Welcome to The Baba Times
Your Window to the World of Philosophy, Religion and Spirituality!
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.
LATEST NEWS We are conducting 'Guided Meditation Session' every Saturday at 5.30 PM EST from New York.
This will include discussions on various topics like Upanishads, Philosophy, Spirituality & Meditation through Skype. Please send 'Add Request' to 'DLSNewYork' from your skype account so that you can participate in this Satsang. These sessions are part of Divine Life Society from Rishikesh
Hari Om. The Baba Times Team, Contact thebabatimes@gmail.com
Relationship of God to His Creation
Spiritual Message for the Day – Relationship of God to His Creation by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 2 November 2015 15**.26 EST | New York Edition** |
Relationship of God to His Creation
Divine Life Society Publication: The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita by Sri Swami Krishnananda
God is the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer of all things. The great relationship of the universe to the Creator and the attribution to the Creator of the great functions of creation, preservation and dissolution are great interesting subjects in theological studies. God is all things—Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. These are the usual attributes that we assign to the supreme Creator of the universe. What are the characteristics of God? They are creation, preservation, destruction. Now these are the primary attributes, together with the great attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. God creates, God preserves and God destroys. But this theological concept of God being the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer has many subtle implications which have created the huge science of theology, which also creates the subtle differences in theological doctrines of the various religions of the world. If we read the theological dogmas of various religions, we will find they differ, one from the other. Every religion describes the process of creation in a peculiar manner of its own.
Why are there these differences in the theological doctrines of creation? The reason is the variegated concepts of the relationship of the universe to the Creator. What are the implications that have given rise to these differences? The implications are very subtle, very deep and difficult to probe into. How God is related to this world is a question that cannot easily be answered. A child’s concept of God’s relation to the world is simple, and we are also thinking in a child-like manner. We cannot escape the subtle prejudice of the imagination that God is somehow or other outside the world.
Logically, by mathematical arguments, we may accept that God cannot really be outside the world. But sentimentally, emotionally and by social gospels into which we have been introduced from childhood, we persist in the imagination that God is somewhere outside the world. So we always speak of reaching God—“I have to reach God”, “I have to go to God”, “I have to attain God”, etc. There are lengthy descriptions in various scriptures of even the passages through which we have to pass to reach God.
Now, we do not know how God is related to this world. Is God outside the world, or is God inside the world? If He is outside the world, what is the connection between Him and the world? Is there a gap of emptiness between the world and God? If so, then He cannot be regarded as omnipresent, all-pervading; He is only somewhere, like a large personality.
To remove all these misconceptions at one stroke the Teacher of the Bhagavadgita says: Mattah parataram nanyat kincid asti dhananjaya—“Outside Me nothing can be, and higher than Me, nothing is.” Mayi sarvam idam protam sutre mani-gana iva. How can we describe the relationship of God to His creation, when He says that nothing outside Him can exist? If outside Him nothing exists, creation is not outside Him. If creation is not outside Him, where is it? The answer is given in various stages. As beads are sewn on a thread, and all the beads are connected by a single thread that passes through all of them in a necklace or garland, so is God present continuously through all the various particulars of the world. Just as a thread passes through all the beads and is continuously present without any break in the middle, it is indivisibly present throughout, entering into every bead throughout, so also God, the great Creator of the universe, is present in every particle of creation. It is like beads which are strung on this cosmic thread—the sutratman.
Again a doubt will come that God is not the world, and the world is not God. For the time being we are told to satisfy our initial curiosity that God is present in all things, and we need not be under the impression that He is far away, unreachable as a so-called transcendent. Yet, when God is taken as a Creator and as a thread passing through all the beads of things in the universe, the subtle misgivings of the transcendence of God persists, inadvertently, willy-nilly.
However, keeping this question aside for the time being to be answered later on, we are told that everything in this world, whatever be the variety that we see, is constituted of a single divine creative will. Ye caiva sattvika bhava rajasas tamasas ca ye, matta eveti tan viddhi na tv aham tesu te mayi. Good things, bad things, pleasant things, unpleasant things, beautiful things, ugly things, right things and wrong things—whatever it be, the things that exist in this world are somehow or other included in this cosmic comprehensiveness of the Creator. They are arranged in such a pattern in the cosmic set-up that there seems to be the sattvica, rajasa and tamasa, as they appear before our eyes. This is another great revelation here. Before the eyes of God the world stands transfigured, and it does not stand as it stands before us. Before God, the world does not exist as an object to be confronted every day, as it does with people. We have to confront the world; we have to face it; we have to attack it. Sometimes we are subjugated by it, and those are our sorrows, because our minds accept certain characteristics of the world according to the capacities of comprehension with which the mind is endowed, and what it cannot accept is rejected by the mind, just as a certain spectrum of colour in the leaves of a tree absorb a particular ray of the sun, and appear to us as green color. The green colour of the leaf, for instance, is the effect of an abstraction. All colours have this feature—everything is of this character.
So, when this selectiveness in perception is overcome by the intuitive character of comprehension which is the vision of God, it is not a sensory perception. God does not see the world with eyes as we see, but He has an intuitive, instantaneous, transcendental comprehension, at one grasp, at the totality of creation. And here, the distinctions that appear to our minds do not exist at all—they get transmuted into a single wholeness of indivisibility. When the great Creator is said to be inclusive of all things in the world, of every character, desirable or undesirable, necessary or unnecessary, pleasant or otherwise, we cannot understand. We cannot think as God thinks, because we have no intuitive comprehension of things. We have only sensory organs. We see, hear, taste, smell, and touch—but God is not like that. His existence is His Self; His perception is inseparable from His Being. His existence is His Knowledge, whereas our existence is not our knowledge—there is a difference. All things are existent in some form or the other, ultimately, in their archetypal Creator, in God the Almighty.
The sorrow of the ego, which is inflicted with pain of self-annihilation, is asking for God. When we ask for God, we are asking for death, and who likes death? There is a terror which makes the ego shudder at the very thought of the immersion of the soul in God. These difficulties appear like mountains later on, and therefore, at the beginning, we have to go through all the various chapters of the Gita, and not suddenly jump to the later chapters.
There are many students who think that the sixty-sixth verse of the eighteenth chapter is the sum and substance of Gita—Sarva-dharman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja, aham tvm sarva-papebhyo moksayisymi ma sucah. We too have to pass through the emotional turmoil through which Arjuna passed in the first chapter, and we will also find ourselves in the same condition of utter misery and helplessness in which he found himself emotionally. We will have to find ourselves in this condition, if we have not already done so. The spiritual seeker has to face a fire in which he has to be burnt and burnt. The demands that God makes upon us are hard indeed, harder and more inconceivable than the demands of a hard-boiled creditor. It is as if God is a creditor; we owe something to Him and He will take the last farthing. This word ‘farthing’ actually occurs in the New Testament—you have to pay the last farthing, and you cannot go scot-free.
But this religious, spiritual or mystical requirement on our part will take us beyond religion itself. As long as we are dogmatic in our adherence to a fanatical theological doctrine, as long as we fight over languages and kin, and stick to our prejudices of nationalities and various cultures, to that extent we are far from God. The Bhagavadgita, in a super-national gospel, gives us this great caution, asking us to transmute ourselves into super-national individuals not belonging to any nation. In our spirit we are super and exist above these limiting shackles of wealth and power, of distinctions of umpteen types and we may say that the Bhagavadgita’s gospel is a gospel of the universalisation of the individual.
Excerpts from: Relationship of God to His Creation - The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
One alone, Without a Second
Spiritual Message for the Day – One alone, Without a Second by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 1 November 2015 17**.17 EST | New York Edition** |
One alone, without a Second
Divine Life Society Publication: Commentary on The Panchadasi by Sri Swami Krishnananda
One alone without a second did exist. Therefore, we cannot exist outside it. It is not necessary to add another sentence that we are identical with that. We have a little common sense to understand that it must be the fact. One alone, without a second, was there. And inasmuch as we stand as a second to it, we will be a redundant existence in the presence of that “all-pervading, all-inclusive, One alone, without a second”. Therefore, it is understood, it is implied, that we are inseparable from that. This is aparoksa experience, direct knowledge.
There was a Guru called Varuna. He had a son called Bhrigu, who was also a disciple. This is an illustration taken from the Taittiriya Upanishad. “Teach me Brahman,” said the disciple to the Guru. “That from which everything comes, that in which everything subsists, that to which everything returns is Brahman. Meditate on this,” was the instruction. After meditating, the disciple went to the Guru again, “Teach me Brahman.” “Contemplate this physical sheath as Brahman.” He meditated, and went again, “Please teach me Brahman.” “Contemplate the vital sheath as Brahman.” He meditated on that, and went again and said, “Please teach me Brahman.” “Contemplate the mental sheath as Brahman.” He meditated thus, and went again to the Guru and said, “Please teach me Brahman.”
Why did he go again and again? What was the matter? There was some defect in the instruction and also in the experience thereby – that is to say, in considering physical, vital, or mental sheaths as Brahman. Again the disciple went, “Please teach me Brahman.” “Meditate on the intellectual sheath as Brahman.” He again meditated on that, and went again to the Guru and said, “Teach me Brahman.” “Meditate on the bliss of Brahman.” After that he did not go again. When bliss has been experienced, why should we go to the Guru afterwards? The Guru is rejected because bliss is a greater Guru than the Guru who brought us the bliss.
In the beginning, it was only a definition by way of an indirect instruction. Brahman is that which is the cause, sustenance and the end of all things, and it is that which is pervading the physical body, that which pervades the vital, mental, intellectual sheaths, that which is the ultimate bliss that we experience in the state of deep sleep. Having consciously entered into that sleep, if we can be conscious that we are sleeping, we are in direct contact with Brahman. As we cannot be conscious that we are sleeping, that contact is not possible. We come back in the same way as we went into it. The fool went in, and a greater fool came back.
The Guru Varuna did not directly tell Bhrigu what Brahman was. He wanted the disciple to work his own way, by his personal effort, and so he only lead him gradationally, stage by stage, through the levels of experience, right from the conceptual idealisation of God (Brahman) as that which exists as the volition, the sustenance, and the end of all things, that which is in the physical and other sheaths, that which is the ultimate bliss. This is how a graduated instruction was imparted to the disciple by the Guru as we have it recorded in the Taittiriya Upanishad.
Bliss in an indication of Brahman; it is not Brahman itself. The word used here by the author of the Panchadasi is that the bliss of the causal sheath which the disciple experienced is an indication of Brahman’s bliss. It is not Brahman itself. That is to say, when we enter the state of deep sleep, we are not experiencing Brahman, though maybe, theoretically, it may be equal to our landing ourselves in Brahman.
If our plane suddenly requires fuel it lands somewhere, at some airport, and we do not even know which country it is, whose airport it is. If we do not even know where we have landed, and simply know that we have landed, that is something like an indirect jumping into the Brahman state. But actually, landing in sleep – that blissful experience of the condition of sleep – is not Brahman experience because we wake up from sleep into the mortal experience of the physical existence. If we had really gone to Brahman, we would not have woken up.
Therefore, the causal experience of Brahman is only an indication and not a direct experience, says the author here. This experience has been undergone gradually through the physical, vital, and other sheaths. It is a final indicator of Brahman’s existence. It is a signpost which tells us that Brahman is appearing, but Brahman has not yet appeared.
The Taittiriya Upanishad says satyam jñānam anantaṁ brahma: Truth, Knowledge, Infinity is Brahman. This is another way of saying sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma: God is Brahman. If all is Brahman, what does it matter to us? It matters very much because we are not outside it. After having being told that Brahman is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity, we are instructed into a further reality of the fact of our being non-separate from that Brahman which is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity. This is how gradual instruction is imparted by the Guru to the disciple in the process of what is known as initiation.
Indra went to Prajapati four times to learn what the Atman is. Prajapati did not give the answer immediately.
The graduated technique adopted by Gurus in teaching disciples varies from person to person, from individual to individual, and from one state of evolution to another state of evolution. And this case of Varuna teaching Bhrigu to pass through all these stages of Brahman being immanent in the five sheaths, and experiencing the final bliss of Brahman as it is manifest in the state of sleep, is one category of graduated instruction by the Guru to the disciple.
Excerpts from: One alone, Without a Second - Commentary on The Panchadasi 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
Pratyahara (Abstraction of the Senses)
Spiritual Message for the Day – Pratyahara (Abstraction of the Senses) by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 31 October 2015 20**.48 EST | New York Edition** |
Pratyahara (Abstraction of the Senses)
Divine Life Society Publication: Sadhana-The Spiritual Way by Sri Swami Krishnananda
You have the stages described in the Yoga Sastras dealing with your sense organs, which present before you a picture of the world, even of God Himself, quite different, of course, from what they really are. What is sense perception? What are the senses doing? And, where are they? You may think that the eyes that see, the ears that hear, etc., are the sense organs. They are only organs, but not sensations. You have sensations, without which the organs will not get animated. A dead body also has these organs. It has eyes and ears but it has no sensation, so the eyes may be open, but there will be no seeing in a corpse. The seer is not the physical eye, but a sensation of visualisation, a form taken by the mind itself.
What does the mind do in this condition? The one integrated mind that it really is ramifies itself into five different rays, - as sunlight, allowed to pass through the mouth of a pot with five apertures at the bottom, will be seen to project itself in five different channels. But, if the holes are fitted with certain lenses of a different structure and colour, the same sunlight which passes through the inside of the pot will project itself through these five apertures in five different manners. These five different manners of the projection of a single integrated mental process are called the sensations. So, we see colour through one sense, sound through another, etc.
Actually, the basic substance of colour, taste, sound, touch and smell is one and the same. There are not five different things here inside us. They look like five different things because of the different lenses through which the single light passes. Thus, they give a wrong picture of things. If these contorted light rays through the five apertures are allowed to project further upon things outside, then the seer inside, which is the mind, will see the world of five-fold perception in a totally different manner from what the world really is. This is what has happened to us. We cannot see things as they really are. We see, we hear, we touch, etc., through the senses which are already conditioned by the structure or the avenues of perception.
In order that you may not be tempted by these Disneyland-like presentations due to these distortions of sensations, you have to practise a process called pratyahara, which means the abstraction of the sensory operations, and centring the energy of these sensations in their source, which is the mind itself. Difficult is this process. The sensations are rebellious. Illustrations are given in the Bhagavad Gita, telling how difficult this method is,-though it is very simple to hear. Wild elephants, roaring lions, terrible tigers, bursting tornadoes and cyclones may be compared to the operations of the senses.
Vasishtha instructs Sri Rama in the Yoga-Vasishtha: “You can drink the whole ocean, you can shake the root of the mountain, you can drink fire, but you cannot control the mind.” Like binding air in a little bag is your attempt to control the sense organs.
Sensations are nothing but desires. They are not really connected with physical things. Wrongly do we feel that we love things, hate things, want things and do not want things, on account of the deceptive operations and the reports of the sense organs operating in this manner. Wild dogs are these sensations. They bark and may attack you, also.
What do you do? You should not be carried away by the appearance of this tornado of the desire process. Here again a kind of self-analysis is called for. Sensations, as told already, are, only desires manifesting themselves, in these five formations. We want five things in this world: we want beautiful things to see, melodious things to hear, fragrant things to smell, delicious things to taste, soft things to touch. You have no other desire in the world except these. Though you may think that you have millions of desires, they are only five, basically.
Now you have to instruct your own mind. Do you want delicious things, beautiful objects, melodious music, a soft bed? Many people in this world may have these facilities, but still they are most unhappy people. Beautiful presentations, tasty dishes, melodious music, soft beds of velvet have not made rich people happy. What the senses are telling you is indeed mischievous. Even if you have all these sensuous things, you will still be the same miserable person as you were before. The sensations are terribly deceptive and you cannot trust them for a minute. You cannot trust what you see or hear, cannot trust any sensation. They are here before you to pull the Atman (Self) out and make It appear like an anatman or a dead object. This living Atman then starts clinging to a dead Atman outside in the form of the visible things in the world. Here is the drama of life, the way in which we are living.
Tell yourself again and again by bringing before your mind the experiences that ancient sages and saints also had passed through. They had the same difficulty. They were the same small people as any one of us is; they became big because of the understanding they exercised and the success they achieved in the restraint of the sense organs. When you meditate you will see a totally contradictory thing just in front of you. You will see there physically present (not imaginarily conceived) things that you once loved. You will think that they are only visions, but at that time they will not be visions. They will materialise themselves into the form that you loved once upon a time, and the same person will be there in front of you, the same treasure placed before you: “Here it is. You have left all of us and come. Here we are.” Don’t say they are illusory visions. They are concrete forms of your own unfulfilled desires.
When Buddha was in deep meditation, he saw his wife in front of him sitting with a little child. He could not say that it was an illusory mental conception, because she was speaking: “My dear lord, I am here. You have left me and come. Here is your child. Don’t you have pity? Why are you torturing yourself? See this beautiful baby. Am I not your beloved? Have you no compassion? Please, please, listen to me.”
Buddha thought, “How is it that this lady has come here?” Then, “No, don’t tempt me!” he told himself. “I know very well what this presentation is. It is my own earlier pleasure of sense life that has condensed itself into the very desirable object which I loved once upon a time. Break to pieces, shatter yourself!” he told himself.
“My dear master, what are you doing on the hilltop? Here is the treasure of the whole world before you,-all the gold and silver,” somebody told Christ when he was doing tapasya (austerities) on a mountaintop.
There were ancient saints of Christianity who lived in the deserts of northern Africa. St. Anthony the Great is one example who struggled with his visions. He saw before him the arms of a beloved, and the treasures and the wealth of the Roman Empire. They were not visions; they were there in front of him. It took him to the point of death until he could realise that he had to overcome them.
These are not stories of somebody,-it is everybody’s story. You are the Buddha, you are Christ, you are St. Anthony, you are the ancient master, in your own self. All these beautiful grand presentations will come before you, as we hear in the scriptures that Indra will come with all his retinue. This Indra and the retinue are nothing but the mind and the sense organs concretising themselves before you, giving the picture of solidity. You have to guard yourself.
This is to tell you briefly some of the fundamentals of pratyahara, the restraint of the sense organs. Once you achieve success in this practice, you have achieved success ninety percent, truly. Until this is achieved, it is all arduous struggle. It is a determination to swim across the current of a river in spate. Later on, if you succeed in your attempt, the river will take an opposite turn, and the world, instead of opposing you, will flow with you. A great unthought-of joy will take possession of you. Struggle will cease, enemies will become friends, the material objects will change their colour and contour, and all shall be well with you, provided this awful, very painful process of the withdrawal of the sensations (not merely the closing of the sense organs) is achieved, and the mind is charged abundantly with these energies which went out earlier and sucked the soul of the mind, making it fickle and uncontrollable.
The mind will be yourself later on. Instead of your feeling that it is “your” mind, you will feel that you are “yourself” the mind, a medium of the expression of the Atman Itself.
Excerpts from: Pratyahara (Abstraction of the Senses) - Sadhana-The Spiritual Way 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
How to Sublimate Desires
Spiritual Message for the Day – How to Sublimate Desires by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 30 October 2015 16**.31 EST | New York Edition** |
How to Sublimate Desires
Divine Life Society Publication: Your Questions Answered by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Q: Swamiji, how can we sublimate desires?
SWAMIJI: You will never be able to sublimate the desires until that which they seek is given to them. The important point is how you will give them what they want. The manner of supplying their demand is your wisdom.
You cannot suppress a desire; no desire can be buried down. If you suppress it, it will create further trouble. You have to fulfil it, but how you fulfil it is the wisdom of the seeker.
Sometimes you may supply its need even by not giving it literally what it wants. If you literally start supplying all its demands, then it will be a very difficult problem. Sublimation is different from fulfilment. Fulfilment is a direct sensual process, whereas sublimation is a spiritual integration.
The mind wants some particular things, not all things at the same time. The mind does not want the whole world to be given to it. Nobody asks for the whole world; so every desire is intriguing in its working. When you are prepared to give it the entire thing, it doesn’t want it; it will want only certain particular chosen things. This is the sign of lack of wisdom behind any kind of desire.
There are simple desires, strong desires, permissible desires, depleting desires. Desires which deplete your energy should not be fulfiled. Those which are harmless, like wanting to take a cup of tea in the cold weather, will not harm you in any way; but there are other dangerous desires which may exhaust you completely and make you weak. Such desires should not be fulfiled.
From the point of view of a sadhaka (a spiritual seeker), gradually the mind should be educated to feel satisfied with the whole, rather than a part. If you ask for particular things, you will never have an end for these desires, because today you will get this particular thing, and you feel that you are satisfied; tomorrow the very same mind, like a dacoit, will want another thing. If you start supplying the demands of a dacoit, today he will want your purse, tomorrow your house, the next day your land and, finally, he may want your life. So, you cannot go on satisfying the highwayman.
Desires are such things, and you should educate them. Introduce educational ways of thinking, holistic thinking. Don’t give just particular things to the mind, but try to give wholesome things. Finally, nothing can satisfy you, except God Himself. All other desires are futile, and they will only bind you into more and more troubles. You must educate the mind to have trust in God and feel satisfied with the beauty of God.
Desires can also be dormant, like a sleeping thief. Or, when you try to corner them from every side by your meditations, they may become thin, attenuated, as if they are going to die, but they can again become robust when the occasion for it comes. A starved thief also is a thief only; he may eat well and afterwards become robust.
Also the desires may appear sometimes, and disappear at other times. When they disappear, it doesn’t mean they are absent; a thing that is out of sight is not necessarily non-existent. And sometimes, they openly come and face you. So, they can be sleeping, attenuated, interrupted, or directly attacking. These are the ways in which desires catch hold of a person. One has to pass through many years of struggle in order to get over them.
Q: Swamiji, how can we try to sublimate desires?
SWAMIJI: First you must find out why desires arise. Why should desires arise in the mind at all, if you conclude that they are not good things? If they are good things, there is no need of sublimating them. If they are not good things, why are you allowing them to rise? You deliberately manufacture them under the impression that they are good, and at the same time you say that they are not good. So, you have a dual attitude towards them.
Now, who creates the desires? Are you deliberately creating the desires, or are they, in spite of yourself, coming up? That you have to find out first. It is a process of self-analysis. The deep root of the desire has to be found out.
Q: I think they are from basic urges.
SWAMIJI: When you use the word “basic,” you perhaps imply that these desires are inseparable from your very existence as a person. That is the meaning of “basic.” Your existence as a person implies the existence of these desires, also. So, that would mean that they will go only when you (as a person) go, because they are inseparable from your very existence.
How will you go? The personality of yours should cease to be; then the consequence in the form of these desires also will cease, according to our analysis. When the cause goes, the effect also goes. The whole question is the very existence of the person as an individual psycho-physical existence. That has to go. That has to be sublimated, not the desires. The poor desires are only henchmen of the very existence of the person. The chief culprit is the existence of the individual himself, and the desires are only offshoots of the existence of the person. That is to say, the sublimation is not of the desires, but of the personality-consciousness.
The personality-consciousness can be sublimated only by transcending it in a universal consciousness. You are conscious that you are a person named Lyle, and it is a very wrong definition of yourself. This is a nomenclature of the physical personality. As long as this physical personality persists, your problems also are going to continue. If you want to get rid of these problems, you must be sincere in handling this issue. You should not just say something and forget these things afterwards. Your physical existence itself is a problem, and that has to cease.
The individual existence ceases only in Universal Existence. It cannot cease anywhere else. So, when your meditation is fixed on the consciousness of Universality of Being, the individual consciousness gets merged into It and transcended. Together with that, the desires also get sublimated at one stroke. This is the highest technique that one can think of. There is no other solution, finally. All other solutions are temporary and a make-shift. The final solution is only this deep meditation on the Universal Existence, before which no problem can stand. The whole thing vanishes like darkness before the sun.
Excerpts from:
How to Sublimate Desires - Your Questions Answered 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
Three Kinds of Meditation
Spiritual Message for the Day – Three Kinds of Meditation by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 29 October 2015 15**.46 EST | New York Edition** |
Three Kinds of Meditation
Divine Life Society Publication: Your Questions Answered by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Q: How can I practise meditation on Cosmic Consciousness?
SWAMIJI: What are you conscious of, at that time? That thing is the object of your meditation. You have no particular object. You are conscious of this earth, the sky, time-space, and stars, etc.; you are conscious of the entire atmosphere. Can you adjust your mind in such a way that you are conscious of all these things at the same time – not one after the other, but simultaneously? Cosmic consciousness initially begins with simultaneous concentration on all things.
Again, I come to the analogy of the limbs of the body. You have many limbs of the body, and you are conscious of them, simultaneously. You do not think, “Today I have a nose, tomorrow I have an ear”. At once, you are conscious of all the limbs of the body. That is called total consciousness. In a similar manner, if you can be conscious of all things conceivable – the entire world, space-time and objects, not one after the other, but simultaneously – if you can do this exercise, that would be an attempt on your part to become transcendentally conscious. This is one kind of meditation.
In the beginning, this kind of abstract concentration may be found a little difficult. That is why they suggest concentration on a deity, and I wanted to know what your deity is. You seem to suggest that you repeat the mantra of Om Namah Sivaya. The meaning of the mantra is prostration to the great deity Siva. Can you think of Lord Siva, his features, his characteristics, his knowledge, his power?
Q: Yes, Swamiji.
SWAMIJI: Can you concentrate on that figure?
Q: The mind comes and goes. I cannot keep it in focus.
SWAMIJI: The mind comes and goes because it wants something other than what you are thinking of in meditation. Now, you put a question to yourself. You tell the mind: “When you have decided that a deity like Lord Siva is final, and whatever you want, you can have from that deity, why are you going elsewhere? Do you believe that Lord Siva cannot give you all things? If you do not believe that this is capable of blessing you with everything, then why do you concentrate on that?”
The mind is playing a dual trick. On the one hand, it says this is the object, and if I meditate on that, I will get everything; but subtly it says, “No, it will not give me everything; I want to go to the marketplace.” So, it is playing a game with you by telling you two things at the same time. If you are sure that this will not bring any blessing to you, why should you meditate on that? But you are feeling it is not like that: “It will certainly bless me.” You will perhaps get everything that you want through meditation on this deity. But another subconscious voice says, “No, no. You should not concentrate like that. You go to the shop and eat some delicacies.”
You have to act like a teacher. Tell the mind again and again, “You are stupid! Why are you running here and there? Don’t you know that everything you want can be had with Him? Not only that, everything that you cannot even imagine in your mind, all things you can get here. An ocean of blessings will come. Don’t go!” Even verbally, you can tell like that. Not merely thinking, even by words, tell the mind, “Don’t go anywhere! You are getting everything here!” Don’t you speak like that to your students in a school? “This is good for you. Don’t be like that. Study!”
Like a father talking to a little baby, you talk to your mind: “Don’t be foolish; don’t go here and there. You will get nothing by going here and there. You are only losing your energy and wasting time. All that you want you can have in one place. Therefore, identify yourself with and meditate on that, and receive blessings from that.” If you think it is Lord Siva, all right, go on with it.
For the time being, I suggest that you can adopt this method, and a higher thing also I mentioned to you – Cosmic Consciousness. And, in that little book that I gave you in the morning, these small suggestions are mentioned: meditation on the external, meditation on the internal, and meditation on the Universal. There are three stages of meditation.
Now, what I have mentioned to you on Lord Siva is a kind of externalised meditation – conceiving God as something placed before you as a cosmic externalised presentation. That is one kind of meditation in the path of devotion, or bhakti, as they call it.
The other thing is internal, the purely psychological contemplation, as we have it in the Buddhist methods, for instance. The meditations in Buddhism are purely psychological. They do not suggest any god, deity, or any such thing. Perhaps you are aware of some techniques in Buddhism; and in Hinduism also, there are techniques of this type. Observing the breath, observing the mind, observing the thoughts, and conducting the thought in different parts of the body, etc., are internal meditations. And the highest is Universal meditation.
In the beginning, you must start with external meditation only. You need not go into internal meditation suddenly. The meditation on Lord Siva is all right for you. You carry on with that method. Slowly, you can rise higher.
Q: Swamiji, the other type of meditation is watching the thoughts or observing the thoughts without identifying with them?
SWAMIJI: That is one method. You can choose whichever method you like. Sometimes, you can adopt all the three methods, alternately: sometimes praying to Lord Siva, sometimes analysing the mind inside, sometimes thinking cosmically. All the three methods are good; you can combine them, if you can do it.
When you do office work or any other kind of work, this should be the background of your thought throughout the day. Then only it will get settled. Actually, you have no other occupation. This is the main occupation; all occupations get merged into this. All that you want through any other work, occupation, etc., will be given to you through this. It is the main object, the main purpose of life. Unity with Reality is the main objective. The very purpose of life is this. Because we are unable to achieve it, we are going here and there in search of jobs and all that. We do not require jobs afterwards; Nature itself will give you whatever you want. But we are unable to do that in the beginning, so we have to do some work, also, some service, together with the attempt at meditation. When meditation deepens, you can lessen your activities, and take to meditation more and more.
Excerpts from: Three Kinds of Meditation - Your Questions Answered 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
Disciplining The Mind - II
Spiritual Message for the Day – Disciplining The Mind - II by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 28 October 2015 16**.18 EST | New York Edition** |
Disciplining The Mind - II
Divine Life Society Publication: Disciplining The Mind by Sri Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on October 23,1973)
The movement of the finite to the infinite is not a movement in space and time. It is a self-expansion of consciousness. The whole process of yoga is a process of the evolution of consciousness, and is not an activity of the senses or the body. It is a self-evolution of consciousness in all directions, in quantity as well as in quality.
God, the Absolute, which is the goal of the practice of yoga and the goal of the evolution of the entire cosmos, has two characters: infinitude and subjectivity. Infinitude implies transcendence of space and time. Subjectivity implies freedom from the consciousness of externality. This is what we mean by ‘the Atman’ in Sanskrit. The term ‘Atman’ really means the character of subjectivity in consciousness which refuses to get related to anything outside it.
Infinite subjectivity is inconceivable to the mind. In the Bhagavadgita, Bhagavan Sri Krishna tells us that the more you gravitate towards this ideal in your contemplative processes, the more is it possible for you to control the mind and the senses. Unless you take the help of the higher forces, the lower demonical elements cannot be controlled. The lowest concept of the mind is of objects. The next higher concept is of the senses. The next higher is the mind. Higher than the mind is the intellect. Higher than the intellect is yourself, which is indistinguishable from the Infinite or the Absolute.
In the Third Chapter of the Gita there are one or two verses pertinent to this self-analysis. Indriyāṇi parāṇy āhur indriyebhyaḥ paraṃ manaḥ, manasas tu parā buddhir yo buddheḥ paratas tu saḥ (Gita 3.42): Indriyas, or the senses, are superior in their functional aspect to the gross physical objects outside because the capacity of the senses to perceive or cognise determines the nature of the reaction that the objects produce in relation to our mind. But inasmuch as the senses are only operational branches of the mind, the mind is superior to the senses. But there is something higher than the mind, which is the intellect, the understanding, the judging faculty in us. The higher should control the lower, and the highest is the Self.
The control of the mind, therefore, calls for external discipline and also internal contemplative austerity. Externally we are to so adjust our conduct, needs and activities in the world so that the people around us, the atmosphere in which we live, the things which are connected with us, the diet that we eat, the breath that we breathe, and so on, should not be in any manner contradictory to the ideals that we are cherishing in our mind.
You should live in a place which should be at least to a large extent, in a great proportion, conducive to the fulfilment of your aims. Live in a place which is comparatively free from those factors which will stimulate your egoism. Live in such a place and have such an abode in an atmosphere which is not merely free from negative factors of distraction, but also enshrines positive factors which are constructively helpful in your contemplations.
But you have also to condition your own personal life accordingly; namely, you should not keep such things the loss of which may cause you troubles and grief and sorrow in your mind. That is why sadhakas do not keep things which are unnecessary for the progress that they are seeking in their spiritual lives. Keep only those things which are necessary for your existence as a spiritual seeker. Speak and keep contact with only such persons who are helpful to you in your spiritual practice, or at least not opposed to your spiritual practice.
When you get up in the morning, have a schedule in your mind: This is what I am going to do today. You have to include in your daily spiritual diary such items as study of elevating philosophical and spiritual texts, japa of a mantra or formula or a stotra, passage, chant or song which will ennoble your feeling and help you in the concentration of your mind.
You must also have a chosen method of meditation. You are told that a Guru is necessary and initiation is necessary, etc., which means to say that you have to be told as to how you have to adjust your thought in the spiritual practices which are ultimately going to culminate in meditation or inward contemplation. Everything is easy in this world; the only difficult thing is the collection of the mind, the concentration or focusing of its attention, and contemplation and meditation on the universal goal that is before you. The most difficult thing that you can achieve is this. This is why it is said that the Guru, a master, a guide, an adept to point out the way to you is necessary.
You will realise that the spiritual path is not going to be rosy. You have to walk on thorny bushes, stones and whatnot. The path is precipitous, difficult to tread, sharp like a razor or a sword, as the Upanishad puts it. Of all the dramatic descriptions of spiritual transformation that we have in written texts, the life of the Buddha is most poignant and pertinent. You can read the sixth chapter of The Light of Asia by Edwin Arnold to get an idea as to what these wonderful, difficult obstacles could be on the path of the spiritual seeker.
The world will put on new colours when you try to confront it. Do not have the misconception that anybody is your friend in this world. All the forces of the world will turn against you when you are unable to set yourself in tune with them, which is the obstacle on the path of yoga. More beautiful things will come to you than all the beauties that you can think of in this world. Nachiketas also faced these difficulties, as it is said in the Katha Upanishad.
When you are strong enough to resist these temptations of pleasantness and beauty, you will be opposed by terror. Thunderstorms will start rising from all sides. Death will threaten you. If you cannot also resist that, you will be taken along the wrong path, all while being told that it is the right path. Contradictory and opposing forces of nature will tell you the wrong thing. The devil will speak, and you will think it is God speaking. All these obstacles are to be expected in the path of yoga. The control of the mind is not an easy affair.
But, says Bhagavan Sri Krishna, if you take resort to the higher forces which are more integrating and comprehensive, ultimately resorting to the Self, the supreme Parmatman, Ishvara, God, the Absolute Himself, if you take resort to Him, strength will be drawn from Him. God Himself will help you. Everything will be unfolded before you gradually, systematically, one after the other, until glory will be the name of your final achievement.
The control of the mind, therefore, should start from the external, move towards the internal, and rise towards the Absolute. Japa of the mantra is essential. Yajñānāṁ japayajño’smi (Gita 10.24): Of all the spiritual contemplative sacrifices that you can think of, says Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Gita, japa is the best. Japa is a kind of meditation itself. It leads to meditation and merges into it. They are not two different things. Japa of the mantra is very, very essential, and study of spiritual texts is equally essential. Study the Bhagavadgita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Yoga Vasishtha, the Upanishads, the Sermon on the Mount, the Dhammapada; and such scriptures of similar value may be taken as books for your svadhyaya, which should be a daily feature like your lunch, breakfast or dinner. You should not miss it even a single day. Every day you must sit, even if there is no concentration. Sometimes you may not be able to meditate properly because you are worried. Even then you sit. You should not miss the item of your sitting for meditation, japa and svadhyaya merely because of the fact you have some engagements or you are disturbed that day. It does not matter. Sit. This practice of sitting at an appointed hour for these practices is very essential in the pursuit of your spiritual diary.
And have a daily routine. You must be quite sure as to what you are going to do on a particular day, at what particular time. This is daily routine, well fixed beforehand. Then have the spiritual diary. You have seen a specimen of it here as given by Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. It has so many questions, such as when you got up from bed, how many minutes of exercises you did, how much pranayama, how much you have studied, how much bad company and good company you have kept, and so on. These questions can be modified to suit your own atmosphere and the station in which you are living. These are some of the tips that Swamiji has given to us for self-control, self-discipline and spiritual regeneration.
Excerpts from: Disciplining The Mind 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
Disciplining The Mind
Spiritual Message for the Day – Disciplining The Mind by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 27 October 2015 06**.30 EST | New York Edition** |
Disciplining The Mind
Divine Life Society Publication: Disciplining The Mind by Sri Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on October 23,1973)
The nature of things in the world demands that the mind has to be disciplined, and the process of the discipline and control of the mind is a gradual and steady approach to the ideal before us, slowly dissociating and freeing the mind from its entanglements in external phenomena, then steadily rising to the internal conditioning factors of the mind until we come to the mind itself. We may compare the art of controlling the mind to the art of controlling a wild beast. We cannot suddenly approach it in order to bring it under our control. Many months and sometimes years of practice are necessary in subjugating a wild animal, and the mind is such.
The mind is after what is pleasant, and not what is really to its own benefit, like a naughty child who does not know what is for its own good. It is not easy to control the mind.
Why is it so? The difficulty in the discipline of the mind is because the mind itself is the subject of action in this intricate process. We can deal with things and persons in the world, but we cannot deal with the mind in any manner whatsoever because of the simple fact that the mind is the centre of action, and it is not the object towards which the action is directed.
We can think of an object as having quantitative measurements such as weight, mass, etc., but the mind has no weight and no mass. We are accustomed to thinking of things in space and in time, as causally related items but the mind is no such thing whatsoever. It is not in space and in time, and cannot be said to be causally related to anything similar to it, because there is nothing similar to the mind in the world.
In one of his books, Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj has defined the mind in a humorous way as thus: “The mind is something which is really nothing but does everything. This is the mind.” Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj’s definition of the mind is that it is something which is really nothing but does everything. Very interesting! Yet we have to deal with it.
The Third Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, a wonderful scripture on yoga, gives us a very simple aphoristic instruction on the control of the mind. While in the regulation, discipline, etc., of things outside we seem to move horizontally with things, in the control of the mind we have to move vertically with our own self. We do not move externally as we do in our dealings with the things of the world. This is not a movement outward in relation to things, persons and objects; this is a rise from the lower to the higher.
In the control of the mind we try to raise ourselves from a lower status of consciousness to a higher status. This is an inner transformation that you try to bring about in your own self by an act of what may be rightly called the contemplative process. The discipline of the mind is a process of inward contemplative transformation. Milk becomes curd. The process of milk becoming curd is an inner constitutional transformation of the stuff we call the milk. Someone from outside does not come and command the milk to become curd. An inner transformation takes place.
Thinking in a logical manner, is the first step in the discipline of the mind. Every thought that occurs to your mind should be logically deducible from reasonable premises, which means to say that your ways of thinking should be re-orientated completely. You have to become a new person altogether from today onwards if your intention is to discipline the mind. You alone can discipline your mind; somebody else cannot do it for you. You have to walk with your own legs. Somebody else cannot walk for you.
The objects of the mind are the same as the contents of the mind. The object of the mind is that pattern or shape into which the mind casts itself when it comes in contact with a so-called physical object or even merely a notion. What affects your mind is not the object physically existing outside. What affects your mind is the shape or mould into which the mind is cast. What affects your mind is the mind itself. The world outside, the people around you, the things that are created by God are not the troublemakers, though we are under the impression that all our troubles come from outside persons. The troubles, the pains and the pleasures of our life are ultimately to be equated with the internal transformations that the mind undergoes for reasons which we cannot easily explain at present.
Just as molten lead, molten gold or molten metal cast into a crucible takes the shape of the crucible, the mind takes the shape or the pattern of that particular object to which it is related, with which it is connected, to which it is attached, from which it is repelled, etc. So the discipline and control of the mind is ultimately a process of preventing the mind from casting itself into moulds of various patterns, etc. The mind should contemplate itself.
Aristotle’s definition of God is thought thinking itself – not thought thinking an object. As our intention in the practice of yoga is to grow into the divinity of Godhood, we have to slowly learn the art of freeing the mind from the necessity of casting itself into moulds of empirical characters.
The Bhagavadgita gives us a clue to this process. The senses and the mind are connected with each other. The senses are the channels through which the mind operates in terms of objects. The senses may be said to be the rays of the light which is the mind inside. Just as the rays of the sun emanate in all directions in empty space, the rays of the mind get projected through the apertures of the senses in relation to the objects of desire of the mind.
We have heard it said that we should neither love nor hate. Why should this instruction be given to us? It is because attachments and hatreds are the obverse and reverse of the same coin of connection with things, and the moment the mind is connected with things outside, it is cut off from the infinite source which is its real aim and objective. Finitude is the nature of the mind. Infinitude is its aim and objective. The finite has to rise from its limited existence to the infinite expanse of the Absolute.
(to be continued…)
Excerpts from: Disciplining The Mind 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
All-Consuming Devotion to God
Spiritual Message for the Day – All-Consuming Devotion to God by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 26 October 2015 22**.10 EST | New York Edition** |
All-Consuming Devotion to God
Divine Life Society Publication: In The Light of Devotion by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana and dhyana are the seven accessories of yoga. Dhyana or the meditation itself is of seven kinds, and it is attended with seven kinds of transformations. With this I have given in a nutshell the essence of the teachings of yoga philosophy, psychology and its practice. This does not mean that the methods of meditation are completely exhausted by the yoga system of Patanjali. There are also other methods of meditation—for example the bhakti method. The devotees of God have their own ways of contemplating God. Their way is not necessarily this analytical, psychological and philosophical method of Patanjali. Their method is more of love, longing and even weeping for God. Only the saints who love God exclusively can tell us what love of God truly is. It is impossible to describe love of God, as we also cannot describe what God is. Even saints and sages who had this experience refuse to explain it, because it cannot be explained.
The love of God is a love that we are having for creation as a whole, because God is manifested in the world. These saints who loved God loved the world, and they made no distinction between the two. Their hearts went out to the Beloved, and we can imagine what it might mean for a heart to go for something beloved. Those who have lived in the world will know what it is for a heart to be moved, and what it means for a heart to go for something it deeply loves. It is not our senses going, not our personality going, and not our speech going—it is something else that goes. Our soul is moved. Nobody can say what it is actually, because we cannot know what happens when a soul is moved. We cease to be anymore when our soul is moved towards something.
When our personality in its manifestation as the sense organs, the mental faculty and so on is moved, we may be aware of what is happening. But when our soul is moved, we cannot know what is happening—just something happens, that is all. Love of God is a sudden, ultimate transformation in which the mind longs for God alone and does not want anything else. This cannot be explained with any amount of philosophical analysis. We can know it only to some extent by study of the lives of saints. Study the life of Christ, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Theresa, of Gauranga Mahaprabhu and of the great acharyas who founded the bhakti cults in India. Read the Srimad Bhagavata Purana and read about the love of the gopis for Lord Krishna. We will be wonderstruck as to how this level of love could exist. Is it possible? Can we conceive of such a thing? But that is love of God. The love of God has again certain stages of development. It does not suddenly drop from the skies. The bhakti scriptures describe elaborate processes of the development of love for God. These are very strange things and are especially unknown to people in the West. It is not that devotees of God did not live in the West—there were some—but they were more prominent in the Eastern countries, and especially in India.
For those who are interested in the study of this psychology of the intense love of God or devotion, I would suggest one or two books—the most prominent being the one written by a disciple of Gauranga Mahaprabhu, the great saint of Bengal, namely, Bhaktirasam Ratasindhu. It is a very beautiful book. Bhaktirasam Ratasindhu means ‘the ocean of the essence of devotion’. This book is published in its English translation by the ‘Institute of Philosophy’ in Vrindavan. We should also read the Srimad Bhagavata Purana. We should read it in the original, but of course those who don’t read Sanskrit can read it in any good translation. The third one is the Narada Bhakti Sutras. This is one book worth reading, and it is a very exhaustive work. We can have an idea through these books about the approach of the devotee to God.
The devotee of God generally regards God not merely as an Absolute in the philosophical sense. It is very difficult to love God in the absoluteness of His being, though there is one stage of devotion which is compatible with the highest of philosophical knowledge. They call it ‘parachute’ or supreme devotion, where devotion becomes identical with knowledge. That is however something very difficult to understand. In ordinary language when we speak of devotion to God, we mean love of God as someone or something, and not everything or nothing. The devotee does not regard God here as everything, as one school of philosophy would say, or God as nothing, as another school says. He is something and is someone whom the devotee can approach with an expectation of response from Him. The God of the devotee is one who responds to the love of the devotee. If there were no response, we could not love, so God responds to the devotees’ calls.
The Srimad Bhagavadgita is the ‘mother’ of all the texts of devotion, but it is a very elevated text, and it is difficult for a beginner to extract the essence out of it. I didn’t suggest it as one of the texts of bhakti yoga, though it also is a very great aid in understanding the devotion to God. In one of the verses of the Srimad Bhagavadgita, God is said to take care of the devotee fully, and that the only responsibility of the devotee is to love God—he has no other responsibility. He does not have to study books or to go to school or do this and that. He has no responsibility, no function to perform, and no other yoga except for intense thinking, longing and loving of God. As I said, God is conceived by the devotees as someone who can respond to this affection. “Oh God, please come! I am dying of separation from you.” When such a cry comes from the devotee, God should be able to respond to that cry. That is the essence of devotion, and we can easily imagine what could be the concept of God in the mind of such a devotee who wants an immediate response. It might be like the child wanting a response from the parent, like a friend expecting a response from a friend, the servant expecting a response from the master, or the husband expecting a response from the wife, or she from him. The human expectation of a sympathetic response is sublimated into a divine emotion in love of God.
Excerpts from: All-Consuming Devotion to God - In The Light of Devotion 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
Stages of Meditation and Mind Transformations
Spiritual Message for the Day –Stages of Meditation and Mind Transformations by Sri Swami Krishnananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 25 October 2015 13**.01 EST | New York Edition** |
Stages of Meditation and Mind Transformations
Divine Life Society Publication: In The Light of Devotion by Sri Swami Krishnananda
The first stage of meditation is a concentration of the mind on the physical concept of the object with its external and internal relations. The second stage is the concentration of the mind on the very same object, freed from these external and internal relations. The third stage of meditation is the concentration on the same object as constituted of certain essences, rather than on its external form or shape in terms of space and time. The fourth stage of meditation is the meditation on the very same essence of the object as independent of space and time relations. The fifth stage of meditation is the fixing of the consciousness on the joy that automatically follows from the freedom realised as a consequence of the abolition of space-time relations. In this stage, the subject and the object come together automatically when there is no space and time and there is no distinction between subject and object.
The sixth stage of meditation is the resting of the consciousness in itself—pure self-awareness of a universal character, where even joy is not experienced as a content or an attribute of consciousness. Joy becomes consciousness and consciousness becomes joy, because Self-consciousness is joy. The sixth stage of meditation is a very indescribable and blissful state, and it represents a veritable freedom of the soul from mortality. The seventh stage in meditation is the realisation or the experience of the Supreme Being. As a matter of fact, it is not a state, it is the ultimate goal reached in a fusion of eternity and infinity. These are the seven stages of meditation in which certain transformations of the mind are involved, and which take place simultaneously with these seven processes of meditation.
The first stage is that particular transformation or modification of the mind, wherein it keeps a check on the undesirable modifications. There are two types of modifications: the desirable and the undesirable. In this case, the desirable modification of the mind is that which is conducive to the concentration of the mind on the ideal or the chosen object of meditation. The undesirable modification is that which pulls the mind towards sense objects. The first transformation of the mind in meditation is that which involves an apparent struggle between the higher and the lower mind, wherein the higher mind is trying to keep the lower in check for the purpose of bringing about concentration of the mind.
The second transformation occurs in the context of an oscillation of the mind between consciousness of multitudinous- ness and consciousness of single-mindedness. That state of mind, where there is a vacillation between external consciousness of variety and the consciousness of concentratedness, is the second stage of mental modification in meditation. Again, this stage involves an oscillation between the consciousness of multiplicity and the consciousness of concentratedness.
The third stage of meditation is where the two processes shake hands with each other, as it were, and become friends. The objective consciousness and the concentrative consciousness were apparently in disagreement with each other in the first two kinds of transformations. In the third stage they become as one, like water flowing from one reservoir to another reservoir with both reservoirs situated on equal levels. The mental modifications of one kind flow into the mental modifications of another kind. There is apparently no distinction between external consciousness and internal consciousness. The distinctions of the necessary and the unnecessary, and the desirable and the undesirable cease in the third transformation of the mind. Here we will not know whether the subject is meditating or the object is meditating, because the spatial distinction is abolished.
The fourth transformation of the mind in meditation is a check exercised automatically over the sense activities. The senses had to be withdrawn in pratyahara with some sort of effort, and we found it a kind of duty on our part to control the senses. Here in the fourth transformation of the mind there is spontaneous pratyahara that is taking place, which is control over the senses that is not exercised with effort, but through realisation.
The fifth transformation of the mind that takes place is also a consequence that follows externally in the wake of this control of the senses. When we are a master of our senses, we are also a master of our destiny, and the environment around us also comes under our control to some extent. Then comes the higher transformations of the mind, where the mind can work independently of the senses. The mind does not need the senses to work anymore, as it can merely think, and things will take place. There is no need of seeing, hearing or even speaking.
This is a very advanced stage of yoga. People in this condition are rare in the world. They have merely to think something, and it will happen. The mind has received such power that their very thought is action. Their thought is more compelling and more powerful than sensory activity. The highest transformation of the mind is where it merges into the Spirit. The mind no more exists as a mind when there is no thinking faculty. Mind becomes consciousness; consciousness is mind. To be is to be conscious, and to be conscious is to think, and vice versa. Our being is consciousness and our consciousness is thinking—thought thinking itself, as Aristotle told us. When thought thinks of an object, it is manifest as man, but thought thinking itself is God. Here is the last transformation of the mind: thought begins to contemplate itself, and it is God thinking Himself. We have become identified with God here. The last experience in meditation is identical with the last transformation of the mind. These again are not mere subjects for analysis and study, but they are matters of experience.
Excerpts from: Stages of Meditation and Mind Transformations - Swami Sivananda and The Divine Life Society 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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
The Importance of Joy
Spiritual Message for the Day – The Importance of Joy by Sri Swami Chidananda
| **Baba Times Digest© | 24 October 2015 22**.51 EST | New York Edition** |
The Importance of Joy
Divine Life Society Publication: Seek The Beyond by Sri Swami Chidananda
Om Sri Sadguru Paramatmane Namah
Worshipful homage to that great Reality, the eternal and the infinite, the timeless and the boundless—beyond human understanding, baffling human language to adequately describe Its imponderable, indescribable, transcendental glory. May Its divine grace ever be upon all of us!
Loving adorations to revered Holy Master Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj who through his radiant personality, his effulgent countenance and his sparkling eyes gave us some little faint glimpse of that great glory in whose experience he was firmly established. He shone with a light that is Divinity. May his benedictions always be upon us all in this great journey beyond the beyond.
We have mentioned the thrill, the joy of the spiritual adventure, this journey to reach the great destination. We have mentioned that the joy, the thrill is not so much in reaching the destination but in the effort itself, in the onward and upward progress towards the goal. It is in the journey itself that the joy is there.
But then, this is not merely a manner of speaking, but it is a necessity also. It is also indispensable and very important. There is a necessity to this joy, there is an importance to this joy and an indispensable place. For if you do not have a real joy and happiness in any undertaking, you cannot engage in it with enthusiasm. If you do not have joy and great pleasure in some undertaking, you cannot give yourself fully, heart and mind to that undertaking. Your dedication to it, or your application to it, will be at best half-hearted.
If you do not get real joy and pleasure out of it, you will not ingather, gather together and concentrate the whole of your energy, your capacities, your abilities. So it will be part of your life, not the whole of your life. The totality of your being will not become diverted and fully applied to that great attainment. So, at best, it will be a part of you that is engaged in this great task, whereas another part of you is equally engaged in something else.
But, this is not merely a great task. It is too great a task to be undertaken by half of you. It is that one unique dimension of life which demands for its attainment the whole of your life, your entire life—all its potentials, all its time, energy, attention and application. If you give yourself totally to this quest, then you may be assured that God gives Himself totally to such a dedicated seeker, aspirant and devotee. This has been the experience of all the great ones. In various ways they have tried to bring home to us this truth.
And such total dedication with all your being, all your heart, mind and soul, is only possible if you get joy out of it. If it is a task that fills you with great elation, great rejoicing, great inner jubilation and happiness, then alone such total dedication—which is very, very necessary—is possible.
So this, therefore, is the necessity of joy. It is necessary to sustain us in this arduous task of the realisation of the Absolute, this arduous task of illumination and enlightenment, this arduous task of self-transcendence, to attain Self-experience. This is the truth. May the Supreme Being and Holy Master help us to perceive this truth and help us to succeed in this great attainment! God bless you all!
Om Tat Sat Brahmaparnamastu
Excerpts from: The Importance of Joy - Seek The Beyond by Sri Swami Chidananda
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \\ Email to BT Digest Editor( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)
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
SEND FEED BACK ON THIS ARTICLE \** **Email to BT Digest Editor** **( dlsusa.org@gmail.com)