M: “No powers can equal Self-realization.

People are not content with their idea of jnana and want siddhis as well. They only look at the body. They are likely to neglect the supreme happiness of jnana and get side-tracked and lost on the way instead of following the royal path. Jnana is everything, and a jnani will not waste any thought on the occult powers."

The Maharshi is unvarying in his attitude towards psychic visions. Even when his disciples report that his own picture has appeared to them, transfigured in brilliant light, he counsels them to put aside all form and to remember that what is thus seen is perish¬able; what has an origin must have an end; it is the intuitive per¬ception of the Self that must be seized.

M: "The seer, the seen and the seeing was all one, all within yourself. Nobody else saw it. It was your own fancy, and yet it is also true that YOU really did see it."

EMBRACING THE HIGHEST

When Bhagavan was very young he intuitively knew that Arunachala signified God in some way. In one of his verses he wrote,

‘From my unthinking childhood, the immensity of Arunachala had shone in my awareness’.

He didn’t know then that it was a place that he could go to; he just had this association with the word Arunachala. He felt, ‘this is the holiest place, this is the holiest state, this is God himself’. He was in awe of Arunachala and what it represented without ever really understanding that it was a pilgrimage place that he could actually go to. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that one of his relatives actually came back from here and said, ‘I’ve been to Arunachala’. Bhagavan said it was an anti-climax. Before, he had imagined it to be some great heavenly realm that holy, enlightened people went to when they died. To find he could go there on a train was a bit of a letdown. His first reaction to the word Arunachala was absolute awe. Later there was a brief period of anticlimax when he realized it was just a place on the map.

Later still, after his enlightenment experience, he understood that it was the power of Arunachala that had precipitated the experience and pulled him physically to this place. The verse I just quoted from chronicles the early stages of his relationship with the mountain:

"Look, there [Arunachala] stands as if insentient. Mysterious is the way it works, beyond all human understanding. From my unthinking childhood, the immensity of Arunachala had shone in my awareness, but even when I learned from someone that it was only Tiruvannamalai, I did not realize its meaning. When it stilled my mind and drew me to itself and I came near, I saw that it was stillness absolute."

The last line contains a very nice pun. Achala is Sanskrit for ‘mountain’ and it also means ‘absolute stillness’. On one level this poem is describing Bhagavan’s physical pilgrimage to Tiruvannamalai, but in another sense he is talking about his mind going back into the heart and becoming totally silent and still.

When he arrived, and this is something you won’t find in any of the standard biographies, he said he stood in front of the temple. It was closed at the time, but all the doors, right through to the innermost shrine, spontaneously opened for him. He walked straight in, went up to the lingam and hugged it.

He didn’t really want this version of events publicized for two reasons. First, he didn’t like letting people know that miracles were happening around him. When such events happened, he tried to play them down. Second, he knew that the temple priests would get very upset if they found out that he had touched their lingam. Even though he was a brahmin, the temple priests would take his act to be a contaminating one, and they would have had to order a special elaborate puja to reconsecrate the lingam. Not wanting to upset them, he kept quiet.

Q.: What is the fruit of one’s life?

Bhagavan: If a person understands that he must conduct himself according to the true principles of life, that itself is the fruit of great tapas (spiritual practice) done in his previous life. Those who do not think in this way are merely wasting their time.

The French Catholic monk Swami Abhishiktananda, the time he spent at Arunachala - leading to a deep enlightenment experience towards the end of his life.

He had darshan of Bhagavan in 1949, and in the early 1950s, he came back to Arunachala to spend time meditating in its caves. An account of his meeting with Bhagavan (who made a huge and very positive impression on him) and the months he spent meditating in the caves of Arunachala can be found in his book ‘The Secret of Arunachala’ which was published in the late 1970s, a few years after its author had passed away.

Before coming to India Swami Abhishiktananda had spent more than twenty years as a Benedictine monk in a French monastery, where he was known as Father Henri le Saux. After some time in India, he adopted the robes and lifestyle of a Hindu sannyasi and called himself ‘Swami Abhishiktananda’. Despite the change of outfit and name, for many years he clung tenaciously to the basic tenets of the Catholic faith that he had been brought up in, feeling that the highest Christian experience and teachings were superior to their Hindu counterparts.

In 1973 he had a heart attack on the streets of Rishikesh that left him unconscious and temporarily paralyzed. When he finally recovered his faculties, he instantly became aware that the Abhishiktananda who had held tightly to Catholic doctrine throughout his life had vanished, leaving just an impersonal experience of the underlying ‘I am’. This is how he wrote about it in letters to friends:

‘Who can bear the glory of transfiguration, of man's dying as transfigured; because what Christ is I AM! One can only speak of it after being awoken from the dead … .

‘It was a remarkable spiritual experience … While I was waiting on my sidewalk, on the frontier of the two worlds, I was magnificently calm, for I AM, no matter what in the world! I have found the GRAIL!’ (‘Swami Abhishiktananda’, by James Stuart, ISPCK, 1989, p. 346)

The finding of the grail was inextricably linked to losing all the previous concepts he had had about Christ and the Church. Commenting on this experience in the same book, he wrote:

‘So long as we have not accepted the loss of all concepts, all myths – of Christ, of the Church – nothing can be done.

’From this new experiential standpoint, he was able to say, from direct experience, that it was the ‘I’, rather than a collection of sectarian teachings and beliefs, that gave reality to God:

‘I really believe that the revelation of AHAM [“I”] is perhaps the central point of the Upanishads. And that is what gives access to everything; the “knowing” which reveals all “knowing”. God is not known, Jesus is not known, nothing is known outside this terribly solid AHAM that I am. From that alone all true teaching gets its value.’(‘Swami Abhishiktananda’, by James Stuart, ISPCK, 1989, p. 358)

In addition to writing several books that attempted to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Christianity, Abhishiktananda had been a regular contributor to seminars and conferences on the future development of Indian Christianity. After his great experience, he received an invitation to attend a Muslim gathering in France to give a Christian point of view. In declining the invitation, he revealed how all his old ideas had been swept away, and how he no longer felt able to expound a specifically Christian viewpoint:

‘The more I go [on], the less able I would be to present Christ in a way which would still be considered as Christian … For Christ is first an idea which comes to me from outside. Even more after my “beyond life/death experience” of 14.7 [.73] I can only aim at awakening people to what “they are”. Anything about God or the Word in any religion, which is not based on the deep “I” experience, is bound to be simple “notion”, not existential.

‘I am interested in no Christology at all. I have so little interest in a 'Word of God' which will awaken man within history … The Word of God comes from/to my own “present”; it is that very awakening which is my self-awareness. What I discover above all in Christ is his “I AM” … it is that I AM experience which really matters. Christ Is the very mystery “That I AM”, and in the experience and existential knowledge all Christology has disintegrated.’ (‘Swami Abhishiktananda’, by James Stuart, ISPCK, 1989, pp. 348-9)

Then, confirming that a lifetime’s convictions had been dropped, he went on to explain that the final Christian experience of ‘I am’ could not differ from its Hindu equivalent:

‘What would be the meaning of a “Christianity-coloured” awakening? In the process of awakening, all this coloration cannot but disappear … The coloration might vary according to the audience, but the essential goes beyond. The discovery of Christ’s I AM is the ruin of any Christian theology, for all notions are burned within the fire of experience … I feel too much, more and more, the blazing fire of this I AM in which all notions about Christ's personality, ontology, history, etc. have disappeared.’ (‘Swami Abhishiktananda’, by James Stuart, ISPCK, 1989, p. 349)

After a lifetime of meditation and research he had finally conceded that no explanation or experience could impinge on the fundamental reality, ‘I am’. Years before he had predicted that this standpoint would be the inevitable consequence of a full experience of ‘I am’:

‘Doctrines, laws, and rituals are only of value as signposts, which point the way to what is beyond them. One day in the depths of his spirit man cannot fail to hear the sound of the I am uttered by He-who-is. He will behold the shining of the Light whose only source is itself, is himself, is the unique Self … What place is then left for ideas, obligations or acts of worship of any kind whatever?’ (‘Saccidananda’ by Abhishiktananda, ISPCK, 1974, p. 46)

‘When the Self shines forth, the “I” that has dared to approach can no longer recognize its own self or preserve its own identity in the midst of that blinding light. It has, so to speak, vanished from its own sight. Who is left to be in the presence of Being itself. The claim of Being is absolute … All the later developments of the [Jewish] religion - doctrine, laws and worship – are simply met by the advaitin with the words originally revealed to Moses on Mount Horeb, “I am that I am”.’

(‘Saccidananda’ by Abhishiktananda, ISPCK, 1974, p. 45)

- David Godman's FB page: Arunachala Cave-Dwellers and Sadhus

THE EQUALITY OF THE JNANI

D. You have said that the Jnani can be and is active, and deals with men and things. I have no doubt about it now.

But you say at the same time, that he has no difference, abheda, to him all is one, he is always in the Consciousness; if so, how does he deal with differences, with men, with things which are surely different?

M. He sees these differences as but appearances, he sees them as not separate from the True, the Real, with which he is one.

D. The Jnani seems to be more accurate in his expressions, he appreciates the differences better than the ordinary man. If sugar is sweet and wormwood is bitter to me, he too seems to realize it so. In fact, all forms, all sounds, all tastes, etc., are the same to him as they are to others.

If so, how can it be said that these are mere appearances? Do they not form part of his life-experience?

M. I have said that equality is the true sign of Jnana.

The very term equality implies the existence of differences.

It is a unity that the Jnani perceives in all differences, which I call equality. Equality does not mean ignorance of distinctions. When you have the Realization, you can see that these differences are very formal, they are not at all substantial, or permanent, and what is essential in all these appearances is the one Truth, the Real. That I call unity. . . .

You referred to sound, taste, form, smell, etc. True, the Jnani appreciates the distinctions, but he always perceives and experiences the one Real in all of them. That is why he has no preferences, whether he moves about, or talks, or does, it is all the One Real in which he does or moves or talks. He has nothing apart from the one Supreme Truth.