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| Thus awakens the awakened one |
by Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Society - Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India |
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| 7. ON ATTAINMENT
AND EXPERIENCE |
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- No one who is not established in God as
an entirety of existence can feel a kinship with Nature or even a sense of
brotherhood with others, let alone have peace of mind within one’s own
self. Unselfish dedicated work for the welfare of all (sarvabhutahite ratah)
and constant devotion to God as the universality inseparable from one’s
true being are marks of perfection (sthitaprajna).
- When man’s meditation on God ends, and
God begins meditation on all Creation, the consummation is reached. It is
here that all questions are answered and all problems solved.
- The highest meditation consists in the
recognition of the Self in all things, so that there is no object before
the Self to think or deal with. It is here that the mind melts like an
exhausted camphor cake in the process of self-sublimation.
- The highest ‘bhava’ which rouses ‘para
bhakti’ in a devotee is that in which one cannot recognise even one’s
own body as if forgotten since many years, for there is no
body-consciousness when the mind expires in pure experience.
- To be able to realise God, you have first
to want God. It is almost a question of supply and demand. To want God is
not merely to ‘think’ but to ‘feel’ through your ‘whole being’ that you
cannot exist without Him. The entire personality vibrates with a longing
that cannot be satisfied by the beauty and the grandeur of the world.
There is a want for ‘That’ alone, and nothing short of it.
- The sense of perfection slowly enters the
mind, when it gradually learns to dovetail the various discrepant
particulars of the world into a coherent whole. This stage comes when the
existence and activity of the mind coalesce in an adjustment of oneself
with God’s Creation.
- Life is a process of entering into God.
This is achieved by seeing God in the objects as well as the actions of
the world, which is not the seeing of particulars, but of the Universal in
them.
- Tapas is
the process of stilling the senses and the mind and allowing the lustre of
the Atman to manifest itself spontaneously. The power of the sage is this
energy of the Atman revealed by the cessation of the externalising
activity of the senses and the mind.
- Brahmabhavana, the art of the affirmation of Brahman, is called Brahmabhyasa
in the words of the Yoga Vasishtha. It consists in constantly thinking of
Brahman, speaking about Brahman, discoursing to one another on Brahman and
depending on Brahman alone for everything that one values in life. This is
the final stage of meditation.
- It is of little consequence to one who
has awakened to normal consciousness whether he or she was a king or a
beggar in last night’s dream. Likewise, what one is in this world matters
little to one who has awakened to the Presence of God.
- When the senses stand together with the
mind and the intellect does not shake, the state of yoga supervenes. The
secret of meditation is this: The mind and the intellect should shine, but
not shine upon things other than the shining awareness. This is the
realisation of God within.
- Appearance is the objectified character of Reality;
and when this character is negatived in the immediacy of experience, it is
not appearance that becomes Reality, but it is Reality free from
objectification that knows itself as such.
- The depth and solidity of substance in
the world is similar to the distance and substantiality of things seen in
a mirror. This truth is not realised in life because the body of the
observer is itself involved in this reflected appearance called the world.
- The passing of the soul from plane to
plane is all a process of Consciousness within the Absolute. Just as our
movements in the dream-world are actual spatial allocations of personality
but are really within the circumference of mental activity - all dream
being only within the mind - so is the transmigration of souls real
empirically but are activities of Consciousness within its bosom.
- It is the opinion of Bhishma that it
would not take more than six months to attain Samadhi if the needed
precaution is taken to prevent the mind and the senses from hovering round
their objects. That this achievement has not been possible in most people
shows that it is easier to glorify God than to feel it in one’s heart, and
the effort at self-control is more difficult than it is announced from
pulpits.
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