Anandamayi Ma often ends her discourses with the instruction: Find Out! Find Out! is at the heart of Tantrik sadhana. Yes, read inspiring words. Listen to satsang. Absorb the teachings of your Guru. But then, Find Out! for yourself. Be an explorer of Self. Investigate Reality. Taste, test, and try. Through sadhana and grace, become an embodiment of View.
In one typical sequence, a disciple poses a question. Mataji answers with a teaching story. She finishes by saying:
Reflect and see how much of it you can grasp!
No simile is ever valid in all respects.
What lesson have you actually derived from it?
Find Out!
There are several invaluable aspects of View embedded here. Although Mataji is giving satsang, she ends by placing the focus squarely on her questioner. You are responsible for your own liberation. Don’t be dependent on me. Look to yourself. See what you can grasp. Find Out!
Then, she wisely cuts off any possibility of getting into the usual fruitless arguments.
No simile is ever valid in all respects. What lesson have you actually derived from it?
Most of us are trained to enter into discussions or arguments based solely on conceptual thinking, common sense, or habitual empty logic learned at school.
A teacher makes a statement, and we immediately raise our hand and begin with, “What I think is…” Or, “That doesn’t make sense because…” Or, “There’s a contradiction in what you say…”
This kind of useless talk about what we think might, could, or should be the case can go on for a lifetime. And usually does.
Mataji agrees in advance that her teaching story, her simile, is not valid in all respects. So don’t bother with the pointless activity of poking logical holes in it. Look to yourself. What have you actually learned? Test the Reality of what I say. Find Out!
Mataji also challenges the questioner to focus on what has been gained or received, rather than on what appears to be missing or incomplete.
This is difficult for many of us because we feel so undernourished. We are used to inhabiting the position of one who is perpetually lacking. We spend our time defending, criticizing, and arguing– expressing our discontent at what is missing from the meal–while others eat the food that is actually being served.
Yet, no matter what our present condition, our desire to know Reality, to know our Self, is nothing other than divine desire. Desire for Self-realization is the Shakti that propels all limited life toward realization of the unlimited and beyond any such concepts. It is Shakti herself returning to Shiva. Find Out! is the play, the lila, of God.
Many people these days like to point out similarities between the View of quantum mechanics and that of Tantra. The relevant difference here is that physicists can go on for decades understanding more and more about the world, but this sort of understanding will have a limited impact on their capacity to participate in Reality.
A Tantrik adept understands with her whole being. Her mode of consciously participating in Reality is radically enlarged. She will not realize herself as a tinkerer with technological toys. She will realize her self as nondifferent from the world Self. The entire world will be her body, her beloved, her home.
But don’t take my word for it.
Find Out!
In Ma’s love,
Shambhavi
