Swami teaches.... Part 1. Develop the crucial skill

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Light and Love Swami teaches... Part 1. Develop the Crucial Skill

 

People boast that they know much, but of what use is all that knowledge if they do not put into practice and win peace and contentment? Fundamentally, the inquiry that makes living worthwhile is, "Where-from have I arrived? Whither am I going?" King Janaka used to gather many rishis in his palace and take delight in discussing with them about spiritual problems; he was a great adept at sadhana and he attained the highest stage of samadhi through Raja yoga. One day, while in the midst of the court, with the Queen and the maids, even while he was conversing with them, he fell asleep. He had a dream. He dreamt that he was deprived of his kingdom, that he was roaming half-mad, hungryand deserted in the jungle, begging for food from whoever he met, that he came upon some men washing dishes and vessels after a feast which they had shared, that he ran towards them seeking some crumbs, that they gave him some little quantity of rice scraped from the vessels, that he was about to put it into his mouth when a big bird flew in and swooped it out of his grasp; so, he yelled in pain and grief, and the Queen heard it and she woke him up. Of course, when he woke, he knew he was the King. He remembered that a second previously, he was a beggar. He questioned within himself, which is real, this or that? To every one who inquired what the matter was, he put the same question. "Am I a king or a beggar?" The queen and others were frightened at this behaviour; they sent for the ministers and with them came, Ashtavakra, the preceptor. He discovered the situation as soon as he saw the King; so, to the question that the King put him, he answered, "Raja! This is unreal; that is unreal; you, who experienced this as well as that, you alone are real." The waking stage is real until the sleeping stage; the sleeping stage is real, until the waking stage. But, both are unreal, because one cancels the other. So, why take life so seriously, so frantically? All efforts, all talk, all pleasures end with the graveyard. Gain, gain; that seems to be the refrain of life in every human's activity. The wise hold that there is another gain which is far more desirable - attaining the presence of God, merging in the Supreme Bliss that God is, liberating oneself from the little pleasures which divert us from the pursuit of the highest pleasure, Divine Bliss. Try to earn the Grace of God by being helpful to your fellow-beings. Different branches of knowledge are like rivers, while spiritual knowledge is the ocean. Even as the rivers merge in the ocean, all types of knowledge merge in spiritual knowledge. You must bear in mind the company you keep. Kabir said, "I salute the bad and also the good!" Kabir was asked: "We can understand you’re offering salutations to the good, but what is the point in offering salutations to the bad?" He replied, "When I salute the bad, I am saluting them, saying, please remove yourself from my presence. I salute the good, saying, please come to me!" Avoid the company of those who are evil-minded. Association with the good is pure yoga. You should pursue this kind of yoga and confer happiness on all people with whom you are associated. By cultivating the company of the good, you can raise yourself, because your bad qualities get diluted by association with the good, like sewage water when it enters the sea.

 

In the Ramayana, we see that by his association with Hanuman, Vibhishana, the brother of Ravana, was transformed into a devotee of the Lord. On the other hand, Kaikeyi, because of the influences of the evil-minded Manthara, brought infamy and widowhood upon herself and estranged herself from her noble son Bharata. In the Mahabharata, we have the example of Dharmaraja, who had to endure many difficulties and humiliations because of indulgence in gambling with dice during a brief association with the wicked Kauravas. Association with the evil-minded can lead to endless troubles. The company of the good takes you near to God. Without God, everything else is valueless. Attach yourself to the good and earn detachment; detachment will liberate you from illusions; that will make yousteady in the faith; that faith will liberate you. Therefore, certain disciplines have to be followed to realize the truth about oneself. This is emphasized in Sanathana Dharma (Eternal Religion). Nevertheless, due to political and cultural forces, Sanathana Dharma itself has neglected in much. The goal of life should be the earning of Atmic faith. That alone confers great joy that alone is true religion. People glibly say that religion too is a convention of human, fashioned for the moment. No, religion is much more useful than that, much more established. It is rooted in intelligence, individual discrimination. It insists on unity of all this in one basic principle, Brahman. It does not advocate or preach difference and manifoldness.All faiths have emphasized one common factor - that there is only One God and Truth is His form. There are no differences between Hindus, Muslims and Christians on this basic concept. Jesus sacrificed his life for the regeneration and welfare of mankind. Today there are some who exaggerate the so-called differences between different faiths and, for their own selfish purposes, exploit these differences and thereby bring a bad name to the great founders of these religions, who were spiritual giants. No prophet or messiah asked his followers to hate other religions or the followers of other faiths. Every religion has declared that God is One and that the Divine dwells in every being. Jesus proclaimed the truth that the One Spirit resides in all beings. All religions, all scriptures, all spiritual teachings point only to one truth - the Unity of Dignity. You may profess whatever faith you like. But you should not disparage another's beliefs. It is a characteristic of the Kali Age that one religion is pitted against another. This only reveals the small-mindedness of the followers and is not the fault of the founders. It stems from envious intolerance and egoistic conceit. No one should cast aspersions on the deities or founders of other faiths. Sanathana Dharma teaches us there is no other system or faith. All religions, all faiths are but phases or facets of the same Universal Faith and Discipline. It is like the seven blind men who examined the elephant and described it to others. The man who held the tail in his hand saw it as a snake; the man who felt the leg said it was a pillar; the man who examined only the ear swore that the elephant was like a winnowing basket. This story has a deep inner meaning. The Atma is one, but each one sees a fraction and judges it differently. It is the integrated sum of each of these facets of reality. When Jesus was addressing the dews, an ethereal voice declared, "All lives are one, my dear Son. Be alike to everyone." When Jesus has crucified, the same ethereal voice declared that the human body is only vesture for the Spirit. The body is subject to constant change. However, the indwelling Spirit is immoral. This was the truth proclaimed by Vedanta when it said, "The body is a temple in which the Eternal Spirit resides as the Indweller." The inner meaning of this is that wherever you may go, the Eternal Spirit remains with you. You must regard the body as the temple of the Spirit; bear in mind that Divinity is ever within you. Only when you realize thistruth can you begin to experience the Divine. Godhead is described in the Vedas as Shahasra Sheershah, thousand-headed. It does not mean that God has a thousand heads. The heads are thousands in number but the heartbeat is the same in all. So too, God is activating all the heads, as the same electric current activates the fan, the stove, the bulb, the mike, the machine, the tube, etc. The current is the same, but the wattage of the bulb differs and causes the difference in light. The individual is different but the indwelling force is the same. In the basic substance, there is no high or low; the difference is caused by difference of the instrument, the container. Students and spiritual seekers have to be encouraged to, "Follow the Master (the inner voice of Conscience), Face the Devil (the down-dragging anti-social urges), Fight to the End (until one is able to overcome the inner foes of lust, anger, greed, undue attachment, pride and hatred) and Finish the Game (of life on the Earth)." This duty is referred to in the Gita as swadharma (one's genuine obligation to oneself); the duties that one gets involved in, while dealing with others is defined as paradharma. Of these two, swadharma is more vital and valuable. The best way to gain happiness is to choose God as the leader and guide. Then, He will guide and guard, from the heart itself. Devotion implies faith in God. A tiny bird that perches on a bough is not scared when the bough sways in the gale. Why? Because it relies not on the bough, but, on its wings. You on the other hand rely on the grip you have on the branch of Samsara, or the world and its ramifications; you do not rely on the Atma or the God within, who buoys you up. That is the reason why any little shake in the bough frightens you. Have faith in your Divinity, in Divinity as such, and nothing can harm you. That is the crucial skill you must develop.

 

A man was crossing the Ganges in a boat; he asked the boatman if he had no watch and when he laughed at it, the man said," No; need or no need, whether you know how to consult a watch or not, unless you own a watch, a quarter of your life is as good as having gone into the Ganges." Sometime later, he asked the boatman whether he had a radio receiver and when he learnt that he did not possess one, he said that another quarter of his life can as well be considered sunk in the Ganges. '"You are not up-to date at all; every one worth anything has a barber's box contrivance called transistor hanging round his neck at the end of a strap." A few minutes later, he asked, whether he read any newspaper and when the boatman apologized for his illiteracy and his lack of interest in news, the man squarely said that another quarter of his life can be pronounced to be liquidated in the waters of the Ganges. Just then, the overcast sky became dark and furious and forks of lightning threatened a thunderstorm and a heavy downpour of rain; it was now the turn of the boatman to ask a question. He said, "Do you know swimming?" and when the man pleaded that he did not have the skill, the boatman replied, "In that case, your whole life is as good as liquidated." Learn the art of swimming across the sea of life, with its waves of success and failure. That is the real skill to acquire. The Beacon of the Spirit is the Lighthouse for the storm-tossed ships carrying humanity across the furious waves of the ocean of life. Instead of earning that light and saving from wretch, human is getting lost in travails, torrents of trouble, worry and agony and vain voyages in search of attaining the absent treasure. Unless that light is present ever with human, unless efforts are made to have it shining, clear in the heart, all the activities of life are shrouded in the darkness of ignorance. One wonders whether he/she has to appreciate or discard the charms of nature and the external world, whether to laugh or weep at their illusory attractions.

 

Blind to the real characteristics of this world, human has become a pendulum between birth and death. Human spins like a top, human is immersed in incessant effort; but what does human win? Nothing. You do not try to find out what you were before birth, after birth, and after death. The potter digs up clay to make his pots. The pots are short- lived and so, they represent the jivis, the individuals. Clay is the Brahmic substance, which underlies all creation. For, what has to be sought after first is spiritual progress. Devoid of the principle of Godhead, no activity can be worthwhile. Brahman, the Universal Absolute, is all this; It is the source, the substance, the sense; it is as cotton in the cloth, mud in the pot, wood in the chair, the basic substance. People say that the body is real, that it is permanent, that the senses give correct information, that the emotions are real. The mind has to be fixed on any object so that it can be seen, heard, or become the target for any sense. The ajnana - afflicted mind will feel objects to be pleasurable and permanent. The ajnana has to be overcome by means of spiritual discipline. People trap monkeys by placing big pots with small mouths in the gardens and putting some groundnuts inside them. Then they wait nearby. The monkeys come, put their hands inside the pots, and fill their fists with the nuts. Now, they find that the hands full of nuts cannot be taken out of the pot, for the mouth is too small for the fists. In this helpless condition, they can be caught easily. They fall a prey to the trappers. If only they drop the nuts, they could escape from the burden of the pot and get free. However, the attachment to the nuts spelt disaster to them. So too, human gets attached to sense-objects and gets entangled in the world forgetting the purpose for which he/she has come. The other legend tells that once a stranger monk a defect in the eye diagnosed the illness of a rich lord and he was advised to cast his eyes on a single color only. The lord collected all the paint he could get and all the painters of the region and daubed everything green - walls, roofs, fences, roads, tree stumps. When the monk returned after some months, he was surprised at the stranger appearance of the town. He asked the lord the reason for this and he was told that it was in accordance with his own prescription. The monk chided him for taking all that trouble and spending all that money, for, he could have gained the same end by putting on a pair of green glasses. When the vision is clarified into Brahma i.e. Atma thathwam (principle, truth, essence), then, all will be seen as the One Basic Brahman. (Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 6. "Which is real? This or that?" Chapter 44 and "The cleansed heart," Chapter 45.Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 16. "Be exemplars of Sai ideals," Chapter 31; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 18. "One God : basic truth of all faiths," Chapter 30 and "Students and Satwic Purity." Chapter 31; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 19. "The teacher and tomorrow," Chapter 29). Namaste - Reet