ATMA NIVEDANAM - SURRENDER / MERGER OF SELF WITH GOD
In the post on “why did God create man”, we heard God answering a question and saying thus: -
No joy of the senses, no joy of possession, can match the joy of God. Though I had everything from eternity to eternity, I began to think, "I am all-powerful, and Joy itself, but there is no one else to enjoy Me. I will make souls in My image, and clothe them as human beings with free choice, to see whether they will seek My material gifts and the temptations of money, wine, and sex; or whether they will seek the million times more intoxicating joy of My consciousness."
The Bhakta ultimately has sought and attained the million times more intoxicating joy of God consciousness!
Bro. Hari, very often speaks on Nava Vida Bhakti and takes us through the nine stages through and through with the aid of Bhajans. When he reaches Atma Nivednam, the last stage or the ultimate state, he says that he got stuck. For all the other stages, he got choice of bhajans.
However, when he reaches Atma Nivedanam, even after searching the entire Bhajanavali book, he could not find an appropriate bhajan. He says, "Swami perhaps had something to teach me, so I sat in silence and started contemplating and then it stuck me. At that stage, upon complete surrender, every bhajan is appropriate because, no matter what the wordings of the bhajans are, whether it is a namavali bhajan or a bhajan filled with bhava or any other type, the state of mind of the singer after reaching the stage of Atma Nivedanam, has to be the same."
Believe me, brothers and sisters, once a devotee reaches this stage or anywhere near the stage, both the statements given below are identically same for him/her.
1) Bhajans now mean nothing for him, because the purpose of bhajan is fulfilled. All rituals, all religious practice, all devotional practice followed till now, were immensely useful for him to reach the state of TOTAL SURRENDER but after reaching such state, he is freed of all such practice. Through all the devotional practices undertaken by him,which were MEANS, the END that is merger with the Lord, has been attained.
Or
2) Any bhajan is the same at his state of existence now. Once you have ceased to be a nadhi after merging in the prema sagara Sai Rama, percussion/ bhajan/ singer/ song/good singing/bad singing/shruthi/ apashruthi -All these mean nothing for you because none of these can now segregate/ divide/isolate you from the prema sagara and make you think on all the above mentioned things. The doll made of salt has merged in the lake of salt. The sugar cane has ceased to exist and only the sweet essence exists now. Is it possible for the essence to revert its status to the sugar cane any more?
The stage is explained as Atma Nivedanam, surrendering the SELF/ ,merger of SELF in God supreme.
With folded hands, with prostrations to the Author of Srimad Bhagawatham, the author shall modify the wording ATMA NIVEDANAM to ATMA SAYUJYA or ATMA SAMYOG, because, at this stage, there is no one left to surrender/offer anything to anyone. It is complete merger of Jivatma with the Paramatman, the individual consciousness with the pure absolute universal consciousness.
THE SURRENDERER HAS BEEN SURRENDERED ULTIMATELY.
THE SURRENDERER HAS BEEN SURRENDERED ULTIMATELY.
In the next concluding post on SURRENDER, we will consolidate all the important learning in many previous posts on surrender and join all the learning to make a Garland of Surrender, Garland of Atma Samyog!!
Love.
Sairam. The contemplation of today's post - His words are ringing in the ears -
ReplyDelete"I separated Myself, from Myself, to Love Myself" - such was the purity when we first were born. And due to our own created ego deluded from this purity to fall pray to the Bhava Sagaram and while going thru this cycle of birth & death of the ego filled individual identity, with SAI's grace, having given the chance to swim in His cascade of Love beams, get relieved from the Bhava Sagaram by Atama Nivedanam / Atam Samyaog.
Highlight of today's post - Hari Bahjana Bina Bhajan - detail explanation in Samarpan booklet. The line "Japa Dhyana Bina Samyog Nahin" - Samyog - Union with GOD cannot happen without japa & dhyana. this one line is enough to get indepth and exist as that Supreme Silence - SAI. Jai Jai Sairam
The following expression mentioned in the above post is the highest attainment one can ever hope to reach, as a singer/ as a participant in a bhajan session.
ReplyDelete" Any bhajan is the same at his state of existence now. Once you have ceased to be a nadhi after merging in the prema sagara Sai Rama, percussion/ bhajan/ singer/ song/good singing/bad singing/shruthi/ apashruthi -All these mean nothing for you because none of these can now segregate/ divide/isolate you from the prema sagara and make you think on all the above mentioned things. The doll made of salt has merged in the lake of salt. The sugar cane has ceased to exist and only the sweet essence exists now. Is it possible for the essence to revert its status to the sugar cane any more?"
Long back, in 2003, one of the senior devotees who has moved from Oman long back, told me, " Satyamurthy, when one reaches the ultimate stage in devotion, all bhajans mean the same, here can be no good or bad bhajan".
At that time, in 2003, assuming the role of bhajan co originator, filled with subtle ego, trying to bring in perfection in bhajan singing in sedan, the author did not realize the value of those words which flowed from that senior devotee.
It took 10 more years to really experience the truth behind those words.
This is the litmus test for all those who attend bhajan week after week. When and only when we reach a state that nothing in a bhajan session can bring us down from the state of absolute one ness with the divinity, when the sounds of percussion, voice of singer, rendering of any type of bhajan by any singer with any kind of voice, with any level as far as Brava, raga and tala cannot move us from our union with God, the purpose of attending bhajans is attained fully.
It is the same state , explained in the LOVE IS GOD post, the state in which Mira walks inside the sanctum sanctorum of Krishna in Ranchod and merges with Krishna, never to return, with never to be found with her body, dead or alive, when the priest opened the door next day.
Seems extremely impossible to think of reaching this state in bhajan singing and attending???? In sadhana, my dears, the lakshya or the goal should be kept always at an impossible level, then only we can hope to reach some where near that goal, in some birth or the other.
How ever, having said that, this is not a green card, an unconditional license for singers to take the above truth as a pretext to take any type of bhajan in a session, saying. " we should rise above the quality / rendering etc".
ReplyDeleteIn a community singing or devotional group singing, it is the core responsibility of each singer to practice his/ her bhajan to perfection or in other words, to choose only bhajans which suit them perfectly, about which they need have an iota of doubt whether the bhajan will come out nicely or not on the day when they actually sing live, so that they need not be ( rather, they SHOULD NOT BE) conscious of their singing at all, the singing has to be effortless, without any anxiety/ excitement/ fear about their rendering the bhajan and when one sings thus, the Bhava has to be as if " here I am singing my last bhajan to live the last moment in my life and after this bhajan, I shall die, to merge with SAI".
Love