| Listen to Prabhaata-rashmih Audio |
Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
We returned from Jamshedpur on the 28th of February. Jamshedpur is the first place I visited after having been in Kerala travelling throughout the state from Trichambaram to Thiruvananthapuram and holding spiritual discourses lasting for fifteen days and sometimes twenty-one days. I used to speak for two hours from 6 o’clock to 8 o’clock. Then once I was taken to Chennai. There, the first talk we gave was for fifteen days on Bhagavad Gita in Tamil.
Then Nandini and Varma, a couple from Kerala in Jamshedpur working in Tatas invited me for a series of Malayalam talks. They had set up a shamiana, a pandal in their own lawn in old TC Colony and I was giving a talk in Malayalam. Listening to my talk in Malayalam, some people there felt that my talk should be available to the people other than those from Kerala. So Swamiji should speak in English. I think it was in response to that demand that I started giving English discourses starting from Jamshedpur. This took me to different parts of India and gradually abroad also. English being a language which could be known by so many people living in so many different parts of the country and the world.
After I spoke in English, my visit to Jamshedpur became every year and fifty-four years have passed. Invariably, I visited Jamshedpur in the month of February. To visit a place unfailingly for fifty-four years is not easy. My health should permit, I must have the convenience to go, taking into consideration my life, activities and programs. And the people of Jamshedpur also should be ready to host my stay and lectures. Three generations have passed and perhaps this is the fourth generation. At least three mainly and fourth a little that listened to me in Jamshedpur.
Similarly, I started visiting Delhi and forty-four years have passed. Regularly we go to Delhi. After we had our own place, our visit became twice in a year. When the Jamshedpur center was established three or four years back, we started visiting the center twice. Once I would go, the other time Nutan Swamiji will go. The same happens in Delhi also.
‘What is the subject that we are talking?’ - Many of you may wonder. It is a subject which is not taught in schools and colleges in general but it is a subject every living individual, man and woman would necessarily know and be familiar with. It is the subject about the inner personality of man. Our body along with its organs are inert, insentient, lifeless. They are made up of matter and energy. As such, they don’t have the power to sense and know. Such a body therefore is animated and activated by the inner being. That inner personality consists of mind, intelligence and ego. Neither the mind nor the intelligence nor the ego is matter or energy. It is different from matter. It is this difference that is indicated by the term spiritual or spirituality. That which is different from material and energial is called the spiritual. That is why we are able to think, know, feel, sense, understand, enquire into, discover, find. All these are functions and qualities which matter and energy do not have.
From the functions of the mind and the intelligence, we clearly understand that our personality is not all the external, gross matter-energy body. There is something besides the body and that body-different factor, presence is called generally the Soul, the Ātma. So whenever you use the word Ādyatmika or Spiritual, it means that subject where Ātma different from the body has a place. Ādyatmika means spiritual.
To become spiritual, one should start thinking about the soul different from the body, the mind and the intelligence and ego different from the body. What are these, how are they remaining in the body or body remains associated with them? How can I touch my mind, feel my mind, how can I improve my thoughts, improve my emotions, improve my feelings? Can I improve my thinking ability, reasoning, rational ability? Just like Newton saw an apple fall, so many apples fall from the tree parallelly and perpendicularly to the earth, he did not pick up the apple but he looked at the apple and felt, “Why are all the apples falling equally to the earth? Why are they not flying?” He kept on thinking for one year before he could understand that it is the gravitational force of the earth that pulls the apple down. This ability is called the ability of the intelligence, the skill of the intelligence.
How to improve this intelligence? How to improve the mind feeling? All of you have generally feeling about yourself. You start fighting with the mother saying that “You gave me less and you gave me more to my brother or sister.” That means you are all very selfish! You cannot think of another. “Let my brother or sister get more, let me have little. As a mother, my mother will not differentiate between us. Maybe I feel like that, even then it is okay”. That thought will never occur to you, that is why you are selfish.
From that selfish level, we should grow into selflessness. It is not enough if you think about yourself and your family members. You should equally think about all the families in the village, in the town, in the state, in the country and in the world. This expansion of the mind and more and more, more and more sharpness of the intelligence, how to develop these? This is the subject of spirituality. And what is the endpoint of this development? We have some phrases, some proverbs in our country, “Vasudaiva Kutumbakam”.
“This is my relative, this is not, so I will not think about him.” This kind of a division in our mind is a character of laghu-cetasām, people who have a very narrow mind. So the narrow-minded alone will think selfishly about them. Udāracharitānām tu, those people who are given to a noble way of life and thinking, vasudhaiva kutumbakam, the entire earth is their family.
So my dear children, you have to grow from your selfishness and you have to become broader and broader in your mind, in your feelings, concern and vision until at last you feel for the whole universe. Only then you become a human being, otherwise we are animals who are concerned only about themselves, their body, their young ones. Now spirituality deals with this subject of soul, its nature, its character, its greatness and the expansion, purity and nobility it will instill into our life. Actually speaking, spirituality makes our life very beautiful, very endearing, lovable. A man of spirituality will be liked by all. He will also think of all. Spirituality means a life where you are conscious of your mind and intelligence and ego. You are aware of the Soul animating your body. You know about a presence within the body other than the body giving sufficient place for it and trying to understand it, being linked to it. This is what spirituality is.
In other words, Ādhyātmikatha means a life where sufficient place is given for the Ātma. Ātma, Ātmikata, Ādhyātmikatha, Ātma, Adyātma, Ādhyātmikatha. Means what? A life where you give sufficient thought, feelings, concern, place, importance to Ātma. The very thought of Ātma in your life will change your life. Always think that within the body there is a Soul. I am not the body, I am the Soul and the Soul is infinitely powerful, potent, resourceful. This thought when you start beginning to accept it, I think it will take to a very long and sustained growth. I wish all of you become spiritual and Ādhyātmic.
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.