Talks and Lectures on the System of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga

Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga: The Natural Path of God Realisation

Lecture delivered at the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha Hall, Tennur, Thiruchirapalli on Saturday the 28th January, 1967.

As Dr. Radhakrishnan has stated it, firstly we have to know the past and then secondly we have to forget it.

I have had a philosophical past. I just now have a human present. So all that has been spoken about those things, which I had learnt and acquired so far, has been a preparation for renunciation of all of them. We have to enter the kingdom of Grace. Rightly he has said that the most important path for a natural life is to love all. To be able to love others out of the fullness of one's heart, out of a great sympathy for the sufferings of ills of others, that is a great thing no doubt. As Prof. Sarma has rightly said, to love is something terrific. To be the thing to be loved is much more difficult. God is Love, it is said, and Love is God. "Anbe Sivam, Anbe Deivam". But the misfortune with us is that the world is full of sorrow and misery, of troubles and sufferings and miseries. Then where is God's love, which is supposed to be enfolding me till death?

If anybody asks me if I love, No! How many can die? If every girl is fascinated by a bright boy or if every boy is fascinated by a bright girl, my first question is can you die for me. If God loves me, He dies for me. And if I love Him, I must die for Him. Therefore we see the impossibility of Love. Yet we are told in sweeter and sweeter words that God is Love and Love is God, and Love conquers all, and all that. All this of course does some good, but not enough.

What took me to this particular system is what you will be hearing about. I have done my work in a small section, entirely that of God Realization. As Sri Ramanuja has said, I found that what Sri Ramanuja taught me was that the union with God is the most important, and you must be able to establish it. Swami Vivekananda has written most beautifully about it. He has said that man is the temple of God!

"Bhaktya Tvananyaaya ........"

So he asked me to practice real Devotion. It does not come by mere repetition or chanting of mantras, or by Nama-japa; nor does it come by the acquisition of knowledge. It can come by none of these things but only by surrender. I am willing to see the end, therefore one must surrender to the ultimate. If the ultimate is to be described as Love, then I am prepared to attempt the challenge of its acceptance. I agree that God is Love. I agree that I do not know whom to love, and that I want of God the capacity to love. This has been my main objective in the study of European Philosophy and also of Indian Philosophy. I have read all the different Philosophers, both Indian and European. I have also taught Philosophy to students to enable them to pass their examinations, to acquire higher degrees. But I also know that to absorb the Highest mind you must have humility and the ability to penetrate the inner rather than the outer garments. It was with that approach that I read and studied every philosophy, but none fully satisfied me.

Yet the world is full of Grace. So when I began to study the western philosophers, and when I found people criticized even a Descartes, a Spinoza, then it has been surprising to me to see the degree of ignorance of the people who wrote, and the spirit of their writing. I do not understand Law or Engineering; and so you cannot understand Philosophy! Every science and every subject has a technique of expression. You are sincerely plunged with me into the use of words. Now philosophy, or rather a philosopher, has been described as a lover of words without knowing their meaning! But that is not the right way. Long ago the Mimamsakas and the Naiyayikas knew the use of words. The great Panini has definitely stated that the words must be known by their roots and their usage. You will see this if you look at the Sanskrit language, the meaning of what Panini said. The words are built around roots, 'Dhatus' and there are some words which may have as many as a hundred different meanings. Therefore multivocality seems to be the basic thing. So you must define every word. The meaning of every word you use must be fixed first. If you read Descartes, or Spinoza, you will find that they first lay down a broad vocabulary, that is they define specifically the words they use. You will see therefore that we have to be guided in the meaning of words in philosophy. So I can understand why some people who merely love words cannot penetrate the inner sanctum of philosophical experience.

But then all the time we wander, and we must come back. After all our wandering around, and after experiencing multifarious things, we have ultimately to come back to our position. That is the only virtue. In fact you all know the saying "Vriddha Nari Pativrata"! So I wandered, and now I have come back. Now arises the necessity for a dedication to the goal; we must dedicate ourselves-we must have 'Diksha' and that is, for Realization, a cardinal thing.

The Kenopanishad, that noblest of the Upanishads, asks kenesitam patati preshitam manah ..... and it immediately answers:

Srotrasya Srotram Manaso Mano yad
Vacho ha Vacham sa hi Pranasya Pranaha.

When you ask these simplest of questions, with what do I see? With what do I hear? With what do I speak? The answer immediately comes:

Chakshushaschakshur Atimuchya dhirah
Pretya Asmallokad Amrita Bhavanti.

When the Kena puts it in this definitive form, they, the Rishis, are asking you to experience and feel the very pulse of your being.

Who can inject this into you? That is next question. We have wandered away from the centre. Who can take you back? Arjuna, after having listened to the eighteen chapters of the Gita, in the ecstasy of listening to the Master, heard more than what he heard with his ears. He understood much more than what he could have if he had only heard with his ears, and seen with his eyes. And all because of the Love of God, which made it possible for him to do so. Arjuna says 'I have to go back to the centre. I can't do it by myself. You must help me.'

Therefore somebody who has reached the centre already, and who has experienced it, he alone can do it! First you must hear of it; then having heard of it, you must speak of it, practice it and finally grow into it. As a Visishtadvaitin I may surprise you all by saying this, but I like it better, and I am willing to follow it up to the last. I gain nothing by being here.

This 'Pranasya Pranah' was the one thing called initiation. It was the breath given for a return to life. God gives this very breath to help you to get back to Him. This is the most important thing in the Vedic path, this statement of the "Pranasya Pranah". If pranayama means anything at all, it is not the inspiration and the expiration and the retention of breath; not the puraka and the kumbhaka and the rechaka. It cannot be this. For pranayama it may do something, this breathing in and out, but not for the inner development. Of course, if pranayama meant that you could inspire the Divine and expire the dross, which is within you, then that would have meant a great deal. But that can't be done. As you all know every yogi had to go through hell! Yogis have always been in difficulties, and even the devas. Even Indra himself is said to have distrusted the rishis. If you sit in a corner and contemplate, then everybody begins to be worried. The family members, father, mother, wife, they all begin to think that you are going to run away from them. And so they are worried. Others think that you are conspiring and plotting to do some evil, and so they also worry. Yogis are thus thought of as demented persons, or as neurotics. Now what do you think of a yogi brought to this level by a large number of people from eternity. What are they to do?

You see, we are inheritors of the past. But we must remember we are also the progenitors of the future. Whatever may have been our past, we must so model our present as to shape our future. I have often said that even if we cannot be gods, or become gods ourselves, let us at least aspire to become the fathers and mothers of gods. We must be producers of gods.

That is why when I became devoted to Sri Aurobindo, it was for this creation of a Divine race of beings. A race of men and women nobler, bigger, more spiritual than what we have today. A "Brahma-Vit" becomes a Brahmin, one Divine in Life. God pours Himself into such a one and he is a Brahmin. You see that the conception of a brahmin was something very different from the hereditary ideas that we have today. Not that I differ from it - please note that, but they arose by this flame and fire and the very breath of God.

People come to look upon the past as a nuisance. Ideas arise and die, or are mutilated or destroyed. We see philosophers murdering each other, sects fighting one another. Then there are the multitudes of people who say that Yoga is not for all of us! Who told you that? What can I do with such people, that is my problem. This is how we have scandalized ourselves.

Hindu thought had to be rethought. Take Kanada, or Kapila, or Badarayana, or Jaimini. What lives on in the most secret places of my heart is not their scholarship, abundant as that is, but the spirit of their teaching. It is so easy to laugh at their systems. But has anybody studied the six darshanas? How many of us have taken seriously a Patanjali, or a Kapila, and really considered their teachings? And it is these same people who have been abusing even the Buddha and Mahavira with this same intelligence-I mean their colossal ignorance! Therefore, these darshanas have become meaningless to us. But do you think that there was a time, or rather that there was not a time when these darshanas were not living to us?

But what has happened today? Where is Jaimini's Purva Mimamsa speaking of gods and of supramental powers? We do not know. We think only that a Naiyayika will be reborn as a jackal in his next life. We think of the mimamsakas as those eating mamsa. Of Badarayana, we think he is a wool-gatherer!

How many have seriously thought to what comical postures we have reduced these darshanakaras. This has made me miserable, this extraordinary ignorance we have produced.

I don't want to go into details, but to tell you the need for a new darshana.

Are you alive, or are you dead? Please answer this question. Are you satisfied that you are alive? How can I say 'I exist'? Some only exist if they have a car. They must have a car to exist! Others exist only if they have objects of their desires. Remove these objects, and they cease to exist. Some exist by jobs. If a man has no job, or has lost his job, what does he say? "Please give me a job, so that I can exist". If such people have no jobs, they don't know what to do and how to exist! People spend time and money on all these, but why can't you spend some time and find out if you exist? Is this the way? What is the meaning of existence? This is a very serious problem in Europe, this one of existence. They even have existentialists! But what is it, how do I exist? Reality means that if you attain to that Reality, you exist. To exist you must begin with the practice of truth, satya. Satya-it is sat, makes for sat. 'Ya' the 'ya' shows that it is something to be achieved. This is the greatness of Panini.

Therefore if you want to exist, you must speak the truth. Always speak the truth. You may ask 'what of those situations when I cannot speak the truth?' You must. Pray to the Master and you will find that such situations where you cannot speak the truth are avoided. You are not thrust into such situations. One who speaks the truth exists. Anything that passes away does not exist.

Now the Jiva or Reality of your existence is the Pranasya Prana! The first thing is to practice a life of truth-a niyama.

The Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga is a purified version of the ancient system of Raja Yoga. The Raja Yoga of books have undergone an extraordinary amount of demotion. Handled by people who did not know what they were handling, or what they were doing, it has become distorted. But they don't know that Patanjali could not have said what he did without 'Ishwara Pranidhana'. His name itself indicates it. Patanjali-Pat-anjali-surrender. Therefore, surrender is first. We don't care whether God is, and how and what He is. We want to know God only as a Master. If you approach God as a God, or a Divine being, He runs away from you, but if you approach Him as a Guru, then He runs after you. You must choose God for your Guru. Any lesser one is meaningless. You must choose God, as Arjuna did, for your Master.

"Sarvam Samapnoshi..."

Why can't you try it? Accept Him at any point. The acceptance of God is primal in Yoga. No less a person than God Himself will do. In fact I feel that God cannot relegate this function of a Guru to anyone else. Artha, Kama, Dharma, these are all right for others. Not Realization. You see here if you can have God and surrender to Him, He shows the path. As Sri Krishna himself said, if you choose me - "Kshipram Bhavati!" You will "become" immediately!

So I start with God, in the simplicity of my faith, in the belief of my faith. So you see that when you take up this particular Raja Yoga, you have to be a suppliant seeking existence from the Ultimate Guru we call God. God is thought to be difficult of access. That may be true of God if you take Him as a king or ruler of the world, that is, in his political function. But if you take Him in his hermitage, then direct contact with God is possible. This desired contact has been one of my earliest personal experiences. You may have heard of Thirumangai Alwar. He was wandering all over to find a guru, but nobody would take him up, or teach him. In despair he went to a temple, and not finding the archakar, went directly in and prostrated before the deity, saying 'Om Namo Narayanaya'. And that was all! I got this inspiration later. My training later was taken over. I was not very conscious about it. It is only in retrospect that He seems to have had a guiding hand in my development.

When I came to Shri Ram Chandraji I did not know him earlier. I never went to Shahjahanpur, except much later. He came! Even then I wanted to test him. I said "You claim too much that you can put me in direct touch with God. How can you do this? Can you explain the process by which you make such a big claim". These were the questions, I asked him.

"I cannot talk. I am not a learned man like you, but sit before me; we start at the point of the heart. Secondly, I put you into direct touch with God. This process is the offering of that life force into that of the abhyasi to commence his spiritual journey". That is what he said.

I am a doubting Thomas. Even now I am one. I am afraid that God is a great deceiver. If I take Him as God, He deceives. If I take Him as a Guru, then he comes to me and satisfies me. This is a great ambivalence of God. I want you to see this distinction. Patanjali said that God is the Guru. Badarayana on the other hand said that God is the creator, the preserver and the destroyer .... Janmadyasya Yatah! There it began! But as Sri Krishna said, "Svalpamapyasya dharmasya Traayate Mahato Bhayat".

In India we all talk. We are great talkers, we Indians. We are fascinated by oratory; by the voice. We do very little. That is our main difficulty. Take Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. His voice, his oration. We are all carried away by it. So it is with others. I used to be fascinated by Satyamurthy. He had a grand voice and manner. I used to be just fascinated. So you see, the voice is a dangerous thing.

Mana therefore is a very important thing. I tell my Master "you speak silence!" You will see that Yoga is the real induction of the Divine consciousness of God.

To recall my experience with my Master, on the second day the unbelievable happened! I found myself in contact with the Divine. I didn't believe it. I thought it was hypnotism. But my Master said that it wasn't false. I found a great peace! The Pranasya Pranah ... it had become the eye of my eye, the ear of my ear.

Here I must tell you one thing. What is natural to an animal is unnatural to me; and what is natural to a God is unnatural to me. What is the Real nature? It is a spark of the Divine! You have to gain that status of the spark of the Divine, the Sesha of the Divine, the Shakthi of the Divine!

Your goal is to become a zero, an akinchana. Have nothing! Become nothing! If you can face up to it as Buddha said, you will find that the more you empty out yourself, the more the Divine will enter into you. You are a patra, a vessel. If it is empty, He can enter. You will then be told, "you do not exist, I exist".

Francis Thompson, in his "Hound of Heaven" tells the story of a wood-cutter, who kept dropping his load as he was going through the jungle, and God was following him, and kept picking up the dropped lumber, and He carried all his lumber for him. The wood-cutter turned and saw him, and called Him a robber. "I am no robber, you are my robber,' said God.

When you can place yourself in the natural path of the Divine, then the Divine Life is your life. "Asat" is what all of us are. That is why the Vedas say "Asato ma satgamaya". But then we have "Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya", from darkness lead me to light, and this gives us difficulty. Who knows that the light is darkness? "If light can thus hide, why not life," said Blanco white! We all know that sunlight hides the stars. When night comes and the sun has gone down, then it is that we see the beauty of the heavens above us!

We have got to develop this direct contact with God in order to realize ourselves as part and parcel of the Ultimate. Let us start this. It is possible that I may go up, and then come down and not in His middle. Or I may go down, and then go up, or I may start at the middle and go up or down. All that does not matter. But let us start this, with energy and sincerity, to bring down this force from above. Can God be brought down? Yes, in my personal experience! I felt deeply light and most of my thoughts were stilled. I reached the thoughtless condition.

If only my friends who are seekers will read the Bhagavad Gita from back to front, all our troubles will be over. That is how it should be read. Surrender first to the higher consciousness, so that it can then reveal to you the meaning of what you read. Please do the saranagati first. After you have done that, you may not read the first few chapters of the Gita. Please do the saranagati first and then see.

You want to achieve God. Why not let God achieve you? As Sankara said, this is a pratibimba, an image. Or as Plato said, the world is a mirror. Therefore, the only way to read the Gita is to start with the last chapter and digest it, the first few need not be read at all!

As in the Veda it is necessary to give up this way of looking at life as an abnormal specialization. Brahmacharya means life of Brahma, or life dedicated to the Brahman, that is, in union with Brahman. It is a simple word with a perfectly simple and clear meaning. But latterly it has been made a peculiar doctrine of non-sexuality! This is our modern difficulty. To practice yoga, they think, needs denial. First get into touch with God.

Then we have to know that Yoga is for the grihastha. This I must emphasize. Have we here a Vanaprastha? Leave alone a Sannyasi! I have not found in the whole range of the Yoga Sutras that you shall not practise yoga at home. There are of course a few yogas which are sannyasa yogas, and as such are not meant for all. But others are for grihasthas. In fact, I may say that there are as many yogas as there are subjects! There is a yoga of art and a yoga of science. There is a yoga of money and another of poverty; a yoga of love and a yoga of hate. Take what our forefathers have done. The 64 kalas, the graceful and immortal sculptures; their mastery of languages; their discernment of the chakras; the movement of the kundalini; their discovery of the 3600 nadis ... all this and much more. How did they do all this? Please think of that.

As Sri Krishna said "Yogah Karmasu Kausalam". Kausalam means easy. That is one meaning. That is, in Yoga everything became easy. But kausalam has another meaning also. It means useful to all. That is, whatever is done in Yoga is productive of welfare to all.

In yoga we must be untiring. The results are grand and universal-mahat virya, mahat aisvarya, brhad Isvara. What jnana extended all the frontiers of the knowledge, the Siddhi! But there was an anonymity about it. I want to emphasize that. Yoga produces an anonymity, and not a synonymity with God! Their greatest mastery was the abolition of the self and of all identity. That was Real existence, they said. What you call non-existence is real existence; and what you call existence is really non-existence. Yours is a language of non-existence. Every parent knows that anonymity launches a child, and it is anonymity that brings it into this world. Most of the great men are anonymous. They come and having done their work, they go. About some of them, we don't even know when they were born, to whom they were born, and even how they were born. Some are said to have been born of flowers, others were found in trees. This is common. They were Adityas!

This is a great discovery. The normalcy of this is that the greatest force can be brought into your life if this "Pranasya Pranah" can be brought into your life, if this " Pranasya Prana" can be brought into you. It can be done if you offer yourself.

What Shri Ram Chandraji says is that there is a very easy way by which I shall be able to give you this by a transmission. The very first thing is the contact with God-consciousness. For the last 7 or 8 years I have been doing this, trying to put this force of God consciousness, by the Grace of my Master. A quietness of self abolition, a calmness, a de-tensioning takes place. This I have been trying to do for the last seven or eight years. They are now much more normal. They are brought to a state of normalcy. Strains seem to fade away. This has been again and again tested under the most serious crises which I have undergone.

I came to this because a test must be carried out when a challenge is thrown. This is for the grihastha. It is slightly different from the yoga for the sannyasi. Sannyasa Yoga is misleading for grihasthas. What is to be removed? Bad conduct! You will see that the great Upanishads were written by people who were not sannyasis. The great Yagnavalkya had two wives, rather than one! One for this world and one for eternity, he said! The sage Vasishta is an eternal grihastha. Now do you see? Where is the necessity for sannyasa? There was therefore a period when people rebelled against sannyasa. Wives were afraid, fathers and mothers were afraid. What I ask is, can't you practice yoga in your own home? Can't you make your house holy? I would say when a sannyasi enters the house, he pollutes it, in a different way of course! The Laws and the ways of a sannyasi are quite different from those of a grihastha. They have different duties, different responsibilities.

Unless I reach the Divine consciousness I cannot produce a God. This came to me at Calcutta during an Aurobindo lecture some years back. It came to me that if you cannot be gods, at least try to become the fathers and mothers of gods! You all know the story of the rishni garbha, where He was born as Vamana and then again as Sri Krishna. There you have a grihastha trying to be born as a God for the saving of humanity. Therefore it is up to you as Grihasthas to realize your responsibility for yoga, the perfect living for God, by God, in God! Is there any one system which offers this dynamic way for living in that consciousness and for growing in that consciousness? Yoga is going into life to deepen it, to make it more full. God is not so distant as some people think.

Tadejati Tannaijati Taddoore Tadvantike (Isa)

Whether distant or near, He is in each one of you. This dynamic message of the Rishis is with us.

The work of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga is that of re-elevating each soul to the Ultimate. Here is a message of the Divine who is prepared to walk into your house and to initiate you. This is the message of a normal life.

Man is one who is said to be a thinking being. Man is said to be one who is proud, who thinks that he is a superior being. If you take 'Man' as from the Sanskrit root, as from the supreme force of the Divine, then you will see that the first thing that came out of the Divine is 'Manas'.

Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga offers you a new method in a new dimension. You will find the great lights of the supramental will be available to you. I don't want to flatter or to give undue prominence to the work which my Master has given to me. But if you will practice it, the ujjivana you are looking for, the uplift of the soul to the Ultimate, will be common to all men.

Forget all differences of caste, creed and race. Not one of these things will help. Being a Hindu, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or anything else, none of these things will help. Man has to become a universal being-rightly or wrongly. You must therefore make up your minds to take up the opportunity offered to you. A little bit of practice is worth much more than a ton of theory. Lenin is said to have told Marx, "I have read the Das Kapital, what next?" Marx said "struggle"! But to avoid struggle is to give yourself to God. "Which god," you may ask, as the Vedic "Kasmai Devaya Havisha Vidhema." Which god to worship is the question. We have too many gods in India. Arundel said we are gods in the making. I agree. But we are such bad avatars! We do not have the vitality of the Divine.

We are told "Ekam Sat Viprah bahudha vadanti"-but I used to translate 'vipra' not as wise men, but as fools! 'Vi' is a negative! Now which God to worship? I say, the Ultimate. The Parabrahmam! It is not something you can grasp. As the Kenopanishad says "Na Cakshus Pasyati". No lesser god will do for this purpose. Please take note of that! Not the vyuhas, the three murtis with their dampatis. Not even these gods will do. As Sri Krishna said, if you want to conquer your ragas etc., then only the Ultimate must be sought, for "Param drishtva nivartate.". Otherwise partiality, neglect, all these theories and difficulties come in. One god for this, another for that, and a third for yet another; where is the end? To how many gods can we pray? Our desires and needs are endless. You see the impossibility of this? We have nothing to do with these gods. They are only officers.

Then came the avatars, ten or twenty-four of them. Which of these shall I worship? There are personal favourites. One likes one, another likes another and so on. Then there are geographical loyalties. In Mathura Sri Krishna, in Ayodhya it is Sri Rama. This is the way our people have worshipped their gods. As the occasion, so the god! This is where we are. So no avatar. On the path of yoga, no avatar.

Then the Antaryami. Each one has an antaryami. Please note. Mysticism is in loneliness. You must develop the consciousness of living alone with your God-your Antaryamin. So it is only the antaryamin to whom you must turn. You have only two Gods, as a matter of act, the antaryamin within you and the one above! "Agreravamaha Vishnor Paramaha!" as the Aitreya Brahmana states.

The inner connects you to the Higher. This way is open to everybody. Nobody can be denied this. And the only way to discover the Antaryamin is to practice truth. The simplicity of this method is that a sympathetic love can arouse the God within you. You will be able to get yourself put in contact with God.

I only pray that our wisdom will enable us to cut across all those oblique things. We have to practice. Once we are able to develop this instrument of knowing God by God, through God, then as Spinoza said "Sub Specie Eternitatu!" you will see everything by insight, not by biological processes of perception.

Philosophy means the love of wisdom. But it fell on evil days. So you see, we have something to do. I pray that in this sacred place, His sacred Grace will produce men of the highest levels of spirituality for the good of humanity.