Grace

Q: You talk a lot about effort but rarely speak about grace. Don't you attach much importance to grace?

Grace is important; in fact it is essential. It is even more important than effort. Realisation of the Self comes about through both effort and grace. When one makes a steady effort to abide in the Self one receives the Guru's grace in abundance. The grace comes not only through the form of one's Guru. When you meditate earnestly all the jivanmuktas of the past and present respond to your efforts by sending you blessings of light. 

How to distinguish between acts which occur as God's will and acts which are brought about by the ego

This is very simple. When surrender is complete, everything is God. Everything that happens is then His action. In that state there is peace, harmony and an absence of thoughts. Until that stage is reached, all acts are by the ego.

Q: Swami, I sometimes feel tremendous grace and have a great sense of well-being. This feeling is ready for a few days and then it goes away. Why is this?

If the awareness of grace does not last it means that your surrender is only partial. Don't be attached to your problems and don't worry about them. Let all your problems go and put them in the hands of Bhagavan. Cultivate the feeling 'This is God's problem, not mine'

When you surrender to Bhagavan you should not worry about any of your problems and needs. You should have faith that Bhagavan is going to take care of everything. If you still find yourself worrying about anything, you have not fully surrendered. 

Tayumanuvar once asked Siva to give him a boon:
You who carry all the troubles of the world, please take all my troubles too. Take from me all sense that I am the doer. You alone act; You do everything through me.

Surrender completely and accept that everything that happens to you and the world is God's will.

Q: Many people feel an urge to worship something which is apart from themselves. They are not very attracted to the Self. Instead they want to worship an external Guru or a God.

Worshipping forms of the deity or of the Guru is a useful aid for as long as one is not mature enough to know the formless reality. These forms are just signals which point to the unmanifest reality.

If you want to point out a particular start to someone you might say, 'You see the tip of that leaf on that tree? The star is just to the left of it.'

The leaf is only a signal which helps you to shift your attention to what you really want to see. The form of the Guru is a similar signpost. He exists with a form as a perpetual reminder to us that our attention should always be on the formless reality

Bhakti

In Vivekachudamani it is said, 'Of the crores of paths to realise the Self, the best is bhakti'

But Sankara then goes on to define bhakti by saying, 'The highest bhakti is steady devotion to the Self, always abiding in the Self'

Q: I can understand what you say: that we are not the body and the mind, and that this truth has to be experienced more and more. But we have to take care of this body and this mind. Also, we must do something in the world. We cannot just sit and meditate all the time. If we do that we will be a burden on others.

We must the care of the body by giving it food, shelter and clothing. This is necessary because the journey to the Self is only easy when the body is healthy. If a ship is not in need of repair, it it is in good condition, we can easily use it to go on a journey. But we should not forget the purpose for which we have been given this body. We should not get side-tracked by thinking too much about good health or worrying about other people's problems. Our purpose in life is to realise the Self. It is an easy matter to get a little food and find somewhere congenial to live and meditate. Once we have achieved this we should have no further interest in the world and its problems.

Love and Compassion

Do we have no other function in the world other than discovering our own Self? Is it not our duty to show a little love and compassion to other people?

If you discover yourself you will be able to give love and compassion to the whole world. It will flow automatically from you. The sun is full of light which it gives to the world without any partiality. If you become full of spiritual light by realising the Self, that light overflows everywhere. That overflowing of your Self is love and compassion for the whole universe. One may try to do some good to others but not much real good will result unless you know yourself. How can a blind man help other people?