Articles for Saadhana

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.

Last evening we had a discussion on spirituality and also meditation.  Whether spirituality, spiritual pursuit can be taken up by non-ascetics, sannyasins and can be pursued? The summary answer I gave was, in the human personality if you analyze it properly we have the body consisting of matter and energy. This body along with all the instruments and limbs are but an instrument in the hands of the mind and intelligence. Without the mind and intelligence employing this body and bodily parts there cannot be any activity at all. The mind and the intelligence along with the ego being not material and energial, they are spiritual constituents. Being so, we are first and last a spiritual being, not a material being. Because the mind intelligence and ego are spiritual, spirituality becomes a subject indispensable for every one of us. You cannot live even for a moment, be useful and effective without your mind and intelligence.  There are people in a state of coma, irrecoverable coma. They are virtually non existent. We feel they are existent because we are wakeful and our senses are working. Their body remains there but the mind and the intelligence are unable to employ them for any useful purpose. So spirituality is not something alien or foreign, it is something very, very realistic.

And what is spirituality? The science and art of enriching, empowering, elevating, expanding, enlightening and fulfilling our mind and intelligence along with their needs. So, how can it be either unacceptable or disharmonious with anybody? The purpose of meditation or allied spiritual saadhana is to understand the mind more and more, make it better and better in terms of the qualities , make the intelligence to do its task of introspection and through introspection set right all the problems of the mind, find solutions for all. When the intelligence does introspection with a view to deal with the problems of the mind and resolve or dissolve them then it becomes a saadhana.

Every one of you is using your intelligence but only for external, sensory and objective purposes. When you start employing your intelligence in the way of introspection to discover and identify the insufficiencies of the mind, disharmonies of the mind and try to set them right, it becomes a spiritual effort. We have four levels of human activity – the bodily and sensory one, for one unit it has the minimum effect let us say one. Then we have oral activity, chanting, prayer etc. That has got one hundred effect. These two exhaust our visible activity. Then we go into the mind and we find that the mind also is working. So whatever you do with the mind, mental pursuit, it becomes thousand times effective for the same time. Then when you go to the intelligence level where introspection is taken up and pursued it becomes one lakh times. Unfortunately people don’t take to introspection and they don’t understand that that is the highest form of human activity and pursuit.

So all that you need and you are missing now is truthful introspection. I would like to describe it as infusional introspection. Why do I call it infusional introspection? Because the purpose of the introspection is to infuse into yourself mento-intellectual qualities and excellence. Any noble and great emotion is a quality. There are qualities which relate to attitudes and responses and objectives. There are equally qualities related to one’s own performance. You must not be idle. You must be striving. That strivingness is a quality. Perseverance is a quality. You must be trustworthy for anything that is necessary. If I give you a task I must feel that here is a task given to X who will do it and he will not mis-do it - trustworthiness. Then being responsible for whatever you do, being responsible for your married partner’s welfare, children’s growth and enrichment, contribution to the country to make the country stronger. Similarly contribute to the world welfare. And you must be accountable and trustworthy for this.

Then you must be having a quality like exclusiveness and dedication. This is another quality. You must be able to apply your body and senses to a given task exclusively for any length of time that the task requires. It is not that I work for six hours and get away. Sometimes you may have to postpone sleep. You may have to forgo meal or delay it but you have to apply your body. That ability, readiness, potential and possibility for this are very important. You must be loving, very considerate, sympathetic. Make Sacrifices for the sake of others. A number of qualities like this are there. Ultimately they become spiritual. Do not have pride, do not have ego. Do not have a sense of doer ship about anything. And then do not be victimized either by suffering or the opposite of it.

In the intelligence level, you must have clarity of understanding, wisdom, any point moral, ethical, social, global. When the questions come you must have an answer for it. Similarly, spiritual questions also clear answers should be there with you. We speak about rebirth, birth, life in heaven etc. Who has seen? Nobody has seen. Is there? No answer. So they agitate the mind. So you must have clarity for it and you must be able to get redemption in your own mind from all the shackles brought about by the mind and intelligence. Now these are the qualities of the intelligence. They can be further expanded. Now, spiritual pursuit is one wherein or whereby the mento-intellectual personality of man is consistently  enriched, empowered, enabled, elevated, enlightened and fulfilled. Now, you tell me whether it can be taken up or should be taken up by everybody or not.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.