'Thus Awakens the Awakened One'- by 'SWAMI KRISHNANANDA'
I. PRACTICAL WISDOM
A Sultan asked an astrologer to tell something about his future. The
astrologer said: “Your highness will live long to see all your
sons dead.” The Sultan was enraged and ordered the astrologer’s arrest
and imprisonment. He consulted another astrologer on the same point.
This second astrologer said: “Your highness will enjoy a long life and
outlive all your family.” The Sultan was highly pleased and gave him
rich presents. Both the astrologers knew the truth, but the latter knew
the Sultan.
‘God helps those who help themselves.’ But we have
to help ourselves in terms of God’s law which requires that we
sacrifice ourselves in every one of our acts in such a manner that our
acts help in exceeding the lower personality by degrees, and
approximating God’s existence.
What you have enjoyed yourself
and what you have given over to others in charity or as gift is really
yours. Everything else is of doubtful nature and you are merely a
protector thereof.
In your dealings with another person, try
first to think through the feelings of that person and then try again to
overcome the limitations of those feelings by rational methods of
approach. This will avoid much of the unnecessary tangles in which
social life is caught up every day.
Do not keep anything which
you will be afraid of showing to others. Do not do anything which you
would not like others to know. In spiritual life secrecy has no place
except in regard to one’s sadhana (spiritual practice).
“Even
this will pass away.” This is a good maxim to remember that our joys and
sorrows are not permanent, and that we should always be therefore
unattached and hopeful of a better future.
We can judge
ourselves as to the spiritual progress we make by the extent to which we
are free from seeing defects in others. The wider we grow, the narrower
becomes the eye which sees defects in the world.
When we come
in conflict with things, we are likely to think that the things are
against us. But this would be like imagining that a stone is against us
because it is thrown at us by someone. The things and circumstances are
only instruments in meting out our dues.
Often, what matters
most is not the words that are said but the way in which they are said.
People either bore or irritate others with what they regard as wisdom,
when it is wrongly uttered or expressed at the wrong moment or told to
the wrong person, though the intention behind it may be good. Judgment
of circumstances is necessary to bring about the requisite result.
Else effort may become a waste or even harmful.
The distance between you and God is the same as the extent of your desire for the world.
Our joys and sorrows are just sensations or experiences and cannot be
called either good or bad, even as we cannot say whether the heat of the
sun or the coldness of water is good or bad. Goodness and badness of
things are personal evaluations of situations which are themselves
impersonal.
Often it so happens that our contemplation on a
vice which we feel we have and which we wish to avoid leads us more
deeply into it until it is too late to recover from the shock of this
knowledge of the fact about us. It is better not to think of a vice,
even if we have it, and concern ourselves only with positive virtue and
spiritual conduct.
“Love all, but trust a few” is a good
policy in social dealings. To trust a few is, of course, not to be
suspicious of everyone, but to be vigilant in every case, even when
things are entrusted to others for execution or when some situations are
involved in other personalities. One should not trust even one’s own
self when the senses are in the proximity of their desired objects.
Dirt is matter out of place. Weed is a plant out of place. Nuisance is
action out of place. Even those things, acts or words which are
normally good and useful become bad, useless and even harmful when they
are out of place, time and circumstance. A knowledge of this fact is an
essential part of wisdom.
Material amenities and economic
needs and the satisfaction of one’s emotional side are permissible only
so long as this law and order of this eternal truth of the liberation of
the Self in universality of being regulates their fulfillment.
The temptation from the evil one comes, first, in the form of unsettled
thinking which makes one immediately forget the Presence of God. This
is at once followed by the implementation of the evil move, whether in
the shape of passion or anger. When the deed is done and the matter has
ended, the remembrance of God might come in, but it rarely appears in
the presence of things which we either love or hate.
They say
that procrastination is the thief of time, postponing a work which needs
to be done immediately. There is no use committing the same mistake
again and again and resolving every day to avoid it, but with no
success. Something positive has to be done with strength of will. Where
either the question of self-respect or sex is involved, the spirit of
service goes to the winds.
When you have inadvertently done a
wrong, switch on the situation, person or thing involved to the Absolute
and concentrate on the former as an inseparable part of the latter. The
wound shall then be healed and the determination to refrain from
repeating the act shall make you stronger than before.
That is
wisdom which can reconcile itself with actual life. When the realities
of practical life conflict with or stare at the knowledge we possess, it
should be remembered that such knowledge is immature and is a mere
theory. Moreover, it is not knowledge ‘of’ life that we need; we require
knowledge which ‘is’ life, and is inseparable from its daily vexations.
We have to view ourselves in a Universal context and then live life,
not look upon ourselves as individuals who have to be at war with the
world in our everyday life.
Thus did a wise man pray: ‘Give me
the will to change what I can, the strength to bear what I cannot, and
the wisdom to know the difference.’ This is the secret of worldly
wisdom, that which decides the nature of one’s success in life.
The vision of God seems to be as far from us even now as it was many
years back, and there is no proper yardstick with which the progress
made on the path can be measured. There is much difference of opinion as
to this matter among wise men, and the wisdom of one does not seem to
tally in all details with that of another. Perhaps self-confidence,
coupled with goodness and an immense capacity for adjustment, as well as
continuous delight, form a good touchstone.
II. SOME RARE TRUTHS
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One is born alone, and one dies alone. Hence one should live also
alone. This art of living alone is yoga. Life is the process of the
flight of the ‘alone’ to the ‘Alone’.
You are alone with your God, and there is no one around you. This is the truth. Rest your mind on this, and attain peace.
The thought of an object intensely entertained causes a proportionate
stimulation in the body of the object by means of a certain affection
for its psychic substance. There is, thus, a reciprocal action set up by
the generation of any sustained thought of the object. The various
things thought in various incarnations create a network of experiences
which is called Samsara.
The rivers do not flow for their own
benefits; trees do not eat their own fruits; cows part with their milk
for others’ good; the life of a saint is not for himself alone.
Evil sets in the moment we forget the Presence of God everywhere. This
is the beginning of the real kaliyuga, and kritayuga reigns when the
consciousness of His Presence is vigilantly maintained.
Narayana and Nara meditate together and are inseparables; which means
that God and man coalesce in every action and form a union in which
karma becomes Karma Yoga, and that spiritual meditation is not merely a
human effort but involves Divine interference. Though we may lift our
arms to touch a magnetic field, when once we raise it near it is pulled
by the force of the field, and here our effort ceases and we are under
the influence of another power altogether.
If omnipresence,
omniscience and omnipotence are to be pressed into one being and this
being is to be focussed into a jet of action, what will be the result?
This is what happened when Sri Krishna lived as a Person in this world.
This is also the difficulty which people feel in writing a biography of
Krishna, for to be all-comprehensive is a difficult thing for the mind
to think.
The more does one become fit for the practice of
Advaita Vedanta, the less is the consciousness of the body and world
around. Advaita and body-consciousness do not go together.
God’s Grace is a powerful tonic which can correct the heart, lungs,
stomach and the general condition of the body. This Divine Grace is
drawn through meditation on God.
The fact that consciousness
knows the existence of matter in experience should unavoidably stumble
upon there being something in matter itself akin to consciousness
without which objective knowledge would not be feasible. The position
that matter should have a character of consicousness inherent in it
would automatically land one in the conclusion that matter is also a
state of consciousness, though incipient and not actually manifest
openly. Matter is Spirit discerned through the senses.
There
are no five koshas covering the Atman like five boxes inverted one over
the other hiding a flame within. The koshas are not compartmentalised
boxes, but are the graded density in which the desires of the mind
obscure the vision spiritual.
All that we read and think does
not get assimilated into the feeling of the heart. That is why a
post-graduate scholar who is dead is not reborn with the same amount of
knowledge. That which has gone deep into the heart becomes a part of our
life. The rest is only a wind that blows over the surface of our minds.
Whether man is different from God, a part of God, or one with God can
be known from the relation of the dreaming individual to the waking
individual. The relation is similar.
God first; the world
next; yourself last; follow this sequence in the development of the
thought-process so that God’s Power and existence may be affirmed in
everything.
III. FROM THE SCRIPTURES AND WISE ONES
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Manu Smriti says: One-fourth of one’s knowledge comes from the
Teacher, one-fourth from study, one-fourth from co-students and
one-fourth by experience in the passage of time.
“He who is
humbler than a blade of grass and more patient than a tree; who respects
others but wants not any respect for oneself, is fit to take the Name
of the Almighty Lord.” This was the famous instruction of Sri Gauranga
Mahaprabhu.
Samsara or world-existence comes to an end only
when the jiva recognises its true identity with the Absolute. The
condition of the jiva-consciousness is just the condition of the sheath
with which it identifies itself at any given time. When the Atman is
discovered to be different form the sheaths, it is at once realised as
Brahman. - Panchadasi
“He is called a ‘man’ who, when anger
rises forcibly within, is able to subdue and cast it out as a snake
casts away its slough with ease,” said Hanuman to himself when he
suspected that the fire he set through the whole of Lanka might perhaps
have burnt Sita, too.
“Poison is not real poison.
Sense-objects are the real poison. Poison kills one life, but
sense-objects can devastate a series of lives.”
These persons
do not get sleep, says Vidura to Dhritarashtra: Those who are sick,
those who have been overthrown by others and are deprived of power and
assistance from any side, those who are afflicted with lust, and those
who are scheming to deprive others of their possessions.
The
Mahabharata says that the Vedas are afraid of him who tries to approach
them without a knowledge of the correct import of the Epics and Puranas.
Here is a covert suggestion that the Absolute of philosophy should also
include the variety and conflict of practical life, in order to be real
and not merely an object of speculation.
The four noble
truths of the Buddha that there is suffering, that there is a cause for
suffering, that there is a way out of suffering and that there is a
state beyond suffering, are proof enough to show that he was not a
nihilist in the sense in which the word is used today, but a practical
man who had an eye to doing something than merely conjecturing about
Truth and its realization.
The teaching of the Yoga-Vasishtha
emphasises that when there is perception of an object by the seer or
observer, there has to be pre-supposed the existence of a consciousness
between the subject and the object. If this conscious connecting link
were not to be, there would be no perception of existence. There cannot
be a consciousness of relation between two things unless there is a
consciousness relating the two terms and yet standing above them. The
study of the perceptional situation discloses the fact that the subject
and the object are phases of a universal consciousness.
“By
excess of passion Ravana was destroyed; by excess of greed Duryodhana
was killed; by excessive charity Kama came to ruin; excess is always to
be avoided,” says a hitopadesa.
“By pranayama one should burn
all dross; by pratyahara sever all attachments; by dharana all
distraction; and by dhyana all undivine qualities.” - Manu Smritis
Krishna and Arjuna should be seated in one chariot. Isvara and jiva
should partake of a single objective in all action. This mutual
transfusion of the universal and the individual is
Krishna-Arjuna-Samvada, the eternal Gita of the cosmos which is
Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra.
Tena tyaktena bhunjithah, is
the exhortation of the Isopanishad. It means that our enjoyment in the
real sense is possible of achievement only when we renounce everything.
But what is this renunciation? It is implied in the earlier sentence of
the verse, which states - isavasyam idam sarvam. All this universe is
indwelt by the Lord. As such, desire for objects is an impossibility.
This is true renunciation; which is also the true freedom and joy.
Sarvam paravasam duhkham, sarvam atmavasam sukham - ‘All dependence on
persons and things is pain; all self-dependence is joy.’ This has to be practiced gradually, by rise from the grosser to the subtler, from the
external to the internal.
Each and every contact which the
desireful nature establishes with the outer world is a piercing dart
thrust into the heart of the person cherishing such nature.” - Vishnu
Purana
“Our prosperity, our friends, our bondage and even our
destruction are all in the end rooted in our tongue,” says a famous
adage.
Draupadi exclaims in the court of the Kauravas: “That
is not an assembly where there are no elders; they are not elders who do
not know dharma; that is not dharma which is not in consonance with
truth; that is not truth which has crookedness behind it.”
“He
who knows, knows not; he who knows not, knows.” This is a statement in
the Upanishad, meaning that one who has realized the Truth has no
personality-consciousness, and one who has it knows not the Truth.
IV. SUBTLE SECRETS OF SADHANA
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“Do the best and leave the rest” is the key motto in Karma Yoga. The
‘doing of the best’, of course, does not mean being foolhardy or going
headlong without thought on consequences, but the harnessing of one’s
full resources to the execution of a noble ideal which is calculated to
aid one in the attainment of God- realisation. To ‘leave the rest’ is to
resign the results of the work to God, for, when even the best that one
can do falls short of the effort needed to achieve a desired result,
the mind is likely to get upset, which is not the spirit of Karma Yoga.
The more we try to depend on God, the more He seems to test us with
the pleasures of sense and the delights of the ego. Finally, the last
kick He gives is, indeed, unbearable. Those who bear it are themselves
gods.
Every moment of life should be regarded as the last
moment, as there is no knowing when this moment will come. When it is
said that the last thought of a person should be God’s thought, we are
impliedly admonished to remember God every day and every moment.
The energy that leaks through the senses by way of excitation and
pleasure-seeking diminishes the psychic force that is necessary for
meditation. Hence before any attempt at successful meditation this
energy-leakage has to be blocked, and the direction of the flow of this
energy turned inward.
We should not try to be more strict on
others than we are on ourselves. Our task is not so much to change the
world as to change ourselves.
The prarabdha karma is like an
extortioner who will not let loose the victim until the last vestige of
dues is cleared out. It cannot be exhausted without being worked out
through experience, and the role of spiritual sadhana in relation to
prarabdha is not one of negating or counteracting it, but of bringing
about a transformation in the vision that evaluates and judges
experience, pleasurable or miserable.
Mostly, the mind is
where the eyes are. Look not at anything which may stimulate desire, or
rouse egoistic ambition. The eyes have to be carefully guarded.
The importance of sadhana in spiritual life is great enough to compel
the attention of anyone wishing to be freed from botheration s. The
vexations of life are due to entanglement in externalized forms, while
freedom at once manifests itself when the universal nature of these
forms is beheld. Sadhana is nothing but an attempt to withdraw from the
particulars and sink into the Universal.
Doubts on the path of
sadhana indicate that the spirit of sadhana has not been properly
grasped. When there is enough conviction about the correctness of the
method adopted, sadhana quickly bears fruit.
The highest fulfillment is the result of the highest renunciation. The less you want,
the more you get. He who wants nothing from the world finds the world
falling at his feet. Even the gods are afraid of him who wants nothing
for himself.
Space, time and gravitation divide and pull the
body by isolating it from other bodies. With this division and pull of
the body, consciousness also appears to be affected due to its
association with the body through the mind, Prana and the nervous
system. The overcoming of this distracting effect of space, time and
gravitation in one’s consciousness is yoga.
The establishment
of oneself in a state of consciousness which stabilizes one’s being in a
non- externalized Universal Pure Subjectivity of Self hood is the final
panacea for the sorrow of mortal existence. This is the great meditation
in which every soul has to engage itself throughout its career in life.
This is the final duty inseparable from man’s aspiration, nay, the only
duty in life.
There are three grades of Self: The real,
secondary and false. The real is the Atman which is universal; the
secondary is the person or thing which one likes or dislikes; the false
is the aggregate of the five sheaths. Meditation disentangles the real
from the secondary and the false.
Buddha and Sankaracharya
represent two sides in the picture of life. The purely phenomenal
approach of Buddha implies the so-called solid content of the appearance
called the world, and the spiritual doctrine of Sankara fills this
emptiness with Soul, and completes the picture.
It may be that
we try to remember God when we are comfortably placed. But the test as
to whether He has really entered our hearts is whether we remember Him
in sickness, suffering, opposition and times of temptation.
The pain generally felt at death is due to the nature of the intensity
of the desires with which one continued to live in the physical body.
The more is the love for the Universal Being entertained in life, the
less would be the pain and agony of departing from the body.
Who is a fool? He who thinks that the world has any regard for him and is really in need of him.
He it is that, as an old man, totters with a stick, thus deceiving the human eye, for He is all things.
Ishvara , jiva and jagat are not three entities standing apart like
father, son and their house. They are three presentations of reality or
view-points of the Absolute from the level of the jiva.
sadhana is a sort of constant remembering a thing against heavy odds,
and pulling up oneself from sinking into deep mires. To retain the
thought of God in a world of colors and sounds that dazzle the eyes and
din the ears is hard enough. This is sadhana, a feat of will and
understanding.
Avoid contact with such things as are likely to
stimulate sense desire or excite the ego. This is necessary until
strength is gained to withstand the forces of the world.
The
test of spiritual advancement is a gradual attainment of freedom from
doubts of all kinds and a conviction of having reached a settled
understanding in regard to one’s true aim of life. It is this conviction
that brings inner strength and power to face all opposition.
The strength to bear suffering comes not merely from a determination of
the will, but the discovery that a vast treasure is awaiting one who
practises such endurance. Students lose sleep and comfort, a lover
undergoes untold pains, and an employee tolerates the unpleasantness of
work, not because of a mere determination of will but due to the sure
promise of an enjoyment which is known to exceed the pains which pave
its way. So it is with spiritual sadhana.
Spiritual sadhana is
ultimately an effort to cease from all effort. This is the highest
effort, because no one normally can be without exerting oneself in some
direction. All activity is a process of moving away from the Center. The
activity to cease from such activity is sadhana.
No saint has
been able to maintain the spiritual balance throughout his life. There
have been occasional reversals though these might not have left any
impression on their minds any more than the mark left by a stick drawn
on water. But the mark is there when it appears. Such is the difficulty
of leading the spiritual life. The case of immature seekers is much more
precarious, indeed.
Just as when we touch a live wire the
electric force infuses itself into our body, when we deeply meditate on
God the power of the whole universe seeks entry into our personality.
The sadhana that one does should speak through the actions and the
words which manifest themselves through one’s personality. The
personality is the vehicle of the aspiration that wells up within. And
the face is the index of the mind.
The Ramayana and the
Mahabharata are two great epics of the forces of lust and greed,
respectively. The passion of Ravana and the greed of Duryodhana caused
the wars of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These are the twin forces
of the devil which can be faced only with Divine Help.
V. SHUN THE EGO
----------------------
When we get irritated or annoyed in the midst of work, for any reason,
it is to be taken as a caution that our personality has entered into
it, and the ‘unselfishness’ of the work has been adulterated with that
undesirable and vitiating factor, the ego. When the work is ‘not mine’,
there is no reason for internal disturbance.
If the hydrogen
and oxygen that are in the entire atmosphere get mixed up in the
proportion of H20, what will happen to us? And why should it not happen?
Who controls the atmosphere and prevents such a combination? What is
this mystery and this precariousness of life? Where then is the need for
man to be proud of his powers?
It is futile on the part of a
sadhaka to attempt at sense-control when he or she is in the vicinity of
objects of enjoyment. It is necessary that one should be wary of this
truth of sadhana, a truth which most people do not recognize due to
vanity and foolishness.
There are ups and downs in spiritual
life, even if one might have reached a high stage of development. The
prominent hurdles are lust and ego. There has not been one who could
overcome both these forces completely. Whatever caution we may exercise
in this regard, we will find, when the time comes, that it is
insufficient.
“Man proposes; God disposes,” says an old adage.
It does not mean that God is perpetually opposing whatever man does.
What really happens is that when man exerts through his egoism in a
manner which violates the eternal law of God, he naturally feels
frustrated, being beaten back by the law of Truth.
It is
difficult to live in society with mental peace, because it is difficult
to be charitable in nature. Charity of things is of less consequence
than possession of charitable feelings, and resorting to charitable
speech, charitable demeanor, and charitable actions through a general
charitable temperament. This is, in short, what is called
self-sacrifice, for it involves parting with some part of the delights
of the ego.
The notion of oneself being identical with the
body is the cause of egoism. It is this egoism that entangles all
judgments of value in the preconception that knowledge is acquired
through the senses and the mind or the intellect. This prejudice of
egoism is Samsara, the persistent idea that all knowledge is in terms of
space, time and externality.
What ‘happens’ is done by God.
What is ‘initiated’ is done by the jiva. We should be able to
distinguish between what happens without our interference and what is
done with it.
One’s life-span, actions, wealth, education and
death are all determined even while in the womb of the mother. The
Omniscience of God is proof enough of the predetermination of
everything. Human effort is a part of the way in which the universal
plan works. Any egoism of man is thus sheer vanity.
VI. RANDOM USEFUL THOUGHTS
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The difference between the natures of Isvara and jiva is something
like that between the meanings of the words, ‘God’ and ‘dog’. There is
no doubt some relation between the two, and yet what a contrast of
characters! In the jiva the character of Isvara is completely reversed
in a Topsy-turvy manner, though the relation between Him and the jiva
is, no doubt, there.
Dharma is that sustaining universal
impulse which conduces to the prosperity of the individual both here and
hereafter. This means that the observance of Dharma does not violate
the laws of the world for the sake of the Spirit or of the Spirit for
the sake of the world. It views existence both in its depth and its
width.
The conclusions of physical science are as much true as
the discovery that all the plays of Shakespeare are only combinations
of the 26 letters of the English alphabet. This is no doubt a truth
which no one can controvert or refute. And yet the heart will revolt
against this conclusion since it apprehends in the Works of Shakespeare
something more than the constituents of the alphabet. This is true in
the case of every other observed phenomenon, also.
The mind
and the body get identified with each other, like fire and iron in a red
hot iron-ball, in such a way that thought cannot be separated from
object. There is always a flow of thought with perpetual reference to
the body, and all human judgment is thus vitiated by the prejudice that
the body is the thinking self. All science and even philosophy cannot
help playing second fiddle to this erroneous hypothesis, and thus cut
the ground from under their own feet.
Hanuman is said to have
told Sri Rama: “From the point of view of the body, I am Thy servant;
from the point of view of the jiva, I am a part of Thyself; from the
point of view of the Atman, I am Thy own-Self.” These three standpoints
correspond to the three great systems of philosophy propounded by
Madhva, Ramanuja and Sankara.
The thought of God is like the
centripetal cohesive force in a star or a planet, which drives its
constituents to its center by a pressure of inwardly directed energy,
and is strikes a universally attuned equilibrium of the entire
personality in relation to creation as a whole, provided the thought is
deep enough and is sincerely raised in one’s mind. It produces a thrill
beyond words.
While Maya follows Brahman, the jiva follows
Maya. It seems that while Rama was walking in the forest, Sita was
following him and Lakshmana was following her. Maya obstructs the vision
of Brahman by the jiva.
Forces which constitute the universe
react and interact among one another for effecting a higher integration -
we may call them men and things, and so on in a state of ignorance.
These activities of forces are the history of the universe.
Hanuman is a combination of strength and intelligence. He was an
akhanda-brahmacharin. His life demonstrates that the ojas-sakti
generated through brahmacharya heightens both understanding and vitality
in a maximum degree.
The effect of one’s reading and learning
can be seen in one’s behavior. If the behavior has not changed, it
means the learning acquired is like water poured over a rock, which gets
wet only on the surface without allowing the water to seep into it.
The four ashramas of life are not four different stages with a jump
from the preceding to the succeeding. Each following stage is the
flowering of the earlier, a maturing, including and transcending of the
past conditions, like the higher and higher standards in education
superseding the earlier ones.
Death is the law of life. It is
the law that requires a constant transformation of all composite
elements and a reshuffling of all existent forms. Thus, death cannot be
avoided. And it can take place at any time, though it has its fixed
time.
Just as twenty-five paise are contained in a quarter
rupee coin, the twenty-five manifestations of prakriti are contained in
the purusha, though invisibly and intangibly. Though the variety of
manifestation is manifold, it is all inherent in its cause, like a chair
present in wood.
The ‘Advaita’ of Sankara is not so much the
assertion of oneness as the negation of duality, as the names of his
system suggests. God is not one or two or three, for He is above
numerical affirmation. He is not anything that we can think of, but,
however, He does not involve in any difference; hence He is ‘Advaita’,
non-dual. Such is the cautious name of Sankara’s system of philosophy.
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva are not three gods, but the one God performing
three functions. There can, thus, be no superiority or inferiority
among them. They are like the three faces of a crystal where one face
reflects the others.
An individual has as many organs as are
required to fulfill the wishes that are embodied in the prarabdha karma
of a given life, and these organs are of such quality and capacity as
the needs of the individual concerned. Nothing more, and nothing less is
given to us in this world.
Every adversity should stimulate
more and more strength in us, enough to be able to overcome onslaughts
of such types again. Every fall should propel us to a higher aspiration,
a longing which should never be dampened, threatened or vanquished at
any time.
Avidya is the disposition by which one mistakes the
non-eternal for the eternal, the impure for the pure, the painful for
the pleasant and the not-self for the Self. Avidya is the seed of
egoism, craving, hatred and clinging to one’s body, so hard to overcome.
When senses trouble you, remember the sages Narayana and Nara. They
are the supreme masters over the senses, before whom Indra had to bow
his head in shame.
There are two greater wonders: The starry
heavens above, and the moral law within. Neither of these can be
fathomed to their depths, and they will remain a wonder forever. They
are endless in their extent and no one can study them as ‘external’
objects.
When Maricha cried out: “O Lakshmana, O Sita,” Sita
mistook it for Rama’s voice. She could not identify Rama’s voice as
different from that of another, though she had lived with Rama for so
long. So is the case with the jiva. It has forgotten its association
with the Absolute and cannot distinguish the call of the Spirit from the clamors of the senses. This is called delusion.
Krishna was a
person of great enjoyments. Vasishtha was devoted to rituals. Janaka
was a king. Jadabharata was looking like an idiot. Suka was renowned for
his dispassion. Vyasa was busy in teaching and writing. But all these
are regarded as equal in knowledge. Different forms serve different
purposes, but their essential being is one.
Man’s conscience
in its essentiality is not an accomplice of harm and injury being done
to anyone. It is necessary for the evil one intending to destroy others
to destroy his own conscience first. The self of the killer is killed
much before the act of killing takes place.
It is unwise to
say that the world is good or bad, for the world is one of the
conditions through which the ‘gunas’ - sattva, rajas and tamas - evolve
in the course of time. All things can be found always in different
places and hence our narrow judgments confined to a limited perception
of truth cannot be correct. How can we say that any part of ‘prakriti’
is good or bad?
Great men are not those who run fast and speak
much but think deep and live wisely. More than doing it is being
something - a change of outlook and attitude. We are great, not because
we are something to the world but because we are something in ourselves,
even if the whole world is not to exist at all.
It is
impossible to use one’s commonsense when one is in the grip of intense
desire; for passions have no commonsense. They have neither reason nor
logic, like the overwhelming force of a mighty river in floods, or like a
beast caught at bay. Conquest over the human passions is the same as
self-control, for the personality of man is but a bundle of latent and
patent forces which seek expression in various ways.
The Ganga
destroys sins; the moon destroys heat; the kalpavriksha destroys
poverty. But the company of the wise ones destroys sin, heat and poverty
all at once.
It is said that when the devotee takes one stop
towards the Lord, he is greeted by the Lord with a hundred steps. The
Bhakti-Sastras state that the love of God for the devotee is more than
man’s love for God. The power of the Whole is intenser than the force of
the part.
Religion is the reaction of the human mind to its notion of God.
Dharma is that sustaining power of Righteousness by which one acquires
here prosperity (adhyudaya) and attains in the end eternal blessedness
(nihsreyasa). It is the law that maintains the balance of forces in the
Universe and dispenses the retributive justice to the individuals in
such a manner as the equilibrium of creation is never disturbed.
VII. ON ATTAINMENT AND EXPERIENCE
--------------------------------------------------
No one who is not established in God as an entirety of existence can
feel a kinship with Nature or even a sense of brotherhood with others,
let alone have peace of mind within one’s own self. Unselfish dedicated
work for the welfare of all (sarvabhutahite ratah) and constant devotion
to God as the universality inseparable from one’s true being are marks
of perfection (sthitaprajna).
When man’s meditation on God
ends, and God begins meditation on all Creation, the consummation is
reached. It is here that all questions are answered and all problems
solved.
The highest meditation consists in the recognition of
the Self in all things, so that there is no object before the Self to
think or deal with. It is here that the mind melts like an exhausted
camphor cake in the process of self-sublimation.
The highest
‘bhava’ which rouses ‘para bhakti’ in a devotee is that in which one
cannot recognize even one’s own body as if forgotten since many years,
for there is no body-consciousness when the mind expires in pure
experience.
To be able to realise God, you have first to want
God. It is almost a question of supply and demand. To want God is not
merely to ‘think’ but to ‘feel’ through your ‘whole being’ that you
cannot exist without Him. The entire personality vibrates with a longing
that cannot be satisfied by the beauty and the grandeur of the world.
There is a want for ‘That’ alone, and nothing short of it.
The
sense of perfection slowly enters the mind, when it gradually learns to
dovetail the various discrepant particulars of the world into a
coherent whole. This stage comes when the existence and activity of the
mind coalesce in an adjustment of oneself with God’s Creation.
Life is a process of entering into God. This is achieved by seeing God
in the objects as well as the actions of the world, which is not the
seeing of particulars, but of the Universal in them.
Tapas is
the process of stilling the senses and the mind and allowing the lustre
of the Atman to manifest itself spontaneously. The power of the sage is
this energy of the Atman revealed by the cessation of the externalising
activity of the senses and the mind.
Brahmabhavana, the art of
the affirmation of Brahman, is called Brahmabhyasa in the words of the
Yoga Vasishtha. It consists in constantly thinking of Brahman, speaking
about Brahman, discoursing to one another on Brahman and depending on
Brahman alone for everything that one values in life. This is the final
stage of meditation.
It is of little consequence to one who
has awakened to normal consciousness whether he or she was a king or a
beggar in last night’s dream. Likewise, what one is in this world
matters little to one who has awakened to the Presence of God.
When the senses stand together with the mind and the intellect does not
shake, the state of yoga supervenes. The secret of meditation is this:
The mind and the intellect should shine, but not shine upon things other
than the shining awareness. This is the realization of God within.
Appearance is the objectified character of Reality; and when this
character is negatived in the immediacy of experience, it is not
appearance that becomes Reality, but it is Reality free from
objectification that knows itself as such.
The depth and
solidity of substance in the world is similar to the distance and
substantiality of things seen in a mirror. This truth is not realized in
life because the body of the observer is itself involved in this
reflected appearance called the world.
The passing of the soul
from plane to plane is all a process of Consciousness within the
Absolute. Just as our movements in the dream-world are actual spatial
allocations of personality but are really within the circumference of
mental activity - all dream being only within the mind - so is the
transmigration of souls real empirically but are activities of
Consciousness within its bosom.
It is the opinion of Bhishma
that it would not take more than six months to attain Samadhi if the
needed precaution is taken to prevent the mind and the senses from
hovering round their objects. That this achievement has not been
possible in most people shows that it is easier to glorify God than to
feel it in one’s heart, and the effort at self-control is more difficult
than it is announced from pulpits.
