Talks - Sri Annamalai Swami

We present below, a few examples of Sri Annamalai Swami’s teachings, recorded during his interactions with devotees.

In his lucid, straightforward responses to questions, the core message of Bhagavan shines bright and clear.

For a complete recording please purchase the books Living by the Words of Bhagavan and Final Talks.

The correct way to pursue self-enquiry.

Bhagavan has said: When thoughts arise stop them from developing by enquiring, “To whom is this thought coming?” as soon as the thought appears. What does it matter if many thoughts keep coming up? Enquire into their origin or find out who has the thoughts and sooner lr later the flow of thoughts will stop. This is how self-enquiry should be practiced.

First seal off the entrances and exits to the mind by not reacting to rising thoughts or sense impressions. Don’t let new ideas, judgements, likes, dislikes, etc enter the mind and don’t let rising thoughts flourish and escape your attention.

Thoughts need a thinker to pay attention to them and indulge in them. If the thinker withholds his attention from rising thoughts or challenges them before they have a chance to develop, the thoughts will all die of starvation. You challenge them by repeatedly asking ‘Who am I? Who is the person who is having these thoughts?’. For it to be effective you must make it before the rising thought has had a chance to develop into a stream of thoughts.

You must generate the conviction, ‘I am the all-pervasive consciousness in which all bodies and minds in the world are appearing and disappearing. I am that consciousness which remains unchanged and unaffected by these appearances and disappearances.’ Stabilise yourself in that conviction. That is all you need to do.

But I am so accustomed to feeling ‘I am this “little self”‘. I need help.

The ‘little self’ will only give way to the real Self if you meditate constantly. You cannot wish it away with a few stray thoughts. If you can understand that this ‘little self’ never at any time had any existence outside your imagination (just like the snake never existed; it was always the rope), you will not be concerned about ways to eliminate it. Your desire for help in eliminating it is part of your problem. Don’t make the mistake of imagining there is some goal to be reached or attained. If you think like this you will start to look for methods and people to help you. This just perpetuates the problem you are trying to end.

Instead cultivate the strong awareness, ‘I am the Self. I am that. I am Brahman. I am everything.’ You don’t need any methods to get rid of the wrong ideas about yourself. All you have to do is stop believing them. The best way to do this is to replace them with ideas which more accurately reflect the real state of affairs. If you think and meditate ‘I am the Self,’ it will do you a lot more good than thinking, ‘I am the “little self”. How can I get rid of this “little self”?’

You said that you need help. If your desire to gain a proper understanding of your real nature is intense enough, help will automatically come. If you want to generate an awareness of your real nature you will be immeasurably helped by having contact with a jnani. The power and grace which a jnani radiates quieten the mind and automatically eliminate the wrong ideas you have about yourself. You can make progress by having satsang of a realised Guru and by constant spiritual practice. The Guru cannot do everything for you. You must practice constantly in order to give up the limiting habits of many lifetimes.

How does Māyā operate? How is the Self concealed from itself?

The Self, which is infinite power and the source of all power, is indivisible. Yet within this indivisible Self there are five saktis or powers, with varying functions, which operate simultaneously: Creation, preservation, destruction, veiling (māyā sakti) and grace. The fifth sakti, grace, counteracts and removes the fourth sakti, which is māyā. When māyā is totally inactive, that is when the identity with the body and mind has been dropped, there is an awareness of consciousness, of being. When one is established in that state, there is no body, no mind, no world. These 3 things are just ideas which are brought into an apparent existence when māyā is present and active.

The sole effective way to dissolve māyā is the path shown by Bhagavan: one must do self-enquiry and discriminate between what is real and what is unreal. It is the power of māyā which makes us believe in the reality of things which have no reality. If you ask, ‘What are these imaginary things?’ the answer is, ‘Everything that is not the formless Self’. The Self alone is real; everything else is a figment of our imagination.

It is not helpful to enquire why there is māyā and how it operates. If you are in a boat which is leaking, you don’t waste time asking whether the hole was made by an Italian, a Frenchman or an Indian. You just plug the leak. Attempting to find the origin of māyā with your mind is doomed to fail because any answer you come up with will be a māyā answer. Establish yourself in the Self. Then watch how māyā takes you over each time you fail to keep your attention there.

If Māyā is a Sakti, what exactly is this Sakti?

Sakti is energy or power. It is a name for the dynamic aspect of the Self. Sakti and Sānti are two aspects of the same consciousness. If you want to separate them at all, you can say that sānti is the unmanifest aspect of the Self which sakti is the manifest. But really they are not separate. A flame has two properties: light and heat. The two can’t be separated. They are like the sea and the waves. Sānti is the vast unmoving body of water. The waves that appear and move on the surface are sakti. Sānti is motionless, vast and all-encompassing while sakti is active.

Bhagavan used to say that after realisation, the jīvanmuktā experiences sānti within and is established permanently in that sānti. In that state of realisation he sees that all activities are caused by sakti. After realisation, one is aware that there are no individual people doing anything. Instead there is an awareness that all activities are the sakti of the same Self. The jnāni is one who is fully established in the sānti, and is always aware that sakti is not separate from him. In that awareness everything is his Self and all actions are his.

The universe is controlled by the one sakti, sometimes called Paramēswara sakti (the power of the Supreme Lord). This moves and orders all things. Natural laws, such as the laws that keep the planets in their orbits, are all manifestations of this sakti.

If everything is the Self, even Māyā, then why can’t I see the Self?

Because you are looking in the wrong direction. You have the idea that the Self is something that you see or experience. This is not so. The Self is the awareness or the consciousness in which the seeing and experiencing takes place. Even if you don’t see the Self, the Self is still there.

Bhagavan sometimes remarked humorously: ‘People just open a newspaper and glance through it. Then they say, “I have seen the paper”. But really they haven’t seen the paper, they have only seen the letters and pictures that are on it. There can be no words or pictures without the paper, but people always forget the paper while they are reading the words.’

While people see the names and forms that appear on the screen of consciousness, they ignore the screen itself. If people were to be aware of the consciousness instead of the forms that appear in it, they would realise that all forms are just appearances which manifest within the one indivisible consciousness.

That consciousness is the Self that you are looking for. You can be that consciousness but you can never see it because it is not something that is separate from you.

How do I know if I am progressing in my Meditation?

Those who meditate a lot, often develop a subtle form of ego. They become pleased with the idea that they are making progress; they become pleased with the states of peace and bliss that they enjoy; they become pleased that they have learned to exercise some control over their wayward minds; or they may derive some satisfaction that they have found a good Guru or a good method of meditation. All these feelings are ego feelings. When ego feelings are present, awareness of the Self is absent. The thought ‘I am meditating’ is an ego thought. If real meditation is taking place, this thought cannot arise.

Don’t worry about whether you are making progress or not. Just keep your attention on the Self twenty-four hours a day. Meditation is not something that should be done in a particular position at a particular time. It is an awareness and an attitude that must persist throughout the day. To be effective, meditation must be continuous.

If you want to water a field you dig a channel to the field and send water continuously along it for a lengthy period of time. If you send water for only ten seconds and then stop, the water sinks into the ground even before it reaches the field. You will not be able to reach the Self and stay there without a prolonged continuous effort. Each time you give up trying, or get distracted, some of your previous effort goes to waste.

You divide your life up into different activities: ‘I am eating’, ‘I am meditating’, ‘I am working’, etc. If you have ideas like these you are still identifying with the body. Get rid of all these ideas and replace them with the single thought ‘I am the Self’. Hold on to that idea and don’t let go. Don’t give these ‘I-am-the-body’ ideas any attention. Learn to recognise them the moment they arise or deny them. Stay firmly in the Self and don’t allow the mind to identify with anything that the body does.

My mind is unstoppable. How do I bring it to the Self?

When it rises, the mind automatically goes out into the world. If you do self-enquiry you can train it to flow towards to the Self. In deep sleep the mind automatically goes to the Self, but you are not aware of it. Through the steady practice of self-enquiry the mind can be trained in such a way that it automatically flows towards the Self in the waking and dream states. It is very difficult at first, but with practice it can be done.

Repeated self-enquiry makes the mind go back into the Self. Other methods may produce good experiences but the good experiences will not make the mind go back into the Self and stay there.

Is it good to devote some time to stay healthy?

It is difficult to do sādhana if the body is not in good condition. Hatha yoga is one way of staying healthy. Bhagavan used to say, however, that of all the different āsanās, nidhidhyāsanā is the best. He would then add that nidhidhyāsanā means abidance in the Self.

Don’t pay too much attention to the body. If you worry about the well-being of your body, you identify with it more and more. Look at it as a useful vehicle: maintain it, fuel it properly and repair if it breaks down, but don’t become attached to it. If you can keep your attention on the Self without being distracted by unpleasant bodily sensations, you are healthy enough to do sādhana. If you do your meditation earnestly and continuously you will begin to find that health problems will not distract you. When your abidance in the Self is firm and strong, you cease to be aware of the body and its pains.

We must take 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, if 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. 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.

Forgetfulness of the Self is a big problem for me.

Forgetfulness of the Self happens because of non-enquiry. So I say, ‘Remove the forgetfulness through enquiry’. Forgetfulness or non-forgetfulness is not a part of your destiny. It is something you can choose from moment to moment. That is what Bhagavan said. He said that you have the freedom either to identify with the body and its activities, and in doing so forget the Self, or you can identify with the Self and have the understanding that the body is performing its predestined activities, animated and sustained by the power of the Self.

If you have an oil lamp and you forget to put oil in it, the light goes out. It was your forgetfulness and your lack of vigilance that caused the light to go out. Your thoughts were elsewhere. They were not on tending the lamp.

In every moment you only have one real choice: to be aware of the Self or to identify with the body and the mind. If you choose the latter course, don’t blame God or God’s will, or predestination. God did not make you forget the Self. You yourself are making that choice every second of your life.

If you remain in the Self, enquiry will not be necessary.

If you move away from the Self, and go back to the mind, you then have to enquire again and go back to your Self. Who is this ‘I’? It is neither the body nor the mind. If you remain as the Self, there is neither body nor mind. So what is this ‘I’? Enquire into it and find out for yourself.

When you see the rope, what happens to the snake? Nothing happens to it because there never was a snake. Similarly, when you remain as the Self, there is a knowing that this ‘I’ never had any existence.

All is the Self. You are not separate from the Self. All is you. Your real state is the Self, and in that Self there is no body and no mind. This is the Truth, and you know it by being it. This ‘I am the body’ ideas is wrong. This false idea must go and the conviction ‘I am the Self’ should come to the extent that it becomes constant.

At the moment this ‘I am the body’ idea seems very natural for you. You should work to the point where ‘I am the Self’ becomes natural to you. It happens when the wrong idea of being the body goes, and when you stop believing it to be true, it vanishes as darkness vanishes when the sun appears.

This life is all a dream, a dream within a dream within a dream. We dream this world, we dream that we die and take birth in another body. And in this birth we dream that we have dreams. All kinds of pleasures and suffering alternate in these dreams, but a moment comes when waking up happens. In this moment, which we call realising the Self, there is the understanding that all births, all the deaths, all the sufferings and all the pleasures were unreal dreams that have finally come to an end.

Bhagavan has instructed us in Who Am I? to see the whole world as a dream. When realisation comes, nothing will affect you because you will have the firm knowledge that all manifestation is an unreal dream.

Final words

You stumble around in the darkness of your mind, not knowing that you have a torch in your hand. That light is the light of the Self. Switch it on and leave it on and you will never stumble again.

You are all here because there is a desire in you to realise the Self. This desire does not arise randomly or accidentally in some people and not in others. It is there because of the punyās that may have come from meditation, charitable works and so on. These punyās will manifest as a desire for freedom, a desire to do earnest sādhana, a desire to find a good teacher in whose presence the truth will be taught and revealed. If someone is destined to be a jnāni in this life, it means that he has come to this final birth with a mountain of punyās to his credit. These punyās will take him to a real Guru, to a real satsang, and in this environment he will do sadhana and achieve the goal. If one does not have this mountain of punyās from the past, there will be no desire for freedom, no desire to look for a Guru who can delivery it.

The Self is readily available all the time but we cannot be aware of it or even put our attention on the thought of it because our vasanas are continuously leading our interest and attention in other directions. That is why it is so important to have the awareness, ‘I am not the mind. I am the Self.’ You have to forcibly drag your wandering attention back to the Self each time it shows an interest in going anywhere else. Don’t be interested in the words that the mind is serving up for you. It is putting them there to tempt you into a stream of thoughts that will take you away from the Self. You have to ignore them all and focus on the light that is shining within you.

I ask you to put all your attention, all your interest on realising this final teaching: ‘I am not the body or the mind. I am the Self. All is the Self.’ This is Bhagavan’s final teaching. Nothing more needs to be added to it. Keep good company while you pursue this knowledge and all will be well. – Sri Annamalai Swami

Sri Annamalai Swami