God, Guru and Grace.

God, Guru, and the 'Grace'

Inspired from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi,
Talk #334, 20thJan.1937
published by Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 
Tamilnadu, India).










Nakkirar was a seeker and a devotee of Shiva. 
He had a firm conviction born of his insight and Tapas, his 
learning from the scriptures,about the nature of the worldly 
pleasures, which had helped him greatly in understanding 
clearly that the sensual pleasures are only a sense of gratifi-
cation. So the relief felt when the force of senses find their 
way,is not the real joy or happiness, but only the functioning
of nature which is mistaken as real pleasure, and the craving
for them starts in the mind.But if at the very beginning, one is 
cautious, does not fall into this misunderstanding, one can give
the natural bodily tendencies a way to let blossom and wither 
away in their own course.No need to control, resist or criticize 
them, feel guilt for them, or indulge in them, and misuse them 
as an escape route from the worries of living the life. Simply 
transcend them.He had learnt it from Shiva's 'Third Eye'. The 
Eye of 'Dispassion', viveka and vairagya, 'discrimination. At 
least one should realize that the apparent happiness (pleasures)
they give, is transient and as such fade away with time.    
He had a deep insight that just as he was a 'conscious' being, 
with an 'Individuality' and a 'Personality', The 'Purusha' of 
'Purusha-Sukta' and just as the 'Individuality' remains as the 
basis of all his 'personal' states, and moments, like the sleep, 
the dream and the waking, and even while waking, or passing 
through several very different and variegated modes of the mind, 
and is reflected through all and each of them, there IS a Reality 
which he named 'Shiva', and likewise him, Shiva too had an 
'Individuality' with His infinitely variegated modes of expression. 
Just as he had felt and had soon discovered his natural inherent 
'oneness', an undivided wholeness that is never non-existent like 
mental modes or experiences or their memories, and which he 
called 'In-dividual Being' and Shiva too shared this 'in-dividuality' 
with him, he had an unshakeable realisation that though the bodily 
animal instincts, the mental obsessions and compulsions turn him 
into a 'Pashu' (Pashu, - a beast), the 'oneness' is never disfigured 
or affected in anyway, remains intact and Whole as ever. He used 
to call this aspect of his being the 'Pashupati', the traditional name 
of Shiva who rides a bull, indicating that He is the 'Master' /
 'Pashupati', and the beast is the ruled one. Thus he was at ease 
with everything, never condemned the functioning of the nature, 
ever attentive about the essential Shiva-Principle and the Whole-
ness, Purity and effulgence of The Shiva.'Karpuragara','Shubhra',
impeccable, .....The 'Sakshin' (Witness) another aspect of Reality
(Brahman) he shared like all living beings with Shiva.
He was aware that this 'Wholeness' was eternally a 'Witness' 
and the 'Witness' in Him and Shiva are one and the same. Shiva's 
'Third Eye' always drew his attention to the pure conscious aspect
of his being. He always used to chant the traditional Shiva-Stutis 
( Hymns in praise of the Lord Shiva) and so deeply aspired and 
cherished to have at least once in his life, a glimpse of the Lord in 
some physically perceptible form.Though he well knew the ephe-
meral nature of all physical things and all such experiences, he 
somehow could not resist this particular temptation, because he 
would always visualize Shiva's such a form before his mental eyes
whenever he chanted His glory.
He was sitting in his hut adjacent to a lake when he saw a fig-leaf 
driven by wind fell into the lake. He was astonished when he saw 
the leaf dipped into the water and was half-sunk there, before his 
own eyes, it's part above the water-surface turned into a bird while 
the other, that was immersed into the water, into a fish. 
Soon there-after, a Yaksha came through the sky, captured him, 
and took him to a far-away cave and kept him as a captive there 
999 others like him.
Aeons passed by and he could not free himself from the deadly
silence of the cave. He remembered Shiva and sang His glory, 
and he and all others were freed. He soon found himself where he
was sitting earlier, near the lake. The bird and the fish were still 
trying to separate themselves from each other. He walked up-to 
them took them and helped them very carefully, assiduously to 
come out of their plight. 
Ultimately the fish slipped into the water and the bird flew away 
in the sky. For a minute the bird sat on the fig-tree, looked into 
the water, 
and found the fish staring at him.They were both as if charmed, 
kept gazing intently at each other. 
In the coming days Nakkirar would see a shoal of the fish, the 
very kind he had rescued once in the lake, while a diving bird 
hovering in the mid air, darting straight into the water and took 
one of them as his prey.
Every-day when he frequently saw this, he could never help 
wondering that the diving-bird was the same that he had once 
rescued from the fish.This was indeed even more amazing.
About three years after, when he saw the bird, it had been 
grown up and even became old and weak. He felt the bird had
been very slow and could not keep flying or preying well. And 
one day it sat on a rock in the mid-lake, and slowly went into 
the water where a shoal of them was in wait. 
As the bird approached them, the fish almost jumped-out and 
caught hold of the bird, took away it into the water and in a 
moment split it into pieces and gobbled-up.
Nakkirar was sad, but the next day when he saw yet another 
diving bird looking exactly as the earlier one, perched upon the 
same branch of the fig-tree, where the earlier had been resting 
frequently, their oneness was instantly revealed to him. 
The shoal was there, as if waiting for the bird.
He saw how the bird suddenly flew high, up in the air, hovering
there in the mid-air at the same place, fluttering his feathers for 
a minute, and like an arrow dived straight into the lake. Came 
out with a fish in its beak and flew away fast.
Nakkirar just sat silent and the tears of bliss started trickling-
down his face. 
That night Shiva appeared before him, and he was absorbed 
in Shiva, for ever.


________________________________________