The scriptures assert that a seeker of Truth should rely wholeheartedly on the combined authority of the Three Great Sources: vidya shastras, guru anushasana, and aparoksha anubhuti. In English, these are the nondual scriptures, the irrefutable testament of the guru, and one’s own direct experience. By taking recourse to these three one is led infallibly to the goal of human existence.
In this issue of Mundamala we are bringing back the feature “Guru Anushasana.” The offering below is a double guru transmission wherein SRV’s provisional guru, Babaji, expands upon one of Sri Ramakrishna’s short, pithy teachings.
Unbearable Heights
1 “A man cannot live on the roof for long. He must come down to more comfortable dwellings inside the house.”
It is not possible for an embodied being to bear the intensity of samadhi all of the time, so he exists at the ordinary level as well.
Devoted to the world and forgetful of God, Who is the source of all creation and the essence of what is beyond the creation as well, mankind falls into preoccupation with a plurality of objects and overlooks the inherent bliss of nondual samadhi. It is like a boy who climbs to the roof of his mother’s house and remains there to play. When nightfall turns the location into a source of fear, he descends quickly and takes refuge inside. Such is the nature of embodied existence in the world of name and form.
But the case of the illumined ones is different. Finding that primal place of origin to be exceedingly calm and blissful, and becoming adapted to its free and open expanse, the enlightened ones find both security and solace there. As they do, they let go of all holds on objects, desires, concepts and future plans and experience unimaginable fulfillment. The roof of the house represents for them the very inception of the projected creation, before the wheels of the evolutionary process are placed in motion and prior to involvement with Maya and karma. In this pristine place, where mind and intellect abide in the Atman, where the individual ego is exposed as a facade couched in limitation, and where Consciousness is ever resting in its own natural state of freedom and bliss, everything reflects perfection in a spontaneous fashion. It is the roof beyond relative existence where sublime states of samadhi are accessible to aspiring human beings seeking nondual Truth. Gradually acclimatizing to those awesome heights of pure Awareness, the call to come inside the home of food, family and frivolity loses its attraction. On the roof, the stars beckon enticingly, reminiscent of sublime matters related to infinity and pertinent to the Beloved One who presides over the entire universal community. For the bliss of samadhi cannot be experienced in the basement of ignorance or the living room of comfort, complacency and conviviality. The Kenopanisad affirms this:
If you think “I have known Brahman well enough,” then you know little;
for the form of Brahman you see as conditioned
in living beings and deities is but a trifle.
Therefore, you should inquire further about Brahman.