Swami teaches... Brahma principle in the spiritual field of awareness

[Guest guest]

Sai Ram

 

Light and Love

Swami teaches... 12 - 14 March 2006

Brahma Principle in the Spiritual Field of Awareness

Swami declares that the precious message of the Vedas is being forgotten:

usually human is busy with so many trivialities that has ignored the essential

purpose of own sojourn here. Humanity, is struggling in despair, to squeeze a

little joy out of the objective world which is subject to change and chaos.

With the help of the mind a human can rise from the level of the human to

the highest level of divinity. But human can also descend to the demonic level.

The human being make-up is a mixture of good and bad traits. One in whom the

good traits predominate, tends to see only the good in others. Those who have

equal-mindedness see the good and bad qualities impartially.

 

When human seeks to rise to the Divine which is human's reality, he/she is

remembering, struggling to know and experience. When individual grovels in the

lower levels of consciousness and is entangled in disease, he/she is caught in

the coils of forgetfulness. Removing selfish desires and expanding one's urge

to love and serve are the most effective means to succeed in merging with

Supreme Consciousness, i.e. the Primal Cause, the Cosmic Thought, the Cosmic

Consciousness, the Mahakaarana.

The Cosmos, as has been said many times, is a manifestation of the Divine

Will. Everything in the Universe is subject to change, impermanence and

disappearance. The world must be viewed as the reflected image of the Divine.

True Swami's devotees should not attach any importance to differences of

religion, caste or sect. These are merely differences in name and form. The

world may change, but the Atmic principle i.e. Shiva principle is unchanging.

The same union of the Universal Divine Mother and Father is represented by the

name and form of "Sai Baba."

 

Human is the most valuable being in the Universe. Human is also the creator

of all values. There is nothing that human cannot achieve, but before

attempting anything one must recognise own powers, role and purpose in life.

There is a mystery, search for the secret, and unravel it for yourself.

In our daily experiences, there are a number of instances which reveal the

existence of Divinity in every person. Consider a cinema; on the screen we see

rivers in flood, engulfing all the surrounding land. Even though the scene is

filled with flood waters the screen does not get wet by even a drop of water.

The screen which provides the basis for all these pictures is not affected by

any of them. Likewise in the life of human, good or bad, joy or sorrow, birth

or death, will be coming and going, but they do not affect the Atma. In the

cinema of life, the screen is the Atma.

The entire phenomenal world is made up of Easwara, Supreme God, identical to

Atma - the primal source and ultimate goal of all beings and objects. This has

also been described as Sathaamaatra Chaitanya (Pure Consciousness). This

principle of Chaitanya cannot be directly seen; it exists unseen. It is

eternal, it is permanent, it is all-pervasive. This is the very embodiment

of Easwara itself that permeates and fills this world. For this principle of

Easwara there are two aspects. One is Saguna (attributeful) and Sakara

(formful) and the other is Nirguna (attributeless) and Nirakara (formless).

Associated with the mind and thoughts, and responding to the joys and

sorrows, the pain and sufferings ofhuman beings, various forms of Divinity have

been visualized. These are the Saguna and Sakara aspects of Easwara. In this

context we have the Trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Maheswara. These are

associated with the three gunas or attributes - rajas, satva and tamas. Rajas

is associated with Brahma, satva with Vishnu and tamas with Shiva. The rajasic

attribute, associated with Brahma, is represented by the sound 'A'. The sound

'U' is the manifested form of Vishnu. And 'M' is the form of the Shiva

principle. These three forms, composing the Trinity, are not permanent as they

have taken form.

In the worship of the Divine the Trinity exist in each individual as

auspicious witnesses. But there is one syllable consisting of 'A', 'U' and 'M',

which is the One underlying all the three forms; that is the Omkara. It is an

expression of the Nirguna Akara the attributeless Divine Principle. (About

gunas and 'Om' has been described in previous serial's "Swami teaches... "

However, here is another angle concern to Saguna and Nirguna aspects).

Whatever number of births we may take and however long we may go on

worshipping these three forms, we will never be able to free ourselves from the

cycle of birth and death. If one wants to get rid of birth forever, one has to

worship the Nirguna Nirakara, the formless and attributeless principle, which

is represented by the Omkara. This may also be described as Paramatma, the

transcendent principle within us. As long as we have the mind and the

tendencies, we can only be described as Jivatma. The One appears to the split

vision as two. Look outward, it is Jivi. Look inward, it is God. The outer

vision makes you forget; the inner makes you remember. (If the mind is turned

towards God and freed from the thought process, it tends to merge with the

Nirguna Nirakara and thus become liberated).

Jivatma and Paramatma are not two different entities. The characteristic of

Jivatma is to waste the entire life in worldly things and associate the mind

with this phenomenal world. This is the externalised vision, which is full of

illusion and delusion. If you turn your mind inwards, it will be free from

delusion. When it is free from delusion and illusion, then it is one with the

principle of Paramatma.

The attributeless Divine assumes certain qualities as Its nature and becomes

Saguna. The individual thus formed seeks to know and experience the variety of

names and forms that are exposed to Its senses of perception and its mind. This

is, in short, the process of living, the project of "knowing", of expanding

one's awareness. The process has a beginning and an end, it involves success

and failure, good and evil.

The Jivi is the Divine Consciousness, installed in a chariot. It is not a

bundle of inert stuff moulded into a form and labelled with a name. There is

only One all-pervading Consciousness but human experiences It in fragments and,

mistaking It as many, human gropes in the confusion caused by own ignorance.

Many scriptures instruct people the truth that God dwells in the body along

with the Jivi, God inducing individual to aspire for the heights and the self

advising him/her to be content with the low. The Jivi has faith in the reality

of the world and of itself. The Divine principle, on the other hand, asserts

that It is present, both close to human as well as far from him. The fact is,

people feel It is far, because they are not aware of Its being near, nay, in

their own hearts. The truth that the scriptures teach is, that God is

everywhere, near and far, above and below, inside and outside. In order to

awaken to this truth, one has to attain higher four levels of wakefulness.

Vedanta reveals four categories of wakefulness: the fully awake, the

wakefulness of mind only - as while dreaming, the wakefulness of the self alone

- as in deep sleep, and the illumination of the self awakening into the

Over-self. These are named Sthoola Sookshma, Kaarana and Maha Kaarana (The

Gross, the Subtle, the Causal and the Super-cause).

The awareness that survives these three passing stages (the Gross, the

Subtle, the Causal) is the Maha Kaarana, the Super conscious. The Super or

Supreme Consciousness is the Thought that became all this - the Hiranyagarbha

the Golden Womb, the primal urge, the first concretisation, Easwara. When Being

"thought," it became the Many, or rather, it put on the appearance of Many. The

Maha Kaarana, is beyond Consciousness; the Sthoola, Sookshma and the Kaarana

bodies into which it proliferated are beneath Consciousness. The former is true

knowledge (eruka in Telugu). The latter is illusory experience (marupu in

Telugu). God is the Lord of eruka, the Jivi is the slave of marupu

(forgetting).

The Maha Kaarana i.e. the Cosmic Consciousness, is often denoted as "Param"

(beyond) in Vedanta; since the concept is obviously contentless, it does not

arise and fade; nor does it originate and disappear. It has no name and form,

for it cannot be defined or limited or identified as separate. It is understood

as Brahman - the unmoving, immovable Totality (Poorna), the Eternal, the True,

the Pure, the Attributeless. Just as the unmoving road enables the car to move

along it, the Brahma principle is the basis for the existence and activities of

Jivi.

The Vedas have three sections Karma, Upasana and Jnana. Karma is the section

dealing with the activities that strengthen and purify faith and devotion;

Upasana is the section dealing with worship of the personal God, the dedication

of all acts to the Highest, the Inner Witness, the surrender of all skills and

experiences unto the Immanent Power - these two endow human with

one-pointedness. As a result of these two, consciousness is able to recognize

in a flash jnana (knowledge) as the fact of its being Divinity itself.

(However, instead of this one-pointedness, we have many-pointedness now:

one-pointedness for coffee, another for the cinema, a third for the disco and

so on. No one stands firm for they have not found the rock of the Atma; they

have no knowledge of their Atmic reality).

 

The Bhagavata and the Gita have made clear that our destination is the

source from which we came. As long as the individual is caught up in the

Prakrithi (phenomenal world), the mind will be unsteady and vacillating. As

long as there is life in the body it is Shivam (sacred). Once life goes out, it

is nothing. The Vedhic declaration, "So-ham"("He is I") is demonstrated by the

inhaling done during breathing. "So-ham" proclaims the identity of the

individual and the Divine ('I am He'). This identity will not be understood as

long as one is caught up in the tentacles of the material world.

The Divine is a wine produced by the nectar that the name of the Lord is

saturated in. Taste it and you forget everything else; you are transformed.

Human is, they say, a monkey that has lost tail; well, human must lose many

more attributes of the monkey before he/she is entitled to call human. Then is

this animal entitled to become a human, in whom the Divine is enshrined.

Water flows from a higher, level to the lower levels. God's Grace too is

like that. It flows down to those who are bent with humility. How can human be

truly at peace without the Grace of God? While trying to get the best out of

Nature's Gifts, you must first be equipped with humility and simplicity;

otherwise, you will only be dragged through many unfulfilled desires.

There are no short-cuts in the spiritual field. Bhakthi (reverent adoration,

devotion) is even more difficult than jnana (spiritual knowledge, wisdom); for,

to get the attitude of "Thou" not "I" one has to surrender completely to the

Higher Power, personified as the Lord. The ego has to be fully curbed. Erase

sensual desire; clear the heart of all blemish; then, the Divine will be

reflected therein as in a mirror). The effulgent Sun can be seen only with own

light. Similarly, only by the Grace of the Divine can one obtain a vision of

the Divine. Sadhana (spiritual discipline) is the royal road to reach the

Divine.

The clearness of vision of the Divine also depend on the consequences of

acts done in previous births which cannot be easily brushed away; no, they can

be destroyed, as a heap of cotton is burnt by a spark of fire. The spark of

jnana or bhakthi will destroy the effect of karma, in a trice. These

consequences are like the cloud of dust that follows a bus, when it runs on a

fair-weather road; when the bus reaches the gravel road or the metalled road,

the dust is less, but it is still there. When at last it enters the tarred road

there is no dust. The mud track is karma; the metalled road is upasana

(worshiping, devotion for God) ; the tarred dust-free road is jnana. By human

skill and effort it is possible to reduce the burden of past karma. But, why it

is so difficult to practice?

One reason is that the tongue is the armour of the heart; it guards one's

life. Loud talk, long talk, wild talk, talk full of anger and hate - all these

affect the human's health. They breed anger and hate in others; they wound,

they excite, they enrage, they estrange. Why is silence said to be golden? The

silent human has no enemies, though he/she may not have friends. The silent

human has the leisure and the chance to dive within and examine own faults and

failings. If your foot slips, you earn a fracture; if your tongue slips, you

fracture some one's faith or joy. That fracture can never be set right; that

wound will fester for ever.

Life is like a tangled skein of yarn. The more you try to unravel it, the

more tangled it becomes. Life is like a tank infested with crocodiles. It is

difficult to cross it avoiding the crocodiles. But it has to be done. Life is

like a block of ice that is continually melting away. Before it melts

completely, the truth has to be realised.

The world is one vast Society. Every individual in it is part of this

Society, bound to it by the love that draws human to human, to be kith and kin.

This love is there, deep in the heart of human. It is the secret source of all

sympathy, and service; it creates the urge to live in and for society.

No one can live in isolation. Persons, sleeping on the same cot are caught

having different dreams; each one has an inner own life, own path and speed.

But on the other side human is under an inescapable obligation to shape own

activities and attitudes in consonance with the others, amidst whom he/she is

placed. Human's affection and attachment are attracted by others, and person's

reactions are determined by others.

Father might be sitting at a table, before his plate on which dinner has

been served; if some one rushes in to tell him that his child has been injured

in an accident on the road, he runs out of the room and on to the road, without

caring for the hunger and the plate. The call of the one he is attached to is

louder and stronger than any call from within.

The family is essential for the blossoming of human personality; how can the

helpless baby grow and learn, talk and move forward without the home? The home

needs the community around it to keep it safe and happy. Even a bird in the

bush cannot survive isolation from its kind.

Loyalty to society is essential for human. The individual's fulfilment, in

the joy of liberation, is undoubtedly, the fruit of the tree of humanity. But,

when you yearn for the fruit, you cannot neglect the roots, the trunk, the

branches, the leaves, the buds and the blossoms of the tree; they all help the

fruit to manifest and to be filled with sweetness. All are mutually

interdependent. Human life can be truly understood in the context of harmony

and co-operation.

The individual born in the lake of society must swim and float in the calm

waters, and joining the river of progress, merge in the Ocean of Grace. Human

has to move from the stance of "I" to the position of "We." By the other words

our journey is from the individual to the universal from 'Swam' (mine) to

'So-ham' (oneness with God).

(Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 5. "Types of road to God,"

Chapter 16 and "The rare chance," Chapter 21; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 12. "The

fruit and the tree," Chapter 3 and "Sabko sanmathi," Chapter 10; Sathya Sai

Speaks. Vol. 16. "The Ever Auspicious Lord," Chapter 5; Sathya Sai Speaks.

Vol. 18. "Cultivate love, faith and humility," Chapter 7 and "The Primal

Cause," Chapter 9).

Namaste - Reet