by Sri Bimal Mohanty
VOL No. 54
August. 2005

 


  Atma
 Knowledge
 Creation
 God
 Spiritualism
 Sanatan

 Questions
 e-mail

MEASURING THE SPIRITUAL PROGRESS- Part 2.

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

QUESTIONS FROM READERS

QUESTION 1 FROM K R PARTHASARATHI

How many persons in your best of knowledge have become one with Brahmam?

ANSWER: People often wonder on this issue. After all it is relevant to their own expectations and it is legitimate to wonder if their sadhana is not a waste of time.

A direct answer to your question would be: none can say how many have achieved brahmatva.

On the face of it, this is quite negative, but there lies the brilliance of this concept in sanatan philosophy of mokshya- the merging or losing itself by the jiva(individual soul) with its source the Brahman.

The sadhana and its culmination is an intense personal experience – an exclusively personal interaction between the sadhak and the aradhya, the desired one. No one else is involved, not even the Guru who may have been acting all along as the guide and mentor. Every one – as long as there remains a separate identity- is a co-traveller with different levels of consciousness.

When the final moment comes, when the Brahman embraces the jiva and both become one, the jiva ceases to exist separate from Brahman.

YathA nadyah syandamAnAh samudre astam gacchanti nAmarupe vihAya.

TathA vidwAn nAmarupAt vimuktah parAtparam purusam upeiti divyam.

Like this river, the wise also lose their very existence- astam gacchanti- and then meet the divine being, the purusam divyam.

As the Mundaka Upanishad tries to explain, the river keeps on rushing to the ocean . When it meets the ocean and realises what the ocean is, it has lost all its existence. There remains no name, no form, no river, only the ocean.

It is said Brahmavid Brahmeiva bhavati. To know Brahman you become Brahman. There are no witnesses to this union. Brahman himself is the only witness. And when you become Brahman who is there to tell whom and what?

We ask: in this condition of uncertainity what is then my motivation for continuing my sadhana? – Read about it in the articles ‘Measuring the spiritual progress’ in AHWAN. ‘Attempts to describe Brahman’ and ‘On Meditation’ are also suggested.

QUESTION 2 FROM Sri RAVI MATHEW

(Re phrased) Is there a god, as you told about the bhrahma,... there is no person or a big power outside us. its all inside us. we all posses energy inside us. and the energy is which guide us and we could increase or decrease the energy...

ANSWER: You recognize a “power” or “energy” within you. That is right. But try to think who is that power? How did it happen to be inside you? If this energy as you say is there to guide you, then what is the nature of this guidance?

When you meditate upon such thoughts in your mind, seeking answers, you will soon realize that, that power or that energy is not there by chance or coincidence. It is also not an inanimate entity without intelligence. Since you are an intelligent entity, then somebody who is there to guide you has to be a higher intelligence and a larger power. When you recognize such facts through mental contemplation, your mind will start getting an ‘awareness’ of this powerful, knowledgeable and higher intelligence.

That is the awareness of God within you. That intelligent power and that energy is God.

He is not only within you. He is also within me, within everyone else, within animals, plants, within everything that is around you. No one can be exclusive to God’s presence. What does that mean? It means that God is also outside, all around. He is both inside you and outside you. He pervades all around you. So logically you are indeed within God as He is within you. ( Like it is said the space or akasha is outside the pot and is also inside the pot, the pot is held in space and the pot holds the space within itself too.)

This power, or this energy which we are identifying with God, does not increase or decrease. But depending upon our mental capacity, our understanding and realization of his presence is some times perceived as less or more. So when you say the energy or power increases or decreases, it is your awareness of his presence which appears to be less or more. As the understanding and awareness grows, you can say His power is growing within.

As regards passing on of this energy or power, down the generations, it is only partially true. It is true that what you and me are to day in this life, we contain a lot of inputs from our parents over many generations. Not only the parents, but we also carry with us our own karmic influences arising out of our actions in our previous lives. But what we have received and carry with us from life to life are generally gross characteristics. But we are not made up of only gross inputs. We are a combination of gross as well as a large amount of subtle characteristics which are passed on to us from God when He infuses the ‘life force’ into us. (brings us to activation). They relate to the higher levels of our existence at the levels of mind, knowledge, bliss and pure consciousness. These subtle characteristics, when cultivated are many many times more powerful than the gross. Our parentage of past lives is only partially responsible for what we are today.

QUESTION 3 FROM Prof Sarveshwar

Agreed that change and results of change are inevitable and needed. But many of our scriptural sayings are disdainful of all things changeable. The moment we hit upon a truth, it asks us to discard it.

ANSWER: It is not true that the sanatan philosophy is either disdainful or disregards change. It is that philosophy that having declared sarvam Brahmeiti considers all activities as divine. Change is also a divine activity.

What it means to say always, is “look at all changes in context of their essential purpose and see where they are heading to.Existence and change are interdependent. Existence is only

possible by change. The creation is ever dynamic. It is not a dead entity. Every object is within this dynamic environment is constantly reacting to forces- physical or subtle- and finding its dynamic equilibrium. No sooner it has done that, it is time to react to new forces. If it fails to react and change it will cease to exist. That is the rule of evolution. Continuous change is the inherent nature of all objects.

With every change and with every new state of existence, a new ‘knowledge’ about things emerges through our cognizance. The sanatan philosophy says: do not make the mistake of resting there. That is not final.

When an object is existing, its existence is first observed by our senses including mind and then it is processed by our intellect, compared with our existing knowledge or memory and then cognized. So there is always a time gap between existence of an object and its cognition.

Existence and knowledge are never synchronized. And by the time we have come to ‘know’, a certain time has always elapsed. And what happens during this period? The object that we have come to ‘know’ is no more existing as it- according to its nature has undergone another change. It no more exists.

Whenever you see the beautiful morning sun, you get to know the physical sun. But what you see as the sun is what that yellow object was sometime back. Your knowledge is a past knowledge. There is something else in the sky now.

If you contemplate on this deeply, it will not be difficult to understand why the sanatan philosophy does not attach undue importance to physical existence of any kind. So the knowledge of the existence of that object which we have gained has become useless and irrelevant by the time we know it. The knowledge can be useful only when the object and its cognizance remain unchanged in time. The only changeless and, ever-the- same object is Brahman. Therefore only the knowledge of Brahman is knowledge and the rest being useless knowledge are non-knowledge.

The terms ‘useless knowledge’ or ‘non knowledge’ are not to be understood as discardable knowledge. They all become useful when accorded the inclusiveness in total knowledge as they lead to the absolute knowledge.

QUESTION 4 FROM Mr Tim Graham

Is it worth bothering about God, Spirituality etc when so much suffering of our fellowmen we see around us? Should not everybody forget all that spiritual preoccupation and donate their time and resources to help mankind?

ANSWER: This is not a new question and crops up always at times of disasters. It will also continue to crop up as long as people remain hazy about their perceptions of life, God,

Yes, sacrificing one’s time, resources and efforts to alleviate physical suffering of the world, is always demanded of each one of us, and one should continue to respond.

But the fallacy in our thinking is revealed, when we believe that sacrifice and service at physical level and same in spiritual level are alternatives to each other. One does not take place of the other and neither is dispensable at the cost of the other. One should always extend all assistance at the physical level to the utmost extent as one’s capabilities permit. But one should never underestimate the power of spiritual counseling to any disturbed individual. Sincerely done, its effects reach out far beyond the limited horizons and work for strengthening the very soul in its journey.

QUESTION 5 FROM SRI PRABODH KUMAR GUPTA

Going through the pages of AHWAN is certainly rewarding and a rich experience. But I am an old man and I am only filled with remorse that I have so little time left to reach out to the Lord having wasted all my life. I need some encouraging words from you.

ANSWER: Everything in life is a mix of good and bad. Life can not provide absolute good or absolute bad. It is not its character. Absoluteness is the characteristic of God alone. Hence living life, necessarily means to understand, accept both good and bad together and use that knowledge to reach the essential truth that helps you to develop a passivity towards all mixed experiences (viparita bhavas) and then to realize that everything in life has one and only purpose. That purpose is to help you evolve from base mediocrity and state of ignorance and half knowledge, to a state of refinement of a higher being. As man is a higher being than an animal so also there exist states of higher and higher levels of manhood till it reaches the state of final divinity. Till that final stage, man remains still an animal. May be a better animal, but nevertheless an underdeveloped animal being. Our scriptures beg of us not to waste this human birth, and make the best use of it for that very purpose for which it has been gifted to us. Who knows how many thousands of miserable existence I have to go through till I acquire another human birth again?

Often people decry or put off pursuit of spiritual path saying that only material service to mankind is all that is required. Helping the poor and the sick doing good for the needy justifies not making any efforts for realization of higher purpose of life i.e God consciousness. This should be understood in its true perspective. This is obsession with material and physical. At this level all our faculties are blinkered and not open to a wider vision of things. Limited vision allows only limited knowledge hence limits the very potential. Limited vision can not realize higher effectiveness. You can achieve much more when full and wider potential is realized.

Most of us live life with self imposed restriction, in partial ignorance, even love the darkness. If the mind is only obsessed with darkness, it will not think rationally all the possibilities for freeing itself to light. Understand darkness but simultaneously look for the crack in the wall through which outside light is filtering through. That will give impetus to find the escape route.

Don’t get too engrossed with merely physical and material goodness. By all means spend time in cleaning your study desk. But do not put off to begin studying till tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come. Both have to be mixed properly. God is waiting.