THE PATH BEYOND SORROW

 

By

 

SRI SWAMI CHIDANANDA

 

 

A DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY PUBLICATION

 

Third Edition: 1991
(5,000 copies)
World Wide Web (WWW) Edition : 1999

WWW site: http://www.dlshq.org/

 

This WWW reprint is for free distribution

 

© The Divine Life Trust Society

 

ISBN 81-7052-078-9

 

Published By
THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY
P.O. Shivanandanagar—249 192
Distt. Tehri-Garhwal, Uttar Pradesh,
Himalayas, India.

CONTENTS

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

We have great pleasure in releasing this beautiful volume of sixteen lectures by Sri Swami Chidanandaji Maharaj, our revered President, on the eve of his 75th Birthday, which fails on the 24th September, 1991.

In a way, these lectures are the outcome of the holy Satsankalpa of His Holiness Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj, who deputed his foremost disciple Swami Chidananda to the West, to convey personally his message of Divine Life to aspiring seekers.

Thirty years have passed since these talks were delivered; but their meaning and relevance are as valid today as they were at the time they were delivered. Also, the teachings and guidance contained in these lectures are universal in scope and intensely practical in their approach. It is our earnest hope that this small volume will help in its own way to further the right understanding of the timeless message of spiritual life.

—THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Beloved Immortal Self! Rays of the Eternal Light Divine! It gives me great happiness to write this little preface to the series of lectures included in this volume. All these lectures, with the exception of the talk “Worship of God as Mother Divine”, were delivered by me in the year 1960 in Canada where I went as a personal representative of my holy Master Sri Swami Sivananda to carry India’s message of Yoga and Vedanta to the West.

Gurudev Swami Sivananda was revered all over India as one of its foremost spiritual leaders and was known in most of the world as a spiritual awakener par excellence and a friend of all mankind who tirelessly broadcast for more than thirty years the universal truth of ethical and spiritual idealism.

In the West, there are many misconceptions about Yoga. They know not what is real Yoga. Most of them think that assuming certain physical postures is Yoga. Though there are many books on Yoga, yet there is a great urge in the West to know more about the inner aspect of Yoga. In these talks, I have made an attempt to put before the spiritual seekers (especially those in the West) the truth about Yoga as understood by me in the light of my holy Master’s teachings and in the light of my own experience. I do hope that this small attempt on my part will help to dispel many popular misconceptions about Yoga and put the whole subject in the proper perspective.

Yoga is an exact science. If you define Yoga in the simplest term, it is the steady movement of the individual soul towards the Supreme Soul. Yoga is a steady ascent to the Divine. Yoga transforms one’s lower nature into the Divine Nature. The practice of Yoga confers upon one radiant health, happiness, peace and tranquillity of mind.

Humanity is one great family. The different races and nations have all made valid contributions to the progress of humanity. Success achieved in different countries in various fields ultimately serve the progress of all mankind.

The glory of India is its Yoga and Vedanta. India’s contribution to the world is its spiritual idealism. Yoga and Vedanta are universal in their scope. They are the property of all mankind. All humanity, now and in the years to come, may usefully draw inspiration from the wisdom of the ancient seers.

It is by bringing about a greater exchange of ideas between nations that we shall be able to reach a deeper understanding of the overall problem of human suffering and misery. Under harmonious conditions, the state of man will be characterised by peace and brotherhood rather than by hatred and bloodshed. Unity of God-head in all creation is the fact of life. It is my earnest hope that this book entitled The Path Beyond Sorrow will show the seekers the spiritual path and take them beyond sorrow and bestow upon them true peace and happiness in life.

In closing, I wish to record my deep appreciation and thanks for the loving services rendered by my good friends, Bill Eilers, Carol Sheldan, Rosalind Dibblee and many others who organised my lectures at the beautiful Coronation Hall at the Y.M.C.A., Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

The talk on “Worship of God as Mother Divine” was delivered by me at the special request of many friends in Durban who were deeply horrified at the prevalent custom of animal sacrifices in their community.

The Vancouver talks were tape-recorded by Carol Sheldan who also transcribed them. My thanks to her for this labour of love. Also, my grateful thanks to Swami Vimalananda and Sri N. Ananthanarayanan who gave their invaluable time to go through the entire manuscript and bring it to this final shape.

May the blessings of Satgurudev Swami Sivananda be on each and every one of those who contributed in one way or the other to the publication of this volume.

—Swami Chidananda

Sivananda Ashram
September 24th, 1975

1. Bliss Is Within

Beloved Immortal Atman! I deem it a great pleasure and blessedness that God has given me this unique opportunity of being of some service to you, seeking and aspiring souls upon this earth-plane, and for this privilege I thank Him who is the Indweller of you all, the Source of our very existence, the all-pervading Presence enveloping this very universe, who is amongst us invisibly even at this moment and who blesses us.

The Path Beyond Sorrow is the title that suggested itself to me by chance, when I saw a little booklet of quotations from various sources—little sayings from different scriptures about the problem of the human being. Actually, it could very well have been worded The Path to God, for it does not require to be told that the ultimate cause of all sorrow is that we have forgotten our eternal link with the perennial source of infinite joy, of never-ending happiness. Cutting ourselves from one who is the granter of supreme bliss, who is more than all the happiness of the entire universe, we naturally feel that separation. We feel deprived of that experience which He is. Bliss is in the Eternal Reality, that great Truth which alone is changeless, timeless, is for ever and real. Deprived of our living contact with that Bliss, separation is experienced as sorrow. That only source of true happiness being cut out of our life in a living way, we quest after happiness.

It is a paradoxical situation—happiness being sought in all directions except in that one where it is to be found definitely and unfailingly.

Pleasure Is Not Happiness

When we observe life on the human plane, what do we see? Everyone is in constant quest of true happiness. Happiness is the quest of smiles; we have concealed sighs and sorrows, much grief and disappointment. Why? Why is this phenomenon observed everywhere in the world? This question has been pondered over, has been investigated. And we have been answered. With the dawn of discrimination, we come to realise that we have done something very foolish, because we have missed the path which leads to happiness and strayed off into the by-paths of pleasures. Happiness is one thing; mere pleasure is another. Missing the path to happiness and wandering off into the by-paths of pleasures, we are, as it were, lost beings wandering in a jungle where we do not know the correct direction to take, the correct path to pursue, to reach the destination.

Why did we miss our way? Why this wandering in search of true happiness on the part of all people and their seeming inability to find that after which they quest? It is because the great majority of them never make the right start. Before starting on the search for happiness, one never gets clear as to what is the nature of this happiness one is after and wherein does it lie. Without knowing the destination, without knowing exactly what we wish to obtain, we have started this seeking just because that has been the pattern into which we are born. We are born into a world where all beings everywhere around us are going after something, behaving in a certain way, and we think, “I am born among people living like this and I also have to live like this”; and so that pattern has become an automatic pattern with everyone. We are born into a way of life. We have entered into a current which leads us just where it has been leading the people here from time immemorial—into a whirlpool of disappointments, tears, disillusionments, pains and sufferings which are inevitable in this embodied state upon this earth-plane. Pleasures can never bring true happiness, because the very nature of pleasure is that it is an experience derived from contacts with sense-objects; and quite naturally, it partakes of the imperfections that are inherent in the sense-objects.

All Objects are conditioned in space and time. They are neither permanent nor perfect. They are full of defects, they change, they pass away, and they give experiences which are mixed, which are not unalloyed. All pleasures are imperfect, because they spring out of objects which are themselves imperfect. These sense experiences are of very doubtful value and they are mixed with various side-effects. Every contact-born sense experience inevitably has bound up with it a reaction. If you are eating something very tasty beyond your limits, even as you are tasting it, there is a fear that perhaps tomorrow you will have to take a pill or a dose. Every sense experience has a reaction which brings in anxiety and lack of peace of mind. In the ultimate analysis, these sense experiences turn out to be purely negative experiences; they do not deserve the name of pleasure or happiness at all. They are not positive experiences at all.

Man’s Triune Nature

Man is a being partaking of a triune nature. As an intelligent human being you have, at the same time, a part which is very base in its expression and full of gross propensities—desire, passion, sensuality, greed, anger, blindness. This is more or less on the level of the brute existence, though it is an inevitable part of the human being—a gross, sensual, animalistic nature. Man is a thinking animal, and it is said that he is essentially an animal having the same urges, the same sensual drives as the sub-human species, but endowed with the superior faculty of rationality—thought—intelligent thought, selective and discriminative thought. That is what makes you a human being, but the physical part of you is animal. Then you have within yourself your true, essential being which is totally forgotten, totally neglected, never heeded, crowded into a corner and entirely overcome by the rational human aspects and the base, gross, animalistic aspects of your being. This three-fold nature goes to make up what you yourself know as “I”.

The Mental Ferment

That particular element in you which makes you human is the mind. It is a doubtful bestowal by God upon individual soul. It is not a too happy thing to have, for, rationality and intelligence, though no doubt good, are for the most part never utilized, never properly exercised as they ought to be. In most people, intelligence is not exercised at all. And in those people who do exercise it, it is usually the co-operative partner to sensual man for devising ways and means of satisfying the senses, of feeding all the cravings of the senses. The human mind, the intellectual operation of which is a part of its function, is characterized by never-ending desires. The mind is never still, even for a single moment, except for the short time when you sink into the deep-sleep state. Except for this period, the mind is constantly active and in a state of ferment. You are not aware of this ferment, because you are constantly kept active through it. Most of it is concerned with the immediate fulfilment of desires and, therefore, you are not aware of it. If you try to check the outgoing activities of your mind for a time and try to watch your mind, then the terrible nature of its constant activity—constant irritation and restlessness due to desire—becomes apparent and you know what a thing you have in the mind. This desire-filled and ever fluctuating mind is the root cause for going outward in search of impermanent sense pleasures.

The Mechanics of Sense Satisfaction

What happens is this. There arises a desire, a craving is created, and then you are urged to go after some sense-object in order to satisfy the craving and you feel that it has been enjoyable. You tell yourself: “I have felt pleasure. I have enjoyed the sense-object”. Actually, this so-called experience which you have undergone is not a positive experience of enjoyment at all. It is just an illusion. The actual experience, in fact, if you examine it, is this—the experience you get at the end of an activity to obtain a sense-object is but the momentary quiescence that ensues in the mind as a result of the corresponding desire-urge having subsided for the time being. When desire arose and craving filled the mind, the mind was thrown into a violent state of restlessness; it lost its peace, its serenity and calmness. As long as the craving was there, the mind was restless, was agitated, and when that object was obtained, the sense took it in. It may have been the sense of taste or the sense of sight or hearing or touch or smell—the sense took it in. And the craving having been satisfied, the agitation or restlessness in the mind, which this craving originally caused, subsided for the time being. And you think, when you vicariously superimpose this fine feeling (this momentary restfulness due to the subsiding of the sense-craving) upon your sense-contact with the object, that you have derived this fine feeling from the object. The fact is that this experience of sense-satisfaction has not been derived from the object. The experience you have derived is the negative phenomenon of having got rid of an agitation in the mind. So, when you get rid of an agitation in the mind, you think you have enjoyed a positive experience, but it is just the negative experience of getting rid of a certain fire within, namely, the agitation of a craving.

Actually, it is a peaceful mind, an unagitated mind, that is the condition of true happiness. And an unagitated mind is never in one’s possession, unless one realizes that all experiences born out of the contact of objects outside of ourselves are negative, having no positive value. The reflected experience they give to the mind is only a cessation of the mental craving and agitation for the time being; and because there is a close tie-in, a coincidence, between the sense contacting the sense-object and the immediate sense of satisfaction, we think that these two have a connection. Actually, it is because the mind has now once again obtained its calmness that you are immediately put into a state of satisfaction.

Supposing you have been exposed on an ice-cold winter’s day, immediately, you come into a room and warm yourself before a fire, take a warm drink, cover yourself with a hot blanket, and say, “Oh, such wonderful pleasure now!” Actually, what has happened is that the discomfort, the painful experience of cold, has been removed by these three things—warming yourself, covering yourself, and taking a cup of something hot—and you think this is a pleasure. But for someone who is already in the room and has not had the negative experience of the cold, these things would not hold the special value which they held for you, because in your case the cessation of pain was taken to be pleasure. If you use your intellect and analyse all the contact-born experiences a human being goes through, you will find that they are all just the removal of some painful experience or other, though man deludes himself into thinking that they are of a positive nature. When you feel very hot, to take a plunge seems a refreshing experience; or to go to a soda fountain and take a cold milk-shake or Coca Cola seems wonderful. It is because you have come out of a very hot place where you have been uncomfortable and perhaps perspiring. When you take the cold drink, it seems wonderful; but what has actually happened is that for the time being you have removed the painful experience of heat and perspiration. Every experience obtained from contact with objects outside of ourselves partakes of this nature and, together with the momentary removal of the painful experience immediately preceding it, it also contains within itself the power to give you certain positive reactions. You may sit down to a fine dinner and enjoy it. What has actually happened is: it was preceded by the painful experience of hunger, and by eating the dinner, you have satisfied your hunger and you think that your sense of fulfilment has actually come from the food which you have eaten at the table. While the dinner appealed to you because you were hungry, to another person who was not hungry and felt no desire for food, it would not have given pleasure. He would have turned away from it saying, “No, thank you. I don’t want anything”. For him there is no pleasure, as he has not come with that painful experience called ‘hunger’ with which you drew near to the table. If that painful experience had been in him also, he would have enjoyed the dinner equally. So, the so-called pleasurable experiences of this world are nothing but the removal of painful experiences immediately preceding them.

This is the very nature of contact-born pleasure. Lord Krishna, who is one of the Great Messengers and who graced this earth, says in His universal gospel, the Gita, “All pleasures, O man, contact-born, are the source of pain”. And, what are our pleasures if not contact-born? Contact of the tongue with a tasty dish, contact of the hand with some object pleasant to touch, contact of our eyes with something beautiful to look at, contact of our ears with sweet, melodious and endearing things to hear, contact of our nose with nice and fragrant things—these are our pleasurable experiences. If unpleasant things are given to us, we are immediately thrown into a state of sorrow. With pleasant objects contacted by the senses, once we become attached to them, the removal or separation of those objects (which have become dear to us due to our becoming attached to them) brings misery, pain. Also, sometimes, the very object which attracted us in one state, when it changes its condition, becomes an object of pain. Thus, to be brought into contact with things which are not pleasing—that is sorrow; to be separated from things which are pleasant and pleasing—that is sorrow. And, if a thing which was pleasant changes its nature, that also becomes sorrow. So, all contacts with outside objects have within themselves the seeds of sorrow. They are the potent source of latent sorrow, and also, they have a beginning and an end. Therefore, the man of wisdom is never happy with them. He does not take pleasure in these outside things, because he has analysed and known the nature of these things; and he says, “No, all contact-born experiences are negative. They are not positive experiences at all. Also, they are accompanied by reaction. They have a beginning and an end”. Objects themselves are imperfect; therefore, the experience gained from these objects is also imperfect, because you cannot have a perfect experience from a thing which is not perfect. Therefore, a wise one does not take delight in these things.

Instances of Irrational Rationality

How many are wise? How many use the intellect rationally? We have to analyse the objects of this universe. We have to see them, not as they appear to be, but as they truly are and analyse the experiences from the objects as they really are and not as we perceive them in a state of non-discrimination. We have to enquire. This intelligence which God has given us we must use; and use rationally, not with bias.

If you use this intellect with bias, since it is already in league with the senses, is already a slave to the sensual urges, it will give you wrong conclusions only. It cannot give you the right conclusions. Your rationality may be real and correct, but at the same time, it can be a very ‘irrational rationality’—a sort of pseudo-rationality. It seems paradoxical, but there are very funny stories told in the ancient Indian Puranas to bring out how a person can use his intelligence, yet use it foolishly. They give the example of a very typical being—a young man—who had this type of intellect. He went to cut wood and climbed a tree and went out on a large branch and started cutting the branch. He observed it and said, “The branch is thickest where it is nearest to the main trunk of the tree; and it tapers off toward the end and that part is thinner than the part on which I am sitting. So, I shall get more wood if I cut it off nearest to the trunk of the tree”. He turned around to sit on the thinner portion in order to get more wood by cutting more closely to the trunk of the tree. Someone came by and called to the man, saying, “What are you doing? It is foolish the way you are cutting that branch”. But the man replied, “It is no business of yours. I know what I am doing. I have given it careful thought and calculation. I don’t want to be fooled by this tree. I want to take as much wood as possible”. So he hacked on and on until the branch came down and he with it. He was a person who did use his intelligence. He figured it out and he thought that he would get more wood this way and he was quite correct, but there seems to have been something that was not at all rational. This characterises a great many types of intelligence.

At another time, a man was asked to look after his very old and senile grandmother. India, like all tropics, is a land of mosquitoes and flies, and the man was diligently fanning his grandmother. But many flies persisted in sitting upon her, even though the man fanned vigorously. He finally said, “Look here, do not bother my grandmother,” and continued fanning her vigorously. Eventually he became extremely annoyed with the persistence of the flies and said, “Look here, if you are not going to obey me, I am going to teach you a lesson”; and after a few more moments of vigorous fanning and the equally vigorous persistence of the flies, he looked over and saw a wooden club and he picked up this club and said, “Do you flies think you are more intelligent than I?” So saying, and carefully aiming the club at one fly, he smacked the fly and brained his old grandmother in the process! Most of us are clever, very clever, but we start with fundamental errors. The man should have known whether the life of his grandmother was more important or the killing of the fly. But he did not, and we laugh at him. At the same time, we make the same error of judgement.

The Tumult of the Senses Vs. The Music Of the Soul

It is peace of mind which is the condition prerequisite for the experience of true happiness. Is that not more important than the removal of a little restlessness and craving, a little agitation caused by desire? Which is the more important? You may say: “If desires come, we have to satisfy them. That is the way to remove them and that is the way to get pleasures”. So saying, you remove the ‘fly’ of desire rather than protect the ‘grandmother’ of true peace of mind by which alone you can find happiness. Real happiness comes out of peace. When the mind is tranquil and serene, peace, bliss wells up from within you. You do not have to manufacture happiness, for it does not lie outside of you. Happiness is not in changeful, perishable objects which are merely material. True happiness is right here where you are sitting. You are yourself happiness. Happiness is your essential nature. That aspect of your being which completely transcends your sense nature and your mental desire-nature—that third aspect of your true being, your real nature, is, in one word, bliss—pure bliss. If you want me to define what you are, I say you are pure, unalloyed, absolute bliss. That is the stuff of the soul. The soul is bliss; it is ecstasy, peerless joy. Even as this table is made of wood, even as your very clothes are made of wool or cotton, even as the very stuff of candy is sugar—the very stuff and fabric of your true nature, the true “I” deep within you, in the very centre of your consciousness, that is bliss. You are your Self, the Atma. You are Spirit, a never-ending, perennial fountain of spontaneous, self-existent joy and happiness. You are not this body and mind and intellect.

The East views the individual being in a totally different light from the West. The West says, “Man is an animal endowed with a superior faculty called intelligence”. The East says, “Man is a glorious, ever-perfect spiritual entity, full of light, full of bliss, and possessing an inferior faculty called intelligence or mind which is his servant, which is his instrument”. Mind is but the medium that God has given you so that the joy, the beauty and perfection of your Self may be expressed, unfolded, made manifest upon this earth-plane, but you have made a travesty of your life. The normal human being lives a life of prostitution, by which I mean, he totally forgets and neglects his glorious spiritual nature and prostitutes all his energies in satisfying the animal within him. The pattern of his whole life is just a constant effort to satisfy the sensual urges of the animal within him. Nice things to collect, nice things to wear, nice things to see, nice things to enjoy—pleasure, pleasure, pleasure—and happiness is destroyed, as it were, in a constant round of pleasures. There is so much noise through the tumult of the senses that the music of the soul, though it is always there, just gets killed completely.

The great joy of my message to you is: nothing can destroy this happiness, because it is imperishable. In your true nature you are indestructible, you are imperishable. So, the joy that you are is also imperishable, indestructible; nothing can touch it. No sorrow can penetrate that exalted realm where you dwell as pure bliss, right within the very centre of your being, the innermost core of your consciousness where dwells the true “I”.

Bliss Is Thy Nature: Bliss Is Thy Heritage

This name and form, this Mr. So-and-So, this Mrs. So-and-So, this is not the true ‘you’. It is just a personality superimposed upon your true being by your parents. They gave you a name. They called you ‘this’ and they called you ‘that’, but this name-form personality is not the true you. Changeless from childhood, into youth, into adulthood, into middle age, into old age is that “I” which is within you. It was within you when you were an infant; it was within you when you were a child running here and there; it was within you when you began to grow. It was within you when you were an adult and lost your peace of mind by going after pleasurable objects; it was within you when you became weighed down with the responsibility of a householder’s life; and it will be within you when you come to experience old age. This unchanging “I” within—try to find out what it is. Give yourself a chance of turning within, a chance of stilling the mind and not allowing it to go externally towards objects. And then look within and try to find in silence, in a little peace, the “I”, and you will find that the real “I” within is peace, bliss, all-light, all-fullness. There, there is no need, no want. You do not feel any lack of sufficiency there. It is all-full and no desire permeates that sacred realm, for it is an experience of all-fullness. Every one of you can possess this supreme experience of all-fullness, all-joy and peace right now, right here; it does not have to be manufactured. You do not have to go out of yourself somewhere in order to reach that blessed state. It is your birthright. It is your privilege and prerogative to claim. Stop being a slave to the senses and stop this ceaseless running outside towards petty and imperfect objects and be silent with your Self and know that you are bliss, know that you are fullness. Rise above desire and be aware of your true nature which is incomparable bliss, which is indescribable happiness.

This incomparable bliss is within the reach of every single human being, from the very fact of your being a human being. It is your claim. It is your heritage from your Divine origin. You are all from that perennial source of Infinite Bliss which people call “God”, which people call “The Supreme”, “The Reality”, “The Truth”, “The Spirit”. Call It what you may; approach It however you will; worship It in whatever way you want to—it does not matter. But, know that It is right here within you: that perennial and changeless source of ineffable and indescribable bliss and joy. It requires nothing to attain, only willingness on your part to give away that which is petty, that which is paltry, and to aspire for and seek that which is incomparable, which is peerless—the “I” within you which is your true essential nature.

The first condition is to make use of your intelligence and try not to be deluded by the attractive objects of the senses. They will lead you on a merry-go-round, a wild goose chase which never ends, for pleasures, you see, can never be subdued by satisfaction. The enjoyment of sense pleasures tends only to accentuate the desire for them. Enjoyment intensifies craving. You cannot put an end to desires that way. You can put an end to them only by awakening to a higher sense of discrimination and knowing the sense-objects for what they are worth, saying, “I, who have been made in the spiritual image of my Divine Parent, will disdain to go after these paltry things which are like bones thrown before a dog. I am the son of the Emperor of emperors and I shall claim my priceless heritage and not go after paltry things”. And, if you do that, if you discriminate and reject that which is paltry, you become heir to that which is of supreme splendour.

Inner renunciation implies discrimination between what is really happiness and what is merely an appearance, and rejection of that which is not of the essential nature of happiness and turning away from it mentally. Mental renunciation born of discrimination—that is the secret of this spiritual quest. That is the starting point of the path beyond sorrow. In one of the greatest Upanishads, the teaching comes to us: “O man, before each human being there always present themselves two paths—one which is merely attractive and seemingly pleasant and the other which leads towards the good, towards your true welfare”. The unthinking one easily succumbs to the route of that which is pleasant and seemingly attractive; and thus he misses his own welfare, his own good. Whereas, the one who is wise, with discrimination awakened within him, examines the two paths and finds out the true nature of the apparently attractive and pleasant and rejects it and always takes the other path which takes him towards the good and there he finds his welfare. There he finds true happiness. This choice of paths presents itself to everyone of you, every day, always, all through your life, from the very beginning. And upon you alone will depend what path you take—whether you are lured away by that which is pleasant and apparently attractive or whether you have within you the light of discrimination which irresistibly takes you towards that which is good, which leads towards your welfare.

Your Unhappiness Is Your Own Creation

This unhappiness is your own creation. It is self-created. It is due to non-discrimination and due to your having become the slave of your own senses. And therefore, what you have yourself caused, you have it within your own power to cast aside. So, even as your sorrow has been self-caused, your happiness too can be self obtained through your own efforts. It does not have to be self-created, because it is there already. It has only to be grasped and this is in your own hands. You are the one who has to move towards that which is awaiting you to experience it.

Develop Virtue: You Develop Happiness

How can you set about doing it? The basic thing is that happiness springs out of a life of virtue. That is what the great science of Yoga tells you. There cannot be happiness without virtue. Here I wish to make it quite plain that I am not sermonizing. Someone told me, “In the West, people do not like sermonizing. Don’t sermonize”. Well, I cannot completely fulfil that wish, for to some extent, this humble servant who stands before you and speaks to you at this moment does sermonize, but then, this sermonizing is of a different variety. He does not sermonize from a pedestal, but rather as someone humbler than yourself, but who has been given a message to convey and, as your servant, he presents it to you. Also, if I do sermonize, it is not that I say, “Oh, you are all sinners. You have all gone to a degenerate state”. Rather I say, “Look at the glory that is already in your possession. Why don’t you claim it?” I am telling you what a wonderful thing you are missing. Do not miss it! Now is the time! This unique opportunity of a human birth has been given to you to obtain something which is grand and which is glorious. Delay not! Why should you prolong your bondage because of desires? Why not assert your essential master-nature and claim that glory which is already there? This I would not call sermonizing. And when I say that virtue is the essential condition for obtaining this happiness, I just acquaint you with a great law. It is not merely a psychological law, but also a spiritual law, for virtue refines your nature. Your nature always manifests itself, expresses itself, upon a threefold plane—the plane of body, an interior plane about which you do not know (there is a plane of psychic energy within, which makes this body active, dynamic, and function), and the third plane of your mind where thoughts, ideas and desires constantly keep operating. And virtue is that factor, that force in your life, which refines your entire being on all the three planes. It refines the physical, it refines the psychic within, and it refines your mind; and it is only in a mind thus refined and made pure that steadiness, balance and absence of desire become possible.

You may try your hardest, but from a mind that is not pure, you cannot drive out desires, because mental impurity and desire are synonymous terms. Passion and impurity tend to put your entire being into a state of agitation on the three levels upon which I have commented. It is the nature of passion to agitate. Likewise, it is the very nature of purity to steady, to sustain, to strengthen and to make inward.

Therefore, it is a deep psycho-spiritual truth that the practice of virtues like purity, simplicity, truth, compassion, selflessness, humility, removal of greed, and removal of envy and jealousy and prejudice brings about a slow transformation in all your nature and makes it refined, subtle and pure; and with the advent of purity, the condition of the mind undergoes a change. That mind which was restlessly plunging outward towards objects of the senses, begins to go inward, begins to develop calmness. I do not want to use the term “introverted”; actually the mind becomes inward, it is no longer filled with the tendency to become externalized. With the mind thus collected within through purity, you slowly begin to have little glimpses of the true happiness that springs from your own inner Self.

These are old-fashioned recipes; but they are the only effective recipes. One cannot be impure and hope to have happiness. One cannot cling to objects in blind delusion and attachment and yet hope to have happiness. You cannot, out of your selfishness and hardness, cause pain and sorrow to others and at the same time hope to have happiness for yourself. The more you give happiness to others, the more you get happiness. This is the law. The refinement of one’s nature, the culture and purity of one’s whole personality—that is the indispensable prerequisite for the dawn of happiness in one’s life.

Thus happiness is the product of selflessness, the product of negating the constant pull of the senses, the product of virtue actively practised in your everyday life. This law has always been there and it will continue to operate in human nature as long as humanity exists, and this is the only effective recipe. If you are pure, all the unhappiness that comes out of the guilt of impure living is gone. If you are simple, all the complications and frustrations arising out of a desire-ridden personality are gone. A simple life immediately relieves you from the strain of constant desires. If you are truthful, you can yourself know that the whole world of constant fear and anxiety which follows untruth is immediately gone. One untruth, and to protect it you have to repeat a dozen untruths, and then your mind is in a constant state of fear and anxiety: “If found out, what will be the result?” By sticking to truth, you totally eliminate all the fear and anxiety and unhappiness which untruth or falsehood puts you into.

Then, contentment. When you are contented, you are the richest person in the whole world. You do not have any jealousy. When you are fully contented with what you have, you do not envy others who have more than what you have. Rather, you rejoice in the good fortune of others.

The Higher Happiness of Your True Being

Thus, developing virtues is the direct way to experience happiness on the lower psychological level. But on a higher level, this is not enough. You should not be satisfied with the happiness that you get on the mental level, though even that experience you will find most exhilarating. That itself is a great gain, but still greater is the happiness that you should aim at. That greater happiness is the happiness of your true being, of your real nature, of the Spirit within, and that comes by constantly being above body, above senses, above mind and intellect. Beyond all these is the eternal, changeless, silent Witness (Consciousness) of all the changeful modes of these lower aspects of your being.

You are not the mind; the mind is your instrument. You are not the body and the senses; the body and the senses are but your external apparel. They are just your covering, your material sheath. More glorious than all, supremely transcending all, You are there within as an untouched spiritual personality which is Divinity Itself. Infinite Bliss is Its very nature. No sorrow, no fear, no desire, can ever touch It. Therefore, try to go into a little calm, silent, inward meditation every day. Feel yourself as you really are. Once you get even a moment of that experience, once you get even a little glimpse of that experience, you will never give up meditation. You may give up your eating and drinking, but you will not lose this opportunity of being silent, going inward and knowing yourself as you really are.

Inward, within yourself, lies the Path Beyond Sorrow, the path to perennial joy, the path to the real happiness in the truest sense of the term. It is an unalloyed experience of joy totally devoid of any painful reaction, of any imperfection, of even the least vestige of any material earthly blemish. It is a perfect condition of joy, full of peace, full of ineffable light and satisfaction within. And it is within the power of every one of you to tread this Path Beyond Sorrow. It does not require special qualifications. You do not have to be an aristocrat. You do not have to be a man with a fat bank balance. You do not have to have an M.A. or a doctorate degree. God, as He has made you a human being, has given you all the faculties necessary for this inward practice, for this wonderful gain of true happiness. The only condition is that the paltry has to be rejected and the glorious has to be accepted as your ideal, as the object of your quest in life, as the central seeking. Make that your goal. Make the realization of the Truth within, the God within you, your True Nature, the central goal of your life. Let all other things be secondary to it; let this quest be the main thing. You will begin to experience it, begin to get a glimpse of that joy right from the first day you start this inward quest through discrimination, through inquiry into the real nature of things, through mental renunciation of that which is paltry, and through deep faith in yourself, in your own powers to ascend unto this experience, and deep devotion to this quest, to this ideal, and daily effort through calm contemplation and meditation. This is the supreme panacea. This is the destroyer of all sorrow, all pain. This will give you the great experience here and now, not in some other state after you have passed the barrier of death. This experience has to be right here and now, in this life, so that you go out of this life gloriously, triumphantly, as a Master, laughing with joy. That should be your destiny. That should be the great purpose of your life. No fear of death. No fear of anything at all, for you are deathless by your very nature.

We have to reject only those which destroy our happiness, and when we reject these little sense pleasures and objects, we are not rejecting anything at all. On the contrary, we are doing the wisest thing, for we know them to be those factors that rob us of our happiness and, therefore, we reject them. We do not reject things of worth, but we reject only those factors that are the real enemies of true happiness, factors that stand in the way of our getting the Supreme Experience, factors that destroy the real happiness by a spurious substitute in the nature of some sense experience which is not at all genuine and which is not a positive experience at all. Establish your life, therefore, upon intelligence, common sense, true discrimination. Use intelligence in a true and rational way and know that objects do not give the Supreme Experience. So, build your life upon discrimination, constantly inquiring into what is real, what is unreal, what is perishable, what is imperishable, what is paltry and changeful and evanescent and what is true, everlasting and changeless. Thus discriminating, always move towards that which is eternal, that which is perfect, that which is enduring and real, and reject all that is of a contrary nature. That is the heroic life.

God bless you. May the Eternal Indweller shower upon you His divine grace and may all the great saints and sages of East and West, bygone as well as present, shower their blessings upon you and give you inspiration, the strength to tread this path that leads to the Supreme Blessedness, Supreme Joy, and put you in possession of this great joy right here and now in this very life. That is the sincerest wish and heart’s prayer of this most humble servant of yours, a brother-seeker on the path that leads beyond sorrow to the supreme Atmic experience, to the Truth experience, to the realization of the Bliss within. May God bless you all.

2. Occult Phenomena—Their Place In Yoga

The term “Yoga”, unfortunately, has been connected with notions of strange and extraordinary experiences, mysterious occurrences and mystical powers. The term “Yogi” is popularly understood to mean not an adept in Yoga, but one capable of doing certain things which ordinary people are not able to do. In a way this is true, as a Yogi is capable of doing certain things which are not possible for many persons, but a Yogi should not be conceived of merely as one who is capable of flying through the air, going without food for months and being buried alive underground for several weeks, or of such other feats as are considered spectacular, extraordinary and unbelievable unless seen.

These notions have arisen more due to distance than anything else, for anything that is far away often seems mysterious. Also they are perhaps due to the ridiculous stories that have been spread about such feats.

The popular conception of a Yogi, though very wrong and very mistaken, is not totally without basis, but that basis has been exaggerated, exploited, magnified, taken out of its context, and given a twist which makes it appear completely different from what it is.

There is an element of phenomena in Yoga, and undeniably, there are elements of mystical experiences too; but these are not what they have been built up to be. What are the bases and what are the explanations of these phenomena? What is the attitude of Masters towards these phenomena? These are points which are not only interesting to consider; these are also important for you, since you are all seekers, and at least one aspect of it all is something very personal to you.

In the title of today’s lecture, the subject is not just “Occult Phenomena”, but “Occult Phenomena in Yoga”. An occult phenomenon, we are told, is anything that is hidden, not easy to observe, something secret or mystic. And today we are concerned with a reference to these phenomena as occurring in Yoga, to teachers and seekers on the path of Yoga, during the practice of Yoga. Therefore, we shall try to consider this subject of occult phenomena as related to the yogic way of life.

Yoga Is Conscious Hastening of the Process of Evolution

First of all, it is necessary for us to have a clear conception of what the Yogic way of life is. The destiny of the human being is evolution and we are all progressing towards ultimate perfection, since we are all meant to realize once again our innate divinity. However, the normal course of human evolution is very, very slow—perhaps spread over countless years and requiring many lives, taking only a few progressive steps in each life. In this process of taking a few forward steps in each body, one undergoes untold suffering, untold sorrow, so much of pain, so much of misery due to the bondage of the body and the interplay of currents of like and dislike, of attachment and repulsion; one undergoes all the different experiences which this physical frame has to go through—growth, change, decay and death. To be brought into contact with anything that is unpleasant is sorrow; to be removed from the contact of anything that is pleasant is sorrow; to be deprived of that which we want is sorrow; not to get what we desire is sorrow; and to get that which we do not desire is sorrow; and ultimately, to part from all, that is sorrow.

The great ones pondered over this life with its bondages and imperfections, its restlessness and peacelessness, its pain, suffering and sorrow. They ruminated over the various miseries characterising this earth-life and said, “No! We should not thus drag on through this earth-plane, life after life! There must be some method by which we can complete our great destined journey more quickly and find ourselves in that ultimate state of supreme blessedness and perfection”.

The technique evolved to rapidly go through this process of achieving fulfilment and perfection is named “Yoga”. The Yogic way of life is one that implies a great intensification of the process of evolution, since the Yogi does not want a slow, dragging process. In India, the achieving of “at-one-ment” with that wonderful Perfection (Divinity) is known as “Yoga”. This then implies that if you take to this life of Yoga, you are trying to do within the short span of a given incarnation, a given embodiment, what perhaps would have taken you a thousand years or two thousand years, spread over several successive incarnations, to achieve. Therefore, Yoga means an intensification of evolution within a single life-span, or perhaps even within just a few years of a single life-span. If you look at the Yogic way of life from this angle then you will begin to understand many things which may be puzzling to you.

If a Botanist were to evolve some method in his floral laboratory whereby he could sow a seed of some fruit, have the tree growing in three months and yielding fruit in six months, it would be considered that he had accomplished a miraculous and extraordinary thing. He would doubtless become a man of the day with the whole world agog at such an accomplishment, with publications full of articles on his research and pictures of the product, and the radio and the TV carrying the story of his miracle, of what formerly took a much longer time having been accomplished, through intensification, in a relatively short period.

Yoga is intensification. During this intensified effort to pack into a short span all the experiences that the evolving individual would otherwise have had to go through over a much longer period of time, very unusual appearances, unusual phenomena, are frequently brought about. To one who does not realize what is taking place within the consciousness of the concerned individual, these things appear as extraordinary, but one who understands knows exactly why they have come about.

It is not in the lives of all seekers or all practitioners of Yoga that one comes across these phenomena, but only in the lives of those who go all out for Yoga with every cell and nerve fibre, with all their heart, mind and might, with an all-soul dedication to the life of Yoga.

Changes Upon Five Levels of the Yogi’s Being

During the process of this evolution, this unfoldment, various transformations arise in the individual upon five different levels of his being. On the physical level, various changes and experiences are seen. Upon the psycho-mental level (the mind and the Prana), certain changes take place, certain abilities come in the natural course, and certain phenomena are witnessed, subjectively by some, and objectively by others. Thirdly, certain phenomena occur at the level of the astral plane which is even more interior than the psycho-mental level. Fourth, you have your spiritual level, and with spiritual unfoldment, you begin to experience many inner experiences. Here it is more subjective, and it is the seeker who is aware of what is going on, and not other people who are not able to know, for it is a still finer realm, still deeper, in the depths of his being. The fifth is the highest level of super-Consciousness. It is universal consciousness—God Consciousness—and upon this level, the phenomena that are witnessed are the true miracles as we know them. Christ operated upon this level and whatever was witnessed in His life was the manifestation of the glory and the power of this supreme level of cosmic consciousness, of Divine Consciousness. He performed the miracles not as an individual, but as a Divine Being.

So, upon all five levels of the Yogi’s being, occult phenomena are witnessed. When the practice of Yoga is started in earnest, even the physical processes like the Yogic postures and breathing exercises, or a little concentrated attention on the breath in Pranayama, may bring various mystical experiences.

If one honestly tries to practise the Yogasanas (Yogic postures) and keeps on with this practice until one acquires what is known as Asanajaya or “Victory over posture”, extraordinary sensations may be experienced from time to time. You may feel that you weigh a ton, that you are pressing into the earth and the earth itself is being depressed with your weight, that you are so heavy that nothing can move you from that place. At times you may feel the very opposite of this and feel feather-light (absolutely weightless) and you may not even be aware that you are sitting. Both of these experiences come when one attains Asanajaya, but they are subjective experiences. At other times, when sitting in one of the meditative poses, one may get ‘jerks’; and it is not uncommon, when one of these poses is held for quite some time, for the aspirant to find himself seated several feet away from where he was at first seated. This is not actual levitation, there is no injury to the aspirant, nor is the aspirant aware of the movement. This is something that anyone who has been doing Asanas for a long time may experience in the course of a year or two. This is why many Masters ask aspirants not to sit in any high place, on boulders, etc. Rather, the aspirants are asked to sit in a room with something covering the floor.

How does this come about? In Hatha Yoga, much insistence has been placed upon purification. Yoga means “the ascending into purity”. When this purification process is at work, there come about changes in the body cells, and also changes in the psychic energy through the various inner currents or channels (“Nadis” as they are called). When this happens, a new nerve current, which hitherto has been inactive, is set into motion by the prevalence of an excess of Sattva in the body, and the body reacts, and sometimes these ‘jerks’ are experienced.

Some Psychic Powers

On the psycho-mental level it is the very common experience of those who have done a little sincere seeking (whether they have known it by the name of “Yoga” or just been seeking and practising certain physical exercises) to find that they have developed certain abilities. The most common of these abilities or inner occult experiences is thought-reading. You may be talking to someone, and before the other person speaks, you know what that person will say. You may pick up a telephone and say something and it happens to be exactly what the person at the other end is thinking; and when talking, you anticipate the other person’s conversation. You may begin to repeat what is in that person’s mind. It is telepathy, but it is spontaneous rather than developed telepathy. Even when you are exercising it, you are not aware of so doing. This spontaneous telepathy just happens and it is the first and the most common of occult phenomena and is on the mental level.

The second is clairvoyance, which is also common. Many people are able to see things that are far away. In clairaudience, you may suddenly be put into a state where you are able to hear someone who is talking two hundred miles away.

The three occult phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance and clairaudience are all upon the lowest level. When one’s Prana becomes refined and one’s mind becomes purified, these phenomena come naturally and often one is not aware of them, and some, even though aware of them, do not know they are extraordinary and take these powers for granted. When a thing grows very slowly and gradually in a person, that person is not conscious that it is unusual and thus takes it for granted. These three powers are the primary powers in Yoga—the primary occult phenomena in the path of Yoga—and they come much more rapidly in Yoga than in other methods.

Personal magnetism comes when your evolution goes still further and when, from the psycho-mental level, a little unfoldment of the astral level also is started; and the development of other powers begins. One may lay hands upon someone who is ill and the person becomes well. One may enter a room wherein is a person in a terrible mood, and the person gets rid of that mood. The seeker may encounter someone who is violently angry with him, about to give him abuse, and upon nearing the seeker, that person is unable to say a word and just walks away. These things that begin to develop in one—the power of healing and the power of instantly subduing a person—are on the astral level. They are powers which are not exactly on the spiritual level and they begin to develop even when you are progressing very little.

Pure Occultism Which Is Not Yoga

Here I have to tell you a fact of which you had better take serious note. The first three powers upon the mental level, the psycho-mental level, and the astral level—all these powers one can have by sheer effort. If the necessary effort, with determination, is made, one can develop them. In Yoga they come through purification, and in the second case, which I have just mentioned, they come through will-power, practice and unceasing efforts. Telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc., are found to be actively present in certain hypnotists, practitioners of mesmerism, etc., and in some people whose lives are in no way ethical, who are not seekers and who are in no way the followers of the principles of Yoga, which principles are purity, self-control, devotion to God, faith, etc. Certain persons possessing powers such as hypnotism and mesmerism are plain and pure occultists who have made occultism their main vocation. The powers they have developed in this way do not indicate the evolution of their nature or any progress upon the spiritual line; for, if the powers are not acquired through an aspiration to realise the Truth based upon a deep and abiding faith in God as the only Reality, and as the goal and destination in life, then it is not Yoga.

Everyone of us has contact with the Cosmic Mind, for we all belong to the Cosmic Mind. Our consciousness is a part of the Cosmic Consciousness and our mind is a part of the Cosmic Mind, but the link is not there. It is broken. Why? Because we are bound up with our own ego-personality. But when we try to rise above it, the channel which connects us with the Cosmic Mind and which connects our consciousness with the Cosmic Consciousness becomes clearer and we are able to feel our oneness. When this happens, knowledge hidden from ordinary minds comes into our possession—knowledge of distant events and objects and, sometimes, even the knowledge of the future. This is due to expansion of consciousness when a certain level of development is reached and the spiritual being within is activated and the spiritual nature is awakened.

This whole projected universe has come out of the subtle elements which were the first evolutes from God. The subtle elements are Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Ether—Ether being the most subtle. These subtle elements should not be mistaken for the gross elements—fire, earth, air, water and ether as we know them—for they are the most subtle principles or the basic supra-physical primal stuff out of which the gross elements have evolved. It is not this earthly fire or earthly air or earthly water or earthly ether of which I speak, but the subtlest essence out of which these grosser manifestations have developed to make up the visible universe. The source of these gross and material elements is invisible, purely subtle, cosmic. During the course of the practice of Raja Yoga, when the Yogi reaches the stage where he is able to concentrate, meditate, and go into trance meditation all at once upon one or more of these subtle elements, then he gains mastery over these elements. He is able to travel in space at lightning speed. He is able to withstand fire or water, because he has complete mastery over these elements at their very source. This is the extraordinary phenomenon that explains the immutability of certain Yogis. Even when passing through fire and water, they seem to come through unscathed, and this is on account of the Samyama which they did upon these elements.

Playing With Kundalini Is Playing With Fire

When your spiritual practice takes the form of Kundalini Yoga and you begin the inner occult process of Hatha Yoga, then, with the rise of the power of the Kundalini from the lower mystical centres (Chakras) into the higher mystical centres, which are in the occult body of each being, there arise various extraordinary powers and experiences. Why? There are mystical spheres in the inner realm of the universe and each Chakra governs certain mystical spheres and all the phenomena of those spheres become the experience of the seeker when he ascends upon this path of Kundalini Yoga and operates upon that particular Chakra. Kundalini Yoga is something which I always condemn. In this Twentieth Century, to the vast majority of modern persons, Kundalini Yoga is unsuited. And unless one has the extraordinary good fortune of coming across a perfect Guru who has achieved his Illumination through Kundalini Yoga, I would not advise one to go near this science at all. When people question me about these inner centres, I invariably tell them, “It does not hurt you not to know”. Some knowledge is better left to itself and it is better not to know. Kundalini Yoga is a violent method, a forceful method, a method to try to force into awakening certain dormant powers. Yoga is a method of intensified evolution; and Kundalini Yoga is a still greater intensification of this method, and therefore, it is dangerous. It is playing with fire.

In all paths of Yoga—whether in the Yoga of pure love for God (through prayer, through faith, through worship, through the Divine Name, devotion and surrender) or in the Yoga of the intellect (the philosophical Yoga of rationality, of hearing and reflecting over the words of the Guru and deep meditation upon the great Truth) or in Raja Yoga (the Eight-fold Ascent of a virtuous life, daily religious observances, steadiness of pose, control of breath, withdrawal of mind, concentration, meditation and superconsciousness) or in the Yoga of cosmic service (serving all with absolute humility, egolessness and total self-surrender unto the Divine Power, considering yourself as an instrument of God; selflessly serving God in and through man in this universe and worshipfully dedicating all your service at the feet of God)—the awakening of Kundalini and its ascent from Chakra to Chakra takes place spontaneously, until Kundalini reaches the highest occult centre. In the Jnani, in the Raja Yogi, in the Bhakta and in the Karma Yogi, in all of them, this activation and awakening of the Kundalini power and its gradual ascent from the lowest centre to the highest centre takes place within the hidden occult personality of the seeker; so it is something which comes about as a matter of course. But, if you deliberately try to bring this about by specific forceful techniques, there is always—and I say always—the danger of arousing powers when your personality is not pure enough to assimilate and absorb them, is not ready to withstand them. Whereas in the other paths of Yoga, as you progress, you bring about a total change and perfection in all your personality, in this forceful Kundalini Yoga, what happens many times is one goes all out for the technique and neglects the prime preliminaries, neglects the essential preparations, and then, before the seeker is ready, these powers unfold. Kundalini Yoga is an exact science, and its techniques are unfailing if properly followed. Thus the seeker finds himself in a position with an excess of power and not able to manage it, not able even to bear it and then all Yogic life comes to an end for him.

It is in Kundalini Yoga that extraordinary powers, occult phenomena and all these occult experiences manifest most intensely, because it is the scientific technique of awakening the greatest power that is within you. In the other paths, through purity, the dormant powers in the various spiritual centres of your being manifest...right up to the end when through Cosmic Consciousness, you are endowed with all the divine powers, and then there is nothing which you cannot do! Through perfection, when you get to the end of Yoga, you are endowed with the eight major Siddhis such as “Anima” (i.e., the ability to reduce yourself to microscopic proportions), “Mahima” (the ability to expand to gigantic proportions), “Laghima” (i.e., weightlessness), “Garima” (i.e., extraordinary increase in weight), etc. For instance, Laghima. If one who has gained this Siddhi is taken to the top of the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building and dropped, he would not fall, but would just float to the ground like a wisp of feather-down. These powers have been demonstrated by Yogis under observation. I have heard that excessive heaviness was demonstrated by a Yogic Master in the West during the early years of his stay in the United States in order to make the people understand that he was not just ‘talking through his hat’, and that the subject of his talk was something which was based upon experience and upon fact. In public lectures, he sometimes used to demonstrate (as a token) the truth about Yogic power. He would, for instance, sit there and call upon anyone from the audience to try to lift him and there were instances when not one, but several together, tried unsuccessfully to lift him. Once a police constable, a very big and powerful man, tried to shake this young Yogi, who was not very big at that time, and the constable could not even budge him, not even by a hair’s breadth, and this was demonstrated before an audience of five to six hundred people in the city of New York. These phenomena are all a part of the Yogic ascent.

Persons Blessed with Mystic Powers

There is a totally different type of mystic phenomena and powers that come through the Grace of God and a person who has not practised any of the Yogic techniques may just obtain all of these powers spontaneously. This happens only when God wants to make use of a person for some Divine purpose and He has found a person who, through absolute life-long moral perfection, is found fit as a perfect channel, as an instrument which is fit and worthy. In such cases, the person is always characterized by an extraordinary humility and self-effacement and he never makes use of these powers of his own volition. The “I” (ego) always stands aside and this person is just used as a willing and egoless instrument. Such an individual is always absolutely desireless and does not go after anything which this world has to offer, but lives a life of the utmost simplicity, almost of poverty. Utmost humility and desirelessness become the chief characteristics of such a person. Such individuals are very rare, but I mention it just to let you know that such cases are not impossible. Such cases have been witnessed in India as well as outside of India, the powers coming spontaneously and being due to the fitness of the person and through Divine Grace.

Occult Powers and the Spiritual Seeker

What is the place of these various inner powers in Yoga? What are their uses and abuses? What is the attitude of the true seeker to these powers? What are the attitudes of Masters towards these powers? What is the place of these powers and the various experiences in the life of the Yogi?

In the first place, one of the most important things you have to know about them is that they are by-products. They are not the quest of the Yogi. They are not the thing for which the seeker has taken to the path. For him, they are just something to pass by on the way. Just as, when you are on a journey to the city, you arrive at and pass, for instance, the Eldorado Motel, and Simpsons-Sears, and then a bridge—all of which have to be passed by since none of them is your destination, the destination for which you started. You may ask, “Why do these things come?” Well, because you are progressing, because you are moving onward, you must pass by these things that are on the way—by the side of the highway—and they are a sure sign that you are progressing, that you are moving along.

Secondly, they serve as encouragement. After all, a human being likes to know whether he is accomplishing something or whether all his efforts are just turning futile—whether they are proper and right or misdirected and useless.

These powers come as temptations to test your moral worth and they are the greatest barrier to Self-knowledge. These powers gain entry into you so subtly, so insidiously, that unless you are extraordinarily introspective, extraordinarily watchful and extremely careful, even without your knowledge you may succumb to them and become vain. Then one begins to have a superior type of pride which is much worse than any gross pride, such as pride of position, pride of wealth, of youth, prestige and power; it is the pride of being high and above the rest of mankind.

“All the rest of mankind does not possess that which I have. I possess something which no one else has,”—this type of subtle vanity and egoism is the greatest obstacle. It is the greatest danger to the seeker, for it goes to nourish the ego which is his deadliest enemy. It is this “I” which has to die in order to get God, and anything which fattens this “I” is the very antithesis of God. You may conclude that the Devil or Satan enters you and gives you these powers, that Satan takes possession of you when you get these powers. To use a spiritual metaphor, the throne which you have prepared for God is then occupied by Satan. So these powers divert you from God, taking you away from the straight path and inflating your false ego.

The seeker has to be very careful that he does not encourage these powers at all, that he does not have any thoughts about them, and that he brushes them aside.

What is the attitude of Masters to these powers? All Yogic Masters—The greatest Master, my Master, Swami Sivananda, one of the greatest saints that India has produced in recent times, and Sri Ramakrishna, the great Master of Sri Swami Vivekananda who came and gave Yoga and Vedanta to the West in 1893, and many other saints—have been absolutely at one in their opinion regarding this matter. “Right from the beginning of the spiritual path,” they say, “beware of psychic powers. Beware of occult powers.” If you get caught in their fascination, you are lost. Your spiritual life is destroyed and all of your Yoga will simply go away. And once you lose Yoga, it becomes very, very difficult to regain it. It is almost impossible to regain it. Once you fall from Yoga, then you have indeed to work very hard to regain the lost status. The Masters are very strong in their terms of condemnation. They say, “Shun occult powers as you shun poison”, and they are indeed poison to spiritual unfoldment. Kick them aside.

Sri Ramakrishna had this actual experience: he said that once these powers were brought to him in a basket. This was an inner mystical experience in which he was offered them, in which he was pressed to take them. At first glance they appeared as truths and he was about to look at them, when suddenly the whole thing became real to him, and in this reality he found them to be occult powers, mystic powers, lordship of the whole earth, and he immediately spat upon them. Spitting is the worst form of insult in India and he spat upon them and began to shout, “Take them away! Take them away at once!” People who were near came running and asked, “What is it? What has happened?” and then he kept quiet and controlled himself. Later on he told his disciples that the power of the whole universe was offered to him and for a moment or a split second, the mind almost looked at it, “but my Mother came to my rescue and I was able to shove it aside completely”. So, the teaching of the Masters, from the very beginning, is: “If you want God, shun ruthlessly all powers, all occult phenomena, as poison”. Do not be fascinated by occult phenomena and do not be diverted by them. Or, before you know it, you will be caught in their coils. If you want God, do not want anything else but God, for if you have God, you have everything. Take it from me: if you have God, you have everything. There is nothing in this universe that you lack, and all things but God will appear to you like ashes, as they are not essentially anything.

If you want God, you go on to the greatest, the highest, the sweetest and the ultimate. Do not have the least desire for anything else, and if these occult powers come in the way, then just ignore them. One should not be diverted, for the Yogic ascent is something which has to be done with your whole being, with your entire personality. The whole heart, mind and personality has to go into it one hundred per cent and any distraction in which you become lost causes your whole progress to be delayed.

Now I come to the last portion: what are the uses and abuses of occult phenomena? Its abuses have been made very clear. To use them, to get caught in them—this in itself is an abuse, because they are not meant to be used at all. A great danger is that what has been built up as moral structure, as humility, as goodness, as truth, as kindness, as love, as mercy, may be directly affected by these powers if one does not become absolutely based in moral perfection, and does not surrender totally to the Lord and look to Him for guidance at every step, and does not sustain the spiritual life with constant prayer and constant recollection of Him. If one is still weak and in the making and these powers come, they corrupt the mind and one may begin to make use of them for obtaining those very things which had been renounced at the start of the spiritual life. One may become a slave to money, to sensual indulgence, to passion and to all that is base and animalistic in the human being if these powers are used. It is said that a person may remain virtuous in the absence of temptation, but when temptation comes, then virtue flies. So, in the beginning, one has to be very careful, for these occult phenomena have the power to corrupt.

Uses of Occult Phenomena

To seekers, to aspirants, to those who want God and are trying to make use of their life to attain God, there is no question of the uses of these powers, for the true seeker just ignores them, and for him they have no content or value, but are things which he passes by on the way. However, if I may speak of these powers independently of the seeker, then there are uses to which these powers can be put, in a limited way. Supposing a person is not in any way a seeker of God, and especially if these powers are in the nature of healing, or magnetism or of prophetic vision (where one is able to know of certain things before they happen, due to clairaudience or clairvoyance), then use may be made of them, but it has been observed that in such situations when these powers are made use of, after some time, they leave the individual.

Magnetism is something by which one heals and cures people, and prophetic vision is something which can be made use of to help people. Supposing one has come to know something about some person, some danger that is in the offing, then that person may be warned of such danger and thus helped. In these entirely limited ways, the person, who is not a true seeker in the real sense of the term, may use these occult powers selflessly—unselfishly—out of compassion, out of love, out of a desire to help others. Some persons have a sense of mission: “I have come here. God wants me to do such and such a thing. This has to be done by me”. And if one endowed with this sense of a mission is also endowed with useful occult powers, it means that the powers have been given to him for a purpose, and so, such powers may be used for the purpose given, but such a person will not attain God. For that, one has to work.

And then, there is a use for these occult powers on a very superior level. These powers have their place in Masters who have the special task of guiding spiritual seekers and bringing people to God—bringing people to the path. Sometimes the Masters make use of these powers to induce faith in a seeker who is ready for the path, but whom a lack of faith is holding back. And sometimes Masters help even common people. They help them overcome the suffering of Karma. They cannot help them to overcome Karma, but they help them to overcome the sufferings of Karma by these powers. Upon a very high level, sometimes, these powers are used by Masters on a large scale, to help not just one individual, but a whole area with many people. There have been cases where Masters have used these powers to help areas stricken with famine, drought, etc., but we are not directly concerned with these, for such Masters are on a level by themselves. They know what is to be, and in the fulfilment of the Divine Will, they make use of these powers.

Avoid All Occult Phenomena

On the lower level, these occult powers can become the greatest of corrupters, the greatest of obstacles for all true seekers. Ultimately, seekers have to realise God and once one has realised through his own discrimination that everything except God is just transitory, evanescent, just a shadow-play, a momentary thing with which one has no lasting connection, once one knows this, then everything except He, from the little speck of dust to the highest power, all occult phenomena, mystical experiences, become devoid of substance. They all partake of the same nature of this passing, transitory, evanescent world. They are not real. They are not true and they have no ultimate value, no inherent worth.

Therefore, do not run after shadows; hold on only to the substance. Do not go after the chaff; go only after the grain that nourishes and gives life. Do not be diverted from the path of truth by all that belongs to the realm of untruth. See only the real and do not be deluded by the unreal. All of these things except God—the highest, the greatest, the innermost centre of your being—are in the realm of unreality. Therefore, the only thing the true aspirant should do is to completely become blind to all these phenomena and think only of the Lord. Live only for the Lord. Love only God. And seek and be questing with absolute one-pointedness and whole-heartedness for the Great Reality—God and God alone. That is the message of the Masters—to avoid all powers.

Seek God alone and never allow yourself to be diverted even one whit towards anything other than God.

May the grace of the Divine illumine your intellect. May the love of the Divine fill your heart. May the blessings of all great Masters ever keep the light of discrimination and true awareness in your heart. May the Masters guide you on the path. May they give you the true understanding. May they give you the inner spiritual strength to resist all temptations and to overcome the lure of all occult powers, petty powers, that seek to divert you from the path. May they inspire you, strengthen you and lead you on to the goal of supreme blessedness and crown your life with the highest attainment of divine realisation, infinite bliss, eternal wisdom and light and the immeasurable divine peace that passeth all understanding. God bless you.

3. Meditation

Glorious Immortal Atman! Blessed Children of Light and Immortality! Beloved Seekers on the Pathway to the Divine! How privileged we are to be able to gather here in this holy morning hour to bathe ourselves in the glorious stream of meditation and the Divine Name! Such an hour is a gift from God. It is a bestowal of love from One who is ever eternal, from One who is our source, One in whom we eternally abide, and in whom we are all one. Such a gift should be accepted with love, received reverentially, and with devotion utilised by us all. Indeed, the token of our true recognition of God’s continuous compassion and grace upon us would be to ever try to make ourselves worthy of such marks of His grace and to that extent we would be drawing nearer and nearer to Him. We should ourselves live our lives in such a way that, seeing one of us, He, the indweller (who knows our true aspirations, our innermost desires) would tell Himself: “Here is a child that has wearied of the toys of this mortal earth-plane, that has wearied of the worthless, passing and perishable objects, that has wearied of the appearance, the names and forms, of this great game of Mine, this drama of life, and now wishes to turn to Me and, therefore, I should not tarry”. Thus recognising, He brings into the life of one who is truly in need of Him, who truly desires Him and Him alone, who is earnest in his quest, all that is needed for his spiritual unfoldment and the attainment of the highest. The yearning, the strong aspiration, therefore, is our part. That is the step the finite takes, and that being sincere and earnest, the fulfilment of it becomes His task. Thus it is that the great Master Jesus said, “Ask and it shall be given”. The asking of it is the task of each individual soul and the giving of it is verily the Father’s task through wise love. And, as sure as the glorious dawn and the radiant sun do follow the darkness of the night, so sure and certain is the fulfilment of the true aspiration of the sincere soul in earnest quest of the Supreme. Such occasions as this—of prayer, of worshipfulness, of meditation—are not only proofs of the tangible presence of Grace in our life, but from our part is proof of our sincere desire for Him. Every time we turn away from earthly pursuits, every time we set aside mere things of this world and collect ourselves in the stillness of our inner being, and sit to worship Him and a call goes out to the Infinite, “Here I am. I need You. Be Thou gracious. Reveal Thyself unto me. I turn away from the passing and seek the Eternal”, it becomes as it were, a true token of the sincerity and earnestness of the soul, of the innermost being’s sincere desire.

The Nature of Meditation and Its Place in Yoga

Meditation, therefore, is the exercise of the deepest part of your being. It is, in truth, the highest and the noblest exercise of the supreme prerogative, the supreme blessedness of human birth. There is no exercise loftier than worship upon this earth-plane. Let us be thankful, therefore, for this beautiful morning, for this solemn hour and for the privilege of sitting at the altar of the Divine Presence, entering into the silence and bathing ourselves in the glorious radiance of His presence. Let us be thankful for this privilege of trying to purify ourselves of all that is earthly within us, trying to fill ourselves with the Divine. Such acts of meditation form but a variation of the process which our entire life is meant to be. Our life is meant to be a constant opening of ourselves unto the Divine—a process of stilling our nature, a constant process of turning away from the perception of the non-self, a continuous process of rejecting the call of the non-eternal upon our being and a resolute, a persistent, and an insistent opening of ourselves to the Atman, to the Imperishable, to the Eternal. Our entire life is meant to be an attempt to turn away from the unreal and move towards the real, an attempt to reject the pull of darkness and seek light and light alone, a resolute rising up from this plane of mortality to the recognition of the immortal nature of the Self within. And meditation is the same process intensified in a systematic and deliberate way, canalised at a specific time. Meditation is intensified living in the Spirit, and our entire life (and its movements) is a diffused flow of the spirit of meditation, of the spirit of our spiritual quest. These two processes, therefore, should have no specific break or barrier separating them. Meditation should supply the dynamism for our living. Meditation should be the re-charging of our life battery in an intense manner. Meditation should be the spiritualising force for all our life—for all our thoughts, feelings, ideas, sentiments and aspirations—for all our dealings with the world. Our perception of the whole world and of all life should be a movement fully bearing out the inner spirit of meditation. These two, viz., life and meditation, are contiguous and continuous processes. They are not two processes with a clear-cut separating barrier.

Meditation is not some isolated act that you do in life and which has no bearing on life, which is entirely of a different nature altogether, and something which goes against the normal current of your life. Yet, it may be going in a direction opposite to the normal current of your lower self, of the desire nature of the mind, of the object-ward movement of the senses. Such outward movements are the inherent tendencies of the mind and meditation may go in opposition to these, but these outward movements do not constitute your Self; the senses do not constitute your Self; the mind and the desire nature do not constitute your Self. Your true being is as a river rushing towards the ocean. Thus, in that being, there should be no separation between your meditation and your living. If this point is not borne in mind, you will find that between meditation and the rest of your day-to-day life there is a sharp divergence, and meditation becomes, as it were, a tug-of-war with the impulses generated by your day-to-day life. It becomes a hard process—one part of the mind contradicting the other, opposed to the other, with much waste of essential energy. There is much conflict within, in the self of the being. The harmony, the peace and the joy with which meditation can flood your being and fill your countenance, that is lacking in your expression; even though you meditate, there is not the calmness in the eye. But where this inner secret has been recognised and life and meditation go hand-in-hand, are fully in sympathy and rhythm, one finds that in such a meditator the calmness of meditation flows through his life; the peace of meditation shines through his eyes; the joy of meditation pulsates and radiates through his entire being. Such, indeed, is the place of meditation in your life. Such, indeed, is the role of meditation in the day-to-day living of your entire being.

How to Start the Current of Meditation—The Technique

We being embodied beings and our mind being what it is, our everyday life does have a certain impact upon our soul consciousness, the innermost awareness, and the senses again and again cloud the radiance of the inner consciousness. Therefore, when you sit for meditation, instead of starting the process immediately, you should allow a certain time for the movement or the momentum of the external life to calm down. Give a little time. Let the thoughts subside, and then, after the mind has ceased its whirl of objectification, and is settling down, then gently lift it up out of the self-awareness, out of the consciousness of its union with its immediate surroundings and with the body. And to that end, the chanting of the Divine Name, of Divine Mantras, produce wonderful spiritual vibrations, divine in their potency, which help to lift the mind up into a state of subtle awareness of the Divine. In the state of calmness and upliftment generated by the quietness in the withdrawal of the mind, the Divine Name evokes your concept of the Supreme, your idea of the Great Reality. The whole body, the entire mind and the senses quieten; and the mind is elevated. It is ready to contemplate upon the higher ideas. Gently, the clinging of the mind to lower ideas gets loosened. You should, therefore, prepare your mind for meditation by filling it with Divine Bhav—a feeling or attitude of spiritual affection—spiritual Bhav. It is somewhat like this: after having travelled through a vast area of mountains and valleys and jungles and variegated scenery, you suddenly come to the ocean-shore and all these multifarious names and forms and ever-changing objects cease and you see just a vast expanse. Your gaze is absolutely undisturbed by any object. You gaze only upon vastness, only upon stillness. From the many, you arrive at the vision of the One.

These processes of stilling the mind, of withdrawing yourself, of calming yourself, of lifting up your consciousness through Mantras, through chants, brings you to a state where the mind is rid of all multifarious objects and is just centred on the God within—on Brahman or the Atman or the Reality, the one Absolute Truth, the Supreme Being, the Changeless Infinite. And even as from the far horizon of the eastern ocean the orb of the sun rises up into that indescribable vastness, your concept of that Being rises in the vastness of the ocean of Pure Being. It may be in the nature of a sound, a Divine Personality, a formless concept, a special idea or a set of ideas you have of the Divine. And, as though the ocean itself has turned into a wave, no different from itself, not separate from it, being the same, and yet appearing for the time being as a wave pattern, you invoke upon this ocean of Pure Being, gently, the appearance of your particular concept of God in the form of your idea or set of ideas and then slowly, gently, flow forth to that idea, that set of ideas or that personality. Let your entire being melt and flow in a continuous stream of love and adoration, reverence, worshipfulness, prayerfulness and faith until your entire being just seems to be a continuous stream of such divine sentiments calmly flowing towards your concept of God.

This pattern should be kept up—a continuous and unbroken flow of loving God-thought. This is the very essence of meditation. It is a state of mind when the entire mind is filled with God and God alone, nothing else besides God. It is very necessary to recognize the process of meditation as such, for there are various wrong conceptions, wrong ideas about meditation, one of them being that it is an attempt to make the mind empty. When this concept is presented to me, I always remember the good old saying that an empty mind is the devil’s workshop. Anything can come into the mind when it is empty. It is a very difficult concept to break away from the minds of people, because it contains a grain of truth. If there is a complete falsehood, you can contradict it, but if there is a part that has a grain of truth, it becomes very difficult to contradict. Uttering a half-truth is more dangerous than a hundred percent falsehood. So, to these people who seem to have grasped the meaning of a part of the process of meditation and who completely ignore the true process, I repeat: “Meditation is filling the mind with God-thought” and, therefore, it means emptying the mind of all thought other than that of God. This emptying the mind of all that is non-Atman or non-Self or non-Divine is only a part of the process; it is only a thing that is implied by the true process. The actual process is to fill the mind with God. The awareness is always there. If you empty the mind, a blank is not created, a void is not created, but God fills it. The Supreme, the Ideal, the Truth, the Reality, the Light of Pure Being—That floods the entire field of your consciousness. God fills it, and where He is, the world cannot be. It is said, “Where there is the Supreme, there is no desire for the world”. So, where God is to come, there should be no desire for the world; for, where the world is, He cannot be. God says, “I am a jealous Master. I will not tolerate the presence of anyone else in that place which is meant for Me. It is Mine”. The heart of the individual is the royal throne of God, and if there are other things there, He looks in and says, “No, it is not ready for Me to come”.

So, meditation is emptying ourselves of all that is not-God and filling the mind with God. The particular conception of God or the Divine does not at all matter, and the greatest curse are those who advocate and inflict upon the human race one certain religion and one certain concept of the Divine and insist that God or the Divine is such-and-such and only such-and-such and insist that all think of Him only in a particular way, with a particular book. For, that is the very destruction of the pure idea of God, the destruction of the very spiritual core within. God cannot be defined. He cannot be comprehended. We cannot conceive of Him, but He is everything which one can conceive of in love. He allows Himself to be known in any way. Just as, when a child pulls the hair of the mother, twists her nose, slaps her, twists and pushes her face, or sticks its finger into her eye, or does anything, the mother loves the child and bends when it pulls her hair, and allows her face to be pushed whichever way the child wishes. Why? On account of love—love of the mother for the child, and love of the child for the mother, also. In the same way, if the loving heart conceives of God in whatever way it can, then that is God. Lord Krishna said, “In whatever way the sincere one seeketh Me, I reveal Myself to the seeking soul in that very way”. And if you try to confine Him rigidly to your set conception, you destroy the very conception of God as the Infinite, as the Omnipresent, as the Omnipotent. What can He not do? What is He not? He is everything. There is nothing which He is not. Therefore, even though we know that He is absolute, that He is transcendent, that He is beyond all name and form, beyond the reach of mind and thought, yet He is everything. He is all.

The Vedanta is the grand culmination of all the attempts at giving the Supreme some sort of recognizable form. It says, “You, of countless names and countless forms, are infinite. You are everything”. So, conceive of Him in any way. Do not be disturbed. Do not have any anxiety, for He knows when you are sitting for meditation. He knows. He can see even where you are sitting. When you start the thought in meditation, He knows even the thought.

Take, for instance, the father of a family, a good man, loved by all, and just imagine how differently he is conceived of by everyone in the family. The son and the daughter look upon him as the father, someone gracious, someone elderly, protecting them, looking after them, an ideal to follow. His brother looks upon him, not as a father, but as a gracious brother. The wife looks upon him as her master and lord and loving husband. And his own parents look upon him as a son, the father of their grandchildren. And his neighbour will think of him in a way entirely different from all these. These conceptions—in the parents’ minds, in the children’s minds, in the brother’s mind, in the wife’s mind, and in the neighbour’s mind—all differ. So they all have different conceptions in their minds of this one being and all these are valid and right.

Saturate the Mind with God-thought

In the same way, you should think of God in whatever way your heart conceives of Him, and you should start the day with a prayer: “O Lord, I come with love before Thee to the altar. I seek to humbly offer myself to Thee. I come to Thee with love. Raise my consciousness to the realm of Thy great divine nature. May You be pleased to lift me up unto yourself. The clamour of the senses, of the mind—may they be stilled. I pray that they may not intrude upon this solemn moment. I want to think of You and You alone. I want to be completely absorbed in Thee”. Say this prayer and then begin to meditate on God. If other thoughts arise in the mind, do not be concerned. Just ignore the mind. Just say, “Do what you wish, but I shall think of the Lord. I shall think of my Beloved, no matter what you do”.

Do not try to subdue the mind. Do not try to forcefully evict the thoughts. Do not use force, for then you will hamper the very object of your meditation which is to think of God; and instead you will be thinking of the mind. Your attention, instead of being focussed on Him, will be diverted and misapplied and misused in a negative process. You should not waste your energy in a negative process. Do not think of the thoughts, do not think of the mind—ignore these and just hold tight to the Divine. If the mind begins to fall away from the Divine idea, chant “Om Om Om Om...”, with thoughts of the Limitless, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Transcendental, filling the mind. Or chant the Name of your Ishta, and in this way, wipe clean the mind of all earth-thoughts and think only of God. And now and again repeat the Name of God and start conversing with God and offer a prayer: “My God, thou art all-in-all. I offer up unto Thee this entire love of my heart, of my whole being”.

The idea is just to saturate yourself with God-thought, with the beauty, the radiance, the light, the divine idea, forgetting all other things and trying to get the feeling of being in the presence of God—of just being there with Him. Every moment that you do this, a transforming process takes place in the depth of your own consciousness. More and more the Light of the Soul begins to fill your entire being. For the moment that you are thinking thus, completely absorbed in God, you are actually transformed into the realm of God. For that moment, your entire being becomes transformed into the God-nature, and when you come out of meditation, this impress of the God-nature which you created in meditation persists. And if you do this again and again, daily, without a single break, what happens is that this impression of the Divine Nature gets to be part and parcel of your consciousness and you feel always one with the Divine. You feel, “I am not this body. I am not this mind. I am not the senses, not the intellect. I am a part of the eternal Sun of God, made in His image, one with Him, a resplendent ray of the Great Radiant Light within”. The mind takes up the form of that idea upon which it dwells with much reverence, love and in-gathered attention and concentration.

I pray to the Divine that He may bless you all with wonderful concentration of mind and success in deep meditation.

4. Real Renunciation

Blessed children of the Lord! Radiant rays of the eternal Light Divine! Salutations to you all. With great joy I once again speak to you to give you a little message from the Master Sivananda and from the cultural treasure-house of the Sacred Land of the Himalayas, the Land of the Holy Ganges, the Land of the Upanishads and the Vedas.

Mother India has ever been the great torch-bearer of spiritual light to people of all parts of the world, at all times and in all climes. She has held aloft the great ideal of Self-realization, of God-realization. The attainment of God has ever been the great hunger of the children of India. More than all the other things of this external, visible universe, they have cherished the supreme attainment of Moksha or liberation in Divine Realization.

Renunciation Should Be Based upon Right Understanding

Renunciation has been the key-note of the teachings of the Great Masters of India. Renunciation is the very essence of spirituality and the secret of God-realization. Renunciation is not lethargy, escapism or irresponsibility. It is the great strength that the aspirant has in his onward march to the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the strength of renunciation that truly sustains the aspirant in his arduous journey to the Supreme.

Renunciation of cravings for sense pleasures is the gateway to permanent happiness. Of all qualifications that are laid down for students of Yoga, for aspirants on the spiritual path, renunciation comes foremost. Renunciation alone can make you fearless and happy. It is the bestower of peace and, ultimately, the bestower of immortality.

One should become disgusted with the world through right understanding, through discrimination and inquiry—getting into the very heart of the nature of this universe and by realizing how all things, all names and forms, are full of defects, are passing, are changeful and perishable. Thus, by looking into the defects of sensual life, one gets true renunciation.

Disgust with the world implies disgust with worldliness. We should not get disgusted with things as such, but rather with our desire to possess things, to attain things. Reason should strengthen our renunciation. Logic should back up our renunciation. This renunciation is lasting, is well-founded. It is not merely the outcome of a little emotional upheaval. The renunciation that comes momentarily through the loss of wife, position, friend, son or property—this will not help you much, for it is a momentary flash in the pan, as it were. It is not real sustaining renunciation born of inquiry and discrimination and constant reflection.

Conviction about the necessity of renunciation will not arise without reasoning, without inquiry and discrimination. Just reflect for a while on the fate of the human being. As a child, the human being in the womb is covered with urine, pus and dirt and scorched by the fire of hunger. As an adult, one is puffed up with enjoyment of sense-objects and indulgences. And as a senile old person, one becomes extremely weak in body and mind and becomes an object of scorn, even of relatives. No one wants to have anything to do with such a person.

Worthlessness of Worldly Life

A life of delusion amidst sensuality, money and sense-objects is the pitiful lot of the normal human being. Life is transitory; death is silently staring at you like a venomous serpent with expanded hood, ever ready to strike. Various dire diseases cause much havoc to the body. Youth abandons the body quickly and old age grips it. He alone is saved who makes haste to utilise this precious life in striving to obtain the summum bonum of life through renunciation, discrimination and inquiry. Maya, the great illusory power of the Supreme, is a very great jeweller. She prepares a skeleton, covers it with flesh and muscles, and hides the various impurities within with a very shining skin. Oh, immediately, a human being is absolutely deluded with this appearance—with this doll prepared by Maya. How long are you going to call this body your self? Develop an undeluded imagination and identify yourself with your real nature, Satchidananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) which is your true Self.

Are you not tired of saying, “My son is ill with typhoid. My second daughter is getting married. My wife is worrying me to purchase a new dress. My husband is going after drink and gambling. My son-in-law died recently”? Indeed, such miseries should open your eyes to the great goal of life. Human love is hollow. It is animalistic attraction. It is passion only. It is carnal love. It is a love that is pure selfishness, for one loves another for the pleasure that the other person is able to give one. At the bottom of it, it is selfish, and also, it is ever changing. The love of one person for another depends upon so many external factors which are changing, and when they change, the emotional attitude of a person also changes. To a great extent, it is mere show. Beloved friend, you can find real lasting love only in God, only in saints. God alone knows how to love and His love knows no change, knows no lessening.

Tell me, beloved friend, how long do you wish to be a slave to these fleeting things of this world? How long are you going to repeat the same monotonous round of sensual enjoyment, day after day, morning, afternoon, evening and night? How long do you wish to worship this body, these sense pleasures? When will you find time to break the bondage of your attachment to these fleeting things, these passing things and, renouncing all desire and craving and passion, meditate on the Lord and do virtuous deeds in life? Think and reflect! Is there really any pleasure or happiness in this world? Think! Think and reflect daily. Analyse the nature of the objects of the world. Try to inquire into their nature and the nature of the experiences you derive from them. See how incomplete they are and how imperfect they are, how mixed-up they are with a lot of exertion and restlessness and desire and craving and disappointment, and how much wrong thought and wrong action are necessary to obtain sense pleasures! Why does man still stroll about here and there—like a street dog in search of bones—in search of little petty pleasures from the perishable objects of this earth-plane? Break your bond of attachment to these things. Search within. Look within and introspect and realize the supreme abode of peace and immortality.

One should not delay. One should renounce. One should understand the glory of renunciation. One should understand the magnitude of human suffering, the absolute worthlessness of all sense pleasures, and the wonderful glory of the Supreme Attainment and the great necessity of renunciation for this attainment.

Turn your back on the maddening crowds of worldly-minded persons, anchor your faith in the Lord and live the life of pure thought, high ideals and supreme wisdom. Adopt universal love, truth and purity as your guiding stars in life. Renounce untruth, renounce harsh nature, and renounce impurity. Refuse to swerve from the path or to look back and, in due course, you will surely attain Realization.

Prepare for this renunciation by the necessary Sadhana practices. All these are designed to subdue and control the mind and make you established in renunciation. The vagaries of the mind should be controlled; the heart should be cultured towards the ultimate ideal of universal Light and Love. Put into daily practice, with humility and faith, as many of the Twenty Instructions of Swami Sivananda as possible. The more you succeed in doing so, the more of mental strength and peace you will have. This will react on your physical life conditions for the better and you will gradually grow more and more in strength and renunciation.

There are three elements in the mind which obstruct the vision of the Supreme Reality within. One is the external impurity of your own nature—various desires, passions, cravings, likes and dislikes. The other is the uncontrollable restlessness of the mind. A steady mind will not be worried. It is only the wavering nature of the mind that brings in untold worry and restlessness and this restlessness is on account of desires and cravings. The impurities of hidden past impressions imbedded in the mind on account of past enjoyments, past experiences and deeds, are responsible for your restlessness and worry. This is the third element of obstruction. Excitement and anger come out of desire and you are not able to discriminate when you are angry, when you are excited, when the mind is restless. To overcome desire is to establish peace in the mind.

These impurities of the physical and the mental aspects of the personality should be removed by the study of scriptural books, by developing selflessness and the active spirit of service, by charity, by devotion to the Lord in the form of prayer and worship, and in the form of devout remembrance of God at all times through the repetition of various chants or the repetition of the Divine Name. The Lord’s Divine Name is a powerful specific for all these imperfections of your external personality. Lead the Divine Life; then and then alone will you be able to overcome the imperfections of your physical and mental natures and become established in desirelessness and renunciation.

The Riddle of Life

Try to understand the riddle of life and the riddle of this universe. Acquire discrimination. Take recourse to the company of seekers like yourself, getting together now and then with those of your own nature, those who are spiritually inclined. Even this will quicken your discrimination and give you the spirit of renunciation. Inquire into the nature of the Great Reality. Study books like the Gita and the Upanishads and then you will have a comprehensive understanding of the innumerable problems of life. There is not an iota of happiness in this world. Seek the happiness that is within.

In this world, people run after pleasures. Is not great wealth valuable to be owned? Is not a beautiful summer resort somewhere in Switzerland, with a pleasant garden and beautiful smelling flowers and wonderful scenery, pleasant to live in? Is not the company of beautiful people very desirable, very pleasing? Yet, in spite of the desirability of beautiful company, wealth and wonderful health resorts and modern amenities and a great deal of pleasure, gay society, you see young people, intelligent people, people having great prospects for their future, with a wonderful career ahead, kick aside all these things which the world holds dear and take to a life of seclusion, of silence, of renunciation, of dispassion, of inward meditation. Why? Why do they kick aside all these things like worthless straw and retire into seclusion and meditate on the Lord? If there were real pleasure in these things, these people of understanding and intelligence would not do such a foolish thing. So, try to think out the reasoning behind this. Think out what exactly has been their process of reasoning to come to such a conclusion, to take such a step and to adopt such a way of life.

Even now, thousands of young graduates, young doctors and lawyers in India, come to Rishikesh in the Himalayas and wish to be initiated into Sannyas. They then go away higher up into the Himalayas and live there in silence and seclusion, practising deep meditation and Pranayama. Why? You have to reflect and find out for yourself what these young people, these intelligent people, these highly educated people, these people with powers of reasoning, found out for themselves within their hearts, through reflection, through inquiry and discrimination. They were able to get the strength to make God the very centre of their lives and just push aside all things which they knew to be secondary and unimportant.

Amidst the din and boisterous bustle of worldly activities, there do come some moments of tranquillity and peace for everyone when the mind, for the time being, however short it may be, soars above the filthy things of this world and reflects on the higher problems of life, the why and the wherefore of this life, the riddle of the universe. You begin to inquire, “Who am I?” The sincere inquirer becomes serious and becomes absorbed in reflection. He begins to search and understand the truth and discrimination dawns in him. He seeks renunciation and dispassion, concentration and meditation, purification of the body and the mind, eventually to reach the highest knowledge of the Self and become eternally free. But the person whose mind is saturated with worldly emotions and materialistic thoughts is quite heedless of these tranquil moments and does not make use of them and is inevitably carried away by the dual current of attraction and repulsion, like and dislike, love and hatred, and is tossed about helplessly on the tumultuous sea of worldly concerns. How uncertain is sensual life in this world! If you constantly think of the transitory nature of sensory pleasures and their concomitant evils—miseries, worries, troubles, tribulations, anxieties, decay, premature death—then you will slowly develop renunciation within.

Sensual Pleasures Opposed to Spiritual Bliss

In the presence of continual sensual pleasures, spiritual bliss cannot exist, just as darkness and light cannot co-exist. If one should come, the other must go. Therefore, show extreme contempt for worldly objects. Destroy all desire from within, Turn the mind away from sensual objects. Give up cravings. Give up deluded attachment and you will develop real renunciation. You yourself have made your life complex and intricate. You have entangled yourself in this quagmire of Samsara by increasing your own desires, your own wants. By making life luxurious and complex, you have multiplied your wants and desires. Every day you are forging additional links to this chain of bondage by creating fresher and fresher wants, newer and newer wants. Simplicity has vanished. Luxurious habits and ways of living are embraced. No wonder there are all sorts of problems in human society. Unemployment everywhere, a sense of inadequacy and want everywhere, discontent everywhere, dissatisfaction everywhere. There is depression in trade and there is unrest everywhere. It is created by man’s own folly.

Due to these uncontrolled desires, persons are always dissatisfied. There is no end to their desires. One nation is dissatisfied with other nations. Some nations are preparing for war. Life has thus become a matter of uncertainty due to the increase of desire and, due to the heedlessness of the human being to this great message of renunciation, this message of simplicity of life, this message of renouncing inordinate desire, there is only movement towards more confusion, more chaos and bewilderment. Life has become stormy and boisterous everywhere. It is full of under-currents and cross-currents. Is there no escape from these troubles and difficulties? There is one supreme way. It is the development of intense dispassion. It is a life of dispassion. It is a life of simplicity, of self-control, of purity, of selfless service, of shedding all selfish nature, of cosmic love.

Develop the habit of taking the right point of view—the habit of thinking rightly, feeling rightly, acting rightly. Practise devotion and meditation. Then alone is it possible for you to have happiness and perfect peace—not somewhere, in some other realm, in some distant future, but right here in the midst of all these external distractions, this external restlessness and boisterousness of life. If you are grounded in dispassion, you will taste of the supreme fruit of such dispassion in the form of absolute tranquillity and peace and in the form of a bliss that springs out of such detachment and peace.

The Indispensability of Renunciation

At this point, we may try to consider one or two modern trends which have a direct bearing upon the vital subject of renunciation. Is renunciation really necessary? Many people in these modern days fight shy of renunciation. They put forward various ingenious arguments to prove that it is not necessary and that it is even useless. In fact, they go a step further and say that renunciation is harmful.

I have clearly shown that renunciation is the very basis of spirituality. You cannot have God unless you empty your heart of desires. When desires fill your heart, how can you seek immortality? How can you have the necessary aspiration for the Supreme? Without this aspiration, the Great Attainment is just a dream.

Renunciation is necessary for progress in spiritual life. All religions and genuine religious teachers are at one upon this point and agree without any difference that mental renunciation is absolutely essential and imperative to attain God-realization and Divine Love—all are certain and emphatic upon this point. Now-a-days we hear certain well-known leaders carrying on crusades against renunciation, but if you try and look below the surface of these so-called intellectual philosophers, you will find that there is an element of pseudo-sensuality in them. They may be very great, no doubt, towering intellectual giants, people of wonderful attainments, people of great organizing ability, but true greatness lies elsewhere. It is not in these exceptional traits and the development of some distinct talents that true greatness lies. We forget that persons may be very great in one respect, but they may be just as absolutely unlettered as regards the true implications of religion. Intellectualism alone does not imply the religious spirit. Religion is something serious, something earnest. It means strenuous practice and ceaseless endeavour, endless quest after Realization—strenuous practice based upon renunciation and ceaseless quest enlivened by renunciation.

There are many modern people posing as Masters and teachers who are inclined to belittle renunciation. Why? Perhaps they themselves are still in the grip of desire. All true teachers, whether of the East or of the West, whether of the present day or of the bygone past, are quite unanimous with regard to the need for absolute inner renunciation. The outward form of it is a different question, but true inner renunciation, the total renunciation of all desires for worldly things, the burning up of all cravings and sense urges, is absolutely essential—that is the essence of renunciation. All true teachers are agreed that knowledge of the Eternal is not compatible with attachment to the non-eternal. The attachment to the very antithesis of Divine Love cannot co-exist side by side with true love for the Divine. These two are not on the same plane and the one excludes the other.

We must give up all consciousness of, and desire for, earthly things in order to know God and attain Him. As long as we have the slightest desire for things other than God, we cannot have Him. It is therefore that Christ was so very uncompromising in His teachings to those whom He wanted to become His intimate disciples. He said, “Leave everything and follow me. Don’t turn, don’t even hesitate for a single moment to attend to other things. Renounce and follow me”. That means we should be prepared to generate in our hearts this element of total renunciation; then alone true aspiration for God can fill our hearts and goad us onward towards earnest and true spiritual life, true spiritual effort.

Sri Ramakrishna, one of the greatest teachers of modern times, used to say that as long as even a little fibre was sticking out of the end of a thread, that thread could not be passed through the eye of a needle. Even if it is only a single cotton fibre sticking outside, unless and until the entire tip of the thread is absolutely pointed, it may not be made to pass through the eye of a needle. Unless absolute concentration of your entire being is directed towards the purpose of your life, the attainment of God, there cannot be success in spiritual realization. We have to be on guard, therefore, against these dubious, compromising sort of doctrines. Apart from the danger of being deluded, there are also other dangers from these false philosophies.

False Prophets of the Modern Age

The modern age is materialistic. The dominant note in the era of today is the materialistic sense of values. Materialism also has many forms. There is a materialism which says that this world alone is everything, that this world alone is worth having. Then there is the other kind of materialism—a subtle materialism which says that God alone is not enough, that there must be the universe also besides Him and that you cannot totally ignore or neglect this universe. To know God alone, according to the votaries of this subtle doctrine, is imperfection; and perfection is to know the ultimate Reality of God as well as this world. They say that you must know God and you must know this universe also in the true sense.

What is knowing the universe? Those who have known the universe have all been deluded by their own knowledge. If you know the universe, in its true sense, that it is absolutely transitory, evanescent, passing, perishable, changeful, worthless, then you will no longer entertain any value for it. But these subtle philosophers say that knowledge should not be one-sided and, according to them, the knowledge of God alone is lop-sided, is one-sided, for it is not powered by a knowledge of the universe also. They do not seem to realize that when God is known, everything is known. This universe is just a shadow-play upon the Permanent Reality which is God, and when the Reality is known (It is infinite, all-pervading, one without a second), everything becomes known. But these people have a peculiar slant upon the subject of Self-realization and the great spiritual goal of life, and they say that you have to know both God and the universe and then only your knowledge is perfect.

What a conception of knowledge these people have! It is like saying that you must have nectar as well as poison. What do they mean: experience both? When you experience God, the experience of the universe vanishes. When you experience the wakeful state, then you cannot have the experience of the dream state. This false philosophy is just like clinging to dreams and those who advocate this philosophy may advance many subtle arguments in support of their thesis. If reason and the teachings of other great teachers do not support them, they have no hesitation in accusing the other teachers of being lopsided, or ignorant, or dogmatic. Even the great Shankara, who has expounded the theory of Maya, comes in for criticism at the hands of these false teachers. They say that Shankara is not right in emphasising the doctrine of Maya. To me, at least, there seems to be no doubt why such people are so ever eager to link God with the world. It is probably because they have a secret (or even perhaps an unconscious) desire for the world. So, in their conscious thought, the world has a hidden validity, a certain value, a certain meaning. Therefore, they still want to hold on to this world and do not like the idea of renouncing it completely from their hearts and minds. Their renunciation, therefore, is not complete. And partial renunciation cannot be. You cannot jump over a chasm between two cliffs in two jumps. There is only one complete jump or no jump at all. You cannot have a sort of half-jump when you want to leap across this chasm dividing the relative existence and the absolute, untrammelled, limitless Cosmic Existence.

The minds of these false prophets are not fully ready for God. This is plain. Hence there is a sort of veiled attempt at refuting the need of renunciation and the doctrine of Maya, and at trying to prove that the world is also important and that one should not completely reject it. I do not agree with this double-think at all. The world has to be rejected. It does not mean running away into the Himalayan caves. It does not mean giving up all the objects of this world. It does not mean that you should throw off your shirt, that you should give up eating normal food, that you should start eating leaves or start living upon water or air. It does not mean any such eccentric and extreme action.

Inner Renunciation Is Real Renunciation

After all, where can you go to get away from the world? Even if you