IN DAYS OF GREAT PEACE

It is the title of the book written by Mouni Sadhu, published in Brazil by Editora Pensamento in 1954, from the first English edition, In Days of Great Peace - The Highest Yoga as Lived, of 1952.

For several years, the author delved into the teachings of one of India's greatest ascetics, and it was one of the best attempts by a European, along with Paul Brunton, to describe without technical details, what those teachings were. The book had an intense repercussion among Brazilian readers, as it reveals the author's experience with one of the most respected holy men in India, Sri Ramana Maharshi. In this book, Mouni Sadhu reveals the real experience of a man willing to know the meaning and influences of being in the physical presence of a great sage but does not try to record any of his teachings, only the spoken words, knowledge and interpretations. The author experienced only his personal experience and the vibrations emanating from Maharshi ... his gaze, his gestures, his deep silence, which was eventually broken, with spoken words that came out of the presence of the Divine Presence that interacted in his being, free from all the shackles of the tyrannical ego that binds the profane man.

Mouni Sadhu avoided using technical terms of classical Yoga, which could confuse the unfamiliar reader, as to convey spiritual matters it is necessary to avoid overloading the mind, which distracts attention and the main message is not absorbed.

In the preface, transcribed here in part and to further inspire the reading of In Days of Great Peace, Dr M. Hafiz Syed, one of Maharishi's devotees, says that most people have no faith in spiritual values because for them, the mind is everything and the mind takes them to countless reflections and speculations. Some say they are sceptical; others pride themselves on being materialistic, but the Truth is covered up by our ignorance and we do not seek it with due insistence. Having exercised our intellect to the limit, we think there is no hope for broader investigations and discoveries. Almost all spiritually mature human beings have shown the path, and by following it, we can eventually be free of all uncertainty and comprehend the meaning and raison d'être of life. They point the path but establish defined requirements to achieve it.

The first requirement is a serious desire to drink from the source of the water of Life, beginning with self-investigation. When asked about these requirements, Maharishi said: “That the aspirant to the things of Truth must have the intense and incessant yearning to be freed from the miseries of life and to obtain supreme spiritual bliss, and that he must have no desire for anything else.”

The second is the unremitting effort accompanied by careful observance of the rules of conduct and the cultivation of the virtues of detachment and discernment.

The third is the search for a Master, an arrow in the path that indicates the direction. However, the presence of a Master, despite being an important milestone in this pilgrimage to the highest, fulfils only the initial role. “You are Gods”, warned the greatest of the Masters that mankind knew, for the Master, dwells within our inner being.

Mouni Sadhu seems to have met all possible requirements. As a serious aspirant, he followed several methods on the realization in God, from different schools and finally found his Master. Thus, Maharishi, finding him prepared, granted his grace eradicating the selfishness of the disciple (as the author himself affirms) and consolidated his eternal and permanent Self.

According to Dr Syed, there are two kinds of rational faith in the reality of spiritual life:

1) - indirect faith, of which we have references from aspirants to the Truth, who had the courage, persistence and willingness to fight and find the thorny path of self-knowledge and subsequent self-realization.

2) - faith born of direct experience, something that does not allow the possibility of doubt or denial.

In Days of Great Peace, is a precious evidence of indirect faith, which we have to investigate carefully and verify for ourselves, as these experiences were written with meticulous care.

Moved by the feeling of serving and the desire to share with others, experiences and convictions resulting from his direct knowledge, he materialized thoughts and feelings in the form of this inspiring and instructive book. Readers interested in the same pilgrimage will find evidence of someone who has crossed the shores of illusion.

In Days of Great Peace, represents one of the best works of a European writer to describe without any technique, what consists of meditation and its ability to lead to ecstasy, and the relationship between the disciple and his Master. Reveals the spiritual and mental states of the author, and communicates his knowledge to the reader. The book comprises 50 short chapters plus the Epilogue and is developed almost entirely around notes taken daily, with interesting incidents that occurred with the author. It is undoubtedly a moving biographical account of the interaction between a disciple and his Master, where silence was the greatest presence.

In Days of Great Peace is a book recommended to every serious student of the deepest things of the Soul, as well as a trip to a country that left a legacy of great spiritual men, where the most important lies in the message that remains in the reader, inviting it to self-knowledge and inevitable self-realization ... in short, from ignorance to wisdom.

Due to the repercussion of this book, Brazilian publishers invited Huberto Rohden to preface the new edition of 1954, which resulted in a complete revision and footnotes, a result that further contributed to guarantee the preciousness of this book.

According to Rohden, “This is undoubtedly one of the most precious books written by a man who had profound experiences of spiritual reality at the feet of a great initiated of the 20th century. The greatest value of this book is in its character of genuine and immediate experience; the author does not attempt to offer readers anything he has thought about Ramana Maharshi; he does not even try to interpret the Master's doctrine in his way. No, he simply reflects, like a faithful mirror, what he felt, lived, suffered and savoured, in those moments of ineffable and anonymous bliss, in deep silence and total ego emptiness, when he was sitting in the shadows of the temple of Arunachala, with nothing thinking or wanting, but simply allowing the invisible spiritual plenitude of the Master to flow from his cosmic source and spontaneously pour into the receptive disciple's channels. Mouni Sadhu, in these eternal moments, ceased to be ego-thought, ego-lived, ego-acted and became Cosmo-thought, Cosmo-lived, Cosmo-acted, as it is said in the language of Cosmic Philosophy, although the author does not use these words.

Being the author, at that time, still alive, he added to the last edition of the English original a new chapter entitled “The Direct Path”, and cancelled the chapter “Adyar”, which appeared in previous editions. The sequence of other chapters also differs from the order that Brazilian readers may know. But the content of the book is always the same, with fascinating authenticity and immediate experience of the Reality.

As for the literary form, I was invited by the current editor to submit the old text to a careful review, a work that resulted in an almost entirely new translation, according to the last edition of the original done under the sponsorship of the author.

In Days of Great Peace can be the beginning of great peace, of a “peace that the world cannot give”, for every reader who lives and assimilates its content, in days of deep interiorization. The central focus of the book is self-knowledge, manifested in self-realization; it is the ... “man, know thyself”, the quintessence of Greek philosophy; it is the eternal “man, dynamically become what you potentially are”, which is the categorical imperative of eastern mystique and western psychology. The alpha and omega of this book coincide with the very soul of the Gospel of Jesus, unified in the “two commandments in which all the law and the prophets consist”, in the sublime vertical of the “first and greatest of all commandments” (self-knowledge), and in the vast horizontal of the “second commandment” (self-realization) - the mystique revealed in ethics.

Humanity struggles in unprecedented chaos, looking for a way out of the labyrinth of its problems. But the only real way out, the only solution to the painful problems in which man struggles, is what matters most in every page of this book: it is not, first of all, the religious and social reform of humanity, but the conversion of the individual. As long as man does not make within himself the great peace treaty, of domestic, social, national, international peace, there cannot be peace outside him. The multi-century history of humanity is summed up in wars and armistices - but they are not true peace. The armistice that culminates in war, a war that ends in an armistice - this is the eternal vicious circle of humanity-ego because the man-Self did not establish true peace within himself, the definitive peace treaty between his human ego and his divine Self; man has not yet proclaimed the sovereignty of his divine substance over the tyrannies of human circumstances, and for this reason, humanity only knows the “cold war” of the armistices or the real war, the “hot war” on battlefields.

Man must have the sincerity to pray the humble confession of his guilt, which awakens in him the “prince of peace”, his inner Christ, his Father, the Light of the World, the Kingdom of God, which has always been in him, but that the man-ego did not properly awaken or raise consciousness.

Guilt breeds suffering, however, the suffering properly recognized and accepted can be the prelude to redemption.

Humanity, violent and suffocated by the abuse of its free will is suffering the consequences of its guilt, and according to the seers, this is only “the beginning of the pain”; they speak of increasing horrors that will culminate in an unprecedented catastrophe ... What is not gold will disappear, and gold is the self-knowledge of the masters: “you will love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your heart and with all your strength”; self-realization is the result of ethics overflowing in mystique: “you will love your neighbour as yourself”.

In Days of Great Peace is a wake-up call for the guilty and suffering humanity - and at the same time a ray of hope for the “new redeemed humanity”. The reader who studies the pages of this book attentively will feel the eternal vitality and powerful evidence of these profound truths that humanity needs today more urgently than ever.

May the man-ego of today be the prelude to the man-Self of tomorrow!

And the truth will bear witness to itself.”

Note:

Mouni Sadhu, whose meaning is Silent - Mouni, holy man, Sadhu, monk, or Silent Monk - is the pseudonym of Mieczyslaw Demetriusz Sudowski, born in Warsaw in 1897, Poland, where he remained until 1945, before the Second World War. He was a scholar of spiritual, mystical and esoteric subjects. After leaving Poland, he settled in Paris, where he received the book “A Search in Secret India”, by Paul Brunton deciding to visit this country; in 1949 he lived with Maharishi. But before that trip, he also lived in Brazil, in Curitiba city, Paraná state, where he wrote his first book, “Quem Sou Eu?” (Who Am I?), in 1947. In early 1950, he migrated to Australia, living in Melbourne, continuing his studies and writing books, where he died in 1971.

Readers interested in learning more about Maharshi's teachings, Mouni Sadhu guides the reading of: “Life and Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi”, by Narasimha Swami and “Maharshi’s Gospel”, which were revised by the Maharshi himself.