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‘Do you feel as
sure of God,’ someone once asked me, ‘as you do of the lamp in front
of you?’ ‘I am sure, quite sure of God,’ I replied, ‘but as for the
lamp, I am not nearly so sure whether it really exists or not !’
This exchange, which is recorded in my Vichar-pothi, took place
thirty years ago, in 1928. On a number of occasions I have had what
appears to me to be a direct Vision of God. I owe it partly perhaps
to the attitudes I inherited in my family, and partly to my
reverence for certain holy books. But my faith rests not so much on
these things as on the fact of experience. Other living creatures in
all their variety, and the human beings I see around me, are so many
forms in which He wills to appear.
What is this direct, Open Vision?—one may ask.
One thing about it is that it should appeal to reason—that is the
foundation. If something is unreasonable the question of vision does
not arise. First, the thing must be acceptable to reason; secondly,
after that, comes the experience. Reason tests it—this is knowledge;
the experience follows—that is vision through knowledge. We may
take, for example, the personal experience of compassion. Reason
must first recognize that the world is full of compassion, that
compassion is essential to the world plan. If my mother had not had
compassion on me, I could not have received what I needed for my
growth. The intellect must understand the need for compassion and
recognize that it is present in the creation. Only then comes the
experience of compassion. To feel in oneself the compassion that a
mother has for her child, that is direct knowledge of compassion.
The Vision Direct of Compassion
The compassion I feel is not for individuals but for society. I am
so hard-hearted that if someone falls ill I don’t feel it in the
least; but if I felt no compassion for the whole community, my life
would come to an end. It is my basic principle that if you want
equal compassion for all, you must not allow individuals to make
special claims—otherwise there will be envy and hatred, which are
found not only among kings but also among those who keep company
with the great. I, therefore believe that as compassion expands to
embrace the whole creation, love will no longer leap like waves in
shallow water, but become ever deeper. Waters that run deep are
still. As the sky pervades all, it turns into a void.
Companions from the Past
The direct experience of the virtue of compassion is a comparatively
small matter. There are other, more compre- hensive forms of open
vision in which we may have fellowship with many who have lived
before us.
The voices of men of former days fill the air around us, but they
are heard only by those who have the power to receive their words.
When can we hear the distant sounds on the radio?—only when we
possess a radio set. Without it one can hear nothing, even though,
as science has proved, the air around us is full of sound. In the
same way we may hear the voices of those who have gone before us,
provided we have the right radio set.
I often speak of my still-continuing talks with Bapu. When he was
alive I had to walk five miles to meet him; it took me two hours,
and I had to make an effort. Now, I simply close my eyes and am with
him that very second. I can ask him questions and get his answers
with no trouble at all. Then, he was confined within a body; now, he
is free. He is everywhere, there is nothing to bind him. I am still
bound, but so long as I am in the body I shall continue to get
inspiration from him.
In the same way I have often described how on my pilgrimage I felt
that the Lord Rama was going before me, so also the five Pandavas,
the Lord Buddha, the Lord Mahavir, Shankar, Ramanuja, Kabir, Namadev....they
all lead, and I follow. They are with me, I am not alone. I never
feel lonely; I feel them to be with me all the time.
I remember also one incident when I was camping at Bettiah in Bihar.
I dreamed that someone of very gracious appearance was sitting
talking to me about Vinayanjali. He asked me about the meaning of
two of the hymns and requested me to explain some points to him,
which I did. He listened with great attention and from time to time
nodded his head in agreement. After a while it came to me that the
man who was visiting me was no other than Saint Tulsidas himself—and
I woke up. I began thinking about this dream, and realized that the
day was that of Tulsidas’ death—a day which I was in the habit of
commemorating every year by reading his Ramayana or his
Vinayapatrika. But this time I had forgotten, so Tulsidas himself
came and talked to me in my dream. Since that day those hymns of his
have had a new meaning for me.
On another occasion Manoharji (Manohar Diwan) had asked me a
question and in reply I had commented on one of the verses of
Jnaneshwari. When I was asleep that night Saint Jnanadeva came and
talked with me. ‘Vinya,’ he said, ‘you have understood me rightly.
One phrase which I used is based on a line in the Upanishad. But I
used the word buddhi (intellect) where the Upanishad used manas
(mind). I did not make this change lightly. In the Upanishad manas
includes buddhi; in Jnaneshwari buddhi includes manas. You will
understand why I used this word buddhi if you think about what manas
means in the Upanishad.’ That was all, but I went on thinking about
it for half an hour.
Face to Face with God
On April 18, 1951, in Pochampalli in Telangana, the Harijans asked
for land and were given one hundred acres. That night I could not
sleep for more than three or four hours—what was this that had
happened? I believe in God; I also believe in arithmetic. I began
calculating; if one were to ask for land for all the landless of
India, it would take fifty million acres to satisfy their needs.
Could so much land be had for the asking? Then I had a direct talk
with God, just as I might talk face to face with another human
being. ‘If you hesitate,’ He said, ‘if you fear this task, you must
give up your faith in non-violence and stop claiming to be
non-violent. Have faith; ask, and ask again.’ He said one thing
more: ‘He who put hunger into the child’s stomach also put milk into
the mother’s breasts. He does not leave His work half done.’ This
set all my doubts at rest; the very next day I began asking for
land.
 An Experience in Nirvikalpa Samadhi
While I was at Chandil during my bhoodan pilgrimage, I went down
with malignant malaria. I was in high fever, and became so weak that
no one expected me to live. I was quite prepared either to live or
die, and I cannot say that I would have been at all sorry if the
Lord had taken me away. One day—December 17, 1952—I felt as if the
time for my departure had come. I was in high fever, but I asked
those present to raise me into a sitting position. No sooner had
they done so that I became directly absorbed in contem- plation. I
may have remained in that state of total absorption for perhaps
twenty-five minutes or half an hour. Although I had practised
meditation a great deal, I had never before known such bliss, such
open vision, as I did then. It was illimitable boundless bliss,
peace beyond all comprehension. I felt that I stood in the very
presence of God and saw Him face to face. You may call it
imagination, illusion, what you please. Shankaracharya called the
whole world an illusion, so as this experience of mine was not
outside the world, you may call it an illusion too. After half an
hour I became conscious once more of my surroundings, and left that
new world of mine. It was an experience of what the shastras call
nirvikalpa samadhi, an experience in which the knower, the known and
the knowing become one.
My body broke into perspiration, my fever left me, and I was ready
to live. He who sustains the world, He it is who sustains me. If He
had called me away I would have been ready; I was equally ready to
be cured. I felt that many of my physical and mental ills would
disappear and I should become stronger mentally. I was weaker than
before and had less physical energy. Mentally however I found myself
so full of energy that I felt, in the words of a Vedic hymn, that I
could swing the whole world to and fro as I willed.
Becoming the Lord’s mount
During my travels in Monghyr district (Bihar) I camped at a village
named Ulao, where the meeting was held in the temple of Shiva.
Usually the Shiva temple itself is underground, and the meeting hall
is above it. At Ulao however, in contrast, the meeting hall was
below and the temple above it. My seat in the hall was just under
the Shivalinga. As I sat there it was as though the Lord Shiva
Himself was using me as His vehicle; I had become His mount, His
bull Nandi. Then it dawned on me that the phrase Adhirudha samadhi-yoga
might have another meaning. Up till then I had taken it to mean a
samadhi, a transcen- dental experience, mounted on yoga; now I saw
it was meaning a samadhi which is a mount, or a vehicle, for yoga,
the ultimate union. Before that I used to rebuke our workers in
rather harsh and arrogant terms. After that event I changed my style
as can be seen by a careful study of my talks from the point of view
of their inward spirit.
In the Arms of God
On August 22, 1957, just two days before I left Kerala for
Karnataka, I was sleeping under a mosquito-net. Suddenly I felt a
sharp sting; I thought it was a scorpion, and got up and shook out
the bedding. A centipede fell out. The sting gave me such intense
pain that I could not sit still, I had to keep walking to and fro.
Something like five hours must have passed, all the while in this
intolerable pain. Then at last I lay down again, and my tears
overflowed. Vallabhaswami (who was one of those with me) thought
that my tears were due to the pain. ‘I am not in pain,’ I said. ‘All
of you go to sleep.’
What had happened was this: All this time I had been inwardly
repeating to myself a Sanskrit prayer: ‘O God, give me devotion,
cleanse my mind of faults, may it be without sin. O thou who
dwellest in the hearts of all, this is the desire of my heart, I
have no other. O God, I am speaking the truth.’
But in fact, while I repeated these words, I had another desire—I
longed that the pain of the sting should subside ! I was saying
satyam vadami (I am speaking the truth) but really it was jhutham
vadami (telling a lie). What a display of egoism ! At last I cried
aloud in my mind: ‘How long are you going to torment me?’ And
suddenly, all the pain was gone, completely gone, and I felt myself
held as in a close embrace. That was when my tears overflowed, and
within two minutes I was asleep. I experienced God then in His
quality of mercy.
An Open Vision
As I travelled through Maharashtra I came to Pandharpur. Those who
were in charge of the temple of Vithoba invited me for darshan of
the image. My companions were people of all castes and religions and
we all had the darshan together. I shall never to the end of my life
forget what I saw that day, it is so deeply imprinted on my heart.
It is hard to find words for what I experienced then as I stood at
the feet of Vithoba, the tears flowing freely from my eyes. I looked
at the image, and saw no stone sculpture there, but the very God
Himself. Beside me there stood those I had revered, some from
boyhood, saints like Ramanuja, Nammalvar, Jnanadev, Chaitanya, Kabir,
Tulsidas and many more. I bowed before the image, looking at its
feet, and saw all those dear to me, all those who had nurtured me,
mother, father, guru, and drank my fill of joy.
For my part, I think of God as an ocean of consciousness, in which
the waves rise and fall, the billows mount up and are broken, and
merge once more into the whole. New waves arise, new waves fall back
to be absorbed again. Each individual soul, one wave in the ocean of
God, emerges from it to play on the surface for one, two, three
lifetimes and then is absorbed, and so set free. Among individual
souls there is no high or low; all are different manifestations of
His will. |
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