Swami teaches... Part 2. Take part in the Divine Play with awareness

May 24, 2007

Light and Love

Swami teaches... Part 2. Take Part in the Divine Play with Awareness There are three things that are immensely pleasing to the Lord. A tongue what never indulges in falsehood. A body that is not minted by causing harm to others. A mind that is free from attachment and hatred. These three constitute the thrikarana suddhi (triple purity). When you approach God and seek His help and guidance, you have taken the first step to save yourself. You are then led to accept His Will as your own. Thus, you achieve Santhi (Absolute Peace).

Many kinds of spiritual practices are resorted to for realizing God. During these exercises, one day God appears in a dream. The devotee rejoices in it. When the Lord seen in the dream appears before him/her, the devotee derives even greater delight. When devotee is able to move and sport with the Lord, he/she becomes ecstatic. That is described as the bliss of oneself with the Divine. It is also called Paramanandam (Supreme Bliss). Of all forms of delight, the bliss that is experienced in oneness with the Divine is unexcelled.

To achieve this state of bliss a start has to be made with the control of the senses. The mind is the basis for all these sense organs. Without mental consciousness, the sense organs will not be able to function at all. In the use of sense organs, there must be due regard for moderation and purity. This applies at first to food as well as to many other things, which you may take in. For example realizing that human's attraction for sensual pleasures is largely due to the kind of food that one takes, the ancients devised an easy and sacred method for purifying the food before eating. They used to sprinkle some water on the food and utter the mantra: "Annam Brahma! Raso Vishnuh! Bhoktaa devo Maheswarah!" (The solid food is Brahma, the liquids are Vishnu and the enjoyer of the meal is Maheswara). The sprinkling is done with Sathya and Rita (Truth and the Cosmic order which together sustain the Universe). In performing this rite, the partaker of food is praying to the trinity to protect him/her with "Sathya and Rita.” This rite was sanctifying the food. (Many intellectuals of today, full of pride in their knowledge and skills, are ignoring the potency of Sathya and Rita).

In the journey to the Divine, human has to reduce progressively various desires, which are the cause of all difficulties. It is true that human cannot exist without desires. Nevertheless, they should be within certain limits and under the control of buddhi (intellect).

(One way to reduce desires is to get absorbed in activity. Idleness encourages the mind to indulge in all kinds of thoughts. If you are intensely engaged in reading, singing, playing, or any other activity, the mind will have no chance to wander hither and thither).

In general, sense organs are subject to various kinds of afflictions. Likewise, when someone criticizes you, the sound waves reaching a certain nerve centre in the brain will excite your mind waves. Immediately an angry reaction occurs. Then there is no control over the mind. On the other hand, someone else may come and praise you. You forget yourself and get immersed in joy. The sense of discrimination may be lost through excessive elation or through deep distress. When the discriminating power is weak, the mind is prone to pursue wrong courses.

Each sense organ has only one function to perform and cannot perform any other function. Sense organs cannot serve as reliable indicators of truth.

Take, for instance, the tongue. When a person is hungry, the laddu (made from sugar) tastes sweet to the tongue. However, the same laddu tastes bitter to the tongue when a person suffers from malaria. Alternatively, when one is healthy, the eye sees every color in its true form as red, green, or yellow. However, when a human suffers from jaundice, the eye sees everything as yellow. Here, again the eye fails to serve as a reliable indicator of truth when it is subject to disease. All the organs in the body are prone to disease of one sort or another. Nevertheless, of all the ills to which human is prone, there is one which cannot be cured by medicine, that is, ahamkara (egoism). In this context, there are seven factors, which have to be considered: deha (the body), karma (action), raga (attachment), dwesha (hatred), ahamkara (egoism), aviveka (lack of discrimination) and ajnana (ignorance). These seven influence the human condition. Ignorance undermines the power of discrimination. Without discrimination ahamkara (self conceit, ego) develops. Ahamkara breeds the twins: attachment and hatred. Attachment and hatred lead to the experience of kartha (the consequences of one's actions). Raga and dwesha generate actions of various kinds. These actions, in their turn, are the cause of birth in a deha (body). It follows that the root cause of human birth is karma (action). Your birth is the result of your actions. The nature of one's birth determines one's attachments and aversions. In the study of the scriptures, we come across the terms Sama and Dama. Sama is generally regarded as meaning control of the inner senses and Dama as referring to control of the external senses. This is not correct. Sama means control of both the inner and outer sense organs. Among these sense organs, three are most important: the eyes, the ears, and the tongue. Each of them tries to follow the other. When the eye sees something, the ear tries to listen to what is happening. Immediately thereafter, the eye seeks to explore something new on the basis of what the ear has heard. (Control your eyes. When you control your eyes and tongue, you can easily control all other senses. When the eyes roam freely, the tongue begins to wag without restraint. When the tongue is engaged in endless talking, the eyes want to look at every conceivable thing. When both these organs combine without restraint, life can become a calamity).

These sense organs, however, do not function by themselves. They are called Upakaranas, that is, subsidiary instruments. For all of them, the mind is the base. It is the mind that creates within itself its conception of the Universe. It gives form to the perceptions got from the senses.

The mind is the underlying current in all sense organs. Suppose that you are experiencing a dream. You see in the dream your parents and friends. In the dream state, you are talking to your parents and friends. You feel in the dream you are listening to what your parents and friends are saying. All that you see, hear, or say in the dream are all the processes of the mind alone. The experiences of the waking state are laid aside when dreams start; dream experiences disappear when sleep supervenes. Being too is lost in becoming. Christ said, "Life is lost in dreams." So the mind is present in three states of consciousness - the waking, the dreaming, and the deep sleep states. But it is absent in the karana (causal) state in which them is only experience of the Divine. This is the state of total desirelessness. It is only when desires cease that the mind stops functioning. Real bliss is experienced in that state. In the waking state, the eye sees, the ear hears and the tongue speaks. In the dream state, the eyes, the ears, and the tongue are inoperative. In the dream state, the mind alone sees, hears, and does the talking. The mind does all the functions of the senses. Mind is the inner operator of all the sense organs, which are only subsidiary ones and not self-acting instruments. However, beyond the senses, the mind and the buddhi (intellect) there is the Atma (the Indwelling Spirit).

At large there are five kinds of senses in human: hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. These five senses are based on the five elements: akasa (ether or space), vayu (air), agni (fire), aapa (water), and prithvi (earth). The earth is the grossest of the elements; water is subtler and more pervasive than earth. Fire is subtler and more pervasive than water. Air is even more subtle than fire and is extremely pervasive. Ether is the subtlest and pervades everything. In this ascending order of subtlety, each element exhibits a wider pervasiveness than the preceding element. With increasing subtlety, pervasiveness also expands. In the reverse process, when subtlety diminishes, the density increases and the pervasiveness contracts. Thus, air is less subtle and grosser than ether. Fire is grosser and less pervasive than air. Earth is the grossest and least pervasive. Akasa is the basis from which the other elements have emerged. Akasa may be compared to an infinite pot. All the other four elements are evolved from it. From the movement of ether, air came into existence. Out of air, fire emerged in course of time. Without air, there could be no fire. Out of the heat generated by fire, water was formed. From water, all multifarious forms in Nature are evolved. The relationship between grossness and pervasiveness can be illustrated by an example. Suppose, for instance, a jasmine flower is placed on a table in a room. Fragrance, which is subtle, pervades the whole room.

The human's mind, because of its extreme subtlety, is capable of immense expansion. Nevertheless, because of the senses, the mind has attraction for a variety of objects and persons. It is when the attraction from these objects is reduced that the mind can achieve expansion. In this context, you have to consider three factors: the gross, the subtle, and the causal. Taking the examples of the tamarind fruit, you find that it has the outer rind, the fruit inside it, and the seed within the fruit. Our body is like the outer rind of the tamarind fruit. Our mind can be compared to the fruit within. Our causal body is comparable to the seed in the fruit. The human entity is the combination of these three. Moreover, in this entity, there are five kosas (sheaths) - the Annamaya (the food sheath), the Pranamaya (the vital air sheath), the Manomaya (the mental), Vijnanamaya (the intelligence) and the Anandamaya (the Blissful) kosas. The Annamaya kosa's qualities are hunger, thirst, and sleep. The Pranamaya kosa's qualities are inhaling, exhaling, and motion. The Manomaya kosa's qualities are sankalpa (thought), vikalpa (absence of thought), and manana (introspection). The Vijnanamaya kosa's qualities are medha shakthi (intelligence), viveka shakthi (power of discrimination), and vijnana shakthi (wisdom). The Anandamaya kosa's qualities are priyam (fondness), modam (delight), and the pramodam (supreme delight or ecstasy). Everyone aspires to have these three experiences. For example, one learns that mangoes have come into the market. One derives a pleasure immediately on seeing the mangoes. This is priyam. Person then buys the mango and takes it home. The joy person derives from possessing the mango is modam. Then person eats the fruit with relish. The joy derived from this is pramodam.

You have to find out the true role of the mind. Below the mind is the vital principle. Above the mind is the buddhi (intelligence). Buddhi is associated with the agni (fire) principle. Prana (the vital force) is also associated with the fire principle. The mind is situated between these two. The mind by itself is pure. It is by succumbing to the senses that it goes astray. If the mind allows itself to be guided by the buddhi, it will not go astray. The scriptures have pointed out that when human follows the senses he/she becomes an animal. Three evil qualities have to be renounced before human. Anger which smothers jnana (wisdom), lust which pollutes karma and greed which destroys one's love for God and human. The touchstone that pronounces an act as meritorious is "renunciation." When human acts according to the buddhi he/she achieves the state of Mahat-thathwa (recognition of own great potentialities). When human recognizes own identity with the Atma, human becomes Brahman. So, human must endeavor to escape from the delusion and reach the state of fully illumined wisdom. The best spiritual discipline that can help him/her to do so is Love. Foster the tiny seed of Love that clings to 'me' and 'mine,' let it sprout into Love for the group around you, and grow into Love for all mankind, and spread out its branches over animals, birds and those that creep and crawl, and let the Love enfold all things and beings in all the worlds. Proceed from less Love to more Love, narrow Love to expanded Love. The statement, "From untruth to Truth" is not correct. The progress Is always from the lesser Truth to Truth which is God. (Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 13. "Full minus full," Chapter 16; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 21. "From Annam To Ananda," Chapter 9; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 23. "Lessons of a debate," Chapter 17; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 26. "The juice, the sugar and the sweets," Chapter 15; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 28. "Offer everything to God," Chapter 24).

Namaste - Reet