Surrender

Sage

Being

Work

Q: Bhagavan said yesterday that while one is engaged in search of God 'within', `outer' work would go on automatically. In the life of Sri Chaitanya it is said that during his lectures to students he was really seeking Krishna within and he forgot all about his body and went on talking of Krishna only. This raises a doubt as to whether work can safely be left to itself. Should one keep part of one's attention on the physical work? 

Sri Ramana Maharshi :

The Self is all. 
Are you apart from the Self ? 
Or can the work go on without the Self ? 

The Self is universal so all actions will go on 
whether you strain yourself to be engaged in them or not. 
The work will go on of itself. 

Thus Krishna told Arjuna that he need not trouble to kill the Kauravas because they were already slain by God. 

It was not for him to resolve to work and worry himself about it, 
but to allow his own nature to carry out the will of the higher power. 

Q: But the work may suffer if I do not attend to it.

Sri Ramana Maharshi :

Attending to the Self means attending to the work. 
Because you identify yourself with the body, 
you think that work is done by you. 

But the body and its activities, including that work, 
are not apart from the Self. 

What does it matter whether you attend to the work or not ? 

When you walk from one place to another 
you do not attend to the steps you take 
and yet you find yourself after a time at your goal. 

You see how the business of walking goes on without your attending to it. So also with other kinds of work. 

Q: If one holds the Self in remembrance, will one's actions always be right? 

Sri Ramana Maharshi :

They ought to be. 
However, such a person is not concerned with the right or wrong of actions. His actions are God's and therefore right.

~ From Be as you are book

CHADWICK'S ENLIGHTENMENT

Ramana Hridayam

CHADWICK'S ENLIGHTENMENT

Once, I asked Chadwick, “Are you realized?” I have put this question to all of the old devotees like Muruganar, Cohen, Osborne, Sadhu Natanananda, Devaraja Mudaliar and others. None of them either said yes or no - all smiled. 

When I asked him whether he was realized, he did not say yes or no. Instead, he told me, “I will tell you what happened. After many years of my stay with Bhagavan - four or five years, I committed the mistake of trying to evaluate how much I had progressed spiritually. This is a thing any seeker should not do. I felt that I had not progressed. 

Many who saw me in Ramanasramam, looked at me like I was a sage or a saint saying, „Oh! He is so fortunate. He is so close to Bhagavan. He meditates so much. He is already in that state.‟ 

This created a contradiction in me as I personally felt that I was not progressing spiritually. However, having left the material life I could not go back to a worldly life either. I felt caught between the devil and the deep sea. 

I was sorrow stricken. I ran to Bhagavan‟s hall. He was alone. I told him, „Bhagavan, this is my plight. I am neither here nor there and this causes much sorrow in me.‟ 

Bhagavan looked at me compassionatelyand said, "Chadwick, who says all this?‟ 

Immediately, there was a current like shock in my body and I literally ran to my room, shut the doors and went into a neutral state. I was not bothered whether I was spiritually maturing or whether I would be able to stay in the world. I was in a neutral state of silence. A few days passed like that wherein I was neither happy nor worried.” 

The only luxury that Chadwick allowed himself was taking his bath in a bath tub which he had in the verandah of his cottage. One day, shortly after the above incident, something happened unexpectedly. 

As Chadwick told me later, “I was taking my bath and very honestly Ganesan, I was not in a spiritual state or in a prayerful mood when it suddenly dawned - the „I AM‟!” 

He experienced it - not just as words. He was so ecstatic that he did not even dry himself. He just wrapped a towel around his waist and ran to the Old Hall from where a few days back he had run away. Fortunately, this time too, Bhagavan was alone. In this spiritual ecstasy of experiencing the „I AM‟, where there was no Chadwick, just the „I AM‟, he asked Bhagavan, “Bhagavan, is
THIS it?” 

Chadwick recounted, “Bhagavan gave me the most glorious smile, and then confirmed, „Yes, Chadwick, THIS is THAT!‟ I then asked him, „Bhagavan, is it so simple?‟ Bhagavan replied, „Yes it is that simple.‟ Since then, I‟ve never had any doubt.”

Ramana Periya Puranam

Self