In India, Ramalila is celebrated every year. To us, Rama was the son of a king, but at the same time he is the indwelling consciousness in every speck of this creation and the creative principle behind the visible and invisible universe. Also, Rama represents to us, not only the immanent reality behind this appearance, but also the transcendental reality.
Millions and millions of Hindus for many thousands of years have drawn inspiration from this great personality. Yogis consider him the incarnate consciousness and the entire Ramalila represents the discovery of the highest knowledge in one’s own self. It is not merely a prince marrying the daughter of another king and going into exile, destroying the demon king, Ravana; it is something more than that.
This Ramalila has been going on, on every soil. The individual consciousness in man is trying to locate, is trying to capture and unite with the shakti, the highest power in the universe.
The awakening of kundalini is of utmost importance in man’s life, and so is the experience that goes with it. Knowledge is not that important. What is important is experience. One iota of experience can immediately transport you to another realm of awareness, but knowledge cannot transport you to any realm; you remain where you are. In order to gain the experience, it is necessary for everybody, without exception, to withdraw his relationship with the sensorial world.
The five senses responsible for knowledge and the five senses responsible for action, represent the ten heads of the demon king Ravana, and each and every sense has twofold attitudes or vrittis, the positive and the negative. That makes it twenty, and these twenty attitudes are represented by the hands of Ravana which you will see in the Ramalila. When the battle was on between Rama and Ravana, Rama went on shooting him. Every time one of his heads was shot off, it was revived again. When it was discovered that in his navel there was something which had to be destroyed, this demon king Ravana ultimately fell.
When awakening of kundalini takes place, many things can happen. It is not merely a psychedelic experience which we have; it is not just the hallucination which we go through sometimes. This experience is responsible for transforming the total quality of man’s consciousness, thereby giving him the total power to see the subtle forces that live in us beyond our vision. The story of Sri Rama, the lila, is, in fact, depicting an entire journey of kundalini through the path of sushumna, right up to sahasrara chakra.
In India, the story of Sri Rama is sung day in and day out. For us he is a personal God, but more than that he is a constant inspiration in that he worked hard to discover Sita, who was in the captivity of Ravana, the demon king. So, today you are having Ramalila. It is very nice. Try to find some time to read the story. Rishi Valmiki has written the story of Rama. Then there is another story, Adhyatma Ramayana, the spiritual life of Sri Rama, and a third, Ramacharitamanasa, the esoteric life of Sri Rama. It is important for all the spiritual aspirants to know what Ramalila stands for.
I have been talking about yoga for over two decades. I don’t belong to a yoga cult. Yoga is not my tradition; my tradition is Vedanta. But I found that without a foundation, you can’t raise a superstructure. If the union between ida and pingala does not take place, if the awakening of the chakras does not take place, if sushumna is not awakened through the practices and if kundalini does not awaken, man lives in the human body
but his consciousness is equal to an animal’s. It doesn’t matter what type of scholar you are. You may talk about any subject. You may talk about Vedanta, you may talk about bhakti, you may talk about raja yoga, you may talk about the Bhagavad Gita – it means nothing! A tape recorder can also talk.
There is an inner experience which is beyond this, and that experience is absolute reality. It is not imagination; it is the formation of the quality, the quantity and stuff of the mind. How do you see the lights in this room? Through the consciousness, that is, the vritti. In the same way, you can have inner experience, the gross mind can be transformed. And with this experience you can go ahead in your search for reality, in your search for anything, you might say, even truth.
I thought it important for me to talk about yoga, and I find that people do understand it. Here you will sing in the Ramalila, but I can tell you a way of witnessing it. Every morning, sit in the lotus posture, siddhasana or vajrasana with any mudra, chin mudra or yoni mudra, close your eyes, stop all physical movement and concentrate your mind on one sound: the mantra. It can be Om, it can be Rama, or it can be the mantra your guru has given you. Every day, sit down and practise mantra, and this is how you awaken in yourself the Rama consciousness. This Rama consciousness moves from mooladhara to sahasrara through sushumna.
I am happy to be at this Ramalila, an opportunity given to me by Swami Ramamurtiji. And after twenty-eight years, I have met Swami Nadabrahmanandji, after longing to see him for many years. I will only be here for a few hours. I am on a flying visit to your country, but hope to come here again sometime and live in the peaceful surroundings of this ashram for some time. I don’t have much to tell you, but I just want you to do one thing – experience, and go after it!
26 August 1982, Ananda Ashram, Monroe, New York, USA, published in Teachings of Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Volume III