….I also mentioned about the form which we have to worship. The most important aspect in all worship is, I suggested, surrender which develops into “devotion” when we surrender to the Master and place ourselves entirely at his training. We will have to surrender all our being, the physical, the vital, the mental and the spiritual. It is, of course, difficult to do all of them at the same time, but we feel that it is more easy to prostrate with the body than with our vitality or with our mind, though we are loquacious about the matter. We almost utter continuously “I surrender, I surrender” but the real surrender does not normally take place. Therefore, it is necessary to feel that the surrender will be accomplished and completed by the Master Himself. That is why, I think, the Upanishad rightly puts it in this form.

“Om Krato smara Krutham smara;
Krato smara Krutham smara”.

 

“O lord of Sacrifice or Surrender! Remember what I have done and the second statement “Remember what I have done” means God will have to complete the act of surrender Himself. Now this is a very difficult point to explain and many people want to be lazy enough to say “let Master surrender. Why should I surrender, let Master do everything and I shall be the recipient”. I do not think that is the meaning. If we go a little way, God takes us a long way. If we make total surrender, He will complete the surrender by taking us up. That is, we are enabled to surrender more and more willingly to His treatment and training without any protest, without resistance and without egoistic self assertions that we have done the surrender and that he has not done it. The whole point therefore is that our devotion will develop when we observe that not only our physical body is prostrated before the Master every day or every hour, but our vital bodies which are full of desires, cravings and other tendencies, get controlled. "Sama” and “Dama” equally follow it. Then, the mind also ceases to wander and we find constant remembrance and our spiritual faculties begin to develop. In other words, we find that we are more and more absorbed even without our being conscious that we are in God or the master. This is devotion. Once this occurs we recognize at once that God’s Grace is flowing through us. And I hold the view that God’s grace has begun to flow through us the moment we surrender either mentally or physically or vitally. Now all these things show that God is constantly with us and ready to take us up at the slightest sign on our part of accepting Him.

The most important thing in this matter is, we are willing to seek God or Master. That is an act of “will” not of “inclination” alone. If we have decided that we want the Master’s help for our own higher evolution, or to reach the Ultimate, we will find that God is very near.

Now devotion is something which is like the fire of aspiration. Now whilst the old view was that devotion is a continuous, uninterrupted flow of aspiration upwards, and is described as a kind of liquid flow, (they call it “Thaila Dhara aviccinna Vat”). It is really a fire. It is a flame of aspiration which moves upwards and expands itself. But what is the function of this flame of devotion? Every flame as you know has its nature to burn whatever it touches.

Now the most important thing which has to be burnt in us is the “poorva samskaras” or habits of mind. The tendencies of our mind are always moving outwards to objects. Now those things produce certain complications in our affections. We get attached to those things. Those attachments have to be burnt up. And there are attachments of lifetime within us. All those things will have to be burnt up.

That is why Master says that the first experience that happens to us in this training is that we feel the Pranahuti which is a kind of air that makes the flame inside us burn brighter and look brighter and we experience a smoke, dark thick smoke, coming out of us. Some people are frightened about the matter. That is nothing to be frightened about except, I think the smoke. The same then slowly evaporates or goes out and we are left cleaner and lighter. There is also a light or heat produced in our bodies during that stage and that is why some people said it is Tapas. Tapas is that which heats. A heated condition is called Tapas. And when this increases, we find the old samskaras breaking from us and we get “Uparathi” as I may call it i.e., we do not worry about any enjoyment or we reverse ourselves from enjoyment. Now this is very important because, after the smoke goes away, the second stage is when we see a kind of light in our heart. Some people experience, it as a dawn light as Master says. But the beginning of the dawn is not the end. The dawn is the first stage of experience, and is not the final one. Some people say that when they reach the higher and higher levels, they will see more and more of the dawn. I think we should see more and more of the Sun. But actually we go far beyond the sun. The fact remains that Sun and all these things are on this side of the spiritual experience and not on that side of the spiritual experience. We go beyond the Sun and the Dawn and what we experience is a farther-dawn, not the dawn of this side. That is why, the veda has beautifully put it  “There is many a dawn which has not yet shed its light”. We go far ahead. Those who had some experience know that those two points are somewhere at this particular region — No.3 or 4 as we number it, i.e., on the left side just above the original point, is a point called `devotion’. It generates sufficient heat and when it comes to this point 4 which is said to be the point of fire or “invisible black fire” we would be having almost every one of our previous samskaras connected with this body taken away from us. Now that is a very big step. But that is achieved almost within the shortest time in this system. Many people say it is at the state of Jeevanmukti that we get rid of these. But actually it will take place long before Jeevanmukti, because even if we destroy all the samskaras of the past, we yet generate certain samskaras of the present which will bring us back.

Now, the final step, of course, is when we transcend and go beyond the fifth or the sixth point. Whatever it is, Master says that we can, by the grace of the Master, cross over the two points which produce the smoke and these ordinary frictional heated lights. That is the power, electrical power, which is introduced by the Master. So much so we have the experience of a smokeless light. Now, that is something which we will have by experience, but mostly through these two states — first when the burning of the samskaras take place, there is heavy smoke passing out of us mostly in the back and not in the front, and secondly we find ourselves light or lighted. We might find ourselves lighted all through. And if our previous training has been alright, we might be able to see ourselves at the Atma point. When the devotion becomes firmer, we find that the heat is so much that smoke is not found and light becomes something of a very pleasant experience. Now, it is not heat, We are afraid of fire, I know. But here is a fire which ‘cools’ rather than ‘heats’. Obviously, our very nature is purified in our upward march. Now upto that point Master gives what happens through the preliminaries of training — meditation on the heart, prayer, surrender and also the way we have developed perfect devotion for the Master. By this time we must have sufficient trust and faith in the Master that he can take us far beyond what most people teach. For, many people stop at what the call ‘Jeevan Mukti’. A place of no return or salvation. May be, they are a little freed from the old samskaras, which will not breed new lives and births. But that is not the goal. The God in a  sense is far short of the Real Goal which we have held to be the Supreme, the Ultimate condition of the Master Himself. So, upto this point the preliminaries of the day to day should be adopted in a simple way.

The next step, of course, is what the Master has to do. As we have already said, in this system of Sri Ramchandra’s Rajayoga our main pivot is the Master. If the Master is not capable, all these things which I have mentioned can not even take place. I am afraid we would not start our journey at all, though we might have appeared to have a lot of devotion, but such devotion is not reciprocated firstly by the Divine and secondly by our own nature. Our interior nature refuses to confirm to devote to any other being, however, well known for all purposes of the world. They might even perform great miracles; they might do so many things which I think are good. Master might not be able to do, for whatever reason I cannot say. One of the most important things in Yoga is, how so ever eminent a Master becomes, he shall not exercise miracles. Now that is a renunciation which is very difficult to get for the Master. That is the reason why I believe great Patanjali says interference of the Abhyasi may be a miracle or Siddhi, but the greater danger is to the Master himself, because he cannot get out of the rings of egoism which he does not seem to be aware of because for him God is the greatest egoist and the greatest miracle monger. For us, God is not that. God is a perfectly law abiding law giver. So He cannot do things which will break the law. He is not an arbitrary power, but the most righteous divinity. That being so, the whole purpose of yoga is to unite us with Him and get us the same condition as God Himself — impersonal, unattached, stainless, bodiless and so on as the Upanishad puts it:

“Chukram Akayam Avranam; Asnaviram Asuddham, Apapa Viddham Kavithi Manishee Paribhuh Swayambhuh ....”

These are the names and He is also said to be incapable of any low attachment and His only purpose is to see that we are lifted up to that condition where we abide by nature out of Yoga, and make us the most lawful citizens in the freedom and to feel free in a lawful world. That is the aim. So, both the world which he has made and Heaven would be meaningless if they lie as the gift at the whims and fancies of a God. I do not believe God wants any Freedom for Himself. Whatever it is we are asking for a condition in which we shall feel free, and that condition is where we can trust the Law of God and which is uniform for all. Therefore, those who entertain the view that God is just a miracle monger and is going about performing miracles, would not be right. That goal is wrong, in which case a Yogi who follows them must certainly get the miracles. I wish they all get the power to perform them because one man does miracles, others just follow him. You see the sheep, that is all.

Here, we are asking for freedom. So Master’s responsibility is very big.

Now Master mentions in a way that most of us do not like a Master. That is, we do not follow the ‘Guru Mata’, but ‘follow the Manmata. That is our own, just because we have come across many Masters who would like to make us their slaves. I believe they have got to make us free but not slaves. And a doctrine which teaches us that God wants us to be slaves of Himself is a very bad type of philosophy or religion. It may be that slaves live more freely than God Himself. But that is a different matter. Now why did we get into difficulties with the Masters. As I told Masters tend to make us slaves. They do not liberate us really. If they liberate us from one set of bonds, they impose another set of bonds which are not intelligible even and are inexplicable. So we try to be our own Masters. That is Manmata. So I myself directly will get into God. Very good. There are rare souls who get into Him. I do not know how they do it. But there are such cases. But exceptions should not be the rule. Most of us are not capable of taking up the direct inspiration of God. Now does God take us directly? I can only say the Great Master Sri Krishna Himself stated: “I choose the person whom I want to reveal myself”. That is a very strange thing. But it is not arbitrary in my opinion. There are certain specific occasions in which a choice should be given. Our own great Grand Master seems to have been one such, because I do not hear he had a Master. The description is that when he was some 8 or 10 years, he suddenly felt that he had come for some other purpose. Immediately he began his voyage. That is extraordinary. Do not think that everyone of us is like Him. That is why Sri Ramkrishna Paramahamsa seems to have said that there are two types of souls the Iswarakoti and the Jeevakoti. Some people are born with the Power to do the will of God. That is the meaning of Iswarakoti, not one who goes about like a dictator chopping off the other people’s heads and putting everybody in chains. They serve the will of God in the very cosmic and trans-cosmic structure. Our Master also speaks of the Supreme Personality which comes to this world once. I do not know in a millennia or more……

Most of us are not capable of taking direct inspiration from God nor does God take us direct. Here I can only say that, in every case we find people struggling because they could not accept authorities which had failed. We have met with Gurus who have been not in the true sense Gurus at all either by their precept or by practice or both but who are trying to make the falsehood appear truth and truth appear as falsehood and who have got such perversities and monstrosities. Now, in order to set right that condition, a Great Personality is born. Naturally He becomes the Guru. But then, it is not easy to recognize Him by the looks. I do not know how we can recognize the person when we come across Him. Even the Master says: ‘please meditate and hope for seeing Him’. So all that I can say is, when we meditate and seriously pray for such a Personality, He comes to us. Obviously he may not be seen by anybody. But if we pray in earnest, if we really want a guide to help us to reach the Ultimate Reality, he comes. He may not come when we ask for any penultimate things of the world because it is not His duty to come for those things. He has come for the Highest knowledge, to give us the Highest Truth in the simplest possible way without complicating our body. That is why we hold that the Master’s role in our practice of training is very important. We cannot train ourselves even with the help of the text books. That is why, it is very difficult to get a Great Master; and if we can get such a Master, our ability to pass these things would be increased and we would attain the Ultimate State in shortest possible time.

(Complete works o Dr.KCV Volume 1 page 224-232)

Master tries to explain the nature of Realisation. Realisation is something very different from ‘liberation’. Liberation or Salvation is ‘getting out of the bonds of rebirth’. Once you get rid of the bonds of rebirth, you are said to be liberated from the bonds. That is what we call ‘Moksha’. But that is not the goal, though human miseries and struggle make us think it is important to get rid of the pain and getting a kind of tranquility from the operation of bondages. But ‘realization’ is something much further. It is ‘discovering your own Oneness with God. The fact that you are liberated from the bonds does not de facto mean that you are ‘realized’. There are probably many liberated people hardly any who has realized, ie., found his oneness with God, the Ultimate being. So, we could think of a large number of liberated souls but not people who have realized God. They may be in the process of realisation in the sense that, after having found freedom from bonds, they discovered that there is more and more to be attained than previously. So you will see that liberation is not realisation.

Secondly, what is realisation? Realisation has been defined by many people as ‘the attainment of a state of God with all his powers of creation, sustenation and destruction and so on and so forth. Actually, these cosmic processes are only with God, but not with anybody else. So, even the highest of the Souls in the realized condition will not be given these powers. It is the exclusive prerogative of the Divine Being alone. That is the distinction between God and the Souls will remain. But an individual Soul, which is going towards realisation will attain a condition which is far beyond all that we have heard from our spiritual savants. God is said to be Sat, Chit, Ananda. Now, this condition goes beyond Ananda. You may ask the question what does it really mean. We cannot express it. It means, Master states, that it is a condition of ‘salt without saltishness’. Salt may not be a good word as the sweet. But there is a positive fact which he enunciates of this condition. This condition is the condition of Omnipotent Will. A person who has reached that State of Realisation can do whatever he wants. His will is invincible. Now that condition is what we will have when we realize. I do not know whether that is not a very high state. In fact, he says that, when a person ceases to be then there is realisation. Now this is a negative description. An individual reaches a state of isness, that is he does exist and then he comes to the condition of zero, absolute negation, where there is no change at all possible in his nature, even though he is swimming in Infinity. Now that condition is said to be the state of realisation. Now, he compares this state with the Nirvikalpaka Samadhi of the Yogins. The Raja Yoga works actually use the words “Samprajnatha” and “Asamprajnatha” Samadhi. It does not use the word “Nirvikalpaka or Savikalpaka Samadhi”. This language came from Advaitins. This Nirvikalpaka Samadhi, which has been preached by Advaita saints or teachers is a condition when we do not have a distinction between God and self. In fact, there is neither God nor self. There is neither object nor subject nor even the knowledge in between nor experience even. Now, that is said to be a very high attainment in that system. But that is not the goal of our system. Our system wants to develop the experience of God in a natural way or Sahaja Samadhi, not getting to That Condition when you are disengaged from your bodily consciousness or even the soul consciousness completely. On the contrary this is where we do work in this world and go on doing all works living in that contact with the Ultimate Reality all the time. Now, Sahaja Samadhi means attachment with Reality all the time, without interruption even when we are doing any work; not only when we are in Dhyana as in the case of Nirvikalpaka Samadhi or even Savikalpaka Samadhi or Samprajnatha or Asamprajnatha Samadhi. This Sahajavastha is sought to be established in everyone of our Abhyasis, so that he will be doing his duties detached from the fruits of duties; but attached all the time to the Reality which pours itself down into him and supports him by its changeless condition. So, this kind of establishment in that Consciousness which you may call a kind of establishment in that Consciousness which you may call a kind of “Stitha Prajnatha” is normal to us and is something to be attained by everyone of us, which means that we are not trying to get out of this world.

The world is not something to be ‘shunned’; what we would renounce of it is our attachment to it. That is, we think that we cannot exist without the object, without the body, without food or without the property given to us. Then, we are caught up in it. In other words let me tell how the thoughts flash to my consciousness. I was asking myself how we built up all these securities about us. Everybody wants to have a house and then he wants to have a bigger compound and still bigger compound and so on and erecting compounds to prevent people from jumping into our houses and entering into them. Our own body may be considered to be a series of securities built up around us, around ourselves. Now, after having built up our securities suppose we have been confined to the inner arena and never move out of it and perhaps misplace our keys also, so that we cannot get out of that, then we think we are prisoners within our own security. We know a fortress that is built by our people to defend themselves from enemy, finally becomes a prison — house when it is surrounded by others. Now this is how we have built up our securities and attachments. So, the very things we thought were necessary for our existence are now discovered to be obstructions to our freedom. In fact, we are prisoners in our own house in our own bodies by our own attachments.

Now, I shall give another example, firstly a man wants to have a security of wife, and in fact it is mutual let us say, after wards they beget children and a security of children and then more children, more security and then finally what do you find? In fact, we have what we call family misery, not family happiness. Our intentions were good, our achievements have been rather disappointing. The one way by which some people say we can get rid of this attachment is “remove all walls; throw away the body, throw away the family, renounce them, this is the only way by which we can get liberated”. But I believe, if we only think why we constructed for a while, and that it is not a kind of madness or foolishness, then we find that these securities are necessary, but without attachment. They must be flexible. We must have the power to control the securities and we must be able to displace some securities with other types of securities. That is, all these organisms are built-in mechanisms. Then we need not get rid of the organism itself, if we are flexible in human nature. I think we have a freedom to adjust the securities. So this freedom is what we can really see when we use our reason. So renunciation as it is told by monks or mendicants is I say a disastrous process when it is done against a society within which we have to grow. There is nothing wrong about us in that we are attached to them as if they are our real securities and real bondages. There is neither bondage nor security in them except that we find them obstructing our real freedom or when we find them not helping our freedom. Everything is done for the sake of freedom and not for the sake of bondage. But we also know transitoriness can bind us and little knowledge can do much more havoc. So, we are prisoners on our own accord and some times we like the prison, some times we hate the prison. Therefore, all bondages are due to ourselves and not due to God.

Now how to get rid of this kind of inflexible bondage, or securities? The only way for us as individuals is to get at God who gave us the capacity to defend ourselves, to find why we are, what we are. So our connection with God becomes very important. If we connect ourselves with God, then we will find the rationale of our securities and bondages, in which case, you are not attached to them and we can use them as freely as possible, without being bound by them. Freedom is a dynamic process of living in God, because God gives the sense of freedom. We construct everything out of Freedom. We barricade ourselves within our fortresses out of freedom and now we find that old barricades are not useful. Things are changing. The world is changing, our patterns of life are changing. So, we have got to throw them away and build again if necessary, new securities which permit our freedom rather than deny it. Now if we understand from this point of view we can know that God did not create this world just to bind us. God created the world to give us security and we made it our prison. Now I think, only if we can look about why and what is the secret force with which the God created the world for our freedom, then, we will find that we are free in this world and not bound.

No institution is perverse enough to bind us for ever, but it can be a liberating instrument. Now this is the dynamics of spiritual life. We have got to connect ourselves with the Ultimate. And Master says it is more simple. But we think that just as it was difficult for us to create barriers around us, the realisation of God must be as ingenious as these things. Now it is true we have built our Gods in our own image, and it is a very funny thing when we study in mythology how we have created Gods to our own tastes and to our lives. But God is really simple. Now the easiest thing we can do is to connect ourselves with God. Do not look to all these outer things that we have created. Now through them shall we realize God, not through our barricades. What we have to get is God’s mind within us and it can be got. Religions have said, “the way to know God is torture”. That is a terrible thing, as if He is our enemy. Our security is threatened by God. Therefore we shall have God to our taste. Really what Master says is the more simple thing is to get at God, because if you can look into yourself, He is the Force that made you construct all these things and so He is within you. Do we think the Creative Power of our being, namely our having a God with such ingenuity and such skill is not a power that is free from the thraldom? The very fact that we can get out of this body when we want and when we do not like the pattern of our body, is a proof of freedom of the Soul. Is that not the Divine? Therefore the Divine force is within us. It is that which builds our body. It is that which draws itself from that body and it can create another body according to its Will, with different type of securities. Now this Supreme consciousness is within us. Only what has happened is so long as we are living within this body, so long as we are concentrated in the running of this body in the supervision of the body, it has lost the capacity to dominate the body as an instrument of freedom. So, it is a victim of bondage, victim to the bondage, and to all its securities, social, religious and so on.

Now, if a great man come to us and arouse that Inner Force within us, ignite it into action of its supreme possibilities of freedom to know the Divine and also to get more and more power from that Divine thing, then, a sense of freedom comes at once. Just as a man who is bound, if he gets a force, immediately expands and says ‘here are the possibilities to me, I can break up my bonds’, so also, if we can get the Divine Force into our system, do we think our own body will remain the body that it is? It will be quickened with new life, new force, new abilities and new possibilities. Now, this is a very great step. Master says, it is possible to get this connection most easily. All that is required is a direct contact with the heart from the Divine personality. Now, since we do not have personalities who can provide us securities more securities and more bondages, we are in difficulties. Our great learned savants are people who have developed the fine arts of creating more bondages and assuring us that those Mantras and Tantras and Yantras will help us. Now, that is not the way. Here is something which transcends all these techniques of art. It is an opening of a direct connection which seems to have a little weakened itself, not altogether. That is why Master says, “the introduction of the Divine Force of thought into a consciousness is the simplest thing that can happen and no kind of ritual or rite or any other technique of preparation are necessary. It may appear so to people who are brought up in the tradition of securities and a craftsmanship in them. But this is nothing. It is not something to be believed. But you know Reality is beyond rites. It is a thing practically to be tested, in which case, you find that all that we require in this is an opening of a line of connection with God which is to be done by Pranahuti. It is only the man who has reached the Ultimate condition that can do this. He must be empowered by that Supreme Divine Reality to connect every individual who offers himself to this consciousness. It is perhaps necessary to have a little discontent over one’s lot in order to ask for it. It may happen even without your knowledge. But then, there is this possibility at the present moment, that the Divine Personality is with us today.

As our ancestors said, “Again and again in history we get a Great Personality who takes to this job of connecting individual souls directly with Himself, so that humanity can progress towards the higher evolution to Spirituality”. No doubt, so long as that Personality is in this work we do find that a large number rise up to that level. A few people only pass through, but a large number remain bound. It has been so in history. At the present moment, Shri Ram Chandraji says that the Divine Personality is now with us and it is because He is with us that this process can be applied to every individual who offers himself to it. This Pranahuthi is a real one and once it is established, the human individual grows to his real dimension of spirituality. He breaks the bonds and small securities, which he has built up, rather, they may not break but he crosses them, because what has been built need not be destroyed unless it is useless for further security. It is just possible we do not want security at all. There was a time when everybody had to build fortresses around his own houses……

(Complete Works of Dr.KCV Volume 1 page 214-221)