Swami teaches... 14 -16 December, 2005

The Individual is a Unit in God's Unity

The power of the physical body is like the fire in the cigarette tip while spiritual power is like the forest fire. Once you are advanced in spirituality even the association with evil persons may not affect you. (But, when you have not developed your spiritual power you should avoid bad company just as you spit out unpalatable food even at the first taste). How to develop the spiritual power? There are many ways, however, Swami indicates to the easiest, available to practice to all who have an inner call to this. However, nothing has obtained without serious work.

The criterion for true devotion is not proficiency in scriptures or routine performance of so-called spiritual practices, but the realization of the divinity in oneself as well as in all others which can be attained only through steadfast adherence to truth, purity of heart and universal love.

Learn to have single-pointedness. Through that concentration, it is possible to open the inner eye also, clear and complete, so that human may visualise God. By taking to repeating the Name of God and picturing in the mind the glory of God who has that Name, as well as a thousand others, slowly the cataract of the inner eye will disappear and, human can see the God who is in own innermost heart, installed in the altar therein. Resolve now to enter upon this sadhana (spiritual practise) from this moment onwards. To reach the Lord, intelligence, discrimination between the false and the true, the transitory and the eternal, the unreal and the real is very essential.

Gain internal peace, internal joy; that can be done only when you act without an eye on the gain. The act must be its own reward; or rather, the act must be according to the prompting of the God within, so that its consequence is left to Him. Practise this attitude consistently and you will find great Peace and Happiness welling within you and around you.

These qualities can sprout and grow only when the Reality of Unity is implanted in the consciousness. All living beings, are cells in the Body of God. Their origin, continued existence, and progress are all in God, by God, for God. The relationship with the Lord is described as developing from in the vicinity to nearness, and from Form of the master and then on to absorption into the Form. Upa-vaasa, the word for the vow of fasting, means "living in the proximity of God" (Upa-near; vaasa-living) and so, the vow is meant to liberate you from the worry and bother of preparing and eating food, so that you might dwell more intimately with God. Remember that the purpose of Fast is spending time in the contemplation of God and not simply punishing the body by cutting a meal or a series of meals.

Vows, vigils, fasts, etc. along with all kinds of voluntarily imposed or involuntarily suffered hardships are to be looked upon as promoting spiritual strength, not as weakening physical stamina. (They dig around the roots and make the plant grow fast. They clip the wayward twigs and make the tree tall and truly trim).

Be ever in the consciousness that you are but the shadow of God, His image. Then, no harm can hamper you. God walks along the royal road of truth; the shadow, holding on to Him by the feet, falls on hollow and hill, fire and water, dirt and dust. So, if you hold on the feet, you can be as unaffected as the shadow by the ups and downs of life.

Each person has three sources of power as an individual, as a child or limb of God and as a shrine where Atma is installed. Hanuman once told Rama, "When I feel I am this body You are my Lord; when I feel I am distinct soul, I know I am the reflection and You, the Original; when I know I am the Aathma, I know I am You and You are I."

About 400 years ago, there was a man by name Mansur in the city of Benaras. By virtue of his good samskaras (inherited tendencies) and his preceptor's teachings, he had developed firm faith in the Vedic dictum: "Aham Brahmasmi" (I am God). When people heard him always repeating this aphorism, they questioned him whether he was really God. He used to emphatically tell them thrice, "Yes, I am God." In course of time, he became the target of envy and hatred among the prominent men in Benaras, including Vedic scholars and heads of religious institutions. They went in a body to the King of Benaras and complained against

Mansur, saying that he had no knowledge of Sanskrith or scriptures but was going about shouting, "I am God," thereby insulting eminent scholars and pandits. The King summoned Mansur to his court and asked him, "Who are you?" Promptly came the reply, "I am God." The King got him examined by medical experts and found that he was not insane. Then the King advised him to give up saying "I am God," in view of the complaints from scholars. Mansur firmly refused to obey the King's command and declared that he would sooner give up his life than forswear his unshakable faith and firm conviction in his oneness with the Divine. He questioned the King boldly, "Why do you want me to give up truth? The truth is: I am God; you are God; everyone is God." As he did not change his attitude despite all kinds of persuasions and threats, the King ordered that his hands should be cut off for the offence of disobeying the King. As the King's minions held Mansur tightly and raised their gleaming swords to cut off his hands, Mansur went on boldly shouting aloud: "Aham Brahmasmi" unceasingly and smilingly. After severing both his hands, the executioners went to the King and reported that Mansur was fearlessly and smilingly repeating his declaration even after his hands had been cut off and he was bleeding profusely.

The King went to the scene of Mansur's ordeal and found that the place was reverberating with the sacred sound of "Aham Brahmasmi" coming unceasingly from the tongue of the smiling Mansur as well as from the blood flowing profusely on the ground from his hands. In a short while, Mansur fell down dead with a smiling and calm face and "Aham Brahmasmi" on his lips.

Praise and blame are the obverse and reverse of reaction to the great and the sublime. The cinema screen is not affected by the volcanic eruption pictured in the films or by the turbulent sea with mountain high waves. It is neither singed nor does it get wet. (The cinema screen is our Atmic nature).

The paradox of human behaviour is that, having the power of discrimination to identify good and bad, human is not able to get away from bad pursuits. This is due to the weakness of the human mind, which is in turn the result of anger, greed, desire, etc.

In fact, desire is all right as long as it is within reasonable limits. For example, if you feel thirsty, it is a reasonable desire to seek water to quench the thirst. (Not satisfied with water, if one seeks cool drinks it is tantamount to excessive desire).

There are three phases in the act of securing a desired object and enjoying happiness out of it. They are Priyam, Modham and Pramodham. Priyam is the desire to experience happiness from a particular object. Modham is the initial satisfaction derived from getting the desired object. Pramodham is the experience of Ananda or happiness out of the object. It is not enough if you get the object which you desired to have, but you should experience the joy of using it. (For example, you like to taste a mango fruit. The first phase is to buy it, the second is to hold it in hand (possessing it) and the third phase is to eat it. It is only while eating the mango that you derive the fulfilment of your desire).

We all are engaged in our own service. All the items of work are aimed at expanding our heart and purifying it. That is the call of the sages of India and all the scriptures and texts. Power and authority gather unto a person through the work, not through words and professions. Even God is known and adored by His works.

Action can inspire action. Example alone can instruct. Tall talk is, as a rule, a barren exercise. Service activities in all lands can thrive only through selfless dedication. Fanfare is a sign of insincerity. Silent, unsullied work alone can appeal.

You must help others, so that you may repay the service that you received. Do not look on, when you find some one in pain or grief. As far as possible, relieve the pain, console the grief-stricken. A person who works for wages, calculates the reward at so much per hour, receives the wages and quits. But, when one works as part of the worship, glad that one is given the chance to serve as long and as gladly as it possible, one derives maximum Ananda.

Today, we are confronted everywhere by statistics parading quantities and reports in glowing terms. Do not bother about adding to the number or achieving a target. Convince yourselves that life cannot continue long without others serving you and your serving others. Master-servant, ruler-ruled, guru-disciple, employer-employee, parents-children, all these are bound by mutual service. Every one is a sevak. The farmer and labourer whom you serve produce by their toil your food and clothing as their service to you. (Most people are not aware that time sanctified by service offers high rewards to themselves as well as those whom they serve).

It is true that all acts of service are not equally sanctifying or uniform in the benefits they confer. When service is undertaken by power-hungry people, or under compulsion or by imitative urges, it results in more harm than good. Self-aggrandizement or competition or ostentation are motives that will pollute the sacred sadhana of service. The candidate for this sadhana has to avoid Ahamkara (egotism), Adambara (exhibitionism) and Abhimana (favouritism).

Namaste - Reet

Swami asks to describe Him as a Teacher of Truth, as Sathyam (Truth), Shivam (Goodness) and Sundaram (Beauty). Humans reality too is Sathyam, Shivam and Sundaram. The effect of truth on the mind is goodness; the joy that flows from goodness is the genuine Beauty that artists love. The three are really one and indivisible. Experience this Truth; this Truth as Goodness and this Goodness as Beauty. That gives the highest Bliss. Let not lesser ones distract you. Go, straight on the royal road that leads to self-realisation, and don't stray into the bye-lanes of counterfeit bliss.

This does not mean that you have to give up kith and kin and foot it all alone. The community in which you find yourself is the arena where you can win the victory, the gymnasium where you develop the skill to win. The spiritual journey lies through compassion, sympathy, mutual help, and service, and these are fostered by society and are to be used for society.

If you love another person, you will not covet lordship over him; you will not covet his/her property; you will have no envy when he/she prospers, no joy when he/she suffers. Love is the strongest antidote for greed. Love persuades you to consider the distress of the other, whenever you are overcome by it. You are drawn to those who have equal ground for grief. You become engrossed in the sorrow of others and so forget your own.

Love is eternal. You are the embodiment of Love. You are the embodiment of Peace. You are the embodiment of Truth. You are the embodiment of God. It is only when this supreme truth is realised, and our life is based on it, that our love can make our life meaningful and enable us to comprehend the world. Your studies, your conduct, your actions, all that you see, hear and think - all these should be regarded as offerings to the Divine. This is the true meaning of taking refuge in the Divine. All that is seen, heard or experienced should be considered as intimations of the Divine.

How to obtain skill for that? All advices are in Swami's Teaching. When the heart is pure, the Lord resides therein and guides a devotee. Human's purity is manifesting when human relations are based on heart to heart and love to love. (Love today is based on desire for a return benefit. It is filled with fear and anxiety. Thus love is motivated. When love is based on a desire for transient and perishable objects, life will be futile).

One of the very first principles for devotee's straight living is: Practise silence. For the Voice of God can be heard in the region of your heart only when the tongue is stilled and the storm is stilled, and the waves are calm. Conserve sound, since it is the treasure of the element Akasha (space), an emanation from God Himself. Silence is the speech of the spiritual seeker.

The second sign is cleanliness: not outer cleanliness alone, but, even more, inner. In reality, the outer cleanliness is but the reflection of the inner achievement. There is a strange glow on the face of a guileless person.

The third sign is that the true devotee will have a reverent attitude to the duty he/she is bound with. He/she will carry out every task as if it is an act of worship by which the Lord will be pleased.

Swami compiles nine steps in the pilgrimage of devotee towards the Lord along the path of dedication and surrender. It is for devotee's own transformation and only after that devotee can to seed Swami's Cosmic Truth in the minds of people.

(1) Developing a desire to listen to the glory and grandeur of the handiwork of God and of the various awe-inspiring manifestations of Divinity. This is the starting point. It is by hearing about the Lord again and again, that we can transform ourselves into divinity.

(2) Singing to oneself about the Lord, in praise of His magnificence and manifold exploits.

(3) Dwelling on the Lord in the mind, revelling in the contemplation of His Beauty Majesty and Compassion.

(4) Entering upon the worship of the Lord, by concentrating on honouring the feet or foot-prints.

(5) This develops into a total propitiation of the Lord, and systematic ritualistic worship, in which the aspirant gets inner satisfaction and inspiration.

(6) The aspirant begins to see the favourite Form of God, which he likes to worship, in all beings and all objects, wherever he turns, and so, he develops an attitude of Vandhana (reverence) towards nature and all life.

(7) Established in this bent of mind, he becomes the devoted servant of all, with no sense of superiority or inferiority. That is the stage of service, which every person calling himself a social worker, or volunteer, or sevak has to reach. It is more fruitful than reciting the Name or counting beads, or spending hours in meditation, though one's service will be richer and more satisfying if done on the basis of spiritual discipline. This is a vital step, which presages great spiritual success. Service is Divine. Humility promotes charity and purity.

(8) This takes the seeker so near the Lord that he feels himself to be the confidant and comrade, the companion and friend, the sharer of God's power and mercy of God's triumphs and achievement,

(9) As can be inferred, this is the prelude to the final step of total surrender, yielding fully to the Will of the Lord which the seeker knows through his own purified intuition.

Human is an amalgam of body, mind and spirit. The senses of perception and action, which form the components of the body, are busy contacting the objective world. The mind - consciousness of the various levels, the faculty of reason and the ego - examines, experiences and judges. It decides after discrimination, which word or deed will be beneficial, favourable, fruitful and felicitous. It attempts to separate the good from the bad, the virtuous deed from the sinful action, the true from the false, the permanent from the momentary. But the Spirit or the Self or the Atma is unaffected, stable and foundational.

The feeling 'I' has to be retained until it is submerged in the 'We' and finally in 'He' from whom it was projected at His Will.This is an arduous process, which requires a long journey through compassion, renunciation, rectitude, fortitude and patience. These are the five vital airs which purposeful living needs. All these are subsumed under the word, 'dhama' (control of senses), in the scriptures. These five are the counterparts of Truth, Righteousness, Peace, Love and Non-violence implies more than the correct reporting of what was seen. It involves the coordination of thought, word and deed and the recognition of the Eternal Witness of all three.

Dharma (right action) is the code of morals that upholds and uplifts human and society. It is the superstructure on Truth. It serves the needs of the time, the society and the goal and is therefore subject to modification. The Dharma of the 'student' is different from that of the 'master of the family' and from the Dharma of the renunciant and the monk. But, through all the stages of life, the Truth, the unchanging Witness persists. Accept Budhi (intellect) as the charioteer, then, the practice of Dharma will lead to success.

Do not treat human values as a separate curricular assignment. Then, it will become dry and uninspiring. It must transform the way of life and should not stop with imparting information. It must be imparted more through example and practice rather than by books and formal teaching.

If human behaviour has no such basis, it leads to disaster. Human has dehumanised systematically by neglect of the basic Unity. From slings to arrows, from cannon balls to bombs, from fusion to fission, human has progressed in the art of killing and entered the Darkest Age of history. The greed for wealth and power has overwhelmed the creed of compassion. The law of self-aggrandizement reigns; the law of self-abnegation has receded. When the son is acclaimed as a good fellow, the father congratulates himself; when he is ostracised as a bad fellow, the father condemns others for leading him astray.

The Hindus have been praying since ages for the peace and prosperity of all the worlds. The Vedic seers prayed for the peace and happiness of all mankind, of all animate and inanimate things. Cultivate that Universal vision. Their conception of the Immanence of God is strong and unshakeable. The rituals, ceremonies, vows and rites prescribed in, Hinduism, are all directed to the promotion and well-being of all the worlds.This is the reason why Hinduism is still alive and active.

Since several centuries and millennia, yajnas (Vedhc rite or sacrifice) have been observed in India for the welfare of the world. These yajnas are not performed to benefit an individual, a family, a sect, a caste or those who follow a particular faith. The aim is universal and the beneficiaries are all living beings, for such yajnas calm the elements and propitiate the deities presiding over the earth, water, fire, wind and sky.

Among yajnas, there are two types - the outer and the inner, the outer being a reflection of the inner. The inner yajna is the bird in the hand; the outer, the bird in the bush. But since the sanctified vision and urge are absent today, what is happening is the release of the bird in the hand with the attempt to catch the bird in the bush. The value and significance of the inner yajna have to be understood first. It involves awareness of the Divinity that is dormant but decisive in the very centre of our Reality. Worship It, propitiate It, please It, become It.

The ancient sages, after performing severe penances and making profound enquiries, realised and declared how unique is the human birth. They have known that there is a Supreme Purusha who is effulgent like the Sun and who transcends darkness. The sages drew the inference that the beginning and the end are One, which is the Divine. They declared that this One is the seed of the Cosmos. No seed exists without husk. Because the grain is covered by husk its parts are not visible to us. For the cosmos, Prakrithi (Nature) is the husk. The seed of divinity is within it (and enveloped by it).

Who is it that has created the five elements, the five life-breaths, the five sheaths, the five external sense organs and the five internal sense organs, which are all ceaselessly carrying on their functions according to their prescribed roles. The seasons in their regular cycle are teaching a good lesson to human. Therefore Nature is the demonstrable proof for the existence of God. Nature is not under any obligation to any human, it takes no orders from any human, it operates according to the will of the Divine.

Human is deriving innumerable debt from Nature, and enjoying the amenities provided by Nature in various ways. But what is the gratitude he is showing to Nature? What gratitude is he offering to the Divine? He is forgetting the Divine who is the provider of everything. That is the reason for his becoming a prey to various difficulties and calamities. While human is receiving countless gifts from Providence, he/she is offering nothing in return to Nature or God. This shows how unnatural and heartless is the behaviour of human being. When we are enjoined to return good for evil, how unbecoming it is to fail even to return good for good? Human is not learning the great lessons Nature.

The artificial instruments produced by human function for a time and then become useless. Scientists today have launched many satellites in space. Sooner or later they cease to function and drop away. No one exactly knows how, when and in what circumstances the planets in nature were created but they have been going round in space ceaselessly and unfailingly for billions of years. Many of the missiles and space instruments produced by scientists are for destructive purposes.

What is the reason for this? The Ego is the cause. The sense of egoism and conceit arising from it is the root cause of the destructive tendencies in human. How long can it last? In a mere fit of sneezing, life may leave this body. What meaning is there in regarding it as permanent?

Let no one be proud about his beauty, strength and youth. The ravages of old age are ahead and will overwhelm him. Even while you feel puffed up by your strength and energy as a youth, age creeps on you irrevocably. Everything is subject to change and decay in this world. Whether it be physical objects or individuals, all are transient and impermanent. Only your purity is permanent. Purity is the essential nature of human.