The attainment of spiritual perfection is like a gradual ascent in the form of a pyramid.
It has a base and it slowly rises gradually, step by step, until the apex, or the top of
it, is reached.
This pyramidical structure of human life is constituted of four aspects of life, fourfold
requirements for the very existence of a person.
The material needs of the body are a very important concern, indeed.
Whatever be your spiritual aspiration, you cannot ignore that you have a body because
as long as you feel that you have a body and you cannot ignore its presence, you cannot
forget that it is there, then you cannot also forget the requirements of the physical body.
Everyone, even an advanced spiritual seeker, has certain needs concerning the physical
body, like protection against heat and cold, hunger and thirst, sun and rain, etc.
If you ignore these aspects, the body may perish, even though you may have a very
innocent spiritual aspiration.
This is called the total of material requirement, material need.
In Sanskrit language this is called artha, or the material associations of the physical
body. They cannot be ignored at all. They are always there.
Then there is another thing: the aesthetic longings of the human personality.
One cannot be happy merely by eating, drinking, putting on clothes, and having a
house to stay. Such a person is not a complete person.
There are other requirements which are of a vital nature, the desire-filled nature of
the individual.
A desire is not merely the desire for food and clothing, though it is primary in some way.
There are other, insistent desires, which we call kama, or a wish to be fulfilled, which
are other pressures exerted by the biological personality, which is something that cannot
be ignored.
Those who have lived a totally isolated life, unconnected with human society for a very,
very long period, will know the working of this kind of feeling in oneself.
A great disturbance of an unknown kind will take place inside the mind of the person.
It will cause agitation of heart. Due to that difficulty in controlling this
reason behind the agitation of such feelings which are of an emotional in
nature, a yoga student also may be subject to intense anger, continuous
irritation, intolerance of anything, and a bursting forth of one's own personality in
an anguished manner, and that person cannot tolerate anything.
That is the negative aspect of this unfulfilled emotional desires.
They cannot all be fulfilled, and they all also cannot be ignored totally.
The nature of this kind of urge, or impulse, is something cannot be imagined
by an ordinary mind.
Just as one cannot know oneself fully, one cannot also know all the desires of one's
own person. Here it is that you are in danger and you
require the guidance of a master or a superior person. Whenever you are agitated,
disturbed and cannot control yourself, almost feeling that you are going out of
your track in your mental operations, at that time you have to approach a master and
place before that master everything that you are passing through.
This is called kama vasana of a variegated nature. It can take several shapes.
So one is the physical needs of the body, another is the vital pressures of personality.
Then, together with that, there is the aspiration for moksha, attainment of God, which is a
fulfilment, finally, of the whole complex of desires, physical as well as vital.
That also is to be taken care of with great caution.
The method by which you can hook together these three types of impulse or aspiration
is a very harmonious manner, that procedure of the cementing of all these sides of human
nature is called dharma, or the law of harmonisation of the aspects of the human
personality with all its relations in human society.
Dharma is sometimes translated as a religion: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and
all that. It does not mean that. Dharma is not religion necessarily.
It is a law operating in the universe, by which everything is kept in a state of cohesion
so that there is no dismemberment of the life of a person. You will be thrown
into shreds of mental individuality, as if your mind has been broken and cast into
wind in different directions, feeling that you have lost yourself entirely, if this dharma
does not operate in you.
So forget the old definition of dharma as a religion.
It is not any kind of 'ism' but it is an ultimate law that keeps the universe in a balance,
keeps the body in balance, keeps the mind in balance, keeps society in balance, keeps
your reasoning in balance, and everything in a state of balance so that you feel that
you are existing as a total individual and do not feel that you are a mix-up of several
parts heaped together in a confused manner.
This definition of dharma is hard for an ordinary mind to comprehend because we are always,
right from the beginning, initiated into a wrong notion of dharma being going to a
temple, worshipping a god, following a faith.
"That is my dharma. I follow Christian dharma, Hindu dharma, Muslim dharma."
This is a poor definition of dharma.
It is something more than what you can think of.
It is the law prevailing eternally in the universe everywhere, in every aspect of
creation, in every degree of manifestation, including your own individual existence.
All these have to be brought together into a focus of attention at the same time.
These are the purusharthas, or aims of existence, final objectives of our life,
known popularly as dharma, artha, kama and moksha.
None of these aspects can be ignored in your life.
Mostly you will emphasise moksha and ignore all other things and fall sick, and become
mentally also little aberrant.
And in the same way, you can emphasise certain other things and forget the three
other aspects of nature, so you will become a shred rather than a total individual.
This is the foundation that you have to lay for your aspiration for spiritual perfection,
so that right from the beginning it is a rise from a wholeness of approach through
gradations of wholeness of perception, until you reach the ultimate wholeness,
which is the Infinite. One of the questions raised, perhaps, is the nature of the Infinite.
If Infinite is based on the Infinite only, where is the question of karma?
That was another question raised there.
Karma has no connection with the Infinite.
It has a connection with the finite only.
That which is located in one place only is called the finite.
That which is everywhere is called Infinite.
Inasmuch as the Infinite is everywhere, it cannot perform any kind of individualised
action. So karma cannot be attributed to the Infinite.
So karma is a result of the reaction produced by individualised action.
Infinite has no karma.
Therefore, as our aspiration for the Infinite...
purnamadah purnamidam, purnat purnamudachyate, purnasya purnamadaya,
purnameva vashishyate: There was a whole in the beginning.
From the whole, a whole universe manifested itself, and therefore this universe in which
we are living is not a conglomeration of little pieces of material objects or
individual existences.
Even now it is a whole. The world works in a systematised, completed manner.
So the whole which is the Infinite, the whole universe has come out in a whole manner, as
a child is born as a whole entity, from a source of it which is also a whole.
A little pinpointed drop, as it were, which is the origin of the child, is not one drop
among many other drops; it is a whole by itself, containing the wholeness of the child, as
the little seed contains the wholeness of a large tree.
So everything is whole.
You are whole, and you are living a whole life, and you detest any kind of partition
in your way of living.
You like everything in a completed form.
That is the internal meaning of this great Upanishadic mantra.
Purnamadah purnamidam: That is full, and this universe also is full.
Purnat purnamudachyate: From the whole, the whole comes out.
How can it be possible?
There cannot be two wholes, or two hundred-percents.
There can be only one hundred-percent, not two.
So, how a hundred-percent origin produces another hundred-percent of this universe?
This is a mystery, which should suggest to you that any activity has not taken place
in the process of creation.
It is not that one day the Infinite thought, "Let me become something else," though such
is the story we read in scriptural narrations.
It is something like the whole mind of yours becoming manifest as a whole dream.
The dream is a whole thing.
Your whole being is transformed into a world of dream experience, and this whole experience
of the dream world has emanated from the whole which was your waking mind.
Does it mean then that the whole waking mind has transformed itself into a whole
that is dream experience? If a transformation has taken place, the origin
has ceased to be in the process of transformation, just as when the whole
milk becomes whole curd, the whole milk ceases to exist anymore.
If such a thing has taken place in the process of creation, the whole Infinite Absolute has
become the whole universe, like the modification taking place in a milk when it
becomes yoghurt or curd, then inasmuch as the milk has ceased to be, God also
would have ceased to be. There would be no Infinite for you to attain afterwards.
There will be only this curd of the universe.
But that is not true.
You have not really become the world of dream because if you have really transformed yourself
to the world of dream, you would not wake up into the original consciousness of the
total waking mind.
So this whole coming from the whole is a kind of appearance, like the whole face getting
reflected in a mirror as a whole reflection.
You are a whole person, and you can see yourself in a mirror as a whole person.
And there are two whole persons: one that is there seeing the reflection in the mirror;
another is the whole person who is reflected in the mirror.
Are they, then, two whole persons?
Can you say one whole person has become another whole person?
For all perceptional practical purposes, the whole has become another whole through the
mirror of reflection. But really, the only the one existed.
The purna only is there when it has become another purna.
Nothing has happened, in the same way as when you are reflected as a whole person
in a mirror, nothing has happened to you.
You are the same person.
Purnasya purnamadaya, purnameva vashishyate: So, having taken the whole
from the whole, the whole only remains, and nothing has taken place, which will
mean that there is no such thing as creation as described in a mythological
fashion, in a dramatic way, as is presented before us by stories of creation in the
scriptures. This is a mystical way of looking at things finally. Such being the
case, our life also should be moulded according to this vision of wholeness.
As wholeness has not ceased to be, we have never become individual beings at any time.
We never got distracted into personalities that we are appearing to be here.
We are the same wholes, and therefore all fulfilment is here at the same time.
It is not connected with a past or a present or a future.
This is the vision that you have to develop before yourself, so that even when you take
the first step in spiritual practice, you feel that you are a totally contented person,
having achieved everything, right from the beginning itself, because a series of wholes
or perfections rise from the lower to the higher degrees.
In sadhana, the rise from the lower to the higher level is not a fraction developing
itself into a whole.
A fraction can never become a whole.
The part always remains a part, and the whole always remains separate from the part.
But here, a mini-whole manifests itself into a larger whole.
So your ascent in spiritual sadhana is your whole personality rising into gradual expanded
forms of wholeness of your own personality, so that when you reach the ultimate pinnacle
of this wholeness, you realise yourself as a world figure, like the Viratsvarupa itself.
What is Virat? It is you, yourself, expanded to the ultimate pinnacle of expansion.
This is how you have to bring into a state of harmony all your requirements through the
otherwise dissected forms of dharma, artha, kama, and the conceived moksha as if it is
above. We generally think moksha comes afterwards, dharma and artha and kama
are before that. That is to say, today is dharma, artha, kama; tomorrow is moksha.
Moksha is not a tomorrow; it is just here, present immanently in dharma,
artha and kama also.
It is like the gradual regaining of health by degrees through the very same
consciousness that is immanently present in your body.
It is not that a part of your body is regaining health and a part slowly
assumes a larger dimension.
A wholeness of health which was in a miniature form rises into a larger wholeness which is
perfect health, perfect satisfaction.
This is how you have to consider the ways of bringing together the aspirations which
are dharma, artha, kama and moksha in your practical life.
Spiritual life is a wonderful, most satisfying, magnificent thing even to think of, so that
wherever you are, in whatever condition, whatever you may be doing in your life, you
feel you are fearless, fulfilled always, and everything that you need is at your hand.
Thus, these four aspects of your life should come together.
In a way this is, to put it differently, the bringing together of the aspirations of a
brahmacharin, grihastha, vanaprastha and sannyasin into a single fold.
You will be wondering how can all the four be together.
Because these four stages of life are four kinds of preparation for a single attainment
of totality of person.
The sannyasin is not isolated from the brahmacharin, grihastha or a vanaprastha.
The brahmacharin is the seed which develops into the practical experience of the grihastha
in life, which again matures into the detached existence of a vanaprastha, which again
matures into the total comprehension of the spirit in the sannyasa life.
So dharma, artha, kama, moksha have some connection with brahmacharya,
grihastha, vanaprastha and sannyasa.
Just as dharma, artha, kama and moksha are not like four legs of a cow, unconnected, but
they are one leg, like the four quarters of a coin, which cannot be separated because
the coin contains all the quarters inside it, not like the four legs of a cow.
In a similar manner, all these four -- dharma, artha, kama, moksha -- are inside imperceptibly
in the coin of your whole life.
That also is the meaning of the apparently differentiated brahmacharya ashrama,
grihastha ashrama, vanaprastha ashrama and sannyasa;
here also four aspects of one coin of total development.
So always you live a total life, whether you are living one stage of life or the other
stage of life.
I have to repeat a few guidelines that I placed before you yesterday, which are of practical
utility to you.
You have to always keep a good company.
Even if you are a householder looking like a bound person, you can be a good person,
an ideal individual, by living in the midst of good community in a village or even a little
township of friends and cooperative individuals.
Keep good company, as far as it is possible.
If you can choose your company, it is wonderful for you to choose your company and be in the
midst of those people only. But under circumstances which
are beyond your control, you are compelled to live in the
midst of people who are not compatible with your personal aspirations, you have to do
one of two things. Exert your power over the atmosphere of dissident
individuals and bring a kind of transformation among themselves also,
and turn them round into a good way of living.
If that is not possible, ignore their existence as if they don't exist at all, and you are
concerned with them only as a practical means of doing day-to-day work in an office, etc.
These are some of the ways of adjustment that you have to practise, either this way or that
way -- good company.
And how you spend your whole day is also something very important.
This is the very meaning of spiritual diary inaugurated by Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj.
What do you do actually, right from the morning til you go to bed in the evening?
Make a detailed, analytical study of everything that you do on a particular
working day, not a holiday.
If you are working hard for some reason or other, you find out for how many hours of
the day are you working hard.
Deduct those number of hours from the total of the number of hours of the day.
How much time you need for sleep and rest?
How much time for bathing and recreation, and your breakfast and lunch and dinner?
How much for any other necessities?
Balance is the hour that is available to you to live even in the midst of your activities
a total life.
You may say there is no balance left, whole thing is distraction.
It cannot be like that because nobody works all the twenty-four hours, and nobody sleeps
like that also indefinitely.
Carefully if you analyse your life, you will find some little balance is left, even if
it be only one hour.
That one hour is yours.
Consider all the other hours are not yours; they belong to somebody else.
This one hour is sufficient for you.
Your longing for spiritual attainment is what is going to lead to success, and not necessarily
the number of hours, though the number of hours also count when your concentration
of mind is not sufficiently strong.
If It is very burning aspiration, tivra-samvega, with ardour in the heart, then God knows your
heart much better than anybody else.
All your sufferings, all your difficulties, all your problems are known to the Mighty
Being, and trust in Him.
"Trust in God and do the right."
This is the old dictum before you all.
Thus, lead your life.
Gradually bear in mind that your householder life is a preparation for a retirement from
the occupations of a householder.
It is not a retirement from work, necessarily.
The occupation is inclusive of certain mental entanglements.
A householder, actually, is not a person doing many things, but thinking in many ways.
The entanglement is not necessarily personal or physical, but psychological.
The psychological detachment should take place gradually in a family.
You do your duty to take care of your family, but don't be attached to the family.
You will be wondering how is it possible to take care of my family with a detachment.
This is the difference between duty and work with desire.
A duty is a necessity, an obligation that arises from your very being in the
circumstance of your life.
It has to be done for the welfare of the whole circumstance of your life,
including the society outside.
Your obligation is not to be associated with a desireful action.
Here it is that the Bhagavad Gita comes before you as a guideline. The gradual
detachment, even in a householder, is a maturity of its thought arising after
the experience of the whole of life as an entangled individual in society.
In the beginning it is all entanglement.
Then, later on, it is only an apparent entanglement through social relations,
mentally not so connected. You slowly begin to feel that your mind is
a little different from the body and social relations.
Then afterwards you will find that you can live a life in the mind only,
let the social relations be anywhere.
You are a mind, rather than a social unit.
You are a mind thinking, rather than a physical individual associated with the mind.
Thought is the human being, so let this thought be your final concern, and live in your ideas.
Ideas rule the whole world.
Every action is preceded by a thought.
The world is not governed by the actions of people, but by the thoughts of people, by
the ideas of the leaders of mankind.
The ideas manifest themselves as activities or performances.
The idea is the ultimate reality; thought is the final principle in the cosmos.
Thus, you live in your mind, in your idea of total comprehension and satisfaction.
Then, gradually, you will find that you are capable of living independently,
without bodily associations.
Such a life is called a vanaprastha, which does not mean running away from the family.
It is a kind of family life only, without the agonies and the emotional pressures
caused by relations with people.
Mostly, what people do is they go away to some holy places for some time, though they
have not left the family.
For three months in a year, the family man goes out on a pilgrimage, lives in a holy
place, and entrusts the enterprise of taking care of the family to his grown-up children.
Whether you are a businessman, or whatever you are, this is the first step that you have
to take to detach yourself.
Three months you are not in the house.
After that, you come back to the house and stay in the house for nine months, so that
you may feel no uneasiness that you are totally without any contact with your family members.
Gradually, if this process continues for some years, you will find that you are in a position
to live unconnected with the family life because the members of the family are
well taken care of by the children.
They are well placed.
Then you may increase your detached life into six months, nine months, and occasional visits
to the family, only.
Somewhere in a sacred place you live such a life, and then your life and your idea that
you have chosen takes possession of you completely.
You become an ideal being, not a physical individual.
Your meditation is thought thinking itself, as they say, idea operating on idea, the Cosmic
Mind dancing in the centre of your own idea, whereby your idea becomes a focusing point
of the Cosmic Mind, and you are a sannyasin at that time.
A sannyasin is not necessarily one who has put on any particular cloth.
That cloth is just an indication that he has achieved that state.
It is a social insignia to distinguish that person from other people,
but it is not an essential.
The essential thing is what you think in your mind.
So live in your mind only, afterwards.
Your ideas are the seeds of the universal idea of God.
A person who lives such a kind of life in his idea only is the sannyasin.
He has renounced.
What has he renounced?
He has renounced the feeling that the world is anything but an idea finally, a mental
operation, a cosmic dance of the Universal Spirit, and in which condition the question
of attachment to anything does not arise at all.
Hence, the question of the so-called renunciation also does not arise.
Automatically you are a healthy spiritual person, just as when you have become healthy,
you have not renounced illness.
Illness has not been thrown away.
In a similar manner, you have not thrown away anything in your renunciation of sannyasa.
You have become a healthy total, into a developed maturity
of spiritual comprehension.
That kind of living of an ideal existence, totally free in every sense of the term, happy
always, happy with anything and everything, such a person is a sannyasin.
So these are some of the traditional features of a spiritual life I mention before you,
the methods of the harmonising of the principles of dharma, artha, kama, moksha
connected with the principles involved in the stages of brahmacharya, grihastha,
vanaprastha and sannyasa, all which commingle in a sea of comprehension
which is a total maintenance of God- consciousness. Such a person only can be
called a sannyasin. You may call him a Guru, and nobody else can be a Guru.
These are, practically, all things that you need for understanding the nature of spiritual life.
Right from the beginning till now, whatever you have heard in these sessions is a book
of life for you.
It is a gospel, a treasure house for you which you can keep with you as a vade mecum, as
a godsend, which will save you in every way for ever and ever.
Hari Om Tat Sat.