Thursday, November 19, 2020

Sadhana Panchakam - Post 35

Surrender or Faith in the scriptures is the vital element that is added into Mananam by this step. The path necessarily involves a combination of Effort and Surrender.

This Step comes as a warning sign for the serious spiritual aspirant: “Do not take the Upanishads lightly. Be serious about your search for God, especially from here onwards.” 

Combination of Effort & Surrender

The head and the heart must unite in our quest for the Truth. Both are necessary – deep inner intellectual reflection as well as surrender of the heart to the Divine.

i) If surrender is absent, then the effort is likely to become egoistic; the ego in our effort can poison it. So effort has to be balanced by surrender. 

ii) If effort is absent, one’s surrender becomes vain and unworthy, almost slavish. In surrender without effort, we run the risk of being driven by emotion or sentiment, and there lies the danger – that is what Fanaticism is made of. 

Main goal in spiritual sadhana is to transcend our ego. It is in the context that Effort and Surrender must go together in perfect alignment.

We start putting in all-out efforts / Purushartha in Sadhana and if surrender is lacking, the belief that "I am doing sadhana", where, ‘I’ refers to our ego, that belief itself may take us away from our goal to transcend our ego.

And, we cannot sit quiet, giving up all efforts, saying that we have surrendered to God and He shall take us to the goal of realization. 

The saying "Do your best and leave the rest" applies as much or in fact, applies most in Sadhana. We have to do out very best as far as spiritual sadhana and rest in total surrender, allowing Lord to take over and guide us and elevate us in our path to reach and merge with Him.

On this spiritual path we are restricted only by the subtlety and sharpness of our Intellect, and the intensity and stability of our Faith. Faith, going hand in hand with the intellect, is the only way open for us. 

Faith could arise due to the authority and reverence in which we hold the scriptures, or it could be due even to the authority of a Guru whom we love and in whose words we trust. This initial basis of faith is vital, for it keeps us focused on the pursuit of the Goal. 

When well-nurtured, faith grows and grows with time. As from seed to tree, so also from faith to conviction. Given the water of logic and the sunlight of enquiry, faith begins to experience change. 

The ultimate test of faith is actual Discovery. A series of experiences, each one taking us closer and closer to the Goal, marks the route to the ultimate Experience.  

In this process of transforming faith into conviction and culminating it in Discovery, we have a perfect picture of what the purpose of Vedantic Sadhana is. 

Veda is Wisdom, the supra-sensory experiences, the seer being the one who ‘sees’ or ‘hears’ the resonance of OM, the eternal sound in extra-ordinary moments of enlightenment. Vedic hymns represent the expressions of those experiences without any human effort in composition.  

Wisdom of Vedanta and renunciation, ascetics of purified nature, dwell in silence of the forests at the end of their lives in the supreme immortal world of Brahman.  

Sankara clarifies that with Mind purified by scriptures, enlightened teachers and restraint of the senses aid realization of the self. Scriptures remain neutral like sun light, but do not reveal truth. It is necessary that one should study vedic scriptures as the means for realization of Brahman, and not only reading them. 

Swami says, 

“From the principle of Brahman emerged Akasha (ether). From Akasha, Vayu (air) originated. From Vayu, Agni (fire) emerged. From Agni, Jala (water) emerged. From Jala came Prithvi (earth). From Prithivi, Oshadhi (vegetation) emerged. Oshadhis gave rise to Annam (food) and man is born out of food. 

Thus, you can see that man and Brahman are intimately related. On this basis, Lord Krishna declared:

 Mamaivamso Jeevaloke Jeevabhuta Sanathana” (the eternal atma in all beings is a part of My Being). Without the principle of Brahman, nothing can exist, be it ether, air, fire, water, earth, vegetation or food.”

 

(SSS- Volume 33)




 

Love.




 


No comments:

Post a Comment