C. LIBERATION AND THE MIND
It is a strange metaphysical paradox that the mind and intellect which is our greatest problem, our greatest barrier and bondage, is the one and only instrument we have to approach the great Reality. It is a paradox that we have to recognise. It is a paradox that cannot be solved; it has to be transcended. You have to go beyond the mind and intellect by using it in the constant exercise of three sadhanas: Enquiry into who am I and what should be my life if it is to be real and authentic; discrimination based upon this enquiry; and genuine dispassion which is the outcome of earnest and continuous enquiry and discrimination. These three sadhanas are the soul of the spiritual life; they are an indispensable support of all other sadhanas.
All people want to concentrate, but all people have the same complaint: Mind runs hither and thither; it does not fix itself upon the object of meditation. This is precisely because seekers are only aware of one aspect of concentration; they are not aware of the second, broader aspect.
The first aspect of concentration is the technique—when you sit upon an asana, try to be steady and concentrate your mind. The body should be motionless, but in the most relaxed way possible. There should be nothing in your posture to drag your attention from the mind dimension to the body dimension.
The second aspect of concentration pertains to the remaining part of the twenty-four hours. During the rest of the day, towards what is your mind focussed? Is it in its usual uncontrollable state, or are you trying to give it a definite direction? By the way you live, are you trying to reduce to the barest, irreducible minimum the different directions the mind has to take?
Concentration has to be understood in its integrate, holistic state. Your entire external life from morning till night should be an ongoing continuous state of being concentrated upon the Supreme Being. Your heart, mind, intellect, feelings and actions must be habitually focussed upon the Divine. Mind has to be educated, trained, disciplined, to keep itself constantly stayed upon the Eternal.
Are you working in a planned manner to do this? If not, how can your technique of concentration be successful? Thus, pay attention to both aspects of concentration. Then see the effect!
78. BE AWARE OF YOUR INTERIM DIMENSION
In this world, each human individual has three dimensions of life. Most people, especially sadhakas, are immediately aware of two of them and are trying to study and deal with these two.
But the third one, everyone is aware of it, but no one pays any attention to it. No one fully recognises the importance of it.
Everyone is aware and pays attention to the first dimension, the secular life, the outer life, the worldly life, where we have to interact with people. This outer, secular world comes upon us from all sides from the moment we wake up from sleep. We cannot do anything about it, and it does not care for our inner aspirations. People and events push us to do things and we must act.
Secondly, we have a spiritual life where we are connected with God, where we are Atman, Immortal Souls, unborn. In that dimension, that other aspect, we are That which weapons cannot injure, fire cannot burn, water cannot wet, wind cannot dry; we are eternal, ever pure, perfect, avinasi (indestructible).
But it is the third dimension of life—everyone knows it, but no one pays attention to it—that is more important than either the outer secular life or the inner spiritual life. For it is this third aspect which decides how you will deal with the outer life and what you will do with the spiritual life.
This third dimension is your inner life of thoughts, feelings, views, attitudes, reactions, your psychological life of memories—hundreds of thousands of memories— imaginations, fantasies, desires, schemes, ambitions, projections into the future, thinking about tomorrow, about ten years hence. It is your psychological life of attitudes— positive, negative, warped, justified, unjustified, wise, unwise—an inner life of reactions to what keeps happening around you.
We are aware of this third dimension, but we are too busy engaged in and involved in our outer life; we are too busy with our sadhana, our spiritual life— japa, meditation, svadhyaya, upasana, kirtan—to pay much attention to it. Whereas, your ancients, those men of wisdom, gave it great importance.
They paid so much attention to it that they went so far as to say that it is this in-between, interim dimension, this subtle, invisible but very tangibly felt level, which decides what the world will be for you and what the inner spiritual life will be for you. Everything depends upon it. Because, as a matter of fact, all day, from morning till evening, you live only in this interim dimension, this psychological level of your life. It itself is the reason, the cause of your bondage or liberation. Mana eva manushyanam karanam bandhamokshayoh (Mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation of human beings). A person is what one thinks. As you think so you become. What a person’s faith is, that that person is. In so many ways they say that it is this interim inner life—which is not the higher spiritual life nor the outer material life—which is the very stuff of your life. You live there only.
You live in this interim life when you are relating yourself to this outer vyavaharic world; you live in this interim dimension when you are dreaming. And it is in this interim life that everything about spirituality, about sadhana, is to be known by you, grasped by you and understood and applied by you. It is only upon the dictates of your intelligence, your rationality and understanding, that your higher spiritual life is based.
And if your higher spiritual processes such as japa and meditation are not properly supported by a correctly lived interim inner life, everything is in vain. You will be doing sadhana for years and years, yet you may still be firmly enmeshed in your bondage. You will not proceed one step forward because something here binds you down, pulls you down.
Therefore, when all the great realised sages and seers formulated their methods, they paid maximum attention to your sankalpa-vikalpa (imagination), to your vrittis. They deeply studied the different states that the mind assumes. And they formulated ways and means of living this interim life in an intelligent way, with common sense, with caution and with understanding. For it is this which decides whether any factor, state of affairs or situation in your outer life, in your gross, material secular life, will be favourable to you or unfavourable to you.
If one is faced with sure death, one is filled with fear. But if one makes up one’s mind, it will be taken as a challenge and thus arouses within one all the courage and heroism one has in one’s inner content. Markandeya took sure death staring him in the face not as a catastrophe or calamity; he did not break down into fear. Rather, he said: “No, I shall deal with this; I shall overcome.” Savitri was facing the loss of her husband, sure widowhood. Normally, women will start beating their breast, weep and wail, but Savitri, no! She said: “I shall dare even to defy death.” And it is not the spiritual dimension of Savitri that reacted, it was the psychological dimension that took this as a challenge, a situation to be faced, grasped, confronted, dealt with and overcome.
These are indications of what you can do if you make this interim dimension of your life an instrument of right perception, of facing everything and moving towards it in a positive, creative manner and not in a defeatist, pessimistic or negative manner. Move towards life. Make use of every faculty within you. Deal with things that are outside in a positive manner.
Everything in this world—every person, every situation, every experience—has both a positive and a negative side. The wise spiritual aspirant makes use of his interim dimension to always put forth a positive attitude, a positive vision, a positive approach and orientation: “Let me see in what way I can deal with it to my advantage. If God is my father, mother, friend, relative and He is the doer of all good, and wishes my highest good, then if He has brought about these circumstances, He has some purpose in it. Otherwise, He will not do it. So, let me see in what way I can be benefited, in what way I shall deal with it, or in spite of this, in what way I can keep moving onward, Godward.”
It is this interim dimension that should be fully at work, intelligently thinking, reasoning, enquiring, discriminating and deciding step by step in what way this outer material world of vyavahara should be dealt with, in what way you have to live and move in it. It is this interior dimension that decides what each and everything that happens to you is going to be for you. For, essentially, until we reach Self-realisation, every human individual is a psychological being. Therefore, to make it the right instrument is the most essential part of the total training of the individual for attaining enlightenment, illumination and emancipation.
Thus, it is worth paying attention to what you are doing, day after day, in this interim psychological realm of your being—what thoughts you are allowing to remain, what thoughts you are rejecting, how you are behaving: “This is good for me; this is going to be a problem. I do not want a problem to be created within me by my own psychological being. I want solutions from it, not problems. Therefore, I will pay full attention to it and see how my mind-process works, how it functions, in what patterns it thinks its thoughts. I will be always alert to see that everything that is coming up and manifesting itself within is positive, helpful and creative, and not negative, destructive and a liability to me.”
Make your mind, its functions, its activities—every manifestation of it, whether in the form of a feeling or a thought or an intention—an asset and not a liability. Otherwise, there will be constantly a war within yourself, constantly a two-way pull, and a great deal of your power will be consumed in dealing with the situation which you have allowed to prevail inside.
All the powers of your entire being should be free, should be one hundred per cent available for living both the higher life and the outer life in a wise, creative and positive way. Otherwise, ninety per cent will be used up in a constant inner resolution of situations and conflicts because of your not having the wisdom to be alert and awake to channel the mind in such a way that the interim dimension is always positive, gainful and helping you to achieve—not pulling you down, enmeshing you and creating problems for you.
Therefore, inside there should be an alert, keen, interested observation of what is going on, and a constant, continuous effort to see that the inner state is always a thing that is taking you forward and not holding you up or, worse still, taking you backwards. This is the art and science of day-to-day life of the sadhaka or the seeker, of the devotee of God or the spiritual aspirant. And this is much more necessary in the spiritual person than even for a business executive or a professional person.
Today is, therefore, an indication to you of this important inner life, the interim dimension or level of your being which is the link between the higher spiritual inner life and the gross, outer, worldly secular life. This is both secular as well as spiritual. It partakes of both. It affects both. And success in both the first two dimensions depend upon what is going on here.
You can do sadhana for years and years, but if it only increases your pride, your abhimana (ego), then finished, all your sadhana is as nothing. It will fall to the ground. It is like a house built on sand, because the entire purpose of spiritual life is to try to get rid of this big thing that is plaguing you, that is sitting upon you, the human ego-sense, the individual personality. And if this is not grasped by your mind, intellect and understanding, and if your japa, meditation, vows, austerities either inflate your ego or have no provision for trying to directly lessen it and eliminate it, then no matter how much you are doing you are stuck; you are stuck!
Therefore, in a hundred different ways, Holy Master Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji tried to make you aware of this much known but least attended to inner life of yours— not the higher spiritual inner life, but the interim, psychological, mental life of yours. He wrote so many volumes including Mind Its Mysteries and Control to try to bring your attention to it. He gave so many secrets of the inner realm and gave so many valuable hints. “Give up Brahmin abhimana, give up sannyasa abhimana, give up doctor abhimana, give up name, fame and sex abhimana.”
It would, therefore, pay rich dividends to be constantly taking a look at yourself. Ultimately, this outer world, what surrounds you, is not what it is for others. It is your own world. Each one creates one’s own world by the way in which one looks at it, understands it, reacts to it, approaches it, and the attitude one takes to it. If there are a thousand people in this hall, they are living in a thousand different worlds. Each one makes one’s own world.
Realise this. It is the mind. You make your own outer world. And in the way in which you make it, it looks back at you. It is like a person standing before a mirror and looking at his own countenance. Whether it is serene, or peaceful, or tense, or negative all depends upon the expression you assume. If you smile, it smiles. If you scowl, it scowls. If you frown, it frowns.
And this interim dimension is a secret realm which no one else in the world really knows. Someone else may try to infer by some outer signs, but, really, no one else can enter into it and know. Even Yajnavalkya didn’t know what was in the mind of Maitreyi. He thought she would just want to have a secure life after he left. Rama did not know what was going on in Sita’s mind. He thought she would be content to serve His mother when He had gone to the forest. He did not know what stuff was inside Sita.
Therefore, pay attention, pay attention to this interim, hidden, inner life which only you know. Because upon it depends your success or failure, your bondage or liberation. Whatever the outer world is depends upon what you make of it from this inner realm. And your higher spiritual inner life also depends upon in what way you are able to understand it, know its essence, and, with wisdom, live it.
May the supreme power of God, the Cosmic Power, the Supreme Being who dwells within you, and has manifested in you as this interim inner life, enable you to understand it, utilise it, and make it a positive asset, an instrument for liberation and Divine illumination and perfection. That is my humble prayer.
You are eternal, beyond time. You are timeless. Nevertheless, even though you are rooted in that state of timelessness, you now find yourself to be a creature of time. Is there any way that we can profit from this peculiar, paradoxical situation we are caught in? While we are in time, can we turn it to our advantage and utilise it in a gainful way?
Our wise ancients admonished us: “Forget about the past. It does not exist. It is finished. Don’t be burdened by it. But before you forget it, take from it all the lessons and wisdom it has taught you about yourself and the world. Then fully concentrate on the present. Focus upon all the opportunities it offers you each day. Take the present in both your hands in a creative, dynamic, constructive way. Be always positive.”
And, while you thus take wisdom from the past and focus upon the opportunities of the present, visualise what you wish to be in the future: “I wish to be a liberated soul. I wish to be an instrument of God and a benefactor of man. I wish to bring glory and honour to my guru, to become an embodiment of his teachings and the teachings of the scriptures and all the great saints.”
In this way, utilise time to go beyond time. Attain your true status as the time-transcending, eternal, all-perfect Being. Do it now and become blessed!
79. WITH WHAT YOU HAVE, MAKE THE HIGHEST AND BEST USE
There is an expression in the West: “Make do.” It means that whatever we have, good or bad, we must make the best use of that. You must make do with what you have and not lament over what you do not have or fantastically imagine that one day you will have—and then you will be tops. Instead, you look at the hard facts, the ground reality, and make the best of what you have. You don’t go on waiting for some fanciful future when everything is perfect. This is one of the defects of the mind—always looking for a time when everything will be ideal.
There is also a significant saying: “That to one who has, God will give even more—to overflowing.” Its significance is that if you will thus make do with what God has given you, then automatically the Supreme Plenum, the purnam, starts giving you more and more, because having done the best that you can with what you already have, you have created conditions for being given more and for receiving more. Some mysterious cosmic law seems to start working and providing you with more and more, because you have deserved it by putting what you have to the very best and highest use.
You have not been neglectful. You have not treated with scant respect what you have already been endowed with. You have given it due recognition, due respect, due value and started making use of it in the best possible manner, which means that you have recognised the worth of what the Cosmic Being has already given you. This is no small thing!
Therefore, taking whatever we have, good or bad, in a holistic way, taking everything together, we apprise our NOW situation, our NOW endowments, abilities, capacities and faculties and say: “Yes, this is what I am at this point in time. In God’s own eternity, this is what I am. This is what I am and what I have, so let me put it to the highest and best use with all possible sincerity, keen interest, earnestness, dedication and enthusiasm.” If this is done, what can you not achieve? There is nothing that you cannot achieve.
Right at the very beginning you will start progressing, moving forward. You will not look forward to something, but start moving forward. This is the great thing needful. This is the working of grace. In the context of Indian philosophy it is called purushartha.
So, in the light of this truth, how do we look at what we have? It is not to be disdained, turned away from, but looked at in totality. “Yes, this is what I have. God has endowed me with this thing called life with all its plus and minus. Yet, I have it. So let me sit up and see in what way I can make the very best use of myself and in what way I can make the very best use of life.”
This means that you start looking at things in a totally different way: “Everything that I am and everything that life holds for me has some value in this approach I have now decided to take. So, let me no longer analyse and divide life into things that are helpful and not helpful, that are sadhana and not sadhana, that are spiritual and contrary to spiritual. No, I will take one hundred per cent of my life and see in what way I can turn each per cent to my advantage, how I can look at it in a different way and see in all of it a means of attaining the Goal, a means of Self-unfoldment, illumination and enlightenment. I will not classify or categorise things, nor try to fight against, reject or throw something away. I will take life as a whole and see everything in it as a possible plus factor kept there by God in His all-intelligence to help me.
“Yes, even when I commit some blunder and have to pay for it, I will make use of it: ‘Now I know what I should not have done and what it is I should do if such a situation arises tomorrow.’” So, the blunder has given you a valuable insight into life and equipped you with new knowledge. Therefore, even when you think something is to be very much regretted, a most unfortunate happening, it has great value for the future. It has alerted you to something that perhaps until that time you had not been aware of. So it has a plus value, it has a positive purpose, and, therefore, it is a factor helping your spiritual life and not the contrary.
In this way, everything, both the sum totality of what you are and the sum totality of what you feel have to be looked at in this way. Our entire dealing with both these factors, and when I say our entire dealing with both, I exactly say what I mean—that you are something more than life. You are something apart from this me which is all that you have.
So, when you know that you are something apart from this me, you don’t get caught up in the me and say I. You know that this is also an endowment, and you begin to think in what way I can make use of this me and this life of mine. Both of them are factors that you, the real you, the eternal you, the essential you, can make use of.
And here we come ultimately to the great saying: “You are what your mind is.” So, if you take this mental attitude, this new vision, this new way of looking at and approaching things, you say no to nothing and all things stand before you with a new meaning. Everything is a plus factor and you have to deal with them in a way in which they become endowments and assets, not liabilities and problems. You make use of them.
Herein comes the necessity of your thinking being backed up by the wisdom of your reasoning, your buddhi. By a little reflection, by a little discrimination you can go on making minus into plus and not even think of it as minus. “This is a plus point. At the moment I don’t see the plus point, but let me see where I can identify the plus point in this seemingly minus situation, both within me and in the life in which I am.”
Thus should be the wise, discriminating seeker and sadhaka’s approach to life and the living of life. May God’s grace and the blessings and benedictions of Gurudev give you the key to this—give you the key, guide your footsteps and enlighten your mind at every step.
80. CONVERT YOUR MIND INTO A LIBERATOR
Loving adorations to worshipful and beloved Holy Master Gurudev Swami Sivanandaji, whose benign glance of grace is ever upon you and with whom you seem to have had some inexplicable and unfathomable karmic relationship brought over from your previous incarnation. Without karmic relationship it is impossible for individual souls upon this earth plane to be drawn into any type of relationship. And, the highest kind of relationship—the greatest, most auspicious and blessed relationship—is between a devotee and God, a seeker and a saint, because this is the one and only relationship that liberates. All other relationships are prolific sources of bondage to sorrow, to restlessness, to asanti.
All experiences arising out of contact and relationship with passing, ephemeral, perishable, temporary things are said to be the source of sorrow. Ye hi samsparsaja bhogah duhkha yonaya eva te (The enjoyments that are born of contacts are only wombs of pain).
When one realises this ground truth—that association with all temporary things are fraught with sorrow—then only our journey to the Eternal begins. Sorrow, therefore, seems to have a purpose. Pain was declared by Gurudev to be an eye-opener. It can lead to the discovery and the rectification of error as well as the cause of sorrow.
Sorrow is caused by relationship with temporary things, and it is mind that creates relationships by its thought moving towards relative things. Through thought alone is brought about all human bondage, all human sorrow. And strange is the paradox, it is through thought alone that one can liberate oneself from the bondage created by thought. The one and only way of overcoming the state created by thoughts moving in a certain direction is to undertake the heroic task of purposefully making the mind to go in the one direction in which the mind becomes the liberator. Sorrow then begins to recede until it gradually fades away and vanishes, giving place to peace and to ultimate liberation.
The secret of sorrowlessness is to undertake this purposeful direction of thought—not towards the relative, but towards the Absolute, not towards the non-eternal, but towards the Eternal. That is the relationship that brings about liberation.
Recognising this, the wise seeking soul realises: “The way is through consciously directing my mind and my thoughts towards the Divine, towards the source of my being, towards the indwelling presence of the Supreme Reality in the very centre of my being, towards that Being who is everywhere—nearer than the nearest, more proximate to me than myself. Wherever the senses move, let me make the mind recognise the presence of the Divine there, even in that object.”
By thus transforming your interior, making the mind take up a new vision—not beholding the name and form and forgetting the indwelling presence of God; but, on the contrary, rejecting the name and form and directing your attention towards the indwelling Reality; by launching upon this purposeful new method of seeing, new method of the awareness of God here and now (in us and in all things) as the one and only reality that there is—man becomes taken up into a state of God-consciousness upon the psychological level, of God-awareness upon the mental level.
Here mind changes its entire role. Instead of taking you towards bondage, it now becomes the instrument to move you towards moksha and liberation. Mana eva manushyanam karanam bandhamokshayoh (Mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation of human beings). “God is here and now.” If you think in this way, you dwell in God. “This is the world I am caught in.” If you think of the world in this way, you are caught in the world.
Verily, you have to decide whether you will make your mind a gift of God or whether you’ll make your mind a net in which you are caught and struggling. The wise decide to make use of the mind and liberate themselves from bondage, darkness and sorrow. Those who are not wise, who dwell in folly, allow themselves to be made use of by the mind, and this gift of God becomes a source of affliction, our greatest problem.
They refer to it as a gift from God because it is the highest endowment. The ability to think and feel and reason through the mind is what makes us what we are. Without it we would no longer be upon the human level; we would sink to the animal level of species. But, even a gift from God can become a burden if we allow it to possess and control us. It becomes truly a gift of God if we control it and make it take us along with it to the great liberation.
This is where we stand in relation to our minds and where our minds stand in relation to us. For it is through the mind and its thought that we create all relationships. Will we allow the mind to create relationships for us willy-nilly, or will we make use of the mind to purposefully create the one great supreme relationship by which the mortal becomes immortal, by which man becomes liberated here and now, even while in the body?
That is the decision we have to take, and blessed is the one who takes the right decision. God bless us all to take the right decision. For we are most blessed and fortunate that He has brought us into relationship with an enlightened, holy spiritual master who has thrown much light upon what relationship to take and how to create this relationship.
We are blessed. May we recognise this blessing, make use of it, go beyond sorrow, and become established in bliss, peace, fullness and freedom!
81. OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE INNER AND OUTER WORLD
Worshipful homage to the supreme, eternal Absolute Reality of whom we are all inseparable parts sharing in that Divinity and in that perfection. Whether we are aware of it or not that inner spiritual relationship is more real than any other relationship that exists in this creation.
If we are to be aware of that eternal relationship, we have to be very, very alert, vigilant and careful that the innumerable relationships we have with external things, beings, situations and experiences do not become diverting factors drawing us away from this inner awareness towards other things. If we do not exercise this caution consciously, if we do not make purposeful effort to keep this vigilance and alertness always, the nature of our present human identity is such that it is bound to take us away from the Reality and disperse our entire being in trivialities, in things of no worth or value.
“Aham adischa madhyam cha bhutanam anta eva cha (I am the beginning, middle and also the end of all beings).” Thus declares the Supreme Being in trying to initiate us into this secret inner relationship. Despite this great grace, this great teaching that He is our all-in-all, everything to us, man still wanders in the jungle of forgetfulness of God, in the forest of God-alienation.
The reason is precisely because one does not make conscious and purposeful effort to keep up this awareness in the midst of distraction, one does not make conscious and purposeful effort through enquiry and through an ever-active discrimination exercised throughout the day to see that the externalising, diverting and distracting influence of the universe outside is counteracted wisely, diligently and constantly by a contrary inner recollection of ourselves in the Spirit.
It is only if this is done that one can keep up this awareness despite the outer attraction of the universe about us with its countless relationships to things, people, situations and experiences that draw us out. The wise sadhaka is that being who makes his or her device to see that this externalising, diverting and distracting force in this world of temporary, vanishing appearances