Sadhus Reminiscences of Raman Maharshi

Author(s): Arunachal Sadhu
Publisher: Ramanasramam Tiruvannamalai

Page 55

A Sadhu's Reminiscences of Ramana Maharshi
49
Hitler is a Jnani, a divine instrument.” He was certainly a man of fate. To deny it by criticising many of his acts as evil is wrong. For the Jnani there is no good and evil. There is only action — spontaneous activity or the actionless activity of Tao. This has no Karma-binding effects. Yet it seems doubtful if Hitler's actions were quite so disinterested, though it is not impossible.
Before I came to India I had read of such people as Edward Carpenter, Tennyson and many more who had had flashes of what they called “Cosmic Consciousness.” I asked Bhagavan about this. Was it possible that once having gained Self-realization to lose it again? Certainly it was. To support this view Bhagavan took up a copy of Kaivalya Navanita and told the interpreter to read a page of it to me. In the early stages of Sadhana this was quite possible and even probable. So long as the least desire or tie was left, a person would be pulled back again into the phenomenal world, he explained. After all it is only our Vasanas that prevent us from always being in our natural state, and Vasanas were not got rid of all of a sudden or by a flash of Cosmic Consciousness. One may have worked them out in a previous existence leaving a little to be done in the present life, but in any case they must first be destroyed.
I was reminded of Sri Ramakrishna who said that so long as one single desire remained unfulfilled one had to go on being born to fulfil it. He said he himself, once, had wanted to wear a silk cloth and gold ring and sit and smoke a hookah. One day he asked Mathura Nath to obtain these things for him. When he had been given