28 Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 This is why Bhagavan said that grace is essential, because grace is our real nature, being the love that we as we actually are have for ourself as we actually are. That is, what we actually are is what is called God or guru, and in his clear view we are nothing other than himself, so he sees us as himself and accordingly loves us as himself. The infinite love that he has for us as himself is what we experience as his grace, and it is only from this infinite love, which is our own real nature, that sat-vāsanā can arise in our heart, because sat-vāsanā is love to attend to our own being and thereby to subside and lose ourself in it. Therefore the grace of God or guru is what is working in our heart in the form of sat-vāsanā, so the battle being fought within our own will between our sat-vāsanā and our viṣaya-vāsanās is actually a battle being fought in our heart between grace and our ego-nature, which is why Bhagavan referred to it as “the warfare of grace” (Ta. “aruḷ-pōrāṭṭam”) in verse 74 of Śrī Aruṇācala Akṣaramaṇamālai: Arunachala, in the common space devoid of going and coming show the warfare of grace. [41] The “common space devoid of going and coming” (Ta. “pōkkum varavum il podu veḷi”) is the heart, the infinite and eternally immutable space of pure awareness, which never goes (ceases to exist) or comes (begins to exist), and in which, having known it as our own real nature, we will know that we could never have gone out anywhere or come back. Since God or guru will never cease fighting the warfare of grace to save us until he achieves victory, destroying in us the vast army of demons, namely ego and all its viṣayavāsanās, in this verse Bhagavan prays from the perspective of a devotee to be shown this warfare, which will certainly end in victory for grace. Therefore, when we are struggling to cling firmly to self-attentiveness and often seem to be fighting a losing battle to avoid being constantly swayed by our viṣaya-vāsanās, we should find courage in remembering that the all-mighty power of grace is on our side, so if we persevere in trying our best to be self-attentive, victory is assured. No matter how difficult it may seem to be, all we need do is to keep on trying to be self-attentive as much as we can, because so long as we are trying, we are thereby cooperating with grace, allowing it to do its work unimpeded. That is, grace will do everything that is required to save us from the snares of ego and its viṣaya-vāsanās, but we have to play our small part by yielding ourself to it, as Bhagavan assures us while also cautioning us in the twelfth paragraph of Nāṉ Ār?: God and guru are in truth not different. Just as what has been caught in the jaws of a tiger will not return, so those who have been caught in the look of guru’s grace will never be forsaken but will surely be saved by him; nevertheless, it is necessary to walk unfailingly in accordance with the path that guru has shown. [42] The path that guru has shown is the path of investigating what we actually are by keeping our mind fixed firmly on ourself and thereby surrendering ourself completely to God, as Bhagavan implies in the first sentence of the next paragraph, namely the thirteenth paragraph of Nāṉ Ār? (cited above in section 11), so this is the means by which we can yield ourself to the grace of guru, refraining from rising as ego and thereby obstructing its work. That is, since grace has sown the seed of sat-vāsanā in our heart and is working within us in the form of sat-vāsanā, yielding ourself to grace means yielding to the inward pull of sat-vāsanā, so to the extent to which we attend to ourself under the sway of satvāsanā, we are thereby yielding ourself to grace. 20 This Path of Self-Investigation Is Exceedingly Easy Since there is nothing in our experience that is clearer or more self-evident than our fundamental awareness of our own being, ‘I am’, there cannot be anything easier for us than to attend to this fundamental awareness, which is ourself as we actually are, as he points in verse 4 of Āṉma-Viddai: For the bonds beginning with action to be untied, to rise from the devastation beginning with birth, more than whatever path, this path is what is exceedingly easy. When one just is, resting without the least action of mind, speech or body, ah, in the heart the light of oneself alone. The eternal experience. Fear does not exist. The ocean of bliss alone. [43] “For the bonds beginning with action to be untied” (Ta. “kaṉma-ādi kaṭṭu aviṙa”) means for us to unravel and free ourself from the ties that bind us to “action” (Sa. karma) and all that results from it, namely the whole of saṁsāra, the continuous cycle of births and deaths and all that it entails. Likewise, “to rise from the devastation beginning with birth” (Ta. “jeṉma-ādi naṭṭam eṙa”) means for us to rise up, awaken or be resuscitated from this degraded, devastating and miserable state of embodied existence or saṁsāra, each round of which begins with birth and ends with death. For achieving such liberation, says Bhagavan, “more than
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