Dispeller of Pain
Swami Amritananda Saraswati
International Festival of Yoga and Health, Bogotá, October 1980
The root cause of all the suffering in the world is ignorance. The states
of physical, mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual agony existing in
the world are due only to ignorance.
Our mental and emotional sufferings are known as psychological and psychic
diseases, while in the physical body the root of our sufferings lies in
the stomach. It is not just that you suffer from a gastric disturbance
because you ate unwisely a few days earlier. Digestive disturbances also
arise due to emotional ups and downs. Upheavals and extremes of happiness
or sadness, laughing or weeping, also lead to digestive imbalance and
this is the cause of many further physical diseases.
In Sanskrit, the causes of pain are termed daihic, daivic and bhautic
tapa. This is not tapas (austerity), but tapa. Tapa literally means 'heat,
burning, producing heat'. What is burning? In common terms, you always
say, 'Oh, I am burning with anger'; 'burning with jealousy'; 'burning
with hatred'; 'burning with desire'. This is the burning which is called
tapa. In psychological terms we can use tension, anxiety and neurosis
to express the same idea. Daihic refers to the physical tensions arising
within the body as instincts, etc.; bhautic refers to all the tensions
of the material world, arising out of our environmental interactions;
and daivic refers to spiritual or transcendental sources of anxiety. We
have all these three types of anxiety, fear and tension in our lives.
Since time immemorial, these three types of suffering- physical, material
and atmic or spiritual have existed in the experience of mankind. These
sufferings we display both consciously or unconsciously, when we suffer
from our physical, mental and emotional sicknesses.
In treatment of suffering and diseases, the cause must be tackled by
a medicine which belongs to the same dimension of tapa. It is not sufficient
to treat a physical disorder like a broken bone with an atmic or spiritual
solution - it is better to apply an appropriate splint and liniment. If
you suffer from diabetes, the doctor will prescribe insulin injections
for you; but what happens if the insulin supply is exhausted? Now, what
will you do? Will mesmerism help? Will it help to apply some type of flower
to your back or head, or some other such remedy? No. It will only suppress
the symptoms of the disorder. It may help you for some time, but not indefinitely.
Or I can blow air from my mouth and tell you, 'Oh, you will be alright
hereafter', but this does not really help. This approach only hypnotizes
us. It can only lead us to have faith in something or some ideal which
is greater than what we are, or believe we are. So it is not really beneficial
to use a spiritual solution for a physical problem- it is insufficient
and ineffective in the long run.
Similarly, if you suffer from a brain tumour, will the doctor just send
you to learn yoga? No, it will be insufficient. Surgery and irradiation
are also required. And even if your pain is relieved after yoga exercises,
does it mean your tumour is cured, or only suppressed in order to come
again when the intensity of your faith and your devotion to the practice
wane at some future time? These forms of physical suffering and pain are
examples of daihic tapa, which demand physical solutions. This is the
first type of burning experienced by man.
Consider the situation where something has gone wrong in your material
life, in your family life or in your business life. Then you seek to alter
the situation by working through all the legal and official channels you
know of. What if, despite all these measures, your problem is yet impossible
to solve? How do you proceed? And if further, even the best lawyer in
the country can offer you no reassurance, and the minister himself refuses
to act upon your appeal and can offer you no solution for your problem,
then how can you be helped?
Surely you are filled with anxiety due to this problem. You are burning
up with anxiety, not the burning of acid, but burning internally. This
is called bhautic tapa. It is an environmental or materially derived suffering
which demands a material solution also. It is not sufficient to rely upon
purely spiritual means in order to solve it. You have to exhaust all the
material possibilities at your disposal. The solution must be applicable
to the problem.
The third type of tapa is daivic. This is the form of spiritual suffering.
Here I am imagining that God descends in me; or that a divine blessing
rests with me, or that I am the greatest spiritual leader in the world.
Or I imagine I am in the highest state of meditation or samadhi, when
I am not. This is a peculiar type of spiritual anxiety. This anxiety exists
between the ignorance of what 'I am' and the knowledge of what 'I am not'.
This is the greatest anxiety which is really burning up the heart and
making the internal self like a fire.
Today many aspirants are terribly impatient to awaken kundalini, and
when they do not even know how to start, then they are frustrated. This
frustration is of daivic quality.
What to do? Where to go? How to remove spiritual ignorance? How to overcome
imbalance in the material life? How to be rid of physical sicknesses?
In order to overcome the 3 types of burning, there is only one way. The
guru is the way. The real connection is the relation with the guru, not
the guru's relation with you, but your relation with the guru.
A patient has to have faith and confidence in the doctor and know that
the doctor will prescribe the correct medicine for his ailment. When you
go to the psychiatrist you know you will be helped and when you go to
the surgeon, you know the surgery will be skilful and effective. In the
same way, when you have the proper way of thinking, and when you possess
the right type of devotion towards the guru, then your relationship to
the guru, like a patient's to the doctor, is fulfilled.
The right type of devotion to the guru should be made clear. I am not
talking about emotion, or what you call love, but devotion as the force
of dedication to the guru as a higher ideal and practice in life. When
you approach the guru with this way of thinking and feeling, then the
relationship will be fulfilled, and whether you go with a physical disease,
a material problem, a mental disturbance or spiritual ignorance, all will
disappear.
You have to have a satguru. Not just a doctor or vaidya as a guru, and
not your own thoughts and conceptions of an 'inner guru', but a physical
guru in a physical body. Such a guru can dispel all your sicknesses. He
quenches the thirst of our internal burning and allays our three types
of anxieties. He delivers us from ignorance and brings peace. The satguru
is the real doctor.
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