study circle

SESSION 6

“What is spirituality? Spirituality is not merely singing bhajans, performing worship, visiting temples, going on pilgrimages, or undertaking any other good activity. Recognizing the oneness of all beings is spirituality.
To understand the principle of Truth and visualize the blissful form of Divinity, hidden in the objective world is true spirituality. But few are making any effort in this direction.
People sit for meditation, close their eyes and start imagining a particular form. But these forms are only reflections and not the Reality.”
--- Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai

Notes:

Most people believe that doing namasmaran, worshipping a god of their choice, visiting temples, taking bath in holy rivers, making offerings in temples, getting certain rituals done by engaging priests and such other activities constitute spirituality. Swami disagrees with that interpretation given to such activities. No doubt they are good actions by themselves and may confer temporary worldly benefits on the devotee, but they cannot be considered as a path to the achievement of the final goal of human birth.

What is the goal of human birth and what is the path to it? Swami often says that man came from the Atman, the Supreme Consciousness and he has to go back to It. The universe and all its contents, ae projections of the one Consciousness, and all have to ultimately merge back into It. This is the basic principle of Truth and Swami says that the understanding of this principle and achieving this goal is the true aim of spirituality. Of course it is not just the intellectual understanding, but experiencing the presence of that Truth or Divinity which is hidden in all the creation. Swami considers only this as true spirituality, and says that few people really make any effort towards this. Those, who do not understand the true implcations of this statement may ask, why Swami has all along been laying stress on namasmaran and certain other religious practices, to be undertaken by His devotees. He knows that few people can straight away understand the meaning of real spirituality and they have to be slowly led into it. But, most people get stuck at the religious level and stagnate. This is in reality what is known as samsara. Worship of forms should ultimately lead to the formless. Basically it should be understood that all religious practices should lead the practitioner ultimately to the realization of the Atman, residing inside himself, and that in turn should result in the feeling and experiencing of the oneness of all creation. Then he realizes that all that exists is the One Supreme Consciousness hidden in the many. Swami said on another occasion that man can attain liberation only when he realizes that there is only ONE and not two.That is to say that he should move from the dvaitic to the advaitic experience. If all the religious activities, man engages himself in, do not lead him to this ultimate realization, they will remain only as empty rituals.

A person who has realized the oneness of all creation is no longer affected by the feelings of hatred or attachments. He has then understood and realized that all that exists is the Atman only and that he himself is an integral part of that apparent multiplicity. This state is really the state of liberation or Mukhti. Swami often says that seeing oneself in everything and everything in oneself is real love. He advises that everything one does must be linked and be in tune with the functioning of the Totality.He cites the example of the functioning of our own body. Every cell in our body functions for the welfare of the whole body. The body of ours like all others is condensed energy which itself is a manifestation of the Supreme Consciousness. The manifested Universe is all energy and nothing but energy, which is partly free and partly condensed into matter.Thus the Universe is the body of God or the Supreme Conciousness and each one of us is like a cell in that body and hence all the work we undertake is part of the functioning of that universal body. When one performs all activities with that knowledge and attitude, one’s ego slowly disappears.Then the individualized consciousnes suddenly expands and becomes one with everything and with every being in the Universe. That is the state of real bliss. Swami says that nobody undertakes this type of sadhana.

The above state can be achieved only by the practice of meditation. But Swami says that very few people adopt the correct procedure in their so-called practice of.meditation. He criticizes the way people sit with closed eyes and imagine some form and contemplate on it. Imagination is a product of the functioning mind. If the mind is functioning, and focussed on any form, it is not true meditation. It is only contemplation. All imagined forms do not mean God. He says that the depiction God in a variety of forms, by people belonging to various faiths, is only the product of egoistic minds. All images are only reflections and not the original.They are all man-made gods! Meditation has nothing to do with religious beliefs. Anyone belonging to any religious group, even those who have no religious affiliations or who are atheists can undertake meditation. True meditation is on the formless consciousness which is the indwelling Atman, the Self in all. We shall discuss about this in greater detail in some of the future sessions. (To be continued)