan: All are in Him only. The Maharani: How is God to be seen? Bhagavan: Within. If the mind is turned inward, God manifests as inner consciousness.[5]
The veils of ignorance, avarana, are so named because they ‘cover’ and are born of non-seeing. [6] If neglected or resisted through non-surrender, they complicate things by adding to the karmic accumulation. The job of the veils is to conceal, hinder, darken, and delude. Our job is to penetrate, inquire into, shed light on, and see with perfect clarity.
Whatever has the power to deceive also has the power to enchant, it has been said.[7] This means that we sometimes conspire with the veils. We imagine we want nothing more than to overcome them, but very often we cling to them. The veils insulate us from the discomfort of having to behold the utter insubstantiality of the one we imagine ourselves to be. Not only are the veils familiar to us, we imagine that they are us. Additionally, they bring momentary satisfaction which in this state of non-clarity seems better than no satisfaction at all. Veiling and the ‘I’ are thus related: when veiling is strong, we say ‘I’; when veiling recedes, only stillness remains. Bhagavan comments:
Veiling is a characteristic of ignorance. It is not of the Self. It cannot affect the Self in any manner but can only veil the jiva. The ego is insentient. United with the light of the Self, it is called jiva. But the ego and light cannot be seen as distinct from one another. They are always united. Avarana or veiling does not hide the jiva entirely. The jiva knows that he is, only he does not know WHO he is.[8]
The confusion comes from the agglomerating power of the jiva, namely, samskaras, which have a kind of self-veiling effect. A form of ignorance that was not there before agglomerates as ‘I’. Bhagavan continues:
Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind. To whom is this avarana? It is [just] ignorance, ego or the mind. [9]
The devotee then inquires, who is obstructed, and how does obstruction arise? Bhagavan adds:
The limitation is itself obstruction. No questions will arise if limitations are transcended.[10]
Bhagavan’s Stillness Beyond the Veils
In the modern era, we are pressed to live in ways that prevent us from knowing stillness beyond the veils. In seeking happiness in worldly experience, the veils are continually reinforced. Each time we sit on the meditation cushion to gain stillness, the veils rear their ugly heads as distraction. For some, stillness comes easily; for others, not so easily. If we find ourselves in the latter category, it is a wake-up call to do due diligence in the meditation hall, applying ourselves patiently to the practices Bhagavan gave us. What Bhagavan’s inquiry and Bhagavan’s surrender are asking of us is successive efforts at exposing the apparent solidity of the veils, discovering first-hand through direct experience their true character as fleeting mental states. When we compare them with the stillness on the other side, their hold on us diminishes. What does this stillness look like?
The standard is very high if we consider Bhagavan in his early days at the Big Temple. We recall how the young Brahmana Swami stayed variously at the Thousand-Pillared Hall, Patala Lingam, Gopura Subrahmanya Shrine and under the temple’s iluppai tree, lost in meditation. After he took up ‘residence’ at the temple plantain grove (Vazhai Thottam), he fell into protracted states of trance and the need for food and sleep vanished. Each morning, devotees from the town came to the temple for darshan and when passing the young sage absorbed in the Self, noticed his depleted form. Naturally, they felt called to bring food. But as his meditational stillness was very deep, he could not be roused, and it was thus not clear how their offerings were to be given. Concerned parties began thrusting food into the mouth of the motionless figure. On occasion when a ‘meal’ was to be given the following day, the donor discovered that so deep had been the boy’s absorption that the offering of the previous day had remained overnight in his mouth, unswallowed.[11]
We can only speculate about what might be going on in the heart and mind of one in such a state. To be sure, the veils are not active, and in the case of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, would never be so again. Here complete stillness is also complete surrender, and no trace of resistance whatsoever remains. In such a state, we might imagine the full operation of the divine at work in the sadhaka’s heart without interruption.
As for the rest of us, we content ourselves with partial surrender and partial stillness. Daily efforts at meditation start by making the physical form unmoving. This is easy enough, but the mind carries on incessantly whether or not the body is still. Here we may watch the breath or recite verses to gradually slow the wheels of the mind. As we move toward inquiry, we remember that Bhagavan tells us there is no small self instigating the perpetual thought chain, and that the Self is not governed by any compulsion whatsoever. We are then bound to ask, to whom do these thoughts arise and whence do they come? Such vichara questions lead us to see that the mind has its own internal laws. If there is no who, i.e. no ego, and if the thinking compulsion does not issue from the Self, then what is driving the process? Inquiring into this what is the beginning of stilling the mind, Bhagavan tells us.
One may say, ‘I am a selfish person’ or ‘I am an angry person’. We then ask, who is this one that is selfish or angry? It cannot be the Self since Bhagavan tells us the Self is the ground of Being beyond all conditioned states. It cannot be the ego since Bhagavan tells us there is no ego. Selfishness and anger are phenomenal states related to samskaras and only manifest according to conditions. If we alter the conditions, they cannot arise. What are these conditions? They are nothing more than the veils of ignorance born of past actions. Uprooting them begins in surrender and stillness. In other words, negative mental states such as anger and selfishness are just meditation problems.
Over time we become diligent in investigating experience. We look for what lies beneath each mental state, emotion, memory, or regret, uncovering hidden causes and bringing the light of investigation to illumine what had earlier been murky. If at times, inquiry and surrender leave us exposed, it is because we are no longer willing to divert our attention from the starkness of reality. Disenchantment may side-track the earnest seeker who mistakes it as an indication of having gone astray. Here the temptation to rush back to the familiar samsaric way of conducting our mental life asserts itself. When the mind settles into stillness, it gains an intimacy with the world never known before, and elicits the poignancy of the world’s inherent ephemerality. Disenchantment, though disagreeable, is a necessary feature of the curriculum Bhagavan is recommending to us.
Their conversation continues:
The Maharani: God is in all the objects we see around us. Bhagavan: God is in all and in the seer. Where else can God be seen? He cannot be found outside. The consciousness within, purged of mind is [seen] as God. The Maharani: Is [that] the soul? Bhagavan: Soul, mind [and] ego are mere words. There are no entities of the kind. Consciousness is the only truth. Soul and God are only mental conceptions. [12]
Borderlands
Surrender and inquiry support each other. Surrender teaches us to cultivate non-resistance to what comes our way. Inquiry uncovers the karmic residues influencing our responses. Karmic residues need to be dealt with, but Bhagavan urges us to deal with them through non-resistance. If resistance causes their perpetuation, proliferation, and increase, surrender facilitates their healthy assimilation. Bhagavan’s instructions could not be simpler. He wants us to give ourselves over to karmic burdens through non-resistance so that their nature might be known first hand. This does not mean we allow unprofitable feeling states to run amok but rather, in facing them frontally and penetrating their surfaces, we might find out what is going on deeper down. If resistance is the chief means of nourishing the veils, then non-struggle or what Bhagavan calls suffering what comes our way[13] allows us to see them for what they are. We greet each obstruction like a patient mother caring for her problem child. When the infant cannot be placated and throws a temper tantrum despite her best efforts, what does the patient mother do? She simply continues caring for the distressed child. Ever yielding, all-conquering, her love is a force of nature and can turn an upside-down world right-side up.
If we chance to observe a mother coming into Bhagavan’s Hall with a differently abled child, say, a teenage child with Down’s syndrome. We watch as the child manifests behaviours that are not in alignment with socially accepted norms, and how the child’s mother, though feeling the eyes upon her, just continues tending her child with ceaseless care. We observe how everyone in the hall is humbled by her tender affection and composure. So utterly moving is the scene that no one feels like the silence in the Hall has been interrupted. The contrary. Her forbearance shines as an example of the path forward.
When encountering our own problem children in meditation, namely, the unruly veils, incessant thinking and the resistance which keep us from stillness, and when we feel surrender is impossible, to use the Maharani’s words, we focus on the image of this mother in the Hall.
Our efforts toward stillness must be unremitting and ongoing, refusing to give up even in the face of endless frustration and every fear of failure.
Suffering and Acceptance
Suffering what comes our way does not mean giving up. It means that what comes to us, comes by way of karmic affliction, and must be actively worked through. Neither God nor guru can spare us this work. This is why Bhagavan never went out wandering around the cities of India healing people since he understood that such help would be superseded by the inexorable law of karma. The suffering of those ‘healed’ would return over time and would have to be reckoned with from within. Here suffering is seen as an asset. In this connection we recall how Bhagavan once said emphatically, suffering is the way. [14]
The first step in responding to suffering is accepting it. But then, Bhagavan urges us to cross over, if only at first by fits and starts, making use of vichara and surrender. Intermittent periods of stillness free of the veils are discovered to have a blossoming effect on the heart. The withering effect, by contrast, is born of defeatism which has the unintended result of sustaining the karmic double bind. Accepting our suffering is not the same as resignation. What makes prarabdha appear chronic and irredeemable is our refusal to face it. In trying to wish it away, we forestall its resolution.
Suffering what comes our way means allowing every aspect of discomfort within to be met with an alive and sensing heart. We do not turn away from suffering but register it fully in the moment and the place of its arising. We honour prarabdha, all the while aware that prarabdha is not permanent or fixed but can be worked with. We allow it to ripen and mature.
We remember that we can only implement what we first envision. Therefore, we accept Bhagavan’s words and trust that stillness is possible, and destiny is pliable. Only then is the practice of suffering what comes our way made workable. We override the impulse to embellish the facts about our lives, forgoing the project of cultivating a favourable self-image. We maintain clean action and speech in our dealings with others remembering that objectionable behaviour or any form of equivocation scrambles the mind with regret and remorse, blocking stillness and flooding the heart with distraction. We see that the veils have something to teach us if we are patient enough to inquire into them.
Increasing meditational stillness allows us to take inquiry to the next level. It aids us in cultivating a healthy sense of moral shame and a beneficial fear of wrongdoing, steering our thoughts, speech, and actions. With a heightened sensitivity to pangs of conscience, our hidden intentions and motivations are identified more readily, bringing a change of heart. The way we conduct our lives is thus gradually altered and our capacity for stillness increases. By such means we access the subtler dimensions of the samskaric inheritance, allowing it to find a place of rest.
If we imagine we are permanently handicapped by adverse karmic conditions and thus incapable of the feats of saints and sages of old, we remember that Bhagavan tells us that wisdom is inherent in every human heart and that the ether is our very own Self. As defilements are dispensed with through surrender, the heart’s innate brightness reveals itself and adverse conditions moderate.
To be in the will of Bhagavan means greeting life’s vexations with non-resistance and freely giving ourselves over to the natural course of things. To be in God’s Will simply means letting go of having to have things be different than what they are.
When we see ourselves pining for something, we know this is a state of non-surrender. Through deep listening and attunement, we discover that the distracting forces of the veils are only born of habit patterns which can be overcome.
Conclusion
We experiment with sitting in Bhagavan’s Old Hall, allowing the addictive dimensions of our preoccupations to reveal themselves. If on such a day following our early morning meditation, we amble a little way up the Hill behind the Ashram at dawn, we may find ourselves stunned by the silence in the air—the stateliness of the trees and the unshakable firmness of the stones—as though Arunachala were apprenticing us in the art of stillness. Here we remember what the sastra says about Lord Rudra as sound and echo, intangible vibration, and the infinitesimal substance of every particle of dust and foam, immanent in verdant trees and the soft green grass, the rustling withered leaves and the silent dead. [15]
Here on the slopes of Arunachala, we behold His presence in an immense resonant field, alive and pulsing, each and every thing having its own being, each and everything in intimate contact with everything else.
Our task, it would seem, is figuring out how to harmonise with it all. If wisps of non-surrender arise again, we greet them in an even-tempered way, favouring what is greater than ourselves. In that moment we see that this vast field of knowing called chidakasa is our very own Self, and we recall the name the Sage-poet used when he versified the following appeal on our behalf:
Might I become like the ether and reach Thee, subtle of being, that this tempest of thoughts may end? Might I, thy prey, surrender unto thee and be consumed, and so have peace, O Arunachala! [16] —
(series concluded)
Footnotes
[1] Talks, §244; Gems, p. 24.
[2] Ibid, §244.
[3] Talks, § 290. In this connection we remember that samasara means ‘to keep moving’.
[4] Talks, §244.
[5] Ibid, §244.
[6] Talks, §579.
[7] Plato’s Republic, Chap 3.
[8] Talks, §579.
[9] Talks, §473.
[10] Ibid., §473.
[11] In the Kitchen with Bhagavan (manuscript), p. 21.
[12] Talks, §244.
[13] ‘Encounters with Bhagavan’, Part II, T. R. Kanakammmal, The Mountain Path, July 2006, pp. 31-32.
[14] Talks, §107.
[15] The Mountain Path, July 1982, p. 204.
[16] Aksharamanamalai, §57, 28.
