Sw Chinmayananda's Account Of Meeting Ramana Maharshi

[Shanmugam]

I found this incident narrated by Swami Chinmayananda very interesting and wanted to share it with everyone:

“I was just emerging from high school, exams were over. On a package railway ticket I was roaming through south India. As the train steamed through the country side at a halting speed, most of the passengers in my compartment suddenly peered through the windows in great excitement and bowed revertentially to the elaborate temple beyond. Inquiring about it, I was told that it was the Tiruvannamalai temple.

Thereafter, the talk of my fellow travellers turned to Ramana Maharshi. The word “Maharshi” conjured up in my mind ancient forest retreats and superhuman beings of divine glow. Though I was at that time a convinced atheist, I was deeply drawn to visit the Maharshi’s Ahsram. I chose to take the next available train to Tiruvannamalai.

At the Ashram I was told that the Maharshi was in the hall and anybody was gree to walk in and see him. As I entered, I saw on the couch an elderly man, wearing but a loincloth, reclining against a round boster. I sat down at the very foot of the couch. The Maharshi suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight into mine. I looked into his. A mere look, that was all. I felt that the Maharshi was, in that split moment, looking deep into me – and I was sure that he saw all my shallowness, confusions, faithlessness, imperfections and fears.

I cannot explain what happened in that one split moment. I felt opened, cleaned, healed and emptied! A whirl of confusions, my atheism dropping away, but scepticism flooding into question, wonder, and search. My reason gave me strength and I said to myself, “It is all mesmerism, my own foolishness.”. Thus assuring myself, I got up and walked away.

But the boy who left the hall was not the boy who had gone in some ten minutes before. After my college days, my polical work, and after my years of stay at Uttarkashi at the feet of my master, Tapovanam, I know that what I gained on the Ganges banks was that which had been given to me years before by the saint of Tiruvannamalai on that hot summer day – by a mere look.

Sri Ramana is not a theme for discussion; he is an experience, he is a state of consciousness. Sri Ramana was the highest reality and the cream of all the scriptures in the world. He was there for all to see how a master can live in perfect detachment. Though in the mortal form, he lived as the beauty and purity of the infinite”

[Shanmugam]

What I just posted was an example of teaching through silence.... No wonder Swami Chinmayananda later realized that what he learnt through years of learning scriptures were already given to him by Ramana Maharshi by giving him a glimpse of absolute reality..

Here is what Ramana Maharishi said about teaching in silence. (Getting such an initiation through silence requires extraordinary receptivity. Not everyone can understand the silent transmission):

D.: Why does not Sri Bhagavan go about and preach the Truth to the people at large?

M.: How do you know that I am not doing it? Does preaching consist in mounting a platform and haranguing to the people around? Preaching is simple communication of knowledge. It may be done in Silence too.

What do you think of a man listening to a harangue for an hour and going away without being impressed by it so as to change his life? Compare him with another who sits in a holy presence and leaves after some time with his outlook on life totally changed. Which is better: To preach loudly without effect or to sit silently sending forth intuitive forces to play on others?
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no 285)

Siva appeared before them sitting under the sacred banyan tree. Being yogiraja should He practise yoga? He went into samadhi as He sat; He was in Perfect Repose. Silence prevailed. They saw Him. The effect was immediate. They fell into samadhi and their doubts were at an end.
Silence is the true upadesa. It is the perfect upadesa. It is suited only for the most advanced seeker. The others are unable to draw full inspiration from it. Therefore they require words to explain the Truth. But Truth is beyond words. It does not admit of explanation.
(Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, talk no. 569)

[Prabhaker]

The real teaching cannot be taught, but still it is called a teaching. It cannot be taught, but it can be shown, indicated. There is no way to say it directly, but there are millions of ways to indicate it indirectly.

Lao Tzu says that the Truth cannot be said, and the moment you say it, you have already falsified it. The words, the language, the mind, are utterly incapable. Truth defies reason; it defies the head-oriented personality; it defies the ego. It cannot be manipulated. It is utterly impossible for reason to encounter it.

This is the first thing to be understood, and the more deeply you understand it, the more possibility will be available to me to indicate towards it. Whatsoever I am saying is not the Truth. It cannot be. Through words, only a situation can be created in which Truth may be possible. But that too one can never be definite about. It is unpredictable. No cause can be produced for it to happen – it happens when it happens. The only thing that can be done is to become available to it. Your doors should be open. When it knocks at your door, you should be present there. If you are present, available, receptive, it can happen. But remember, through scriptures, through the words of the Enlightened Ones, you cannot attain it.

So the first thing is that it cannot be said. And every Master has to create an indirect situation, has to push you towards the Unknown. All that he is saying is just pushing you towards that which cannot be said.

The second thing, before we can understand Kakua and this beautiful Zen story: the real teaching defies words but it cannot defy the heart. If there were a language of the heart, it could be said through it. But the heart has no language, silence is the only language of the heart.

When the heart is silent, it says something; when the mind is silent, it says nothing. Words are the vehicle of the mind. No words, silence, is the vehicle of the heart. Silence is a language without words, but one has to learn it. Just as one has to learn the languages of the mind, one has to learn the language of the heart: how to be silent, how to be wordless, how to be without a mind, how to be a no-mind.

When the mind stops functioning, immediately the whole energy moves towards the heart. When the mind is not functioning the heart functions; when the heart functions, only then can something be taught to you. The real teaching can be taught through the heart. You MUST be near the heart. The nearer you are, the more capable you become of understanding the silence.

Remember, silence is not emptiness. To the reason, it may appear that silence is emptiness – it is not. Silence is the most fulfilled moment possible. It is not only fulfilled, it is overflowing. But it is of a felt significance. The heart is not empty; it is the only thing which is full. The mind is just empty because mind has nothing but words. And what are words? – ripples in emptiness. And what is silence? – silence is the Total.

When you think, you are separate from Existence. When you don’t think, you are one. In a nonthinking moment you lose all boundaries; suddenly you disappear, and still you are. And this felt moment of non-ego, of no-mind, of no-thought is the situation in which it becomes possible for the Truth to descend into you. When you are empty of yourself, you will be filled by Truth. So all that a Master has to do is to kill you utterly and completely; is to destroy your ego utterly and completely; is to cut your head so that you can become the heart. And then the whole energy moves into the heart.

Can you be headless? If you can be, only then can you be a disciple. If you cling to the head, then you cannot be a disciple. Can you live without the head? If you cannot live without the head, then you are closed to the Truth. Head is the barrier, and heart is the opening.

Returning to the Source ~ Osho

[Prabhaker]

Between a master and a teacher what is transferred? Not truth, not knowledge -- then what is transferred? In fact, nothing is transferred. In the presence of the master something arises in the deepest core of the disciple, not that it is transferred. Nothing travels from the master to the disciple, nothing at all, but the presence of the master, the very presence of the master, and something that was deep inside starts surfacing. The presence of the master calls forth the being of the disciple -- not that something is given or transferred. Just the very presence of the master becomes a catalytic presence and the disciple starts changing.

Of course, a disciple will think that something is being done by the master. Nothing is being done. No real master ever does anything. All his doing consists of is being present to you, is being available to you. All his work consists of one simple thing -- that he should be there, just like the sun.

The sun rises in the morning and buds open and become flowers. Not that the sun gives them something, not that the sun comes and opens the buds -- nothing is done by the sun, just the presence of the light and the bud starts opening. The opening comes from the bud itself... and the flowering and the fragrance -- it all comes from the bud itself. The sun has not added anything to it, but the presence has been catalytic. Without the sun being present there the bud would find it almost impossible to open. It would not know that opening is possible. It would never become alert of its possibilities and potential. A master simply makes you aware of your potential. If he has achieved, you can achieve. He is just like you -- the blood and the bones and the body. He is just like you. If something is possible in his being, if his bud can become a flower, then why can't you become? This very idea sinks deep into the heart, stirs your whole being, and energies start surfacing, your bud starts opening.

This is called SATSANGA in the East -- to be in the presence of the master. And the real disciple is one who has come to know how to be present to the master. The master is present, but how to be present to the master?

Have you seen the sunflower? That is the symbol for the disciple. Wherever the sun moves, the sunflower moves that way. It is always present to the sun. In the morning it is facing East, in the evening it is facing West. It has moved with the sun. Wherever the sun is, the sunflower moves. The sunflower is the symbol, the metaphor for the disciple.

The Diamond Sutra ~ Osho