Articles for Saadhana

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Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Most probably it was when I was in Calcutta, before taking up Sannyasa and coming over here, I happened to read somewhere a verse bedha buddhistu samsāre vartamānā pravartate. bedha buddhistu samsāre vartamānā pravartate. In the whole world or worldliness, it is the differential outlook, the differential notion that is constantly at work. Bedha buddhi means the sense of difference. You know the entire life, the entire knowledge is by comparison and contrast. We call something white because it is different from the other colors black, red, etc. The same applies to all the other colors. We call X a man and Y a woman because the two are different from each other. Similarly the human and the non-human. Something is plus and different from plus is minus. Multiplied by and divided by – they are also different. The same applies to heaven and hell. Today, tomorrow, yesterday – everywhere it is difference. But what are we dividing or differentiating?

There are so many things born out of the earth in the form of plants, herbs, trees, creepers, and what not. All of them are earth’s products. But we find them to be different from each other. At no point of time the thought of uniformity on the ground of earth being the source strikes us. The same applies to secular as opposed to religious, religious as opposed to spiritual, spiritual as opposed to secular. So we are dividing our activities into secular and spiritual or religious. This division is also unauthentic and this is what that gets us into trouble. Early in the morning we get up, we wash our teeth, wash our face, have our bath, then may be, we have some breakfast, then we go to the office or get into the domestic routines. All these things we consider to be, what, secular. Then what is religious or spiritual? Either doing a pooja for a deity which you have chosen or made or bought. If you are spiritual, reading a spiritual book, or doing some introspection spiritual or sitting in a place closing the door sitting in a room and meditating. So there is a clear mark of difference between secular activities and spiritual or religious activities. Now this is called bedha buddhi.

It is very simple to understand that this bedha buddhi is going to be very dangerous and it is a stumbling block. So what should you do? Try to take away the bedha buddhi and take it as a sadhana to understand that, “How can I feel every activity I perform as divine? How can I feel every object I encounter or interact with is equally divine?”

So the world is born of God. If it is born of God, the world is godly, godly. An ornament made of gold is golden. So the world born of Brahman or born of God, should it not be braahmic or godly? Yes, yes, why don’t you hit upon that point and make your mind accept that whatever I do including getting up, going to sleep, dreaming – everything is equally godly. The mind will not easily accept it. But start training the mind. Then you will find the sense of difference vanishes and everything appears to be equally sublime and divine.

I will give you one line of thinking. Our body is not a worldly product. It is a product designed and made by the inner spiritual presence and potential. Whenever you think of your body, your body is alive. It is an enlivened body, animated body. That animation is what makes it a body living and interacting. So whenever you see a body, are you seeing a dead body or living body? A living body, the moment you say a living body, is not the livingness that strikes you when you look at the body? That livingness, it belongs to the spirit, it belongs to the Soul. Being the spirit and the soul, it is not secular at all. It is this animation that makes the body active.

 If you had gone into sleep and you wake up, you have not died and body has not become a dead body it means that it is a spiritual waking up. If it is a spiritual waking up, it is the same spirituality that makes you brush your teeth, have your bath, go to the dining table and have breakfast, go to the office and do the work there. Subjectively every activity is equally, equally, equally enabled, empowered by the spirit, by the soul, by the godliness that is present in the body. Don’t look at the things in an objective manner.

I am seeing a piece of rock. The rock is inert. But, I see the rock. Then only the rock is seen. Now, in my seeing the rock, it is the power and presence in the body that enable me to see.  So the rock is an object of vision for me. And when I open my eyes in the presence of the light, light rays get reflected from the rock, they pass through the cornea, and an image of the rock is formed in the mind.  I am not actually seeing the external rock, a gross object. I am only seeing and feeling the internal image made by my mind in itself. Tell me whether that image is, whether that image is an object or the subject part in your person. This subject part namely the sentience in your system, in your body is absolutely divine, absolutely spiritual. Whether you wake up, whether you sleep, whether you dream, whether you interact, whether you act, in all these things subjectively, it is the presence and propulsion of the spirit that we are able to feel and notice. Thus you have to subjectivise the whole objectivity and take away the sense of differentiation in your mind.

Make no difference between God and world, make no difference between God and yourself, make no difference between yourself and the object world that you see and interact with. May be the world is an object. But you interact with the object world and in that interaction, the subjective you are manifest at every point of time. Let this subjectivity inundate your object interaction, object perception, overcome the difference and feel sublime, divine, and spiritual at every point of time. Once you start feeling this, you will find every activity that you perform is equally sublimating, equally elevating, equally enlarging, equally infusing, infusing into you a sense of spiritual sublimity and nicety. See it is something so beautiful.

I am afraid that you will not catch the message. When I sit on the chair, I feel the impact of the seat. This impact is given to me by my skin, through the skin. But the impact itself is felt and cognized by my mind. Suppose I am unconscious and you put me on the chair, will I know that I am sitting on the chair? So the feeling that I am sitting on the chair itself, my dear Souls, is spiritual. There is nothing non-spiritual anywhere in our life of experience and interaction. Unless you bring the intelligence into the whole process, and start reflecting upon, introspecting over the whole process to bring into focus the subjective spiritual presence and animation in everything, I don’t think you can cut short the differential outlook in you.

So when I read bedha buddhistu samsāre vartamānā pravartate, from that time onwards, I started feeling, “this bedha buddhi is the criminal and it should be dispensed with”.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.