Precepts for Practice
Divine Life
Society Publication: Yoga and Realization by Sri Swami Sivananda
Worldly life is a bed of roses
till a thorn pricks you in your feet. When the thorn starts pricking you, then realize
that the world is a bed of thorns. The man then awakens to the reality. The
world is an illusion. Friends are hypocritical cheats. Relatives are selfish
bugs. There is none on whom you can depend except God.
Beloved aspirants! Awake!
Arise! Realize! Resort to the feet of the Lord. Practice Yoga. Come, start
today. Follow my Twenty
Instructions. I will serve you nicely and guide you. Waste not a minute.
In spiritual Sadhana nothing
is of so much importance as regularity. Whatever you do, even though it is very
little, do it regularly. The mind will tempt you in various ways. It will try
to keep you away from Sadhana but never yield.
Mind is a crooked mechanism,
agitated, wavering and wandering. It is always unsteady. Control the wandering
nature of the mind. Sadhana is the means to control the mind. Withdraw yourself
from the external world. Control your emotions, sensations, activities.
Constantly dwell in the Atman. Give up external show. Do not be attached to the
flesh.
Develop the eye of wisdom.
Look with your inner third eye. The aspirant realizes immense joy when his
third eye is opened. Fear, sorrow, doubt and delusion take leave of you. Unfold
all the latent faculties and powers. They are lying hidden within you.
Keep the ideal always before
you. Do not forget it even for a second. Examine within yourself how far you
have progressed at the end of the day. Make fresh resolves the next day for
better progress. Repent for the mistakes you have committed.
Diabolical forces are within
and never outside you. It is only the mind that is reflected in front of you.
Change the angle of vision. Everything will be good. You will see only His hand
in everything.
Do not blame God for your
having failed in maintaining the Spiritual Diary. Give your mind a good
shoe-beating. Resolutely start the practices once again from today.
Do not strain yourself beyond
your capacity. Relax completely the moment you feel that there has been
something wrong with the normal movement of the Prana. Dash cold water on your
face when you feel sleepy.
The breathing gets controlled
during meditation. It becomes very thin. Merge the mind in the Atman. Take it
away from the body and its associates. The goal of life is Self-realization.
Mere seeing of some lights and hearing of sounds during meditation is not the
final state of Self-realization. They are, no doubt, encouragement to the
Sadhaka.
You have had your rebirth in
God. By gradual degrees try to forget the past, its successes and failures, its
sins and virtues. You are not concerned with any of them now. You are a new man
altogether. Bury the past deep and cover it up nicely with the Lord’s Names and
Yoga Sadhana. Develop self-surrender to the Lord.
Asanas are as necessary as
Pranayamas. One goes with the other. Please practice Asanas at least for
fifteen minutes daily. This is the best insurance for good health.
All energy must be conserved
and utilized for purposes of spiritual Sadhana. All the time that you have
should be spent for spiritual practices and Nishkama Seva. If you use your time
nicely in spiritual pursuits, you will be able to achieve the goal of life in
this very birth.
I shall be pleased to accept
you as my disciple. The ‘fees’ I demand are very costly. They are Vairagya,
Viveka and Mumukshutva. If you have these, you can be my disciple.
Go to the temple daily and
pray to the Lord to give you more and more devotion to His Lotus Feet. Pray to
Him to enable you to remain perfect Brahmchari. Go to a secluded place daily
and introspect. Intensify your Sadhana and Vairagya.
Do not take onions. You need
not object to tamarind, salt and sugar now. Fast on Ekadasi. Take milk and
fruits. Take saltless diet on Sundays.
By one strong determination of
the will, get rid of all evil qualities like smoking, taking tea and
meat-eating. These weaken your nerves. You will be easily irritated. You will
not be able to control your emotions. Tea is stimulating no doubt, but does
harm ultimately.
When you are harassed by the
tea habit, it will be difficult to leave it in the beginning. Use milk as a
substitute for some time. You are simply alarmed. You imagine that you will
have headache without it. All these are mere hallucinations.
If you want to know God then
know yourself. Find out who is the seeker. Then you have known everything. You
are that Eternal Self. For this you have to put up a course of Sadhana but a
strenuous one. Then you will be able to clear all the doubts. Nothing will
satisfy you by the explanations.
Only when you taste the
sweetness of the sugar you are satisfied. So also till you have realized God
you cannot have any satisfaction. Doubts after doubts will be mounting over
your already heavy shoulders.
The western psychologists start
and work from the physical and go to the mental plane and stop there, whereas
the Eastern philosophy proceeds from the top and then looks at the bottom with
the knowledge of the highest. Knowing the One Imperishable, you know everything
else. This is the gist of our philosophy.
You can have your godhead
through your physical mechanism provided you acknowledge its perishable nature.
Look at the perishable nature of the body and all that we see around us. Just
see how within a few years great wars were fought. Thousands perished. What
does it show?
You must go in after that
Imperishable—that is God. The Lord permeates everything. To realize this
Imperishable it is not enough if you simply sit quiet expecting a miracle from
Him or the Guru. You should strive for yourself, by incessant practice of
Sadhana.
Excerpts from:
Precepts for Practice - Yoga and Realization by Sri Swami Sivananda
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