The Aspiration for Spiritual Life
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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