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GRACE IN MOTHER’S TEACHING

Ekkirala Bharadwaja
Magazine : Matrusri English
Language : English
Volume Number : 2
Month : August
Issue Number : 5
Year : 1967

Those who know do not speak

Those who speak do not know”.

Thus wrote an ancient sage. Mother does not teach anything; she is the Mother and not the teacher. She alone is the Mother who understandingly bestows what is needed for its welfare on the child, even without being asked to do so. This is the substance of one of Mother’s sayings.

Does the Holy Mother of Jillellamudi hestow Her grace on her visitors? No. When someone saught her grace, She only replied, “Grace is always there. It is not what is bestowed upon one only on his asking for it. Sufferings are as much a matter of grace as are joys. Grace is always there. You recognise it only some times, and only in some of its manifestations. At other times only you do not recognise it; it does not cease to exist on that account” this is the gist of what I heard her say on several occasions and ofcourse, this is how I understood her wor Is.

Bhagavan Ramana said: The Supreme Lord is eternal grace. Therefore there is really no such individual act as bestowing grace; and being ever present, the manifestation of Grace is not confined to any particular period or occasion.

“God, Grace and Guru are all synanymous and are both eternal and immanent. Isn’t the Self already within? Is it for the Guru to bestow it by his look? If a Guru thinks so, he does not deserve that name”.

In us is nurtured by what we hear from self-styled tea chers and guides (see quotation from Ramana given above for the complete meaning of this phrase) the idea that whatever we do is owing to Karmabandha (01 Prarabdha?) and that grace is something extraneous to it: that it is obtained by seeking only; that we are outside it normally. Therefore we often tell ourselves, “Let us do our part of the job and leave the rest to God!”. If we succeed, we say “It’s all His grace” (if at all!). If we fail, we say “I am unlucky” or “God is not gracious to me”. Therefore we try to seek His grace-pray for it and try to placate His sweet will with our vows. Unconsciously we reduce Him to the level of a corrupt officer or a boss who is fond of flattery. When we fail to taste His grace in our failure, we are unconsciously regretting for having prayed, or else we would not have prayed for a purpose! In our prayers we admit unwittingly that it is the fulfilment of our desire that we have loved and really cared for. God is only a kind of a scape-goat, a safety valve, a backdoor. Only when we have failed repeatedly and suffered continuously do we ever think of God with any sincerity of purpose (which is to understand what really the word signifies). That is the moment when we have really started tasting His grace which has been there all along. “In fact your very desire for grace is due to grace that is already working in you”: Ramana told one of his devotees. For, only when we sincerely desire to know the truth regarding individual effort, God and His grace, our self can be said to be really seeking liberation from the veil of ignorance-not when we glibly talk in that vein. “If the Atma complains about the veil, then the Atma will remove it”-this is another saying of Bhagavan. “Yearning for Liberation is itself Liberation” said Mother.

According to Mother, “It’s not correct to speak of God’s grace. Grace itself is God.” The one who ordains everything has Itself ordained the moment of one’s Liberation. Therefore the ordained moment is itself God”. This moment at which the grace of God comes to be recognised by the individual as such, is already preordained; that is to say, even what we the ignorant ones consider to be grace (ie. apart from what usually happens in the course of Time) has been ordained even when the whole creation has come to be. Grace does not constitute any violation of the preordained pattern. God is grace; it is grace that has laid down the pattern of creation and its unfoldment. As far as we the ignorant ones are concerned, the moment of recognising grace as such constitutes grace. This does not come as the result of any endeavour. If it does, it’s a reward and not grace. Thus it is that Lord Krishna said that a vision of His Universal form (viswaroopa) does not come of any charity that’s done or rigorous self-mor tification that’s practiced

Na reda yagna adhyayanair na divinai —

Rna Cha kriyaabhir na tapobhirugrathi,

Evam rupaha sakya aham Nriloke

 Drashtam Tradanyena Kurupraveera.

(Bhagavadgeeta 12:48)

Grace manifests of itself, not out of any considerations of deserved ness. For as Jesus said. nothing except the Father is Good. That’s why Mother said “when I do not discriminate between qualities where is discrimination between castes (for me)?” “The (benign) look that does not discriminate is itself Grace” said Mother. Mother gives what is necessary for the child to receive, not whatever the ignorant child asks for. It’s our ignorance that prevents us from accepting it as such when what we are given does not happen to be what we looked for. It is our ignorce, ince again, that makes us feel that we are graced when we happen to get what we longed for.

“What’s grace?” asked someone.

“Tell me what grace is not! Mother retorted.

That is the place of Grace in Mother’s teaching. That is the grace of Her way of teaching of teaching about everything by not teaching about anything!

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