Sri
Swami Sivananda
The life of man is an indication of
what is beyond him and what determines the course of his thoughts, feelings and
actions. The wider life is invisible, and the visible is a shadow cast by the
invisible which is the real. The shadow gives an idea of the substance, and one
can pursue the path to the true substance by the perception of the shadow.
Human existence, by the fact of its limitations, wants and various forms of
restlessness, discontent and sorrow, points to a higher desired end,
incomprehensible though the nature of this end be.
As life on this earth is
characterized by incessant change, and nothing here seems to have the character
of reality, nothing here can satisfy man completely. The Bhagavad Gita has referred
to this world as anityam, asukham, duhkhalayam, ashashvatam—‘impermanent,
unhappy, the abode of sorrow, transient’. The sages of yore declared with
immediate realization that ‘Truth is One’ and that the goal of human life is
the realization and the experience of this Truth.
The universe is inconstant, and it
is only a field of experience provided to the individuals so that they may
evolve towards the experience of the Highest Truth. It is the glory of the
people of Bharatavarsha (India) that to them the visible universe is not real
and the invisible Eternal alone is real. They have no faith in what they
perceive with the senses. They have faith only in that which is the ground of
all experience, beyond the senses, beyond even the individual mind.
Earnest seekers used to seek shelter
under great sages who purified the holy region of the Himalayas with their
mighty presence, and lived the austere life of Yogis in order to attain freedom
from the trammels of earth-bound life and rest in the beatitude of the
Absolute, Brahman. This they considered the true life, and thus the way of
fulfilling the law of the Eternal.
The great law-giver Manu, after
describing the various tenets of dharma, finally asserts: “Of all these dharmas,
the Knowledge of the Self is the highest; it is verily the foremost of all
sciences; for, by it, one attains immortality.” The pursuit of dharma, artha
and kama has its meaning in the attainment of moksha which is the
greatest of all the purusharthas (ends of human life). Dharma is
the ethical and moral value of life; artha is its material value; and kama
is its vital value; but moksha is the infinite value of existence
which covers all the others and is itself far greater than all these. Others
exist as aids or preparations for moksha. Without moksha they
have no value and convey no meaning. Their value is conditioned by the law of
the Infinite, which is the same as moksha.
The Vedas and the Upanishads are the
expiration of the Divine Being, and they give an exhaustive commentary on spiritual
life. They are expositions of the significance and the import of human life and
of the method of the transmutation of the mortal appearance into the Immortal
Essence. The instance of the great Nachiketas and the story of his adventurous
search for Truth narrated in the thrilling Katha Upanishad serve as exemplars
to all men capable of thought and reflection.
Nothing of the world of sensibility
can be of real value—this is what Nachiketas taught through his memorable act
of renunciation. Not even the longest life and the immense wealth offered to
him could tempt him. He persevered in his quest for the Highest, and in the end
achieved the Highest. Nothing short of it could satisfy him. Such are the true
heroes. A real hero is not he who stands against bullets or risks his life in
hazardous attempts, fights battles, dives into oceans and climbs high cliffs,
but he who subdues his senses and overcomes his mind, recognizes the supreme
unity of life and casts aside dualities and desires. To achieve this is the
duty of man; this is the immortal message of the sages of the Upanishads.
The tangle of sense-experience in
which man is caught is most vexing, and hard it is to free oneself from it. Man
is deluded by the notion of the reality of the so-called external relations of
things, and thus he comes to grief. The Mahabharata says that the contact of
beings in this universe is like the contact of logs of wood in a flowing river,
temporary. Yet the attachment to sense-percepts is so strong that phantoms are mistaken
for facts, the impure is mistaken for the pure, the painful for the pleasant,
and the not-self for the Self.
The message of the ancient sages is
that the life one lives in the sense-world is deceptive, for it hides the
Existence underlying all things and makes one feel that the particular
presentation of forms before the senses alone is real. “Children run after
external pleasures and fall into the net of wide-spread death. The heroes,
however, knowing the Immortal, seek not the Eternal among things unstable
here,” says the Upanishad. The call of the ancient sages to man is: “O son of
the Immortal! Know yourself as the Infinite; become the All. This is the
supreme blessing. This is the supreme bliss.” This is the undying message to
man.
The sages have again and again
stressed: “If one knows It (i.e. the Immortal Being) here, then there is the
true end of all aspirations; if one does not know It here, great is the loss
for him.” (Kena Upanishad). And sage Yajnavalkya says that all great deeds done
in this world, without the knowledge of the One Imperishable Being, are not
worth anything. Humanitarian services, fasts and charity, one’s political,
national, social and individual life, should all be based on the feeling of
universal brotherhood which is the eternal expression of the Reality of
universal Selfhood.
Humanity can hope for peace when
this condition, discovered and laid down by the rishis, (viz. abiding by
the law of the Divine) is fulfilled. Peace can be had only to the extent that
the system of the Divine is adhered to in life. And this peace is inversely
proportional to the love of body, individuality and its relations in the world,
in which humanity is generally steeped. An ‘awakening’ of a higher
consciousness is necessary so that disorder and discontent may be abolished.
Education of humanity in the right
direction is the precondition of world peace. Materialism, atheism, scepticism
and agnosticism which are rampant in these days, and which have robbed man of
his reverence for the Supreme Absolute, are mainly responsible for the
increasing selfishness, craving, confusion, violence and agitation of mind that
are seething in the world. Man should learn that behind the appearance of
materiality, discreteness, externality, doubt and impermanence, there is the
reality of spirituality, unity and infinity.
Additional reading "What life has taught me" by Swami Sivananda
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