They Alone Know their Spontaneous State

Once a Pundit went to Raman Maharishi and in the course of conversation, put a question to him. Raman Maharishi answered it. He put another question and Maharishi answered that too. To make an impression on people sitting there, he put yet another question. This angered Raman Maharishi. ‘What do you mean, Pundit?’ he picked up a staff. The Pundit ran out of fear and Maharishi chased him! People were surprised no end. Maharishi chased him for quire some distance and then came back. The very next moment he was calm and composed and blissful as before. How spontaneous is the life of saints! The renowned writher Paul Brunton was very intelligent. He wrote, ‘How spontaneous is Raman Maharishi! What an elevated state he has attained to! What spontaneity!’

‘What will the people say? What will they think about me?’ – They don’t bother. ‘Nanak speaks spontaneously with intuitive ease.’ There is neither attachment nor aversion in the hearts of those great souls. They lead a spontaneous life.

Once in Saharanpur, some Sanchalak (manager) acted carelessly and thereby caused some disorder in management of crowds. I admonished the Sanchalak and gave him mild punishment. The media showed wise sense and next day papers carried the news with comments like, ‘Bapuji took a Sanchalak to task. Bapuji’s impartiality and efficient handling ensures pin-drop silence in the satsang and prevents disorders. Bapuji is not only a saint, he is farsighted as well.’

Had the concerned writer or the reporters been evil minded, they could have said, ‘Raman Maharishi shouldn’t have loss this temper or so and so saint shouldn’t have done like this…’ in fact, only those can lose or keep from losing their temper, who have ego (which may keep cool or lose temper) in the first place. Self-reposed saints have no personal ego. They are natural and spontaneous in behavior. ‘Nanak speaks spontaneously.’

The Lord says in the Gita:
‘One should not abandon, O Arjuna, the duty to which one is born, though faulty.’

The enlightened one only appears to be engaged in faulty actions. He simply lets it go spontaneously. Hanumanji was being punished by Ravana’s men in Lanka. They were wrapping cloth on his tail (for burning). Hanumanji says, ‘Ok carry on; warp the cloth!’ then they soaked it with oil. Hanumanji said, ‘Fine, go on.’ And then he set fire to Lanka. Those with a Sāttvic mindset take it as Hanumanji’s acumen and fun-game but hose, who are Ravana’s devotees and Lord Rama’s detractors, will criticize Hanumanji.

So how is this world? It is the reflection of your mental outlook, you will find virtue; and if you have a demoniacal outlook, you will see vices all around. How a photograph looks depends a great deal on the angle from which the photo is taken.

All saints are not of the same temperament. Durvasaji was a perfected Self-realized sage. But he would castigate so severely even on small matters, that those at the receiving end would shake in their shoes and those witnessing the scene would have misgivings about Durvasaji. In fact, the common rules of do’s and don’ts are not applicable to enlightened saints.

Once, Durvasji was sitting in a forest. A man was going his way at quite some distance. The saint cried loudly out to his way at quite some distance. The saint cried loudly out to him, “Come here…”

The man came to him and reverently said, “Yes Your Holiness!”

“What Your Holiness! Where were you going?”

“To home.”

“From where are you coming?”

“I had gone to practice austerities in the forest. I worshipped the Mother and the Mother blessed me with Her Darshan. I am childless. Vaidyas had ruled out the possibility of my begetting a child. The Mother however has blessed me with a boon to beget a child.”

“The boon is cancelled; you will not beget a child.”

This is Durvasaji, a great God-realized saint. Now, people may think as to what kind of saint he is. But the discerning ones will see the benignity of this curse. Durvasaji didn’t act out of malice in calling him and canceling the boon he got after severe austerities. The saint might have thought, He came to this pious place and the saint’s glance was cast on him. He engaged in spiritual and devotional endeavors s well; yet he has a yearning to beget a child. He will get all the more entangled in the world and begetting a child he will have attachment thereto. It will bring him misery or land him into the quagmire of the world or hurt him both ways. The kind saint saved him from this train of misery and attachment.

‘(Devotion to the Lord) destroys highly ominous portents.’

Getting free of desire as a mode of sādhanā is far superior to fulfilling desires by getting the desired thing through tapasyā. Even after fulfillment of desire, one remains in the same state, spiritually, as before. Satsang is far superior to tapasyā. To impart this teaching to the world, God must have acted through a God-realized saint in this peculiar manner.

So let foolish men criticize Durvasaji or Raman Maharishi for acting in the way they did but this was their pure spontaneous nature at play

A saint was delivering satsang at Vrindavan. An unruly woman came there and said, “O you! You are enjoying life at others’ expense and you are delivering a sermon!”

She was talking all kinds of nonsense about the saint. A fellow saint said, “Your Holiness! She is speaking ill about you.”

“How do you say she is speaking for me? Is she mentioning my name? She is just speaking.”

The women heard the saint say this. She started berating the saint by name. People said, “Now she is castigating you by name.”

“There are so many men with this name in the world. Why should I take the rebukes as meant for me? She may be rubbishing anybody with this name.”

The woman was enraged all the more. She said pointing at him, “I am saying to you, you bald-headed scoundrel!”

People said, “Babaji! Now there is no doubt. She is pointing towards you.”

Babaji said, “She is addressing this body, not me. This is the outermost covering of mine. There are four more inside. She is in sight of only the physical body and is accusing that only, but I am not the physical body. The physical body will become a corpse one day, but I will live. She cannot reach me. Her reach is only up to the physical body. She is condemning, cussing and expressing anger against only this physical body, the outermost of the five coverings. I am beyond all the five coverings. She is not a tall saying anything to me.”

“I am cussing you so strongly and you are harping on ‘not to me’, ‘not to me’?

The woman was hurling invective and Babaji was laughing. Somebody may say,
What kind of a saint is this? He carries no respect at all! It all depends on one’s disposition and way of thinking. One having malice for the saint will say, ‘Is this a saint?” One with devotion towards the saint will say, ‘How great is our saint!’ now, whether the saint is great or petty, God alone knows but your mind is vacillating between positive and negative feelings. It is up to you whether you vacillate driven by somebody or by attachment and hatred or you open your eye of Knowledge, controlling the vacillations of mind, to know your Self-god.

Strange are the ways of saints! A Raman Maharishi may lose his temper occasionally; a Durvasaji may do so every now and then and then and there are others who never lose their temper. But all the three are Jivanmuktas, liberated while living. If somebody weighs enlightened saints in the balance of his beliefs saying they shouldn’t do this or that, he is doing so either out of malice or out of greed for money. One should get to the truth behind what he says.
One, who has experienced Self-Bliss, is not angry even if he looks to be so. He may look to be sad but he is not so. He may look to be displeased. With whom will you compare him? Only the enlightened ones know the unusual state of mind of the enlightened men. If one evaluates Raman Maharishi on the basis of his outward behaviour and finds fault with him, one must be under the influence of one’s demoniacal nature. If one shows wisdom in judging him, one does so under the influence of one’s godly nature. But the Mahapurusha has attained the Supreme State transcending all sentiments, Gunas, Time, Space and all five bodies, reposing in God. Your evaluation makes no difference to him. If you are under the influence of your godly nature, you will evaluate him with attachment. But they are not such as to be evaluated by these scales of yours.


‘He is neither pleased with eulogy nor enraged by dispraise. Nor is he agitated by (the fear of death), nor takes delight in life (due to his identification with the absolute Self).’ (The Ashtavakra Gita: 18.99)

A Jivanmukta, Janani is not pleased if people praise him and he doesn’t get angry if people criticize him. He is not afraid in the face of death for he knows that his true Self is eternal, that birth and death are mere fiction not reality. Neither he is desirous of living nor afraid of dying. He is always calm and composed.
If he, like Raman Maharishi, admonishes a disturbing element and chases him away it is his sweet will and if he, like the saint of vrindavan, silently listens to the invectives hurled by a petty woman, it is his sweet will. He can not be compared to anybody. He is just incomparable. So our aim should be to make the Experience of the Janai our own
.