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Harih Om Tat Sat. Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
Yesterday I was explaining one or two verses of Bhagavad Gita very well, spending a lot of time. Then I asked people to give me some feedback. The feedback was not satisfactory at all. There is no necessity for becoming disappointed because clarity of thought is the last goal in spiritual life. Before becoming a speaker myself, Swami Ātmānandaji, a very elderly person had taken us to Ānandāśram. Swami Ramdas was living there. He was a speaking Swamiji. You cannot say Ramdas was a scriptural person. He has written a book “In the quest of God”, then “In the Vision of God.” I think they are in our library. Both of them make very good reading.
Later on, to look after Ātmānanda Swamiji during his appendicitis program without operation, I happened to stay in Ānandāśram for more than a month. So I had an occasion to mix with and interact with Swami Krishnanada, a very elderly person, then MRR Ramaswami who was editing the journal of the Ashram, Balaji and some others. So MRR was a literary person. He was editing the journal.
During a conversation, he said, clarity of thought is what everyone wants or looks for. Ever since he mentioned to me, my whole speeches drastically changed. They were given to discussion of the thought process and explaining what would be the clear picture, clarity with regard to spiritual concepts, spiritual sādhanā, spiritual goal, spiritual realization etc. And people used to say, “Swamiji, your talks generate a lot of clarity.”
In Malaysia, there was one person, a school teacher. He said, “Swamiji, all the people who come here complicate religion. You are one person who uncomplicates the complicated religion”. All this was a sequel to what MRR told me at the Ānandāśram. I am applying and relating the statement to yesterday what happened here. You are all hearing. Maybe the ideas get absorbed. But I don’t think they get processed in you. Even if they get processed, you are beating against the bush.
The purpose of the processing, the object of the processing, where it should have its impact and how you have to be helped, that point is missing. For example, yesterday I was saying, Krishna makes a very comfortable statement, “I am present in everyone, none I particularly love and none I particularly hate. All the difference that is made is because, the people who worship me, they make the difference.” So God never makes a difference. All the differences are made by the devotees.
Now, tell me what is your place in your devotional life? Has God the place or you have your place in your devotion? Because ‘you’ make the difference. You are not able to worship God fondly and well; that is why God remains at a distance. Things are not clear to you because you are not attempting to become clear. Your sādhanā doesn’t progress because you don’t want it to progress. You don’t know what real sādhanā is. Then He says:
Apply it to you. Krishna says, “Maybe I am a worst person, very immoral, unethical, unsophisticated, unrefined. All these bad qualities I have, blackmarks I have. I am not going to look into them.”
Bhajate mām-ananyabhāk. If I can worship God exclusively, wholesomely, I become a sadhu, a noble person. If anybody can become noble, the moment he starts loving God and worshipping him fondly, then what is my problem? All that I have to do is I have to be fond of God exclusively. I do agree that God is great and supreme. While I agree, I don’t worship Him as the supreme. If I worship Him as the supreme, nothing else will have any place in this world at all in my mind. Everything will become inferior and God will become the most superior. Do I consider Him to be so?
Or at one stretch I say ‘God is Supreme’, and I hold on to many things in this world. I want X, I want Y. I still want something ‘Super X’. What is meant by considering God to be Supreme? I am a devotee of the Lord and as a devotee I think I become excellent, I become priceless, invaluable, not because I have attained God but because I am fond of God, I worship Him through fondness. Am I doing it? Have I done it?
Yesterday ‘C’ was telling me, “I was doing it earlier, I am also doing it here.” That means what? All the years she was doing, there is no difference. Earlier I was a devotee, now also I am a devotee. Then why did she join an Ashram? She could have remained at home. So she is not able to evaluate what is taking place in her. Maybe she has progressed considerably; that is what I feel. But she is not able to evaluate it. It is like the donkey carrying beautiful and costly gold. It never gets any benefit of goldenness. It only exhausts its energy and nutrition by carrying the weight of gold. The entire benefit is had by the merchant who knows the value of gold. She is an inmate and maybe we have some benefits of having an inmate in ‘C’. We ask her to do some work. We have the benefits. But she doesn’t have any benefit. It is like donkey carrying gold. Don’t think that I am harsh in saying this. I still want you to discriminate matters. What is it lacking in you?
This statement ‘A man maybe the worst in the whole world, even then if he starts worshipping me extremely, that extreme fondness and worship for me make him a very noble person.’ Now the question I am asking you is, do you feel that you are noble? Have you become noble? Or will you say you were noble right from your birth? Even then I don’t mind.
So our discussions are not having the penetrating effect on the listeners. That is where I feel bad. I have evolved a formula, fifty mind-hours. Yesterday ‘T’ repeated it. What is meant by fifty mind-hours? Because you should keep this idea in your mind, make it a practice, a pursuit, an evaluation. The mind has to become pure! In order to purify the mind, the mind has to be pure! So let the pure thoughts, purity, process of purity be administered to the mind. How will you administer it? By getting pure coconut oil and smearing it on your body? The ‘mind’ process has to become pure!
So reading these scriptural statements or this kind of a Bhagavad Gita dialogue statements, trying to relate them properly, applying them to oneself. So even if I am a durācāri, what of it? What I have to do is, I have to be fond of God and worship Him from my heart. When I begin to worship God in my heart, that ‘beginning to worship’ makes me pure. It is not that purity is something else. My very worshipping God fondly, that is what makes me pure.
And be a constant worshipper. Not necessarily that you go to a pūja room, collect flowers. But you have to be a constant worshipper. Worship being installed in your mind, thought process and attitude process, you will become a constant worshipper of God. God is the goal, God is the truth, God is everything.
What does it mean? This realization will come only when your mind is filled with this thought, this process, this statement. Whenever you read Bhagavad Gita, it is this process institution that is taking place. It is not reading, it is not hearing, it is processing, processing, processing in your inside, in the mind level. The very purity is being sought, gained and displayed. Will you spend some time thinking about what I say and let me know?
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.
