'Rishabha Gita'- The seed of this world-appearance is ignorance. Man acquires this ignorance or mental conditioning effortlessly. It seems to promote pleasure though, in truth, it is the source of grief. It creates a delusion of pleasure only by the veiling of self-knowledge. When one becomes aware of the unreality of this mental conditioning, one’s mind ceases to be. As long as there is no natural yearning for self-knowledge, so long ignorance or mental conditioning throws up an endless stream of world-appearance. This ignorance perishes when it turns towards self-knowledge.
Rishabha Gita
The Rishabha-Gita is contained in sloka 19 of chapter 4 and chapters 5 & 6 of Skandha V of Srimad Bhagavata.
1. Once, while moving about the country, Rishabha was in Brahmavarta.
There, in an assembly of sages, where a large audience was present to
listen to him, Rishabha delivered a sermon especially to teach his sons,
though they were endowed with self-control, humility, affection and
discipline in all matters of life.
Rishabha was referred to as Rsabha in the Mahabharata, Vishnu-Purana and Siva-Puruna.
Rishabha said:
2. Oh children! The sacred human body that you have got in the world
is not meant to be utilized for sensuous enjoyment as by low creatures,
which too get such enjoyment through the filth they consume. It is to be
used for observance of austerity with noble spiritual ends. By such
austerity the mind becomes pure, enabling one to attain to the bliss of the Brahman. The seekers that realize God without practising any spiritual
discipline are called the Nityasiddha – the eternally perfect. Those who
realize God through austerity, japam and the like are called the
Sadhanasiddha – the perfect through spiritual discipline.
The practice of mortification does not necessarily lead to a virtuous
life. The mortified may practice all the cardinal virtues such as
prudence, fortitude, temperance and chastity and yet remain a thoroughly
bad man. This is for the reason that his virtues are accompanied by,
and connected with, the sins of pride, envy, chronic anger and UN-charitableness assuming the proportion of active cruelty. Mistaking
the means for the end, the puritan fancies himself holy because he is
austere. But austerity is just the exaltation of the ego of the
individual. Holiness, on the other hand, is the total denial of the
separative self and abandonment of the will to God. To the extent that
there is attachment to ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’, there is no attachment to
God and only affirmation of self. Austerity coupled with holiness is
what attains the Brahman.
3. The association with holy ones is the door for entrance to the
realm of liberation. And the entrance to hell (spiritual degradation)
consists in association with worldly-minded men who are intensely
attached to women. Holy men are those who are even-minded, tranquil,
peaceful, unperturbed, friendly to all, and endowed with all good
qualities.
One is to free oneself from likes and dislikes, and to engage oneself
in righteous self-effort to reach the supreme Truth. Self-effort is
that which springs from right understanding of the scriptures and the
teachings of holy persons.
The samskaras (tendencies, impressions) brought forward from the
previous lives are of two kinds. The pure ones lead one to liberation
and the impure ones keep one in bondage. One is pure consciousness
oneself, not inert physical matter. One is not impelled to action by
anything other than oneself. It is open to one to strengthen the pure
latent tendencies in preference to the impure ones. That is the reason
why the holy men advise that one shall tread consciously the path that
leads to the eternal good. The wise seeker knows that the fruit of his endeavor is always commensurate with the intensity of his self-effort.
Fate or destiny or god does not ordain it otherwise. The seeker is,
therefore, to endeavor for his true good – his salvation by a keen and
intelligent study of the scriptures, by having the company of the holy
ones and by right self-effort.
4. Or, holy men are those who consider the intense attraction they
have for Me as their noblest attainment in life, who have no attachment
to worldly-minded people, wife, children, properties, etc, and who are
satisfied with such requirements as are enough to live on.When there is
non-attachment to family, property, worldly minded people, etc, the will
turns away from the normal life. Man attains to the state of voluntary
renunciation, resignation, true indifference and perfect willingness.
The phenomenon by which this change is marked is the transition from
virtue to asceticism.Voluntary and complete chastity or the denial of
the will to live is the first step in asceticism. Second, it shows
itself in voluntary and intentional poverty. It arises either as
possessions are given away to mitigate the sufferings of others, or it
is an end in itself as a constant mortification of wills itself, its
visible form, its objectivity and the body. He nourishes the body
sparingly lest it excite more strongly the will to seek expression in
the worldly possessions. He is absorbed in the inward, direct, intuitive
knowledge from which alone all virtue and holiness arise and which is
expressed in precisely the same way in the conduct of life. Intuitively
every man is conscious of all philosophical truths. Only the ascetic
realizes and lives the truths.
5. Whoever struggles to satisfy the senses is bound to be morally and
spiritually lethargic and bound to do many evil deeds. I find no
meaning in men doing again and again the very kind of karma which has
brought into existence this body which, besides being short-lived and
ephemeral, is the cause of all suffering. The repetition of the karma is
bound to result in new embodiments in a series, and more suffering.
Samsara is a series of lives with birth and death with no
enlightenment. In ignorance, man binds himself to family and friends, to
wealth and possessions and to pleasures associated with body. He gets
involved in the cycle of samsara with no effort at redemption. He makes
no effort to realize the ultimate Truth or the Reality. He lives the
life of a beast, caring for satisfaction of the physical senses and
appetites.
If a seeker is intent to overcome the series of lives, he is to
associate with realized souls to know the way to overcoming samsara. The
enlightened persons, having realized themselves, will be of help to the
seeker in his effort.
6. As long as man does not make an earnest inquiry about the Spirit
within, so long will he, out of ignorance, be debarring the dawn of
spiritual consciousness in him. As long as he works for selfish
attainments, so long will his mind be inclined only towards such actions
(and not for spiritual inquiry). And for such body-centered men given to
selfish actions, embodiments are caused again and again.
There are three kinds of reality – the Supreme Spirit, the individual
spirits and the material principle. There are three kinds of
relationship – the relation of the Supreme Spirit to the individual
spirits, the relations of the individual spirits to matter and the
relation of matter to the Supreme Spirit. Each of the three terms is
related to the other two. So each relationship has two directions.
One must practice discrimination to inquire the pros and cons of each
issue and to choose the one that leads to God. For instance, ‘lust and
greed’ is impermanent. God is the only Eternal Substance. Discrimination
is the knowledge of what is real and what is unreal. It is the
realization that God alone is the real and eternal Substance and all
else is unreal, transitory and impermanent. One must cultivate intense
zeal and love for God and be attracted to Him as the Gopis of Brindavan.
The magician alone is real; his magic is illusory. This is
discrimination. As long as the seeker does not practice inquiry and
discrimination ultimately resulting in realization, so long does he
continue to be in samsara – the repetition of birth and death.
7. When ignorance clouds the mind, it is enslaved by samskaras -the
impressions of actions done earlier. As long as the mind does not
develop attraction and love for Me, Vasudeva, so long release from
embodiment does not arise.
The samskaras are creative and dynamic. They are of two kinds –
cosmic and individual. The birth and the way one has been born, which is
common to all individuals are due to cosmic samskaras. The samskaras,
which are peculiar to one, are due to one’s own actions in one’s past
births. For example, of two children born in a family, one may become a
saint and the other a criminal. This is because of the personal
samskaras of the individuals carried from their previous births.
Likewise, the new samskaras acquired during the present life may
influence future activities in this life itself or in the next lives.
Buddhism believes that the samskaras
become constituents of one’s personality by being passed on from moment
to moment of its duration. The action-samskaras are transmitted from
moment to moment of one’s existence, stay in one after one’s death and
become active in producing one’s next birth, and so on. Ethical action
will produce samskaras in the individual self for future action in this
life or the later ones, paving the way for ultimate realization.
8. As long as man, unconcerned of the purpose of life, fails to
perceive that the actions of his body-mind are not of the Atman, the
spiritual Self, he will be completely oblivious of his spiritual nature
and behave like an ignorant person, a merely body-centred being, seeking
delight in the sex-dominated life of the householder suffering from its
endless woes.
Ignorance arises when craving envelops the mind-stuff. This craving
dries up the good and noble qualities of the mind and heart. It makes
one hard and cruel. It is this craving that is responsible for bondage
and misfortune. It breaks the heart of man and creates delusion in him.
Caught in its whirlpool, man is unable to enjoy the pleasures that are
within his reach. Though it appears that the craving is for happiness,
it leads neither to happiness nor to fruitfulness in this life.
9. The union of man with woman is spoken of by great men as a new
knot in their heart, added to the already existing knot of ego-sense.
For, from that springs the terrible infatuation causing the extension of
the sense of identification, consisting in the sense of ‘mine-ness’,
with regard to house, property, son, friend, money and so on.The ego is
the thought ‘I’. Of all the thoughts that arise in the mind, the ‘I’
thought Is the first. Other thoughts arise later. Holding a form, it
comes into being. It stays on as the form is held. It breeds on it and
grows strong. It changes form as suddenly as it assumes form. All suffering revolves around egotism. Egotism is the sole cause of
mental distress. Spreading the net of worldly objects of pleasure, it is
the egotism that traps the living beings. Indeed all the terrible calamities in this world are born of egotism.
Egotism eclipses self-control, destroys virtue and dissipates
equanimity. When one is under the influence of egotism, one is unhappy.
Free from egotism, one is ever happy.
10. This knot of the heart, the ego-sense (Ahamkara), which is the
result of tendencies created by past actions, is identical with the
mind. So if man is to be totally free from the bondage to sensuous
enjoyment, his mind, free from all modifications, should be dissolved in
the category superior to it. Then man becomes free from the cause of
bondage, namely, ignorance.
In all the experiences of happiness and unhappiness, as also in all
the hallucinations and imaginations, it is the mind that does everything
and experiences everything. It is the performer of all actions.
The seed of this world-appearance is ignorance. Man acquires this
ignorance or mental conditioning effortlessly. It seems to promote
pleasure though, in truth, it is the source of grief. It creates a
delusion of pleasure only by the veiling of self-knowledge. When one
becomes aware of the unreality of this mental conditioning, one’s mind ceases to be. As long as there is no natural yearning for
self-knowledge, so long ignorance or mental conditioning throws up an
endless stream of world-appearance. This ignorance perishes when it
turns towards self-knowledge.
11. The means to be adopted by one who wants to break this knot of
the heart are as follows: Devotion to, and service of, an enlightened
guru who is only Myself – the Supreme Divinity; renunciation; equanimity
in suffering and enjoyment; the constant remembrance that suffering is
there in any attainment in this world or in the hereafter;
intelligent reflection on the true nature of all experiences; abandonment of works for personal gains; austerity;
12. dedication of works to Me; hearing the recitals of My divine
actions every day; contact with great devotees having Me as their object
of adoration; singing about My excellence s; non-entertainment of
animosity towards any one; equanimity; tranquility; cultivation of
intense desire to get over identification with home and one’s own body;
13. study of scriptures; living in solitude; conquest of the senses
and vital energy; strong faith; celibacy; vigilance; restraint of
speech;
14. the knowledge and insight to see My presence in everything;
practice of samadhi; cultivation of equanimity; firmness, perseverance
and discrimination. By practicing all these, an earnest aspirant can get
over the knot of the ego-sense.
15. After one has, by the instruction
of the guru and the careful practice of the above disciplines,
completely overcome the knot of the heart (the ego-sense), which is born
of ignorance and forms the seat of tendencies leading to works, one can
give up all practices of yoga.
If, by the grace of the guru, one’s ego vanishes, then one is liberated.
For, once the ego-sense or self-cent redness is shattered, sadhana by
conscious effort becomes redundant.
16. These instructions should be given by a father to a son, by a
teacher to a disciple, and by king to a subject, if they wish to attain
to My state or aspire for My grace. It should be done patiently without
getting annoyed even when they are found unreceptive. They should not be
allowed to get more involved in works for sensuous gratification with
which their discriminative faculty has already been dulled. What gain
can a teacher have by inducing such men, already blinded spiritually,
for want of discrimination, in their involvement in the whirlpool of
samsara, to works and rituals for worldly advantages?
17. The ignorant men of the world without a proper awareness of their
ultimate good acquire objects of enjoyment out of their intense desire
for them. In mutual competition for these petty objects of enjoyment,
they quarrel and fight among themselves and suffer misery without end.
God exists timelessly as the Godhead, as the Brahman whose essence is
Being, Awareness and Bliss. God who is Spirit can only be worshiped in
spirit and for His own sake. The ultimate good is to be sought in an
eternal divine now, which those who sufficiently desire this good can
realize as a fact of immediate experience. The peace that passes all
understanding is the fruit of liberation into eternity. In everyday
life, peace is also the root of liberation. Where there are violent
passions and conflicts for petty enjoyment and sensuous pleasures, this
ultimate good can ever be realized. This approach promotes tolerance and
non-violence. Every event of violence interferes with
the normal and natural relationship between individual souls and the
divine eternal Ground of all being. Such conduct is a sacrilegious
rebellion against the divine order.
18. No wise person, who knows what is good for man and is endowed
with a kindly disposition, would, on seeing another man steeped in
ignorance and perverted in intelligence, encourage him to persist in the
wrong path he is following, even as he would not do so with a blind man
going towards a pit.
19. One, who would not save another from the path of death, on which
the latter has entered, cannot be called one’s guru if he is the guru,
one’s relative if he is a relative, one’s father if he is the father,
one’s mother if she is the mother, one’s deity if it is the deity, one’s
husband if he is the husband.
A guru is in the nature of an inner being sent to the seeker
(disciple) by the Divine at the appropriate stage of his sadhana
(spiritual practice) to attain realization. Age, caste, creed, gender,
vocation, etc of the guru is of no relevance to the seeker. The seeker
is to feel the guru in his soul and accept him as such. He is the true
guide to elevate the seeker to the realm beyond his mind. One who does
not satisfy these criteria is no true guru.
20. This body of mine is of an inexplicable nature, as it cannot be
accounted for by karma. My mind is dominated by the quality of sattva by
virtue of which devotion to God flourishes in it, and adharma finds no
place as it has been left far behind. So wise men call me Rishabha.
Every embodied being has a two-fold body. One is the mental body which
is restless and which acts quickly and achieves results. The second is
the physical body, which does really nothing. When the mind confidently
engages in self-effort, it is then beyond the reach of sorrow. Whenever
it strives, it surely finds the fruition of its striving. On
the other hand, the physical body is only physical matter. Yet the mind deems it as its own.
The mind experiences only what it contemplates. If the mind turns
towards the Truth, it abandons its identification with the body and
attains the supreme state. Hence one is to endeavor with the mind
consciously to make it taking to the pure path.
Rishabha was so called on account of his constant consciousness of
the inherent bliss of the Atman and, as a result, absolute indifference
to everything else in the physical world.
21. Hence all of you, who have sprung from my heart, serve, without
any reservations, Bharata, your brother, who is adorable for his excellence s. Serving him is equal to looking after the subjects.
22. Among objects that have existence, plants with life are superior
to lifeless things like stone. Among living objects, moving beings like
animals with consciousness are superior to plants. Among creatures with
consciousness, man is superior. Higher than man are astral beings;
higher than these are beings like gandharvas, siddhas and kinnaras.
23. Greater than siddhas and kinnaras are the asuras; greater than
they are the Devas with Indra at their head. Greater than them are the
sons of Brahma, the Prajapatis.
Among the sons of Brahma, Rudra is the greatest; greater than Rudra
is Brahma who is the devotee of Mahavishnu. And Mahavishnu is the
devotee of holy men.
24. I do not consider any one to be equal to a holy man. I do not
find any one higher. I accept whatever food men offer Me through holy
men with faith and devotion wholeheartedly. This food is dearer than
even what is offered in fire at the Agnihotra.
25. In this world, it is the holy man who holds within himself my
primeval and the most worshipful form, the Veda. I do not find any one
equal to the holy man in whom the supremely pure qualities of sattva,
control of mind, control of the senses, austerity, forbearance, truth,
benevolence towards all and realization are present.
Attachment breeds desire. Desire leads to anger when desire is
frustrated. Anger clouds mind. Such clouding destroys memory and then
reason is destroyed, for reason and memory are intimately connected. So
the holy man is neither attached to the temporal objects, nor hates
them. He performs all actions without any egotism and seeks to attain
oneness with the Supreme Being – Nirvana.
A variety of ways to overcome ego-sense is listed above. The egotism
covers everything like a veil. All troubles come to an end when the ego
dies. Then, though living in the body, one is liberated. The ego is like
a cloud. The moon cannot be seen on account of a thin patch of cloud.
When the cloud disappears, one sees the moon.
Samadhi is the state in which the ego-sense is overcome completely.
When all functions of the Reason including sleep are stopped, the Reason
stays in itself. But Reason is conscious and its consciousness is due
to the reflection of the Cosmic Person. The reflection, with no object
to know, stays in its original nature. This staying of rational
consciousness in it is the samadhi. This is the aim of yoga.
When this rational consciousness does not stay in itself, the knower
in it identifies itself with the functions of the Reason and assumes its
forms. The final samadhi is the staying of the Cosmic Person in Him,
not even as the knower. This is the stage of final liberation while in
body. The earlier samadhi is only the beginning, the gateway to the
final one. In the final stage, the three attributes of Prakrti will be in perfect harmony, maintaining perfect equilibrium.
The states of samadhi – the first and the final – cannot be had
merely through physical and mental exercises. The most important
preliminary is the purification of one’s Reason, which is the ‘I-am’. So
long as the ‘I-am’ is activated by inner functions, it cannot be pure
and stable. It can be made steady by practice and detachment. Practice
is effort repeated. Detachment is equanimity and non-egoistic.
To obtain these faculties one is to practice friendliness with
generous people, compassion for those in distress, affection instead of
jealously for those who are meritorious, and indifference towards the
evil of evildoers. One is to practice self-control such as non-injury,
non-stealing, truthfulness, celibacy and non-acceptance of gifts. It is
significant that the preparation for achieving the states of samadhi is
based on ethical action.
26. These supreme devotees who have
nothing to call their own do not pray for any personal advantage even
from Me, the Infinite and the Absolute Being, and the grantor of
heavenly enjoyment and liberation. Why will they then seek small
perishable worldly advantages?
One cannot attain God if one has even a trace of desire. Subtle is the
way of dharma. If one is trying to thread a needle, one will not succeed
if the thread has even a slight fiber sticking out.
27. Seeing that all things, moving and unmoving, are en souled by Me,
you must salute them every moment with sincere feeling. This indeed is
real worship to Me.True worship of the Supreme Spirit is true knowledge
of IT – jnana. What is jnana (knowledge)? It is to know one’s own self,
dissolving the mind in it. It is to know the pure Atman, which alone is
our real nature.
Knowledge is discriminative understanding of WHAT IS. Sri Sathya Sai
defines it thus: Advaita Darsanam Jnanam – Knowledge is realization of
Non-dualism.
The means for attaining it are the scripture, tapas, tradition,
reasoning and experience. It consists in the understanding that the
Brahman – the Supreme Spirit alone had been before the universe came
into being, is what exists in the middle and will continue to be when
the universe including Time dissolves itself into IT. The Brahman alone
is the Reality and the Truth.
28. The true meaning of all that man does by mind, speech, cognition
and actions is only adoration of Me. Without this kind of worship of Me,
man will not be able to rid himself of the noose of Yama, which
consists in the great infatuation of looking upon the body as the
spirit. Supreme consciousness is ongoing action or creation, consciously done
with an awareness and sublime intention to experience the Self. This is
“being at the spiritual game”. This is to say that one is to dedicate
one’s whole soul, whole mind and whole body to the process of creating
self in the image and likeness of God. This is the process of
self-realization or salvation or in whatever way it is called. This is a
moment-to-moment conscious action in pursuit of the sole – soul goal.
Sri Suka said:
29. Though his sons knew all the above teachings in a way, he made
his sermon in order that the world at large might understand this
doctrine. After this, Rishabha, the friend of all, desired to teach and
demonstrate to the world the dharma of the paramahamsas characterized by
repose in the Self, renunciation of actions, devotion,
knowledge and dispassion. He, therefore, installed in succession to him
as the ruler of the country, his eldest son Bharata, who was himself the
embodiment of sattva and who was devoted to the servants of the Lord,
and dependent on them in all matters. Then Rishabha left his residence,
taking with him nothing but the body. He was henceforth like one
inebriated, completely nude, and having disheveled hair.
Withdrawing into his heart the sacrificial fires like the Ahavamya
maintained by him, he took to the life of a sannyasin and wandered away
from his country, the Brahmavarta. A sannyasin is the renounce r of the
world or the ascetic. At this stage of life, he gives up all connections
with family and all rights and duties. He renounces the world. He
spends the rest of his life as a man of God. He owns no property, lives
by begging and changes his name so that others do not know his family
connections. He wanders about and teaches spiritual truths to whosoever
seek them.
30. In the midst of men he appeared from time to time as a senseless
man, blind man, dumb man, a ghoul or a drunkard. In repulsive attires,
he was found to remain silent, not answering even any one’s questions.
31. He traveled through towns, villages, military cantonments,
cow-pens, cowherd settlements, travelers’ shelters, mountains, forests
and hermitages. All along the way, as an elephant in rut is pestered by
flies, evil men persecuted him by threatening, beating, urinating on
him, spitting on him, throwing stones, cow-dung and dust at him, and
insulting and abusing him. Being firmly established in the knowledge of
the real and the unreal, and in the conviction that one was nothing but
the Universal Spirit, he had no identification with the body, which, for
men in ignorance, is the most real entity, but was, for him, unreal. So
none of these persecutions disturbed him, and he traveled all
over the world alone, his mind merged in the Atman.
One cannot have the knowledge of the Brahman as long as there is the
slightest trace of worldliness. One is to keep one’s mind aloof from the
objects of sight, hearing, touch and other things of worldly nature.
Only then, does one realize the Brahman as one’s own innermost
consciousness. As the all-pervading Spirit, the Brahman exists in all
beings. IT is the beingness of all that exists. IT alone is.
32. By nature, he was endowed with very handsome and
well-proportionate hands, legs, chest, arms, shoulders, neck and face.
His face always had shone with a natural smile. His eyes were long and
red like a lotus petal, having pupils that assuaged the grief of men.
The parts of the face like the ears, eyes, cheeks, neck and nose were
all
well-proportioned and symmetrical. The veiled smile on his lips had
always attracted the interest of women. This handsome form of his now
presented the appearance of a ghoul with disheveled hair, dirty and
unwashed, owing to lack of body consciousness.
The signs of God-vision are that a man who has seen God behaves
sometimes like a child, sometimes like a ghoul, sometimes like an inert
thing and sometimes like a mad man. There are other signs, too. One is
intense joy. There is no hesitancy in him. He is like the ocean; the
waves and sounds are on the surface; below are profound depths.
When one finds that the very mention of God’s name brings tears to one’s
eyes and makes one’s hair stand on end, then it is known for certain
that one has freed oneself from attachment to lust and greed, and
attained God.
33. Rishabha realized from the persecutions of ignorant people that
society was hostile to the practice of yoga. To retaliate against the
persecutors would be still worse. So he gave up the habit of moving
about and adopted what is called ajagaravritti, the way of life of a
python which remains at a spot without going for food anywhere. He lay
himself in one place, took whatever food he had there, performed the
functions of excretion and stretched himself there rolling in the fecal
matter, and got himself covered with it.
Pure love of a devotee has two characteristics. So intense is one’s
love of God that one becomes unconscious of outer things. One forgets
the world. The second is that one has no feeling of “mine-ness” toward the
body. One wholly gets rid of the feeling that the body is his.
Chaitanya, like Rishabha, experienced this kind of love.
34. His excreta, however, were so fragrant that the atmosphere up to ten yojanas was filled with its sweet smell.
Experienced practitioners of Yoga engage in meditative practices all
through their life resulting in their attainment. It is often that
whatever is excreted of their bodies fills the atmosphere with
fragrance. It is also that, often, their bodies do not begin to decay
until long after they are clinically dead.
35. Similarly, he followed also the ways of cow, deer and even of
crow – walking, sitting, eating, drinking and excreting like all those
creatures.
36. Bhagavan Rishabha then practiced various forms of yogic discipline,
experienced the unbroken bliss of the Spirit, and attained to the sense
of oneness with the all-pervading Being. In the course of it, various
yogic powers like movement in the sky with the speed of mind, power of
disappearance, entry into another body, clairaudience, etc came to him
automatically without his striving. But he rejected them all.
The yoga enables the seeker to realize the identity of his particular
being with the whole world of nature (Prakrti) just as he realizes his
identity with his physical body. He can have as much control over the
world, as over his body. The extraordinary powers resulting from such a
control are not supernatural, but natural. He has to distinguish himself
from every aspect of Prakrti, realize his separateness from it, then
enter it and be one with it, without at the same time losing his
discriminatory power attained, and then controls its movements from
within. The first requirement is a kind of detachment from Prakrti,
which results in its control.
As the final realization of such discriminatory oneness with the
evolutes of Prakrti arises, at every stage, some extraordinary powers
are attained. The achievement of siddhis or psychic powers such as
becoming infinitesimally small (anima), becoming infinitely large
(mahima), becoming infinitesimally light (laghima), becoming
infinitesimally heavy (gurutvam), the power of touching anything at any
distance (prapti), obtaining anything desired (prakamya), lordship over
everything (isitva) and control over everything (vasitva) is dependent
upon four factors – time, place, action and means. Among these, action
or effort holds the key to all endeavors. All achievements are possible
through the practice of pranayama.
At the end of the ultimate samadhi, the cognition of the seeker
(yogi) is always truth. It is direct intuition of anything in the world
like the intuition of the existence of one’s body. How much of the
cosmos can be known depends on the perfection of the samadhi. But one
can obtain other powers (siddhis) by following other methods of
concentration, at different levels.
1. Oh great one! In the case of those
who are established in the Atman, they have already burnt the seeds of
karma in the fire of yoga. How can the powers of yoga that have come to
them automatically, prove to be a bondage to them? Why did then Rishabha
refuse to accept them?
The self-conscious Atman in the Jiva is the spirit within,
ontologically. It seeks realization of itself, meaning to be real with
it. It is self-realization. It is an experience for the spirit or the
self. It is beingness what it seeks.
The ‘I’ consciousness is the pure being, eternal existence, free from
ignorance and thought illusion. If the seeker stays as the ‘I’, his
being alone, without thought, the ‘I’ thought for him will disappear.
The illusion will vanish for him forever.
The real Self is the infinite ‘I’. The infinite ‘I’ is eternal. It is perfection. It is without a beginning or an end.
When the ‘I’ (ego) merges into the ‘I’ (existence-consciousness –
sat-cit), what arises is the infinite ‘I’. This is the true ‘I’
consciousness – the Atman.
Sri Suka Said:
2. What you say is true in a way. But though the mind has been
controlled, it cannot be trusted too much. The best of yogis do not do
so, knowing its fickleness and untrustworthiness, just as a determined
hunter would not entrust a captured animal with any freedom.
Mind is a stream of thoughts passing over consciousness. It causes all
thoughts to arise. Apart from thoughts, there is no such thing as mind.
Thought, therefore, is the very nature of mind.
Everything in the world is dependent upon the mind, upon one’s mental
attitude. On examination, the mind itself appears to be unreal. But we
are bewitched by it. With mind controlling our activity, we seem to be
running after mirage.
The mind flits in all directions all the time and is unable to find
happiness anywhere. Like the lion in a cage, the mind is ever restless,
having lost its freedom. It is never happy with its present state.
When objectivity arises in one’s consciousness, one becomes conditioned and limited.
That is bondage. When objectivity is abandoned, one becomes mindless.
That is liberation. When one thinks ‘I am the Jiva’, etc the mind
arises and with it the bondage. When one thinks ‘I am the Self; the Jiva
and such other things do not exist’, the mind ceases and with it arises
liberation.
3. So it is said: Do not compromise with the fickle mind. For, by
doing so, very powerful personages have lost all their spiritual powers.
The conditioned mind alone is bondage; liberation is when the mind is
unconditioned. The conditioning of the mind drops away when the Truth is
clearly seen and realized.
When the conditioning has ceased, one’s consciousness is made
supremely peaceful. ‘The Self alone is all that is’ is clear perception.
‘Conditioning’ and ‘mind’ are mere words with no corresponding truth;
when the truth is investigated, they cease to be meaningful – this is
clear perception. When this clear perception arises, there is
liberation. In essence, bondage is the craving for pleasure; its
abandonment is liberation.
4. A yogi who trusts his mind too much is like a husband who does so
in regard to his unfaithful wife. The fickle mind might betray him into
the hands of his enemies like lust and its allies, just as the
unfaithful wife might betray her husband by colluding with her paramour.
The mind flits in all directions all the time and is unable to find
happiness anywhere. Like the lion in a cage, the mind is ever
restless,having lost its freedom. It is never happy with its present
state.
5. Can any man of true discrimination put full trust in the mind in
the belief that it has come under his control – the mind which is the
root cause of all dangerous passions like lust, anger, pride, greed,
sorrow, infatuation, fear and the bondage of karma?
Everything in the world is dependent upon the mind, upon one’s mental
attitude. On examination, the mind itself appears to be unreal. But we
are bewitched by it. With mind controlling our activity, we seem to be
running after mirage.
The mind alone is the cause of all objects in the world. The world
exists because of the mind-stuff. The mind vainly seeks to find
happiness in the objects of this world. When the mind is transcended,
the world vanishes, dissolves into its source.
6. Thus, though he was the king of kings, he veiled his divine nature
from vulgar eyes by assuming the attitude of a senseless man in dress,
language and conduct. Next, in order to show how great yogis abandon
their bodies, he established himself in the perpetual consciousness of
the Atman by recognizing the indivisibility of the Atman into the seer
and the seen, and thus overcoming even the modicum of tendencies he had
assumed for the blessing of the world.
Just as water remains water and flows down, and as fire does not
abandon its nature of rising up, consciousness remains forever
consciousness. To the enlightened person, there is only one Infinite
Consciousness – Pure Atman, indivisible and immutable. In reality one is
unborn and one does not die. The notions that ‘I am’, ‘these are’, etc
do not exist for the enlightened one.
In the seed, there is no diversity. However, there is a notion of
potential diversity of leaves, flowers, fruits, etc supposedly present
in it. Even so, Cosmic Consciousness is one devoid of diversity. Yet the
universe of diversity is said to exist potentially in the said
Consciousness.
7. Without connection with even the lingasarira (subtle body), by the
mere remaining momentum left of the impulsion given by yogamaya, his
body travelled all over the land, and reached the region of Konka,
Venkata, and Kutaka included in Dakshina Karnataka. There he traveled
in the forest at the foot of the mountain known as Kutakadri like a
ghoul – with the mouth filled with stones, hair disheveled, and stark
naked.
The subtle body (lingasarira) consists of the inner instrument, the
senses and the subtle elements. It is considered the same as the Jiva
(soul) except the Atman. It is the subtle body without the gross body
that is given by the parents. What transmigrates on the death of an
individual is the same subtle body.
The reflection of consciousness within itself is known as puryastaka.
It is also known as the subtle body – lingasarira. As long as the
puryastaka functions, the body lives.
When it ceases to function, the body is said to have died. When the
body dies, the subtle body chooses another, suited to fulfill the hidden
vasanas.
8. Once a forest fire broke out there by the mutual rubbing of
bamboos in a strong wind. The whole forest, along with his holy body,
was burnt in that fire.
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