Jesus the Teacher Within. Laurence Freeman

is in everything), they are scared of sliding into the gnostic heresies (the word heresy literally means choice) that confronted the early church. Furthermore, as Westerners they balk at the apparent loss of personal identity suggested by Ramana’s words. But as Christians they might also recall those sayings of Jesus where he spoke–shockingly, too, for many of his listeners–of the oneness between himself and the Father: ‘My Father and your Father’; ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father.’ Or of St Paul’s personal confession that he lived no longer but that Christ dwelt in him.

      I have been crucified with Christ: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me; and my present mortal life is lived by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.¹⁴

      Ramana expressed his experience of the Self, the immanent and transcendent presence of the Divine Guru, in his own terms conditioned by his Hindu context. He constantly returns to the unity of nonduality (advaita) just as St Paul does to the indwelling Christ,

      The guru never sees any difference between himself and others and is quite free of the idea that he is enlightened and those around him are not.

      Seeing Jesus as guru serves to understand the New Testament titles used most frequently of Jesus, teacher and rabbi The signs of a true guru, as described by Ramana, are abundantly evident in the gospel picture of Jesus as a human being in communion with God (whom he called ‘Father’). But we see him also as a person of his own time and place with the natural limitations this implies. Ramana says a guru possesses the following qualities:

      a steady abidance in the Self, looking at all with an equal eye, unshakable courage at all times, in all places and situations.

      If Jesus is guru we are invited to see ourselves as disciples. Our ego may find that unacceptable or impossible. ‘I’ll listen, but I’m not bowing to anyone.’ But dedicated spiritual practice eventually makes disciples of us all. It is interesting then to know what Ramana saw as the qualities of a true disciple:

      an intense longing for the removal of sorrow and the attainment of joy and an intense aversion for all kinds of mundane pleasure.

      Perhaps the reason that our spiritual practice seems to ‘take so long’, as people often complain, might simply be that we do not intensely enough long for what we protest we want immediately!

      The role of the guru in his exterior manifestation is to push the disciple inwards to the quest for the Self. When Ramana Maharshi was asked what method or discipline was best to follow he did not offer an array of meditation techniques. He pointed people to Self-inquiry. The constant thought ‘Who am I’, he said, destroys all other thoughts. Like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end be destroyed. Then Self-realization naturally arises.

      Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind the I-thought is the first. It is only after the rise of this that the other thoughts arise. It is after the appearance of the first personal pronoun that the second and third personal pronouns appear.

      According to Ramana the aim of all spiritual practice is to lead the mind to stillness. When the I-thought has been traced all the way back to its origin, it disappears in its ultimate source of all things, the Self. The radical simplicity of Sri Ramana’s teaching is the expression of a compassionate, decisive but noncondemnatory personality. This is reminiscent of the way Jesus himself treated sinners and outcasts. Ramana remarked to a Hindu visitor discouraged by his inveterate sinfulness:

      Even if one be a great sinner one should not worry and weep, ‘O, I am a sinner how can I be saved!’ One should completely renounce the thought ‘I am a sinner’ and concentrate keenly on meditation on the Self. Then one will surely succeed.

      Compare this with the parable of the Prodigal Son who returns home to his father’s unconditional, impartial forgiveness;¹⁵ or the story of the sinner and the religious official praying in the Temple and the way the former’s simple humility finds God’s favour rather than the Pharisee’s complacency.¹⁶ When he met with sinners and outcasts, Jesus loved. His anger was reserved for the rigidity of religious authority, the sin that denies that it is sin and even claims to be from God. It was not directed against ordinary sinners. His power was felt not in punishment but in the reintegration of the sinner both to himself and to society. He called them to repentance and a new life: ‘go and do not sin again’ as he told the woman he saved from being stoned to death.¹⁷ He convinced people that they were forgiven and he empowered them to take advantage of the invitation to live more fully that is intrinsic to that discovery. Jesus’ compassionate response to sin emphasises both the person’s will to transcend the habit of sin and the action necessary to fulfil that intention. People did not leave his presence fixated on their sinfulness. They left in liberty to live differently. The energy of this newfound freedom is related to the joy felt in his presence. He was one in whose presence, as a contemporary theologian wrote, it was impossible to feel sad.

      Ramana Maharshi’s question ‘Who am I?’ leads beyond all the false identities that constitute the ego. It leads to a tranquillity of mind which evokes the ‘stillness’ of Psalm 46 which Ramana liked to quote: ‘be still and know that I am God’. For those who listen to it, the self-inquiring question of Jesus, ‘Who do you say I am?’, discloses just this power of inner stillness. ‘The false perception of the world and of our self,’ Sri Ramana taught, ‘will disappear when the mind becomes still.’

      Seeing Jesus as a guru who teaches by means of question and presence, rather than as a moralist and rule-giver, may be a challenge for many Western Christians. Yet full Christian faith recognises Jesus as the incarnate manifestation of the essential quest and question of the human journey to God: the incarnational form of the ‘Who am I?’ which makes us human. Jesus, as the Word of God, like a mantra, draws our attention from its scattered state of egotism, unifies it and awakens us to the truth he identified with life itself. ‘I have come,’ he said, ‘so that you may have life, and may have it in all its fullness.’¹⁸

      Jesus does not have this effect by magic or through psychic powers. According to the gospel we come to know and understand Jesus by ‘faith’. Listening to his question is the beginning of an unmapped expedition of faith. As we tread the narrow path of his question we discover how much more than belief faith means. The intellectual mind (manas in Indian philosophy) believes; but faith is our capacity for insight (buddhi, or spiritual intelligence). Faith is the ‘vision of things unseen’.¹⁹

      In a “Peanuts” cartoon Lucy once told Charlie Brown that she had a new philosophy: ‘All will be well.’ ‘That’s nice’, he replied. ‘Only thing . . .’ she added. ‘What’s that’, he asked? ‘I don’t know what it means.’

      Faith is not the dream but the felt conviction that things will eventually work out for the best. Without denying the reality of evil or innocent suffering faith knows that the broken can be repaired, the meaningless can be understood, the wounded can be healed, and even that what is dead in us can be raised to new life. Faith knows that despite all signs to the contrary, and there are many, life has constructive meaning and beneficial purpose. The mystery of life is that even its tragedies and setbacks, its disappointments and failures can serve to awaken and deepen faith.

      Why should we trouble ourselves to listen to the question Jesus raises concerning himself and how we see him? Because faith is born in the listening. By discovering what we are listening to we find meaning, authentic consolation, joy and fulfilment, in ways which no answers can bestow. How does this transforming, healing and revelatory energy of faith arise through the stilling of the mind? How does the Self shine forth?

      It happens through every action of life performed faithfully as a disciple. This means when they are not done selfishly or even for my own spiritual benefit. These practices are not necessarily overtly religious. They cover everything in a normal human life: the