(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.
(Continued...)
(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.
(Continued...)
(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.
(Continued...)
(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.
(Continued...)
(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.
(Continued...)
(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.
(Continued...)
(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.
(Continued...)
