SATSANG WITH ACHARYAS GURU

SATSANG WITH ACHARYAS

April 2008

Question: What is the difference between Religion and Spirituality?

Answer: In common parlance we understand and use these two terms differently. When we use the word religion, generally, most people think of various religious practices. Suppose I use the word Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and so on we think of certain religious practices and specific beliefs associated with the particular religion. When we use the word spirituality we look upon it as some kind of a process of growth or maturity which does not necessarily involve religious practices.

We can differentiate the two in this way, which is fine. If spirituality is just growth, one does not need religion to grow and to mature. For maturity I have to live, have some understanding of ethics, of what is right and wrong and make right choices. Only then do I become a mature person. What does it mean for me to be a mature person? I am a mature person when I can handle myself, that is my thoughts and feelings and also handle my interaction with others. It is evident that I am not alone in this universe. There are others with whom I can and do interact. I should be able to handle their idiosyncrasies, their thoughts feelings and actions and handle our differences. When I am able to do all this without causing turmoil in myself or another, I am a mature person.

To achieve this end religion and God does not have to play a role necessarily. Such a person may not ascribe to Ishwara or to any particular religious practice or belief, but may still live in this world as a mature person. Such a person is a spiritual person; one who is committed to his or her own growth process.

When we talk of a religious person, he is one who lives according to a certain faith, who engages in particular religious practices and who has a certain concept of Ishwara in accordance with a particular theology. A spiritual person need not be religious but a religious person is supposed to be spiritual. You do all these religious practices for what? They are done to facilitate growth. This is one way in which people understand the difference in these terms.

In fact a religious person should be a spiritual person who wants to grow. You can have a religious person who is not mature or one who even follows destructive religious practices. Such a person is not a spiritual person. A fanatic can present himself as a religious person. But you cannot call him a spiritual person. In fact more often than not he is non-spiritual, immature who can look at life only from his stand point. Such a person may be very religious but not mature. Religion is meant to make a person spiritual. If there is a religion that does not emphasize spirituality, then it is not really worth anything. If a religion keeps me immature, then what kind of a religion is it? It is destructive. In our tradition, we don’t make a distinction between the two. If the religion is universal, then it makes a person grow and makes him spiritual. That is the role of religion. Religion is meant to do that.

Religions should not divide people. Any religion should address me as an individual human being, not someone belonging to a particular group. If religion is Truth, it has to have elements of universality. Religion should not turn one human being against another. If religion came from God and every religion claims that it came from God all the scriptures should not contradict each other. If scriptures came from God and God wants to talk about Truth, then He is not going to pit one group against another. Just as no sensible parent will pit one child against another so that they fight with each other. How can God pit one group of people against another? How can any teaching that does so be considered the word of God?

Some people use the term called Covenant. Covenant is another word for a deal, an arrangement. “I will give you special treatment and you accept only me. You have been chosen by me among all others”. This they claim to being right. Supposedly He made deals with all these different groups of people that only led them to fight against one another. This is not and cannot be scripture, the word of God.

The teachings in Sanaatana Dharma are different. They talk of human pursuits. They talk of the essential nature of an individual, irrespective of what the individual thinks, what he does not think, whom he follows and whom he does not follow. God is available in any form that you invoke. These are all universal ideas. If there has to be a scripture for a human being that helps a human being be inhuman among other human beings, then is it really scripture? Every teaching can claim the status of a scripture. When it comes to accepting what is being said, what am I supposed to think? It just makes sense that a scripture would be something that would not turn us against each other. That is what makes our scriptures unique. Every scripture should be saying that.

If you think you are chosen, and others are not, you have to fight the others. In fact the one who believes he is chosen should not have a need to fight the one who he thinks is not chosen. But then he often does. Perhaps he wants the validation of the unfortunate one who he thinks is not chosen to recognize that he is the chosen by accepting what he believes. In our tradition we don’t have the problem of being chosen or not. For us everyone is chosen because each being is essentially divine. One either sees it or one does not. Religion and spirituality need to come together in a way that is truly universal in its scope, and not universally imposed.

May 2008

Q) Please clarify whether meditation is to be done on Saguna Brahman or Nirguna Brahman? Is it possible to just meditate on ‘OM’?

A) The word dhyaanam is well defined in the tradition as saguna brahmavishaya maanasa vyaapaaraha.

Vyaapaara is activity; and maanasa vyaapaaraha is mental activity. This is different than say pooja which is a physical and mental activity. Speech is also involved in a pooja. One recites prayers along with the physical actions of lighting the lamp and offering flowers and naivedyam. In meditation one does not do any physical action neither does one speak anything. The activity is purely mental.

Any mental activity has an object. When I ‘think’, I always think about something. When I visualize something, there is always an object. In meditation, the object is Saguna Brahman which is Ishwara in a manifest form. Brahman from its own standpoint, essentially, not with respect to the manifest form, is Nirgunam Brahman. There are no two Brahmans. Saguna and Nirguna are purely from different reference points. When we take the manifest as a reference point, it becomes essentially Saguna Brahman. One cannot meditate on Nirguna as dhyaanam involves some vishaya, some object. One can only meditate on Saguna.

Form can either be a physical form (visual) or it can be an auditory form. Both are mental. When the eyes are open it is a sensory perception of form along with its mental representation in the form of a thought. When one’s eyes are closed there is only the mental representation without the sensory perception. If I visualize a murti of Krishna and then close my eyes, it is still visual but now only mental without a sensory perception. Mental representation can be a form symbol (eg. Krishna) or it can be a sound symbol like the sound OM. A mantra like Om Namah Shivaaya is a sound symbol, not a form symbol. Even though we write OM, it is only to indicate the sound. The meaning of OM is Ishwara. One cannot place a form of OM on an altar, and do pooja to that form. It is not supposed to be done. OM is a name for Ishwara.

When I chant ‘Om Namah Shivaaya’, I am doing japa. Either I can visualize the form of Shiva or I can chant the mantra. It is not possible to do both. One can either visualize or one can ‘hear’ mentally. If the two are done very fast, it may appear that you are doing two things, but the reality is that you can have only one thought at a time in the mind. One thought replaces another thought, it does not superimpose on another thought. As you can have only one thought at a time in the mind, you can either visualize or ‘hear’ mentally. You can have a form symbol which is visualized mentally or a sound symbol which is visualized mentally. All this become Saguna dhyaanam as there are forms involved.

OM from the stand point of its symbolic meaning is a name for Ishwara. It has another meaning also which reveals to me what the nature of that Ishwara is. For example: Rama is the name of a King. The etymological meaning of Rama is what it reveals - ramanthe asmin - that in whom every one revels, that which is the source of joy called aatmaa. Therefore Rama means aatmaa. Hence, ‘Rama’ has two meanings. It is the name of the person and also indicates aatmaa. Similarly OM is the name of Ishwara and indicates Nirguna to me. This has to be understood. One can say that Rama stands for aatmaa. There is no person called aatmaa; one has to understand the meaning of the word aatmaa. Similarly, one has to understand the meaning of OM. Deciphered etymologically, it indicates what Brahman is - essentially not from the standpoint of the manifest. Once this is understood, one realizes that dhyaanam cannot be done on the unmanifest. This needs to be known, just as one knows that Rama means aatmaa, and one cannot visualize aatmaa.

When I do poojaa to Rama, which Rama is the poojaa being done to? The Rama who is Kodandapaani or the Rama who is aatmaa? Pooja cannot be done to Rama who is aatmaa, poojaa can only be done to the Rama who is Kodandapaani. Rama being aatmaa is something that I know and understood. Similarly, I cannot do dhyaanam on Omkara or Ishwara as they are Infinite. I need to have a form which I can visualize.

Nirguna is to be understood, it cannot be meditated upon. Once I have the knowledge and understanding, I can remain with that knowledge with closed eyes. This is called nidhidhyaasanam, which includes the aspect of knowing. Once known, the knowledge is contemplated upon and the knowledge becomes real, it becomes evident. Nidhidhyasanam is a word that is used along with and following the words shravanam and mananam. When shravanam and mananam are not taking place, then meditation becomes an exercise. This is a prayerful exercise which gives some shaanthi or peace. Meditation in tandem with shravanam and mananam gives me that abiding self knowledge.

Shravanam is listening. Listening tells me things like how the word Rama means aatmaa. After listening, I sort out my questions and clear doubts. This is mananam or the process of understanding. Finally, the knowledge that I have gained becomes assimilated and real for me by niddhidhyaasanam or contemplation. It is not contemplation upon something that I visualize. Knowledge implies clarity. What is the end of knowledge? As my clarity improves and I reach a point where there are no more questions, that point is the end of Knowledge. At this point, I don’t have to do nidhidhyaasanam. I am in nidhidhyasanam.

Yatra yatra mano yaathi, tatra tatra samaadhayaha, wherever the mind goes, it remains abiding in its own nature.

June 2008

Question: People go through ups and downs. It is said that you are your own friend and you are your own enemy. When you go through a low, where do you seek your strength / resources from? How do you know that your mind is telling you the right thing or it is just going along with what you want to do?

Answer: In spiritual pursuit you ultimately seek help from Ishvara. Helplessness is the problem. Aatmaiva aatmano bandu, Aatmaiva ripu Aatmanaha. The message from the Gitaa here is ‘do not put yourself down’. This is a major source of a human being’s problem; putting oneself down.

Putting one self down is connected to one’s self esteem. I feel I am not worth anything. Self esteem is not ego, it is self estimate. To estimate is to put a value on something. Self estimate is putting a value on one self. We all create some frame work based on which we evaluate ourselves. We all have a self esteem; we all put a value on our self, on who we are as a person. This self esteem can be very high (thinking very highly of oneself) or it can be very low (thinking of oneself as good for nothing). Besides being high and low, can also be realistic or unrealistic. It can be unrealistically high (when I think I am ‘Gods gift to humanity’ and everyone should treat me that way) and it can be unrealistically low (when I think I am ‘lower than the lowest’ and everyone is better than me). Or it is realistic more or less. I am no better, no worse than anybody else. Nothing is exceptionally wrong with me.

What is self esteem born of? Self esteem is born of self appraisal. How do I do self appraisal? I do it based on my assessment of myself, how good I am, how bad I am, how others think of me, behave with me and so on. Initially I appraise myself based on what others think of me. When I am young what ever my father says, my mothers says, I use as benchmarks to estimate myself. If father tells me all the time I am good for nothing I end up concluding I am useless. Hence self estimation is dependent upon self assessment and also others assessments of oneself. If every one around me keeps telling that I am useless, I start doubting myself. Thus self esteem has to do with others opinion of me and as a consequence my opinion of myself.

The more self esteem has to do with others opinion of me the more tenuous it is. The more I depend on myself for my self esteem better off I am. Why is this so? This is so because others can never know me properly. Really speaking nobody knows anybody for that matter. How can anybody know me well? I don’t know myself well enough. We surprise ourselves by our thoughts, by our actions. I am supposed to know myself the best, but if I don’t know myself fully, how can anybody else know me fully? Not possible. Even a spouse will not know me fully. That is why even after 40 you wonder why does he or she behave in this manner? What happened to her? Nothing happened to him or her. It is our knowledge which was incomplete. Thus nobody knows me well. If nobody knows me fully, how can I assess myself depending on somebody else’s opinion about me? But we are so vulnerable to other people’s opinions / comments. Somebody says something and we are so vulnerable that we obsess over if for days on end. They don’t know you, so they are going say things. If they really know you, they won’t say these things. But you can’t expect them to know you also.

I’ll tell you a story. There were two firemen that responded to a fire in the woods. They succeeded in putting it out and were returning to their base. Because of the direction of the wind while putting out the fire, one’s face became black with soot and the others was totally clean without a single black spot. As they returned they came upon a stream. One of them went to the stream and washed his face clean. The other did not. Which one of the two washed his face?

If you think the one with the soot on his face the answer is wrong. It was the one whose face was clean. Looking at eachother, and not seeing their own faces, the one with the clean face looked at his friends dirty face and thought “this is what my face looks like I need to clean it”. Thinking similarly the one with the dirty face looked at his friend’s clean face and did not feel the need to clean his face. They both concluded about their appearance on the basis of the others face.

Similarly we estimate ourselves on the basis of others’ opinions. We look at something from our own standpoint; from one angle. If we are little wiser, we may look at it from two angles. However we do not look at it from most relevant angles. If this is clear to me, I can’t really be affected by what other people think about me. So the more my self esteem depends on my own self appraisal, not on a reflected appraisal, the more realistic it is. Then I learn to be realistic about myself also. Not too high, not too low. So we are all average in the world. It is nice to be average. There is always somebody up, somebody below. It doesn’t matter how many people. I can merrily go along my way.

Self esteem is a big thing in dealing with oneself. Ups and downs in life are there, will be there and are to be expected. I don’t let it give me a label that I live with all the time. We become very vulnerable because we depend on others to make us feel good. That is why I need some acknowledgement. Everybody needs acknowledgement / acceptance. I don’t see one human being who doesn’t need to be acknowledged by some body. Even a Sannyasi will check with other Sannyasis. He will feel happy if others recognize him as a mahaatmaa. Some recognition, some acceptance is always necessary. We think peer problems are only for children. Peers are there at every stage. You look to your peers as a professional, as a parent and so on. That is where you get validated, by your peers. I am a doctor and I take my car to a mechanic and he says I am a good doctor. That is not a big acknowledgment for me. But if another doctor says that, then it is acknowledgment. Social work is also like that. It is a very human thing to seek acceptance, acknowledgement. There is nothing wrong with that. But then if my self esteem, my very identity depends on being acknowledged, I feel I am a nobody unless I am acknowledged then I make myself very vulnerable. It is not real also. In the sense you should not be dependent on others for this. So one can see how self esteem, need for acknowledgment, need to be accepted makes us vulnerable and gives rise to our ups and downs. In this I feel helpless when the world doesn’t respond to me as I would want it to respond to me. Everybody has similar needs. Everybody wants to be acknowledged by everybody, then we should have a mutual acknowledgement society. Like some world wide societies which are constantly giving each other awards. When this does not happen, you end up feeling deprived; unaccepted, unacknowledged, depressed, and helpless.

So where do we ultimately go to seek our strength if no one around us can provide it?

Ultimately we turn to the final source of strength, Isvara. Isvara is not only the source of strength but our own source as well. It is the one relationship that is fundamental as it is universal and invariable. All other relationships are variable, they are transient, and they change. They are dependent on many factors. This is one relationship that is constant as it is a relationship between an individual and the total. Every body has this connection between individual and total, in the form of Jeeva and Ishvara. If I can appreciate this fundamental connection, then this is not something that is unreliable or unstable. I am at once non separate from Ishvara. He is my strength, my resource, in fact my source. When my source becomes my resource, then my mind will not go wrong. When the fickle world becomes my resource, my mind will naturally be unenlightened and confused.

Swamini Pramananda

Sri Dhira Chaitanyaji

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