Glimpses of the Self

When Papaji had reached the end of the Kaivalya Navaneeta verses, I posed the following questions:

David: After showing these verses to Kunju Swami, the Maharshi said that the practice of sravana, manana and nididhyasana in the Guru’s presence was the most effective way to stabilise in the experience of the Self and eradicate the ignorance, uncertainty and wrong knowledge which might rise to cover it up. Do you approve of this prescription?

Papaji: Yes, I do agree. What he says is what I am also saying here. So I do approve of his prescription.

David: Can an experience of this kind be stabilised by any kind of effort, or does effort cause it to go?

Papaji: It should happen by itself if you listen intently to the teacher, but if it doesn’t happen, then you need absolute effort. Not 50% but 101%. Whatever the teacher says, you have to abide by it. You must not forget anything he says.

He will tell you, ‘You are Atman, you are Brahman, you are Truth Itself’. You must believe him. You must have an unshakeable conviction that his words are true. Until you have that conviction, stay on. Don’t leave till you have it.

This intense determination to succeed is the effort. Don’t give it up. If it doesn’t happen in this life, keep it up in the next life, and the next and the next. One day you have to get it. (Nothing Ever Happened, vol. 3, pp. 396-7)

The phenomenon of gaining and losing experiences of the Self also came up in an interview that Papaji had with Rama Crowell, a Canadian devotee. It includes some interesting advice on how to maintain such experiences:

Rama: Many people come to you, receive this teaching and get a glimpse of it through a direct experience. But the glimpse disappears, maybe because they are not fit to hold on to that teaching. These people then get disappointed.

Papaji: Yes, yes, they get a glimpse of it here, and then they go away fully satisfied to the West. But they come back saying they have lost it on the way.

There was one girl from Vancouver who told me a story like this. There is also a boy here now who said the same thing.

I told the girl, ‘You lost it because you always tried to maintain it. You tried to keep it, therefore you lost it. It is not your father’s property. It is not something that you can keep. Now you have come for a second time.

‘You have had a glimpse. Don’t try to hold on to it. Don’t try to maintain it. It came. Now let it go. It’s not your possession. It’s not an object to be possessed. A glimpse is a glimpse.’

Rama: Would it not be more helpful to equip such a person with the means of holding on to the experience?

Papaji: The best way of equipping oneself is to give up the intention of holding. (Nothing Ever Happened, vol. 3, pp. 389-90)

By claiming the experience – ‘I’ am enlightened – and by holding onto it as something that one ‘has’, one allows the individual ‘I’ to rise again. When this happens, the experience fades and becomes nothing more than a pleasant memory.

While I was in Lucknow I met many people who had had waking up experiences or brief glimpses of the Self while they were attending satsang with Papaji, but in almost all cases they seemed to wear off in the days and weeks that followed. While the Guru’s presence was the key catalyst in making the experience happen, what caused it to go away were the vasanas that had not been destroyed by the experience. This is what Papaji told me when I spoke to him in 1992:

Many people have had temporary glimpses of the Self. Sometimes it happens spontaneously, and it is not uncommon for it to happen in the presence of a realised Master. After these temporary glimpses, the experience goes away because there are still thoughts and latent desires which have not been extinguished. The Self will only accept, consume and totally destroy a mind that is totally free from vasanas. (Nothing Ever Happened, vol. 3, p. 405)

The Lucknow satsangs were characterised by large numbers of people claiming ‘enlightenment’. What is far less well known is that Papaji distinguished between ‘enlightenment’, which he seemed to regard as an experience of the Self that could be lost if it was not guarded properly, and the sahaja state, which was permanent and irreversible. I tried to get to grips with this distinction in the following dialogue that I had with Papaji, but, like many other people who tried to talk to him about this, the results were not entirely satisfactory.

David: Three days ago I received a copy of a letter which you wrote to a couple in 1991. You were congratulating them on having waking-up experiences. In your letter you wrote: ‘You have won enlightenment. Now you have to go beyond on the raft of this enlightenment to the unmanifest supreme, turiyatita sahaja samadhi. This can be vaguely translated into English as “spontaneous natural state”.’

Papaji: Turiyatita sahaja samadhi actually cannot be translated into any other language. This is a Sanskrit term which has no equivalent in English. Waking, dreaming and sleeping are the first three states that we all know and experience. ‘Turiya’ means ‘the fourth’. It is the state which underlies and supports the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping. Beyond this is turiyatita, which means ‘beyond the fourth’. It has no name because it cannot be named. We can call it the transcendent state, or we can loosely translate it as the ‘spontaneous, natural state’. Very few people discover this state. Kabir, Ravidas and Sukdev found it, but very few others know this state directly. Kabir was a weaver, Ravidas was a shoemaker, and Janaka was a king. They had different roles in life, but their state was the same.

What are the indications of this state? In the sahaja state there is no planning. There is no feeling, ‘I have got to do this,’ or ‘I have not got to do that’. Whatever comes is finished and then forgotten. It is not stored in the memory.

David: I would like to ask you some questions about the two states. What is the difference between enlightenment and the state beyond it, which you call sahaja sthiti?

Papaji: Enlightenment is connected with the word ‘light’, which is the opposite of dark. It is seen as the light which banishes darkness. If a man thinks that he is in spiritual darkness, he strives for the light that will banish that darkness. He meditates, he chants the name of God and does tapas until finally this state of enlightenment is revealed to him. Before, he was in darkness; now, through his efforts, he has found the light that banishes the darkness. Before he attained the state of enlightenment, he was in a state of ignorance. This means that enlightenment came at some later time and was not there before. If it was not present before and only appeared later, it is in time, and whatever exists in time is not permanent. At some later time it will disappear. This state which is won by effort will sooner or later disappear. It is not the natural or sahaja state, which is there all the time, and which needs no effort to reveal itself. This is the difference between them. One is attained in time by effort, and is not permanent; the other is there all the time, naturally and effortlessly.

Everyone is in this natural state whether one is aware of it or not. It is only arrogance that prevents one from being aware of it. Everyone thinks, ‘I have done this’, ‘I must do that’. ‘This is mine; that is his.’ Claiming ownership of things that are not yours is arrogance; taking responsibility for things you have not done is arrogance. The man who lives in sahaja sthiti does not live and behave like this. He knows that everything is going on naturally by itself. He claims nothing as his own, not even his thoughts.

When I speak and read, the eyes help me to read and the tongue helps me to speak. The words I speak come out of the mouth, but the tongue itself is not speaking. Where do these words ultimately come from? Nobody thinks about the answer to this question. If the eyes of a dead person are open, that body can’t read, and it can’t speak. So who or what is responsible for sending the light to the eyes to see, and for sending the sound which ends up as talking? Go back and see the source from which everything comes. If you know that source, you will know what this sahaja sthiti is. Everything else is ego. When there is the feeling ‘I am looking’ or ‘I am feeling,’ or ‘I am behaving,’ there is mind, there is ego, and the natural state is covered up. Everything, including this whole world, arises from that source. When you know that source by being that source, then and only then can you say that you are in sahaja sthiti.