Spiritual Life should be Vital and Alive
Divine Life
Society Publication: -
Spiritual Life should be
Vital and Alive by Swami Chidananda
Beloved sadhakas
(aspirants)! What spiritual life should mean to you, what spiritual sadhana
(practices) should imply for you, what spiritual life and sadhana can do
for you, what the Guru can do for you, how his wisdom teachings can enrich you,
how spiritual books and scriptures can benefit and be of use to you depends
entirely upon how and in what manner you relate yourself to all these factors.
You have to probe deeply and
know for yourself the answer: whether your relationship is merely sentimental,
whether it is merely mental or intellectual, or whether your relationship to
all these factors-spiritual life and sadhana, spiritual books, the Guru
and his teachings-is a vital and living one.
You have to ask, you have to
find out: "How am I related to my spiritual life? How am I related to my
Guru and his spiritual teachings? How am I related to the lofty ideals that
have been placed before us in our scriptures-the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the
Puranas? How am I relating myself to my Guru mantra?"
For all these factors to mean
anything to us-if they are to enrich us, elevate us, transform us-our
relationship with these factors must be a vital and living one.
It should mean to us our life itself. They should dominate our life.
They should be overwhelmingly present in a pervasive manner, in every movement,
in every aspect, in every activity of our life.
Our life should reflect these
ideals. Our life should reflect the living teachings of the Guru. Our life
should reflect the scriptures in a vital way. Ideals are not meant to be
worshipped; they are meant to be emulated, followed and lived.
Scriptures are meant not only
to be read and known, they are meant to be deeply studied and applied. They are
meant to be entered into and practised. They should become our life, the very
fabric of our life. The Guru is not meant merely to be revered, but to be obeyed.
All these factors should
constitute the very warp and woof of your daily life and thought. Thus and thus
alone can you make these factors an enriching, dynamic, life-transforming
process in your life. Our relationship with all these factors is not meant to
stop in the plane of our human personality- nature only; it is not to stop upon
the psycho-physical level. You can practise all the asanas with the
body, but if the body does not transform itself into a vehicle of sattva
(purity), of selflessness, of servicefulness, of sadhana, of tapasya
(austerities), of samyama (meditation, concentration and
superconsciousness practised at the same time), it has not become the vehicle
for these important spiritual factors that it was meant to be.
Your relationship with these
factors should, therefore, be upon the innermost vital plane of your true
personality. It should be a dynamic spiritual connection. Then and then alone
our spiritual life will become an ever- progressive, dynamic factor of our
being. Ideals should be emulated; Guru should be obeyed; scriptures should be
absorbed and transformed into life. Sadhana should become the very
breath of our day-to-day living.
You should perpetually be a sadhaka
and a Yogi, not only when you are sitting upon your asana in your puja
(worship) room or meditation cell. After getting up, you become something else.
That will not do. Unfortunately, that is the way it is, and that is why we fail
to achieve great heights of spiritual experience and awareness, why we fail to
progress.
Everything pertaining to God
should become a vital, living factor, a vital, living force in your being and
through your being in all the movements and activities of your daily
life-mental, verbal and spiritual. Everything that constitutes spiritual life
and sadhana, everything that is related to God-realisation, should,
therefore, become a vital thing. You have to relate yourself. We must be it.
Relationship should be one of life itself, a vital, living thing.
This is the secret in
spiritual sadhana, in spiritual life. Mantra springs into
dynamism and manifests God by abhyasa (practise), by japa. It is so with
everything. It is not by knowing that, one attains spiritual perfection and
God, it is by being and it is by doing that everything in
spiritual life becomes a reality and a living experience. May God bless you to
see this clearly, and may you reap rich benefits from this clear perception.
God bless you!
Excerpts from:
Spiritual
Life should be Vital and Alive by Swami Chidananda
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