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Sri Krishna Janmashtami-2006.
My dear associates in the Path, Pranam at the
holy feet of all the devotees of the Master.
1.
On this auspicious occasion of Sri
Krishna Jayanthi I try to share some of my
understanding on the thoughts of our beloved
Master Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj of Shahjahanpur
in connection with Lord Krishna. Since they
relates to changing the course of ones’ life I
thought it is relevant on this occasion.
2.
In the article “SPIRITUAL
TRAINING THROUGH YOGIC TRANSMISSION” he wrote that “By the grace of my master I
shall try to reveal a great secret, or a
mystery, which the people in general do not
know. It is a great wonder when a great
personality like Lord Krishna, Swami Vivekananda
or my master changes the entire course of a
man's life. How is this done?”
3.
“Some skeptics may say it is after all
due to the person who wanted to change himself,
and the master or Guru was the cause merely for
name's sake. If Lord Krishna had such power why
did he not change the heart of Duryodhana
instead of bringing about the battle of
Kurukshetra? They may also quote many stories
wherein somebody taking a worthless person or
even a lifeless object as a guide has become a
great saint. But this need not hinder us in
trying to find out the reality, because God's
ways are mysterious. Some are deluded by their
own thinking and some are illumined by Divine
Grace.”
4.
True, that some of us think that we
understand everything or are capable of
understanding with our intellectual endowment
everything. While this is good the avoidable
irrational corollary to this, that ‘what I do
not understand is not correct’ is not very
helpful in the search of Truth. As Master has
warned us we should not get deluded by our own
thinking which many times are based on partial
facts and fragments of truth. There can be many
points of view and it is obvious that the point
of view of the Centre is the best though it is
not that easy to have. Every sadhaka tries to go
near the Centre from his angle and as he
approaches the Centre his vision gets broadened.
5.
Master continues “If the question as to
from whom Lord Krishna got light is put to me,
my answer would be that He is Self-luminous. But
then this need not mislead the enquirer that he
too is self-luminous and everyone else is also
such, and there is an end to all enquiry.
Logical speculations are no substitutes for the
cravings of the heart. The heart is not
satisfied even if the logic stops dead in some
blind alley.”
6.
The inquiry that we are having into the
nature of real self or God or Master is not
something that we can restrict to the realm of
the intellect. In which case it will be partial
and the result would be partial truth or shall I
say partial untruth! We are surely part of the
divine and an integral part at that. But our
mind cannot be Masters’ mind unless we purge out
all the dross and dirt out of our system and
make it as pure as we can. It has been stressed
by Master many times that our conscience can be
pure only when our mind, manas, chit and ahankar
are purified. Perfection we know is an Utopian
goal but, near perfection is what we can strive
for. It is here we need the help of others to
purify ourselves and the relevance of Pranahuti.
For this we attend to purification of our system
assiduously practicing the methods given by the
Master.
7.
Master continues his message saying that
“Pranahuti is effected through the power of will
which is always effective. If a trainer in
spirituality exerts his will to mould the mind
of the trainee it will bring effective and
excellent results. Many swamijis, who start the
profession of Gurudom as soon as they put on the
ochre-coloured uniform, complain that although
their shishyas (disciples) listen to them with
interest, yet they remain as crooked as the tail
of a dog. The reason is obvious. Either the
swamiji does not exert his will or he has got no
power. The teachers prescribe many laborious and
brain-taxing practices and leave their disciples
to their own fate. Neither does the teacher know
the result of the methods nor does the disciple
care to use his discrimination. The result is
internal grossness, dullness of the intellect
and loss of freedom on the part of the
disciples, and corruption, degradation and moral
turpitude on the part of gurus, who are very
conscious of only their right to teach, but
quite unmindful of their duties and
responsibilities towards their disciples.”
8.
“The worthy trainer with the power of
yogic transmission weakens the lower tendencies
of the mind of the trainee, and sows the seed of
Divine light in the inner most core of the
abhyasi's heart. In this process the trainer
uses his own will-force which has the Divine
Infinite power at its back. In a way he is
conscious of “That” and he just focuses “It”
through the lens of his own will upon the heart
of the trainee. The trainee may not feel
anything at the beginning. The reason is that he
is accustomed to feel only through the senses,
and the Divine power is beyond senses. After
some time, however, he may feel the results of
such transmission, which also are in the form of
subtle changes of the workings of his vital
parts and of the tendencies of his mind.”
9.
Master in the same article states what
happens to spiritual training in some
organisations. “There is an organisation in this
part of the country which professes to impart
spirituality. It commands a pretty large
following, and people who join it seldom break
off even though some of them, to my personal
knowledge, are greatly disgusted and averse to
it. I find that they have adopted unspiritual
ways to keep the abhyasis bound fast not only by
inducements and allurements but even by fright
and threats. And when I study their inner
condition, I find not one of them having any
spiritual achievement, but they are only caught
up by some material force. You will find hardly
one amongst them who is nearer the mark in any
way. Whereas, in our sanstha, you will be happy
to note that none of the preceptors has even the
slightest touch of maya in all his
Transmissions. It is only the pure wave that
flows from him to the abhyasi. In my opinion
such pious methods must at all cost be adhered
to in order to promote piety and righteousness
all over. I pray for the making of such noble
personalities to work for the enlightenment of
the world, and time alone shall bring the
results to light. We must try heart and soul to
prepare such worthy souls as may be useful and
helpful to the future world. It matters little
if a few break off from us, because what they
have gained during their brief contact will
develop in the subsequent life, if not in this
one. Thus our labour is by no means wasted or
lost.”
10.
Kindly note the purpose of the system
given by the Master. He said “I pray for the
making of such noble personalities to work for
the enlightenment of the world and time alone
shall bring the result to light.” His system is
meant for transformation of the world in
contrast to that of Lord Krishna where
individuals’ realisation to his duty is said to
be the goal. It is useful to recall certain
fundamentals about the concept of God with
reference to the attitudes that get generated in
us.
11.
When we view the Master in first person
we get one who is a granter of our wishes and
the pinnacle experience in such cases can be
Aham Brahmasmi.
12.
When we view Master in second person
“Thou” we move into the realm of devotion and
surrender.
13.
When we view the Master in third person
“IT” or ‘Tam’ we get a special personality who
is working out the transformation of human
consciousness in which we have a part to play so
that we live in an enlightened world.
14.
Lord Krishna in his Bhagavad Gita
explained the intricacies of Yoga of different
types adding the Bhakti aspect also in Yoga.
Different types of yoga that do not have
surrender to a Master as an integral element of
the system lead to what is termed as self
realisation. It is the common perception that
yoga sadhana leads to Advaitaanubhuti or to the
awareness of Aham Brahmasmi. It is held by many
scholars that yoga as taught by Sage Patanjali
is nir-Iswara or without God. There are many
hold the opinion that Iswara Pranidhana is part
and parcel of Patanjali Yoga. But in any Yoga
where God is not in the picture the pinnacle
experience can only be Aham Brahmasmi. In such
an experience the question of surrender is not
possible. Lord Krishna was emphatic in stating
that without the surrender to God no real
progress in the path of realisation which leads
to active participation in the divine plan is
possible. We should remember the purpose of
Lord Krishna in delivering the Gita is to
motivate Arjuna to fight the battle for the sake
of righteousness. It was not surely to make him
a saint. If one has to act and not get tainted
by the action there is only way of doing it
namely dedicating the entire actions to the
divine for the divine purpose and according to
divine will. This state of consciousness is
possible only through surrender and not the
methods of Ashtanga Yoga or other yogas bereft
of bhakti and surrender. Thus the Lord was
presenting Himself in the first and second
person aspects of God.
15.
Master even while giving the prayer for
all occasions starts with the words “Thou art”
and thus makes it clear that we should start
with the state of surrender to the Master so
that we reach His stage. His stage being TAM we
find the Master keeping before us the second
person and third person aspect of God. That is
why while he talks about surrender he gives a
definition of total surrender as surrender to
all that exists in the universe. It is no
surrender to any person or God that he talks but
surrender to the Infinite Being which expresses
itself every where.
16.
The transition from an orientation to the
second person God to the third person is not
that easy for the sadhaka. I seek your
indulgence to quote Dr.K.C.V. from his diary
"Thus I found myself made to abjure the old
theoretical ways of approach. I had to remake
myself in a new way. I had to take stock of my
whole past. All sectarian and caste conceptions
had to be rethought. Philosophies help bind
people to set notions. Thus I was to meet the
challenge of the New. It happened that I should
meet Shri Ramchandra ji.
17.
Firstly his views were clearly different
from my whole past. The conception of the
Ultimate as Zero was quite against my
philosophic inclination. Having failed with the
positive concept it is time to experiment with
this - Is it likely to be true?” The Zero has to
be understood as the Beginning or Origin of all
possibilities being nothing of what it becomes.
18.
The concept of Invertendo shows how the
deformation of evolution is natural and the
power inherent in Zero (Nirguna). I began
understanding the meaning of Vivarta. All flow
necessitates the inversion and it is natural.
The formations of the descent are clearly on
this principle of inversions. The vast Brahman
extends up to our knowledge of it. Thus Truth,
Consciousness and Bliss themselves are
attributes which get transcended in higher
approaches. Satchitananda are not the Ultimate
Reality, they too being terms of knowing -
Sankara too gets transcended.
19.
The individual is continuous with the
Universal and the Ultimate, and is not
abolished. The Pralaya or mergence is cosmic and
supracosmic and then all are withdrawn into the
Ultimate. The individual ray of the Ultimate has
created for itself an organic organization of
physical-vital, mental and supramental centers
and organs. These may well be the knots which
have demarcated the several systems known as the
physical, vital, mental or the bonal, muscular,
circulatory, alimentary, hormonic, nervous,
supranervous, and psychic etc. They have become
autonomous in a sense but have to be opened up
for higher control. This is possible only by
bringing down the highest power of the Centre
and not merely the higher power just above the
human. It is the necessity to mould the lower in
terms of the highest through the higher which
has also to mould itself to receive the highest.
That leads to going beyond Sri Aurobindonian
Vijnana - moulding of the mental, vital and
physical.
20.
This is done by means of the transmission
or descent of the highest consciousness or
condition (Zero) itself into the lowest region
of the human heart or the organism as it is. The
yogic process is this transmission from the
Ultimate which alone can shape the entire being,
of the abhyasi for the experience and
realisation of one's oneness with the Ultimate
and experience it in one's own physical, vital,
mental and supramental levels - called by Shri
Ramchandraji, the Pinda, Brahmanda, Para
Brahmanda and Central Regions working under the
direct force of the Centre".
21.
Shaping of the entire being or moulding
ourselves thus means a total integral and
holistic transformation in our way of living. We
are aware that during meditation we do go into
very deep states and some times we are at the
gross level. Broadly we may say that from the
ego centric awareness to ethnocentric awareness
is the normal mode of meditation of many of the
meditators. However we do seem to enter to
cosmic and pan cosmic or para cosmic levels of
consciousness. And surprisingly in almost all
the sincere meditations we do we enter into a
state of Tam or Total Ignorance as Rev. Master
calls it. This is the one imperience that impels
us to continue our meditation even as our Master
has stated in his Commentary on Ten
Commandments.
22.
If it were not so we will be facing the
problem stated by Lord Krishna in the XII
chapter of Gita sloka 5 which was translated by
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan as “ The difficulty of
those whose thoughts are set on the Unmanifested
is greater, for the goal of the Unmanifested is
hard to reach by the embodied beings.” One of
the, if not the unique feature of this system of
Rev. Babuji is that such Unmanifest Tam is
within our reach during our life time. This is
one singular contribution of this system for
which humanity shall be indebted. It is this
awareness of the Tam that makes us live the
fraternity that has been spoken for over several
millennia.
23.
Prayers have been the time tested method
of reaching the Lord. That we should pray for
all in the Universe for the spiritual good is by
itself a great prayer no doubt. But that we can
will for such a change is the possibility the
imperience of Tam grants us and this has not
been heard of so far. The method of this prayer
which uses our will while stating that “all the
people of the world are my brothers and sisters
and that we are developing true love and
devotion” is no ordinary petitioning prayer. It
is an expression of a will and determination to
live according to the will of the Master.
24.
Lord Krishna appealed to Arjuna to act in
such a way as to discharge his duties as
enshrined in the sastras. He was talking of
Swadharma though that is done ineffectively is
more important than the para dharma even if done
effectively. Commentaries and criticisms of the
commentaries is not our concern. Master has
stated clearly that it is our primary duty to
realise our oneness with God. And this duty is
some thing universal which does not distinguish
between castes and races. When God is taken in
the third person perspective, this can only mean
that we should partake in the divinization of
man which is the real duty waiting to be done by
all of us. The third commandment is categorical
in stating that our duty or dharma is to achieve
oneness with God. A deeper understanding of this
commandment would enable us to understand that
we cannot have other goals like artha, dharma
and jnana. This is in contrast to Lord Krishna
accepting four categories of devotees. In this
context it is prudent for us to consider the
statements of the Master regarding what type of
prayer we may make. To quote him from his
commentary on the second Commandment “One should
pray to Him alone who is the Master in the true
sense. I donot think it proper to pray to the
slaves i.e., those powers which are subordinate
to man who are potentialised by him…. …It is
also sheer folly to pray to the great Master for
worldly gains except in most special cases.”
When this is well understood our clarity
regarding the goal gets established in our
hearts and we seek Oneness with Him.
25.
It is not as though I have said something
that is not known to you. I am only placing
these ideas in the spirit of Bodhayantah
Parasparam. My salutations to all.
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