The Stages of Ascent to Moksha
Divine Life
Society Publication: Discourse 8 - A Summary of
the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana by Swami Krishnananda
Sadhana is the way to moksha.
It has no other significance. Moksha is freedom from bondage. But it is
necessary for everyone to know whether one is really in bondage or is really
free. If we are free, then there is nothing to do. Let us be happy in this
world.
Does anyone recognise that he
or she is in bondage? If this question is put before anyone, they will be
surprised. “What kind of bondage is there in me? I seem to be perfectly all
right in my life. I can go about anywhere I like. I have all the necessary
amenities for a comfortable existence. I am really happy. I require nothing.
God has given me everything.” If this is the case, you are really a free
person, and there is no need to strive for further freedom because of the
conviction that you are already free.
The impossibility to even
recognise that one is in bondage is a worse form of bondage. The beginning of
sadhana is the consciousness of suffering. We must be immensely aware that we
are in a state of agony. The bondage that we are referring to is a malady that
has crept into our very existence.
Our total life is free
movement on our part. But there is a root within us that is weeping because of
this bondage, due to which the soul itself suffers. This is the bondage of the
existence itself. To believe that we are really existing is ignorance on our
part. The fact is that we are on a process of movement. We have moved
continuously from previous lives to the present life, and we shall move from
this present life to future lives. The movement is such that it is continuous,
like the flow of a river. Buddha’s wisdom recognised that bondage is the
imagination that one truly exists in a state of stability. The
previous life’s consequences urge us to move onward, and the possibilities of a
future life pull us from the front. We are propelled from both sides.
This fact is not known to us.
Ignorance is sometimes bliss, as it is well said. Total ignorance looks like
total bliss. That we are caught up in a whirlpool of evolutionary process and
we are helplessly driven in a direction of which we have no knowledge at all,
that we cannot even lift a finger of our own accord unless forces outside us
cooperate with us.
The consciousness of the
nature of one’s bondage is the beginning of sadhana. This is what is told to us
in the Yoga Vasishtha, in its description of the stages of awakening.
“Something is very wrong with me right from the beginning. I do not know my
past, I do not know my future, and even today, just at this moment, I cannot
understand what circumstances I am passing through.” This is the beginning of
wisdom, and is called subheccha in the
language of the Yoga Vasishtha—wanting to know what is good. Though the nature
of the good is not actually known, there is at least a desire to know it. Subheccha is the first stage of
sadhana. We do not want to be bad; we want to be good.
The next stage of sadhana is
an effort to find out what is good. It is not enough if we merely want the
good; we must know where the good lies, and strive for it. This is
self-analysis. Satsanga, study, attending
discourses of mahatmas, worship, japa sadhana, are
all helpful in investigating into the nature of the problem and then
deciphering the nature of the ultimate truth. These first two stages, subheccha and vicharana, are mostly the
preliminary stages of spiritual practice, and yet they are difficult enough for
a person who is not acquainted with this way of thinking, just as a person who
does not know cycling cannot sit on a bicycle even for a moment until he learns
it.
By such kind of continuous,
assiduous investigation into one’s own bondage and what is good for oneself,
the mind which is fattened by being fed through sensory life becomes thinner
and thinner, and that which was once opaque due to the desire for enjoyment of
the objects of the world—due to which, the light of the Self within could not
be reflected, as sunlight cannot pass through a brick and can pass only through
a clean glass—becomes thinned. In the earlier stages, due to the thickened form
of the mental process, the very idea of there being something called the Atman
within may not be possible, but after assiduous practice in this manner, the
mind becomes thin. That condition is called tanumanasi, a
threadlike condition of the mind where it is transparent and reflects the true
nature of everything.
According to the Yoga
Vasishtha, these are the first three stages of actual sadhana, spiritual
practice. By continuing this practice for a long, long time throughout one’s
life, the sattva, or the purity in one’s
person, flashes forth, and the sun of knowledge begins to dazzle through this
mirror-like clean mind that has been attenuated through the absence of desires.
This is a pure sattvic transparent condition of
the mind, free from any kind of distraction or lethargy, i.e., rajas and tamas. This in itself is a great
achievement that we have flashes of insight in our sadhana. This state is
called sattvapatti.
Because of the bliss that we
enjoy by the experience of this light of the Self emanating from within one’s
own self through the mind that is so transparent, we do not feel a desire for
anything that is outside, and we feel that we are sufficient in ourselves. Our
very being is a joy to us, and we do not want assistance from any other thing.
Detachment automatically, spontaneously takes place in this stage. This is the
stage of asamsakti, non-attachment. It is
not the non-attachment that has been inflicted by deliberate austerity, but a
spontaneous event that is taking place on account of the knowledge arising
spontaneously in the sadhaka—asamsa. We have to take several
births, normally speaking, to attain this state of asamsakti,
or sattvapatti.
Total detachment is unknown to
mankind. We always cling to something, either in the mind or socially,
physically, materially. Total satisfaction in one’s own self, free from having
any desire to contact outside oneself, is something unimaginable for the common
man. But such a state is reached by the intense practice of self-investigation—asamsakti, as it is called.
Then comes the higher state,
called padarthabhavana. We do not
recognise that the world is really material. It is no more an object. All the
things in the world appear as a congealed form of universal power. There are no
persons, no things, no objects, ultimately. They are concentrated
pressure-points of universal force. We will never see anything material
afterwards. It is all one inundating force permeating all things, looking like
objects, persons and things. This is padarthabhavana.
When such a state of universal
recognition of a pervading force is attained, the only one thing that remains
for a person—who is really not a person but is a centre of force—is to identify
one’s own localised point of existence with this universal force so that what
exists is not a sadhaka with a universal power,
because this sadhaka has gone into the very
bosom of the sea of power. It is cosmic prana, cosmic mind, cosmic intellect,
cosmic consciousness—whatever we may call it. This state of immersion of one’s
own being into the pervading presence of universal force is true liberation. In
that condition, whether we exist in this body or do not exist in this body, it
makes no difference. While we exist in the physical body even with this
realisation, we may be called a jivanmukta purusha
in the language of the scriptures. The mind is not concentrated on the body; it
is concentrated on that to which this body belongs.
It is then said to be
salvation where even this little appendage of the body born through past karma
drops completely, and the pure existence, the soul as it is, merges into the
Universal Soul. This is called moksha, for which sadhana is practised. We do
not live in this world for any other purpose.
The consciousness of the aim
of existence is a primary modification of any kind of spiritual aspiration.
Routine activity, doing the same thing every day, chanting the same mantra
without knowing its implications, and actually in practical life getting
immersed in the oblivion of one’s relationship with this universal force, is
not sadhana. There must be an actual awakening to this great fact of one’s
vital relationship to the all-pervading power, the immersion of oneself with
it, the communion of oneself with it, the self-identification of oneself with
it, being it, and having an experience
of only one existence. This is moksha, for which purpose we are striving. May
God bless you!
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