Swami teaches....Part 33
Link to Swami Teaches....Part 32
|
Sai Ram Light
and Love Swami teaches.... (25 - 28 July 2005)
Celestial Sound of Love in Human's Heart as God's Grace
All around you echo the sentiments that you carry in your own heart. Yadh Bhaavam thadh bhavathi - "You become what you yourself feel." When you pronounce another person as vicious or bad, you are making a pronouncement on your own wickedness or vice. Your own impurity casts upon him/her that suspicion. Once you rid yourselves of faults, all are pure and good. Whatever you touch becomes gold; that is the Divine alchemy of Love, Divine Love, Universal Love, Love for Love's own sake. The rays of the morning Sun induce buds to blossom into fragrance and beauty; they prompt the Divine in you, today, to blossom into fragrance, purity and holy endeavour. Earth and sky take on a golden hue, reminding us of the Hiranya Garbha (Golden Womb) from which all creation emanated in the timeless past. From far melodies of violin are spreading and calling to meditate. What kind of information the sound of melody is carrying? Sound is of three kinds: Saamaanya, Varna and Mooka; Saamaanya (the common) are all the sounds of the objective world, of rain and thunder, of rivers gurgling, of valcanoes and earthquakes and the like, even the dropping of dew on a tender petal of rose, the sailing of a feather from a bird's wing through the air. The second kind is the sound of Varna (the spoken word): this carries a specific meaning and is armed with intention, to inform, or instruct or inspire. This is the flow of the heart-beat of one into the heart of another. The third kind is Mooka (the sound of silence): when one dives into the depth of that silence, one hears oneself, the primeval Cosmic Om, the Pranava that emanates from the praana (the vital vibration) that fills the Universe. To hear that sound, one has to approach, as near as possible, the core of one's being. That is why the Upanishath calls itself so; it urges you to go near, delve deep, dive to the very floor of the lake. Upa means Near; Nishath means Sitting. Om summarises the Vedhas and their teachings. Om thath sath, says the Geetha. Thath (that) which Sath (is) is Om, the One. Thath is used to indicate that the objective world is taken by senses to be separate and afar; it means 'that', and 'that' is always far, and separate. Sath means 'is,' 'the is,' 'this.' When you recognise the Thath as 'is' or Sath, it becomes 'this, it is no longer object, it is subject, and the merging of object with subject manifests as the Om. Om - the celestial sound of silence is an 'abode' where pictorially other kind of sounds has fused. Om - the language of Gods for this illusive world-Leela where God is above all gunas (qualities). He has no Aagraha (anger). He is ever the embodiment of Love. He is in gunas, but gunas are not in Him. There is clay in pots, but there is no pot in clay. One should not fear God. One must love Him so much that all acts He disapproves are discarded. Fear to do wrong; fear to hate another; fear to lose Grace. Yajnas (ritual sacrifices) are valid so long as you feel that you are the body. When you know that you are Brahman, yajnas lose value. Or, when you perform the yajna as a sacred act of thyaaga (renunciation) dedicated to God, regardless of the fruit thereof, with no calculation of the gains therefrom, then the yajna is worth while. The Lord is unaffected, though He is immanent in the universe. Human too must be in the world, but not of it. Holding the fan by the hand will not help; you must move it to and fro vigorously, in order to feel the cool breeze that blows on your face. There is no breeze in the fan; it is all around you, everywhere, as air. Direct it towards yourself by saadhana (spiritual practice). So too, direct the Grace of God that is everywhere, towards you and make yourself happy by saadhana. Saadhana and ceremonial rituals,prayers have undoubtedly special meaning. But, But Swami tells you must be concerned more with the Sun in your inner firmament than in the depths of outer space. You are concerned with the inner illumination, more than external light and energy. What is the saadhana that will send the inner Sun Godward? God is hidden and obstructed by the clouds of egoism which are connected with desires and differences.
Seeing difference is the bane of the undeveloped intellect. The One Sun is seen, adored, and acknowledged all over the world; you do not boast of an American Sun, an Ananthapur Sun... When you pay undue attention to differences, spasms of hatred, anger, malice and envy overwhelm you. Anger rushes blood to the brain; the temperature rises; the composition of the blood changes; toxins enter into it in such quantities that it injures the nerves, and make you old before your time. Desire to which you are too fondly attached breeds anger and its nefarious brood. The Aanandha that the Aathman can manifest will keep age and aging away.
Impress
on your consciousness that Nature
is alive, since God is life; that
Nature appears ever-lasting, since
God is eternal; Nature is but a
reflection of God. Without the
motivator, Nature is helpless and
powerless. Appearance is but a
reflection of reality. The Grace
of God cannot be won through the
gymnastics of reason, the
contortions of Yoga or the denials
of asceticism. Love alone can win
it, Love that needs no requital,
Love that knows no bargaining,
Love that is paid gladly, as
tribute to the All-loving, Love
that is unwavering. Love alone can
overcome obstacles, however many
and mighty. There is no strength
more effective than purity, no
bliss more satisfying than love,
no joy more restoring devotion, no
triumph more praiseworthy than
surrender. The achievement of Aanandha through prema (of the highest bliss through the highest love) - this is the teaching of Vedhaantha. Vedhaantha is an often misunderstood school of philosophy. It does not mean the study of profound tomes, or the calculated breathing, through trained nostrils of measured quantities of air, or even eating as a dog does and sleeping as a jackal does, (wandering without any assured abode or source of sustenance) as the saying goes. Right living, balanced living, true living is the prescription of Vedhaantha. The fair face of Vedhaantha has been disfigured by fanatics and false interpreters. They created confusion where clarity existed and so people lost faith in spiritual discipline itself. Vedhaantha is Love, the philosophical basis for that love. Love flow full and free, regardless of consequence, for, it is one's nature to love, to seek out the dry dreary wastes which love can water and make fertile.
Wherever
there is a vacuum, in any heart,
Love flows into it and is glad
that it can fill the emptiness. It
is never held back; it is offered
in abundance, without guile or
deceit; it does not wear the cloak
of falsehood, flattery or fear. Love ennobles the least and the lowest. Love your Self for the God that it embodies; love others, for the God that is enshrined in them, that speaks and acts through them. This is the bedrock on which you can build the mansion of happiness, this recognition of the Divine, that motivates you from within.
But, at the present time, people are content to listen to the praise of the Day and repeating what they have heard, to others, in parrot chatter. What really matters, however, is the experience of the bliss that it is designed to confer. Passion, agitation, anxiety - these degrade human nature. They are born out of hatred, greed, malice or envy, which love alone can counteract. People who visit India will notice the large concourses that attend temples, that partake in bhajans and Naamasankeerthan where the glory of God is sung with demonstrative enthusiasm that; mill around venerable personalities who preach and teach the ways of God, and they infer that this is a sacred land full of pious individuals, who tread the pilgrim path to Divinity. But, these are frequently hollow rituals, empty exercises, exhibitionistic picnics or hikes; the pilgrims are more interested in shopping, both in the temple and the bazaars, than in stopping the ungodly habits to which they are attached. They are unaware of the basic truth of God, nor are they anxious to earn that awareness, by the hard path of discipline.
If you simply group together, preparing and sharing Prasaadhams (eatables placed as offerings to God) on every conceivable occasion, or even singing and extolling God, your efforts are all in vain. Expand your hearts; enlarge your vision; enlarge the circle of kinship; take more and more of your fellow beings into the tabernacle of your hearts. And, adore them in loving worship. Wisdom is only compassion at its highest; for, through sympathy you enter the heart of another and understand the other person through and through, you go behind the veil of pretence and punditry, convention and custom; you go behind good manners and fashion that people put on to hide their agony and ignorance from the rest of the world. Finding the unity in this diversity of roles is true wisdom. It is not enough if you believe that God is everywhere and at all times, and that you are yourself no different from Him. When you are God yourself, to whom are you to surrender what? Think over this deeply and attain to that realisation. It is not enough if you have no hatred towards other beings. A wall has no hatred towards any being. But, is that the ideal? You must positively love all beings, actively love, actively engage yourself in acts of love. Treat the distressed, the diseased, the old, the helpless, the child with great respect, and intelligent consideration. Lead simple lives; do not develop an attraction for high life, gaudy outlandish dress and manners; invite the reverential attention of those who need service. Test every gesture, every mannerism, every whim of yours, on this touchstone Will this win the approval of Swami? When you recognise Swami as the dweller in your heart, you will walk on the path of self-knowledge, self-confidence, self-satisfaction and self-realisation. Try to assuage, as far as you can, the distress of others; it is the best saadhana for the aspirant. Human being walks with two legs: this world and the other, dharma and Brahaman, righteousness and God. If one is totally engrossed in this world, he/she is choosing to travel all his life with a handicap; hopping on one leg. Goodness in this world, Godliness for the life after death - equal attention to both, vigilance while taking a step, with either foot, these are essential for a happy journey through life. Uma's father, the Monarch of the Himalaayas, is said to have prayed to Shiva, "Vouchsafe to me the vision of a fraction of your Universal Self. How can I cognise through my senses and limited intelligence, the limitless?" Human can picture God as having Human Form. That is the way in which divinity can be grasped by human. Here and now, it is only as He, that God can be felt and experienced. God is not to be spoken of as Coming down or going up, since He is everywhere, available for your becoming aware of Him, through beauty, truth, goodness, strength, love or any one of the divine attributes.
Namaste - Reet Swami teaches.... (20 - 24 July 2005)Know and Realize Bases of Your Divine Status Human is not merely a creature thrown up by nature in the process of an evolutionary gamble. He has a special meaning, a special mission, a unique role. He is Divinity, encased in the human frame. Human being is a unit of Atmic unity, a child of immortality, set in the background of this mortal world, in this mortal flame. Human's mission is to merge in the God from whom humanity has emerged. Heaven is not a supra-terrestrial region of perpetual Spring; it is an inner experience, a state of supreme bliss. Humanity is a million-faced sparks of the Divine Force. Human being can delve, not only into the secrets of nature, but into own mystery and discover God, who is behind both Nature and him/herself. The clouds of conceit and ignorance hide from persons their destiny. Seeing difference is the bane of the undeveloped intellect. The One Sun is seen, adored, and acknowledged all over the world; you do not boast of an American Sun, an Ananthapur Sun... When you pay undue attention to differences, spasms of hatred, anger, malice and envy overwhelm you. Anger rushes blood to the brain; the temperature rises; the composition of the blood changes; toxins enter into it in such quantities that it injures the nerves, and make you old before your time. Desire to which you are too fondly attached breeds anger and its nefarious brood. The Aanandha that the Aathman can manifest will keep age and aging away. Have the Name of God on your tongue, in your breath, ever. That will evoke His Form, as the inner core of every thing, thought or turn of events. That will provide you with His company, contact with His unfailing energy and bliss. That is the Sathsanga (good association) that gives you maximum benefit. Converse with God who is in you; derive courage and consolation from Him. He is the Guru most interested in your progress. Words without experience is bound to be unconvincing; words that come from the depth of experience have the ring of sincerity which convinces. The experience of the Truth alone can foster Love; for, Truth is so all-embracing and integrating, that it sees no distinction. Through Truth, you can experience love; through love, you can visualise truth. Love God and you see God in every creature. Or you can start with the individual, and widen the circle of love, till it envelops all creation. Knowledge is said to be acquired when you pursue the analytical method and divide things, feelings, experiences into categories, pleasant and unpleasant, harmful and beneficial, lasting and temporary. The higher knowledge however unifies, it makes one aware of the one which appears as many, it reveals the truth, on which falsehood is superimposed. To discover this truth, the classic texts have laid down two codes of discipline, one external and the other internal. The outer is Nishkaama-karma (desireless activity) - activity that is engaged in as dedication and worship; or, activity that is gladly carried out, from a sense of duty, regardless of the benefit that may accrue, with no attachment to the fruits thereof. The inner is dhyaana (meditation on the splendour of which one is but a spark). Karma (activity) has to be regulated by dharma (righteousness) then it will lead one on to Brahman (the basic truth of the Universe, including oneself).
A clean uncontaminated mind is like a fully blossomed fragrant rose. It refreshes and pleases, whether it is on the wall or on the table, in the left hand or the right. But the evil mind stinks, and is avoided by kith and kin; it infects those who contact it. Waves move out from the mind in ever-widening circles and affect all those who draw near. Let your mind have no waves; let it be silent, level, calm, so that the Hamsa (the bird of purity with perfectly white plumes, the bird that can distinguish between right and wrong, accepting right and rejecting wrong, the bird that is the symbol of Soham alias the principle of the One, embracing I and the others). Let the mind dwell ever on God; let it see all as God. That is what is described as onepointedness. If it is so fixed, it will give up its tendency to search for faults and foibles in others; it will not run after the foul and the frivolous; it will not accumulate the trivial and the transient. Be careful that you do not cavil at another's faith. There is a road from each heart to the Source of all joy, namely, God. We all will come in our own good time, at our own pace, through our own inner urge, along the path God will reveal to us as our own. The Truth that is in all beings is also in you. Search for that; discover that unity; that source of courage, of love, of wisdom. Each name and form when it was adored was described as All-powerful, All-knowing. All-pervasive, etc, so that worshippers may be led through every door to the self-same entity that subsumes all. However, the shortsightedness of human won over this largehearted view; the Names and Forms were taken as essentially distinct and each became the centre of a sect, creed, with all its divisive consequences. Thus, we have a multitude of warring factions, each swearing by its own favourite Form and Name, to the exclusion of all the rest. The real harvest of Aanandha for which the spiritual operations of rites and manthras (sacred formulae) were gone through has been neglected, while the weeds of calumny, cynicism and conflict have grown wild over the fields. The evil influence of kaama (lust) is at the bottom of this tragedy. The Geetha laid down that even the Vedhas have to be transcended, whenever they seek to foster desires and cater to transient urges. It speaks in the same shloka that human must seek to become Aathmavaan (the possessor of soul) and the Aathmic (spiritual) strength. The Geetha asks you to be, not Balavaan (possessor of physical prowess), not Dhanavaan (possessor of a comfortable bank balance) but, Aathmavaan (having the prowess arising out of the awareness that you are the Aathman, which can remain unaffected by fame or shame, grief or joy and all the buffetings of the dualities of the world). It points the way to lasting happiness - never being concerned with the earning of happiness and the maintenance of happiness, but, just being oneself. Being established in the Aathman, never worried about how to be happy (for the Aathman is ever Blissful), this is the prescription of the Geetha. Nir-dhwandho (without paying attention to the dual throng of grief-joy, pain-pleasure, etc.), nithya-sathwastho (ever fixed in the quality of equity), nir-yogakshema (unaffected by considerations of security and welfare), Aathmavaan (established in Aathmic consciousness) that is how the Geetha lays down the path of liberation. The prescription to scrutinise always the purity of the means, and not worry about the acquisition of the fruit of the activity; and the description of yoga as the stoppage of all modifications of consciousness - both emphasise the same advice of the Lord. The regulation and restriction of the senses purify the intellect, which then can boldly and quickly investigate into the real nature of the subject-object relationship, the I-other relationship, and discovering that all is I (the One), attains peace, prashaanthi (unruffled peace).
A single seed of kaama
(desire) if it gets stuck in the
soil of the heart, is very
difficult to dislodge. Kaama can
be suppressed and mastered only by
Raama (attachment to God) and
prema (love for all beings,
prompting sacrifice of joys and
comfort for others). Without a
hold on Raama and prema, kaama
will upset your faith in standards
of morality and righteousness. It
will place before you all sorts of
specious arguments to overcome the
pangs of conscience and enslave
reason and sense of duty. In the life we meet many who desire that others must admire and applaud, and so, they do japam or sit in dhyaana, where many will be-seeing them. Theirs is not the attitude of indifference, which says, "I don't care what they say, or who sees me or who does not." Their innermost craving is for people to notice them and publicise their spiritual attainments. They are eager for audiences and spectators. However, saadhana is an activity, which will be vulgarised by public gaze. This is the reason for saadhakas (spiritual aspirants) retiring into lonely mountain caves, or into solitary temples in inaccessible regions of the Himalaayas, or in the depths of jungles. You need not imitate them; you can create enough privacy in your own home, screening off a portion of some room. There you can sink into yourself and discover the Inner Reality as the Reality of the Universe Itself. Concentration can be mastered in dhyaana (meditation) and this will lead to disinterestedness in the results of one's actions, for the actions are not one's own, but God's. The results too are not one's; they are God's. When you become detached from the fruits of your actions, though intent on action (offering to the Lord your skill and energy), then, you attain peace of mind, Prashaanthi. If you cultivate attachment to things of the world, and houses, bank balance and insignia of power, then, dhyaana fails.
By dhyaana you develop jnaana
(spiritual wisdom) and by japam
(recitation of God's Name) you
develop bhakthi (devotion) and by
both, you cleanse your heart of the
canker of ego. You can link
yourselves with God, by a chain of
love, through the recitation of the
name, in silence and with full
awareness of the meaning and its
nuances. Each Sai Raam, Hare
Krishna, Hare Raam, or Vitthal is a
link; the more the links the longer
the chain, the firmer the bond. But,
each link has to be well forged out
of well tempered steel. One false
link, that is to say, the Name once
uttered in sloth or slight,
indifference or anger, resentment or
rancour, will constitute a weak link
and the bond will not bind. The experiencer of the prema (love) is the inner I, which is the reflection of the real I, the Aathma (soul). When the senses are out of action, that I will shine in its full glory. The senses are one's deadly foes; for, they drag your attention away from the source of joy inside you, to objects outside you. When you are convinced that they are at the bottom of this conspiracy to mislead you, you will certainly stop catering to them. When you get (spiritual wisdom), Kaivalyam (divine status) draws towards you. Kaivalyam is the state in which the Divine is experienced as all-comprehensive, as Will, as Activity, as Bliss, as Intelligence, as Existence. You must suppress your thamas (ignorance), sublimate your rajas (passions) and cultivate sathwa (purity) in order to be established in Kaivalyam. You have come through thamas and rajas and you are now in the region of sathwa, as symbolised by the two gates through which you have come. Now, you must take the lesson of the symbol of the Flag of Prashaanthi (supreme peace) to heart. Be seated therein in concentrated meditative prayer, and open the petals of your heart through yoga, so that the Supreme illumination may be gained.
Many of you have come to witness the amazing evidence of Swami's Divine Power. But you must not waste time in idle confabulations about the nature of that power and the process of its manifestation. Experience it, and be thrilled by it, fill yourself with its amazing Mystery which is divinity.
However, without firm reliance on
the ever-present God, human
being cannot experience the presence
of the Divine Power and cannot have a
peace. In western countries now God is
denied, and person is relying on
himself; he/she exaggerates own
intelligence and sense of adventure
and prides him/herself on the advance
has made through science and
technology. Peace is fleeing from the
hearts of men and women; social
harmony is becoming a distant dream;
international concord is a mirage,
pursued by a few. Man travels to the
moon, but does not explore own inner
levels of consciousness, and
understanding them, cleanse them and
control them.
PS: The spelling is always as in original texts.
Namaste - Reet |