Extracted from Be As You Are: The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi

Questioner: Is not grace the gift of the Guru?

Ramana Maharshi: God, grace and Guru are all synonymous and also eternal and immanent. Is not the Self already within? Is it for the Guru to bestow it by his look ? If a Guru thinks so, he does not deserve the name. The books say that there are so many kinds of diksha, initiation by hand, by touch, by eye, etc. They also say that the Guru makes some rites with fire, water, japa or mantras and calls such fantastic performances dikshas, as if the disciple becomes ripe only after such processes are gone through by the Guru.

If the individual is sought he is nowhere to be found. Such is the Guru. Such is Dakshinamurti. What did he do? He was silent when the disciples appeared before him. He maintained silence and the doubts of the disciples were dispelled, which means that they lost their individual identities. That is jnana and not all the verbiage usually associated with it.

Silence is the most potent form of work. However vast and emphatic the sastras may be they fail in their effect. The Guru is quiet and peace prevails in all. His silence is more vast and more emphatic than all the sastras put together. These questions arise because of the feeling that, having been here so long, heard so much, exerted so hard, one has not gained anything. The work proceeding within is not apparent. In fact the Guru is always within you.

Questioner: Can the Guru's silence really bring about advanced states of spiritual awareness?

Ramana Maharshi: There is an old story which demonstrates the power of the Guru's silence. Tattvaraya composed a bharani, a kind of poetic composition in Tamil, in honour of his Guru Swarupananda, and convened an assembly of learned pandits to hear the work and assess its value. The pandits raised the objection that a bharani was only composed in honour of great heroes capable of killing a thousand elephants in battle and that it was not in order to compose such a work in honour of an ascetic. Thereupon the author said, `Let us all go to my Guru and we shall have this matter settled there.'

They went to the Guru and, after they had all taken their seats, the author told his Guru the purpose of their visit. The Guru sat silent and all the others also remained in mouna. The whole day passed, the night came, and some more days and nights, and yet all sat there silently, no thought at all occurring to any of them and nobody thinking or asking why they had come there. After three or four days like this, the Guru moved his mind a bit, and the people assembled immediately regained their thought activity. They then declared, `Conquering a thousand elephants is nothing beside this Guru's power to conquer the rutting elephants of all our egos put together. So certainly he deserves the bharani in his honour !'

Questioner: How does this silent power work?

Ramana Maharshi: Language is only a medium for communicating one's thoughts to another. It is called in only after thoughts arise. Other thoughts arise after the `I'-thought rises and so the `I'-thought is the root of all conversation. When one remains without thinking one understands another by means of the universal language of silence. Silence is ever-speaking. It is a perennial flow of language which is interrupted by speaking. These words I am speaking obstruct that mute language. For example, there is electricity flowing in a wire. With resistance to its passage, it glows as a lamp or revolves as a fan. In the wire it remains as electric energy. Similarly also, silence is the eternal flow of language, obstructed by words.

What one fails to know by conversation extending to several years can be known instantly in silence, or in front of silence - Dakshinamurti and his four disciples are a good example of this. This is the highest and most effective language.

Questioner: Bhagavan says, `The influence of the jnani steals into the devotee in silence.' Bhagavan also says, `Contact with great men [mahatmas] is one efficacious means of realising one's true being'.

Ramana Maharshi: Yes. What is the contradiction? Jnani, great men, mahatmas - do you differentiate between them?

Questioner: No.

Ramana Maharshi: Contact with them is good. They will work through silence. By speaking their power is reduced. Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence, so mental contact is the best.

Questioner: Does this hold good even after the dissolution of the physical body of the jnani or is it true only so long as he is in flesh and blood ?

Ramana Maharshi: Guru is not the physical form. So the contact will remain even after the physical form of the Guru vanishes. One can go to another Guru after one's Guru passes away, but all Gurus are one and none of them is the form you see. Always mental contact is the best.