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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
I have been speaking for quite a number of years, exposing our scriptures and the fundamental subjects of spirituality, religion, yoga and philosophy. Every day I think afresh and in a searching and researching manner have been finding out how best and most effectively this ideas can be communicated to the people. That is how I try to present matters in a simpler, in a more and more direct manner.
We have got something called religion; it is primarily in the way of a devotion. Though we called it religion and religious life, the factor that plays in it is devotion. What is devotion? It is one kind of emotion or another related to God where we consider the Supremacy of God and our own subservient nature and status. Keeping this as a ground, we have evolved a number of systems, procedures, practices and the like, which come under the broad category of religion. So far as India is concerned, the evolution and also diversity in this religious sphere are enormous. Our Vedas are the great testimony for all this. We have evolved a number of hymns, then a number of rituals and ceremonies, some of them very, very protracted and so expensive that an individual cannot do it. Then we have different forms of contemplations, everything done inwardly. Finally we have the enquiry, search, research, investigation and finding. By all these four processes, the entire gamut of religion stands covered.
You begin with praising God, you follow it up with some kinds of offering, some kinds of austere performance towards God, then you withdraw from it and make all your practices inward, mind-based and intelligence-based and finally you only take up the level of intelligence and then you try to enquire into and find out - What is what or who is this God? What is the meaning of all that I am doing? Where will I have finally to tap to get at my goal? When you think in this manner, three broad divisions appear before us.
You can enquire into the world, what is this made up of? What is the ultimate reality in the world? Why? Because the entire world is transitory and changeful. Something changeful cannot exist by itself, it has to be supported by a changeless substratum. What is that, is one enquiry. Who is this God, is another enquiry. The third is, who or what am I. These are the only three enquiries finally we can think of and we have found all these three enquiries are in essence the same and the finding is also the same. That is how we say the Self is the first and the last reality. The word God and also Brahman referring to the Supreme Reality are synonyms of the Self. By arriving at this finding, our religion as well as philosophy, spirituality and yoga, all of them have mingled themselves to become one. This is the background of our cultural civilization.
Why did I say this? I want to emphasize one point. In the devotional life and religious life, to a very large extent, external means of worship will be sufficient. If you want to grow with worship, by worship, towards the goal that is meant for, I think you have to outlive this religion and take to your own personality. The transition from external rituals and performances to internal enquiry and contemplation is indispensable. All that we are doing is our activity. This activity cannot and will not reach God. The approach to God is not a physical or a mechanical one. God is present everywhere, He is penetrating us, He is surrounding us. Such an all-pervading presence you cannot reach because you are already engulfed by it, permeated by it. Then what is it that we have to do?
These words should be a watch word for all of you. ‘By the practice or the power of devotion, the devotee comes to know Me.’
यावान्यश्चास्मि तत्त्वतः - Who am I? Am I a person? Am I a creature? Am I a product? Or am I a truth or a principle?
यश्चास्मि तत्त्वतः यावान् - What is the measure and magnitude? Am I specifically present somewhere? Or am I absolutely present everywhere? Am I inside and outside? Am I devoid of both? Am I only immanent or also transcendent? All these questions will have to be answered. They know Me in तत्वा – essentially, essentially. The worshippers of God have no knowledge of God, they have no idea. So the devotion grows and at one point of time it makes you reflect upon and understand who is this God? What is His measure and magnitude? How can He be accessed, felt and experienced?
ततो मां तत्त्वतो ज्ञात्वा – Thereafter knowing Me essentially, he enters into Me. This entry is not a physical one, it is the understanding that I am engulfed and encircled by God, I am equally penetrated by Him. This understanding is the entry into God. Our shastras make all these points very, very clear. The only point is that we refuse to read the shastras and derive the benefit necessary. Unless a devotional life undergoes the transition from the external, invisible, infinitely distant God to the internal, constantly present consciousness, the Self, I don’t think any devotee will be able to make progress and have the joy of fulfillment. So the transition from the external worship to the inner purification, sublimation and enlightenment is the very crux of all kinds of spiritual, religious, philosophical and yogic life.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.