5. Pathway to Liberation

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

Pathway to Liberation

Speech delivered at Allahabad on 9th April 1968. Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to you on the important aspect of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga, which, in my opinion, is paramount as a significant contribution made by Shri Ram Chandraji Maharaj, namely the spiritual transformation of man. That I call Pranahuti or Transmission, a method adopted for igniting the minds and souls of men to finer and greater achievement of the ultimate reality. Today I wish to dilate on the supreme possibilities open to the seeker after the ultimate by this means, the attainments that he is likely to meet with on the path to total transformation. A prayer is always to the ultimate Being to take you to His ultimate status. It assumes that the Divine ultimate can descend and does so, not only in the large historical periods in the form of avatars, but also in the little incidents of a human life, an awakening in the heart of the antaryamin within each one of us. A prayer uttered to the Infinite makes it possible for Him to enter into you, and this is done by the Guru or teacher who does the transmission on behalf of the Ultimate, or as the Ultimate itself. Therefore, prayer is a necessary preliminary to any spiritual puja or worship. It is an opening of the mind and the heart for the entry of God into you, an entry of the driving force of God into you, till finally it becomes a continuous stream or flow sustaining every activity of yours; when you are awake or asleep; when you are liberated or unliberated; when you have transcended the body or entered into the great and brighter heavens. But the most important and significant feature about it is in the technique. That not only should you say the prayer once, or only twice, but afterwards wait for the Divine to do His task. I remember the great story where it was stated that an excellent devotee of God, who was rather addicted to the practice of chanting the names of God a thousand times, had begun his chant. God came at the first call; but the devotee would not recognize it, and insisted upon repeating and reciting the whole number of 1008! God said he can afford to wait, and so left. So it is necessary for you to wait for God, rather than make God wait for you, even when you are very devoted and loving. This happens in every case when you think the ritual of number is more important than the practice and realization of the presence of God before you even before you call Him. Now if this prayer is properly performed, then with the deep sincerity and openness of heart, a transmission begins to enter into you almost at once. The most important thing according to our own practice, and even according to the real works on the subject of spiritual upliftment, show that, by and large, when the Divine force enters into you, whenever it is Divine, the senses come to a halt; and the mind almost loses interest in the objects which the senses bring to it. That is why this calmness settles in the mind, and gently settles in the whole body. This means, according to the technical definition given by the Upanishad-Mandukya-that we have passed from the state of Jagrat to a state of Swapna. And from that state, in a deeper meditation, and waiting for the flow of Divine force within you, flowing throughout your system from top to toe, even as the blood that circulates in your organism, you will find that a deeper calm, almost an obliviousness to surroundings, occurs. You are not aware even that you are where you are, or that you are practising meditation at all. It so much simulates your deep sleep that it is called sushupti. The mind also has come to a halt then. What remains? It is stated that what remains is Prajna. What remains is just Prajna. This deep-sleep state is also comparable, as I mentioned yesterday, to the Samprajnata Samadhi of yoga. Because it is not sleep at all. It is a sleep in the infinite or Divine consciousness, where you have lost your way of being and your mind has ceased to function as an instrument of your needs, physical, motor, or sensory. It has turned inward. The senses that are usually turned outside, they come to a halt. The mind turns inward. Introspection, they say, begins, but there is no inspection. What do you inspect when everything has come to a halt? It is at that point in this system, by this transmission, that you begin to feel the presence of the flame in the heart, or the Jyoti-Antarjyotir ameyameyam-this inward light, the light that is Divine, that comes into you. The earlier two stages are, if you might just call them in that way, cleansing processes, which reveal the light that is within. A flame that has to grow vaster and spread through your entire organism. Now this is a condition where, when our abhyasis sit for meditation and are lost in that condition, even at a slightest utterance from the Preceptor they come back to the normal state. They are aware, they are not asleep! This peculiar experience of the Prajna is easily had in a normal way almost within a few weeks of the beginning of this method. And then, what do you discover of experiences? Well, you have, as you pass through these experiences of the inner light, what you call the sense of travelling to higher planes of consciousness. And this, again, has been charted out in a novel way by Sri Ram Chandraji Maharaj. It is not something that you find in any work so far published. All that you get from the other works is an arousing of the Kundalini and passing it through the so-called Sushumna that is said to be in the spinal cord, the vertebral column, and taking it through the six chakras till it goes to the sahasrara at the crown of the head. This is the Tantrik version. The Upanishadic version, on the other hand, tells you that there is the sushumna rising from the heart or that particular nadi that takes you to the Brahma-randhra and far beyond. Our Master Sri Ram Chandraji puts it very clearly then that it is from the heart that we shall have to go to the crown of the head, not from the sacral plexus to the crown of the head. It is a fundamental difference in approach. So, what is opened up in this is the pathway to liberation. A thousand nadis set out from the heart but there is only one nadi that takes you to the crown of the head, the Brahma-randhra. And some of us who have had the experience of the Brahma-randhra know that it is not only a way of exit for the individual soul to infinity, but it is the way of entry of the Divine into the very heart of Being into the heart. Now this is a confirmation of the Chandogya and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads. This experience, then, takes us almost to the Cosmic Consciousness, what you may call the Brahmanda consciousness. You are made almost to feel that you are a citizen of a vaster world; not only this physical world but the astral worlds are opened up, and of course these are all astral experiences because they are non-mental and non-sensory. If you want to say that they are higher-mental and higher-sensory I might be able to accept it, but they are certainly not of the physical order. When we go to that level of consciousness we are aware of a new dimension to our personality. There only a sense of the I-ness persists, and the body-consciousness, or the identification with the body, almost ceases. You are no longer interested in working out things on the plane of the physical because at the level of the astral you have got all that you want for inward knowledge to reach up to the highest point. It is necessary, at this stage, to point out that many people think that by going to such a level they can bring the force and the power of that consciousness for their own material purposes in this world. They want to use the powers of the higher, inner life for outer manifestation and aggrandizement. And that is exactly where the yogis have warned us that once you take the inward path it is dangerous to come down. It is almost tantamount to a fall, and the result is yoga-bhrashtata. But some of us need not be afraid of it, perhaps! But if you look at it from the point of view of our ultimate aspiration to know reality in its truth-ness, then we have got to make a still higher approach to Reality. And that approach to Reality is a dimension beyond the Cosmos. And to this level most of the abhyasis in our system are led in the course of a few years. When they reach that level or arrive at that level, you find that they are quite a different type of men, with a different purposiveness of being devoted ultimately to the Divine work. A love of God comes more freely to them than a love of themselves or a love of the world. Now, at that level, when one becomes really a 'Prapanna' as Master would put it, one who has totally given up himself to the work of the Divine, there open up new frontiers of spirituality. It has been stated that much of that experience cannot be described at all. Firstly because they are not natural to us, but they are natural to the Divine consciousness. It is something that you have yourself to experience if you want to know the full meaning and significance of that experience. Now this is the level you are taken to. Up to this level many people have taken us, perhaps, but beyond that Shri Ram Chandraji speaks about a level of consciousness which, perhaps, is not consciousness in the normal sense of the term, when it is confronting a prospect or an object. There is no longer a subject-object-knowledge relationship. It goes far beyond that, where the subject, the object and knowledge are all one. But I think it is a meaningless statement for most of us metaphysicians who are yet thinking in terms of our ordinary knowledge. But it has been promised to most that such an experience is a possibility and the culmination of our experience. At this point I could only remember the Upanishadic verse. "Saparyagat Shukram Akayam Avrunam, Asnaviram, Shuddham apapaviddham, Kavihi manishi paribhu svayambhu, Yathatathyato arthan vyadadat Sasvatibhyssamabhyaha."

In this language in which the Upanishadic seer of the 'Isa' has pointed out that the subject can be transposed to be the object, a subtle play of the cases reveals the magnificent unity that is arrived at. When a person reaches that particular state he becomes pure. He is the essence of whiteness, or clarity or transparency. And what does he achieve? A level of seeing far beyond "Kranta-darshih'Kavih, paribhuh, svayambhu," self-creating that being, all-widened being that he is. And what is more, he sees everything in their true, eternal nature. And if we want, and if every philosopher does really require the experience of Reality as it is in itself, well this particular consciousness which is transcendent, in the real sense of the term, to the cosmos must be experienced. It has been a statement, a vision. The practicalisation of that had not been possible for most, if not almost impossible, for, the path-way to that was somehow barred. Therefore, in the simplicity of his perception and vision, Shri Ram Chandraji shows that to that point only the transmission of the Highest Personality can take you. It is a gift of God. It is the Grace of God. It is an opening up of the body of God-'Vivrunute Tanum Svam'! It is an opening up of the very body of God. We enter into the splendours that are of God.

Now such an experience is within reach of every one of us with the help of the supreme transmission of the Ultimate Master. All this, it may appear, will demand only one thing from you - constancy of remembrance of your goal. Constancy of the guide, or the constancy of the remembrance of the guide who is with you. Constancy of the sensitivity of the transmission that is being poured into you.

A constancy that requires a fidelity of experimentation and knowledge of the Ultimate! That requires the status of a dhira-a dhira is one who has mastered the technique of dhyana, of the dhi! And who is courageous enough to follow the light that is coming from within, the dhi! One of the most magnificent verses, which has been recited by us through the centuries, is the Gayathri. But to whom do you address that? To the Solar sphere! And to whom are you moving, according to our own tradition? To the Solar sphere! And to the beyond! That is why the goal that has been set before us is the highest that the human mind could ever conceive of. And the means that has been given to us is the highest that the human mind could ever crave for. It may be a tragedy that we have forgotten all that knowledge. It may be said that the Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga is as ancient as the hills of this country. But we are getting it in the most purified form without all those adorations that have come into it by way of myth, by way of phantasy, by way of power-politics in spirituality!

Now I stated that this path of the Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga takes up the frontal position, whereas the Tantrik system, as I also mentioned, takes up what is called the spinal levels. Many of you who are interested in spirituality might have been attracted to what is called the Shat Chakra Nirupana and the other ways of such things. Here again we know from bitter spiritual experience during the last 2500 years, I think from the time tantrik Buddhism developed vigorously, we know what extraordinary things have occurred in the name of shat-chakra-nirupana! And the experience of the chakras, the rousing of the Kundalini, and the rest of those things. On these points, Shri Ram Chandraji points out that if you reach the higher levels by this path, automatically and naturally, all the centres in the back get illuminated. But then it is not by the rousing of the Kundalini you go up, but by the descent of the Supreme force from the crown of your head downwards. It is not shakti that has to move up to Shiva, it is Shiva that has to come down to those levels.

That is why in this system you do get the awakening of the Kundalini and all the centres, but they are processes of nature or of God, and not your individual effort or business. His recent researches, of course they are researches of nearly fourteen to fifteen years, have demonstrated clearly that the centres which he has pointed out are much more important in the downward movement by which, from the Centre, the force had moved out to the grossest portion-Adhimooladhara ! For what? For creation, and the continuance of creation and procreation of the world! The force has come to that individualised point. And as it is known, you cannot lift it up by just pushing it upwards. They do not go that way. The easier way, as it has been found by him and as it was understood by some of the Vedantins, was to rouse it from the heart and connect it to the Brahma-randhra. Then from that it will flow out and downwards and correct your whole system. You become more and more moral. As it was stated by an eminent yogi, Sri Aurobindo, the downward movement of the mind has created all these disastrous tendencies which you call kama and krodha. In fact, our own people constantly recite 'kamoha karshit, manyural karshit'. They are not ours, they are Nature's, and I am not responsible for their working! That is why every type of exertion to control these two forces only represses them, and brings them out in worse shapes. That is why Master has stated that yours is not to touch those centres but to go upward, and these things naturally come under control.

Now this is a very great discovery. They are helpful in evolution but they are not helpful in involution. And the pathway of descent down the hill is more easy by jumping down, but the pathway up the hill is different, and ought to be different. It must be a type of spiral. Any man who has constructed a road up a mountain knows that the twists and turns by which he ascends to the height is the easiest way to go up, though the shortest way may be, as in Tuglak's kingdom, or as in logic, to put a straight line between the two and go there, as the funicular railway system tries to do. Now we don't want to try that job because human nature is not intended for such experiments. On the contrary the pathway of knowledge, merely taken, does not lead you anywhere. Every knowledge needs a practice - a kriya - and the kriya that we have to do is the prayer. The second thing is to meditate, by which we mean to receive the Ultimate consciousness by way of transmission into you. And when it begins its work, your goal is reached in the shortest possible time. And not only that, all the benefits that are said to accrue form the Tantrik sadhana of the Shat-chakra-nirupana are got in an easier, more natural, and less disastrous way. Human nature has now the possibility of becoming Divine with the Divine's help. Human effort, I do feel, is necessary; but a human effort that resists the Divine movement is not likely to meet with success. Let, then, human effort coincides more and more with the Divine way of ascent. That is why it has been possible for Shri Ram Chandraji in the short span of a dozen years to reveal the central possibility of the method of Sri Ramchandra's Rajayoga, which is to help every individual to receive the transmission of the highest consciousness and, further, to lead him with his help, (if he wants to have the appearance of individual effort to go along with it) to reach the Ultimate. All that the Divine wants is a co-operation, not a resistance. And that co-operation is all that you have to offer when you offer a prayer and sit in meditation for an hour a day in the morning, and half-an-hour in the night when you go to bed. Well, that is the easiest path which anybody can take, and any one can undertake, and the simplicity of the method, the sovereign result that it yields, verily make it a Raja Yoga!