The mind must become the
servant of the intellect, not the slave of the senses. It must
discriminate and detach itself from the body. Like the ripe tamarind
fruit, which, becomes loose inside the shell, it must be unattached
to this shell, this casement called body.
Liberation is just the awareness of Truth, the
falling off of the scales of delusion from the eye. It is not a
suburb of select souls - it is not a closed monopoly of expert
Sadhakas. Like the Godavari losing its form, its name and its
taste in the sea, liberation dissolves the name and form, aptitudes
and attitudes. You are no more a separate, particular individual.
You are happy, that you have come on a pilgrimage
here, but let Me tell you one thing: unless you control the stream
of desire that springs in the mind, this is just a wasted
opportunity. If your wish is fulfilled, you revere Me; if it is not,
you revile Me. That is how desire debases you. When one wish is
fulfilled, ten rise in its place. For there is no dearth of want;
the same person has come to Me seeking success at the examination,
then a job, then a father-in-law, then a child, then a rise in the
salary, a transfer in a cheaper place and a seat in the Medical
College for his son - a never ending series of wants, until at last
he comes seeking My Grace for an end to worldly pursuits and for
initiation into the path of spiritual practice.
No one can liberate you, for no one has bound
you; you hold on to the nettle of worldly pleasures and you weep for
pain. The kite is pursued by the crows so long as it carries the
fish in its beak, it twists and turns in the sky trying to last and
it drops the fish. That moment it is free. So give up the attachment
to the senses; then grief and worry can harass you no more.
When you know that thieves have broken into your
neighbor's house, you become extra cautious and, every night, before
you retire, you examine every lock and bolt in the house. When you
know that death has carried away a victim from the house next door,
why do you not examine yourselves, whether you are equipped to meet
it when it comes for you ? Why do you immerse yourselves in
distractions like building houses, piling bank-balances, celebrating
picnics and contesting elections. Engage yourselves rather in things
that will make you immortal and serve your best interests by service
to the world ! Seek your own Reality, that is what a wise man should
do.
Dharma purifies the mind and leads you to
God. It creates a taste for the Name and Form of God. When you love
the name and form of Krishna, you will naturally respect and obey
the command of Krishna, His Agjna, which is found in the
Bhagavad Gita. Have the Name on the tongue and Form in the eye; and
the demon, called Aasa, unending desire, will fly from your
mind, leaving joy and content therein. This kind of constant
dwelling on the indwelling God will promote Love for all beings. You
will then see good in others and you will strive to do good to
others.
Remove the vices of lust and hatred, and put out
the raging flames of anger and greed, then the innate Santham
and Soukhyam and the Swarupam and Sevabhavam of
man, will manifest themselves unhindered. Santham is the
Swarupam; and Soukhyam; and is the Swabhavam of
man.
The very fact that man is equipped with memory,
mind, intelligence, discrimination, the ability to anticipate the
future and the desire to detach himself from the senses is an
indication that he is destined for some higher goal. In spite of
this, if man craves for a lesser consumption, he is a Papi
(Sinner). But he who persists, in spite of temptations and
obstacles, on the path that leads to self-fulfilment and
self-realisation, is a Gopi, for the Gopis of Brindavan were the
most inspiring examples of such souls.
When the Gita directs you to give up all
Dharmas (Set codes of morality), it does not ask you also to
give up all Karma (activity): that is to say, you have to do
Karma, and, when you do it for God, through God and by God,
the Dharma of it does not matter; it has to be acceptable and
it is bound to benefit you. The statement is not an invitation to
licentiousness or complete inactivity; it is all for dedication and
surrender to the highest in Man, viz. God.
The body can be clean if washed with water;
speech can be clean if it is saturated in Truth; life can be
purified if it is sanctified by Tapas; and the intellect can
be cleared of blemish through Jnana. Above all, the
conviction that you are not the body only a resident of the body has
to grow in you. If you identify yourselves with the body that you
carry about with you, you are inviting sorrow and suffering to
overwhelm you instead of the joy and peace which are awaiting to
bless you.
Do not admit into your mind the demon of
A-santhi. Direct all your cleverness and all your intelligence
to the successful execution of the great drama, in which all of you
are taking part at present. It is His drama. He is the Director, you
play a role, an actor carrying out His Will, speaking the words that
He put in your mouth and making movements as directed by Him.
The experience of this one life must be enough to
show you that there is no joy unmixed with grief, that both grief
and joy are short lived and they both depend on the mind and its
control. You do not require the experience of a series of lives to
grasp this patent fact. This world is keeping you in bondage; it is
a prison from which you must get released; and you should not plan
to return to it again and again.
The eye which is scarce two
inches long can see millions of miles into space, but is incapable
of seeing itself ! Man too is as shrewd and as weak as the eye. He
can analyze others' motives, count others' faults and map out
others' skills and capacities, but he is powerless to analyze
himself, his feelings and his emotions. Unwilling to discover his
own faults, he cannot assess his innate skill and realize his inner
reality ! But the power can be acquired if you keep company with
Sadhakas (aspirants for spiritual progress), not otherwise.
Man thinks himself that he knows
everything but, when asked about himself, he hangs down his head in
shame. Man knows the news of every land, but he is ignorant of the
nuisance that he is to himself and others. He is moving in darkness
but yearning for Ananda. He does not know the means of
securing Ananda: Prayer, Seva, study of spiritual
texts, meditation and silence. He has no faith that he is Ananda
and that Ananda is his own nature. He is blown off by
calamity, for he has no strength to withstand the blow. Faith in the
God within is the toughest shield against the thrusts of Fate.
Nests laboriously built by birds
are torn away by storms; the fragrant petals of flowers are felled
by rain. Defeat and victory are the obverse and reverse of the same
coin; when you welcome one, you have willy-nilly to welcome the
other too. Forbearance, compassion and incorruptible virtue are the
three pillars of the happy life. Only such a life can be called
civilized; the rest is barbarian existence.
When you do not accept the
insult some one casts on you, it goes back to the person who
indulged in it first; a registered letter that is not accepted
returns to the sender. Do not damage your mental peace by receiving
the letter and reading the contents. Refuse to receive it. You have
a chance of correcting the wrong-doers too; accept it and pin the
gang of mischief makers. So be warned !
WHEN you pray for a thing from
God, you run the risk of condemning Him, if for some reasons the
Prayer is not answered the way you want it to be or as quickly as
you want it. This contingency arises because you feel that God is an
outsider, staying in some Heaven or holy spot, far away from you.
God is in you, God is in every word of yours, every deed and every
thought. Speak, do and think as befits Him. Do the duty that He has
allotted to you to the best of your ability and to the satisfaction
of your conscience. That is the most rewarding Puja.
When you stand before another,
his image is in your eye and your image is in his; have you not
observed this? You are in Him, I am in you: that is the Truth this
phenomenon proclaims. When you believe in this, and when you
cultivate Love, Humility, Reverence for Life and Tolerance, you are
on the Right Path. When you are not on this Path, that is to say,
when you are traveling left, you are certainly left out when it is a
question of sharing Divine Grace.
I know many parents who dote on
their children and admire them when they learn the bad habits of
gambling or drinking! They do not curb them when they swagger about
in the bazaars, teasing and bullying those who pass by. They do not
instill into the young minds the attitude of reverence towards
property belonging to others. As a consequence, their children land
themselves in trouble and, then, the parents repent and curse
themselves for their unpardonable foolishness.
IF the parent is a drunkard, a
gambler and a cheat, no amount of textbook ethics can cure the sons.
I like children and the young innocence. I will not allow them to be
blamed. The fault lies wholly on the shoulders of the elders, the
parents, and the leaders who shape the norms which they imbibe.
Cleanse your emotions, passions,
impulses, attitudes, and reactions. That is the essence of spiritual
discipline as laid down in all Faiths. Examine your mind, your
thoughts; do not seek the fault ridden person. Seek only purity;
speak ill of none. Do not humiliate anyone; respect him for the good
in him. Their grief at your behavior will haunt you during your last
moments.
Life is a mosaic of pleasure and
pain - grief is an interval between two moments of joy. Peace is the
interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn; the
diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flower. There
is no bee without the sting; cleverness consists in gathering the
honey nevertheless. Troubles and travails will haunt you but you
must not allow them to deflect you from the path of duty and
dedication.
If you feel you must have
something to be happy, pray to God: "God, you have the
responsibility to keep me healthy, happy, good and intelligent; give
me this thing which I believe is necessary for my happiness; but, if
you think I am wrong, give me whatever you think best". God will
never desert His obligation. He will feed you and foster you.
Have patience; do not, in your
hurry, enjoy cheap joys, fall into error and unrighteous deeds. Have
faith that God will add unto you all the joys that you desire and
deserve. People ask men for favors; they extend their hands towards
others and plead "Dehi" (Give). But, "Dehi" means
also, "He who dwells in the 'Deha' or Body; which is God".
So, do not humiliate that "Dehi" by calling out "Dehi"
before others. Say "Dehi" to the Dehi; He will respond
generously and graciously.
Women preserve the culture of
this country with greater tenacity and faith. They keep men on the
moral path and inspire them to follow spiritual discipline. Their
hearts are tender and full of compassion for the hungry and the
distressed. That is why in this land, women are adored and revered.
Elders quote the Shastras
that say that the home, where the floor is soaked by the tears of a
woman, can never see prosperity. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa took
great care to see that Saradamani Devi did not take his simple jokes
and ridicules too much to heart, for then she might shed tears. We
honor the land where we are born as our "Mother Country", the
language we learn on our mother's lap as "mother tongue", and the
Scripture that teaches us Morality as "Mother Veda". In this
way, every Indian has four mothers, including the mother who gave
birth to him. According to Indian Culture, all these have to be
adored as Divine.
Those who deny God, the Supreme
Will or the First Cause, can give no real satisfactory justification
for their stand; nor can those who assert that there is God. Both
have to rely on their own experience. After all, how can sweetness
be denied by one who refuses to taste sugar? How can one be
convinced that sugar is sweet until one tastes it? We have to feel
the great marvel of energy, manipulating both, the minutest atom and
cell and the vastest, most distant star. How else can we understand
the Omnipresence and Omnipotence, except by accepting God as the
Architect of the Cosmos?
Follow the call of the Divine
arising from the hearts of all living beings. Serve them in an
attitude of worship, not expecting something in return. Do not
accept even gratitude, having dedicated all your acts to the
indwelling God. This will purify you so that you shall be able to
listen to the "Soham" that your breath repeats every moment.
"Soham" transmutes itself into OM when the distinction
between He and I has dissolved itself in the process of 'Samadhi'.
Man is born for the attainment
of Joy, not for sheer eating and revelling. Real and lasting joy can
be won only by a life led along the path of Dharma which
makes the inherent Divinity of man shine forth; illumination is the
purpose of life; of the recurring sequence of birth and death. Man
has, in him, the spark of Divinity, which is Omnipresent,
Omniscient, Omnipotent and immanent in entire Universe. In order to
become ever aware of this innate Reality, man must learn the
technique laid down by the Scriptures, revealed by the same
Divinity.
The very first lesson of the
primer of the spiritual text is "Control of Speech". Speech is the
armament of man; other animals have fleetness of foot, sharpness of
claw, fang, horn, tusk, beak and talon. But man has sweetness of
speech which can disarm all opposition and defeat all the designs of
hatred. Sweetness makes you "Pashupathi" - Divine; harshness
makes you "Pashu" - bestial. Mere outward politeness or
sweetness is hypocrisy! Sincere speech must flow from real sweetness
of heart, a heart full of love. Remove all evil from the
Manasarovar, the pellucid lake of your mind, and make it a fit
abode of Godhead.
Start from today a new chapter
in your life, the chapter of Japam and Dhyanam,
Japa-Sahitha Dhyanam or Dhyana Shitha-Japam. In the
Tretha Yuga, the Name was Sita-Rama; in the Dwapara, it
was Radha-shyama; and in the Kali Yuga, it is Sarvanam,
that is to say, all Names of the Lord; you can select any one that
appeals to you.
Every man desires to acquire
Ananda. From where can Ananda be acquired ? Faith alone
can win Ananda. Peace can be got only through faith; faith is
the spring of joy. But now we see sorrow, wherever we cast our eyes.
Why does this happen ? Because, man has lost faith. He has no faith
in himself. How then can he acquire Ananda ? How can a
person, who has not got faith enough to live happily for a few days,
win the Grace of God ?
Namasmarana is the
process by which this dedicatory attitude can be cultivated and
confirmed. When confronted by calamity, you must attach yourself to
this Sadhana even more firmly instead of losing faith in it
and getting slack. The drug should not be given up when it is most
needed. The pity is that, when the first disappointment faces you,
you lose courage and confidence and give up Rama or Krishna or Sai
Baba.
Many of you have problems of
health or mental worry of some sort or other. They are mere habits
by which you have been brought here, so that you may contact the
Grace and strengthen your faith in the Divine. Problems and worry
are really to be welcomed as they teach you the lessons of humility
and reverence.
Bharatavarsha knew that the
secret of Peace lay in service and Love towards all beings. The
culture of this land proclaimed that the best form of service is to
foster the practitioners of the good life; the sages and the
Sadhakas. Do not decry the servants of God; do not obstruct the
charity of the generous; do not discourage the study of the
scriptures, even if you cannot positively promote any of these; that
is the lesson taught in this land.
At present, everyone is after
Sukha. The hunt for comfortable jobs and positions of influence,
the founding of banks and business houses, the growth of bungalows -
all this is evidence of the eagerness to live in happiness. But
there is no eagerness to live in Santhi. Sukha is
confused with Santhi. Sukha is taken to be the same as
Santhi. No one of the rich or well placed or prosperous or
powerful has Santhi. You can investigate and find out for
yourselves the truth of this. Santhi is not found in the pass
book or many roomed bungalows or godowns or iron safes. Your whole
attitude is topsy turvy.
Go straight along the path of
Karma and Dharma towards Brahma; this is your destiny.
Karma has to be done; there is no turning away. Each has his
allotted task, according to the status, taste, tendency and earned
merit. Do it, with the fear of God and of sin, deep in your heart.
Welcome pain and grief; so that you take both success and failure as
hammer strokes to shape you into a sturdy Sadhaka. Inner
contentment is more important than outer prosperity.
Friendship must serve as lids
for the eye, as sandals for the feet. The friend must be "another
Me". He must experience, in equal depth, the joy and the grief of
the other. Friends must be like milk and water. Let Me elaborate
this example. When milk, into which some quantity of water is
poured, is placed on a burning stove, the water goes off as steam.
The milk laments the separation and boils over. Then, the only way
to keep it calm, is to sprinkle a spoon or two of water; its friend
is back and it is happy. Milk cannot tolerate separation from its
friend.
Your friends today attach
themselves not to you but to your purse or to some advantage they
can gain through your father's kindness. When your purse is empty or
when your father is no longer in power, they bid you good-bye.
Friends who drag one away into evil habits and vicious deeds, are
prowling around in search of victims.
Be in the world like a maid
servant in a rich man's house. The maid servant deals with all the
objects and things always knowing that nothing belongs to her and
that this is not her true home.
Those who seek to know God must
steel themselves to bear insult, injury and torture, with a smile.
We shall be judged not by the
creed we profess or the label we wear or the slogans we shout- but
by the work, the industry, the sacrifice, the honesty and purity of
character. Realize the Heaven within you and all at once all the
desires are fulfilled, all the misery and suffering is put an end
to. Feel your self above the body and its environments, above the
mind and its motives, above the thought of success or fear. The
great cause of suffering in the world is that people do not look
within: they rely on outside forces."
God is inscrutable. He cannot be
realized in the outer objective world. He is in the very heart of
every being.
Gemstones have to be sought deep
underground; they do not float in mid-air. Seek God in the depths of
your self, not in the tantalizing, kaleidoscopic nature. The body is
granted to you for this high purpose, but you are now misusing it,
like the person who cooked his daily food in the gem-studded golden
vase that came into his hands as an heirloom.
Man extols God as omnipresent,
omniscient and omnipotent, but he ignores His presence in himself!
Of course, many venture to describe the attributes of God and
proclaim Him to be such and such, but these are but their own
guesses and the reflections of their own preferences.
Who can affirm that God is this
or thus? Who can affirm that God is not of this form or with this
attribute? Each one can acquire from the vast expanse of the ocean
only as much as can be contained in the vessel he carries to its
shore. From that small quantity, he can grasp but little of that
immensity.
Like the seven blind men who
spoke of the elephant as a pillar, a fan, a rope or a wall, because
they contacted but a part and could not comprehend the entire
animal, so too, religions speak of a part and assert that their
vision is full and total.
"Udyogam Purusha Lakshanam",
it is said. Ud-yoga means, as is commonly understood,
employment in some job, something that is worth doing. No, it means
Ud (Higher) Yoga (spiritual discipline): a Sadhana
which mark out (Lakshanam) the Purusha (the man). When
Artha is sought through Dharma, the Purushartha
deserves the name, 'Paramapurushartha', for it is Parama,
oriented towards the Para or the higher eternal values.
In one of his speeches, Nehru
had to acknowledge that there is a destiny that shapes events,
irrespective of individual efforts. Well, everyone has come to that
conclusion sooner or later; for, there is a limit to the capacity of
man control events. You may call it Destiny. Another may call it
providence; and a third, God. Names do not matter. It is the
humility that matters; the wonder, and the sense of awe that matter.
The eye sees because it is
illumined by a microscopic spark of the rays of the Sun. "Chakshos
Suryo ajayatha". From the eye, Surya was born. The
Atma is the motive force of all the senses; the eye is but a
window through which the Atma peeps out at the external
world. Of what use is the eye, when the vision is not correct ?
Samam means Brahmam; Samadrishti means seeing only
Brahmam, the one, in all things at all times. This Ekathwam
is the basic Truth. All other experiences are partial, distorted,
and false