- Pujya Sri K. C. Narayana

The topic of this seminar “Truly speaking, we give wrong suggestions to the mind” is a sentence taken from the message given by the Master on the historical event of the Centenary Celebrations of the Samarth Guru Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj of Fatehgarh in 1973 at Chennai. Master on that day was beaming with spiritual splendour and in his message gave out all the aspects of his system of Rajayoga in a crisp manner. This sentence as such is not new wisdom as we know our tradition repeatedly stated that our mind is the cause for our bondage as well as our liberation. John Milton said "The mind in its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven." Our quest to know our true nature has drawn us to this path of Rajayoga.

Obviously, the quality of our life cannot be very good if we do not know who or what we are. It is only the naive and superficial person who can think that at the moment of death we just become a ‘corpse’. Every sensible person has always sought to know his/her roots or the Home Land. Every one of us here spent quite a bit of our life in search of our source and many of us do feel to have had a glimpse of the Unknown. Paradox it may seem but that is what it is! Some in fact do feel that they are successful in their endeavour and the mystery of it is that only when they had become a ‘corpse’ (living dead) they ‘realised!’ and started their real life.

What I say may appear ridiculous, and bizarre. But that is the manner in which the wisdom is passed on through millennia by good people who understood human nature and wanted to pass on the teaching for having a better life and a reasonable hope for the future. The wise Socrates said as he looked forward to his last hour "Wars, factions, and fighting, have no other origin than this same body and its lusts... We must set the soul free from it; we must behold things as they are. And having thus got rid of the foolishness of the body, we shall be pure and hold converse with the pure, and shall in our own selves have complete knowledge of the Incorruptible which is, I take it, no other than the very truth."

Socrates (469 - 399 B.C.) proclaimed: "I sought to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his actions." (The Apology.)

If we try to understand what the wise man was telling us in his last hour namely that "The body and its desires bring hatred, revenge, jealousy and, as a consequence, wars and suffering" we find that it is as much valid today as it was two millennia before. The desire to overcome, to compete, to be more powerful, more rich, to have more possessions, is the struggle that brings great stress and unhappiness in our lives in the modern times.

If we just look at an ecosystem in nature we see that adaptation and cooperation are the principles that prevail. Order and organization are essential in every natural environment. Master was saying this only in his Fourth Commandment. Implementation of this maxim would ensure good, sensible and balanced administration in human affairs. Robbing, cheating, lying, are not conducive to prosperity, but to unrest and confusion. This is true not only in spiritual matters but applies to mundane matters too. "Seek virtue and wisdom," says Socrates. What does it mean? It means plainly that we should use our "intuition" which is the subtle aspect of our intelligence, the mental gift that allows us to understand the deep aspect of situations and events. We are tended to use impulsivity, brute force, aggression, and revenge but we should let our superior intellect clarify every situation, be detached, be impersonal and do not allow ourselves to be sunk into the mud like an animal! In the yogic and vedantic terminology it means that we should develop Viveka. The mind gives directions to our actions. Whether they are good or bad depends on the goal we have chosen.

Goals are very important in life. They help us to determine the path or means through which we are going to achieve the goal and achieve great results. Having a goal is tantamount to making a promise to ourself. However, many aspirants make a wise decision of the goal they want to achieve but forget a main ingredient for effective action namely passion which Master calls restlessness. Restlessness is the driving power that enables us to manifest our goal. Many set their goal to be oneness with the Master but do not believe that they will attain the same. This is because they lack faith in themselves and Master wants that we should have faith that we will reach the goal. But our mind misguides us mischievously quoting the case studies of failure of persons who practiced some other method and also the enormous ordeals the aspirants have gone through in the systems of the past to attain the goal. This wrong feed to the mind is the most detrimental input we are aware of in sadhana and many leave the sadhana when faced with trying circumstances.

While the importance of setting up a goal with clarity is essential and that it by itself can be called an aspect of Viveka, it is twice as important to have a proper structure that excites us and gives images of success. The goal should be

a)    Specific and precise and we should have a detailed idea of the goal and the various stages before attaining the same. Many aspirants confuse the goal as given by the Master because they accept consciously or unconsciously the goal to mean something which the Master never meant. They try to somehow fit Nothingness or Void into some tangible and manipulative concept for the mind to play with. This is one area where I have found many aspirants accepting the wrong suggestions regarding the goal. Goal clarity that is spoken of many times does not carry any clarity but aids the impure mind to articulate the same according its fancy.

b)    We should be able to evaluate our progress towards the goal. The mind accepts and receives many suggestions about the progress one has made based on imaginary notions and hallucinations. I personally had many aspirants reporting rather irresponsibly about the stage in which they are while the fact remained that they were far off from that stage and were playing into the tricks of the mind. It should be noted that every spiritual condition is an aspect of the ONE and there is need for reverence and balance in reporting the condition.

c)    The goal should be attainable and within our reach. Realisation and enlightenment is not the prerogative of the recluse. We can learn the alpha and omega of spirituality in the environment of the home and in the social set up in which we live. Here in this area Master has brought in the concepts of trusteeship and due attachment. The mischievous mind however asks us to accept all sorts of manipulation of these concepts and most of the time effectively succeeds in making us think and act in such a manner that is least conducive to progressive spirituality.

d)    The goal should be realistic and it should be something within our physical and emotional reach. This would mean that we should have examples of such men and women who have reached the goal. While it is undeniable that there were saints and realised souls in our system and are also there even now our mind which has learnt the art of doubting the doubt itself makes many an aspirant feel that it is something that is unattainable. This is a problem of faith in oneself, the method and the Master. Evaluations of self many times suffer from this defect. As far as method is concerned there are many instances when the aspirant even though is making sufficient progress according to the intensity of sadhana he puts in this system, considers repeatedly and ad nauseum the virtue and advantages of the systems he never practiced or those that were being practiced with practically no spiritual progress. It is unfortunate that some aspirants even start making irresponsible judgments about the Master calling him a liar etcetera. All these are due to impure mind which plays its jokes and tricks with our aspirations.

It is important to consider why the mind does these tricks. Now we know that the mind is capable of evil thoughts in the sense that these thoughts act as obstacles in reaching our goal, the question would be how is it so? Dr. K.C.V. raises this issue when he says “The question of questions for religion would be, how does evil arise at all in a god-created world? Or if evil infected this creation from the very beginning so as to be the cause of all creation itself, how is it proposed to explain it? There are various reasons, and one of the primary reasons would be that every evil has a nucleus of good which is exaggerated or perverted. For example we know that people play up one set of values against another, for instance social justice, against real justice; and what is demanded is a compromise or mutual adjustment of these values. However, one is negated by the other and there results other compromises which defeat the other conditions of moral life. As it was said of power, that “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”, we find certain values have a tendency to try to corrupt truth, ahimsa, Asteya, Aparigraha and Brahmacharya, which fortunately cannot be corrupted, Even an abstract devotion to them is preferable to casuistry regarding them. This is a truth that the Western ethical and religious thinkers have to learn even today. Wherever casuistry was practiced it left the moral subject more helpless than ever.”

Master however explains that this problem arises because the lower mind gives directions to the higher mind. That would mean that our self and selfish concerns condition the decisions we make about a person or situation. Every thing will be viewed and analysed through the pair of glasses of the lower mind.

He asserts that the original nature of mind is purity and it expels all thoughts that are impure and that is the origin of thoughts. This principle is not only applicable when we meditate but through out all our activities in life. Thoughts about the divine are about the most pure thoughts that mortals can have. Therefore if the mind is purified more and more silence and balance gets restored and the torture of thoughts gets reduced. But then how to develop such a practice of thinking about the Divine constantly in a totally polluted atmosphere and environment is a question of practical importance.

Master in this context says that the direction of flow of thoughts from the lower plane to the higher plane should happen for achieving this. The question remains how to do it with an impure mind. Lord Krishna leaves the question there and does not give any solution other than abhyas and Vairagya. Master on the other hand says that the help of a competent brother can be taken and he would through the his own internal Divine power exercise Pranahuti and divert the flow to the higher plane and also further on to the Divine realms. Pranahuti which is working wonders with us and which brings in radical changes in our behaviour and attitudes is a great boon to humanity by the most revered Samarth Guru Sri Ramchandraji Maharaj of Shahjahanpur. Let us see the conditions in which this method arose in its present form.

That the world, during the nineteenth and the earlier part of the twentieth centuries, has been passing through the death pangs of an old era and the birth pangs of a new, is evident to all. The old principles of materialism and self-interest, the old sectarian and patriotic prejudices and animosities, are perishing, discredited, amidst the ruins they have wrought, and in all lands we see signs of a new spirit of faith, of brotherhood, of internationalism, that is bursting the old bonds and overrunning the old boundaries. Revolutionary changes of unprecedented magnitude have been occurring in every department of human life.

The old era is not yet dead. It is engaged in a life and death struggle with the new. Evils there are in plenty, gigantic and formidable, but they are being exposed, investigated, challenged and attacked with new vigor and hope. Clouds there are in plenty, vast and threatening, but the light is breaking through, and is illumining the path of progress and revealing the obstacles and pitfalls that obstruct the onward way.

In the eighteenth century it was different. Then the spiritual and moral gloom that enshrouded the world was relieved by hardly a ray of light. It was like the darkest hour before the dawn, when the few lamps and candles that remain alight do little more than make the darkness visible. It was the time for a once more Divine Revelation to the torpid, frivolous children of men, if they were not to sink altogether into the ape condition. Compared with the eighteenth century the present time after the Advent of Samarth Guru Lalaji Maharaj is as it were the dawn after darkness, or as the spring after winter. The world is stirring with new life, thrilling with new ideals and hopes. Things that but a few years ago seemed impossible and dreams that dare not be dreamt are now accomplished facts.

All this is because of the Advent is our firm faith and the Special Personality structured by him is the guiding Master to us for generations to come. This Special Personality is the Light-bringer of the spiritual world, as the sun is the light-bringer of the natural world. Just as the material sun shines over the earth and causes the growth and development of material organisms, so also, through the Divine Manifestation our growth and development in spiritual plane will happen. As there is nothing special as spiritual and material our destinies in all areas will be guided and monitored by the great Master provided we follow the natural and virtuous path he has given.

We all individually and collectively, have to evolve ourselves and thus humanity as a whole beyond our existing known boundaries. This means that individually we are to change from our existing state of being to become a higher, more evolved state of being. We have discussed that our personalities are conditioned by the environment, physical, vital, mental and spiritual. Different cultures impose different conditioning upon the minds of their citizens by virtue of their way of life. It all amounts to a limitation of mind. To change from the personality we have picked up from the society and the environment into a new personality of our own design on the lines of the Commandments given to us by our Master is the evolutionary task we all face. This is a task that moves past in the face of family, tradition, culture, religion, color, status, wealth, fashion, gender, fame or in short against the face of all the accepted values in our societies.

Never before have we been given so much knowledge to challenge our inherited belief systems and to intimidate the self-imposed limitations of our minds. How we develop into the future can only be limited by our own level of acceptance and our own willingness to let go of the past. And our unwillingness to let go of the past is evidence of our lack of understanding or outright stubbornness towards change which itself is due to mischievous mind play. What we need to develop is our own ideal not one that we have been conditioned to by the tradition but one that is our own creation based on the tenets given by the Master. Master has given the path of grace, a path that can in fact be different for different persons based on their samskaras. Many aspirants have odd notions of the role they have to play in the Divine work and also seem to be anxious to know their status in the scheme of things.

When Master asks us to mould ourselves again our mind starts playing its tricks and would like us to fit into modern-day society. The social and power politics come into play and there is always a politician waiting to use our image for his gains. It is no wonder the present day Masters are visited by the most important social and political big wigs. We should note that evolution is not about being accepted by an existing image but is about changing and moving beyond the boundaries of that accepted image which is dictated by the mind control that advertising and marketing is so daemonically good at.

It may in a sense be said that we must become like the caterpillar that transforms itself into the beautiful butterfly. The caterpillar represents the old personality and the butterfly represents a new life that has yet to unfold.  Firstly, the caterpillar seems to get into a dream and starts dreaming of its new form. It goes into the cocoon and it liquefies. It dissolves the past and out of the same energy, it forms the new life in accordance with its dream. The new form comes only after it liquefies or annihilates its old form. Humanity at present is in a state that is the same as the caterpillar that has yet to embark upon its remarkable transformation. In the fortunate few who got into the fold of the Master who is ever eager to embrace all such a process of liquefication has happened and they embarked on their new form.

We can never evolve beyond our odd notions about the level we can achieve. Very few people will be able to accept that they can be a Master until they witness, first hand, somebody else being in that state of purity. Even then their own acceptance will rely on their acceptance of equality with the Master. Master when he said he makes Masters was making an extraordinary statement. How many accept such equality? No wonder we need courageous persons who can control their minds and make it an instrument of the divine.

Once the design of the goal and the intermediary stages are enshrined in our mind then the individual components can be formulated and worked upon. These are the elements of the Sadhana that spiritual masters have spoken about and are recorded as personal affirmations in their writings, letters and diaries. A diligent effort is required to replace the demons from our past thinking. Only when the new knowledge is added to the quagmire of our mind, will the alchemical process start to take place. The metamorphosis of the caterpillar is likened to the human alchemical process of turning the lead of the past into the gold of spiritual truth. It may be rather radical when it is stated that our goal should be to become Masters. It is the ideal for humanity as a whole. Any climb down from that point is a compromise to any evolved mind. At the same time, we must realize that our own evolution progresses at the rate of our own acceptance of the new knowledge and its integration into our lives. This is possible only when we yield to the Divine dictate for transformation of the human into Divine. This demands courage, a lion hearted approach, a do or die attitude. Only such men are sought for in this Era.

Moulding ourselves and living a new way of life that bears no resemblance to our past that is choosing to live as the butterfly instead of continuing to be a caterpillar is a hard task indeed. This is so because change is always uncomfortable, not only for us but for those that observe it in us. We are moving forward in our life and they are standing still. They can no longer relate to us because we are at a loftier vantage point. But we have to continue to play the game with them, if we still want them in our life. Can we really afford to compromise or do we fly away and leave them standing in their own confusion, hoping that one day they will follow our lead? This is an unhappy situation in which some of us are stranded in our effort to move as forerunners of new Era.

The more spiritually advanced we become the more difficult we find it is to fit in with the accepted values of this present day society. We eventually reach a point when we cease trying to ‘fit in’ and realize it is only our truth that matters to us. This is why it is said that Masters are crippled by the consciousness of humanity. We need to learn that an impeccable entity can no longer effectively operate here amongst a lower intelligence. There will no longer be any desire in such an entity to partake of the consciousness here. But once the Masters make the mistake of forming associations or create institutions they cannot avoid the prison they have chosen and all the values and spiritual stages gained are compromised leaving them unhappy souls. However in the absence of our own ideal, there is one ideal that we can focus upon, that is not currently in abundance in human consciousness namely unconditional Love. Such is the possibility for the evolved souls if they keep their goal in view and Love that with their entire physical, vital, mental and spiritual being. Love Him who loves all becomes possible only for persons who are advanced in the spiritual way of life. In such a love there is no lack and it is all through abundance.

Creating a new life for ourselves is what we do in between lives in the planes of bliss. It is elementary to know that in all the planes from the physical through vital, mental, aspirational and spiritual planes there are various shades of bliss. Laya or absorption is had many times in our sadhana. During meditations it is common observation of the aspirants that we not aware of the body and we seem to be born in a fresh body after a deep meditation. Thus when we enter the new body it becomes almost impossible to live what we have created in bliss because the new brain has no memory of what is held in the soul. Also, the body has its own mindset from its experiences based on samskaras and it has a different agenda to what our total being is seeking to experience.

Our progress in spiritual life often gets blown to smithereens by the demands of our samskaras and the conditioning of our minds by society. The only chance we have in life is to ‘wake up’ to this knowledge and be ‘born again’ to a new life of our own designed on the lines of the Natural Path. Life as per the path is lofty enough to resemble a life in bliss. Our prayer thinking the Master to be an ocean of bliss and we are merged in it is experienced when there is strict compliance to the commandments of the Master. It is wise to wake up and respond to the call of the Master “Awake, O sleepers, it is the hour of the dawn.” while we are in the body, because then we are giving ourselves every chance of fulfilling it. Life then gains a meaning. It is not about our acquiring more and more money or our sex life or being somebody who is acceptable to others and to our society. It is really about fulfilling the spiritual journey or yatra in our quest for mastery.

The message taken up for discussion in this seminar is as already stated drawn from the message of the Master in 1973, Basanth Celebrations. We can hear the voice of the Master thanks to the efforts made by our associates and disciples of the Master. The magicians have a vessel from which water flows out irrespective of the several times when it is emptied. This they call in this country “Water of Bharat”. For me this message is one such vessel from which Nectar flows not withstanding the number of times it is emptied. It is but wisdom to share the Nectar with all.

Pranam.