Sathya Sai Vahini - Post 4

Chapter II

 From Truth to Truth

Questions may be asked, and doubts expressed by many about the state of a person after attaining fulfillment, the fullness of awareness. The person’s life will be saturated with unexcelled divine bliss (Ananda). The person will experience oneness of thought, emotion, and knowledge with all. 

The person will be in ecstasy, immersed in the One and Only, the eternal divine Principle, for that alone can confer joy during the process of living. Genuine joy is this and no other. God is the embodiment of eternal ever-full joy. 

Those loyal to Indian (Bharathiya) culture, whatever sect, or faith they claim as their special mold, accept this axiom: God is the highest source of joy. This conclusion (Matha) they accept as dearest and most pleasurable (Abhimatha).

 

Self is fullness and bliss is wholeness

Fullness means wholeness. Wholeness implies One and not two or three. There cannot then be any place for the individual. When an individualized Atma or soul (Jivi), the particularized differentiated self, has become whole and full, there is no possibility of its return to the consciousness of the objective world — such doubts may arise in the minds of many, but these doubts are not correct. 

When the individualized soul becomes fixed in the totality (Samashti), it loses all ideas of distinction and is ever in the consciousness of the totality, the One that subsumes the many. 

The person will then be aware that the Reality of each is the Reality of all and that that Reality is the One Indivisible Atma. The person will not exhibit any consciousness of distinction between individuals.

The Divine that it knows as the core of each “thing and being” is now recognized by it as the Divine that it itself is, so it will be deeper than ever in the fullness of bliss (Ananda). How can it then experience separateness? No, it cannot. 

The rays of that bliss illumine all religions. The sages and great wise people (rishis) became aware of the bliss. They communicated that experience to the world in easily understandable language. The unreachable moon is made known by pointing a finger in the direction where it can be seen! 

So too, they brought within the purview of people the truth that lies beyond the reach of mind and speech, according to the state of consciousness that each of them had attained. Their teachings were not only simple but varied to educate and elevate all levels of understanding.

Introspection

Ananda upon attainment of completeness / attaining self-realization, has been covered in many posts in the blog / in many satsangh talks in the youtube channel earlier.

Let us take up this “Ananda” as explained in Taittiriya Upanishad today, from the exposition given by Swami Krishnananda

1)              “To come in contact with any object for getting happiness, we have to forget what we really are and focus on the object. 

2)              This is atma-nasha, or destruction of selfhood, as it were, in a very significant manner so that, in every clinging to an object, there is a transference of ourselves to the particular object in which we are interested.

3)              Every kind of love, every type of attachment is a transference of oneself to another. 

4)              If a mother loves the child, the mother has gone; only the child is there. The consciousness of the mother has identified itself with the child's body in such an intense manner that she does not exist anymore. 

5)              This is the case with every kind of transference of consciousness to objects. 

6)              All our sorrows in life can be attributed to this peculiar trait in our consciousness to go outwardly—either positively as love, or negatively as hatred—in respect of certain things.

Now comes the question of love and happiness. 

How are we happy?

And how is it that when there is love for a particular object, happiness seems to manifest itself from within? 

This is mentioned in Taittiriya Upanishad when it discusses the nature of the innermost sheath in us, called the Anandamaya kosha.

7)              What makes us happy? When we come to the proximity of a loved object, we seem to be happy in our mind:  The nearer we come to it, the greater is the happiness we feel inside. The happiness that one feels at the proximity of the loved object is called the priya. 

8)             It is not the apex of happiness, because we have not possessed the object. But happiness increases when it is under our possession. 

But now comes the psychological feature. 

How is it that happiness arises at all? 

What do we mean by happiness? 

Can we define it? 

Is it a substance? 

Is it a thing? 

Is it an object? 

Is it material or non-material? 

Is it outside us or inside us? 

Or is it midway between the two? Where is it situated? 

9)             An analysis would make it clear that happiness is not in the object. If a particular object which attracts our attention is the source of happiness, then happiness should be really inside it, as a part of its nature. 

10)        Then, as the sun is shining for all equally and not merely for one person, the object concerned also should be a source of happiness to everyone in the world, if happiness is the real character of that object. But we will see on observation that this is not true.

11)        So, it is not true that the object is the source of happiness. 

In our study of the Aitareya Upanishad, we noted   that the Atman alone was; nothing else existed in the beginning. 

There is the selfhood in us, which is another name for the deepest non-externalisable consciousness. 

12)        Why does the mind move towards the object outside? Because it is not ours.  Our love for a thing is intense when it is not possessed by us. 

13)        The love that we feel is nothing but a movement of the mind towards the object for the purpose of grabbing it. 

But when we have already got it, where is the point in the mind moving towards it once again? So, the mind withdraws itself.

14)        The externalisation of the mind outside was for the purpose of grabbing the object of sense. But, when the purpose is served—when the object has come near us and we have got it—the mind need not think of it. 

15)        When the externalising force of the mind ceases on account of the satisfaction felt by the possession of the object, there is, for a fraction of a moment, a flash of the universality of our consciousness. 

16)        The mind ceases to think of the object because of having had the satisfaction of possessing it, and the cessation of the mind is the cessation of externality of consciousness. 

17)        The moment this cessation takes place, the non-externalised Self within us bursts out; and happiness is nothing but the experience of non-externalised consciousness. 

Thus, the happiness has come from us; it has not come from outside.”

If the exposition of this great sage seems difficult to understand and absorb, let us understand the same in simplest manner.

When a desired object is owned or attained, then for a fraction of seconds/minutes, mind withdraws from the external world and rests without any thought. At that moment, unknowingly, we are one with our true nature, the SELF. This oneness with our true SELF, for want of better expression at worldly level, is defined or explained as “Ananda”.

Now, from the inner most expression from source of an unnamed realized seer, a Jivanmukhta

“All these expressions, bliss or Ananda, are valid only for the human beings outside of me. To me, all these are not relevant. There is nothing outside me for me to experience it as “Joy” or “Ananda”. I just exist. I AM I”.

When Swami writes about the one who has realized SELF, "The person’s life will be saturated with unexcelled divine bliss (Ananda)." He is writing for the seekers to know about the state of a realized seer, not from the realized seer's side.

Continued….

Love.