Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Spirituality is verily a knowledge science. It is a knowledge process, knowledge pursuit, knowledge sādhanā. Even when it is described as yoga, it is described as Ātma yoga - Adhyātma yogādhigamena-gamyam. That yoga has nothing to do with physical āsanās, mudrās, exercises and the rest. Yoga means something to be practised in the inner level. There alone, one factor fuses or merges with another factor, totally to disappear and become the other. Such merger or fusion is not possible in the mechanical, physical, material or external world. So the real yoga is Rāja yoga. Krishna will put it as ‘Samatva Buddhi Yoga’ or ‘Buddhi Yoga’.

A man who has become a yukta, a yogi in the buddhi level, he abandons sukṛta and duṣkṛta means virtue and vice. It is totally abandoning, being indifferent to the triguṇa-maya Vedas and adopting the path of nirdvandva. All these are mind-intelligence based. Even if you treat it as a yoga, it is a science of knowledge. That is why Krishna was explaining to Arjuna this yoga science in eighteen chapters under different names. When you take recourse to knowledge, standing firmly on knowledge and remaining there, you start discussing the subject, guiding the disciples etc. it will become a knowledge yātra, a knowledge voyage. That is why our three spiritual texts namely the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutra are called Prasthāna Trayam, the knowledge voyage triple.

So in true spirituality it is always satsanga that matters. Satsanga is a session in which the knower of truth speaks, and whatever he speaks will be harping upon self-knowledge, the Supreme Reality knowledge, mukti and jeevanmukti. Bhagavad Gita is actually a moksha śāstra. Mahabharata is also a moksha śāstra.

Why I said all this? The most authoritative exposition of this wonderful yoga or spirituality can be found certainly of course in Bhagavad Gita and Uddhava Gita but it is fully and elaborately discussed in Yogavasishtha Ramayana. It consists of 32000 Sanskrit verses. There is one śloka there. I would like you to know it very well.

Vāsanākṣaya vijñāna manonāsa mahāmate. O mighty-intellected Rama, understand three items are there. Vāsanākṣaya - attenuation of desires. Our mind breeds desires. It is a treasure house or store house of desires. Even while we have a number of desires unfulfilled, we go on multiplying desires. So there should be a special effort in the sadhaka to attempt this extinction of desires. Try to understand whether desires are necessary and of what tangible effects are they.

I don’t think it is necessary for you to desire in order to live in this world successfully. If you have a certain skill or potential and this is required by the society, the society will hunt it and you will have to go there and you will get your earning. Suppose you have very good skill but the society does not have a use for it, what will you do? Nobody will call you. Even if you desire that ‘I should have a good job and I should make a building’, I don’t think both will be had. On the other hand, if you have the requisite skill and the society has a need for it, without your effort you will find your employment.

So by desire we don’t gain anything. We become impatient and agitated. On the other hand, if you don’t desire and yet try to acquire your skill, make it available for people, you will be successful and prosperous. Let the needs be the basis for your activity and pursuit, not the desire. Only fools desire, the wise do not desire at all. Even if you desire for anything, when that which you desire for is had in the mind level, the desire becomes absent. So the objective of a desire is to make it extinct. Suppose you try for desire extinction right from the beginning, then you will have all-fulfillment because when a desire is fulfilled, it becomes extinct. So if you have an all-desire-extinct state, you will have an all-fulfillment state also. So Vasishtha says vāsanākṣaya. Reducing and attenuating the desires is one practice that you should aim at. ‘I will not touch the area of desires. It is very sacrosanct. I will not go there.’, you cannot say so.

Then vijñāna. Vijñāna is trying to know more and more about the soul, God, Brahman; that they are all-pervading, therefore they are in you etc. This knowledge about the soul, about the world, about the ephemerality of the world, constitution of the world, prakṛti’s guṇās, what are the guṇās, what does each represent, all these spiritual knowledge Krishna has been speaking about it in eighteen chapters for the sake of Arjuna. So this is the knowledge that we refer to, useful knowledge explaining Vedanta, explaining the science of Vedanta. This you must be able to understand, read, reflect upon, think and be a master of it. So that vijñāna should be pursued on the one hand, attenuating the desires as a practice is also to be done.

Then the third is manonāsa. What does it mean? Whatever is mind should become extinct and you must have pure sattva. The mind as such should become extinct. You must be able to make the mind extinct. What does this expression mean? Try to understand the mind. Mind always breeds on plurality, many things. We would like to have different types of dress, different qualities maybe not but different types of dress we would like to have. We use vessels and after some time we say “It has become obsolete, let me have something new.” There is a craze in the mind or craving for change. When the craving for the change, plurality, desire for plurality is treated and finally that desire is no more there, that is called desire freedom.

So what I mean by three factors, one is the attenuation of desires, the second is knowledge, spiritual knowledge about all that we are required to know. This manonāsa has to be attempted - how. In our meditation, if your meditation is successful, your mantra along with the mind anusandhāna will stop, will drop. Just like you are dropping in sleeping, you will drop in samādhi also. Let the mind drop.

Every day the mind drops in sleep and comes up when it wakes. Here what we mean is a slightly different process. Remaining in the waking state and conscious, you should allow your mind to sink. Vāsanākṣaya vijñāna manonāsa mahāmate. You must try to attenuate desires by going into the philosophy of desiring and its futility. Knowledge you should try to acquire from very different sources, even apart from Guru.

Manonāsaḥ, the word manonāsa means plural perception should stop, differences should stop. All are one, that kind of a feeling should come. In meditation what happens – you start meditating with the mind, after some time you feel “I don’t have to think of anything”. Then thought process also stops; everything stops. That is manonāsa. These three are to be practised for a long time, simultaneously, says Vasishtha. I don’t know whether you are able to grasp it. Vāsanākṣaya, vijñāna and manonāsa. So the meditation is very important.

In the meditation what are you trying to attempt? You preserve the optional thought, the mantra that the Guru has given you, preserve it earnestly, faithfully. Let the thought process become lighter, feebler, gentler and slower. After sometime you will find it becomes so feeble and light that it becomes extinct. That is that manonāsa stage. It can be physically, personally experienced. Then you will know the mind is not an always-present item. It is present, it can also become absent. Now is it merely a mind-absent state - no. It is the source of the mind, hence the source of creation, source of everything. When you are able to discover and identify the source of everything, where will you stand, what will be your height and dimension? It is such a grand, great state. But all the three together will have to be practiced.

One day my brother Poornananda Swami was asking and accusing our Gurudev saying that “You only initiated me into meditation, into kriyā, sādhanā and I have been doing it. But you did not tell us about the need for vāsanākṣaya and vijñāna.” I don’t know whether our Gurudev was a little hurt or displeased.

“Yes, if I had told you in the beginning itself about manonāsa and vāsanākṣaya, would you have heard me? Which seeker would like to be told that ‘you drop your desires’? Will he hear?”

“Swamiji, I have come here to fulfill my desires. My efforts are not sufficient, they may not be successful. I want to have your blessings. So with the blessings, all my desires for myself and for my family, children and grandchildren should be fulfilled.” This is his attitude. The seekers who go to the Guru are not very much different.

“So if I had told you, you would not have understood”, Baba said. But after sometime, because of the intensity of seeking and the knowledge that the world is ephemeral and fleeting, maybe we will be prepared to listen to it. Whatever it may be, understand that this is a very important message.

If you simultaneously and in equal measure practice the three for a substantial period, you will have the fruition of your sādhanā; they will bear fruit. At least you have heard what I said. Now you have to think and will you come to the conclusion sometime, maybe within a month or two that desires are unnecessary for life? Without desire is far better than desire and when we become totally desire-free, then the mind if at all it has to think, it will think only of the Self, only of God, only of Brahman because it has nothing else to think.

Muktiṃ prāhus-tadiha munayo vāsanā-tānavaṃ yat (Vivekacūḍāmaṇi 267). Mukti or liberation is only then when your desires have become totally extinct.

For the ascetic, for the Muni, for the one who has got introspection as a habit or culture, for him, these three together pursued in full measure for a long time will pronounce their benefit, result and fruition.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.