Visitor. I am taught that Mantra Japam is very potent in practice.
Bhagavan: The Self is the greatest of all mantras and goes on automatically and eternally. If you are not aware of this
internal mantra, you should take to do it consciously as japam, which is attended with effort, to ward off all other thoughts.
By constant attention to it, you will eventually become aware of the internal mantra, which is the state of
Realisation and is effortless.
Firmness in this awareness will keep you continually and effortlessly in the current,
however much you may be engaged on other activities.
Listening to Veda chanting and mantras has the same result as conscious repetitions of japam – its rhythm is the japam.
- GURU RAMANA.
Chapter XI
MEDITATION
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The Jnani (sage) is the Self, and sees nothing apart from himself.
(Day by Day with Bhagavan)
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“I know one (Sri Ramakrishna Dev) whom the world used to call mad, and this was his answer:
“My friends, the whole world is a lunatic asylum: some are mad after wordly love, some after name, some after fame, some after money, some after salvation and going to heaven. In this big lunatic asylum I too am mad; I am mad after God. You are mad; so am I.
I think my madness is after all the best.”
- Swami Vivekananda
....
A JNANI HAS NO BODY
Before leaving the ashram, I wrote down several questions for Guy Hague to ask Bhagavan that I had not had a chance to ask myself. I had been bothered by the fact that so many saints and enlightened people had been ill and suffering physically. I asked, “Should they not have perfect bodies and why do they not cure themselves?” In Europe, I got a letter from Guy saying he had discussed my question with Bhagavan. He wrote:
“Bhagavan told me to tell you that the spiritually perfect person need not necessarily have a perfect body. The reason, as he explained it, is very simple.
“You see, the ego, the body, and the mind are the same thing. The spiritually perfect person, like Bhagavan, is above these three things. Consequently, he has… no body to heal, neither a mind — or ego — to heal it with. He is beyond all this because it is illusion. He is living in Reality. Christian Scientists can take the mind and heal the body — for they are the same thing. American Indians heal, too, in this manner. It is faith healing.
“But if the spiritually perfect person is sick in body it is because the body is working out its karma. Bhagavan gave an illustration of karma, which he says is like an electric fan and must just run its course, only gradually ceasing even after it has been turned off.
He says the mind is born into illusion and builds a body and a world to suit it — that is, a world that it has earned and deserves (by its karma). Bhagavan, knowing the body and the mind to be illusion, cannot experience any bodily ailment or discomfort. We make him suffer pain, loss of weight, etc. It is in our minds, not his. He is actually bodiless, though you and I cannot realize this as a fact.”
- Mercedes de Acosta: Here lies the Heart
