F. IT’S YOUR CHOICE
The fulfilment or otherwise of your life, the success or failure of your life, the attainment or non-attainment of your life—all of these depend upon the way you choose to think, choose to feel, choose to look at things, and the way in which you approach life and start to use it.
If you think failure and defeat, you invite failure and defeat, you deserve failure and defeat, because you have asked for it.
If you think success, attainment, fulfilment and achievement, you will succeed, your life will culminate in fulfilment, in glorious achievement, for you have invited it. That is what you deserve, and that is what you will receive.
47. YOU ARE WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO BECOME
The great Upanishadic seers of realisation have declared that life and the outcome of life for each and every individual is a matter of constant, continuous, moment by moment, choice. It is a matter of choice. What do you choose? What is your wish?
This, the great wisdom teachings of Vedanta very clearly and unambiguously state in the Kathopanishad. It is also very clearly brought home to us in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita which contains the quintessence of the Upanishadic teachings.
You are what you choose to become. Nothing is forced upon you. Nothing is imposed. You are not compelled. There is no external force in this universe that does it or can do it. All force, all power, is within you. You are the source of all force, all power. It is for you to choose how you will express it.
The Kathopanishad, through Lord Yama’s teachings to Nachiketas says: “O Nachiketas, at every step, at each moment, before every human individual there are two paths, the path of wisdom and the path that is merely pleasant, the sreyo marga and the preyo marga.
In another context, the Upanishads say that constantly within the human psyche there is a flow of thoughts— constantly. They either take the channel of the auspicious or the channel of the inauspicious. It is for the wise, awake and alert individual to keep watch and to be immediately aware of which direction the thought flow is taking. If it is in the right direction, it should be encouraged. If it is in the wrong direction, it should be immediately checked, withdrawn, and the thoughts made to flow in the right direction, the direction that is conducive to one’s highest welfare.
Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji reiterated this same truth, this same fact of human life in his own unique manner, summing it up briefly by saying: “Detach, attach.” It is for you to say, “No,” break the connection, and then attach to where you want the connection.
Disconnect yourself. It is for you to do so. Constantly you must make use of this power of choice and detach your mind from the petty pursuits and fleeting perishable objects of this world and attach it to the lotus feet of the Supreme. Detach and attach. He constantly said that this is what sadhana is. Herein lies the secret, the key to a progressive spiritual life and the surety of attaining the Goal. Detach and attach!
And, as though to clinch the issue—that you are a creature of choice, that what life ultimately means to you depends upon what you choose, that as you think so you become—at the conclusion of the Gita, Lord Krishna declares to Arjuna: “yathecchasi tatha kuru (Act as thou wishest). Now, it is up to you what you will choose, whether to follow, obey and do as I say or whether to follow your own mind, your own desire, and do as it propels you. It is up to you.”
Therefore, the individual soul has freedom of choice. He can weigh pros and cons. Through his uniqueness and wisdom, he can anticipate consequences by reflection, by thought. Upon the basis of his own experience and what he sees happening in the world to others, through logic, rationality and intelligence he can anticipate what will happen if this or that course is taken, what will be favourable or unfavourable for him, what will be conducive to his highest welfare, what will be adverse to him. Then he can make a choice.
Thus we create for ourselves our experience, our future. Long ago in ancient puranic India they expressed the selfsame law “As a man thinketh, so he becometh” in an allegorical way. They said that upon both the right and left shoulder of each human individual two deities preside, and they keep saying: “Be it so, be it so.” So, whatever arises within the hidden depth of your own inwardness, which you think is not known to anyone and sometimes may not even be known to oneself, these celestials say: “Be it so,” and so it comes to prevail.
For we live in the presence of God, and He is one who immediately grants to us whatever we wish. Therefore, we have the concept of the celestial wish-yielding tree or the celestial gem, holding which whatever you wish instantaneously manifests. Therefore, be careful what you ask for when you are in His presence.
He is a Being who can give us the highest, the sublimest, greater than which there is no other gift. So, when we are in the presence of a Being capable of such munificence, such abundance, why will we deprive ourselves of the highest and greatest of all gifts and attainments by asking for something very petty, small, puerile, or worse still, in our folly asking for something that is not good. For what you ask, that is given you.
Therefore, we have to guard ourselves not only from external inimical or adverse forces, but more than anything else, we have to guard ourselves against our own folly, our own ignorance. The jivatman suffers more through ignorance and folly than through any wickedness or evil. Wickedness and evil have a limited ability to injure you, make you suffer, but ignorance and folly can heap upon the individual soul endless suffering.
This reminds one of a subtly humorous statement, which nevertheless conceals great wisdom: “It is a great pity that ignorance is not painful.” If it were painful, people would try to get rid of it immediately. That all of you know; one does not want to allow any painful condition to prevail or continue. But unfortunately, ignorance not being painful, one allows it to be, and this leads to endless suffering later on.
The entire Vedanta siddhanta (doctrine) says that the great problem of man is avidya, ajnana. All suffering, all tapa-traya, all problems, all the complications that the human individual soul—which is part and parcel of the supreme, all-perfect Divinity—undergoes are due to ignorance. It is that which causes the individual to make the wrong choice and to later regret.
Through knowledge alone can ultimate liberation be attained. The Kathopanishad characterises the state of ignorance as little understanding like that of children. Due to this smallness of understanding, beings take the visible alone to be real and refuse to believe in and recognise the invisible which is the real. Therefore, they come to grief and are caught in the ever-recurring wheel of birth and death.
One, therefore, has to guard oneself against one’s own folly through awareness, through reflection, through always being in the company of wise people. That is why satsanga has been lauded so much as one of the gates to liberation. The company of elevating, inspiring books is also very helpful in the process of gradually progressing towards wisdom. One needs to be simple of heart, humble and prepared to learn.
Our situation is very much indeed a situation of choice. This choice is that which ultimately decides what you become, what your life ultimately culminates in. This indeed is to be pondered deeply, known very clearly and constantly borne in mind. With this awareness live wisely, choose rightly, act spiritually and crown yourself with blessedness.
May the choicest blessings of Gurudev be with you at every step taking you in the right direction, making you choose the correct alternatives. Thus may you with wisdom, alert awareness and an active discrimination steadily move towards the Goal!
48. WHAT WILL BE YOUR CHOICE?
The humble prayer of this servant at this moment is that you may be enabled to grasp and absorb the practical spiritual teachings of Gurudev and apply them in your own day-to-day life, that you may adopt them as the very principle and pattern of your living, and thus, before you shed your physical body and go forth from here, you may be able to realise the Absolute, you may be able to enter into an experience of that great Reality and abide in that great Reality.
Whether this will be a fact or only a distant hope, whether this will be a dream or the reality, depends entirely upon you. It depends entirely upon each and every one of you. It depends upon your choice. It is a matter of choice. It depends upon your wisdom. It depends upon your right understanding and clear perception. How do you understand your presence here on planet Earth? How do you understand yourself as a part of human society?
Your presence here is primarily in human society, a society that is endowed with the power of perceiving, observing, understanding, enquiring, discriminating, reasoning, selecting and rejecting. All other forms of life are, by and large, body-bound in their consciousness and the living of their life. They are not endowed with this unique faculty of reasoning and coming to right conclusions or wrong conclusions depending upon whether their reasoning is right or wrong.
Reasoning can depend upon logic. Or, it can depend upon bias, prejudice or self-love. Then the reasoning will lead you astray. But the real point is that whether this chance and opportunity of being a human being will be rightly used or not depends not upon God, not upon faith, not upon others. It depends upon each one of us. It is a question of choice.
This is made very clear by Yamadharmaraja when He was confronted by Nachiketas. Yamadharmaraja, who had knowledge of this side as well as that side, who knew what becomes of the soul after physical death, who knew the nature of the Reality dwelling within this unreal, temporary body, tells Nachiketas: “It is a matter of the individual soul’s choice. Before each one of them open up two paths.
“The first path is the one that is pleasant and satisfies the senses, a path fraught with the danger of losing one’s freedom through attraction, through slavery. For the more one indulges the more intense becomes the desire. The second path is apparently difficult and does not seem to be pleasant but leads to one’s highest good, one’s supreme welfare. It is for the individual to choose whether one will go towards that which is merely pleasant and attractive or one will go in the direction of that which is difficult but glorious.”
And Yamadharmaraja goes further to say that the vast majority of human society is short-sighted. They are shallow; they do not use their faculty of deep thinking and reasoning. So whatever they perceive through the senses, they decide is the only reality. Seeing is believing. Thus concluding, they run after temporary things believing that there is nothing beyond. Failing to perceive the greater Reality, taking this temporary appearance to be reality, these small-thinking people come again and again into the wide-spread net of death.
Nachiketas perceives immediately. He has right reasoning, clear perception, and he says: “Then I only want the highest, the supreme, that which is permanent, unchanging and imperishable.”
Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji wanted everyone to be like Nachiketas. He wanted us to be wise, perceiving, and with clear thinking and right reasoning to make the heroic choice. He always used to say: “You should have the Nachiketas spirit.”
Lord Krishna left to Arjuna the choice of the direction he will take. Even before the Mahabharata war He put two alternatives before Arjuna and said, “You choose.” He did not help Arjuna to choose. Arjuna chose Krishna instead of the Yadava army. Duryodhana thought Arjuna to be a fool and rejoiced that the army was left for him. But Arjuna had wisely chosen the Divine.
The source of all human actions is the human mind, the thought that you allow to occupy and dominate your mind. It requires vigilance, policing, alertness, wakefulness, jagriti. Thus knowing, the wise yogi, the spiritual aspirant, is ever alert. This choice we are speaking of is not the choice of some momentous point in your life. It is a choice which commences at every dawn and continues throughout your waking hours until you retire at night.
This wakefulness and choice must be constantly exercised each moment, at every step, all of your life. There is a bhajan which says: “O, keep your steps upon the highway of life, carefully discriminating, reflecting well before each step about the direction you are stepping.” Thus a constant awareness and a correct choice is what is indicated when the principle of self-choice is put before us as the great fact of a successful spiritual life.
Similarly, departing from here, the great Buddha, the enlightened one, admonishes his followers: “O Bhikshus, be a light unto yourselves and be a lamp unto the feet of others.” The light is within; shine with that light. Let that light radiate, let it manifest in and through your life—your thoughts, words and deeds. Shine with the light that you are, and so let your life be an ideal one that illumines the path of others.
Now, it is left to you. Will you shine with that light that you are? Will you be a lamp unto the feet of others? Will your very being be an awakening light, a constant process of illumining this human society, this prapancha, wherever you go? Or, will you forfeit this great privilege, this great blessing? Will you allow yourself to be entrapped in the grosser, lower self?
If you allow yourself to be enslaved by the lower self, then your life becomes a centre of discord, disharmony, falsehood, unspirituality. All that is the very contradiction of your supreme divinity begins to occupy the field of your relationships with others, vitiating the atmosphere and creating asanti in yourself and others, spreading darkness instead of light.
Therefore, let us choose to shine as the light that we are. We make this choice now! We shall never allow the lower self and its negativity to eclipse the full radiance of our divinity. We shall never allow it! We shall be vigilant; we shall ward it off. No matter how many times we shall be assailed, we shall emerge victorious. We shall shine with the great radiance of the light that we are. This will be our life.
Thus we choose, and throughout the remaining days of our life, this choice will guide us. We will abide by this choice, and at each step we will choose to move in the right direction. We will choose to be what God has meant us to be, what we really are.
This is the great need. This is wisdom. In this lies your highest blessedness. Let this be your wise choice, and let this choice guide you each day of your life at every step. May the grace of the ever-present Divine Reality, the benedictions of the guru who dwells within you, enable you to succeed in this great choice!
At every step each day make your choice and move towards the Light. In this lies your assurance of transcending all pain and sorrow and entering a state of perennial bliss. Supreme bliss does not come. We have to move towards it. We have to ask for it. We have to opt for it. We have to work for it. Then it is ours. Thus, joy or sorrow, bondage or freedom, restlessness or peace is a matter of individual choice. The way is before us and it is up to us to choose the direction.
49. CHOOSE TO DWELL IN TRUTH
Yesterday, we briefly dwelt upon the central experience around which the whole edifice of the Vedic religion is built. The sages who had this exalted experience declared that everything here is indwelt by the presence of God. God is immanent in all existence. Isavasyamidam sarvam yat kimcha jagatyam jagat (All this whatsoever in this universe that moves or moves not is indwelt by the Lord). Thus they declared this central experience upon which the whole of Hinduism is based.
This central experience was once again granted to Arjuna in the astounding and amazing vision by which he was blessed, through the grace of Lord Krishna, in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, when Lord Krishna granted him the vision of His cosmic form. Arjuna saw God and God alone everywhere. Wherever he turned, wherever he gazed, he beheld nothing but God. He was thrilled, exalted, awestruck, overwhelmed by this great vision.
Sarvam khalvidam brahma. Neha nanasti kinchana (Verily, everything here is Brahman. There exists nothing other than This). In the light of this great vision, this great experience, this central fact of the Vedic vision and the Vedic way of life, how should one conduct oneself? These detailed instructions were given by the same Lord Krishna in the eleventh book of the great scripture the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana when He declared His last and final departing message to the great devotee, Uddhava.
Through him, He taught what it means to live in the light of this great vision, to remember it and to bring it into your feelings, your thoughts, your view of things and the way in which you relate yourself to life. And this vision and this teaching gives you the key to how to spiritualise all your life, your actions and your day-to-day dealings with this world in which you have to live, move and have your being, physically speaking.
Can this physical aspect of your life also be spiritualised, raised up to a spiritual height? Yes. Not only yes, but if you wish to enter into God-experience, it is indispensable. Otherwise, you will always be held prisoner to this gross level of consciousness. You will ever dwell in physical consciousness and relate yourself to this physical world outside on that level only. There will be no possibility of your rising beyond and going into a higher plane of spiritual consciousness unless and until you spiritualise the physical—transform it—and in and through it raise yourself to a higher level of spiritual consciousness. It is through your day-to-day life that you have to gradually proceed upon the ladder which ascends into the supreme realm of God-vision.
It is up to you to decide whether you will allow the changing appearances to completely fill you and dominate your life or whether you will allow the inner spiritual fact to infill you and transform your life. You have to choose.
What is your choice—to allow the ever-changing, physical appearances to be the basis of your life and actions, or to choose to make the great spiritual experience and fact of your ancestors to be the basis and means of relating yourself to this world outside? If you clearly recognise that it is upon this choice that the vision and quality of your life depends, you will reach the ultimate experience.
If you choose to set aside this great truth, shove it to the sidelines, your life will be an everlasting groping, stumbling, falling and moving around in circles. If you choose to live in the light of this truth, then your entire life becomes illumined. You no longer live in the dark; you walk in the Light. You are able to declare: “I am in the Light; the Light is in me; I am the Light.”
Then your whole life becomes spiritualised. This is a matter of your choice—whether in the presence of Light you choose to dwell in darkness, or whether you choose to come out of the darkness once and for all, refusing, rejecting, all possibility of return to that darkness. You say: “tamaso ma jyotir gamaya. Never more, after having come into contact with the Isa Upanishad, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavatam and with Gurudev who lived all three, never more shall I live in darkness in the midst of Light. I shall ever dwell in the Light, move in the Light and ultimately attain illumination.”
If that is the determination, then nothing in this world can prevent you from becoming a jivanmukta, from living a radiant life of divine vision and quality. For in this awareness anything that is petty, ignoble or unspiritual cannot prevail—impossible! Anything that is petty, that is unspiritual dare not enter into such a life. Even if it enters, it will be discovered immediately, put to shame and hastily got rid of, not allowed to proceed further. Such is the power of the radiance, the power of the light of God, that you invoke if you choose to live in this vision.
The choice is before us each day, each dawn. As a matter of fact, the Kathopanishad goes one step further and says that the choice is before you each moment, at every step. The choice is always before you within and without, in the realm of your thoughts, your sentiments and feelings as well as your actions which are only a pale reflection of that which you are, that which, in fact, is your true field of action.
The Kathopanishad also says that it is not realised, it is not attained, by one who has not turned away from the wrong ways of living. It cannot be attained by one in whom serenity has not been established through renunciation, right perception, detachment and the giving up of delusion.
It cannot be attained by one who has not ingathered his mind, overcoming its restlessness and ceaseless tendency to move outwards and lose itself among the objects of the senses. Unless the mind is resolutely brought inside and made to stay upon the Atman, one cannot attain illumination.
It can be attained only through the wisdom that dawns when these conditions have been met. Therefore, verily, every moment of your life you have the choice of adopting a spiritual vision, of invoking a spiritual bhava and attitude, and seeing in every act that you do an association with that great Reality that is immanent in all creation.
“I am not far away from God. God is never far away from me. He is everywhere, all around, within and without. This is the truth. In this truth I shall strive to live.” If you choose thus, you are on the way to immortality, to liberation, to divine perfection.
All the scriptures are a call to this choice, the right choice: Arise, awake and seek enlightenment. All the scriptures are a great clarion call to adopt this vision, to live and act in the light of this vision, and to attain illumination. That is the great, eternal call of the Upanishads to each and every one of you.
Outer circumstances do not matter. Because it is the inner view and vision that has the power to transform, to overcome all outer circumstances and to make you see the Divine indwelling the so-called gross physical universe.
There is no gross physical universe at all. Everywhere only God prevails. Everywhere only the Divine pervades. You live in that Divinity. The so-called gross world and earthly circumstances are our creation, our imagination. Brahman alone exists.
Let us live in truth. Let us affirm and assert the truth and not commit the great error of choosing to live in falsehood. Reject falsehood. Affirm truth. That is the whole of viveka and vichara, of discrimination and enquiry. May God and guru enable you to lead this lofty life of the truth-vision and crown yourself with supreme blessedness in this very incarnation, in this very body!
Ponder this deeply and well. If you make up your mind, there is no such thing that is impossible to the human soul, the jivatma, richly endowed with a human birth and status. This truth is to be firmly grasped.
If you consider yourself to be a weak human being, then everything is impossible, everything is difficult, everything is uncertain. If you consider yourself to be a divine being, everything becomes possible, everything becomes easy, everything becomes sure and certain.
So, whether you think of yourself in error or whether you think of yourself in knowledge is the decisive factor. What do you choose? Darkness or light? Error or knowledge? Ajnana or jnana? It is for you to decide.
Gurudev wants you to live in the light of knowledge, to arise, awake, and attain wisdom. The Upanishads want you to live in the light of knowledge. The prayer tamaso ma jyotir gamaya induces you, reminds you, goads you, to live in the light of knowledge. Ignorance has never been encouraged in the context of the Vedic way of life, in the context of the spiritual culture of India. It has never been favoured.
This indeed is a crucial, decisive factor upon which you must take a definite stand—without vacillation, without faltering, without uncertainty.
50. YOU CHOOSE WHAT YOU BEHOLD: GOD OR MAYA
This world in which you live, the things you are surrounded by, at once constitutes the illusory creation of maya—deluding, attracting, tempting, pulling you out, an enchanting bazaar of false appearances drawing you away from your right direction, away from your goal—and at the same time it also constitutes nothing but God, God appearing in ever so many forms, a great grand revelation, a manifestation, a cosmic expression.
And the paradox is that our scriptures declare and affirm both these things. At one point Lord Krishna says: “Very hard and difficult indeed is My maya, made of the three gunas, to cross, to go beyond. Most succumb to its attraction, lose the way and get caught in the net of death and rebirth.” In the same Gita teachings, He says to Arjuna in the eleventh chapter: “Behold the reality of this universe.” Arjuna looks and sees only God, God alone everywhere.
So you live in this paradox. What does it mean to you? What do you make of it? Are you living in God, or are you surrounded on all sides and overwhelmed by maya? What is the truth? It is for you to decide. He that hath eyes, let him see. He that hath ears, let him hear.
The paradox will be there. But the paradox may not be a paradox. It is simply to say that Brahman and maya coexist. God and His deluding power coexist. It is for you to choose what you will see. The Upanishads give the analogy of the munja grass which has an inner core that can be drawn out of the outer covering. If you are not aware of this you will only see the outer appearance.
Similarly, the outer side of all things is the deluding, tantalising, tempting maya. But the inner side is the one, all-pervading, ever-present, divine Cosmic Reality. It is, therefore, for you to decide towards which you will direct your vision. As you look, so you will behold. If you look at it with the eyes of non-discrimination, you will behold only the outer appearance. If you look at it with the eyes of discrimination, then you will behold the hidden God.
You must look with a special eye. Just as in the eleventh chapter of the Gita the Lord clearly declared to Arjuna that he would not be able to see with his ordinary eye, and so He bestowed upon him an extraordinary eye; so, in this century, Gurudev came amidst us to try to give us the right vision, to bestow upon us a divine way of looking at things, of beholding the Divine Reality hiding within the outer appearances. He tried to bestow upon us the right vision through his writings, through his teachings and through the wisdom he imparted to us by the way he lived his life.
Whether you behold God or maya depends upon you. They coexist. You cannot separate them. It is for you to be wise, for you to be awakened within, for you to use discrimination and behold the essence and not be deluded and overcome by the appearance. If you thus live, the world will elevate you to sublime heights each moment. It has the potential to inspire you, elevate you, fill you with Divinity.
Therefore, look and behold the Reality. Do not allow your mind to be drawn away by the appearance. Let your life be lived in wisdom and discrimination. Let your life be lived with an awakened vision, never missing the essence, at all times beholding only the Reality: samam sarveshu bhuteshu tishthantam paramesvaram vinasyatsv avinasyantam yah pasyati sa pasyati (He sees, who sees the supreme Lord existing equally in all beings, the unperishing within the perishing). Thus the Lord has declared.
Therefore, if you live with this eye of discrimination, you can also say: “I live, move and have my being in God.” God will become the greater reality to you. Maya will fade away and take a back seat, and you will practise the presence of God. You will benefit by the divine proximity. Life will become to you an Upanishad. Thus may you live and become blessed forever!
You have this great blessedness of having a dual awareness—a lesser awareness which is an error, and a greater awareness which is the truth, the correct awareness. And this wonderful fact grants you the privilege of being in a position to make yourself an instrument, not merely of the limitations, finitude and imperfections of your temporary, fleeting human personality, but choosing, on the other hand, to make yourself an instrument for the expression and manifestation of all the perfections that comprise your true, essential divine nature.
You have the privilege of making this choice: I shall make myself an instrument of my divine perfection, not my human imperfections. I shall make myself a centre of God. I shall make myself a centre of God’s perfection, beauty, truth, purity, compassion, forgiveness, wisdom, harmony, love, tolerance, peace, friendship, helpfulness and divinity.
In short, I shall choose; and I will apply and utilise this great privilege that I have of making myself an instrument of all that is lofty, noble and sublime. I shall supply to the world that which it lacks. I shall not add more clouds to the firmament. I shall bring a ray of sunshine!
51. CHOOSE TO MANIFEST WHAT YOU ARE
What will you yield, in the form of the living of your life, in the world into which God has sent you? The oyster yields a pearl because that is what it holds within its bosom. The gold mine yields gold because that is what it holds within its bosom. What will you yield from within the depths of your own personality, your nature, your individual identity? What will be your gift to the world? It is for you to choose. It