7th CHAKRA PORTAL - Meditation & Master

This portal would be about spirituality and the highest teachings and poetry.

Of the teachings, the Mahavakyam of Tat Twam Asi (I am THAT) relates to this highest state of the Absolute.

Swami indicates that to abide as the Reality of "That" one has to apply both meditation and self-inquiry for the final conviction of inherent Grace to still the mind and transcend consciousness. I wanted to share an excerpt from a book "Ramana Maharishi and the path of self-knowledge" by Author Osborne (who also wrote books on Shirdi Baba). The excerpt is a synopsis that was written by Ramana's devotee Humphreys and published in the international Psychic Gazette and is an excellent presentation of what is takes to be a Master and reach the heights of the 7th chakra:

"A Master is one who has meditated solely on God, has flung his whole personality into the sea of God, and drowned and forgotten it there, till he becomes only the instrument of God, and when his mouth opens it speaks God's words without effort or forethought; and when he raises a hand, God flows again through that, to work a miracle.

Do not think to much of psychical phenomena and such things, their number is legion; and once faith in the psychical thing is established in the heart of a seeker, such phenomena have done their work. Clairvoyance, clairaudience, and such things are not worth having, when so much far greater illumination and peace are possible without them than with them. The Master takes on these powers as a form of self-sacrifice!

The idea that a Master is simply one who has attained power over the various occult senses by long practice and prayer or anything of the kind, is absolutely false. No Master ever cared a rap for occult powers, for he has no need for them in his daily life.

The phenomena we see are curious and surprising - but the most marvellous of all we do not realize and that is that one, and only one, illimitable force is responsible for:

(a) All the phenomena we see; and

(b) The act of seeing them

Do not fix your attention on all these changing things of life, death and phenomena. Do not think of even the actual act of seeing or perceiving them, but only on THAT which sees all these things - THAT which is responsible for it all. This will seem nerly impossible at first, but by degrees the result will be felt. It takes years of steady daily practice, and that is how a Master is made. Give quarter of an hour for this practice. Try to keep the mind unshakably fixed on THAT which sees. It is inside yourself. Do not except to find that THAT is something definite on which the mind can be fixed easily; it will not be so. Though it takes years to find that THAT, the result of this concentration will be seen in four or five months' time - in all sorts of unconsciousness clairvoyance, in peace of mind, in power to deal with troubles, in power all round, yet always unconscious power.

I have given you this teaching in the same words as the Master gives to his intimate chelas (discipes). From now onwards, let your whole thought in meditation be not on the act of seeing, nor on what you see, but immovably on THAT which sees.

One gets no reward for Attainment. then one understands that one does not want a reward. As Krishna says, "Ye have the right to work, but not to the fruits thereof" Perfect attainment is simply worship, and worship is attainment.

If you sit down and realize that you think only by virtue of the one Life, and that the mind, animated by the one Life into the act of thinking, is a part of the whole which is God, then you argue your mind out of existence as a separate entity; and the result is that mind and body, physically (so to speak) disappear; and the only thing that remains is Be-ing, which is at once existence and non-existence and not explainable in words or ideas.

A Master cannot help perpetually being in this state with only this difference, that in some, to us incomprehensible, way he can use the mind, body and intellect too, without falling back into the delsuion of having a separate consciousness.

It is useless to speculate, useless to try and take a mental or intellectual grasp and work from that. That is only religion, a code for children and for social life, a guide to help us to avoid shocks, so that the inside fire may burn up the nonsense in us, and teach us, a little sooner, common sense, ie. a knowledge of the separateness.

Religion, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Theosophy, or any other kind of "ism" or "sophy" or system, can only take us to the one point where all religions meet and no further.

That one point where all religions meet is the realization - in no mystical sense, but in the most worldly and everyday sense, and the more worldly and everyday and practical the better - of the fact that God is everything, and everything is God.

From this point begins the work of the practice of this mental comprehension, and all it amounts to is the breaking of a habit. One ahs to cease calling things "things" and must call then God; and instead of thinking them to be things, must know them to be God; instead of imagining "existence" to be the only thing possible, one must realize that this (phenomenal) existence is ony the creation of the mind, that non-existence is a necessary sequence if youa re going to postulate "existence".

The knowledge of things only shows the existence of an organ ot cognise. There are no sounds to teh deaf, no sights for the blind, and the mind is merely an organ of concsption or appreciation of certain sides of God.

God is infinite, and therefore existence and non-existence are merely His counterparts. Not that I wish to say that God is made up of definite component parts. it is hard to be comprehensive when talking about God. true knowledge comes from within and not from without. And true knowledge is not "knowing" but "seeing".

Realization is nothing but seeing God literally. Our greatest mistake is that we think of God as acting symbolically nd allegorically, instead of practically and literally.

Take a piece of glass, paint colours and forms onto it, and put the same into a magic lantern, turn on a little light, and the colours and the forms painted on the glass are reproduced on the screen. If that light were not turned on, you would not see the colours of the slide on the screen.

How are colours formed? By breaking up white light with a many sided prism. So it is with a man's character. It is seen when the light of Life (God) is shining through it, ie. in a mans actions. If the man is sleeping or dead you do not see his character. Only when the Light of Life is animating the character and causing it to act in a thousand different ways, in response to its contact with this many sided world, can you perceive a man's character. If white light had not been broken up and put into forms and shapes on our magic lantern slide, we should never have known that there was a piece of glass in front of the light, for the light would have shone clearly through. Ina sense that white light was marred, and had some of its clearness taken form it by having to shine through the colours on the glass.

So it is with the ordinary man. His mind is like the screen. On it shines light, dulled and changed becasue he has allowed the many -sided world to stand in the way of the Light (God) and broken it up. He sees only the effects of the Light instead of the Light (God) Himself and his mind reflects the effects he sees just as the screen reflects the colours of the glass. Take away the prism and the colours vanish, absorbed back into the white light whence they came. Take away the colours from the slide and the light shines clearly through. Take away from our sight the wordl of effects we see, and let us look only into the cause, and we shall see the Light (God).

A Master in meditation, though the ears and eyes be open, fixes his attention so firmly on THAT which sees that he neither sees nor hears, nor has any phsycial consciousness at all - nor mental either , but onlny spiritual.

We must take away the world, which causes our doubts, which clouds our mind, and the light of God will shine clearly through. How is the world taken away? When, for example, instead of seeing a man you see and say, "This is God animating a body", which body ansers, more or less perfectly, to the directions of God, as a ship answers more or less perfectly to her helm.

What are sins? Why, for example, does a man drink too much? Becasue he hates the idea of being bound - bound by teh incapacity to drink as much a he wishes. He is striving after liberty in every sin he commits. this striving after liberty is the first instinctive action of God in a man's mind. For God knows that he is not bound. Drinking too much does not give a man liberty, but then the man does not know that he is really seeking liberty. When he realizes that, he sets about seeking teh best way to obtain liberty.

But the man only gains that liberty when he realizes that he was never bound. The I, I, I's feel so bound are really the illimitable Spirit. I am bound because I know nothing that I do not sense by one of the senses. Whereas I am all the time that which senses in every body in every mind. These bodies and minds are only the tools of the "I", the illimitable Spirit.

What do i want with the tools sho am the tools themsleves, as colours are the White Light?"