Shree Mahalakshmi Narayan Shakti Peetham

The impossibility to even recognize that we are in bondage is a worse form of bondage than real bondage. To know that we are bound is a great virtue. But to think we are free even while we are bound, and not be able to recognize the kind of bondage in which we are – there are no words to describe this most idiotic condition of human nature.

The beginning of sadhana is the consciousness of suffering. We must be immensely aware that we are in a state of agony. The bondage that we are referring to here is not an ordinary insufficiency that we have in our workaday life. It is a malady that has crept into our very existence.

Our total life is free movement on our part. But there is a root within us that is weeping because of this bondage, due to which the soul itself suffers, is the bondage of existence itself. To believe that we are really existing is ignorance on our part. The fact is that we are in the process of movement. We have moved continuously from previous lives to the present life, and we shall move from this present life to future lives. The movement is such that it is continuous, like the flow of the river. It was the recognition of Buddha’s wisdom that the evaluation that one truly exists in a state of stability is bondage. We are pushed forward by the requirements of our future incarnation, and also pushed from behind by the actions that we performed in our previous lives. We are propelled from both sides. The previous life’s consequences urge us to move onward, and the possibilities of the future life pull us from the front.

This fact is not known to us. Ignorance is sometimes bliss, as it is well said. Total ignorance looks like total bliss. That we are caught up in a whirlpool of evolutionary process and we are helplessly driven in a direction of which we have no knowledge at all, that we cannot even lift a finger of our own accord unless forces outside us cooperate with us, that we cannot breathe, we cannot think, and we cannot sleep, the heart cannot beat, the lungs cannot perform their functions unless forces transcendent to our personality operate – this is not known to us.

The consciousness of the nature of one’s bondage is the beginning of sadhana. This is what is told to us in the Yoga Vasishtha, in its description of the stages of attainment. “Something is very wrong with me right from the beginning. I do not know my past, I do not know my future, and even today, just at this moment, I cannot understand what circumstances I am passing through.” This is the beginning of wisdom, and is called subhecha in the language of the Yoga Vasishtha – wanting to know what is good. Though the nature of the good is not actually known, there is at least a desire to know it. Subhecha is the first stage of sadhana: We do not want to be bad; we want to be good.

The next stage of sadhana is an effort to find out what is good. It is not enough if we merely want the good; we must know where the good lies, and strive for it. This is self-analysis, vicharana. Satsanga, study, attending discourses of mahatmas, worship, japa sadhana, are all helpful in investigating into the nature of the problem and then deciphering the nature of the ultimate truth. These first two stages, subhecha and vicharana, are mostly the kindergarten stages of spiritual practice, and yet they are difficult enough for a person who is not acquainted with this stage of wisdom, just as a person who does not know cycling cannot sit on a bicycle even for a moment when he is learning.

By such kind of continuous, assiduous investigation into one’s own bondage and what is good for oneself, the mind which is fattened by being fed through such a life becomes thinner and thinner; that which was once opaque due to the desire for enjoyment of the objects of the world – due to which, the light of the Self within could not be reflected, as sunlight cannot pass through a brick and can pass only through a glass, in the earlier stages, due to the thickened form of the mental process, the very idea of there being something called the Atman within cannot be possible, but after assiduous practice in this manner, the mind becomes thin. That condition is called tanumanasi, a threadlike condition of the mind where it is transparent and reflects the true nature of everything.

According to the Yoga Vasishtha, these are the first three stages of actual sadhana, spiritual practice. By continuing this practice for a long, long time throughout one’s life, the sattva, or the purity in one’s person, flashes forth, and the sun of knowledge begins to dazzle through this mirror-like thin mind that has been attenuated through the absence of desires. This causes a pure sattvic transparent condition of the mind, free from any kind of distraction or lethargy, i.e., rajas and tamas. This in itself is a great achievement that we have flashes of insight in our sadhana. This state is called sattvapatti.

Because of the bliss that we enjoy by the experience of this light of Self emanating from within one’s own self through the mind that is so transparent, we do not feel a desire for anything that is outside; we feel that we are sufficient in ourselves. Our very being is a joy to us, and we do not want anything from any other thing. Detachment takes place spontaneously in this stage. This is the stage of asamsakti, non-attachment. It is not the non-attachment that has been inflicted by deliberate austerity, but a spontaneous event that is taking place on account of the knowledge abiding in the sadhaka – asamsa. We have to take several births, normally speaking, to attain this state of asamsakti or sattvapatti.

Total detachment is unknown to mankind. We always think of something, either in the mind or socially. Total satisfaction within one’s own self, free from having any desire to contact outside oneself, is something unimaginable for the common man. But such a state is reached by the intense practice of self-investigation – asamsakti, as it is called.

Then comes the higher state, called padarthabhavana. We do not recognise that the world is really material. It is no more an object. All the things in the world appear as a congealed form of universal power. It is as if the motion of universal force gets concentrated into these knots appearing as space and time, to which we give an appellation of objects, persons, things, etc. There are no persons, no things, no objects ultimately. They are concentrated pressure points of universal force. We will never see anything material afterwards. It is all one inundating force permeating all things, looking like objects, persons and things. This is padarthabhavana.

When such a state of universal recognition of a pervading force is attained, the only thing that remains for a person – who is really not a person but is a centre of force – is to identify one’s own localised point of existence with this universal force so that what exists is not a perceived sadhaka of universal power, because this sadhaka has gone into the very bosom of the sea of power. Instead, it is cosmic prana, cosmic mind, cosmic intellect, cosmic consciousness, whatever we may call it. This state of immersion of one’s own individuality into the pervading presence of universal force is true liberation. In that condition, whether we cease to be this body or do not exist as this body, it makes no difference. While we exist in the physical body even with this realisation, we may be called a jivanmukta purusha in the language of the scriptures. The mind is not concentrated on the body; it is concentrated on that to which this body belongs.