Radiant Immortal Atman! Beloved devotees of the Lord! You are aspiring souls who aspire after the good life—a life that justifies our existence as rational beings, a life that is worthy of our existence as beings who are aware and who are endowed with the power to think and reason, to observe, understand and infer, to whom there is no limit to knowledge, and as beings who know how to profit by our existence.
Infinite possibilities lie within the reach of the human individual, purely because the human individual is an amsa or a part of the Cosmic Being Whom we call God. You are a part of that Being Whom all religions, all philosophies, all illumined and enlightened realised souls have known, have experienced to be, and have declared as being omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Your very nature, your true identity, your svarupa, is identical with, none other than, essentially one with, the Supreme Being Who is also described as sarva ananta guna sampanna (having all virtues to an infinite degree).
How many of you make this truth the basis of your life? How many of you remember this truth, ponder this truth, first thing every morning when you wake up? How many of you constantly affirm this truth, assert the truth that you are inseparably linked up with the Divine, inseparably related to the Divine, inseparably a part of the Divine? Why do you not do it? Why do you not wake up and immediately become filled with the awareness “I am part of the Universal Spirit, anantakoti brahmanda nayaka, paratpara tattva (the Lord of innumerable crores of universes, the Supreme Truth, the Supreme Principle)”? Why do you think immediately of something mundane, something prosaic, something outside of you, something gross, material, earthly, bound in time and space? Why?
Have you ever wondered why “when I have the ability and the potential to enquire, seek and find, and when I have been given the opportunity, when the doors have been thrown wide open for my ascent into a state of absolute Divine-consciousness, why it is that I am still grovelling in this level in which I was born?” If you do not ask yourself this question and reflect upon it, who will do it for you?
Because all the scriptures, all the great realised souls, all the masters of wisdom again and again seek to declare to you: “You have neither birth nor death, neither bondage nor liberation; you have no name nor form; you are the Supreme Being, you are one with the Divine. Why are you unnecessarily weeping and wailing?” Jnanis say it, devotees say it, Sant Tulsidas says it, Kabirdas says it. Even the great acharya Ramanuja says that we are all like sparks that have come from a great blaze. A spark can also burn; it is fiery. Just as fire burns, you have got a potential; a spark has got a potential to create a blaze. When you have this ability, why is it you only think of small, ordinary, humdrum, mundane things which the Upanishad declares are alpa (little), in which there is no sukha (happiness) and which are asat (which have no enduring, permanent existence)?
The scriptures answer this question. It is because of the achintyasakti (inscrutable power) of parabrahman. It is because of maya. When Lord Narasimha came to Prahlada, Prahlada trembled and said: “O Lord, I am not afraid of You. The whole world is trembling before You because of Your terrific man-lion form—Narasimha avatara. But I am not afraid of You, I am afraid of Your maya. I am afraid of Your power of delusion, maya.” If Prahlada, who constantly thought about God, constantly uttered His Divine Name, constantly longed for Him and Him alone, if he says, “I am afraid of Your maya,” if he feared maya, how much must you be cautious, how much must you fear it.
Therefore, always endeavour to somehow or other constantly retain your direction towards God, your inner awareness of your divinity, of being a part of Him, in order that maya may not delude you completely. That is the one thing needful if you do not want to allow this delusion, this maya, to fill your heart, pervade your mind and take possession of your consciousness.
The Lord Himself says: “This divine maya of Mine is difficult to overcome.” But, it is not that He only brought maya into being and did not show the way out. It is not so. Mameva ye prapadyante mayametam taranti te (Those who take refuge in Me alone, they cross over this maya). The supreme Cosmic Being has very clearly indicated how She can be crossed and who can cross Her.
The conclusive and ultimate assurance, ultimate declaration from the Gita is: “ma suchah—do not grieve. You have nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. I will see that maya cannot touch you. Do not grieve.” The Gita starts with grief, terrible grief and agony—the tormented soul of Arjuna. But the supreme culminating point of the Gita is: “ma suchah—O Arjuna, do not grieve.” And grief-stricken Arjuna was no more grief-stricken.
Our constitution gives us the right to vote. Even a beggar exercises his franchise when
So, waking up in the morning should not merely mean waking up into this maya-bazaar, waking up into this temporary world of pain and death. It should not only mean waking up into this little, confined, outer earth awareness. It should also simultaneously mean waking up into the awareness of your divinity which has been temporarily suspended in sleep. And keep up that inner wakefulness along with your outer physical wakefulness of the senses and the mind. Keep up the inner wakefulness of your svarupa. That is the great thing needful. That is what will make your life divine. That is what will take you, day by day, higher and higher towards the Goal Supreme. And this you have to do for yourself, with wisdom.
It is possible only if there is a keen longing for that Goal, a keen faith in your ability to reach it. Because there is the ability to reach it, God has made you educated, brought you into contact with scriptures, with great realised sages and their wisdom teachings, and brought you into an environment favourable, conducive, suitable and helpful to the unfoldment of your radiant divine nature. What has that supreme Cosmic Being not done? That Being has done everything; there is nothing that that Being has not done. We have to reciprocate, not emotionally or sentimentally, but earnestly and sincerely in life, in a living manner through jijnasa, mumukshutva and sadhana (desire to know, intense longing for liberation, and self effort, spiritual practice).
That is our privilege, our great privilege. If we lose this privilege then great is the loss. Therefore, we must realise every day, every dawn, every moment, the preciousness of what we are, the unparalleled, unique preciousness, value, the worth of what we are. If moving away from this awareness we think of things outside as being more worthy, more important, more precious, then deplorable is our lot. If we shift our sense of values from what is within, what we are, to something that is a passing appearance, phenomenon, then great is our loss. To allow this to happen would be throwing away an unparalleled golden opportunity that the Cosmic Being is proffering to us, offering to us.
Ponder this well. When you wake up in the morning, what do you wake up to? When you come into a state of awareness, what is that state of awareness? What is its level, what is its plane, what is its content, what purpose does it serve? Think deeply about it, and be a true jijnasu, a true mumukshu, a true seeker, a true devotee of the Supreme. Be a true part of Divinity, a true amsa of paramatma, and make your life divine. This is the greatest way in which you can bless yourself.
Just as there is full potential within each one of you for divine perfection, even so, like all the nine gems upon a golden plate, all things necessary for the supreme attainment have also been given to you. There could be no greater good fortune. Not to recognise this good fortune and fail to utilise it—there could be no greater misfortune than that. Both good fortune and misfortune are at our finger tips, in our hands. We must recognise the difference and do what is needful. That is the important need of the moment!
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Sivananda Yoga (Yoga DVD) Diwali Prasad booklet - "Kanakdhara Stotram" ( Sanskrit/ Gujarati/ English) Divya Jivan (Gujarati)/ "Amrut Putra" (Gujarati) Atam Mahek (Gujarati) / Fragrance ( English) - Swami Adhyatmananda |
Yoga, A Way of Life - Sri Swami Adhyatmananda
"Yoga and Health" - a complete book with Question & Answer section by Sri Swami Adhyatmananda
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