[Advaita-l] Meditation on the Supreme & The Guru -The Multifaceted Jivanmukta

[Divya Meedin]

An excerpt from The Multifaceted Jivanmukta, page 381

As was apparent to anyone who listened to them attentively and with
devotion, His  Holiness’s talks were beneficial, pregnant  with import,
lucid, practical, punctuated with rib-tickling humour, cogent and
smooth-flowing, with not a single sentence or phrase out of place or
superfluous. They also bore, when relevant, the unmistakable
stamp of His own direct experience. The following comprises extracts from a
benedictory address of His Holiness at Chennai in 1982; that He was
speaking on the basis of the scripture as also His own experience is patent.

“Practice meditation, commenced in the aforesaid manner, with just a form
of God as the object of focus and with the eyes kept closed. Some day that
divine  form will be apprehended even when the eyes are opened, as though
it has manifested itself in front of you. For this, what is needed is
perseverance for a time with the practice of meditation. As one persists
with the practice, there finally occurs the direct perception of the
divinity that was meditated upon. When this stage is reached, if one were
to have something in mind at that time, one would even receive
clarification regarding it. That response would characterise the word of
God. The person concerned
can uplift himself as also those around him. You can personally experience
all this, subject to your assiduously striving for a time towards that end.

“Can meditation be done on the Supreme as devoid of attributes? Yes, it
can. You may ask, ‘How should I do it?’ Behold an external light briefly.
Forget the world while doing so. While you take no notice of the world,
close your eyes. Conceive that both your eyes are proceeding to look
within. As you conceive thus, a light shall be seen on its own. What kind
of light? What usually shows up is a spontaneous glow that is bluish or one
that bears semblance to moonlight. When the light manifests, promptly
think, ‘I am of the very nature of pure consciousness. Consciousness is
all-pervasive,’ and retain
just this thought. If you practice maintaining this thought, you shall
progress all the way up to asaṁprajñāta-samādhi. With progression in
practice, your meditation shall  ripen into asaṁprajñāta-samādhi proper
that results in the dawn of enlightenment.

“Due to the excellence of meditation, there arises in the mind the
realization of the Supreme Brahman. There occurs Brahman’s sphuraṇa,
manifestation. What is this manifestation like? It is like when we
sometimes aver, ‘Aha! This is now so obvious.’ After such manifestation of
the Supreme Brahman, there is no further requirement to meditate. The
Supreme Brahman, which manifested, continues to remain unveiled.”

The Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad describes the Guru whom a disciple desirous of
enlightenment should approach, as versed in the scripture and established
in the Supreme Brahman; it goes on to teach that those who approach such an
enlightened Guru with some desire obtain the consummation of that desire,
while those who are dispassionate and serve him are freed from rebirth.
The  Kaṭha-upaniṣad points out that one does not become enlightened when
taught the Truth by one who is unenlightened. Bhagavatpāda has described
the Guru to be sought as one who has realized the Truth and is ever intent
on what is good for his disciple. Vedānta-deśika, the eminent
Viśiṣṭādvaitin philosopher and preceptor who lived in the 14th century, has
described an ideal Guru in the first verse of his Nyāsa-viṁśati. In a talk
delivered by His Holiness in the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai in 1958
and
attended by thousands, His Holiness took up this verse and, elaborating on
it, spoke of the characteristics of a Guru. Such was His broadmindedness
and readiness to accept whatever was good that it did not even strike Him
as unusual that He, an Advaitin and the pontiff of a Maṭha founded by
Śaṅkara-bhagavatpāda, was taking up, and that too, in a Śaiva temple, a
verse of a Viśiṣṭādvaitin who had attacked advaita in his works such
as Śata-dūṣaṇī.

That verse conveys, “One who is desirous of liberation should seek a
preceptor who is (a) grounded in a good tradition, (b) a person of steady
knowledge (of the Truth), (c) sinless, (d) versed in the scripture, (e)
established in Brahman, (f) replete with the sattva-guṇa, (g) a speaker of
what is true (or the Truth), (h) with conduct that is in accordance with
the prescribed codes, (i) free from showing off, jealousy and other such
negative traits, (j) unmoved by sense-objects, (k) an enduring friend
(=not one who abandons a disciple), (l) compassionate and (m) corrector of
disciples when they err.” His Holiness had in full measure each and every
characteristic of an ideal Guru spoken of in the Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad, by
Bhagavatpāda and in this verse.

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