Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Ma said I should say something about our dharma and in what manner does it relate to religion or does it go beyond religion. You know our Ashram is a trust. It is actually a public charitable educational trust. We want to describe it as an educational trust because whatever we do is for the purpose of educating the people and participants. Even now people do not look at the life of a sannyasin as the life of a teacher, a very distinguished teacher who tries to learn, study on the one hand, pursue knowledge, at the same time disseminate it. Maybe all people are not able to disseminate it effectively but a sannyasin’s life is supposed to be for pursuing and propagating wisdom. It is such wisdom that will enable the people to understand the nature and purpose of life, the necessary disciplines and refinements to be followed in order to enrich and elevate life.

Everything concerning human life comes under the gamut of dharma. In that way our dharma is not just religious or so much religious. In our dharma there are people who do not believe in God and who can and do believe in God. Belief in God or disbelief in God does not in any way affect the course of our dharma. Our dharma has been an outcome of dedicated enquiry. We have a celebrated proverb called 'Athatho Dharma jijñāsa'. It is the birth right of a human individual to think about ‘Am I doing the right thing, what is right, how to make everything in my life right, and what is purpose of being right or righteous?’.

Any kind of an enquiry can come up in life and the enquiry into dharma is also very relevant and indispensable in human life.  In fact, that individual in whom such an enquiry sprouts alone is considered to be an arya, a śreshta. This is the concept of our dharma. So our dharma considers whether belief in God is necessary or not. Can we go without the belief? Suppose we believe in God, what are the benefits or advantages? If you believe and you don’t get the benefits, then the belief is not meaningful. So it will analyze everything in human life, oneself, the constituents of the world, the very concept of God and religion, everything is enquired into by dharma. Such a dharma is by its very nature not religious. It does not divide anything like religious and non-religious. Our dharma when properly understood covers the entire gamut of life, activities, interaction, character, behaviour, inter-personal relationship, relationship with the world, relationship with nature, relationship with the beyond, everything is included. There is nothing precluded from dharma.

In other words, only when one is able to bring the entire life and activities of his within the sphere of dharma, he become dharmic. Now such a dharma obviously does not allow to be considered as either religious or secular. This is a point many people do not know. When our dharma was evolved, I am sure, in the plains of Ganga where people began to concentrate and live peacefully because of the availability of beautiful water throughout the year, there was nothing like religion or religious matters in the world at all.  The word religion got included in the dictionary much, much later. Then how can you call our dharma to be a religion? So it is not religion. The subject has been debated and discussed and also adjudicated in Supreme Court many years back where they have said that our dharma is a way of life. It is not a religion at all.

Our dharma relates to what? Human life and personality. In the personality there are four distinct levels. The sensory level in which eyes, ears etc. hands, feet etc. come in. Then, the oral or articulational level – the tongue, speech etc. Then we go inside to touch the mind level where thoughts, feelings, emotions and memories arise. Then we go into the intelligence level where investigation, interrogations, assessments, findings, search etc. are there. Now our dharma is relevant to the sensory plane of our life, the oral plane of our life, then the mental and intellectual planes. It also relates to the ego level and finally touches and concludes by reaching the Self level.

It is the self level that was disclosed by Krishna in the Kurukshetra battlefield for Arjuna because there was nothing else that could work. He had to fight his own grandfather and kill him; he had to fight Drona and all the respectable and adorable people with whom he had no enmity at all. Obviously such a war is not permissible to any level of human life. Therefore Krishna had to instruct and disclose the existence of the Self and the indestructibility of the self. “Standing yourself inwardly on the self which is unborn and undying, which is indestructible, just undergo this war.  Just like any other activity of nature, do not claim any possessiveness about anything. Simply act as a non-actor.”  This is what he said. So our dharma takes us to that level of perception, that level of realization.

This dharma is not merely a doing of the intelligence. It is a pursuit of the mind, heart, and even ego, I can say. The pursuit gets climaxed and fulfilled when we reach a stage of ego-effacement or ego extinction.  As our ego is prominent now, it can also be extinct. For both, the mind alone has to work. In one, you have a feeling that I am working, in the other you have a feeling, I don’t work, it is nature that enables me to work. Neither over the senses, nor over the tongue nor over the brain, mind and intelligence do I have a sense of ownership and control. So, I am working almost irresistibly as an automatic process like the wind blows, the water flows, the earth springs and the aakasa remains. Like that I am also alike. Now this is something very interesting for you to know. Unfortunately our people are unable to understand our dharma in this manner. They still have the scare crow of religion.

Our trust which is a public charitable trust and which also enjoys the 80G registration. We have been registered and sanctioned 80G. That means donations made to the Ashram are exempt for 50% income tax, exemption is available. Now if you want to get this 80G which we have and retain it, we cannot spend any money for any religious purpose at all. So, this is a constriction that we have to suffer from or work under. When I think about it, I don’t find any meaning and purpose in this statement at all. Because so far as our dharma is concerned, we don’t have a religion, we only have a dharma and that dharma does not allow any kind of a division or thought like religion and non religion. It is a way of life. Our dharma when properly analyzed you will find, all forms of worship are exercises done by the worshipper and for his own benefit. Whether he worships God or contemplates upon the soul, chanting Gayatri, it makes no difference. Some people take to God, others takes to their own soul. Others take to nature. Others take to shoonya or a zero. All these are available in our dharma. How dare anyone call it religion, religion and God based?

So I am at present thinking of defining our dharma and trying to place before the people whenever necessary that please understand this dharma and get away from your differentiation of religion and non-religion. We don’t do anything at all except when it is beneficial to human life either at the individual level or in the family level or in the society and national and global level. We don’t do anything except as a benefit to any of the creature in this country. When we bury something in the earth, the earth digests it and the earth remains more and more useful and relevant. The biological nature of the earth increases. We should preserve our earth, preserve our air, preserve our water, preserve all the other elements also. Now this ecological consideration is a compulsion for us. So our dharma can go to any extent of defining anything whatsoever.  It always relates you to nature which has moulded your life and personality and which surrounds you. Now such a dharma, is it not itself very secular? Because it is very pragmatic, very practical. It does not take your mind away from anything, absolutely worldly, absolutely social, absolutely individualistic, absolutely familial, everything is pragmatic, pragmatic. Such a thing, how can it be ordinarily religion, because any religion tries to think of a God who is not visible and who is at an infinite distance. Our dharma is not like that. So I would like all of you to know about it.

I would like to put some thoughts in writing to govern our activities which are going to be to some extent in the sphere of the seeming religion also because people who come here invariably are devotees and worshippers and it is a herculean task for me to tell them what is the meaning and purpose of worship. Worship is not to make God fatter and look better. It is to make yourself better, a more reformed and a refined person. The entire emphasis should be shifted from the external or distant God to your own mind and intelligence. Then devotion becomes fulfilled and you become a true meaningful devotee.

Harih Om Tat Sat Jai Guru.