(August 28,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – Towards Liberation

Towards Liberation

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 5: An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda

All the elements joining together to produce a form, is what we call birth. But suppose a person has done immense charitable deeds – assuming that the good exceeds the bad, then after the exhaustion of the blissful experience of the soul in the Chandraloka, there will be a coming back, to rebirth into this world. Then, what happens to the bad deeds? The next birth will be determined by the balance of the karmas.

The Upanishads describe several stages of ascent. There is no sudden jump into the Supreme Being. The soul crosses through the worlds above, the five elements, the physical embodiment of the fourteen lokas – Bhu-loka, Bhuvar-loka, Suvar-loka, Mahar-loka, Jana-loka, Tapo-loka, up to Satya-loka. It moves direct towards the borderland of the Universal Being – Brahma-loka.

The nearer you go to the border of the Universal Being, the less you become conscious of your individuality. You feel at that time that you are withering away and vanishing like burnt camphor. Yet the individuality in a very rarefied form persists. Only the individuality which is rajasika (distracted) and tamasika (dark) will have a consciousness of itself. Pure sattva-dominated jivatva (individuality) will not be conscious of itself because it will be so transparent then. It is like a clean glass. The glass, if we imagine that glass has consciousness, may not know that it is existing because of the transparency of the glass. The glass attains a transparency of the highest sattva-guna, and loses self-awareness, individual consciousness. At that time, says the Upanishad, the Great Creator sends a messenger. A being who is not human comes and leads the soul along the path of the Supreme Creator. This is the stage of cosmic consciousness but it is not liberation fully, because to have cosmic consciousness there must be some object of which one must be conscious. Thus, it is still a lower stage.

Saguna Brahma Upasana and Nirguna Brahma Upasana are two types of meditation.

The worship of God can take various shapes. It may be an individualized, particularized God located in one place or it may be a devotion to multiple Gods like Vishva-Devas or it may be devotion to One, Creative Power, whatever be the name that we give to It. We cannot imagine what the Creator could be. But by the purity of your purpose and intention, if it is possible to expand your love to the dimension of the Supreme Creative Principle, you will be the highest, most blessed person.

The upasaka remains distinct from the upasya devata, and therefore it is called saguna. What is the meaning of saguna? Saguna means 'with attributes'; we conceive God with attributes. We, as human beings, can think only as human beings even in respect of God. We think of a vast dimension of the comprehension of God's Existence.

'All-knowingness', All-power', 'All-freedom', 'All-bliss' – these are the characteristics that we are able to conceive and attribute to God Almighty. But there are other ways of conceiving God, also. God can be the most beautiful Being. The aspect of sadhana which conceives God as the most powerful Bliss is called 'aishvarya-pradhana' bhakti – bhakti which takes into consideration the Glory and the Might and Power of God for meditation.  The emphasis is laid here on the Power and Glory of God.

Truth, beauty and goodness are considered as the highest characteristics of God. Truth means not truth-speaking merely but  It is an eternally existing Principle. A thing that passes away sometimes cannot be regarded as Truth; that is relative truth. The Goodness of God, the Power of God and the Beauty of God – it is difficult to conceive these together!

We cannot conceive God fully because we are not capable of imagining the extremely powerful God being compassionate, good and loving, all in one. But when we try to conceive God in our meditations, we segregate these qualities. All of these things do not come to the mind simultaneously.

Madhurya-pradhana bhakti is the type of devotion where the Beauty of God and the Bliss of God is the object of meditation. You can consider God as your Supreme Father and as your Mother also, because   Protectively He is Father and lovingly He is Mother.

He is also your Friend, as shown by the relationship between Arjuna and Krishna. You can ask Him to do something for you, and He will do it for you. In Maharashtra there was a saint, whom Sri Krishna served as a little boy, washing his clothes and sweeping the floor and cleaning the vessels and the like. Another saint went to Pandharpur to have Darshan. A voice told 'Vitthala is not here! He is serving the other saint there and washing his vessels; His name is Srikhandiya.' The saint ran to find out where Srikhandiya was; by that time the boy vanished from that place. You can consider God as your friend, as your beloved, as your father, as your mother or as your master.

All these come under what you call saguna bhakti. There is an 'otherness' of God to some extent here. Whether He is a father or a mother or a beloved or whatever He is, He is 'other' than you. A distinction is maintained for the time being. You attain to Brahma Loka with this kind of devotion – you are not the Creator, Brahma, yourself.

At the end of the universe, when the universe is dissolved; everything gets absorbed and the purified soul which was living in Brahma Loka as a scintillating part of the Cosmic Being merges in the Absolute.

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Towards Liberation -Chapter 5: An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda

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(July 12,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – The Realization of the Absolute

The Realization of the Absolute

Divine Life Society Publication: A Treatise on the Vedanta Philosophy and Its Methodology by Swami Krishnananda

Conclusion

 

A study of the Ultimate Reality of things reveals to us that their truth being one, their forms must be false. That which is one can appear as two or many only through imagination. Both the individual that perceives and the world that is perceived can only be projections of a powerful Universal Thought, while, in truth, there is only the undifferentiated Pure Being. The main points discussed in these pages, are: (1) Brahman or the Absolute is the only Reality. (2) It is Undifferentiated, Non-Relational, Supra-Mental, Transcendental, Consciousness, without the distinctions of knower, knowledge and known. (3) It is immaterial, so far as practical empirical life is concerned, whether Brahman is Impersonal or Personal, Nirguna or Saguna, so long as there is nothing second to Brahman, so long as there is no objective reality and no externalized knowing. In the process of philosophical meditation, however, the Absolute is envisaged in its pure perfection, free from superimposed attributes, as an ‘other’ of every form of thought, as the supra-cosmic, eternal consciousness. (4) The universe is an appearance of the Absolute, and, being of a presented or objective character, it is relative, transitory, unintelligible, and a perversion of Reality. (5) There is, in fact, neither the individual nor the cosmos, neither the subject nor the object because these are merely experiential standpoints of viewing the one undivided existence. (6) If God is taken to mean something different from the universe and its contents, that is, if God is a subject or an object of something—then, such a God would be as transitory as any mortal being. (7) The only purpose of the life of every individual is the realization of the Absolute. (8) Knowledge and meditation are the two main ways to attain Perfection. Knowledge is jnana or anubhava of the Nirguna Brahman, and meditation is dhyana or upasana on Saguna Brahman.

The whole theme of the Upanishads is centred in two fundamental conceptions of Reality—Brahman and Atman. Both words are often used to mean the same thing. “This Atman is Brahman” (Mand. Up., 2.). The further implications of this statement are the different theories of spiritual philosophy. The philosophy of the main declarations of the Upanishads, however, consists essentially of the eight conclusions drawn above. This is the Ultimate Truth, transcending empiricality, extending beyond the egoism of human nature. The whole process of the realization of Truth is, therefore, a sacrifice of the ego, and is a great pain. Suffering in the process of the experiencing of Infinitude cannot be abolished for the individual so long as the individual itself is inconsistent with the Infinite. Hence, the attempt towards the attainment of the perfectly Real is generally looked upon with a sense of fear, disgust and even hatred.

The human being is always attached to the immediate concerns of life. He has no eye to look to the beyond. He is grieved about the past, doubtful about the future and worried about the present. He is ever diseased in his spirit due to his violation of the eternal law. He is caught in the whirl of ignorance, passion and sin, and is constantly dashed by the huge waves of uncontrollable sorrow. Every moment he finds himself in a fix. He ceaselessly dies to himself in time, and seems to recover new sense just then and there. His whole life is a flux of states—now destroyed, now renewed. He has no idea of anything besides himself, anything that is vaster and truer. He is imprisoned within his fragile body, within his whimsical mind, within his childish intellect, within his conceited individuality. A shower of superphysical knowledge upon him seems to be music played before the deaf. He thinks too highly about himself.

The Upanishads are not unaware of the futile attempts of man to grasp the Limitless Being, and they warn him that it is not to be comprehended through logic, but to be heard from the wise one (Katha Up., II. 8, 9). Reason is meant to strengthen belief in what is heard from reliable sources, and not to walk unaided. It is an empty pride to think that one can depend totally on oneself and reach the Eternal. Reason and faith should go hand in hand if the desired fruit is to be reaped. That which is agreeable at present does not remain so the next moment, nor does the disagreeable appear so forever. The immutable Reality is unperceived and unfelt, and the apparition seems to give us life, light and joy. The sole purpose of the Upanishad teaching is to disentangle man from the chain of samsara, to show him the way to the Glorious Light that shines within himself. Man is not a sinful mortal creature in truth; the Upanishad calls him “son of the Immortal”— amritasya putra (Svet. Up., II. 5). But he can know himself only through sacrificing himself. The highest sacrifice is the offering of the self to the Absolute. The greatest yoga is the sinking of the self into unity with the Absolute, by denying the separate, and asserting the One.

Such an act which refuses to feed the individual self-sense with its diverse requirements, compels the relative self-interest to dissolve itself in the Absolute-Interest, which soars high above the limitations of Space and Time, and engages itself in its establishment in the perfect satisfaction and uncontradicted experience of completeness and utter Reality. The awareness of the state of the Pure Self unimpeded by phenomenal laws or separative restrictions, and the infinite rejoicing in the free flow of the law of the Spirit, is the life of the exalted Self-realized one. He exists as the Divine Being, which is the supreme condition of the fullest freedom of Eternity. Without such a knowledge of the fundamental nature of existence, life becomes intense with conflict and war between the opposing forces. It is impossible for the individual to blossom into Infinity in the midst of such a heated strife among disturbant powers of Nature, without reconciling and pacifying them in a more expansive consciousness and a higher order of reality where they disclose their inner truths and melt into the bosom of Being with a fraternal embrace. The difficulties in coming to any settled opinion of things as they are the miseries of everyday experience, the quandaries in determining the essential truth and falsehood of life, the concomitant selfish desires, the failures, the kicks, the blows, the burning anxieties, the vain beliefs, the mocking expectations and hopes that confront the human being in his struggle for existence, give him opportunities to discriminate the Eternal, and direct him on the way that leads to the realization of the Absolute.

Continue to read:

A Treatise on the Vedanta Philosophy and Its Methodology by Swami Krishnananda

If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit:
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If you would like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact the General Secretary at:

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