Grace is always there
Mr. B. C. Das, the Physics Lecturer, asked:
D.: Contemplation is possible only with control of mind and control can be accomplished only by contemplation. Is it not a vicious circle?
M.: Yes, they are interdependent. They must go on side by side. Practice and dispassion bring about the result gradually. Dispassion is practised to check the mind from being projected outward; Practice is to keep it turned inward. There is a struggle between control and contemplation. It is going on constantly within. Contemplation will in due course be successful.
D.: How to begin? Your Grace is needed for it.
M.: Grace is always there. “Dispassion cannot be acquired, nor realization of the Truth, nor inherence in the Self, in the absence of Guru’s Grace,” the Master quoted.
Practice is necessary. It is like training a roguish bull confined to his stall by tempting him with luscious grass and preventing him from straying.
Then the Master read out a stanza from Tiruvachakam, which is an address to the mind, saying: “O humming bee (namely, mind)! Why do you take the pains of collecting tiny specks of honey from innumerable flowers? There is one from whom you can have the whole storehouse of honey by simply thinking or seeing or speaking of Him. Get within and hum to Him (hrimkara).”
D.: Should one have a form in one’s mind, supplemented with reading or chanting God’s name in one’s meditation?
M.: What is mental conception except it be meditation?
D.: Should the form be supplemented by repetition of mantras or dwelling on divine attributes?
M.: When japa is the predominating tendency, vocal japa becomes eventually mental, which is the same as meditation.
Talks with Ramana Maharshi
1st July, 1936
Talk 220.
