CHAPTER TWELVE

GRACE

1.   "Is Ishwara Prasad (Divine Grace) or the jiva's own efforts necessary to attain That whence there is no return to the wheel of life and death?"
Bhagavan: "Divine Grace is essential for Realisation. But this Grace is vouchsafed only to him who is a true devotee or a yogin, who had striven hard and ceaselessly for freedom."
Talk 24

Note: The inference clearly is that efforts are of the utmost importance. Grace is granted only to him who strives — "hard and ceaselessly." Thus Grace looks like a Provident Fund which is added on to the wages of him who works and earns them, and not granted to the one who does not earn. Earn more and you get a larger provident fund; earn less and you get a smaller one. Nothing is given for nothing, spiritual gifts least of all. Therefore Grace cannot be equated with efforts, for it would no longer be Ishwara prasad, but strictly earned wages, payment for the efforts themselves. Nor can it be equated with non-efforts, as fortuitous, unmerited gifts; for no such gifts are known to exist. God, in His infinite mercy, has contrived Grace to be a grant, a sort of bonus for genuine exertion, and as inducement to a greater exertion.

"Grace is vouchsafed only to him who is a true devotee,
or a yogin, who has striven hard and ceaselessly for freedom."
Let this gem idea sink in us. It comes from the highest authority about Truth in existence, and thus will have to be
treasured and ceaselessly meditated on by the earnest seekers. Let him therefore, who listens to preachers who boldly proclaim God's mercy and Grace to depend on God's whims and fancies, not fall in their trap; for they are ignorant dogmatists. They imagine God to be whimsical like their own selves or weak-minded to listen to prayers. Nor should he listen to those who preach effortlessness: their words are belied by the experience and wisdom of the Master-
Rishis, who, for thousands of years, gave the world its most valuable heritage — the science of Yoga.

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Bhagavan calls Grace indispensable for Realisation. So it is. Provident fund, as it accumulates from day to day, year to year becomes in the end a substantial pile, which is far more valuable than wages, as it secures the ease and comforts of the subject for the rest of his life. In the case of the seeker it hails in the Supreme Guru and finally jnana itself, as the cumulative reward of many lives of aspiration and deliberate penance. The next text makes Grace, Guru and God iden- tically the same.

2.   "Is not the Master's Grace (Guru Anugraha) the result of
God's Grace?" The disciple asks and the Master answers: "Why distinguish between the two? The Master is God (Ishwara ^[?]) Himself, and not different from Him."
Talk 29

Note: Here Grace is the Guru, who is not other than God
Himself, which, by implication, means that Grace cannot be fully recognised till sometime after meeting the Guru, when its working becomes increasingly perceptible to the subject's consciousness.
Although throughout life one may feel something of it, yet its fullness cannot be so patently borne out till the inner transformation has taken place, due to the presence and guidance of the Guru and the practice of sadhana.

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3.   "Does distance have any effect on Grace?" asks the American visitor, and Sri Bhagavan answers: "Time and space are within you. You are always the Self you are seeking. How do time and space affect it?"
Talk 127

Note: The visitor, a typical Westerner, follows the above ques- tion by the analogy of the radio broadcast, which, he says, is clearer to the nearer receiving station and dimmer to the farther. He does not indicate where he holds the transmit- ting station of the Grace he has in mind to be located — in the
Pacific, the Atlantic, or in the Himalayas, or perhaps in Tiru- vannamalai. If he means the last, in the person of Bhagavan, then he is right to want to be sure on this point. For the con- stant proximity of the Sage makes a great difference to the rapid purification of the mind and its inclination towards meditation and concentration. The opportunity to be in that proximity is an act of Grace. If Bhagavan annihilates distance in the transmission of Grace, he means that the Self is above time and space. Moreover, Bhagavan does not like to discour- age the visitor, whose prarabdha keeps him at a distance. Yet the Grace which the visitor has in mind has a definitely de- termined field of action. To be always with the Master — oc- casional absentments excepted, — I repeat, is due to a dis- tinctly high grade of Grace, for it quickens the maturity for
Realisation. There should be no mistake about that. We have the evidence of the Srutis ^[?], of all yogis, of Bhagavan himself in many places in this work, as, for example, text 31 of the next chapter, and so on. We read again in the Bhagavatam (XI, xii, 1-7) that when Sri Krishna took leave of His foremost disci- ple Uddava before leaving this world, one of the first mes- sages He left with him was to seek always Sat sanga, for, He said, nothing pleases Him more and nothing produces quicker results on the Path than the company of Sages. The company of the Guru is the greatest Sat sanga.

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4.   "Show me Grace."
Bhagavan: "Grace always is, and is not given."
Talk 133

5.   "There are disciples of Bhagavan who have had His Grace and realised without any considerable difficulty. I too wish to have that Grace."
Bhagavan: "Grace is within you. If it is external it is useless. Grace is the Self. You are never out of its operation. If you remember Bhagavan, you are prompted by the Self to do so. Is that not Grace? Is not Grace already there? That is the stimulus, that is the response, that is Grace."
Talk 251

Note: The second questioner is a lady, probably a Highness on the gadi of some Central Indian State, who cannot retire to the Ashram and be always near the Master. She assumes that some of Bhagavan's disciples had His Grace "without considerable difficulty" and realised the Self, so that she too must have it without considerable difficulty, notwithstanding the distance of her residence from Him. It is seldom safe to rely on conjectures. Hard exertion, as we have observed, is necessary to earn Grace, which ever abounds, because it "always is". Simple requests will not suffice, because Grace is "not given".

Grace, Bhagavan asserts, is not external, for "if it is external it is useless": it could then be purchased even without merits. Grace is internal and must therefore be secured by merits born of efforts. Those who cannot exert must be satisfied with crumbs or small morsels. Lack of time and of favourable circumstances are the enemies of sadhana. They may be due to prarabdha, yet Bhagavan asserts elsewhere that prarabdha cracks under the hammer-strokes of effort.
Practice remains in the last analysis of paramount necessity to the serious-minded seeker. (See text 27 in the next chapter.)
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6.   "I am unable to concentrate to have peace by myself. I am in search of a force to help me," asks the visitor, and the
Master replies: "Yes, that is called Grace. Individually we are incapable because the mind is weak. Grace is necessary. Sadhu seva (service of saints) is meant only for it. Just as a weak man comes under the control of a stronger one, so does the weak mind come easily under control in the presence of the stronger-minded saint. There is, however, nothing new to get. That which is, is only Grace, there is nothing else."
Talk 287

Note: The questioner is in great mental distress, which by himself he is unable to overcome. He has tried to meditate, has read the Gita, the Upanishads ^[?] and all the books of this
Ashram, yet he remains restless, and so he needs Bhagavan's help. What medicine can cure such a mind? You cannot teach him, for he has learnt everything that needs learning.
You cannot talk him out of his distress by any means, for, we may be sure, he has talked to himself times without number about it. The only remedy left for him, Bhagavan suggests, is service of saints, which implies a long residence in their company, which alone is capable of normalising a distraught mental state. That is why the scriptures advise Sat sanga to soothe shattered nerves and eliminate ignorance. There is really no other way. Even if one is a millionaire who can afford to take a round-the-world trip and drown his worries in the seas he crosses, or in the wonders he meets abroad, on his return to his old environments he will resume his old worries, as he will the wearing of his old clothes. This is only a temporary device, but the company of saints transforms the inner vision for the better and for good. By increasing the tendency to introversion one draws nearer to the peace and bliss of the Self. Meditation apart, the mere proximity of a saint imparts happiness to all around.

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7.   "Is not Grace the gift of the Guru?"
Bhagavan: "God, Grace and Guru are synonymous terms. They are eternal and immanent. If a Guru thinks that he can bestow the Self, which is already present, he does not deserve the name. The books say that there are various kinds of diksha or initiations — hasta, sparsa, chakshu, mano, etc. The Guru makes some rites with fire, water, japa, mantras, etc. and calls these fantastic performances dikshas, as if the disciple becomes ripe only after them. "What did Dakshinamurti, the Supreme Guru do? He remained simply silent and the doubts of the disciples were dispelled: they lost their individualities. This is jnana, and not all the verbiage usually associated with it. "Silence is most potent in its effects. The Shastras ^[?], however voluminous and emphatic they may be, fall far short in their effect. The Guru is quiet and peace pervades all.
His silence is vaster and more effective than all the Shastras ^[?] put together. These questions arise because of the feeling (among some) that, having been here for so long, heard so much, exerted so hard, one has not gained anything. The work proceeding within is not apparent, though the Guru is always within you."
Talk 398

Note: The three Gs is a formula which can he always remembered as a trinity in unity — the fount of Divine Mercy for the redemption of erring man. Thus Guru is Grace, so that to ask Grace from the external Guru is meaningless.
In our extroverted vision we imagine the body of the Guru to be the Guru Himself and Grace to be communicable, that is, coming from an external object; whereas in fact Grace springs up from inside the seeker himself. Bhagavan deprecates all external vehicles of Grace as well as pseudo- gurus, who claim the conferring of Grace orally through whispered mantras, fire and water. Bhagavan dubs these useless rites, termed "initiations", as fantastic, and very
rightly too. They are cheap stuff, which the man of purity and spiritual stamina summarily rejects. Those who claim ability and authority to confer Grace, or, what is the same, the Self, do not know the Self — "they do not deserve the name of Gurus," Bhagavan says.

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When we seriously cogitate over these remarks of
Bhagavan in the light of our own experience and reason, we find them to be true to the hilt. Spirituality-loaded Mantras have been whispered in the ears of millions upon millions for ages and have resulted in almost nothing, except perhaps in the temporary imaginary elation of the "initiates" for which they have often to pay in money, service, etc. In the West, we have analogous rites which are supposed to work miracles on the millions of their partaking devotees. What is the result? Adhikara (natural maturity) alone counts: it comes to those who do not take part in rites and "initiations" as well as to those who do.

Silence, Bhagavan continues, is far more helpful in the spiritual path than all the big tomes of the Shastras ^[?] and scholarship, for the Self is the silent witness of all things, and is in everyone, and thus can be attained only through silence of the mind. To be It we have to be silent like It.

Hence Bhagavan asserts that those who stay long in the
Ashram must not imagine themselves in the least neglected.
Grace, as the Self, works silently and imperceptibly. They are soaked in it, and are every minute steadily advancing towards the glorious experience of It, which is the immediate goal of all genuine sadhakas.