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kami
USA
920 Posts |
 Posted - Mar 05 2013 : 08:57:25 AM
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Read this today - does not get any clearer than this!
Sri Bhagavan insisted (for instance, in his replies to Sivaprakasam Pillai) that the enquiry is to be kept up to the very end. Whatever states, whatever powers, whatever perceptions or visions may come, there is always the question of to whom they come until the Self alone remains.
Indeed, visions and powers can prove a distraction, clamping the mind down as effectively as attachment to physical power or pleasure and deluding it into imagining that it has been metamorphosed into the Self. And, as with earthly powers and pleasures, the desire for them is even more injurious than their possession.
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Echammal asked whether siddhis (powers) could be attained by the devotees. It was the period when Sri Bhagavan was composing the Forty Verses on Reality, the work which, with its Supplement, can be taken as his enunciation of doctrine, and he composed a stanza in answer to the question.
“To abide firm in the Reality which is eternal is the true siddhi. Other attainments are all such as are possessed in dreams. Do they prove real when one awakes? Will those who are established in Reality and free from illusion care for such things?”
The occult is an obstacle to the spiritual. Powers and, even more, the desire for powers, impede the aspirant. It is said in the Devikalottram, which Sri Bhagavan translated from Sanskrit into Tamil:
“One should not accept thaumaturgic powers, etc., even when directly offered to one, for they are like ropes to tether a beast and will sooner or later drag one down. Supreme Mukti (Liberation) does not lie that way; it is not found elsewhere than in Infinite Consciousness.”
To return from this digression: it is not only as a technique of meditation that Sri Bhagavan prescribed Self-enquiry but as a technique of living also. Asked whether it should be used always or just in fixed hours of meditation, he replied, “Always.” This throws light upon his refusal to sanction renunciation of worldly life, for the very circumstances which had been obstacles to sadhana were thus converted into instruments of sadhana. Ultimately, sadhana is simply an attack on the ego, and no amount of ecstasy or meditation can carry it to success so long as the ego remains entrenched in hope and fear, ambition and resentment, in any sort of passion or desire.
-Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge by Arthur Osborne |
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Occult Powers or Siddhis - Bhagavan Ramana
