Articles for Saadhana

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

I thought I will again delve upon the concept of:

The primary question is that would you like to live in this world without getting afflicted, tormented, shaken and intercepted by whatever takes place or would you like to be always troubled and tormented? Normally the answer will be “We would not like to be tormented”. If that is your goal, then not dropping interactions or not stopping interactions or not escaping from them is a must. Whatever problem arises from your interactional life, that problem has to be dealt with, resolved or dissolved during the interaction itself.

How many hours do we sleep in a day? Maybe seven hours? Seventeen hours we are remaining active. It is about two and a half times the sleep hours. In sleep we remain still, we are freed from interactions, we remain still, so that the body will get an opportunity to generate adequate cells and energy in order to remain active for the following period. Sleep also means a state of rest but if you want to remain active and interactive well, then all the limbs of your body have to be given proper exercise and movement. This exercise is a must. Nobody takes exercise in sleep. You have to employ your bodily limbs in order to accomplish the exercise. So it is a kind of a civilized and purposeful activity, employment of your limbs.

In the interactional stage also, the interaction should go on and you should understand that the mind can and will develop the ability to assimilate the impacts of interaction along with the interactions themselves. The interactions are supposed to generate a measure of stress and strain. The stress and strain are not physical or interactional. You know the interactions are mostly with the matter-energy aggregate body and bodily limbs. The interactions are in the physical level but the tension and stress are in the mind. So you should understand the mind factor invites tension and the same mind will have to be trained, equipped and enriched for assimilating the interaction. First of all, you should understand that this is the way. Then never leave your interaction. You may be worried; you may be anxious.

The pregnant woman in labor pain, if the child has to come out, the cervix will have to enlarge and that results in pain. So she has to undergo the pain. And nowadays doctors say unless the pain is suffered, the mother will not have sufficient fondness for the child. The pain cannot be avoided; that is not what we want. A healthy approach will be to tolerate the pain, forbear the pain and have the delivery. The strength of the mind is its ability and readiness to suffer. To which extent you suffer, to that extent you are mentally strong. So the strength of the mind comes from cultivation.

You think about marathon runners. What do they do? They keep quiet and acquire the ability to run or they go into the road and start running, running, running, running, running, training the muscles, training the knees. Here also, the same process is there. Be interactive, be interactive, never leave it, never leave it, maybe you have tension, maybe you have suffering, maybe you have acute distress but the temptation and the impetus to work, interact should not be tampered with. Naturally, the mind will learn to bear the tension because it has to employ itself for the work in hand. So the mind will have to learn the ability to be at home with the tension and yet remain active and interactive, active and interactive. For this, what is the spiritual formula that will help? The spiritual formula is one of understanding.

Interactions are inevitable and the interactions inevitably produce either sukha or duhkha. Sukha is a complement to duhkha, duhkha is a complement to suhkha. Either you have both, one after the other, or you have none. So there is nothing in our having duhkha and there is nothing in our having sukha. If both of them have equal value and relevance, then where is the question of preference to one and prejudice to another? When either the prejudice or the preference declines, then the other becomes irrelevant and the mind reaches a state of poise, equipoise. That equipoise, you will say “I am neither happy nor unhappy. I allow happiness and unhappiness to be”. So you have virtually won over the world because won over the impacts of the world, won over the effects of interactions. You don’t have to walk all the mountains in this world to overcome. The overcoming is done within you, within you, within you, within you.

And what is the mind overcoming? Mind is overcoming the delusion that sukha is desirable and duhkha is undesirable. The mind is after all trying to resolve or dissolve mind’s own responses. It is just like the sea trying to dissolve the waves. The sea is not dissolving the rock or the earth, it is dissolving only the waves because the waves are the sea water itself. Here also, what you call sukha is the mind substance itself and what you call duhkha is again the mind substance. Cannot the mind be at home with the mind substances? So what is there in sukha which is not there in the mind and what is there in duhkha which is not there in the mind? The differences are not in substance, the differences are in your comprehension. That comprehension being a product of intelligence, by right exposure and enlightenment, the comprehension is set right. The differences which sukha duhkhas bring about completely fall to the ground.

In order to achieve this state, therein lies the special point. ‘Interaction leaving’ is not the way. ‘Interaction pursuing’ is the way. If you take a vow that, “Come what may, I will not stop my interaction. I will continue to act”. Part of the mind may be involved in dealing with the impact. And try to do that and see. What you propose to get from escaping from interaction for a while and you have no ascent at all? You have been hit so hard by the interaction that you fall and you allow the body to sleep. That is no way at all! If you have to train the mind, the mind has to be wakeful! And in wakefulness, you have to ask it to go ahead with the interaction. Naturally the impacts will have to be in the background. Part of the mind will start digesting it, digesting it, digesting it, and there will come a time it depends upon your own efficiency that without stopping interaction you will be able to deal with the stress and strain arising from it.

The whole pursuit is taken to the causal realm. Now it is in the effect realm. That ‘sukha duhkha samatva’, the causal realm is all activities are born of rāga dvesha bhaya. You will reach a stage where without desire, without resentment and without fear, you can remain active. Any activity you take up but there should be no desire motivation, hatred motivation or fear motivation. Then what else is the motivation? That is called spirituality. What does Krishna say in Bhagavad Gita?

All beings are kept active by the guṇās, sattva, rajas and tamas of prakṛti.

So we are active because of prakṛti. If prakṛti’s sattva, rajas and tamas get damaged, then we cannot be active. And our activity will consist of sattva guṇa - means what? Light, knowledge and happiness. Rajo guṇa means activities and the causes for it in the way of mental urges. And tamo guṇa means delusion, lethargy and sleep. Every day, we are passing through all the three. You develop such a harmony with sattva guṇa, rajo guṇa and tamo guṇa that when you are bright and happy it is okay, when you are not but active it is okay, when you feel tired and go to sleep it is okay. I wish people understand this wonderful note of harmony.

Spirituality is never to dissuade you from action. When I used to work on a manual typewriter, I will work for hours. At the end of the day, sometimes I start committing mistake. So I said, “No, today I cannot work anymore. Apparently, there is some fatigue either in the head or in my fingertips or in the mind”. Because it is without seeing the keyboard, when I move my fingers mistakes come. That means, somewhere there is a need for rest. So I stop.

Now when I am writing, you know the words should gallop and come to my mind. If they don’t come, how can I write? I think there is intense activity in the mind level, in the intelligence level. The people who help me in writing books go through, make corrections and finally feel this particular word or sentence has to be recast or one word has to be changed. But the moment they color it and I see it, I understand that it is to be changed. Without asking, suddenly I put another word or recast the sentence and often they express surprise, “Swamiji, how do you do it so fast, so suddenly?”. See, that sattva guṇa has to be active and rajas will be cooperative.

Then when my eyes close, they say, “Swamiji, please go and take rest and come. We will also go”. People make a mistake that “I should be all sattvic”. It is impossible. You think of Brahma, he continues to create. You think of Vishnu, he continues to maintain. But how many things go wrong in this world but even then, he maintains and Shiva continuously destroys. Do they ever stop their work? And why should we stop?

One is meeting sukha duhkhas, another is eliminating and dissuading rāga dvesha bhayas. The second is the causal plane. The first is the effectual plane. I don’t know whether you have understood it. I would like you to think about it and let me know. I shall explain the proposition again.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.