1. Universal Equality
In the course of a conversation about Sri Bhagavan’s
life in Madurai, Sri Bhagavan recalled, “If my aunt began
preparing appalams, or the like, she would call me and ask
me to put my hand on it first. She had great faith in me,
because I used to do everything according to her wishes and
never told lies. I had to tell only one lie and that was when I
came here.”
A devotee then said, “It means that for doing a great
thing, sometimes a lie has to be told!”
Sri Bhagavan replied, “Yes. When it is for the welfare
of the world and when the situation demands it, it has to be
done. It cannot be helped. Where is the question of telling a
lie? Some force makes one say so. So long as there is purpose
there is need of action. When there is no purpose, we can
avoid action in the same way as was done by the sage in the
story of the sage and the hunter in Yoga Vasishtam.”
Full of curiosity the devotee asked, “What is that
story?”
In a Forest, a sage sat motionless and in silence. His eyes
however were open. A hunter hit a deer and as it was running
away, he began pursuing it. When he saw the sage he stopped.
The deer had run in front of the sage and hidden itself in a
bush nearby.
The hunter could not see it and so asked the sage
“Swami, my deer has come running this way. Please tell me
where exactly it has gone.” The sage said he did not know.
The hunter said, “It ran in front of you. Your eyes were open. How could you
say you do not know?”, to which the sage
replied, “Oh my friend! We are in the forest with universal
equality.
We do not have ahankara. Unless you have ahankara,
you cannot do things in this world. That ahankara is the mind.
That mind does all things. It also makes all the sense organs
work. We certainly have no mind; it disappeared long ago.
We do not have the three states – the states of waking, dream
and deep sleep. We are always in the fourth or turiya state. In
that state nothing is seen by us. That being so, what can we
say about your deer?” Unable to understand what the sage was
saying, the hunter went his way thinking they were all the
words of a mad man.
2. God works for his Devotee
Ramana Maharshi - On a
Particular day in the year the God and the Goddess
are taken to an adjoining field and the festival of the gods and
goddess is celebrated.
This is in memory of the fact that one day
Sundaramurti Swami entered the temple and found to his dismay
that neither God nor Goddess was there, and that on searching
for them he found them in a field working at transplanting
seedlings for a devotee, a Harijan. |
