An Asram Am, Tiruvannamalai
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AN ASRAM AM, TIRUVANNAMALAI " Even when the thieves of the five senses break in upon me, art Thou not still in my heart, Oh Aruna• (A QUARTERLY) chala! " — The Marital Garland of " Arunachala ! Thou dost root out the ego of those who Letters, verse 11. meditate on Thee in the heart, Oh Arunachala ! " —The Marital Garland of Letters, verse 1. Publisher : Vol. Ill JULY 1966 No. 3 T. N. Venkataraman, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai. CONTENTS Page EDITORIAL : Reincarnation 223 Bhagavan on Reincarnation . 226 Editor : The Dream-Self (Poem)— A. Rao 227 Arthur Osborne, Lines from " A Testament " — Arthur Osborne 228 Sri Ramanasramam, The Hindu Doctrine of Karma and Tiruvannamalai. Reincarnation — Prof. M. K. Venkatarama Iyer . 230 Devayana and Pitriyana — Bhagavan Das . 234 Bhagavan's Teaching on Aham Vritti — N. R. Rajagopalaiyer . 236 The Questions of Nachiketa Managing Editor : — Madguni Shambu Bhat ... 237 V. Ganesan, Sri Ramana Maharshi and the Sri Ramanasramam, Indian Philosophic Tradition — His Highness Sri J ay a Chamaraja Tiruvannamalai. Wadiyar Bahadur, Maharaja of Mysore .. 238 Outer Change and Inner Poise — Irmgard George Schultz . 242 Narayana Guru^—John Spiers . 243 Annual Subscription : What is Reincarnated — Dorothy C. Donath . 247 INDIA .-. Rs. 5. 11 am Alpha and Omega— Gladys De Meuter . 250 FOREIGN .. IQsh. $ 1.50. Causality and Rebirth — Dr. W. J. Henn Collins 252 The Dance (Poem) —Alta Yates . 257 Life Subscription : The Tibetan Doctrine of Incarnate Buddhas Rs. 100; £ 10; $30. — Bodhichitta . .. 258 An Incarnate Abbot Explains . 260 Single Copy : Verses from Sri Muruganar Rs. 1.50; 3sh.>, $0.45 — Prof. K. Swaminathan . 262 An Introduction to Japji — Lt. Col. Karamchandani . 263 CONTENTS— {Contd.) Page 3% fountain f ntk ARROWS. FROM A CHRISTIAN BOW-XI ; (A QUARTERLY) A Christian view of Reincarnation — Sagittarius . 265 Traces of Reincarnation in the West — H. Sabastian Gubbins . 267 The Hero of Mythology — Sir George Trevelyan 270 Renewed Opportunity — Cornelia Bagarotti . 274 Strange Case of the Pollock Twins The aim of this journal is to set — Kenneth Brass .. 275 forth the traditional wisdom of all From the Ganges to the Amazon — Jean Butler 276 How I Came to the Maharshi — K. K. Nambiar 277 religions and all ages, especially How the Maharshi Came to Me as testified to by their saints and — MUDr. Robert Fuchsberger 280 mystics, and to clarify the paths Some Reminiscences — Kunju Swami .. 282 True-Seeing — Wei Wu Wei .. 283 available to seekers in the condi• The Bhagavad Gita— Prof. G. V. Kulkarni tions of our modern world. and Arthur Osborne . 284 Book Reviews . 287 Ashram Bulletin .293 Introducing . 299 • Letters to the Editor . 301 Contributions for publication should be addressed to ' The Editor, The Mountain Path, Sri Ramanas- To Our Subscribers ramam, Tiruvannamalai, Madras State'. They should be in English 1. The official year of the quarterly is from January ,to December. and typed with double spacing. 2. SUBSCRIBERS IN INDIA should remit their annual Contributions not published will be subscription by Money Order only as far as possible and not returned on request. by cheque. The words 'subscription for The Mountain Path for year/years' should be written on the M.O. coupon and the full name and address written in BLOCK • LETTERS on the reverse of the coupon. Life Subscription should be sent by cheque drawn favouring The Mountain Path and crossed. - The editor is not responsible for The journal will not be sent by V.P.P. statements and opinions contained 3. FOREIGN SUBSCRIBERS can send their subscrip• in signed articles. tion by International Money Order, British Postal Order oi by Bank cheque or draft payable in India, U.S.A. or U.K. The subscription rates are for despatch of the journal by surface mail to all parts of the world. If despatch by AIR MAIL is desired the following No payment is made for contri• additional annual amount should be remitted : butions published. Anything herein $ (a) Pakistan, Ceylon Rs. 4.00 published may be reprinted else• (b) Asia, Egypt, Indonesia 12s. 1.80 where without fee provided due (t) Europe, Africa (excluding Egypt) 18s. 2.70 acknowledgement is made and the (d) Australia, New Zealand, Fiji 24s. 3.60 (e) Nofth & South America, Hawaii • 30s. 4.50 editor is previously notified. (QUARTERLY) Editor: ARTHUR OSBORNE VOL III JULY, 1966 No. 3 REINCARNATION (EDITORIAL) It is possible to discuss rebirth only from ment. Therefore he starts to worry what the point of view of ignorance, because from will happen to this hypothetical individual the point of view of knowledge there is no when, at death, the psycho-somatic instru• one to be reborn. Therefore Bhagavan ment dissolves. Will it continue to exist would generally brush the question aside without a body ? Or will it get an ethereal when asked about it. He would make some, in place of a physical body ? Or will it take such reply as : " First find out whether you form as a new complex in a new physical are born now before asking whether you body ? It is no use asking the Jnani, the will be reborn." Or : " Why worry what you ' Enlightened ', since he knows that these will be after death before you know what are unreal questions inasmuch as the hypd- you are now ? "1 thetical individual about whom they are asked never really existed. The one thing that a man is absolutely certain about is his own existence. He may This unreality of the hypothetical indivi• come to believe that the world outside him dual is the basic doctrine of anatta, no-ego, is real or unreal, I.Niat he is sitting at a solid which forms the very starting point of table, as his senses tell him, or at a cluster Buddhism. Its final realization is the culmi• of whirling electrons, as the nuclear nation of all religion. A religion like scientists tell him, that there is or is not a Christianity, which does not say outright God, that other people really exist or that that the ego does not exist and never has, they are imagined by him, like the equally comes round to the same point by insisting real-seeming people he saw in last night's that it must be sacrified. He who gives up dream ; but7 what he knows from personal, his life (the hypothetical ego) for Christ's first-hand experience is his own existence. sake shall find it (the true, universal life of However, from this certainty he makes a wholly unwarranted deduction : that he, is a 1 See the section on reincarnation in Ch. 1 of limited individual being, identical with or ' The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi in his own Words Rider & Co., London, and Sri Ramanas- located in a particular psycho-somatic instru• ramam, Tiruvannamalai, 224 THE MOUNTAIN PATH July the Spirit) ; whereas he who clings to it carnation, the question exists, as I have shall lose it. already said, only from the ' point of view of ignorance\ That does not, however, But to give it up is the hardest thing to amply that it is completely invalid, inasmuch do, even though one may be convinced theo• as posthumous states of being, although no retically of its unreality. A man clings so more real than this life, are also no less tenaciously to the false hypothesis of indi• real. It is best to wake up from the whole vidual being that the religions have to lead series of dreams, but for those who are un• him by all manner of devious ways to able to do so it is possible to describe their weaken it, attack it, cut away its roots of sequence. Nor is doing this a mere concession desire, curb its exuberant growth of indul• to curiosity. It has a positive value within gence. Ways of indulging it are called vices its limited range of reality, since the dream- and banned ; ways of curbing it are called sequence, as long as it lasts, is shaped by the virtues and extolled. Indeed, the one thing law of cause, and effect, that is of karma, on which all religions agree is the need to and it is salutory for people to understand discipline or deny it ; and it may be that that what they d<9 in this life shapes what the common feature in all who renounce they will be and undergo later. religion is its indulgence or^ to use the fashionable term of to-day, its ' expression'. It is generally agreed in the various reli• gions that those*who* have failed to awaken This preoccupation with the hypothetical to Reality pass pn from this life to a subtle individual has even invaded religion, taking state in which they reap the harvest of good the form of wondering what will happen to or ill that they have sown. The impressions it after death. Indeed, for many people reli• preserved in what the psychologists would gion has come to mean mainly beliefs and call ' the subconscious' arise to form the opinions as to what happens after death. environment and substance of a new world, Really this is an insignificant part of reli• just as they may during a dream. This is gion, as may be seen from the fact that two what is called heaven and hell. of the world's great religions, Judaeism and Hindu teachers add, however, that this is the original Taoism, said nothing at all about not the end. How can it be ? How could an it. The modern exaggeration of its import• individual state of reaping the harvest of a ance is a symptom of dangerous spiritual phenomenal life be frozen into perpetuity ? passivity, since by it religion comes to mean After having thus enjoyed or suffered what ' what will happen to me ' instead of ' what has been accumulated, the person is born I have to achieve'.