Paths To Self-Realization

By Dr. B. V. Radhakrishnan

Among the four Hindu Purusharthas or goals in life - dharma, artha, kama and moksha (righteousness, prosperity, pleasure and Liberation) - the last is regarded as supreme. All systems of Hindu thought except the Charvaka believe in the final emancipation of man from samsara or incarnation. This final release is variously designated Moksha, Nirvana, Kaivalya or Apavarga. In order to attain it there are the various paths of karma, bhakti, yoga and jnana. Sri Ramana grades them according to their efficacy in his Upadesa Saram, quoted in this issue.

Sri Ramana is the embodiment of Advaita Vedanta. He was not an academic philosopher and did not like expounding theory, but he had the wisdom that comes from direct experience of Reality.

Liberation or Mukti, he taught, is becoming One with Brahman; or rather, since the identity of the atma with Brahman has always subsisted and has only been hidden by illusion, it is awakening to consciousness of identity with the Supreme Self.

This identity is existent from eternity, though hidden from our view. "That which is real in the absolute sense, highest of all, eternal, all penetrating like the ether, exempt from all change, all sufficing, undivided, whose nature it is to be its own light, in which neither good nor evil, nor effect, nor past, present or future has any place, that formless is called Liberation."¹ It is not a coming into being of what did not formerly exist, for whatever comes into being must also have an end and is therefore ephemeral. Mukti is thus not an achievement or attainment but only cessation of the process of becoming. It is not abolition of one's self but realization of its infinity and absoluteness by the expansion and illumination of consciousness. It is not to be relegated to a future time or located in a place called Svarga or Brahma Loka or any other name. It just is.
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1 - Vedanta Sutras with Sankara's commentary, 1-1-4.

Sri Ramana often reminded us that Mukti is not anything new to be attained. But is our real nature. "There is no realizing the Self. The Self is always realized."² Only knowledge of it is obstructed, and this obstruction we call ignorance. "To enquire 'Who am I that am in bondage?' and to know one's real nature is alone Liberation."³ In the Self there is neither bondage nor Liberation. The egoless state is the only reality.

Like all the sages and saints of India, he affirmed that this can be realized through the Grace of the Guru. But that implies that the Guru is not another individual external to us but is the Self manifested. So long as we identify ourselves with the body we take the Guru to be another bodily individual external to us. But really we are not the body, nor is he. We are the Self and he is also. Realization means converting this theoretical understanding into direct knowledge. Even though we mistake the body for the Guru, he himself makes no such mistake. He appears outwardly only to guide us. This is what Sri Ramana meant when he said that Self, God and Guru are the same. Therefore he could make the tremendous statement that "He who has earned the Grace of the Guru will undoubtedly be saved and never forsaken, just as the prey that has fallen into the jaws of the tiger will never be allowed to escape."⁴
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2 - Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, p. 490. Sri Ramanasramam.
3 - 'Who Am I?' - p. 46-47. (Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, Rider & Co.)
4 - Ibid., p. 44.

Who, then, is the Guru? It is clear that in the high sense in which Sri Ramana uses the term it can only be the perfect Sage who is in uninterrupted conscious Identity with the Universal Self. "The Guru is one who at all times abides in the profound depths of the Self. He never sees any difference between himself and others and is quite free from the idea that he is the Enlightened or the Liberated one while those around him are in bondage or the darkness of ignorance. His Self-possession can never be shaken under any circumstances and he is never perturbed."⁵

Such a one is called a Jivan-Mukta, Liberated while living. "A jivanmukta is one who is free from any sense of the reality of external objects, only seeming to have such a sense .... His mind is, wholly merged in Brahman and enjoying eternal bliss. He is free from duality. Though awake he is free from the qualities of the waking state. The absence of the idea of 'I' and 'mine' even while in this body, which follows like a shadow, is a characteristic of the jivanmukta. He does not dwell on the enjoyments of the past, takes no thought for the future and looks with indifference on the present. He is unruffled by pain or pleasure and is free from the bondage of transmigration."⁶

Can a jivanmukta be subject to ignorance? It is traditionally agreed that he can. This is likened to a dark shadow on a white canvas - it cannot produce any effect on him. His continued bodily existence is compared to a potter's wheel moving round for a while after producing the pot. Sri Ramana used to compare it to an electric fan revolving a few times even after the current is turned off. Ajnana-lesa or ignorance is the continued momentum of the wheel; it produces no further karma for the liberated. What appears to be activity in him is only akarma, that is inaction or unattached action.⁷
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5 - Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge by Arthur Osborne, p. 140. Rider & Co.
6 - Shankaracharya's Viveka Chudamani, vv. 429-436.
7 - Bhagavad Gita, IV, 20.

Some have said that complete Liberation can be attained only after destruction of the body, but that is not accepted by those who know. Sri Ramana has definitely asserted that " There is no difference (between a jivanmukti and a videha-mukti). For those who ask it is said that a Realized Man with a body is a jivanmukta and that he attains videhamukti when he sheds the body, but this difference exists only for the onlooker, not for him. His state -Is the same before shedding the body and after."⁸

Is he, then, still bound by karma? Sri Ramana gave us the perfect answer when he said that the body may be but he is not, since he no longer identifies himself with the body. "The truth is that the Realized Man has transcended all destiny and is bound neither by the body nor by its destiny."⁹

Now let us turn from consideration of the Goal to the path. Sri Ramana explained that karma or action can never lead to Liberation.¹⁰ However, action performed without attachment and in a spirit of service to God can point the way to Liberation and purify the mind, thus enabling it to take a more efficacious path.¹¹ Physical acts of worship and ritual, vocal action such as incantations and purely mental action such as meditation are helpful, and in this order, each more so than the preceding.¹²

Similar was his verdict on breath-control, also a form of action. "The practice of breath-control is merely helpful in subduing the mind but cannot bring about its final extinction."¹³
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8 - Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own words, p. 192, edited by Arthur Osborne, Rider & Co.
9 - Ibid., p. 188.
10 - Upadesa Saram (printed in this issue).
11- Ibid., v. 3.
12 - Ibid., v. 4.
13 'Who am I?', p, 43.

In fact he taught that breath-control is not an independent technique but only an approach towards mind-control. "Breath-control is a help in controlling the mind and is advised for such as find they cannot control the mind without some such aid. For those who can control the mind and concentrate it is not necessary. It can be used at the beginning until one is able to control the mind but then it should be given up."¹⁴ "The mind subsides by the practice of breath-control, but such subsidence lasts only as long as the control of breath and vital forces continues; and when they are released the mind also gets released and immediately, becoming externalised, it continues to wander through the force of its subtle tendencies."¹⁵

Coming now to the path of bhakti, Sri Ramana said that remaining in the Real Being, transcending all thoughts through intense devotion, is the very essence of supreme bhakti. He explained that true bhakti means surrendering the ego so completely that nothing remains of it, and this comes to the same as, discovering by Self-enquiry that there is no ego. "There are only two ways," he often said; "Ask yourself 'Who am I?' or surrender."

The most direct path to Self-realization, he explained, is Self-enquiry. It leads directly to Self-realization by removing the obstacles which make one think that the Self is not already realized. "Even though the mind subsides by other means, that is only apparently so; it will rise again."¹⁶
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14 - The Teachings, p. 146.
15 - 'Who am I?', p. 42.
16 - Ibid., p. 42.

On occasion Sri Ramana sanctioned all methods, although grading their efficacy, as already explained. He also said that the final state of Self-realization is the same by whatever path or through whatever religion it has been approached. However, the most efficacious way is Self-enquiry. "The only path of karma, bhakti yoga and jnana is to enquire who it is who has the karma, vibhakti (lack of devotion), viyoga (separation) and ajnana (ignorance). Through this investigation the ego disappears and the state of abidance in the Self in which none of these negative qualities ever existed remains as the Truth."¹⁷ Just as milk is uniformly white though drawn from cows of different colours, so also realization is uniform for all persons of whatever denomination."¹⁸

In fact all ways are good provided they lead to the merging of the ego in the Self. What the devotee calls surrender the Advaitin calls knowledge. Both alike are trying to take the ego back to its source and make it merge there.¹⁹ One sacrifices the ego on the altar of love, the other discovers that it does not exist and never did; both arrive at the same ultimate point of its non-existence.
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17 - Supplementary Forty Verses, v. 14 (Collected Works).
18 - Atma Satshatkara, v. 42 (Collected Works).
19 - Day by Day with Bhagavan, p. 30. By Devaraja Mudaliar, Sri Ramanasramam.