So I was saying, we are in Akshara Manamale, we completed 50, almost half we have completed,it has 108 malas, a beautiful number 108. So this is the mala, this is the garland that Ramana has made for his beloved Arunachala. So as we spoke, if you want to get into this frame of devotion and love, you have to place yourself as Parvati.
Because only a lover can understand the feelings of a lover. You have to become a lover, basically. And you can see Ramana is a lover here.
You look at all the phrases here, it’s pure love, a deep love, profound love. And that is why you see all these great mystics like Rumi and so many others, talk so much about love. Bhakti is love.
Sant Gyaneshwara – look at his bhakti. Pure love it is. Meera, Tukaram, Lalleshwari – all these beings you see the mad love for the Lord.
Nithyananda said it is absolutely fine to have divine madness. People might call you mad. You look at Ramana, all these people call him mad only.
You look at all the people madly in love with their self or divinity, they are called mad people. And Nithyananda says it’s okay to be called mad. Because everybody is mad. But all are mad behind the world. So you may be mad behind God, no problem. That area the world cannot touch. It is okay to have divine madness, he says. Have divine madness. Develop divine madness.
You can see this madness in this beautiful garland. He’s surely mad. And it’s very difficult to understand this love, this bhakti, until you become a bhakta.
So even if you sit here and just listen to it, you might not relate much to it until you place yourself. That is why awareness. You have to become aware of yourself…. of how would Parvati have done that meditation and tapas. It is not like our tapas. Our tapas is mostly swartha bhakti (selfish devotion).
We do tapas to get something. You know, Parvati did tapas to give herself – not to get but to give. Give herself. Because in giving you get. It is like melting, like a salt doll or the ice melting and dissolving into water.
That is pure kind of love. So you can see Ramana’s mad love. See, he composed this Aksharaman Malai.
In the start we discussed, for devotees. It is not that he wants to propose a poem or a poetry and he wants to be an author for it. No. And he did not proclaim it also. Even if he would have sung this in that wilderness, who would have known? Like all the mad people like Lalleshwari and the like. Look at the poems of Lalleshwari. Isn’t it madness that she composes and sings in the wilderness with no audience.
So, Ramana does not need to write for an audience. He is doing it for us. Bhagavan Ramana has written this for us. For the sake of devotees. So that it helps us connect to Arunachala. It helps us build up this devotion and deep intensity. Because, please understand, without this devotion and deep intensity, Mumukshatva will not come. Mumukshatva means this kind of madness.
So it is a great blessing that Ramana has gifted the world with this this bead of devotion. Without devotion, all Jnana is useless. So I have told this before. We have had many sessions where we said Jnana and Bhakti, what Ramana says, they go hand in hand. Bhakti also without Jnana is incomplete. If you have Bhakti and no jnana, then you will not have the wisdom to realise whether it is selfless devotion or selfish devotion (Swartha Bhakti). You may remain in apara bhakti for eons and not realise it – you need jnana to realise it.
Like I said now, we might do tapas for attaining the Lord, attaining self-realization, but we might not realize that that devotion is Swartha Bhakti, Apara Bhakti. We need wisdom. We need our third eye to be opened to show us that this is Apara. You need to transmute it into Para Bhakti. So that is where Murugan Tattva comes into place. Without grace, you cannot have jnana and without jnana you cannot be conscious of the purity of this Bhakti.
Same way, if you say you have jnana but no bhakti, then that wisdom is dry. It is not wisdom but knowledge. Wisdom without pure bhakti makes you a philosopher. Wisdom filled with devotion is real wisdom because real wisdom will generate devotion. Such devotion is needed to melt the ego. Such devotion melts the carrier of wisdom.
Bhagwan Ramana teaches this very beautifully in many ways. Both Jnana and bhakti are not two paths, they are inseparable. You can see clearly that Ramana is an epitome of this inseperable bhakti and jnana both.
|| Excerpts from Jake Light’s TALKS ON AWARENESS
From the series of “Akshara Mana Maalai” from the course “Aligning with the grace of Arunachala”
Akshara Mana Malai is a sacred Tamil poem of 108 verses composed by Ramana Maharshi in praise of the holy hill of Arunachala. The title translates to “Garland of Letters,” as the verses are arranged alphabetically, and it is considered a devotional hymn from the perspective of bridal mysticism, with the devotee seeking union with the divine. The poem is chanted by devotees to overcome obstacles, receive guidance, and feel the presence of Arunachala and Ramana Maharshi.
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