Chinmayananda Saraswati

Dear All,

The detachment referred by Acharya above is termed as vairagya in the path of wisdom or even dispassion.

Vairagya is the second of the 4 qualifications of a spiritual aspirant in the path of Jnana/wisdom.

The first is Viveka or discrimination between real and unreal.

Once the discrimination is made, then the second qualification of detaching from / disassociating from / dispassion about what has been identified as unreal, is the second qualification of an aspirant.

The glittering world full of objective pleasure/ temptation is all unreal. Any thing that cannot exist permanently as it exists at one point of time is unreal or ephemeral.

Only when the mind withdraws from its attraction for all unreal things in the world, can one develop more satwic qualities, can develop more focus on the object of meditation, can reduce the flow of thoughts and can ultimately hope to be be face to face with the object of meditation, i.e., can have a glimpse of inward experience of the object of meditation - God.

As Chinmaya puts it, the vairagya or detachment has to be at mental level and not at physical level. What does this mean?

A sanyasi may discard dressing, just sit with one single piece of cloth or kaupyana, may put his body to rigorous sacrifice, reduce food, reduce sleep and take up intense austerities to achieve the goal of Realization. But all his austerities at physical level may fail totally if the sanyasi happens to see a beautiful woman passing by with lustful thoughts even for a moment. His detachment has been at physical level whereas the mind is still a beast. 

On the other hand, Janaka did lead life of a king, enjoying all the pleasure of a king, lived in palace and dressed as a king but was a truly realized soul. His renunciation was at mental level and not at physical level. 

Thus, enjoying the worldly comforts itself is not a sin. All that is required is a perfect understanding at all times that these worldly attainments, woman or wealth or attire or power etc. are not our ultimate goal, nor are they permanent and valid for all times in our life. 

The real transformation is within, the real withdrawal is within, the real experience is within, the real peace or joy is always within, never ever in the outside world. This can be achieved only on withdrawing ourselves mentally from the world, at least during our sadhana/meditation, to begin with.

Love.

PS - Speaking of austerities at physical level, we take up fasting during Ekadasi, Shivaratri, take up difficult pilgrimages undergoing lot of hardships, attend akhanda bhajans sacrificing sleep etc.

All the above austerities are indeed very important and very noble ideas. 

However, the basic purpose of taking up all these hardships are to purify our mind, detach our mind from world and attach to God.  

Author recalls his childhood days when his own grand mother, fasting on vaikunta ekadasi, used to take him along with her for 2 to 3 continuous movies of Sivaji!!!!!!!!!

Any sacrifice/fasting/other hardships without focussing our mind totally on God is like taking up right thing with incomplete focus. 

A night of fasting should see the devotee totally focussed on his/her chosen God, totally detached from the world and immersing on Godly thoughts to an extent as though that night is the last night given to us for living with our Lord and after that night, we may not exist at all!

Love.

Swami Vivekananda

Divyatman,

This is covered in a subtle manner in a post under Surrender theme where it is explained how you Love God outside you, you Love God within and then you Love the God in all.

Life history of all the realized Masters in our Bharath stands testimony for the above quote.

Ramakrishna/Sivananda/Yogananda/Ramana/Chinmaya/ Anandamayi Maa - Take any one of these Masters and see their history.

They turned towards the world and took up their mission in their own intuitive manner, once they realized LOVE/SELF within. 

Till one discovers God/SELF within, it is very difficult for him to transform others. 

No matter how and where each individual is existing as far as spiritual evolvement is concerned, he/she is essentially divine and their inner Divinity/inner Spirit silently recognizes and responds 100% only to the call/gospel/writings/teachings  of a realized Master.

Often, one may attend workshops/seminars/spiritual satsangh and hear many scholarly people or even head of an ashram talking on spiritual subjects but such talks do not transform them. At best, they return home and appreciate the speaker's knowledge and that is it.

Whereas, when we come face to face with a realized Master and of course, if our prarabdha karma has reached a stage where our real spiritual transformation has to begin, even few words, even silence, even a stroke of the realized Master touches the core of our being and our inner transformation starts at that moment!

Love God without/within /in all

A devotee starts adoring, worshipping God with form, develops single pointed devotion which evolves to total love for the chosen God.

After several years/births of such love for God, the devotee reaches the stage where he discovers Divinity within his heart, not as his chosen God with form but as LOVE DIVINE.

There is a huge difference in the texture and quality and depth in all the service which the devotee had been rendering to the world during various stages of his spiritual evolvement and the service which flows spontaneously after he has discovered God as LOVE within.

Once he has realized God, his walk is love, his talk is love, his action is love, his silence is love, his service is love, his writing is love, his gospel is love, his very existence is LOVE, LOVE and JUST LOVE.

Today, all sevaks of all spiritual or social organizations must take note of this secret - "IF YOUR MIND SAYS THAT YOU HAVE DONE SOME SERVICE, THEN THE SERVICE IS NOT WITH TOTAL SELFLESS LOVE. THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF EGO IN YOUR SERVICE, HOW SO EVER SUBTLE IT MIGHT BE!"

Selfless service can flow only when you have lost cognizance of your small self which is ego and exist as big SELF or PURE LOVE.

Who else but a realized master vivekananda can give this slogan "BE AND THEN MAKE" to us? 

The author modifies the slogan with salutations to Vivekananda and  re-words the same as "BE , JUST BE AND LET THE WORLD TURN TOWARDS  YOU, TO BE MADE"

Once you exist as a God man, a realized yogi, then, few chosen ones, whose life has reached the right moment for undergoing inner transformation, will just reach you by some turn of events and submit themselves to you, to be MADE, to be molded by you, to transform from a simple clay (their existence as man-man) to be chiseled  by you (by your teachings/by your very existence as a message) to be transformed to the beautiful Krishna (God man).

Love.

Anandamayi Ma

Dear All,

We go to a cinema hall to watch a movie.

We are seated comfortably and there is a pure white screen in front of us.

At the designated time for start of the show, the projector man enters the projector room and switches it on.

On the white screen, advertisements appear, the censor board's certificate appears and then there appears a movie with 3 hours of entertainment with many forms, with different names, many scenes depicting many emotions. 

Along with various scenes, we laugh when the characters in the movie do a comic scene, we cry in an emotion filled scene, we get active in the fight scenes, we smile and feel satisfied when the hero and the heroine stand united at last, after so many hurdle!

Have we ever thought about what would be happening to the pure white screen on which so many forms are apparently doing so many actions? 

Perhaps we have never thought about this till now.

Does the pure screen get affected by the ever changing scenes projected on it, though we as on lookers get totally moved by various scenes?

For the screen, how does it make any difference whether any movie is played on it, whether the hero laughs or cries or jumps or fights or dies on the screen?

From the morning hours when the cleaner enters the hall to clean the hall and up to the end of the last midnight show and then until the cleaner comes on the next day morning, the screen exists there, still, pure, white, unmoved by any thing projected on it. 

Maa puts it beautifully in the above quote when she says "though the dance of creation is happening around me in the hall of eternity, I shall remain the same".

What does the above quote in the light of the movie and screen example actually mean?

God Almighty, after having created this universe, stands totally disassociated with the universe though each and every object is created by Him, sustained in Him and dissolve in Him.

The screen without which, no movie can ever be played in the hall and yet, the screen  has no association with any movie which is being projected on the screen. 

The screen was there (before the show), the screen is exactly existing as pure (during the show) and the screen continues to exist as pure (after the show).

Same is the state of existence of realized Masters, Maa being one of the few such masters. 

100s of visitors/followers/ashram inmates may be interacting with Swami Sivananda / Chinmayananda / Anandamayi Maa / Rama / Krishna / Ramana etc.

Several actions may be going on during the day in which the masters themselves may seem to be actively involved. 

However, the real pure existence of the masters which is their SELF/ATMAN/PURE CONSCIOUSNESS has absolutely no association, no connection with any of their actions happening around them, just like the screen which has no association, no link with the motion which is on, on the screen. 

The author stands as witness to the above truth. He was seated near Maa Amrutanandamayi few years before in Her ashram. There was so much of action going on, She was apparently discussing about some problems in Her medical college with some college authorities. In between, She was attending to scores of devotees approaching Her, getting Her hug, weeping and crying on getting Her hug, crying out their personal problems to the saint.

The author watched all the drama with amusement and his inner state of existence aligned with Maa's state of existence and in that very instant, he could almost see through the total inner silence of  Maa.  

All the college problems, devotee's tears etc. were like the motion picture on the screen as explained above whereas the Saint was silent and still within, exactly like the pure awareness screen. 

Her eyes fell on the author, the state of inner silence of the author and Maa were totally communicated to each other in the depth of silence and both smiled, to convey that "I KNOW WHAT AND  WHERE  YOU ARE".

Few words were exchanged which were adequate proof that both knew each other's existence till eternity. The author reserves the conversation that happened between the two as it is purely personal though he is perfectly aware that anyone who reads what Maa conveyed to the author about him would be amazed to the core!

Love.