20. Total Awareness leads to Enlightenment
Listen to this truth: the moment we imbibe a single dimension of the truth in any way, if we catch a single idea and imbibe it honestly, truthfully, we have caught the right thread. Just one aspect of the truth is enough. It can do wonders. There are so many paths that lead us to the ultimate truth.
Periapuranam, meaning the Great Epic, is a book in Tamil, which describes the life of 63 enlightened masters. If we study the life of these masters, we will be surprised. We will find that some of them have not done anything that seems worthwhile. In our opinion, they would have done nothing at all. They would have faced no challenges in their lives. Nothing remarkable would have happened in their lives. In fact most of them would have simply plucked flowers, offered it to God and achieved enlightenment! Understand: they all lived with complete devotion and awareness towards God. So that was enough. We may claim the same thing of ourselves but it is not true. Our minds are too complex to be able to do this. In those days it was possible.
What we do is not important; what matters is how honest we are with our actions. When the masters offered flowers, they were true and honest in their action. We also offer flowers everyday and do all possible things to please God but we are not enlightened as yet.
It is because we are not honest. When these masters pluck flowers to offer to God, they are thinking of Him to whom they are offering the flowers. They are totally devoted to the thought of the deity with nothing else distracting them.
When we pluck flowers, even if it is to offer to our favorite deity, we are thinking of something else, somebody else. I have seen people who do rituals regularly. During the ritual, they will be thinking of something else. Their thoughts will be either with their office work or some thing else in their life.
Enlightenment leads to thoughtlessness. I was traversing the Omkara hills on Buddha Purnima night when I had my ultimate spiritual experience-enlightenment. It was a full moon night and I was sitting on the banks of the river Narmada, totally relaxed. I had given up all my meditation techniques, mantras and penance, just a week earlier. I decided to relax totally and let go of everything. I simply sat and enjoyed nature's beauty. Around midnight, the relaxation became deeper and deeper and the thoughts became less and less. The inner chattering totally stopped and an unimaginable ecstasy took over me. There was no body, no boundary. I became one with the cosmic energy, the Divine. I became forever blissful.
Our being knows the truth. We only need to open our hearts and minds to it. Once we begin to live in the truth, we will expand and cover the entire universe.
21. Devotion or Intellect, they Lead to the Same!
The words created, creator and creation cause unending arguments.
Let us be clear. What we actually see as three separate entities are not separate at all. The creator, created and creation are all the same! The words mean the same thing!
Creation itself is intelligence. Creation has its own intelligence to direct its growth. The creation is continuously creating. Only the creating exists. Only the process exists.
Where does this concept fit in our ultimate goal, which is to live joyfully? To be joyful, we need to learn to live without the help of body and mind.
Many devotees ask me, 'What is destiny?'
I answer, 'Your present is a totality of all your past decisions and your future is the totality of all your present decisions. The purpose of human life is to learn the techniques to live blissfully, without the help of the body and mind. Learn that. That is what I mean by being with God.
Learn to live in ecstasy. Great masters like Ramana Maharishi, Adi Shankara and Swami Vivekananda were great intellectuals. Ramana said that learning to live ecstatically, blissfully without the help of the body and mind is the only thing we have to learn because it is the ultimate goal.
Our understanding of the types of Bhakti yoga and Gnana Yoga is flawed. We think that Bhakti yoga primarily means devotion, and Gnana Yoga means wisdom, an intellectual process. We are wrong.
Bhakti yoga and Gnana Yoga are means by which we unite with the Divine. Masters like Ramana Maharishi, even though intellectual, expressed bhakti at its peak. Two other great masters Chaitanya and Ramanuja also expressed their great wisdom through bhakti. Ramanuja's commentaries on the scriptures are incomparable. Both are intellectuals, but are perceived as bhakti proponents. Be clear: there is no difference between Gnana and Bhakti yoga.
Devotion or faith is an easy way to attain liberation or enlightenment. But even if we have faith, nobody can liberate us like magic. We each have to liberate ourselves using the power of faith. We have to work on ourselves.
This is the way to acquire enlightenment. When we work on ourselves, and when the Guru's grace descends on us, we get enlightened.
Both these paths are not different from one another. In our journey to enlightenment, it is not important which path we travel; what is important is how sincerely we travel.