Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

A medical student from Malaysia has come here. He has come here on a particular assignment and approval from the college who wrote to us and sought a confirmation from us that he will be here staying and undergoing a process of study. The program for which he has come is to study the nature and implications of the mind, perhaps also the intelligence. Psychology, psychiatry, these are subjects which come under medicine. Naturally any kind of a study we do with regard to the human mind also can be a part of the medicinal science.

I was having some talk with him last night. I was emphasizing one important point that the entire body is made up of matter and energy. In fact, the whole world is made up of matter and energy. There is a constant conversion between matter and energy, inter-conversions of matter and energy are a constant process. Actually when we speak, we are generating the energy called sound and for producing that energy, the cells in the body are being used up and converted you can say. Though it is a matter-energy conversion when we articulate, the articulation process will not take place unless there is a conscious agent behind the process. This conscious factor or consciousness is what becomes the subject of spirituality for us.

The people of medicine may have a certain definition of consciousness. But we don’t describe consciousness in that manner. We describe consciousness as 'That', (I can only use a relative pronoun and then give an adjective, a qualifying clause for it) by virtue of which one becomes conscious of other things as well as oneself. Every one of you is aware, “I am”. You are also aware that “I have a body, I am wearing shirt or dress, I have a house, I travel in a car, there is a world around me.” The “I am” awareness is the consciousness of oneself. All the other rest are consciousness of other things. That is why I said, consciousness is that, call it a presence, a power, a property or an entity or a prevalence by virtue of which one becomes conscious of other things as well as one self.

What we call the mind is a functional note of this consciousness; so also is intelligence, so also is ego. This consciousness cannot be either matter or energy because no matter or energy in this world is ever seen to have anything like the power to sense, feel, think, know, enquire, memorize etc. whereas we have all these powers. It is these powers that distinguish the human from the rest of the creatures. So, the consciousness we refer to is different from the rest. The entire medical treatment is in the sphere of matter. All the medicines are material, one substance or the other and it is being administered to the material, matter-energy aggregate body. There is no medicine to act on the mind at all! Because mind is not matter. That is why we have a subject called psychology by itself.

So, what is spirituality if you ask me, I would like to say to make it understood that it is a psycho-intellectual science, a mento-intellectual science. This science does not propose to seek any assistance of matter or energy in order to treat the psycho-intellectual counterpart of our personality. How much this can be treated and to what benefit, outcome and fulfillment, I thought of mentioning. I said this only by way of introduction.

Here is a verse from Vivekacūḍāmaṇi.

Spirituality categorizes people as tāmasic people - the normal, ignorant, deluded, worldly, material, outward people. The second category will be, they are alright, worldly, but they also believe in something called the spirit and spirituality. They don’t say our mind is matter, intelligence is matter, ego is matter. So, to that extent they are not purely material or solely material. Whenever this kind of a knowledge comes, it is called the effect of sattvaguna. Ordinary people are mostly tamas and rajas.

When the sattvaguna element in the human personality goes on increasing, initially it is called alloyed sattva. Later on it becomes purified sattva. So, the spiritual people will fall into two categories. They are mixed sattva and then pure sattva. Both these people are described by Sankaracharya and we are more interested in the suddha sattva – the purified sattva. Listen:

Viśuddha-sattvasya – the man who has become a viśuddha-sattva, whose spiritual content and quality have become viśuddha - purified. So, when the mind and the intelligence and ego are purified, refined, sublimated, they automatically get an elevation, an enrichment, an expansion, a kind of a loftiness, something very sublime and quality is something like a buoyancy, spiritual buoyancy, a spiritual radiation, all these start manifesting in the system. Sankara describes it as “prasāda:”, cheerfulness. The qualities are more than one. "Prasāda:", cheerfulness.

Everybody wants to be cheerful and joyous. But many people are not able to feel joyous. They will be always moody. We generally say, it is just like a cat which has eaten a cockroach. That is the type of face people have. Prasāda: svātmānubhūti:, they start feeling something distinctly called ‘I’, the self. They are very sure, they are experiencing it as different from body, different from the world, different from air, water, different from matter, different from heat, all these are properties in the body. So, they feel something different in the way of consciousness, Ātma, the ‘I’. "Oh! that ‘am-ness’, that ‘I’-ness, something different",they understand.

Paramā praśānti:, as a result of which they get peacefulness, quietitude. Suppose you have a desire and the desire is fulfilled, then you become peaceful but some other desire will crop up and whatever you have got will be lost. This is not something like that. This is a kind of a peace, quiet and pleasantness. Paramā, of a very high and ultimate nature because there is no desire for the mind and whatever you want to have, that is already within you and it is undiminished, it is untarnished. So you understand it very clearly. "Paramā praśānti:".

Tṛpti: - contentment, praharṣa:- exhilaration, paramātma-niṣṭhā - we have so many nishthās and vratās and tapas etc. Most of them are done by the body. Sometimes mouna, chanting etc. with the mouth and tongue, then mentally also some chanting mantra etc. nāma and all that. All these fall into different forms of nishtha. Japa nishthah, tapo nishthah, then upavāsa nishtha. Something or the other; they are physical and oral and mental. This is a nishtha which is different from all that. Paramātma-niṣṭhā. You always feel that ‘I am the self’ and the feeling and being conscious of the self itself becomes the nishtha.

By virtue of the qualities and the nishtha, what follows is "yayā", by virtue of which, sadānanda-rasam samṛcchati, one attains in full measure, abundantly, sadānanda-rasam, the delicious taste of ānanda coming from the supreme reality, from something that is imperishable, everlasting. All the things in the world are not lasting including the conditions of the body. A youthful person does not remain always youthful, he becomes old. Our stomach becomes full, hunger is appeased only to feel hunger in another three, four or five hours. So, here it is not so. What a beautiful statement is this!

My dear medical student ‘R’, I would like you to understand, this is spirituality. We are treating our inner personality not making use of any medicine or even physical poses and yogāsanās, mudrās etc. they are just preliminaries. We are approaching, entering into the mind arena and the intelligence arena and trying to bring about mentally and intellectually a number of qualities, changes and purifications in them as a result of which experientially you get all these which are mentioned here. This is what spirituality is. It is a constantly transforming process by virtue of which the inner personality gets transformed, reformed, refined, sublimated, elevated, expanded and enlightened.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.