Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

I don’t know whether you are aware that I am one who constantly and repeatedly conducts research into the subject of spirituality, spiritual wisdom; how it is to be pursued, what are the effects when it is pursued wholeheartedly, why are people not able to pursue this sādhanā well.  Even when they pursue, why they feel not sufficiently inspired, and very often they say I am not able to progress.  Why is all this, I always think about it. For my research I don’t need an external laboratory.   It is within my own body using my own mind and intelligence and the observations the senses make about the world around.  It is a process of introspection where the various subjects and needs are taken up, discussed, related, correlated and the right conclusions arrived at. 

I was speaking about bhakti that it is completely depending upon the devotee. I remember ‘S’ of Jamshedpur asked, “Swamiji what you say is right, but can we rely upon a God who is nothing?”  Okay you rely upon a God who is everything, but thinking that God is all powerful you must be able to develop devotion.  In other words, your devotion can grow only when you understand that God is all-pervading.  But the devotion itself is an emotion that the mind gives rise to thinking about God. That means what? God is not somebody or something alike so many things in this world, but different from.  So it is that non-sensory nature of God that makes you generate devotion in your mind.  When I say this, you may not understand or accept but you have to think about it.  You can be devoted to yourself.  You can be devoted to the earth.  You can be devoted to the other bhūtas.  Whatever you are devoted to, devotion is a sublime quality of the human mind.  How can the mind develop a quality, if it is not capable of developing it?  That is what happens. 

Many of you think about a good and all-powerful God, but your mind is not growing devotion.  Is it due to the lack of the concept, its perfection, or is it due to some other lack in you, the devotee?  In whichever way you think, you will find, devotion is completely resting upon the devotee’s mind, heart and intelligence.  You must exercise your intelligence in such a manner that the devotional thoughts will become denser, deeper and what not.  I always speak that the human personality gives rise to four different levels of activity.  One is the physical - the sensory activity, the next is oral - articulation.  These are the two visible and perceptible ones.  But they are the effects and outcome, of what? Of the inner activity by the mind and intelligence. Before every physical movement or activity, the mind has to generate it, employ it and cause it.  Then again you will find, mind becomes the causal and the source.  Are you aware of this?  Then the intelligential activity is that where you try to employ your intelligence and try to either enquire, or analyze or investigate or assess or discover.  There must be something in the way of knowing, a quest. Then only the intelligence comes. Of the four levels of activity, what we need is a mento-intellectual activity to be applied to the devotional practice. This is by and large lacking in the people.  That is why their devotion does not progress.  

I am reminded of a verse in Yogavasishta Ramayana

Vāsanākṣaya vijñāna manonāsa mahāmate - there are three items Vasishta speaks about – manonāsa, vāsanākṣaya, attenuation and extinction of desires.  Vijñāna - gaining more and more knowledge about what the world is, I am,  what is the mind, what is the intelligence, what is their relationship and  who is this God which religion speak about.  That jnana can only be about the visible prakriti, how the prakriti is formed, how does it  work, how much freedom does it give, what is my prakriti, can I change it, what is this mind, what is the intelligence, what is the role of both, in this way you understand.  This vijnana should be taken up and pursued and properly developed. Then the third is manonāsa – what is manonāsa?  It is something very simple.  You sit in a place, close your eyes.  If you are an initiated seeker, then whatever the Guru has asked you to do, do it. Sit.  So the mind alone becomes meditative, and you will find at a time when the mind and even the optional thought, the mantra that you are practicing, both of them will disappear, as in sleep, but not sleeping.  When the mind and the thought process both disappear, both come to a still level, automatically that becomes manonāsa. Because the mind is not at work, so the world is not perceived.  Because the mind is not at work, there is no thought of the past, present or future.  If the mind is active, all the problems arise.  When the mind is not active, it is absorbed, then no problem. Now these are the three distinct items you have to practice.  Chirakālam samābhyasta - you have to practice these three, the triple, for a long time.  Then bhavanti phaladhā muneḥ - for a person who has enough practice of manana śīla, for him, these three give a great result, outcome and fruition.

When I sought initiation from my Gurudev, he did not tell me anything.  We were closed up in a room.  I sat in his front.  He did not explain to me anything.  He just gave me a process of anusandhāna, mental contemplation.  I held on to it as a sadhānā, as a tapas, as an anuṣṭhāna, as a pursuit, and it is this pursuit that has given me all that I needed.  At one time, I told him that I don’t feel like reading. “No don’t read. The book to be read will come to your table and when the time is opportune you will start reading”. When I asked him, “Is it necessary to read?”  “This does not mean that you should not read.”  I was so much given to the assiduous pursuit of the sadhānā that I never wanted to have a distraction in the form of reading. 

My brother, elder brother who was primarily initiating everything in the way of my contact with my Guru, at one time he told our Gurudev, “Gurudev, you initiated us into a sadhānā. But, but, but, you did not tell us that we should take up vichāra, as Yogavasishta says”. Vichāra - What is vichāra?  Truthful introspection. In vichāra the mind and the intelligence alone are at work.  In meditation we are trying to dissolve it in their very source but in vichāra they are kept vibrant and active and we start reflecting upon, as  I told you, the things seen and heard by us, the world, then the source, the terminus of the world. Then into one’s own being, going into what the mind, intelligence, ego, qualities and other things are, tendencies. 

When the vichāra becomes intense, subtle, sharp and focused, then the intelligence, param padam paśyati, the intelligence perceives the supreme truth.  When the thought process itself is dissolved, your mantra itself vanishes, the mind vanishes, you suddenly come up and say everything went off. See you are a fool, fool. Why?  You say everything went off. Then what remains?

"I don’t know."

Then who experienced the stillness?  

"I."

So, you have experienced a stillness and you are not able to understand it.  Are you not a fool?  My mind was thinking, thinking, the mantra was on and I found that the mantra and myself, both of them have subsided, dissolved.  How can they dissolve? When you put sugar into a cup of tea, it is the tea water that takes away the sugar.  So in their dissolution, there must be a terminus.  While you say, the thought process, the mantra itself became extinct, you are not able to say what made it extinct, and what succeeded its extinction.  You are not able to understand because you are not sensitive, you are not sharp.  We have always been seeing only external things like solid, liquid, gaseous, different forms of energy like light, fire etc.  Now, inside your body there is no fire. There is no water.  Inside your body, not in the body.   So it is a substance different from even ākāśa, and that is the substance into which you get dissolved, and how dare you say that I got dissolved but Swamiji  ..  ..   Call yourself a fool of the first order.  Until you understand where you are dissolved, what happened, what is that substance, I cannot call it a substance. Unless you do vichāra on dissolution, and you are able to find out what it is, it is your direct personal experience. That experience must be understood, analyzed, verified and clearly assessed.  This assessment will be possible only when you do introspection over the very subject. 

So, the introspection, vichāra is a process where the mind and intelligence alone are involved with a view to discover, assess and verify what you are having within your body.  What is this mind, what is mentation, what is this intelligence, what is intellection, what is ego, what is beyond these?  I did not tell my Gurudev as my brother spoke, I was not there also, but I understood that he was grumbling and complaining that our Guru did not tell us. But our Guru apparently then told him, “If I had told you about vichāra, would you have been ready to do it?”  In the same manner, your Swamiji speaks to you about it but I don’t think you will take up what he says and clearly get focused in your vichāra.  I am not ending with a negative note.  What I say is, you will still have to understand and appreciate what is this vichāra and what happens when vichāra is done.

Harih Om Tat Sat Jai Guru.