Wednesday, July 17, 2013

(July 17, 2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – Spiritual Life is Positive, Not Punitive

Spiritual Life is Positive, Not Punitive
Divine Life Society Publication: The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

The practice of yoga has a double aspect to the seeker. There is an initial feeling of confidence, enthusiasm, and even a sense of success, but it is followed by a sudden diminution of enthusiasm and a sense of helplessness which comes upon one due to certain psychological reasons. All students of yoga will pass through these stages.

The lowest condition of human existence is one of material attachment and immersion in social values, imagining that the world is all and nothing is beyond, and that sense-life is the real life. But a day must come when one is shaken up from this conviction, and a sense of the beyond peeps into one's life. It is then that people like to go to ashrams, go on pilgrimage, see Mahatmas, Saints, Gurus, or resort to sequestered places for the purpose of isolation, peace of mind, etc., as it occurs to their minds. Then comes a feeling that there is something superior to earthly existence or worldly life – that a life divine, a life of discipline and ethicality, morality, a life of love of God perhaps is the aim of life, and one has to take these higher aspects of life very seriously. Life in the world is not all. This is the stage of the seeker, the sadhaka, who works oneself up into an emotional enthusiasm of the love of God, practice of sadhana, discipline, austerity, diminution of physical pleasures and enjoyments of life.

The mind and the senses have needs. They want something, and we have been telling them, "I am not going to give you anything." We are not going to give any kind of satisfaction to the temporal pattern of our physical existence. This is what is called sadhana usually speaking, in common language. When we do something contrary to the normal demands of body and senses, we regard it as a kind of religious life – austerity.

One of the defects of the general approach to life spiritual is the treading of a beaten track of tradition, which has been driven into our minds right from our childhood as the proper approach to things. It is not true that what society says is always the right approach to things. We live a kind of traditional mode of conduct which we are compelled to regard as final in its worth and value, merely because we have been taught these lessons right from our childhood.

We have been brought up under these conditions. We have a list of what we call the 'do's' and 'don'ts' of life. Right from babyhood we are told by our Parents and teachers, "Do this and don't do that." We are frightened right from childhood, and we are reared in a state of fear. We are never told the reason why it should not be done. Also, we are not told the reason why it should be done. And also they say, "You must do this. If you don't, you will get this punishment, even of hell." This fear of religion often becomes the basis of our approach to God, and we know very well how harmful it is to a positive approach to anything whatsoever.

Anything that we call success is positive – it is not negative. When the positive action is missing, and merely the negative condition prevails, it becomes an unhappy state. If we analyse our spiritual practices – Is our sadhana making us unhappy? To underline what I have said already, a sense of positivity and satisfaction should precede and accompany anything that we do as a spiritual practice.

The life spiritual is not an imposition either from a Guru or from a monastery – it is a thing that we have undertaken voluntarily, of our own accord. Nobody compels us to lead a spiritual life. Any kind of compulsion is unhealthy. Neither does the monastery require it, nor does the Guru require it. It is we ourselves that want it for our own purpose, for our benefit and welfare. So every moment, every day rather, one has to watch one's mind. "Is this spiritual practice an imposition upon me by the Guru, or the monastery, or society, or somebody else? Or is it something that I have been voluntarily doing and I am perfectly satisfied with it?" If there is any kind of external pressure and an unhappy feeling, whether it is justified or unjustified, that unhappy feeling is the reason why there is a reaction one day or the other. So ultimately, the reaction is caused by our unhappiness. What we are aiming at finally is a development of our own inner nature, which is the highest spontaneity.

Nothing can be more spontaneous than what we ourselves are. There is no compulsion or restriction imposed by us on our own nature or our own being. It is better to give up spirituality if it has become an imposition, a kind of torture, a suffering, a sorrow, and something which the mind resents.

What is to be emphasised here is that the life spiritual is positive, undertaken by ourselves and not imposed upon us by others. We want it because it has some value for us, and every discipline that we are practising is undertaken by us of our own accord, deliberately. We need it and we know why we need it. We should not do it because somebody tells us to do it – then it is external and we may not like it. So even a little that we do – really, positively and genuinely, with joy – is of greater worth in our life than many things that we do in a day without joy in the mind.

Many spiritual seekers are driven by emotion rather than by intelligence, and this happens to everyone in the beginning. We suddenly cry for God, as if God is going to jump from the skies in a minute. That looks very wonderful in the beginning, "Oh, how religious is the person, how spiritual, how yearning, how pure, how genuine." But this will not work for all time, because while God is love, God is also law. He will not break a law merely for the sake of love, notwithstanding the fact that He is infinite love.

It is here that we find a combination, inextricably related, of law and love. Tremendous disciplinary restrictive law combined with infinite spontaneity of affection and love – all these we will find in God. No one can be regarded as more affectionate than God, and no one can be regarded as stricter than God. He is the strictest of all conceivable beings – yet He is the most compassionate. These two features are blended there in a Single Unitary Being. And so, as God's nature is reflected in the stages of sadhana, the disciplinary aspect or the restrictive feature of sadhana, which is voluntarily undertaken, has to go hand in hand with spontaneity of approach and a positivity of feeling and satisfaction.

To reiterate, spiritual practice is voluntary. It is we that move towards God. We are not pushed by some motive force from outside or from behind. Forces can assist us, but they should not compel us, because anything that is of the nature of a compulsion is extrinsic in nature – whereas the spirit is intrinsic, and spirituality is the manifestation of this intrinsic nature of our own being.

Every external factor should be converted into an internal feature of our sadhana so that all our external relationships, whatever be their nature – whether of a family, or an institution, or a whole nation - these external factors should be transformed into an internal feature necessary in the transformation of the total personality, because the individual's personality is not an island. "No man is an island," as a poet wrote. We are not like islands, completely cut off from other portions of the land.

Every individual is connected to every other thing in the world, in some way or the other, so it is not possible to have a totally isolated individual approach, oblivious of external factors. When these factors are visible, especially when they are very pressing in their nature, they should be taken note of in their proper place, giving due respect to the position they occupy, and then converted and transformed into a motive force for the onward movement of the spirit towards God.

Continue to read:
The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda
 

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