Q & A with Annamalai Swami

Excerpted from Annamalai Swami: Final Talks


Annamalai Swami: "Bhagavan [Ramana Maharshi] watched me very closely in the years that I served him in the ashram. One time I went to the Mother’s temple where many people were talking about worldly matters.

"Bhagavan called me back, saying, ‘Why should you go to that crowd? Don’t go to crowded places. If you move with the crowd, their vasanas will infect you.’

"Bhagavan always encouraged me to live a solitary life and not mix with other people. That was the path he picked for me. Other people got different advice that was equally good for them. But while he actively discouraged me from socializing, he also discouraged me from sitting quietly and meditating during the years that I was working in the ashram. In this period of my life, if Bhagavan saw me sitting with my eyes closed he would call out to me and give me some work to do.

"On one of these occasions he told me, ‘Don’t sit and meditate. It will be enough if you don’t forget that you are the Self. Keep this in your mind all the time while you are working. This sadhana will be enough for you. The real sadhana is not to forget the Self. It is not sitting quietly with one’s eyes closed. You are always the Self. Just don’t forget it.’

"Bhagavan’s way does not create a war between the mind and the body. He does not make people sit down and fight the mind with closed eyes. Usually, when you sit in meditation, you are struggling to achieve something, fighting to gain control over the mind. Bhagavan did not advise us to engage in this kind of fight. He told us that there is no need to engage in a war against the mind, because mind does not have any real, fundamental existence. This mind, he said, is nothing but a shadow. He advised me to be continuously aware of the Self while I did the ordinary things of everyday life, and in my case, this was enough.

"If you understand the Self and be that Self, everything will appear to you as your own Self. No problems will ever come to you while you have this vision. Because you are all and all is the Self, choices about liking or disliking will not arise. If you put on green-tinted glasses, everything you see will appear to be green. If you adopt the vision of the Self, everything that is seen will be Self and Self alone.

"So these were Bhagavan’s teachings for me: ‘If you want to understand the Self, no formal sadhana is required. You are always the Self. Be aware of the Self while you are working. Convince yourself that you are the Self, and not the body or the mind, and always avoid the thought, "I am not the Self”.

"'Avoid thoughts that limit you, thoughts that make you believe that you are not the Self.'

"I once asked Bhagavan: ‘You are at the top of the hill. You have reached the summit of spiritual life, whereas I am still at the bottom of the hill. Please help me to reach the summit.’

"Bhagavan answered, ‘It will be enough if you give up the thought, "I am at the bottom of the hill”. If you can do this, there will be no difference between us. It is just your thoughts that are convincing you that I am at the top and you are at the bottom. If you can give up this difference, you will be fine.’

"'Don‘t adopt attitudes such as these that automatically assume that you are limited or inferior in any way.'

"On another occasion I asked Bhagavan: ‘Nowadays, many people are crossing big oceans by plane in very short periods of time. I would like Bhagavan to find us a good device, a jnana airplane that can speedily transport us all to moksha.’

"This time Bhagavan replied, ‘We are both travelling in a jnana airplane, but you don’t understand this.’

"In his answers to me Bhagavan would never let me fall into the false belief that I was separate or different from him, or that I was a person with a mind and a body who needed to do something to reach some exalted spiritual state. Whenever I asked him questions that were based on assumptions such as these, he would show me the error that was implicit in the question and gently point me back to the truth, the Self. He would never allow me to entertain wrong ideas."

Question: "What other questions did Swamiji ask during his early days at Ramanasramam?"

Annamalai Swami: "When I first came to Bhagavan I used to ask questions about liberation. What is bondage? What is freedom? And so on.

"Muruganar, who was sitting next to me on one of these occasions, laughed and said, ‘This boy doesn’t even know what liberation is and what bondage is’.

"I think he was amused by the innocence of my enquiries. After I began serving Bhagavan, I listened very attentively to all the philosophical explanations that he gave. I also talked to Chadwick and other devotees about various aspects of Vedanta. I gradually absorbed the teachings until a point came where I could say that I had a good working knowledge of Bhagavan’s teachings and the various other systems that were being discussed in his presence.

"In one of his later songs Muruganar wrote about Bhagavan, ‘You make wise people of those who come to you in an ignorant state. This is the grace of Ramana.’

"I always felt that this was a reference to me.

"It wasn’t easy in the beginning. When I first came to the ashram, I was so forgetful I rarely remembered anything that Bhagavan said. Because I was so forgetful, I used to keep a paper and pencil and write down whatever Bhagavan was saying. I felt that my forgetfulness was a hindrance to absorbing Bhagavan’s teachings, so one day I approached him and said, ‘Bhagavan, my memory is very bad. Could you please bless me with a good one.’ Bhagavan looked into my eyes for a few minutes without saying anything. From that day on my memory became very clear and sharp, so much so, I gave up carrying my pencil and paper."



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