Who is feeling the separation? Who is separate from whom? Ask yourself this question whenever these thoughts of separation from self arise – says Annamalai Swami
I remember a devotee who got very attached to Bhagavan’s
(Sri Ramana Maharishi) feet. He would touch his feet and then try to hold on to
them for a long time.
One day Bhagavan said to him: ‘Don’t get attached to the feet
because one day they will disappear. If you are so attached to physical things,
when they go, you will be depressed and you will feel miserable. Hold onto the
Self within. That is the Guru’s true feet. It will never go away because it is
eternal. The Self abides within you as your Guru. It is up to you to find him
there and to stay with him.’
The light of the Self cannot be extinguished. It is eternal and
immanent. It is not like ordinary lights that can be switched on and off. Once
it is discovered within, it will be on all the time.
The incident that Annamalai Swami reported in his final answer
also seems to have been recorded by Sadhu Natanananda in his Tamil book, Sri
Ramana Darshanam. In a section about devotees who wanted to hold onto the
Guru’s feet or show excessive respect to him, he has Bhagavan give out two
emphatic statements: the first to a devotee who was holding onto his feet, and
the second to another devotee who was performing an over elaborate prostration:
‘Only the Supreme Self which is ever shining in your Heart as
the reality, is the Sadguru. The pure awareness, which is shining as the inward
illumination “I”, is His gracious feet.
The contact with these (inner holy feet) alone can give you
true redemption. Joining the eye of reflected consciousness /chitabhasa/, which
is your sense of individuality, to these holy feet, which are the real
consciousness, is the union of the feet and the head which is the real
significance of the word asi (the verb in tat tvam asi, “that thou art”).
As these inner holy feet can be held naturally and
unceasingly, hereafter, with an inward-turned mind, cling to that inner
awareness which is your own real nature. This alone is the proper way for the
removal of bondage and the attainment of the supreme truth. ’
'The benefit of performing namaskaram [prostrating] to the Guru is only the removal of the ego. That is not attained except by total surrender. Within the Heart of each devotee the gracious Guru is giving darshan in the form of consciousness. Since to surrender is to offer fully, in silence, the subsided ego, which is a name-and-form thought, to the aham sphurana (the effulgence of “I”), the real holy feet of the gracious Guru. Since this is so, Self-realization cannot be attained by a bowing of the body, but only by a bowing of the ego.’