(Oct 28,2013 ) Spiritual Message for the Day – Three kinds of Adhyasa or Superimposition

Three kinds of Adhyasa or Superimposition

Divine Life Society Publication: Commentary on the Panchadasi by Swami Krishnananda

Afflictions like hunger and thirst will continue as long as there is this body, in spite of the fact that one has acquired a kind of knowledge of the difference between the Atman and the body. The associations are of three kinds, and these associations are known in Sanskrit as adhyasa. The first one is known as bhramaja adhyasa – superimposition caused by sheer ignorance. The second one is sahaja adhyasa – superimposition which is natural to existing conditions. The third is karmaja adhyasa – superimposition that is the outcome of the existence of the body itself.

The first one, known as bhramaja adhyasa – superimposition brought about by sheer ignorance – is the transference of values between the intellect and the Atman, pure and simple. The universality of the Atman, which is eternity in its essential nature, is wrongly transferred to the individual principle known as the intellect, and then there is a false feeling that the individual is longstanding – eternity itself.

We do not feel that we are going to die tomorrow. That feeling never enters our mind because of the transference of the perpetual or eternal character of the Atman to the individuality principle that is our intellect. If this transference of values were not to be there, every moment we would be in fear of death and there would be no incentive to work; even for a moment we would not lift even a finger.

On the other hand, there is the transference of the qualities of the individuality principle (intellect) upon the Atman, pure and simple, on account of which we begin to feel that we are limited in location. We are in one place only; we are not in different places. We are ignorant; we are not omniscient. We are very helpless, not omnipotent, and we are located in one place only. That is finitude.

Finitude in space, finitude in knowledge, and finitude in power – all these three kinds of finitude are imposed upon us by the transference of the individuality character of the intellect onto the Atman. Because of the Atman's character getting reflected or transferred to the individuality principle, we feel that we are going to live for endless years. There is a sense of permanency to our existence on account of this other kind of transference, the transference of the Atman's character upon the intellect. This kind of mutual transference of values from Atman to intellect and intellect to Atman is called bhramaja adhyasa – superimposition of characters caused by sheer ignorance, bereft of proper understanding.

The second one is called sahaja adhyasa, or the natural superimposition taking place between the consciousness reflected through the intellect and the ego principle. When the Atman consciousness gets reflected through the intellect, it assumes the awareness of individuality. We feel “I am” in our personal character, and the consciousness of personality, or I am-ness, is simultaneous with the consciousness of egoism – intense attachment to the personality itself. The consciousness of personality is identical with attachment to personality. This is natural superimposition, or sahaja adhyasa.

Karmaja is the third superimposition, the transference of the characters of finitude upon the physical body, and the transference of characters such hunger-thirst, heat-cold, etc., which are felt by the body, upon the intellect.

Now in the case of the jivanmukta, or the person who has realized the Self, the first adhyasa is checked off. He will not feel that this personality is transferrable to the Atman or the Atman is transferrable to the individuality principle. On account of this severance of the original adhyasa, which is based on ignorance, he will not take rebirth. But he will continue to be in this world with this personal body as long as the other two karmas persist. The reflection of consciousness of the Atman through the intellect will continue in the case of the jivanmukta purusha also – that is, he will know that he is existing as a person. And he will also feel the pinches of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, as long as the prarabdha karma continues – that is, the third kind of adhyasa – karmaja, persists.

This is with reference to this particular verse which says hunger and thirst, etc., will be seen to be present even in the case of those who are enlightened; but this feeling of hunger and thirst, etc., is to be attributed to the ego consciousness rather than to the original Atman itself.

 Excerpts from:

Three Kinds of Adhyasa or Superimposition - Commentary on the Panchadasi by Swami Krishnananda

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(August 1,2013) The Cause of Bondage

The Cause of Bondage

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 55: The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

What is the bondage from which we wish to be free? What is actually meant by this thraldom of samsara? How has it come about? Why is it that we are full of sorrow and we have no peace? This is mentioned in a single sutra, avidyā kṣetram uttareṣāṁ prasupta tanu vicchinna udārāṇām (II.4), which states that the series of processes by which the individual soul has got into bondage consists of nothing but pains and pains, one after another, in various degrees of involvement.

Ignorance of the true nature of things is the origin of bondage. ‘Avidya’, ‘ajnana’, ‘nescience’, etc. are the terms used to designate this condition. What actually exists is not known; this is called avidya. We cannot, by any amount of effort of the mind, understand what is actually there in front of us; and whatever we are seeing with our eyes or think in our mind is not the true state of affairs. This is called avidya. We may logically argue, deduce, induce, but all this is like the definitions given by the blind men who touched different parts of the elephant. On account of a partial grasp of truth, there is a partial attitude to life; and everything follows from that, one after the other.

Every successive link in the chain of bondage is dependent in one way or the other on the previous link.

The inability to perceive the true state of affairs, the absence of an understanding of the correct relationship among things, creates a false sense of values. Avidya is not merely absence of knowledge –but the presence of a terrific foe in front of us, which has a positivity of its own. It exists in a peculiar way which eludes the grasp of understanding.

So a negative type of positivity is created, we may say, called the individuality, which asserts itself as a reality even though it is based on a non-substantiality. The individuality of ours is insubstantial, like vapour. It has no concrete element within it. It can be peeled off like an onion, and we will find nothing inside it, but yet it looks like a hard granite adamantine being on account of the affirmation of consciousness. The reality that is apparently visible in the individuality is borrowed from that which is really there. The support comes from that which really exists, which is True Being, and this support is summoned for the purpose of substantiating something which is utterly false and wholly untenable. This untenable position is called self-assertion, affirmation, egoism, asmita, ahamkara, etc. All this has happened on account of not knowing correctly the interrelationship of things. There is a dependence of every factor on every other factor so that individuality can have no ultimate value in the scheme of things.

The asmita tattva that is mentioned as the effect of avidya is a centralisation of consciousness, a focusing of it at a particular point in space and time, and a hardening of it into an adamantine substance which gets encrusted more and more by repeated experience of sense contact which confirms the false belief that the isolated existence of the individual is a reality. We get confirmation every day that our individuality is real due to the pleasure that we receive by sense contact.

Piles and piles of notions of this false individuality, asmita, get grouped together, and there is an impregnable fortress created in the form of what we are as individuals.  That which is real has become unreal, and that which is unreal has become real. The thing that has really evolved as an effect becomes the cause, as it were; and that which is the cause looks as if it is the effect. The cosmic substance out of which the individuals have evolved has become the object of perception of the individuals, and the latter have usurped the position of the cause of cognition, experience, etc. notwithstanding the fact that they are evolutes. They have come further than the original substance which is cosmic.  

Conclusively, we may say that everything that we think is a wrong thought. There is nothing like correct thinking as far as the reality of the individual is concerned. When the very basis is wrong, how can anything that proceeds from it be correct? This is the history of the production of asmita out of avidya.

In one place Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj has mentioned in a humorous way that the mind is something which is really nothing, but does everything. This is the world – it is really not there, but it is terrible. The character of the real is injected into the apparent formation of the unreal, and then the unreal looks like a reality. We transfer ourselves to the objects in our perceptions, and then it is the reality of the background of our being which is the cause for our belief in the reality of objects.

No individual can be complete. Everything is a part. Therefore, everything is restless; it has to be restless. But this restlessness, pain and anguish felt by each partial experience of individuality tries to get fulfilment by finding its counterpart in sensory experience.  We may say our likes and dislikes are conditioned by our prarabdha karma. That is why everyone does not like everything – my likes are different from your likes, etc. The reason is that we as individuals are constituted of certain forces which do not relate themselves directly with every factor in the universe, because the prarabdha is a peculiar sample that is taken out of the entire resources behind us, called sanchita karma.

This peculiar effect that further follows from asmita, or individuality, in the form of the pulls and repulsions, raga and dvesha, adds a further confirmation to our belief that the world is real, the body is real, individuality is real – that all our phenomenal experiences are real.

Patanjali gives a series of descriptions for the freeing of one’s consciousness from such involvements by graduated techniques and practice. A sudden directing of the mind to meditation is not possible because the layers are hard enough that they cannot be pierced through at once. Also, the layers of bondage, which have manifested themselves in a series, are not placed one above the other in a linear fashion. They are intricately involved – one getting into the fibre of the other, as it were – and we cannot peel one layer out without causing pain to the other layer that is underneath. Because of the vital involvement of consciousness in every layer, there is a little bit of suffering involved in the peeling out of the layer, just as we feel pain when we peel the skin. We know that skin is not our real nature, but yet we feel pain when it is peeled off because we have become one with the skin, one with the bone and marrow, the flesh – one with everything. Likewise, every layer of bondage has become part of the self, so that the removal of the bondage is not desirable. It looks pleasurable for the soul.

Bondage itself has become a source of joy, so that we can say that the very vision of there being something beyond in the form of freedom has left one’s vision. If a person is a captive in a jail for fifty or sixty years, he may take that as the natural way of living. He has been in the jail for sixty years; he has been used to that way of living, and he cannot think of any value or reality other than that. In a similar manner, there is an accustoming of consciousness to a life of bondage, and the conditions, limitations and restrictions have been regarded as a type of freedom by itself. Even the limitation that has been imposed upon us, we mistake for freedom, and the pain that follows is regarded as joy.

The pleasures of sense are not really pleasures. This is the point that is mentioned in one of the following sutras. They are pains which are misread as pleasures.

It is difficult to know why we feel happiness, why there is pleasure at all in sense contact, unless we know the depth of perception itself. Why is it that we are seeing objects? What is it that compels us or drives us towards objects? Where is the need for us to come in contact with things? Why it is that we wrongly mistake pain for pleasure, and how is it that we can get fooled by the senses in creating a notion of falsehood?

It is the inability to grasp these things that has created an impression that bodily experiences and phenomenal processes are independent by themselves – a reality taken by them. This is the essence of bondage; and how difficult it is to get out of it is clear on the very surface.

Excerpts from:

Chapter 55: The Study and Practice of Yoga by Swami Krishnananda

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(July 20,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Need for a Guru

The Need for  a Guru

Divine Life Society Publication: The Chhandogya Upanishad – Uddalaka’s Teaching by Swami Krishnananda

Someone was living in a country called Gandhara, and was attacked by robbers on the way. He was tied up. His eyes were covered and he was taken to a long distance and left in a thick forest infested with tigers, wild beasts, etc. The person was crying, "I have lost my way. I do not know where I am. Will anybody come and help me? Does anybody hear my voice? Is there anyone near me?" That was all he could do. Then, there was one good Samaritan passing by that way and he untied all the knots with which the person was bound. He removed the bandages from the eyes and said to him, "Oh, you have come to this place. Where are you coming from?" The poor man replied, "I come from Gandhara. Now I do not know where it is. Which is the way to that place?" Then the kind one said, "You proceed from this place in that direction and you will see a big tree there. Then you turn to the right and walk for about two miles. Then you will see a village. From there you move towards the east and there you will see a signpost. Now proceed slowly and you can safely reach your place."

This is an analogy to describe the condition of people in this world. We have been exiled from our 'home' and cast into the wilderness by the robbers of the senses and we cannot see things properly as they really are. We do not know from where we have come. We have lost our way. And the apparatus of our senses are not going to help us. The mind has been confounded. The only way is to ask for help, and just as a person with sight can help a person without sight and can point out the way to the destination which he has to reach, so is the blindfolded soul in this wilderness of life to take the guidance of a person with spiritual eyesight, who can visualise the presence of the great Reality which is the destination of everyone. Such a person with eyes which can see the truth of things as they are is called an acharya, a spiritual master. He is the preceptor, he is the Guru. There is no way of escape from this muddle of life except through the guidance of a preceptor, because a preceptor, a Guru, is one who has undergone these experiences of life. He has seen the tortures of existence, the sufferings, the winding path and the dismal ways through which one has to go. He knows from where one has come and how one can revert to that place again. Through the indications given by the master, the disciple has to proceed gradually.

In the analogy, the good Samaritan told the blindfolded man how he could go back to his house step by step by the winding path with the help of various objects which served as signposts. Even so, are the scriptures signposts on the way. The instructions of the Guru are the indications on the path. We are told that from this predicament in which we are now, the next step would be like this. Naturally, we cannot reach our destination at one stroke. It is perhaps several miles away, hundreds of miles far. This means that we have to put forth much effort. So we go three miles from here and we find a road that diverts itself to the right. We go along that. Then we find a huge banyan tree there. From there, we again turn to our left. Then we go another ten miles along the same path, and find a village there. Then we take rest and from there we move towards the western direction, and so on and so forth. These represent the higher and higher levels of consciousness to which we have to rise up, overcoming the various obstructions on the spiritual path. Thus are we instructed by the master.

We have fallen from the ancient, pristine existence by a tortuous process of descent. It is not a sudden drop, as drops of water from the sky fall on the earth. It is a winding process through various kinds of curves and turns through which Consciousness has got itself entangled and has come to this present pitiable condition of earth-consciousness, body- consciousness, object-consciousness, and a total absence of universal consciousness. To go back to that orginal state, it is not possible to take a jet plane and fly straight. It is not a straight movement. It is also a very winding process. We cannot see beyond a certain distance. This is the difficulty of the path. For, everywhere, every kind of vehicle will not be available. Likewise is the method that has to be adopted in the practice of sadhana. The same method will not work always. After a certain point or a certain limit is reached, the method of sadhana may have to be changed, the speed may have to be accelerated and a different type of guidance may have to be required. There are stages of approach, and you will not be told everything at one stroke. There is also no use explaining that, because the mind cannot grasp all the intricacies at once.

Just as the blindfolded man received instructions from the good Samaritan, so the blindfolded soul has to receive guidance from a spiritual master. And as the person in the illustration was intent only on reaching home and was not interested in mere sightseeing, (otherwise he would go hither and thither and miss the way again), so is the soul to be intent upon its destination, and should not waste its time in sightseeing in this world. The master will tell the seeker, "This is the way." On the way he may see many things. He should not be interested in those things. They are experiences through which every one has to pass. And as was the case with the blindfolded man who was intent only on rushing back home and not seeing places on the way, so should be the interest of a spiritual seeker to return to the 'source', passing through tentative experiences in which he should not get engrossed. He should not get lodged in the halting places on the way. Thus the soul can reach back to its grand goal, its destination.

What is the way? The way is the acharya, the Guru, the teacher, the master, the preceptor. There is no other way. "So only a person who has a proper preceptor can realise the Truth," says this Upanishad. No one else can reach this Truth by any effort of the mind, the intellect or the senses. No amount of scientific analysis, no amount of study of the scriptures alone will be of any use. It requires direct guidance from one who has personal experience. Such a person is the acharya, the preceptor who knows what Truth is. He is a blessed person who has such a guide with him. Then he will have to live in this world only as long as this body lasts. Afterwards, he will have no bondage. As long as he is tied up to this bodily individuality, as long as the prarabdha-karma which he has to experience remains, so long he will have to remain. The sanchita-karmas are destroyed by knowledge. The agami-karmas do not exist for that person, but the prarabdha-karma continues. The prarabdha is a name that we give to those cumulative effects of action which have given rise to this physical body, this individuality of ours, in which we have to pass our life here and undergo experiences of various types. When we are in a position to complete this course of change through this body, then we are about to enter that borderland of freedom. We have to be bound to this world, to this life, only as long as this body is there. The moment this body is cast off we are free, because there is nothing else to bind us. All our karmas have been destroyed by meditation and by the actions performed in this life. They are not going to bind us because they are not selfish actions. They are not motivated by bodily individuality. They are propelled by knowledge of a higher truth, and therefore, the actions of the present life after the rise of knowledge, the agami-karmas, will not bind us. Nor are we going to be influenced by the sanchita-karmas, results of past actions. They too have been burnt up by knowledge. The only thing that remains is prarabdha. When that is gone, every type of bondage is gone. Then we attain to the great Being. This Being is the truth of all things.

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The Chhandogya Upanishad – Uddalaka’s Teaching by Swami Krishnananda

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(May 20,2013) Do the Best and Leave the Rest to God

Subtle Secrets of Sadhana - Do the Best and Leave the Rest to God

Divine Life Society Publication: Thus Awakens the Awakened One by Swami Krishnananda

·          “Do the best and leave the rest” is the key motto in Karma Yoga. The ‘doing of the best’, of course, does not mean being foolhardy or going headlong without thought on consequences, but the harnessing of one’s full resources to the execution of a noble ideal which is calculated to aid one in the attainment of God- realisation. To ‘leave the rest’ is to resign the results of the work to God, for, when even the best that one can do falls short of the effort needed to achieve a desired result, the mind is likely to get upset, which is not the spirit of Karma Yoga.

·         The more we try to depend on God, the more He seems to test us with the pleasures of sense and the delights of the ego. Finally, the last kick He gives is, indeed, unbearable. Those who bear it are themselves Gods.

·         Every moment of life should be regarded as the last moment, as there is no knowing when this moment will come. When it is said that the last thought of a person should be God’s thought, we are impliedly admonished to remember God every day and every moment.

·         The energy that leaks through the senses by way of excitation and pleasure-seeking diminishes the psychic force that is necessary for meditation. Hence before any attempt at successful meditation this energy-leakage has to be blocked, and the direction of the flow of this energy turned inward.

·         We should not try to be more strict on others than we are on ourselves. Our task is not so much to change the world as to change ourselves.

·         The prarabdha karma is like an extortioner who will not let loose the victim until the last vestige of dues is cleared out. It cannot be exhausted without being worked out through experience, and the role of spiritual sadhana in relation to prarabdha is not one of negating or counteracting it, but of bringing about a transformation in the vision that evaluates and judges experience, pleasurable or miserable.

·         Mostly, the mind is where the eyes are. Look not at anything which may stimulate desire, or rouse egoistic ambition. The eyes have to be carefully guarded.

·         The importance of sadhana in spiritual life is great enough to compel the attention of anyone wishing to be freed from botherations. The vexations of life are due to entanglement in externalised forms, while freedom at once manifests itself when the universal nature of these forms is beheld. Sadhana is nothing but an attempt to withdraw from the particulars and sink into the Universal.

·         Doubts on the path of sadhana indicate that the spirit of sadhana has not been properly grasped. When there is enough conviction about the correctness of the method adopted, sadhana quickly bears fruit.

·         The highest fulfilment is the result of the highest renunciation. The less you want, the more you get. He who wants nothing from the world finds the world falling at his feet. Even the gods are afraid of him who wants nothing for himself.

·         Space, time and gravitation divide and pull the body by isolating it from other bodies. With this division and pull of the body, consciousness also appears to be affected due to its association with the body through the mind, Prana and the nervous system. The overcoming of this distracting effect of space, time and gravitation in one’s consciousness is yoga.

·         The establishment of oneself in a state of consciousness which stabilises one’s being in a non- externalised Universal Pure Subjectivity of Selfhood is the final panacea for the sorrow of mortal existence. This is the great meditation in which every soul has to engage itself throughout its career in life. This is the final duty inseparable from man’s aspiration, nay, the only duty in life.

·         There are three grades of Self: The real, secondary and false. The real is the Atman which is universal; the secondary is the person or thing which one likes or dislikes; the false is the aggregate of the five sheaths. Meditation disentangles the real from the secondary and the false.

·         Buddha and Sankaracharya represent two sides in the picture of life. The purely phenomenal approach of Buddha implies the so-called solid content of the appearance called the world, and the spiritual doctrine of Sankara fills this emptiness with Soul, and completes the picture.

·         It may be that we try to remember God when we are comfortably placed. But the test as to whether He has really entered our hearts is whether we remember Him in sickness, suffering, opposition and times of temptation.

·         The pain generally felt at death is due to the nature of the intensity of the desires with which one continued to live in the physical body. The more is the love for the Universal Being entertained in life, the less would be the pain and agony of departing from the body.

·         Who is a fool? He who thinks that the world has any regard for him and is really in need of him.

·         He it is that, as an old man, totters with a stick, thus deceiving the human eye, for He is all things.

·         Ishvara , jiva and jagat are not three entities standing apart like father, son and their house. They are three presentations of reality or view-points of the Absolute from the level of the jiva.

·         sadhana is a sort of constant remembering a thing against heavy odds, and pulling up oneself from sinking into deep mires. To retain the thought of God in a world of colours and sounds that dazzle the eyes and din the ears is hard enough. This is sadhana, a feat of will and understanding.

·         Avoid contact with such things as are likely to stimulate sense desire or excite the ego. This is necessary until strength is gained to withstand the forces of the world.

·         The test of spiritual advancement is a gradual attainment of freedom from doubts of all kinds and a conviction of having reached a settled understanding in regard to one’s true aim of life. It is this conviction that brings inner strength and power to face all opposition.

·         The strength to bear suffering comes not merely from a determination of the will, but the discovery that a vast treasure is awaiting one who practises such endurance. Students lose sleep and comfort, a lover undergoes untold pains, and an employee tolerates the unpleasantness of work, not because of a mere determination of will but due to the sure promise of an enjoyment which is known to exceed the pains which pave its way. So it is with spiritual sadhana.

·         Spiritual sadhana is ultimately an effort to cease from all effort. This is the highest effort, because no one normally can be without exerting oneself in some direction. All activity is a process of moving away from the Centre. The activity to cease from such activity is sadhana.

·         No saint has been able to maintain the spiritual balance throughout his life. There have been occasional reversals though these might not have left any impression on their minds any more than the mark left by a stick drawn on water. But the mark is there when it appears. Such is the difficulty of leading the spiritual life. The case of immature seekers is much more precarious, indeed.

·         Just as when we touch a live wire the electric force infuses itself into our body, when we deeply meditate on God the power of the whole universe seeks entry into our personality.

·         The sadhana that one does should speak through the actions and the words which manifest themselves through one’s personality. The personality is the vehicle of the aspiration that wells up within. And the face is the index of the mind.

·         The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are two great epics of the forces of lust and greed, respectively. The passion of Ravana and the greed of Duryodhana caused the wars of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These are the twin forces of the devil which can be faced only with Divine Help.

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Subtle Secrets of the Sadhana  - “Thus Awakens the Awakened One” by Swami Krishnananda

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