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by
Sri Bimal Mohanty
VOL
No. 74
April: 2007
PURUSHARTHA’s LARGER DIMENSION AND MORE ABOUT SANYASA
Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty
QUESTION 1 FROM Ms Mandakini Basu
Sir, I do not say this as an excuse. But in this hectic life there is so little time to devote to study of scriptures, attending satsangs, doing daily pujas, yogabhyas and then meditation which should be my daily activity. What is your advice for me?
ANSWER: Such self analysis when sincerely done, is in itself a great preparation for sadhana. That is also the way The Lord works.
Hectic ways, which is really a self imposed malady, is the curse of modern life style. If man could simply slow down, lot many problems of life would automatically melt away.
If the circumstances of life are keeping you away from your spiritual pursuits, no good will come by being frustrated or from despair. But as an intelligent person one should constantly analyse the very activities of the day which took priority but were indeed not so very important and could have been set aside. It helps to plan your activities better. If you have convinced yourself about what is good and indispensable for you, you will always find time. Your inner voice is your best guide. Your mind is your great support.
Mere mechanical pursuit of spiritual activities brings small benefits only. Amongst mantrajapa (repeatition of mantras), pujan ( rituals), shravana (attending satsangs), swadhyayana (study of scriptures) and manana (meditation) etc, meditation or self contemplation even in its simplest form, is considered most effective. All forms of establishing linkage with God bring benefits no doubt. But they are supports only towards the ultimate purpose of realization within. In this respect manana or meditation is not only superior but necessary. Even short but regular meditation adds happiness to life. Anywhere, anytime could be meditation time. Meditation is the ambrosia of the yogic life.
Do not lose confidence and your faith. Be at it and do not ever be slack in your efforts. The promised grace of the Lord comes to everyone’s life when the time is ripe. God bless you.
QUESTION 2 FROM Mr. Al Truman
Listening to you, I tend to agree that I myself am the major contributor to my Karma. However there are many natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, cyclones etc. or even war which are not my creation, yet I suffer. What is the spiritual explanation?
ANSWER:This is a question on which many indeed are always confused. We have often discussed in AHWAN that the entire creation, involving all objects and beings is a single, homogenous entity- each one interconnected with and interdependent on each other as in a matrix.
We should never make the mistake of thinking that our existence is an isolated individualistic existence. We are all part of the ‘collective. The ‘individual vyakti’ does not exist without the ‘collective samasti’. Every action by every one, however direct or remote, directly or indirectly influences and affects everyone else. ‘Good’ done by an individual or a group, brings good to all, evil brings misfortune for all to face. Dharma brings benefits to all and adharma the opposite. There is no sanction for anyone to perpetrate evil. That is the way of dharma.
The nature is always in a state of dynamic equilibrium- that state which is most conducive to all. However, man, a group of men, a nation or nations in their limited knowledge often misunderstand the nature, impose their own theories of progress and personal benefits upon the state of things and disturb the harmony. Nature has its own self- correcting mode, but whenever a threshold is exceeded, a violent reaction becomes inevitable. The effect of our aggregate karma is real, even if all happenings can not be explained within the limitations of one’s ‘time’ and ‘mind’.
Many of the natural (and even man created) calamities can be avoided if man only spends his time and energy in correctly understanding the divine law of cause and effect, instead of pursuing disastrous and fruitless goals. All our so-called scientific pursuits or researches should be spiritually influenced rather than materially influenced.
A contemporary case in point is this issue of global warming. A catastrophe seems to be round the corner. Many are and will suffer. Who is responsible? Who to be blamed? - God or ourselves?
Having said that, it is also true that in some disastrous happenings a direct relationship with the suffering is not even remotely understood. Although such happenings provide the circumstantial cause, the suffering of the jivas is never unjust or unearned. Due to many many acts of misdemeaner accumulated over long periods of our existence, a time comes atone them and thereby the opportunity to learn the lesson and return to dharma. Take the Mahabharata war for example. Although a feud between Pandava and Kaurava brothers, many apparently innocent citizen suffered. Since all had contributed to the aggregate rise of evil in the society, atonement for all and thereby re-establishment of dharma was necessary. An era of calm and peace was ushered in.
The lesson behind all these, is that there is no place for evil conduct anywhere, any time, by any one. One knows not when, how and under what circumstances they shall cause suffering.
God expects us all both at individual as well as collective level, to act wisely, intelligently submitting ourselves to the Divine ways and prosper through them. The Divine ways and our own true nature are tuned to each other, both having the same purpose – the good of all. There lies happiness for all on earth. S Radhakrishnan also observed; ‘If the harmony of the world is derived from the conformity of all beings to their nature, the disharmony of the world is due to their non-conformity. God does not stand aside when we abuse our freedom and cause disequlibrium.’
The human society’s only hope is dharma- the intelligent conformity with the Divine.
QUESTION 3 FROM Mr. GORDON MILLER
God - Is he or is he not? The doubt still haunts?
ANSWER: This is the age-old conflict between heart and mind. It is really not very bad to have this doubt. How else one would search the answer? Take this doubt further to think about it day in and day after. Reflect on your own life. It is the greatest book you have and the only book which you have read thoroughly like no one else except God, has read. Go through the pages of your own life. How many of us regularly read our own very book –our Life? There is always an answer hidden somewhere we failed to notice- some unexplainable event -which can only be explained as a divine intervention. So He is there.
Most of us, go through our lives, with very little thought behind our actions. By thoughts I do not mean planning and preparedness but the esoteric meaning behind everything. It is what the Kena Upanishad proded us to think- keneshitam patati preshitam manah, kena prAnah prathamah preiti yuktah, keneshitAm vAcamimAm vadanti, chakshyuh srotram ka u devah unakti?
Who makes the mind to think what it thinks? By whose command my vital forces proceeded to do what I did? Who is the Divine being, who in me ‘speaks’, ‘sees’, and ‘listens’?
Like low-grade mental beings we do not apply our mind deep enough. What a criminal wastage of this precious gift of mental faculty! Answers to all these questions lie within us and there is God.
His door opens to every sincere knock and there in front of the seeker stands God.
QUESTION 4 FROM Sri Anil Kumar Tewari
We observe a sequential series of thoughts…. we are not in a position to say, with firm, that there lies an eternal substance behind all these thought-moments ….. how a dialogue is possible between what is unchanged and that is changing incessantly? (Edited)
ANSWER: Thoughts are not always sequential. To be able to think in logical sequence is a part of yogic sadhana.
An individual soul ‘jiva’ can not merge itself with his own thoughts. As long as the feeling ‘I am thinking’ remains, this “I-ness” maintains its separateness. ‘I’ always remains a ‘drsta’ of the drsya. Only in the advanced stage of sadhana when “I” starts losing its “I-ness”, the common identity of ‘seen’ and ‘seer’, ‘thought’ and ‘thinker’ gets revealed. Subjectivity and objectivity are the results of duality.
‘Self observation’ is not same as ‘thoughtless’ stage.
For a thought to be thought by the thinker or a scene to be seen by the ‘seer’, if one is constantly changing (like thoughts and scenes) the other has to logically remain steady and unchanged. If both were unsteady, there is a false perspective of the thought or scene.
No one logically can refute this theory of the need for a steady backdrop for all-changing scenario.
That is how Brahman- or his presence within us is always steady and unchanging so that we can see the unsteadyness around us in true perspective.
Sanskaras are the food and reason for the changes that take place. They do not affect the steady state of the true self. There is no dialogue between the thought and the thinker. The dialogue is always between the ego-driven individual self – the ‘I-ness’- and the eternal self, the Paramatma or the Brahman.
