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This website is devoted to Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality and Science. We bring in articles on teachings by Great Saints like Sri Shirdi Sai Baba, Adi Shankara, Swami Sivananda, Swami Krishnananda, Aurobindo, Mother of Auroville and others.
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The Wonderful News of Non-duality
Spiritual Message for the Day – The Wonderful News of Non-duality by Sri Swami Chidananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 24 August 2015 22.28 EST | New York Edition** |
The Wonderful News of Non-duality
Divine Life Society Publication: Early Morning Meditation Talk by Sri Swami Chidananda
Worshipful homage to the one, non-dual, transcendental Universal Spirit! That Spirit is at once omnipresent as well as invisible, in that Its essential nature is far subtler than the subtlest faculty that we human beings possess in our human personality. It is beyond the reach of the senses, mind and intellect. Therefore, being ever-present, all around us and within us, yet we fail to perceive It directly or experience It within us as an indwelling presence or all about us as an all-pervading presence.
But there is something we should not miss in the truth about the Supreme Reality. This truth about the Supreme Reality has been proclaimed by our ancient ancestors, who after directly experiencing the Absolute declared to us the truth that the Supreme Reality is one and non-dual. That alone exists. No other thing besides It exists.
This wonderful truth that they proclaimed, as a result of their living experience of the Reality, has an extraordinary value for us. It makes it clear that That, being the sole thing existing, It must then not only be the subtlest of the subtle, but also the grossest of the gross. Therefore it is not only beyond the reach of the mind and the intellect and the rational processes, but it is also directly perceivable through our senses.
Whatever you behold, you behold nothing but God. In the stone, in the tree, in the mineral, in the metal, in the grossest thing conceivable He is there as itself, as that itself. He has taken all names and forms. Nothing exists other than Him. Whatever you see, hear, taste, touch, smell, whatever you perceive, you are perceiving only God, including all gross outer things.
The question therefore changes. The question is no longer, how can we see Him? The question is, how on earth can we fail to see Him when everything that exists is nothing but that one Being in multifarious shapes, names, forms? Even if you want to, you cannot miss Him. Even if you say, I will not perceive Him at all, and close all your senses, there He is within the inwardness of your being. Because, He is within and without.
You cannot say that I will wear a cotton cloth, but I shall not have anything to do with the warp and woof, the horizontal and vertical threads, of the cloth. The cloth and the warp and woof are one and the same. They are inseparable. Our statement would be laughed at. Our statement would be absurd.
When you behold the universe, you behold God. When you are dealing with the universe, you are dealing with God. Being one without a second, He is not only the subtlest of the subtle, He is the grossest of the gross. He is everything. His absolute non-duality means this. Therefore, no matter what we are encountering, we are encountering God.
For days together it has been raining. It has been raining non-stop. Torrential rains slanting in this direction and then that direction, coming under the doors and through the windows. But did it ever occur to you that this rain which is swelling all the little mountain streams all over our northern Garhwal region, and which is coming from all different directions, eventually joins the Ganga and flows towards the ocean?
In this manner, if all the various data of perception that comes as input into our interior is looked at from the unified angle of there being nothing but one Brahman manifesting in multifarious names, forms, colours, shapes, appearances, then no matter how much comes from what direction, it only takes us towards that one unified thought: “This is God. This is God. God is appearing before me in this form, this form, this form—all around me—through all my senses. I am surrounded by that one element alone. There is no diversity. This is only unity. It is God sporting in these innumerable names and forms. It is God alone coming into me through all the five senses—sights and sounds, everything.
If you keep on firmly rooting yourself in this one truth proclaimed by our sages in ancient times, if you become completely established in this one idea, one truth, then diversity ceases to be diversity for you. There is only One, and all these things flow only in one direction because That alone exists. Our entire life becomes an unceasing Godward flow, a Reality-oriented onward flow.
May thus the truth proclaimed by our ancients help us to see that, in fact, in truth, we are all the time experiencing God and God alone. May this truth make our entire life and all its movements a concerted and unified total flow towards that great Reality—always in God-thought, never in any other thought, always remembering, always in a state of awareness of God and God alone.
This, therefore, is the living of the truth. This, therefore, is a Reality-oriented movement of our life-stream. This we must very clearly see and thus live in awareness of this inner meaning of our life. Then God is not a sometime-to-be-experienced Being, God becomes an ever-experienced reality without any barrier of time and distance between you and God. It is only a manner of speaking about it in human language. You and God are ever in a state of unity.
May the awareness of this truth be a gift that we ask of the Supreme Being. May this awareness be the only thing that we seek from revered and beloved Holy Master. It is said that what you ask will be given to you, what you seek you will find without fail. Therefore, asking and seeking for this ever-present experience, may we be blessed by Its bestowal upon us by the Supreme Being and the Holy Master. May God bless us all!
Excerpts from: The Wonderful News of Non-duality – Early Morning Meditation Talk by Sri Swami Chidananda
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Aparokshanubhuti
Spiritual Message for the Day - Aparokshanubhuti by Sri Swami Chidananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 23 August 2015 20.57 EST | New York Edition** |
Aparokshanubhuti
Divine Life Society Publication: Essentials of The Higher Values of Life by Sri Swami Chidananda
What does the direct Experience mean? All the knowledge a human individual gathers in this material world is through the perception of senses. If you have a good hearing faculty you gather knowledge through all kinds of sounds; you can distinguish all types of sound, all types of speech, words, etc. Similarly, if you have a perfect faculty of seeing, your cognition of the entire world is through sight. In the same way, you are able to perceive heat and cold, soft and hard through the sense of touch. Similarly you perceive the world through the sense of smell and the sense of taste. So, whatsoever you know about the world right from the birth onwards, is through the five senses of seeing, hearing, touching, smell and taste in the form of roopa, shabda, sparsha, gandha and rasa. (Appearance, speech, touch, smell and taste) These are the five dimensions of your cognition. These are five types of experiences through which you perceive the whole world and acquire all the knowledge. So this is indirect knowledge, it comes through one of the senses or a combination of them. If any one of these senses is absent, that part of perception is absent. A person born blind has no perception of colour, form and appearance. That aspect of the world does not exist for him at all.
In direct Knowledge the senses play no role. Aparokshanubhuti, the direct Knowledge arises only when the senses are completely still. The senses are useless for direct Knowledge. As a matter of fact the senses are the main obstacle in direct Knowledge, they come in the way of the direct Knowledge. It arises without the medium of these senses, when the senses are totally still, the mind is desireless and when the seeker enters a very subtle state of higher consciousness. One just experiences in the depth of one’s own consciousness, one’s own real Self, transcending the material world and its cognition. That is the direct Experience. That is the Aparokshanubhuti.
In some wondrous era in our ancient history, the seers had the great Experience and came face to face with the Truth, came face to face with the Ultimate Reality. The moment they entered into the direct Experience, they were amazed, they were struck-dumb; because, there was a total transformation of their whole consciousness and they became filled with the Light. The darkness of ignorance vanished instantaneously, all doubts, all questions vanished forthwith. They experienced the total Knowledge; everything became clear straightway; no more any questions, any doubts, remained. That Knowledge is known as Brahma-jnana and the knower is known as a jnani. Thus, whatever is to be known became known to them. The origin and the source of the universe and the man, also became known to them. They became the very embodiment, the very personification of Knowledge itself.
Excerpts from: Aparokshanubhuti - Essentials of The Higher Values of Life by Sri Swami Chidananda
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The Tumult of the Senses Vs. The Music of the Soul
Spiritual Message for the Day – The Tumult of the Senses Vs. The Music of the Soul by Sri Swami Chidananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 22 August 2015 20.54 EST | New York Edition** |
The Tumult of the Senses Vs. The Music of the Soul
Divine Life Society Publication: The Path Beyond Sorrow by Sri Swami Chidananda
It is peace of mind which is the condition prerequisite for the experience of true happiness. Is that not more important than the removal of a little restlessness and craving, a little agitation caused by desire? Which is the more important? You may say: “If desires come, we have to satisfy them. That is the way to remove them and that is the way to get pleasures”. So saying, you remove the ‘fly’ of desire rather than protect the ‘grandmother’ of true peace of mind by which alone you can find happiness. Real happiness comes out of peace. When the mind is tranquil and serene, peace, bliss wells up from within you. You do not have to manufacture happiness, for it does not lie outside of you. Happiness is not in changeful, perishable objects which are merely material. True happiness is right here where you are sitting. You are yourself happiness. Happiness is your essential nature. That aspect of your being which completely transcends your sense nature and your mental desire-nature—that third aspect of your true being, your real nature, is, in one word, bliss—pure bliss. If you want me to define what you are, I say you are pure, unalloyed, absolute bliss. That is the stuff of the soul. The soul is bliss; it is ecstasy, peerless joy. Even as this table is made of wood, even as your very clothes are made of wool or cotton, even as the very stuff of candy is sugar—the very stuff and fabric of your true nature, the true “I” deep within you, in the very centre of your consciousness, that is bliss. You are your Self, the Atma. You are Spirit, a never-ending, perennial fountain of spontaneous, self-existent joy and happiness. You are not this body and mind and intellect.
The East views the individual being in a totally different light from the West. The West says, “Man is an animal endowed with a superior faculty called intelligence”. The East says, “Man is a glorious, ever-perfect spiritual entity, full of light, full of bliss, and possessing an inferior faculty called intelligence or mind which is his servant, which is his instrument”. Mind is but the medium that God has given you so that the joy, the beauty and perfection of your Self may be expressed, unfolded, made manifest upon this earth-plane, but you have made a travesty of your life. The normal human being lives a life of prostitution, by which I mean, he totally forgets and neglects his glorious spiritual nature and prostitutes all his energies in satisfying the animal within him. The pattern of his whole life is just a constant effort to satisfy the sensual urges of the animal within him. Nice things to collect, nice things to wear, nice things to see, nice things to enjoy—pleasure, pleasure, pleasure—and happiness is destroyed, as it were, in a constant round of pleasures. There is so much noise through the tumult of the senses that the music of the soul, though it is always there, just gets killed completely.
The great joy of my message to you is: nothing can destroy this happiness, because it is imperishable. In your true nature you are indestructible, you are imperishable. So, the joy that you are is also imperishable, indestructible; nothing can touch it. No sorrow can penetrate that exalted realm where you dwell as pure bliss, right within the very centre of your being, the innermost core of your consciousness where dwells the true “I”.
Excerpts from: The Tumult of the Senses Vs. The Music of the Soul - The Path Beyond Sorrow by Sri Swami Chidananda
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Every Action is a Total Action
Spiritual Message for the Day – Every Action is a Total Action by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 21 August 2015 12.28 EST | New York Edition** |
Every Action is a Total Action
Divine Life Society Publication: The Universality of Being by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Every action is a total action. Nobody does anything anywhere, and anybody who thinks that he or she is doing something is a fool because somebody else is operating in a total fashion at the back of this so-called individuality.
“Everything has been done by Me,” Lord Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita. “I have already done what you are trying to do now.”
Here again is the question of relativity. Even before the Mahabharata war took place, Lord Krishna said, “I have already destroyed these people.”
“How is it possible, why they are still here?” asked Arjuna.
“The war has yet to take place, but I have already destroyed them. The very root of these warriors’ existence in another space-time was plucked out by the universal power, and they exist only as phantoms, pantomimes. Your attacking them in war is only an instrument of action. They do not exist, really speaking. I have already withdrawn their souls. The whole Mahabharata war is only a pantomime show. Actually, nothing is happening. I have done everything,” Lord Krishna replied.
This is the Ultimate Reality speaking to everyone involved in space and time. Here is the Bhagavadgita. Nobody reads the Bhagavadgita with this kind of insight. They go on chanting it again and again, but why has the Lord said that? He says that something that has not taken place as yet has already been done.
This is the foundation through which you have to operate your mind. After hearing this, you cannot get attached to anything. The very word ‘attached’ will look like a foolish description because that to which you are attached exists only because of your relation to yourself, and the meaning that you see in the object to which you are attached is due to your existing in one particular form. Unless both are there, parallelly acting, one action cannot take place in respect of another. Neither can you love a thing nor hate a thing unless there is an action and reaction between both on a common level.
The perception of this or that in any manner whatsoever is an interaction taking place, and actually it is not your work. Therefore, you can possess nothing in this world. There is bereavement everywhere. You lose everything. Whoever has possessed anything will lose it one day or the other. Whoever was born will also die. The whole misery of life is due to the wrong belief that there are permanent things, solidly existing like a stone wall. There are no stone walls here. They are all like mist appearing as a pillar, which will melt into nothing by the rise of the sun of knowledge.
This is a great subject for meditation, and cannot be forgotten by anyone. If you miss the import of what I have told you, you have missed the entire meaning of life. You may be busy in your own way, but do not be so busy that you do not know the reason why you are busy. Highly penetrating understanding coupled with true dispassion must be behind it. You do japa any number of times, but nothing will come out of it because the foundation itself is wrong. You think you are doing japa or achieving something else, but neither are you doing anything nor are you achieving something else. It is a total action taking place by the operation of space and time, of which you have no knowledge because, as I mentioned, you are in a concentration camp and are completely controlled by forces which you cannot know because you yourself are subject to these operations. You are brainwashed totally, which is why you cannot understand anything, and if you do all this activity, all this work, service and meditation with a confused mind, it will bring a confused result.
That is why it is insisted that before you start anything, you must have a clear understanding, viveka. Viveka means clear understanding of the nature of things—the capacity to discriminate between what is really there and what is not there. If this is known, if this story has enlightened you, you will know that you cannot have any kind of inward longing for anything in this world. Vairagya automatically follows, as sunlight is automatically followed by the departure of the darkness of night. Detachment and desirelessness need not be exercised with effort; they automatically go when the structure of the whole universe is understood. Therefore, viveka and vairagya are considered to be primary qualifications. They are not two things, just as space and time are not two things. They are one only. This is rational conviction, which consists of the illumined perception of things through viveka and an automatic detachment from all conditions which cause attachment.
Your feelings, longings, and the operation of your emotions should be harmonised with what you have concluded by your reasoning and understanding. Then this combination of reason and feeling, like a chemical action of two substances, bursts forth into what is called intuition. Intuition is nothing but the blend of understanding and emotion. When they are two different operations, you can neither know what you are doing through emotion, nor can you know what you are thinking. On both sides you are making mistakes. When they are blended together into a coherent totality, there is a bursting of the intuition directly into the nature of things.
Who likes to be in bondage? If you have intense longing for liberation, you have done your duty. That longing itself will take you to moksha.
Excerpts from: Every Action is a Total Action - The Universality of Being by Sri Swami Krishnananda
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Self-Realisation
Spiritual Message for the Day – Self-Realisation by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 20 August 2015 16.43 EST | New York Edition** |
Self-Realisation
Divine Life Society Publication: Self-Realisation, Its Meaning and Method by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Self-Realisation is not an easy thing to achieve, because the notion of the Self is a barrier and a handicap. What do you mean by the Self when you speak of Self-Realisation? Where is this Self situated? “It is within me.” This is a usual glib answer available for any person.
“I seek to know my own Self.” And why do I seek to know my own Self? Because I want to live in peace. What do you mean by peace? No answer can be given. Here, again, we are in a state of confusion.
Why do you want Self-Realisation? To know my own Self. Why do you want to know your own Self? To be in a state of balance in my mind and outlook. What for is this effort? To be peaceful. What is peace? That cannot be answered. We do not know what this peace means, about which people talk so much and which is the theme of the various rostrums in the parliaments of cultural discussion the world over, which are taking place from Peru to China!
But, what is this Self? While you may say, ‘it is within me,’ and this may appear to satisfy the person who has put this question, you will be sure that it does not satisfy even your own selves. There is no use merely saying ‘the Self is within me and that is my God.’ We have a curious notion of Self and God, indeed. It is within you!
When you say, ‘the Self is within me,’ what do you mean by this ‘me’? What is this ‘me’ or the ‘I’? Again, the same question arises. Here, again, we are bodily shackled. We are men and women, we are human, and we cannot be anything else. So this ‘within’ in which the Self seems to be situated is the ‘within’ ‘this body.’
You have confined the notion of yourself to your bodily existence finally, though your intention is to break through the barriers of bodily consciousness in search for the Self. The thief has subtly entered through the back door, while you are keeping police and army at the front door to prevent an entry of the dacoits. They have come through the back door and they have done their work, because the Self which is supposed to be the means to break through the barriers of bodily consciousness has confined itself to the body only, again, for, when the Self is within, it cannot be but within the body. If it is not within the body, within what is it, when you say that it is within? Here is a difficulty before you. Many of the books will not answer this pose. If God is not within, where else is God? And if you say that He is within, within what? Within the body? You are caught again by the very answer that you are giving, which is supposed to be the solution to your problems.
Where is this Atman? What is Self-Realisation? How would I conceive It? And, finally, what for is this Self-Realisation?
We need not be carried away by the complacence common to people that everything is clear to our minds. We will find that while everything seems to be clear now, when we proceed further and further, we will find it gets blurred more and more, until we see an iron hill in front of us, a mountain, a dark curtain which we will not be able to pierce, because the egoism of the individual is already there, which told that everything is clear. Humility is the hallmark of the spiritual seeker, and the guidance of a master is essential.
Excerpts from: Self-Realisation - Self-Realisation, Its Meaning and Method by Sri Swami Krishnananda
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Knowledge
Spiritual Message for the Day – Knowledge by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 19 August 2015 19.39 EST | New York Edition** |
Knowledge
Divine Life Society Publication: The Mundaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Real Knowledge does not consist in the mastery of cartloads of mere verbiage, but in the immediate experience of the Self. Without this Self-Knowledge, it is futile to try to know anything else! Man’s knowledge of an object is clouded by the ignorance that shrouds his own Self; and minus this unifying force of Self-Knowledge, all knowledge is reduced to mere conjecture and, therefore, it is arbitrary. Knowledge of the Self instantly means true knowledge of everything.
How is this Knowledge to be attained? While yet engaged in the performance of his daily duties, the aspirant should carefully and minutely analyse the nature of the world, and grasp the transience of all objects. If everything is transient, what, then, is Eternal and, therefore, worth aspiring for? This question cannot be answered by the aspirants’ intellect, for the intellect itself is a finite and frail instrument and one amongst the transient objects in this evanescent world. But the emergence in the aspirants’ mind of such a Query is itself the signal that the heart-strands that bound him to Samsara have got loosened, and that with the sword of Jnana he can easily cut them asunder. This sword is in the Guru’s sheath and has to be acquired by direct personal initiation. In the Guru’s holy presence, the disciple’s intellect ceases to function. Like the gushing waters of a mountain torrent, when the obstructing dam is broken, Divine Wisdom floods the heart of the aspirant: he knows. He realises that in essence he is that Knowledge Itself! That is the Supreme Knowledge in which the distinction between knowledge, the knower and the known vanishes.
Excerpts from: Knowledge - The Mundaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda
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Stillness
Spiritual Message for the Day – Stillness by Sri Swami Premananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 18 August 2015 13.42 EST | New York Edition** |
Stillness
Divine Life Society Publication: Meditation and Its Utility in Daily Life by Sri Swami Premananda
Om Sri Sadguru Paramatmane Namah
Modern man is unfortunately plagued by a nervous tension that makes it almost impossible for him to be quiet. If he actually wants to learn to pray he must first learn to be still, to quieten himself. In fact, this very quietness and stillness frequently becomes prayer when God manifests Himself in the form of STILLNESS.
Repeat the exercise of becoming aware of sensations in your body_—whole body. This time start with the top of your head and end it with the tips of your toes, omitting no part_ of the body. Beware of every sensation in each part…. You may find some parts of your body completely devoid of sensation…. Dwell on these for a few seconds—if no sensation emerges, move on……
As you become more proficient in this exercise you will, hopefully, sharpen your awareness to the extent that there will be no part of your body in which you do not feel several sensations…. For the time being you must be content to dwell briefly on the blanks and move on to the parts where you feel more sensations—Move slowly from head to foot…. then once again, from head to foot….. and so on for some fifteen minutes. As your awareness sharpens you will pick up sensations that you hadn’t noticed before…. you may also pick up sensations that are extremely subtle, too subtle to be perceived by any but a man of deep as a whole. Feel the whole of your body as one mass of concentration and deep peace. Now become aware of yours body as a whole. Feel the whole of your body as one mass of various types of sensations…. Stay with this for a while, then return to the awareness by parts, moving from head to foot…. then, once again, rest in the awareness of your body as a whole……
Notice now the deep stillness that has come over you. Notice the complete stillness of your body…. Do Not, however, rest in the stillness to the extent of losing awareness of your body…. If you are getting distracted, give yourself the occupation of moving once again from head to foot, becoming aware of sensations in each part of your body. Then, once again, notice the stillness in your body. If you are practising this in a group, then at occasions, notice the stillness in the whole room.
It is very important that you do NOT move any part of your body while doing this Sadhana. This will be difficult at first, but each time feel the urge to move, or scratch, or fidget, become aware of this as sharply as you can…. Don’t give in to it…. It will gradually go away and you will become still once more……..
It is extremely painful for most people to stay still. Even physically painful and you become physically tense, spend all the time you need becoming aware of the tension…. where you feel it, what it feels like…. and stay with it till the tension disappears.
You may feel physical pain, rather severe pain. No matter how comfortable the position or posture you have adopted, your body is likely to protest against the stillness by developing aches and pains in various parts. When this happens, a serious Sadhaka MUST RESIST the temptation to move limbs or read just posture so as to ease the pain. Just become keenly aware of the pain.
Your awareness may wholly be absorbed by the acute pain. You may start sweating, may be profusely. Your mind may think that you are going to faint with pain; at such moment firmly decide Not to fight it, Not to run away from it, Not to desire to alleviate it, but to become aware of it, to identify with it. Then you may see that the pain sensation is broken into its component parts and you may be surprised to discover that it is composed of many sensations viz., intense burning sensation a pulling and tugging, a sharp, shooting sensation which may merge every now and then…. and a point which may keep moving from one place to another…. This point you may identify as pain…. as you will keep up this exercise, you shall find that you are bearing the pain quite well—i.e., pain without suffering.
Every Sadhaka has to experience some types of pains, as indicated above, until his body becomes accustomed to remaining perfectly still. Deal with the pain through awareness. When your body finally does become still, you will have a rich reward in the QUIET BLISS that this stillness will bring you. The temptation to scratch is another frequent temptation with beginners. This is because, as their awareness of their body sensations sharpens, they become aware of itching and pricking sensations that were there all along but were hidden to awareness because of the psycho-physical hardening that most of us submit our bodies to and because of the grossness of their awareness. A Sadhaka must resist such temptations during awareness Sadhana.
Excerpts from: Stillness - Meditation and Its Utility in Daily Life by Sri Swami Premananda
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The Pure Consciousness and Freedom of Thoughts
Spiritual Message for the Day – The Pure Consciousness and Freedom of Thoughts by Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 17 August 2015 20.47 EST | New York Edition** |
The Pure Consciousness and Freedom of Thoughts
Divine Life Society Publication: Thought Power by Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda
Om Sri Sadguru Paramatmane Namah
Through constant and intense practice of Yoga and Jnana Sadhana, you can become waveless, thought-free. The waveless Yogi helps the world more than the man on the platform. Ordinary people can hardly grasp this point. When you are waveless you actually permeate and pervade every atom of the universe, purify and elevate the whole world.
The names of waveless Jnanis such as Jada Bharata and Vamadeva are even now remembered. They never published books. They never made disciples. Yet, what a tremendous influence these waveless Jnanis had produced on the minds of the people!
You can attain Jnana only if you are free from sensuous desires and immoral mental states. Aloofness of body from sensuous objects and aloofness of mind from immoral states of mind are needed for the attainment of Jnana. Then only will Divine Light descend. Just as a bungalow is cleaned of cobwebs and the garden, of all its weeds for the reception of the viceroy, the mental palace should be cleansed of all vices, desires and immoral states for the reception of the Holy Brahman, the Viceroy of viceroys.
When a desire arises in the mind, a worldling welcomes it and tries to fulfil it; but an aspirant renounces it immediately through Viveka. Wise people consider even spark of desire as a very great evil. Therefore they will not entertain any kind of desire. They will be ever delightful in Atman only.
Thinking starts the process of creation. Thinking means externalization or objectification. Thinking means differentiation, quality and multiplicity. Thinking is Samsara. Thinking causes identification with the body. Thinking causes ‘I-ness’ and ‘mine-ness’.
Thinking causes time, space, etc. Stop this thinking through Vairagya and Abhyasa, and merge yourself in the Pure Consciousness. Where there is no thinking or Sankalpa, there is Absolution or Jivanmukti.
Excerpts from: The Pure Consciousness and Freedom of Thoughts - Thought Power by Gurudev Sri Swami Sivananda
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Modern Man In Search Of A Soul
Spiritual Message for the Day – Modern Man In Search Of A Soul by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 16 August 2015 19.53 EST | New York Edition** |
Modern Man In Search Of A Soul
Divine Life Society Publication: Modern Man In Search Of A Soul by Sri Swami Krishnananda
I was told that there was a doubt in the minds of some people whether there is a soul for which man is searching, or there is only the soul. This difficulty, this question also arises due to a misunderstanding of the very meaning of the soul itself. Though there are hints in the great scriptures as to what all this means, we do not have that intellectual calibre to go into the depths of the implications of these scriptures, much less the time to study them.
What is man searching for? All of us are well-educated, cultured persons with time enough to think deeply over this matter. We cannot say that we are searching for money and status merely, though it may be one of the things that we are searching for. We have seen learned people who are not happy. We have seen very rich people who can burn money but are unhappy in many, many ways. Potentates, politically powerful, ruling a large dominion are terribly insecure day in and day out; they have no peace of mind. There is something that everyone is missing, whatever be the acquisitions of a person physically, materially, economically, politically. Something is missing which keeps us anxious all the while. A very rich man is always anxious about something. He does not rest quietly, thinking: “Everything is fine, like milk and honey. Let me sleep.” No rich man will sleep like that; he is worse off than a poor man as far as anxiety is concerned. Similarly, every person with any kind of acquisition is insecure for various reasons. A healthy man is insecure that he may fall sick and cannot be eternally healthy.
So, there is a lacunae, unintelligibly though, felt by each person, and one would like to search for an answer to this insecurity, this restlessness, and this elusive character of that which one is searching for in life. No one seems to have got what he wanted in this life. When the time comes for us to leave this world, it appears very few will go with the satisfaction that they have got what they wanted. There was always something receding, like the horizon, and not permitting the grasp of the human being—psychically, intellectually, mentally, much less physically. We cannot know so easily what we have lost. We may concede that there is some terrible lacunae in our life, and we are hollow, a vacuum, empty inside in some mysterious way in spite of our material possessions and social status.
Perhaps every one of us may be aware there is something lacking, but it is not easy for us to know what it is. We go on experimenting with various circumstances. “Perhaps I lack material wealth.” We struggle, experiment with it and get something, and find that it is not the thing that we wanted. We go on searching in various ways for other things such as power, authority and doership, and we find that we are not really seeking them, and they are not at all what we expected. We have been experimenting with the location of something which we have lost in the various persons and things of the world, and to our consternation we have realised, and some of us are yet to realise, that these locations—call them persons, things, events, circumstances, situations—are not the spots in which we can discover that eluding something which we seem to have lost.
This mysterious, eluding something which cannot be confined to the body of an individual is what we very glibly define as the soul. We may touch our chest and say, “My soul, my conscience, my Atman speaks.” This Atman, this little thing we are indicating within the location of this physical body, is not what we are seeking—though it is present there also—because it is an influence, it is a force, it is to some people something like an abstraction; and yet we will find that all life finally is an abstraction. Our life is an abstraction; it is not a concrete thing. We are not living a concrete life. For instance, when we touch money, we are not touching a substance but are touching a value, a conceptual evaluation which is in the head and not in the hands.
So are we living in a physical world, really speaking? Or are we living in a world of concepts, ideas, notions, evaluations and aspirations? Do we believe that this is a physical world? We are seeing a table, we are seeing trees, this building, and the world is there so hard and solid; how do we call it maya or unreal? We will realise one day that we are living in an unreal world.
The people that are around us are not our people. The things that we seem to possess, we have really not possessed, nor have we been searching for them. We have only been experimenting with them as tools for the discovery of that which we have lost. We have not lost anything physical. What have we lost? What are we searching for? What is it that is keeping us restless and unhappy?
Each person has his own concept of the meaning of life; that is what we call a philosophy of life. Humanity is one, though people are many. We can imagine that there can be one meaning in the midst of many people. That one meaning can be said to be the soul of humanity.
Hence, the soul is large, and it is small. When it is large enough to comprehend the meaning discoverable in the whole of creation, we call it the soul—yes, it is true. But the process by which we discover the location of the soul or the meaning in life is by degrees. The soul may be one, which is a different matter, but in our lives it does not always reveal itself as one. There are degrees of the manifestation or descent of this concept of the soul. I do not say there are degrees of the descent of the soul itself, but the concept of the soul has a descending character and an ascending character. This is the reason why we feel that there are many souls, and each one is searching for one’s own soul, which perhaps is the reason why one is sometimes impelled to become selfish in spite of the fact that there are similar souls in other people. Yet we are occasionally altruistic; we think in terms of larger circles and the welfare of many other people, and we are serviceful, which tendency cannot be explained if the soul is only inside our body. So there is a larger soul than our own soul, yet we are searching for our own meaning.
There are gradations in an army hierarchy, for instance. The lieutenant colonel is a soul of the group which he commands, and the colonel is a soul of a wider group that he commands. Now, are there two souls? Is the lieutenant colonel one soul and the colonel another soul? And there is the brigadier, the lieutenant general, major general, and so on. Each one is a soul. I have already said that the soul is not a person, because one person cannot control so many other people. It is a pervasive influence, a larger immanence of an invisible something—a meaning, an authority, a soul, intelligence, consciousness, whatever we like to call it. That thing exists, pervading all. Perhaps the general’s soul pervades the souls of all the lower categories. The soul of the general is immanent in the souls of the lieutenant generals, the soul of the lieutenant general is present in the souls of all the major generals, and the soul of the major general is present in all the souls of the brigadiers, etc. So are there many souls, or is there only one soul? We can answer this in any way because there are gradations of the concept of organisation, the concept of authority and the concept of pervasive influence, which is the soul that we are speaking of. Thus, there is a soul, and there is also the soul; both are correct. The larger dimension appears to comprehend the lower levels, absorbing the existence of the lower categories of soul in the higher one; yet the lower ones exist in their own capacity, notwithstanding the fact they are subsumed by the operation of a higher soul. In that sense we are searching for the soul, but we are also searching for a soul when we are ascending the series from lower levels.
I do not think I should go too far into this question. I have not tried to give an answer, but I have tried to stimulate your minds to a need that you will feel, and must feel, for an answer which you cannot escape giving to the question of your own life. Please consider it for yourself.
Excerpts from: Modern Man In Search Of A Soul by Sri Swami Krishnananda
If you would like to purchase the print edition, visit: The Divine Life Society E-Bookstore
If you would like to contribute to the dissemination of spiritual knowledge please contact the General Secretary at: generalsecretary@sivanandaonline.org
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Be Other Centered
Spiritual Message for the Day – Be Other Centered by Sri A.K.Krishna Nambiar
| **Baba Times Digest© | 15 August 2015 17.28 EST | New York Edition** |
Be Other Centered
Divine Life Society Publication: How to Manage Oneself by Sri A.K.Krishna Nambiar
Om Sri Sadguru Paramatmane Namah
Social quality is inherent in every being. Awareness of the fact that man is not only living for the good of himself, but also for the good of others is essential to make the good out of this concept of life. Needless to stress that that is one way to make the best of oneself. It is only a man with such an attitude who can help others. It is practice oriented. The lives of many industrialists, businessman, philanthropists, saints etc., prove that the highest form of social quality is to work for the betterment of others without expecting anything in return. Recently in our own country Mother Theresa demonstrated the use of the social aspect by looking after many people who were dying in the streets of our big cities for want of food and medical attention. This is still fresh in our memory and every individual can emulate this example of selfless service within his own capacity.
There cannot be anyone without emotion. The feeling generated in oneself is emotion. Feelings are generated when one comes into contact with objects and subjects. Feeling of love towards fellow beings is inherent in everyone. The feeling to adore something (God in most cases) is also ingrained in man. Anything that is emotional in man can be improved upon or altered by oneself. Surroundings, circumstances and contacts help to improve the emotive aspect. Emotions can be discriminated and controlled before being acted upon for the overall improvement in one’s personality. The experience of one’s self makes the emotion subside in knowledge and integrate the emotive and intellectual aspects in one’s self.
Excerpts from: Be Other Centered - How to Manage Oneself by Sri A.K.Krishna Nambiar
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