Snake in the rope

Harsha (Dr. Harsh K. Luthar) hluthar at BRYANT.EDU
Wed Mar 3 16:28:18 CST 1999


Nandaji: For this  you must supplement your study of VedAnta with sadhana
too. Without that, 'understanding' will be very difficult and ultimately
useless.

Harsha: Yes. But surely no effort to understand is ever wasted. Sri
Jaldharji has had a chance to explain to the benefit of many people. What is
Sadhana? Is it not holding on to the awareness that the Ocean of compassion
sits in One's Own Heart and is One's Own Self as Pure Awareness of Being.
Anything that allows the mind to be quiet and content is Sadhana.  In my
understanding, Jaldharji has explained (through the analogy of snake and the
rope) that when the Self is Realized, the false cognition that the world is
different from the Self vanishes. There is only the Self. Therefore there is
no attainment outside of one's own Self.

>From S.S. Cohen writing about Ramana Maharshi:

Rationality was the very essence of his arguments, while the ultimate answer
to all the questions was always the same, namely, "Find out who you are." He
first met every questioner on his own ground, and then slowly steered him
round to the source of all problems - the Self - the realisation of which he
held to be the universal panacea. When the audience shrank, he at times
became humorously autobiographical about his early school and home life or
about his many experiences on the hill with sadhus, devotees, etc. As time
passed and the Master's state of mind and ideas took firm root in me, I
ceased to ask questions, or to intercept him in his walks outside the Ashram
grounds, as I used to do in the first six months. The final conclusion to
which I came in the end of these six months I reported one day to Bhagavan.
He showed his gracious approval by a gesture of finality with his hand and
said: "So much lies in your power, the rest must be left entirely to the
Guru, who is the ocean of grace and mercy seated in the heart as the
seeker's own Self."

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