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The outside world thinks it is a ‘dry’ world which discards the ‘outside’.
But in reality that is the world that is full of the coolness of nectar of love.
Outside there is only bark and shell, but inside there is the sweetness of coconut-water.
That is the nectar of love which has to be milked from the Thing that is inside everything.
This is the stage of SannyAsa that the Acharya has shown to us with great compassion.
(Continued...)They should be practised with great bhakti as if they were equivalent to the icons with life.
All along we have been doing SAdhanA in a dry mechanical way; but hereafter we have to do the shravaNa, manana etc. with great devotion that breathes a cold air.
The next step being sannyAsa, one may think that this is the ‘dry’ stage in the SAdhanA.
On the other hand, the wet and cool weather is going to start only now.
It is dry only from the outside.
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(Continued...)These mantras as well as the philosophy imbedded in them are equally living things, - not just pieces of information to be learnt from writing.
They are living divine things.
Just as the icons of the temples which have been ritually invoked by PrANa-pratishhTA, the mantras etc. are deities in the form of the akshharas (letters).
We have to set up a relationship with them, a sort of love that takes us to that state where we ourselves melt into nothingness .
These principles of philosophy that the Guru teaches us and which are to be absorbed by manana and dhyAna, are wrongly considered to be dry philosophy.
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(Continued...)By that very drying up the sprouting of love takes place by which that very ahamkAra becomes ready to be offered as food to something else.
That is when it can be converted into Bhakti towards the Universal Source of all Life.
Bhakti towards Brahman, that is, the Atman, bhakti sometimes towards the saguNa Ishvara, bhakti towards the Guru, all these are a must.
One more bhakti is a must.
You remember, after all the four-component SAdhanA, one is now ready for the SannyAsa and to receive the mahA-vAkya teaching.
We are going to learn deeply all the shAstras and Upanishads.
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(Continued...)When we kept it dry, that was also justifiable.
There are methods of cure where the medicine is administered only after one is made to starve.
Even among crops, sometimes they are allowed to dry up and then only proper watering is done to cool them and make them grow better.
It is the same situation here.
We usually are in such a state where, in the mind, intellect and ahamkAra, thoughts, feelings and determinations arise as food for them.
It is necessary first to dry them all up.
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(Continued...)But Vedanta’s Brahman is not emptiness. It is a fullness, full of the quintessence of bliss.
The Taittiriyopanishad has revelled that JIva in its Fullness becomes Bliss itself (II – 7).
It is the cit (Knowledge) that has become Life.
It is the essence of cit and Ananda, Fullness of cidAnanda.
The whole concept of Bhakti is to conceive of it as a living fullness, relate ourselves to it and develop the thought that we should dissolve in that fullness.
That is how through Bhakti one cools and waters the dry SAdhanA regimen.
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(Continued...)Even in chess and cricket also this might happen.
But in all these, the beauty of the relationship of one soul giving its all to another living soul is absent.
That ‘mAdhurya-rasa’, the taste of sweetness, is what is missing!
Starting from nitya-anitya-vastu-vivekaM (discrimination between the real and the unreal), the SAdhanA that goes through vairAgya (dispassion), shama (sense control) and dama (mind control) and uparati (cessation), has been a dry affair keeping everything as well as oneself dry like an inert object.
There has been no trace of a relationship with ticking life.
If one goes that way one will only end up in the emptiness advocated by BauddhaM.
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(Continued...)In Science also the same self-effacing ‘intuition’ produces the discoveries attributed to Einstein and others.
One may say that such scientists did not consider their Science as a living devatA.
But all living beings have a super-Being as their common source.
That central source is the root source of all the arts and sciences and of all knowledge and action.
When the scientists devote themselves heart and soul to their science in a dedicated fashion, it is that common Universal Source of Knowledge that sparks them with that intuition about new truths and discoveries.
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(Continued...)Can you imagine chess or cricket having life?
But we know monumental examples where the practitioners of music, dance, literature give up all their lives to such arts as if they are divines with life.
And when they dwell at the peak of excellence in their performance, we say “they performed as if in trance, forgetting their self”.
It only means, for that moment they gave themselves up to those arts.
And the ‘life’ within the art makes them reach a peak of excellence.
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Another point to be noted is this.
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(Continued...)But here the thing to which we get attached is not for being possessed by us.
Instead it should possess us; that is the anguish with which we get attached.
What should go is the so-called individual self or ego.
To whatever we attach deeply for that very purpose, that is Love, that is Bhakti.
But just because love or Bhakti is but a deep attachment to something, it does not mean such an involvement in chess or cricket or being a bibliophile is Love or Bhakti.
Because such attachment is all for fattening the individual ‘I’.
In other words it feeds the ‘svayaM’ (the outer self). On the other hand feeding the ‘svayam’ (to the Self) – that is, the ‘svayam’ is to be fed to the Self -- is Love or Bhakti.
This is the grand ‘svayamvaraM’ wherein the bride is ‘fed’ to the bridegroom!
(Continued...)However, if there is the thought that it might still be better if there is a saguNa-mUrti for directing our Love, especially at the beginning of this advanced stage of SAdhanA, then certainly there is the Guru.
Pour all your Love and Bhakti on him.
He will lift you up and make you direct your Love towards the nirguNa.
Has not our Acharya said:
*prasAdena guroH seyaM pravRttA sUyate phalaM* (See KDAS-46: Sec. 29)
–‘By the Grace of the Guru, the effort will become pravRtta and will give the desired result’.
After all what is Love?
Is it not what goes and attaches to you wholly?
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(Continued...)Gratitude, that is very important.
The Bhakti that arises out of this gratitude – gratitude to Him who has directed us into this most remarkable advaita -- raises its head now and then. Of course we may have to maintain it for a very short time and quickly resume our journey.
However, this Bhakti of short duration is so intense that all that bhakti that we did long ago for the one-pointedness of the mind pales into insignificance.
When we were carrying on that Bhakti almost incessantly, it was like a routine, and sometime lifeless.
But now on our jnAna path, a certain bhakti shoots forth as if from an underground spring, along with a sense of gratitude, and even though it is only for a moment, it is full of life.
But since our objective is nirguNa, even from this, the mind has to be turned off.
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(Continued...)If you want you may believe that the nirguNa brahman, in order to shower its grace on you, works for just that moment like saguNa, and then after sending you inside the core of your heart, within there it remains nirguNa and takes you over. Instead of resorting to such wishful thinking, the best thing would be to go forward with shraddhA and shraddhA alone!
Memory does go back to the Ishvara (saguNa brahman). As long as there is a mental action, thinking of anything good does bring back the memory of Ishvara, who is the aggregate of all that is good.
Except for advaita, all the other schools of thought earmark him as the destination.
How can an advaita-sAdhaka not think about Him?
But when that thought does occur, start thinking: “Oh Lord, it is because of your Mercy my mind has ventured into advaita. And by Your Grace I am moving on this path little by little. I know you are doing all this, in your great compassion, to take me over finally into your advaitic oneness. So if I now worship you as a saguNa deity, I will be going against your own sankalpa. Please help me go forward on this same path”
- This is a kind of expression of gratitude for the path so far trodden and a prayer for the path that is remaining, so that the mind still stays on the nirguNa principle.
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Just now I talked about the Atman that tests, the Atman that reveals itself, the Atman that does the action of taking over the surrendering self.
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The noblest object is God and so if we humbly submit to Him with Love that is Bhakti.
This Bhakti then becomes Guru Bhakti, Matru Bhakti, PitR bhakti, Bhakti towards our nation and so on.
Among these, only God and the Guru can really take our Love as well as our individual ‘I’ and melt it in the universal ‘I’.
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(Continued...)It is we who have to do service to him with the thought: “We have got ourselves into the mire of samsAra.
At least some rare person is struggling to get the Release. Let us do whatever we can to smoothen his journey of life”.
Thus neither to individuals nor to the society does this sAdhaka have to show his love. That does not mean he has to be inimical to society.
There is neither love nor hate. Non-violence is his first characteristic – by the very fact that he has taken a promise at the time of taking SannyAsa, that not a single being shall have any fear of me – in other words, “ I shall not harm in any way any living being”.
So he cannot have any hate towards any being or society.
This absence of hatred, however, which has come as the effect of the strength of his SAdhanA, is not to be shown as an explicit love in the outside world.
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Of course it is true that a JnAni after he has attained Brahman realisation sometimes does perform worldly service by the prompting of the Almighty of the mAyic world.
Our Acharya himself was one such.
But that was, after the stage of influence by MAyA – in other words, one has established himself as ‘MAyA-proof’!
That JnAni is not doing things on his own volition; he does them as an instrument of Ishvara.
Thus love can be expressed or exhibited either before one begins any such thing as advaita-SAdhanA or, after one has attained Realisation, in the form of service to the world or to individuals – but not at the present stage of advaita-SAdhanA that we are discussing.
One in a million who has engaged in this SAdhanA not doing worldly service is also not a big loss to the world. In fact it is the other way.
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