(Feb 15,2014) Spiritual Message for the Day – Reuniting of the Individual with the Cosmic by Swami Krishnananda

Reuniting of the Individual with the Cosmic

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 7 The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda

Our nature is intrinsic to us, and an answer of a spiritual character can only come from within, not from without. All spiritual growth is an inner growth, like the growth of a tree. It is purely internal, though in its internal growth it draws sustenance from external forces. The individual center, which is a unit of force, seeks expression and gathers within itself a momentum, like a river that flows into the ocean. The human individual’s evolutionary act may, to some extent, be compared to a river flowing to the ocean. In the beginning it is a droplet like the Ganga at Gangotri or Gomukh, and we cannot even see it, so insignificant it is in the beginning. But though it is small rivulets, yet even at the very beginning it has a tendency to move towards its destination. Though this tendency is not visible outside, it is inherent within, and it gains momentum by moving further. It gathers its tributaries into itself and gains more strength; and in this gaining of strength, it also gains further momentum to rush through the plains, inundating villages, sometimes destroying things, caring not what it confronts in its way. Somehow it finds its way to its home in the ocean, where it shall gain peace forever. When the river reaches the ocean, it rushes no more. It wants nothing further, for its purpose is served.

Likewise, human energies are forces that cannot rest quiet until they reach their consummation in the sea of forces. Though the waters of the river are akin to the waters of the ocean in substance, the manner of their working is different. While the ocean is calm, subdued and magnificent in its profundity, the river is restless and cannot find peace anywhere. It is universal force in comparison with individual force. As a river seeks its peace in the vast expanse of the ocean, the forces that constitute the unit of individuality rush towards the sea of force in the cosmos. All our hectic activity throughout the day is an attempt of the segregated units of energy to find their attunement in the ocean of energy. We have been isolated from home, and we ask for an attunement with it. Now in this process of the reuniting of the individual with the cosmic, many a mistake may happen, as in the rivers trying to find their way to the ocean. The river may have to face mountains obstructing its path, due to which it may have to run in a thousand directions, splashing its waters hither and thither and wasting itself in the effort to confront the barrier, overcome it, and find its way to the ocean.

The human individual may have to face the same situation. It is not that the human energies flow calmly, majestically into the ocean of universal force. We are obstructed by circular motions of force – whirls and coils of energies which may catch us on the way and suck us into themselves, wherein we may either get caught up or lose consciousness of our destination. This happens when the ultimate purpose of the movement of the universal force, manifest as an individual, is coupled somehow or other with personal desire.

We have two kinds of energies, the Deva and the Asuric, the higher and the lower, one pulling us up to our universal home and the other tethering us down to the universal campus. The forces that tie us to the body are called desires; the forces that try to escape the limitations of the body and seek their expansion in the ocean of force are the aspirations for freedom.

The onward journey of righteousness, therefore, oftentimes gets smothered by the downward pull of desire. The stage of the Brahmacharin is the time intended for gathering momentum, gaining strength for further fulfilment. The Grihastha-dharma is an obstacle on the way that has to be confronted and overcome. Hence, the Ashramas are a process of education of the soul. Even the soul is an object for us. It is really a non-objective principle, incapable of objectification. We cannot analyze or understand it with our intellect; it is ourselves. Who is to understand his own self?

Remember, we have the Devas and the Asuras in us. The tremendous battle between the two is going on always – one asking for nectar, the other for poison. Both are struggling for victory within our own selves.

Painful is the life of sadhana; therefore, we do not know which of the two directions to go. When we are asked to move both ways and are in the lower forms of mental expression, in the counter form of evolution, we are likely to listen to the call of the lower nature. It is easier to flow with the current of the river than to swim across or move upstream. The tendency of the lower Prakriti is to move towards the objects. The lower Prakriti, the Apara Prakriti, is the totality of the objects of the world and the forces that tend towards these objects. The lower nature of Apara Prakriti calls attention of the desireful mind; the higher aspirations, though they may be present even in the lower levels like fire hidden in a matchstick, are smothered and not visible.

No one likes to deliberately commit a wrong, but everyone unknowingly does it because the inner voice of the conscience which speaks in the language of Truth is misdirected by the illusory light that is shed by the senses that direct the mind towards the objects.

The relation to the four Purusharthas – dharma, artha, kama and moksha – is a final attunement of the individual forces with the purpose of creation.

Excerpts from:

Reuniting of the Individual with the Cosmic by Swami Krishnananda

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(Nov 3,2013 ) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Aspiration for Spiritual Life

The Aspiration for Spiritual Life

Divine Life Society Publication: The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda



 

We have a general idea of God, of the world, of life, of Self-realization or God-realization, but when it comes to actual experience in day-to-day life, we realize that the mind stands apart from Reality. Sadhana is nothing but this adjustment of the mind with Truth.

Sadhana is not merely the concentration of mind on God at the very outset. Before we understand God, we find ourselves in the necessity to understand ourselves. We appear to have a very appreciable knowledge of God and His creation but very poor knowledge of our own self, due to which it is that we suffer in life. Pleasures and sufferings are connected with ourselves, and not with God.

We mostly think that the objects are away from us. The object of the mind is not connected with the mind physically, materially or in reality.

Whatever be the sadhana that we practice, whether it is kirtana or bhajana, japa or meditation, all these hinge upon this relation of the mind and its objects. When we chant kirtana, for example, it is not merely a word that we utter or a sound that we make; it has an object. It is not merely a mental operation that goes on when we are meditating; it has an object. We are not merely moving about here and there; our activities have an object. We will find that every blessed thing that we do in this world, psychologically or physically, has a counterpart as an object.

No one tries to dig a well for water when the house is on fire. To try to do sadhana late in life, when everything is settled economically and physically, would be a folly because sadhana is not as easy as people imagine. It is not just commencing something at once. Even a business we cannot commence so easily. There are many factors involved in anything we do; and particularly in spiritual practice, the most important factor being our own self.

The more we grow in the consciousness of spirituality, the more also do we realize the intimacy that subsists between ourselves and our objects – the intimacy in an inner sense, not an external or social sense. We do not suddenly become celestials or gods. The Puranas tell us that we have passed through 84 lakhs of yonis or births. We have been every blessed thing in this world before becoming human beings. This is what our scriptures say. Scientists all say that we have passed through various stages of evolution from matter to life, from life to mind, and from mind to intellect. From the pure inorganic level we came to the biological, and from the biological we came to the psychological and the rational.

Very mysterious, minute and subtle is this process of evolution. We have been growing psychologically, and not merely physically, organically and biologically. The earliest state of the mind is supposed to be that in which it gets lodged with matter, where there is no such thing as psychology at all. It is only inorganic matter. Fire is in the matchstick, but we cannot see the fire. It is totally absorbed in the matchstick, which must be rubbed in order that it may be ignited. The condition of mind wherein it is inseparable from matter is the crudest form of matter. It evolves gradually, where it tries to extricate itself from the clutches of matter, and it begins to assert its independence, slowly, though not fully. It does not succeed in its assumption of independence, but it refuses to be totally controlled by the laws of matter.

The life principle that is manifest in plants and trees is the first assertion of independence of mind over matter, while in inorganic material it was apparently not there at all; for all practical purposes, it was dead. So in the human level we seem to be at an advantage over all other aspects of creation – animal, plant and inorganic levels. We have a freedom of our own. Although man is small compared to the gigantic machinery of the cosmos, he has a power in him on account of the psychological transcendence that he has achieved. He knows the workings of the mind better than the animal does.

Though scientifically it is true that we are superior beings, we sometimes have fears which haunt us. One reason for the increase in the fear in humanity is a peculiar characteristic in us which is absent in the animal, on account of which they are a little more blessed than man: egoism. It is not merely self-consciousness; it is self-assertiveness – assertiveness to the opposition to others and in others’ well-being.

Just as the mind is a part of our being, the ego is also a part of us. We cannot separate the mind from our self, and so also we cannot separate the ego from our self. We are the mind, we are the intellect, we are the ego. We sum up all these elements in a single term ‘I’ which includes mind, intellect, ego and all other psychological functions in the evolution of the human mind.

In spiritual practice, you will realize that it is egoism that acts as the greatest of oppositions, more than even the senses and the other psychological functions.

We have the power and the freedom to do this or that, to choose one alternative or the other. When freedom is given to a person who does not know how to exercise freedom properly, it becomes a cause of bondage. Vision and action have to go together. A gun is good in its own way, and a sword has its own purpose, but we cannot hand them over to a baby. Power corrupts, as they say, when vision is lacking. First we have to realize where we are. The freedom with which man has been endowed is expected to be utilized to evolve further into higher understanding. But if human freedom is mixed up with human ego, then evolution can be retarded at the human level. We confuse the human ideal and aspiration with the animal way of perception. One of the animal ways of thinking is: “The world is absolutely unconnected with me, and has nothing to do with me.”  

Spiritual life is supposed to commence with viveka, or understanding. The first understanding that blossoms forth is the understanding of the fact that there is some sort of connection between ourselves and the world.

The spiritual aspiration, the spiritual consciousness, rises like a small tendril, a small plant, and flashes forth like a spark and he becomes restless. This restlessness is the commencement of the spiritual consciousness in human life. When the sense of having enough with things arises, we may be sure that the spiritual is awakening in us. It is just awakening; the child is not yet born, but yet there is a possibility of it being born.

This goes also by the name of vairagya, scriptures say: a distaste that we feel for the ordinary satisfactions of life. It is a lack of taste for things, and has nothing to do with the physical distance of objects from things. It is not that we cannot get things, but rather that we do not want them. There is a sharp distinction between vairagya and frustration – when we cannot get a thing, it is frustration, but when we can have it but do not want it, this is vairagya.

Vairagya is the absence of longing. Nothing can be more difficult than to realize the distinction between the sense of spiritual discontent, divine discontent, and the submerged desires of the human mind.

Many a time, our desires seem to lie buried, with none on the surface, but it does not mean that there are no desires. Desires can lie dormant like a coiled serpent but when anything touches them, immediately they expand themselves into furious activity. This is exactly what desires do.

So vairagyas, as the scriptures tell us, are of two kinds: the vairagya of the person who has been through the ruts of life, passed through many a suffering. That is one sort of maturity which the mind reaches and attains a kind of vairagya.

But there are some who are born with a longing for the eternal, though they might have not physically come in contact with tempting objects. This is the most stable kind of vairagya; but even the earlier one should get stabilized by the aspiration planted in the mind of the seekers by deep thought and the understanding of the nature of things.

The first stage in the development of spiritual aspiration is an inherent sense of dissatisfaction with everything in this world, and longing for things which are not visible to the eyes. This is viveka and vairagya, understanding and dispassion combined, and here is planted the sapling of true spiritual life.

Excerpts from:

The Aspiration for Spiritual Life: The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda
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(July 21,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Importance of Faith

 The Importance of Faith

Divine Life Society Publication: The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda

When seeking the guidance of a Guru or a Master, a very important instruction to the spiritual aspirant is that we should have adequate faith in our own self. There should be no doubt in regard to the very objective we are seeking.

Our problems and difficulties of daily life seem to be enough argument against the existence of God. The usual question everywhere in the world is, “If pain can be, how can God be?” as these two are contradictory in nature.

The viveka and vairagya shakti of a student, which perhaps appear to rise in the initial stages on account of the fructification of the meritorious deeds performed in previous life, get stifled at some point in time. Anyone can be in a state of doubt at some time. Pains come in an intensified form, almost to the point of death; such sufferings are not impossible in this world. When they come upon a person, it is then that the mind begins to doubt the existence of meaning in life.

The student should not approach a Guru or Master with this attitude: God may be, or God may not be; I may be successful or I may not be successful; the achievement may be of value or not be of value at all. With these debatable attitudes, the student should not approach the master. Faith, shraddha, is regarded as a very important quality or qualification of a seeking student. The student has to convince himself of the meaning of his aspiration. Our aspiration should not be a meaningless pursuit.

All faith can be shaken by the winds of suffering when suffering comes in a form which cannot be tolerated by the frailties of the body. It is faith which can stand us in good stead, which can follow us even to our doom. If the turmoils of life can shake our faith, then it would mean that the faith has not been born of conviction.

The faith which comes to us early in life, due to having been born under certain circumstances – for example, in a religious family, a good society, etc. From our childhood, it is quite possible that we, children of such parents, are taught to believe in the existence of a Supreme Sovereign of all creation, and due to this instruction that has been given to us since childhood, we develop a kind of faith in the existence of a kind of Supernatural Being. This faith has not come to us due to conviction, understanding, analysis, observation or study.

If logic is the way of thinking, if logic is the law of thought, then every object of thought has to be subjected to the modes of logic. The existence of God no more becomes an article of faith but is summoned to the court of reason and analysed threadbare, and proofs are called for; and if no proofs come forth, the existence of God is dismissed from the universe of thinking.

In this effort to analyse the nature of God, the mind forgets that this peculiar nature called God, which is not capable of an analysis along the lines of logic because while we may accept God as a kind of object, and may even call Him the Supreme Object, He is not an object of the mind.

It is on account of this difficulty involved in the thought of God that proofs have failed to establish His existence.  We are prone to put a ‘why’ before anything that is presented before us. Why should it be like this? Why should God create the world? Why did God create a meaningless, painful, chaotic, material world? And why should there be this distinction of high and low, gross and subtle, in a world of equality created by God? These are some of the ‘whys’ that occur to our minds, questions which cannot be easily answered because who is to answer them? Before whom are we posing these queries? We cannot put these questions to other human beings because they too think like us.

The world does not contain only pain and suffering, ugliness and defects, poverty and sickness, death, transformation and change. The world has two sides, the positive and the negative. When we look at the negative side of things, we begin to weep, and when we see the positive side, we begin to laugh.

We may take the standpoint of the common man that everything is subject to destruction. This is a world of transformation – change. One question is: Can there be a God in a world which is in perpetual change? This is one of the doubts that may occur in the minds of people: If everything is impermanent, can there be permanence anywhere? The question itself is pregnant with the answer: Because everything is impermanent, something has to be permanent.

All expressions of thought carry with them two sides – the positive and the negative. While the world with all its deficiencies and shortcomings may be said to be the negative side of experience, God is its positive side.

If God cannot be, the world also cannot be. If we accept the existence of the world, we have to accept the existence of God because we cannot accept one side and cancel the other side. Our aspirations are enough proof for the existence of a permanent value in life. The two sides of our longings are -  as many things as possible and for as long a time as possible. Quantitatively and qualitatively, we seek perfection. But these subtle hints behind our longings get smothered by the ravaging, clamouring voice of the senses.

This is the reason why the sadhana-chatustaya, particularly in its aspect as satsampat, wants us to cultivate the qualities of kshama, dhama and uparati. The mind should be calm in order that we may be conscious of the existence of a meaning in life first and foremost, and in this subdued attitude realise that there is a permanent value which we seek in the world. It is said that we should develop a faith which will not be shaken by the logic of the world. It is with this faith that we have to approach a preceptor.

Conviction is the first thing – a faith born of conviction. A faith born of conviction is unshakeable. Faith is supposed to be fourfold.

1.       Faith in the existence of God, who is the supreme objective of our seeking.  

2.       Faith in Guru. Just as we should not test the existence of God with our logic, we should not test the competency of the Guru. Once we have taken him as our Master, he is our Master forever.

3.       Faith in the words of the scripture. The need for faith in the scripture arises on account of our logical reason being incompetent to ascertain the nature of Reality. It is not logic, intellect, argumentation or reason that can be an aid in the ascertainment of Truth; only revelation, insight, and intuition can comprehend the nature of Reality. God is the seen, as well as the seer.

4.       Faith in one’s own purified conscience is a form of faith. A dirty mind cannot reveal the voice of conscience, so it is useless to say, “I act according to my conscience.” The conscience speaks in everyone. When the voice of the conscience passes through the prism of our desires, it gets deflected into various rays of cravings for things of the world. We cannot know what our conscience speaks.  

We have to be purified by the practice of viveka, vairagya, kshama, dhama, uparati, titiksha  which are certain stages of training of the mind for the reception of the knowledge of the Spirit from the Guru. Shraddha, faith,  is the primary motive force behind concentration of mind, the ideal which the student of yoga seeks in the end.

Continue to read:

The Path to Freedom: Mastering the Art of Total Perception by Swami Krishnananda

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