Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Last night as well as now, I feel quite happy to be seeing so many of you here assembled. Obviously you must have come over here because of your spiritual interest, the primary note of which is the seeking that your mind and heart have. I am wondering whether you know sufficiently well that a spiritual abode is a place and a center of austerity. Austerity is the one factor, call it a quality, a practice, a restraint, a regulation or a discipline. This austerity is the one factor that can bring quality and refinement into human life.

You may have many things in life. First, a good and healthy body, preferably good looking, sufficient education which makes you worthy to take up a profession in life and have sufficient income. Gradually you may get married. You may have children, nowadays, a couple of children, maximum. Maybe you have a house, a car and the other conveniences that anyone will look for. But I would like you to know that none of these things is going to build quality into your life. Why? Because you are actually an inner personality and not the body. Body is something that we have. This body is sensed and employed for every little thing by the mind and the mind is directed by the intelligence. If you look for quality and enrichment, these are applicable to and related to the emotional mind and the rational and enquiring intelligence.

Think now for a while. Do you have sufficient qualities in the way of mental and intellectual enrichment? It is austerity that reminds you of it and empowers you to penetrate into the mental and intellectual plane and bring refinement, moderation and embellishment. What is austerity? That also is different. Just like you evaluate life in terms of your body and things to be enjoyed sensorily, you may initially think that austerity is physical and sensory. To begin with, it is so. But the austerity has to involve and permeate articulation.

What exactly are the words you use, what are the feelings, responses and reactions you convey through your words? The quality of your speech, it should not be the least harming anybody, hurting anybody. If at all, it should be very endearing and delight-giving. If your speech has to be good, your mind, thoughts and reactions, attitudes have to be good. So, the austerity has to penetrate into your inner horizon. If your attitudes have to become good, noble and benevolent, then the insight and direction will have to come from the intelligence. So, the intelligence will have to be exposed properly and enlightened. This is where our scriptures come as the supreme source of help, correction, guidance, strength and inspiration.

Generally I talk. I finish the talk and people get up. Invariably you will find, they start talking and exchanging pleasantries. If they have listened to the talk and the talk has stopped, if at all can they not discuss something that they have heard? Or can they not introspect alone in the absence of my speech or other’s speech, what they have heard? That is called the manana aspect of it. When you are in the Ashram and we don’t have a program in Vijñāna Bhavan, you should not cluster and start discussing worldly and household matters.

A few months back somebody came here. Later on, everybody started saying that he was an imposter, a cheat number one. He came here as a devotee, at least I accepted him as one and I have no problem either then or now. Somebody had come here for the first time from Chennai. They became so friendly that the first man robbed him of a substantial amount of money by getting it in the form of a loan. My point is that, is this the type of friendship and gossip that you should do? You have come here, primarily for what? To build and strengthen your austerity. You must have sufficient sensory restraint. The senses should be regulated and refined.

When you come here, you may not get the food that you have at home of your choice. But for a few days try to adjust yourself with whatever is available. We are trying to make it a little cosmopolitan. We have got a Hindustani or an Oriya cook now. That is one restraint and austerity that you must have. Our ‘S’ lived here continuously for three years initially. He is a person from Karnataka. Never has he said, perhaps not felt also, anything adverse about the food, though the food was not fully to his liking or taste. Let us feel for the others and try to get along with others. संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं Sangachadwam, samvadadwam (Rigveda X-192-2). Learn to get together, go together, travel together, speak together, alike. That is an austerity.

We cannot pry into the habits of people, even the inmates here. I would like to tell you that we had a Swami. He came here as a Brahmacārin from Bombay, a good boy by all means. I always used to tell him that, “You have stealth in you. Try to probe into it and get rid of it.” He would go to Trichur, whenever there is a good book, good looking book, properly bound and cut, he says he has so much of deadly fascination to it that he cannot come away without buying. Whenever he buys such books, they may not be spiritual or philosophical at all. We had a guest house. He used to stay in the guest house. He will straight come to the guest house, keep the book there in his room and come away here. (He would) Never tell me about having purchased a book. “Do you read these books?” He says, “No, I only look at it.” It is a disease called bibliomania. He says, “When I see a good looking book, I cannot take away my attraction to it.”

Now, austerity means bridling yourself whenever necessary and adopting new habits and ways whenever necessary. One day I found somehow in his room a book, some kind of a magazine in which a number of pictures cut from different magazines are kept. I did not go through all of them. But I found, all the pictures were of women. I said, “My dear boy, what are you doing?" “I like to look at them.” Similarly, he wanted to go to see some pictures. At one point I felt like saying, “Go and see and come back. Finish your interest.” But Mataji Sulabha Devi here was much more firm. She would not like it at all!

You like pictures. We have got a number of pictures. How many Gods and Goddesses are there? If you can make pictures of Mahabharatham, all human life, Ramayana, you know how beautiful the pictures will be! Graphite in which our Gopalakrishnan Nambiar was working, their company used to produce only divine pictures for their calendar and the pictures were so exquisite, they should have been priced internationally. Such beautiful pictures from the viewpoint of art, beauty, alluring, enchanting colors and what not! So, if you have a fascination to look at women, this is not what one should do! Look at Mahalakshmi, how beautiful she is! What about Goddess Saraswati? Such a beautiful sattvic form. She keeps a veena in her hand. We have a number of pictures about Krishna. You know, what is the picture I like? I like a human Krishna with two hands, with nothing in the way of a conch or a club in his hand. Very seldom I find such a picture. I like to look at the picture of my Gurudev. I like to look at the picture of my Param Gurudev and Param Param Gurudev, Narayana Tirtha.

What is austerity? Austerity is trying to bridle, reform and refine whatever is crudely there, undesirably there, sensorily there. You have got a long life for it. Why are people getting married? To me, marriage is an austerity. Why it becomes an austerity? The multi-pronged interest of the mind towards the opposite sex is bridled by focusing it on one person in a proper relationship, societally made, ceremonially confirmed and well inaugurated. And keep your interest and dedication to only the married partner. Then, in the course of two or three years, you have a child. So, from a mere youth, you become a parent. It is a great thing in human life. And every day of your life, you grow not merely as a husband or wife, but also as a father and a mother.

Don’t think that austerity is reserved only for sannyāsins and the Ashrams. Your household should be an abode of austerity. It should look well, people inside the house should talk well, should mean well. There must be ample love and give and take between the family members. The other day, a family came here and a girl who is going for plus one or graduation, I think graduation, she was saying, “I feel very much, the unloving nature of my father. My father doesn’t talk to us. If at all there is a talk between the father and the mother, it is always a quarrel. I don’t know. We are feeling very bad, very bad.” Good children. It is the lack of austerity. Can you be so selfish as not to give the children what they want? You purchase dress and other materials for them. No! Their hearts have to grow, minds have to grow, their intelligence has to grow. You admit them to schools only to get academic embellishment. But there is a cry of the human heart for emotional enrichment. The intelligence also should have the discretion by virtue of which life will be better.

To me, austerity starts at the sensory level, progresses into the oral level and it very soon enters into the mind level, intelligential level. All that I am talking to you is because of my austerity. Your very sitting here and hearing me is austerity and the austerity should continue when you get up from here and think over what you have heard, relate it to yourself and your domestic environment and see what are the points of conflict for improvement. My dear souls, austerity is in the bodily and sensory level to begin with, one. Your pushpa-samarpaṇam, standing in queue, going to Mā, collecting the flowers, come in a proper and a beautiful pace, nice to look at, stay in the place where you are meant to stay, allow the man who does the pushpa-samarpaṇam freedom, then gently come and take his place, offer it. How you offer it, I always observe. Sometimes I close my eyes, and with the right hand you touch the right foot. It is not an easy process of touching the left and then the right. No! The right foot should be touched with the right hand, and then the left. Then it becomes that pradakshiṇa style. Get up.

You see that when a petal falls beyond, outside the cloth spread here, it should not be collected and put here. I generally show my eyes and tell them, "Collect it.", otherwise they themselves collect. There are some people who will take it and put it there. You are trampling over the flower, the petals have fallen there, they are not supposed to be taken and offered. That means, whatever you offer becomes polluted and defiled. But many people do not know that. Don’t you think it is an austere refinement, a religious reformation?

Like that, sensory austerity, then speech austerity, then thought, attitude and emotion austerity, then knowledge austerity. The austerity becomes maximum and most central when your intelligence prefers to reflect upon the self, upon God and then wants to realize it in its own fullness. So, this austerity, austerity, that is the watchword. I think in our Ashram there is enough austerity, many of you may not know, our austerity is Jñāna-tapas. That is why we hold classes, we speak to people, we explain to them.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.