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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
Last evening, during the Satsang, two points were raised, one by S., another by A. S. raised, “How to avoid, overcome, or sublimate fear.” I was answering in this manner:
Any human mind is always a composite of love, hatred, and fear. To begin with it is so. At the same time we have got the will, the wish, the potential and the possibility to deal with these triple forces and sublimate them, and in fact, this is the only striving that is called for in human life. Anyone, in spite of whatever prosperity level he has, resourceful level he has, is always victimized by desire, hatred, and fear. In as much as the mind is so victimized, nobody will be able to have peace, contentment, and fulfillment. So the need to sublimate love, hatred, and fear is inevitable. Nobody can close his eyes towards it. Because of this compulsion, inevitability, the pursuit becomes very dear and also near to everyone.
It is possible to sublimate love, hatred, and fear. One has to understand that this fact is there. And secondly, everything he does should not be to enhance and intensify love, hatred, and fear, on the other hand, to wean and sublimate them, definitely. It is simply possible, provided you are conscious of it. We don’t have to do anything special but become conscious of the need for sublimating them. And rather than multiplying and intensifying these three, let us be conscious of sublimating them. When the mind becomes free of these, you will have the best of human life - a flexible mind, a reconciling mind, a sustaining mind, a mind that overwhelms all kinds of inputs from the world. Otherwise the inputs from the world make us tense and also overtake the mind. The fate will be entirely different, provided you are conscious of it. It requires a little explanation if you want to approach the subject from an intelligence point of view.
Another point I want to say is that - Any enquirer of Vedantic truth, we call it brahmajijñāsā, it has to be done by a person who has the required four fold prerequisites. The first is viveka, the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is unreal, the second is vairāgya or virāgatā. You generally translate it as dispassion. So dispassion is a qualification. vairāgya is not something that you have in the way of a dejection or a disappointment. It is on the other hand, the outcome of a well developed understanding about the transitory nature of the whole world as well as the constituents of the world, including our own personality; which again consists of the body - biological aggregate; inside the body – the mind, intelligence, and ego. All these are transitory, transitory, transitory!
When we are conscious of the transitoriness of the world, all your acquisitions can only be transitory, whether it is your body, your children, your married partner, the house, members of the house, relations, friends, property, wealth – everything becomes transitory. From a transitory possession, you cannot have an enduring happiness. Automatically the mind is compelled to seek what is non-transitory or eternal. Then we come to the Soul or the Self.
Now, about vairāgya, Bhartṛhari sings beautifully. He was a king sitting on the throne. Suddenly he found a disloyalty on the part of his wife, the queen. He instantly thought, “As a king on the throne, I am supposed to know even the most secret pulsations of every citizen and group of people. But, alas, I have not been able to recognize this disloyalty on the part of my own married partner. So I don’t deserve to sit on the throne.” One. Secondly he also felt that the human mind is so treacherous and untrustworthy. It is not untrustworthy for others, it is equally untrustworthy for oneself. “My wife certainly was deceived and defeated by her mind.”
So immediately he renounced everything and became a ascetic, lived for quite a number of years and all that he did thereafter was, maybe at the end of his asceticism, he composed 300 verses. They are called three centuries of verses. The first century is on Neeti - justice, propriety, morality, ethics, etc. Neeti satakam. The second is Sringara satakam. It deals with romance. The third is Vairāgya satakam, dispassion. And he sings in this manner:
He concludes saying that vairāgya alone gives fearlessness. All the other things in this world, whether it is a possession, or whether it is a quality, or whether it is an enrichment - all of them are subject to some kind of an attack or fear. And I don’t have time now to explain all the propositions.
bhoge roga-bhayaṁ - In the matter of eating a sumptuous meal, you always have the feeling the food may not be pure, it may contain some kind of an infection. Suppose you belong to a good family, some member in the family, may be your own child, may turn to be indifferent and he may bring ill repute to your family. If you are a scholar, you may be defeated by another greater scholar. Every possession, quality, and enrichment is associated with fear, he says. On the other hand,
sarvaṁ vastu bhayānvitaṁ bhuvi nṛṇāṁ - for the human beings in this world, all things are associated with fear.
vairāgyam-evābhayam - so the last answer for S’s question is that; in terms of intelligence and reason, rationality, dispassion alone ensures fearlessness.
This dispassion is not a dejection. Something unhappy takes place in the world, a dear and near one dies and you attend the cremation ground, some woman in the course of delivery has died - it is not because of any typical instance. You have to look into the world, assess and ascertain how transitory the huge planet earth also is. I say that there will come a when the sun will become cold, what to speak of other things. The whole heat will have been over. You and I may not be alive when the sun becomes cold. But, it is going to become cold. The earth is going to be completely worn off, at one time. Even now, I am told, America has sufficient nuclear weapons, even one-fourth of it or one-tenth of it, if it is employed, then the entire earth will be pulverized, nothing will be left. So the human has got the power to destroy the very planet. He is already destroying. We have got a lot of green house, green gas emissions are there. At the end of the century, we are supposed to reach a very precipitous situation where we don’t know what is going to happen at all on the surface of the earth. The only being who can cause damage to the earth is the human. All the other beings upon the earth, they don’t cause this kind of a damage. So,
sarvaṁ vastu bhayānvitaṁ bhuvi nṛṇāṁ vairāgyam-evābhayam
The other question was that: Is it a formful meditation or a formless meditation? I have already answered it. I would like to put it briefly. You know God is always permeating and pervading. If something has to permeate, it can never have a form. You think of heat entering water and making it hot. You think of water entering a piece of cloth and making it moist. So any substance to permeate another, it cannot have a form. The form free substance alone will be able to engulf and interpenetrate everything in this world.
So, God, if he is God, he has to be form free. And I don’t think it is difficult for us to understand it. Our own mind is formless. That is why it pervades the whole body. Because it is formless, it can give rise to all forms. See it is able to perceive all forms. Our tongue is taste free. That is why it is able to taste every taste. Our eyes are colour free. That is why the eyes are able to see all the different colours. Water is colour free. That is why you can dissolve any kind of a colour and the water will reflect that colour. So to be able to be all, the source has to be different from all. So formfreeness is an essential character or quality of God.
In order to understand it, I don’t know why there is difficulty. Our body is formed, but our mind is formless. The iron rod is a solid piece, but the heat that enters is not at all solid. It is such a simple proposition. The source from which all things are born, that source has to be different from all the things. Then only it can give rise to all. Such a simple proposition! The mirror is colour free. So it can reflect all the colours. So God also is formless, property less, characteristic less. That is why God can give rise to multiple and all characteristics. A little introspection will be able to lead you to this kind of a firm conclusion.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
