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Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
How this self-realization as a spiritual path works and brings about fruition and fulfillment is something all of you should do well to know. Here is a verse from Vivekachudamani which I have explained many several times. Again I will speak about it because some new people are here.
Don’t think that self-knowledge will instantly give all-round peace and fulfillment for everybody. There is something, you see it and if you have eyes you can see and all people can see. But after seeing, what each makes out of the sight, out of the knowledge that each gets by seeing it, there it makes a lot of difference. These are personal differences depending upon a number of factors. What are the factors? The purity of one’s mind, the sharpness of one’s intelligence and then the affinity and bond the intelligence and mind have.
If the intelligence knows something and that knowledge is made known to the mind, the mind should start adhering to the knowledge and correcting its thinking and further activity. So, that is a very important point. With how much dedication you do all this and how much of fixity you have, that is what people say vygrata or concentration. A number of questions come. So here is a beautiful verse:
All these are adjectives. Rāgā means desire, nirasta means receded from. So, your mind should recede from all kinds of desires, finding them unnecessary and useless. What I get from all desires, I will get from myself. So, I will approach the self rather than approach the objects of sensory enjoyment. Now the whole mind and its working are subjected to this kind of a recognition. So, all the desires flee or fall.
Vinirasta-bhogāh - The craving for sensory enjoyment, the craving also declines and falls. Then the mind becomes Śāntāh - The mind becomes quiet. That means there is no agitation, no craving, no desire, no greed, no possessiveness.
Sudāntāh - the senses are sufficiently under control. Senses are ours and we should employ them in our manner, not that the senses attract the mind and put it into delusion as it happened with Sita when she saw a golden deer in her Ashram, in her kutīr.
Yatayo mahāntah - your intelligence should become very very sharp and perceptive. Every time you should start thinking and introspecting, thinking and introspecting and introspection must have ample place and importance in your life. Is this necessary? Am I right in doing what I do? Is there anything futile in my attempt? If two things are compared, which is better and which is worse? In this way, every time your intelligence should be active to guide you.
Mahāntah - they are mahātmās. They don’t have petty objectives and petty interests in life. Always they are high-souled people thinking in a very high, lofty, exalted manner. Such people, vijñāya tattvam parametad-ante - At the end of their pursuit, they come to know the supreme truth about the Self.
Parametad-ante, prāptāh parām nirvṛtim-ātmayogāt. What is the supreme truth? I am the self and the self is blissful. This self does not need anything else for its enjoyment. Does the sun need a lamp for further lighting the world? Our sun itself is ample and sufficient. The self itself is ample and sufficient for our fulfillment, for our purpose. When we understand this, all our activities, cravings, everything say goodbye.
Prāptāh parām nirvṛtim - They attain supreme nirvṛti, recession from the world, withdrawal from the world. And what is the process? Ātma-yogā! What is ātma-yogā? Normal yogāsanās are with the body, mudras and other things. Here it is ātma-yogā. Whatever is within your body, the mind and the intelligence, they alone are working in this yoga sādhanā. Mind thinks and reflects, intelligence discriminates and analyses and decides. So, every time the agents that are at work or factors, that is the mind and intelligence. The mind and the intelligence are touched up, attuned in such a manner that all the distractions come to a stop, all the enquiries are settled and both the mind and intelligence have nothing to do specially for anything. So, it is a state where the mind keeps quiet, the intelligence also remains quiet. As Kathopanishad says:
When the senses remain quiet, along with the mind (the mind also is still), the intelligence also remains inactive finding nothing to be enquired into, that is the Supreme state. Senses, mind and intelligence keep quiet having nothing to be specially achieved, that state of inner stillness and fullness, that is the Supreme to be attained. So, the entire knowledge should make you work towards it. It is not that you constantly read the scriptures. It is not that you constantly do the meditation. No, no it is not that. It is a full wholesome transformation.
Suppose your inside is dark now, the density of darkness reduces, it becomes lesser and lesser dark and finally it becomes luminous, brilliant, light. It starts sparkling. The thought will be very clear. The intelligence, their introspection, everything will become very very clear to you. So, there will be greater brilliance in your system. This is not the visual brilliance, the spiritual brilliance as a result of which you will start understanding matters much faster, much better and more precisely.
Every word of this verse has to be taken up individually and you have to deliberate upon it, make sure you understand the import and that import is infused into your mind and intelligence, making them qualitative spiritually to reflect and radiate that self-realization always.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
