Sadhana Panchakam - Post 49

Human relationships are very delicately poised, due to the chemistry involved in the intermingling of people. In the context of human relationships, this step risks being misapplied. More often, it is simply beyond the reach of most people. 

Here, the context is the life of an advanced seeker. The principle involved is a two-way agreement:

“We should not let people around us become an obstacle to our progress, nor should we become an obstacle to their progress.”

Handling Sattwa with Caution

“Meshes of obligations” needs to be clarified. When a good deed is done, the receiving party is placed under an unsaid obligation. Such obligations can multiply and add to the web of entanglement in the world. To a spiritual aspirant, this is not a thing to be encouraged. But its discouragement requires great tact and care.

1.   Receiving the Kindness of Others: To the man of God, people are bound to be very kind, adoring, reverent and ready to be of any service. They are, as it were, at his beck and call. How does he prevent them ruling, or perhaps, ruining his life by their kindness.  A man of realization or a true Godman, never falls into the trap of all these and stays away from all favors. 

2.  Being Kind to Others: Nor should others become obligated to him. The man of God, impelled by his rare, magnetic, Sattwic qualities, could become deeply sympathetic to others and take their burdens upon his shoulders. 

Some impersonal element needs to be maintained. This means that when he does help others, he should feel that it is God who is really helping them through him. Then he frees people from being obligated to him.

3.     Being a Guide to Others: A third way of getting entangled is by taking on the role of a Guru when it is unsanctioned or unsolicited. 

Nobody on this planet is free from having critics. Even Sri Rama and Sri Krishna had their share of critics; Jesus and Prophet Mohammed also had theirs.

For most of us, a stoical attitude is the only recourse. This means facing the adversity boldly without taking things personally, remaining inwardly impersonal, indifferent and untouched. “Be indifferent” is best described as developing an “impersonal personality”.

Sankara, when he commends that unnecessary attention of people should be avoided, he recommends that they should leave themselves in the hands of the unknown SELF, surrendering fully to that SELF. 

What transpired between Krishna and Arjuna was not ordinary extended conversation between two people in samsara but a communication by the Divine to the human in a fraction of moment.

Neither Krishna nor Arjuna did utter a word on the battlefield, the silent dialogue which perhaps Vyasa alone heard it in solitude, with his senses and mind restrained and even the intellect standing still. 

It was Vyasa's grace which enabled Sanjaya to narrate it to Dhritrashtra saying this is the dialogue that took place between them. 

Knowledge can only be communicated, but spiritual awareness of the SELF and the Bliss of Beatitude can only be experienced as something as explained in Katha Upanishad, “which is not within the range of vision, no one ever having seen it, by heart, by thought and by mind alone apprehended, perhaps not even by those except when they declared 'It is”. 

Assistance not needed should neither be desired nor be encouraged. Virtue is not to be sourced externally but recollected internally. 

The peace of the self is established and enlightenment dawns when as said in Katha Upanishad, all mental activities together with Mind cease their activities, and the intellect itself does not stir, that, they say, is the supreme goal.  

Swami Vivekananda’s writing on Jivanmukta is given below. You would find the connection between today’s verse and the following para, only when you get deep into the subtlety of the words of the great Master, Swami Vivekananda.

 
“It is easier to become a Jivanmukta (free in this very life) than to be an Acharya. For the former knows the world as a dream and has no concern with it; but an Acharya knows it as a dream and yet has to remain in it and work. It is not possible for everyone to be an Acharya. He is an Acharya through whom the divine power acts. 

Sri Ramakrishna is a force. You should not think that his doctrine is this or that. But he is a power, living even now in his disciples and working in the world. I saw him growing in his ideas. He is still growing. Shri Ramakrishna was both a Jivanmukta and an Acharya.

The Jivanmukta (‘the living free’ or one who knows) alone is able to give real love, real charity, real truth, and it is truth alone that makes us free. Desire makes slaves of us, it is an insatiable tyrant and gives its victims no rest; but the Jivanmukta has conquered all desire by rising to the knowledge that he is the One and there is nothing left to wish for."

 

 Love.