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| Annamalai Swami |
(from "Annamalai Swami - final talks"):
Annamalai Swami: Bhagavan watched me very closely in the years that I served him in the ashram. One time I went to the Mother's temple where many people were talking about worldly matters.
Bhagavan called me back, saying, 'Why should you go to that crowd? Don't go to crowded places. If you move with the crowd, their vasanas will infect you.'
Bhagavan always encouraged me to live a solitary life and not mix with other people. That was the path he picked for me. Other people got different advice that was equally good for them.
But while he actively discouraged me from socializing, he also discouraged me from sitting quietly and meditating during the years that I was working in the ashram. In this period of my life, if Bhagavan saw me sitting with my eyes closed he would call out to me and give me some work to do.
On one of these occasions, he told me,
'Don't sit and meditate. It will be enough if you don't forget that you are the Self. Keep this in your mind all the time while you are working. This sadhana will be enough for you.
The real sadhana is not to forget the Self. It is not sitting quietly with one's eyes closed. You are always the Self. Just don't forget it.'
Bhagavan's way does not create a war between the mind and the body. He does not make people sit down and fight the mind with closed eyes. Usually, when you sit in meditation, you are struggling to achieve something, fighting to gain control over the mind. Bhagavan did not advise us to engage in this kind of fight. He told us that there is no need to engage in a war against the mind, because mind does not have any real, fundamental existence. This mind, he said, is nothing but a shadow. He advised me to be continuously aware of the Self while I did the ordinary things of everyday life, and in my case, this was enough.
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