People say that spirituality is developing the soft qualities of life, like kindness, compassion, love, sympathy. However, the block for people to experience spirituality is always the mind. You can be kind and loving, yet that will be influenced by your mental perceptions. You can be meditating, yet your meditation will be influenced by your mental state or condition. For anything that you do, you will always find an imprint of the mind in your effort. Despite people making the effort to have that spiritual awareness, it is challenging and difficult. Most people have also experienced that to change a nature, quality, habit or behaviour of the mind, is very difficult.
When you are alone, and when there is no block, confrontation or challenge, you think, ‘Oh, I have attained my state of equipoise and balance and harmony, and now I am not disturbed by anything.’ Then, when you come out in public and you find challenges, difficulties and blocks, you also find your serenity suddenly evaporates and anger appears. You find your peace suddenly becomes a mirage and frustration sets in. Why is this happening? This is happening, because you have never tried to become a friend of and know the mind. You have always tried to push the mind. Even in meditation, when something happens, you say, ‘Stay down, I am meditating.’ The relationship with the mind never develops.
I remember small incidents that Sri Swamiji used to tell me. When I was about nine or ten years old, he told me a story of a king with four wild horses. These wild horses had to be tamed. So, the king made a proclamation throughout the land, that anybody who could train and tame these wild horses would get a good reward. Many people came to try tame these wild horses. Nobody succeeded. Some broke a foot, a leg or arm, yet those horses were untrainable and unmanageable.
Then one day, a young man comes and says, ‘Sir, give me a chance. Let me try. I only have one condition. I will take the horses away from you for one year, and bring them back properly trained.’ The king agreed and gave the man the horses. Time passed. The king at first worried about what had happened. The man had said one year and sixteen months had gone by.
One day, while he was walking in the courtyard of his palace, he saw these four beautiful horses trotting, with a man sitting on the first one. He recognized him. The man alighted, bowed before the king, and said, ‘Here are your horses.’ The king said, ‘How did you train them?’ The man said, ‘Well, I let them roam free. When they used to run, I used to run with them. When they used to sleep, I used to sleep. When they used to graze, I used to make my bread and eat. One day, I put my hand on the back of one horse. At first, it did not like it, but then over time it got used to it. Then one day, I put a blanket on the back. They did not like it, but eventually they got used to it. One day I put the bridle, they did not like it, but they got used to it. One day I put the saddle, they did not like it, but they got used to it. Slowly they started to see me as their friend, not as their master. Not as somebody who was trying to subdue them, but one who wanted to become friends with them. Due to that relationship, today I am able to bring the horses to you.’ After telling me the story, Paramahamsaji asked me, 'Do you know who the four horses were?’ I had to think. Then he said, ‘They are what you carry with you all the time. Your mind or manas, your buddhi, your chitta, your ego. They are the four horses, that have to be controlled.' Although he told me the story when I was ten years old, fifty years later I still think that these four horses are difficult to manage. However, only after mastering them, can one experience the spiritual harmony, unity, luminosity and the soft energies.
The first level of work is at the individual level. What can I do to improve myself? Asana, pranayama, yoga nidra, meditation are good practices, no doubt. They make you feel light, they give you energy and peace, yet they do not change your behaviour, attitude and awareness. You have to start with changing the quality of your awareness, your attitude, and for that, you have to observe, correct yourself, and improve. Self-observation, self-correction, and self-improvement become the individual effort. Yamas and niyamas help a lot, yet you have to make that effort continuously and constantly. It is not an effort that you can make, one week per year. Every day, every day, that awareness and effort has to be sustained. That is the individual effort.
The second effort is the communal, the group, society, the family of which you are a part. If you are living at home, you are part of a family - father, mother, wife, children, whoever is there. If you are living in the ashram, you are part of the family. If you are living in a group, you are part of the family. Family means the group with which you interact. What can you do to maintain clarity, harmony, support? It is kartavyabodh in Hindi, knowing one’s obligations, duties, responsibilities, and fulfilling them to the best of one's ability.
You have to become part of the community spirit, rather than trying to change the community spirit to suit your needs. This helps you lessen and overcome the self-obsessions and the selfish nature. It makes you more integrated, harmonious, helpful, supportive, balanced, within the group, within the family, within the organization or ashram.
The third effort is pursuance of the aim, the goal, and not losing the focus and awareness. If connection is the focus, then connection has to develop and evolve into something stronger, positive, uplifting, creative, better. If God is the goal, the effort has to be to realize the presence of that divine energy in everything. God is only a concept; it is not a person. People make God into a person, however, God is only a concept, an idea which is beyond our existence, comprehension and intelligence. If we are limited, God is considered to be limitless. If we are restricted, God is unrestricted. If we are finite, God is infinite. If we exist in one dimension at one moment in time, God exists in every dimension, in every moment of time.
It is the expansiveness of the spirit, which is known as God. The unit of that spirit is known as the individual soul. It is like a drop of water and the body of the ocean. The body of the ocean is made by an infinite number of drops of water. One drop of water, when it leaves the ocean, is identified as a drop, not as the ocean. That is the play. When we die, this bubble of water, evaporates, becomes steam, goes up into the cloud, God. When the season comes, the drop falls and starts the journey again. This is the continuous ascent and descent of the drop, which is known as the cycle of life and death.
If you look at the life of saints in every culture, religion and country, you will see that how they have experienced God is totally different to what we have conceived to be the experience of God. When saints like Saint Augustine, Saint Francis, Mother Teresa, and all the other saints that have come throughout the ages, speak of God, they speak of God as a higher power, a higher energy in which everything is fulfilled. In life, we strive to fulfil things, but in God everything is fulfilled.
Whatever the aim is in the third effort, one has to remain true to the experience of it. When you want to make a small business into a big business, you put all your effort and energy into it, and you think of nothing else but how you can improve the business. The same principle and effort has to apply here. Those who apply become the successful people. Those who do not apply simply live their life like a normal person. These three aspects have to be worked upon, if you want to be not only a channel, but also an experiencer of that higher nature.
20 January 2024, Ganga Darshan, Munger