The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-8

Perfect knowledge

A person wishes to go into the depths of an ocean after tying himself with chains to the shore. He wants to go deep into the depths of the ocean and also wants to know what difficulties, hurdles, he will have to face. We shall have to tell him that his first problem is that he is clinging to the chains on the shore. The second one is to learn to swim to save himself, instead of directly going into the depths of the ocean. The third hurdle would be the experience of the depth which is like death. As he goes down he will start losing himself. And there is only death when you reach the final depth.

The world is all around us. And we have tied ourselves to many things in the world. This strong hold is the greatest hurdle on our way to the depths of the self. Buddha used to tell his Bhikshus - Sannyasis - that life is a great deception and he who comprehends the meaning of this maxim, loses his grip of life. So try to understand this first maxim - life is a deception. Things are not that which they appear to be. Here what we hope for is never fulfilled. We try to find happiness and we get unhappiness. We try to find life and get death. We want fame and nothing remains in our hands except infamy. We try to get riches, but the inner poverty goes on increasing. We desire for success and the whole life is a long story of failures. We start for victory and return defeated.

It is essential to understand this deception of the entire life. If a sadhak who is desirous of going within himself realizes that life is a great deception, then the hold of life on him will be loosened - will go away. His hand on the chain fastened at the shore will be free at once, We know this but we do not see it, we ignore it. We want to see, to persuade ourselves, that life is not deception. We desire to deceive ourselves thus.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-7

Tantric path to super energy

Tantra is a philosophy of nonduality. It accepts life in its totality - even the wicked, the inauspicious, the darkness. Tantra accepts them not with a view to treat darkness as darkness or to treat bad as bad or to treat inauspicious as inauspicious, but because there is a possibility of transforming inauspicious into auspicious. There can be light by cleansing darkness. What we call matter is in its deepest sense, nothing else but God? Tantra is nonduality. It is the acceptance of that One only.

That which is bad is also one form of that One. That which is inauspicious is also a form of that One.

There is no condemnation of anything in Tantra.

G.M.S. Torrel has written one book, GRADES OF SIGNIFICANCE which means steps of greatness.

According to Tantra, differences that are found in life, are the differences in the importance of steps.

Even the first step is a part of the final step. If the first step is removed, there are no means to reach the last step of the temple. The ugly roots hidden in the ground are the life-giving source of the flowers blooming in the sky. If these ugly roots hidden in darkness are cut, there is no possibility of those flowers blooming in the sky. The unshapely stones buried in the foundation of the temple, take care of the golden-pitcher at the top of the temple. If they are removed, the golden-pitcher would fall down.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-6

Self energy from sex energy

Life can be viewed in two ways in all its layers. Life has two aspects - one is material, and the other is spiritual. It is necessary to examine sex also from these two directions. One aspect of sex is biological which is linked with the body and its particles. The other is of energy, of soul which is linked with the mind by consciousness. So it is necessary to comprehend the two words first. The first is biological energy which is related to life cells which constitute man's body. These life-cells are a part of the body.

This biological portion which we call semen or sex energy or call it by any name can be seen with our naked eyes. But there is another aspect which is linked with lt, and which can be called self energy or energy. We can call it sex energy or self energy. It is like an magnet. In a magnet there is a piece of iron which is seen by us and there is also a magnetic field on all its sides which is not seen. But if we keep iron pieces round it, the magnetic power draws them towards it. There is a field in which that power works. This iron piece will remain as an iron piece even if it loses its magnetic power. There will not be any difference in the weight of that piece, there will not be any difference even in its constitution, there will not be any difference in its form, but It will have one fundamental difference in it, and that is, there will no magnetic power in it, the power of attraction will have gone.

I told you this as an illustration.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-5

Process of progress

Nonviolence, nonpossessiveness, nonstealing, desirelessness and awareness are the fundamental vows of the art of sannyas. Sannyas like life is an art. Only those who are experts in the art of life can achieve sannyas. The art of sannyas goes beyond life. Only those who can experience life in its totality are able to enter sannyas. It is the next step of life. God is that building which is reached by ascending the ladder of samsar - worldly life. So the first point I would like to make clear is that there is no opposition - no contrast between the samsar and the sannyas. They are the two camps of the same journey. Sannyas evolves and blooms in the samsar itself. There is no enmity between the sannyas and samsar, on the contrary the sannyas is the fruit of deep and wide experience of the samsar. In fact the experience of sannyas is directly proportionate to the experience of samsar. Only those who do not under stand life, those who cannot go deep into the experiences of life, remain away from sannyas.

According to my view the flowers of sannyas blooms in the midst of samsar, and goes beyond, sannyas means going beyond samsar. In his search for happiness, a person finds that he is going deeper and deeper into unhappiness. While wishing or longing for peace he finds dis-quietude.

While running after riches, he sees that poverty within becomes more solid. His eyes open and he begins to look beyond the samsar in his life. Some people have told me that they find this subject difficult to understand and it goes high above their heads. My advice is to raise your heads. That would enable your raised eyes to look into the world of samsar and those talks would enter your heart. These matters are bound to be complex and difficult, they cannot be easy because their final fruit in nothing but unhappiness, their final result is nothing but ignorance, their final essence is nothing but darkness. The thing appears in one form, our delusion creates something else, and the truth is yet something else - other than that. But we live as if we are lost in the samsar, so we do not even have the idea that there can be any other truth than this.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-4

Nonstealing

Life is a network of interconnected relationships. An individual is required to be interrelated. Even an interrelationship is a relationship between two individuals. But two individuals are necessary for a relationship to establish. So life when seen from outside is interrelated; but along with it life is also interrelated from within. If that individual is not there, all the interrelationships become false.

Love is a relationship but the individuality of the lover is most necessary, and if that individuality is a borrowed one, it is not an individuality. Individuality is always one's own, it cannot be borrowed.

Otherwise it is a deception. That borrowed one is a put on face to show others. Under that face, there is nobody. It has no individuality, neither of life-zest, or originality. What we ordinarily call an individual is, in &ct, not an individual but a personality. That what we ordinarily call an individual is not original, but it is a collection of clothes which are put on. It is like an onion. If someone goes on removing the layers of an onion, it appears he will get the onion after each layer. But he gets only layers and never the onion. Similarly we are like a bundle in which all borrowed things have been collected. No matter how deep we go in this borrowed individuality we shall get nothing at the end.

If there is no soul, no originality, the whole life becomes a false thing.

The biggest stealing in life is copying or, following. If an individual is only interested in becoming like someone else, he becomes a thief in the real sense of the term. When a person takes upon himself the personality of someone else, it is an imitation, and he ceases to be original. His authentic originality is lost. This does not mean that we should not accept ideas coming from others or stop relating with others. We should certainly be connected with others, but we should preserve our individuality - the 'self'. Currents of thoughts come from others to be accepted.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-3

Material prosperity and nonpossessiveness

Material prosperity is the basis of spiritual life, without which no building is constructed Foundations can be there without buildings. Some one may leave the foundation as it is after filling it to the top; then the building will not be there in spite of the foundation. Prosperity is the basis of the condition which is above passions and passionlessness. Without being materially prosperous none can realize the uselessness of prosperity; without getting wealth, none can know that nothing is achieved by wealth. The greatest gift of wealth is the disillusion about its worth. If one does not get wealth, one can never know the worthlessness of wealth. The distressed, the needy and the poor will find great difficulty in being free from the Lure of riches. How can one be free from that which one has not got. To be free from a thing, one should have it. One should have the thing first, then and Then only can one be free from it. That is why I always say an affluent society - community - can become religious and only prosperity takes a person beyond riches.

When I said in my previous discussion on nonpossessiveness that a few things make a person less attached and many things make him more attached, many friends might have felt there is some contradiction in these two statements. This doubt has been raised. To be free from a smaller bondage is very difficult, and it is possible to be free from a greater bondage. If chains are few, a person can endure them; but when they are many, a person would revolt. The poor man has so few chains that he has no idea of breaking them. And a rich person has many chains, so he gets the idea of breaking them. When things are multiplied, a person realizes that he has collected a useless load around him. The load which I thought, would give me freedom, did not free me but on the contrary I am simply burdened. I had thought the load would be such that it would help me rise to a higher level; but that rising up did not materialize but made it difficult for me to walk. A greater bondage takes one nearer freedom.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-2

Source of violence in man

There would not be any difference if a person sitting in his cave on a dark night of the last day of the dark half of the months keeps his eyes closed or open. There will be darkness even if the eyes are closed or open. But there would be difference if that person keeps on sitting with his eyes closed when morning comes, the sun is rising, the rays the of the sun are falling on the door of the cave and birds begin to sing. There was no difference when the eyes were closed or open in the darkness of night. And the darkness of the night was not responsible for that man's condition. The situation was that there was darkness. But when the sun has risen if the man keeps on sitting with his eyes closed and sees darkness, it will be his responsibility for seeing the darkness. If he wishes, he can open his eyes and be free from darkness.

The animal's life is like the dark night of the lost day of the dark half of the month. There is no possibility of self-knowledge in that condition.

Animals have no knowledge of self-existence, there is no alternative for them, there is no freedom to know themselves, there is no possibility for this. So it cannot be said that animals are responsible for self-ignorance. They are in a dark night and are not responsible for the darkness. That is why no fault can be attributed to them if they do not go in search of self-knowledge; but man has passed through that journey of animal world and has entered the world of consciousness where there is Sun's bright light, and if any man remains in darkness then no one but he alone is responsible for it.

The Perennial Path The Art of Living - Chapter-1

Nonviolence

Violence is a disease of human beings, but it is not so for beasts. For beasts, it is their nature.

There is no possibility of nonviolence at the level of beasts. That is why they haven't got any idea of violence. Violence is the disease which man bas inherited from beasts, and it is a disease obstructing his evolving consciousness. It can be said that one who is not willing to wipe out one's past, is refusing his evolution. If I continue to remain what I was yesterday, it means, my 'today' is wasted. If I wish to make progress, there is no other way for me but to go beyond my yesterday.

The past must be transcended. The 'past' of man is his beasthood, and the 'future' leads him to god-hood. But one who does not transcend beasthood, cannot enter the temple of God. But one who desires to achieve the 'future' - to attain God - has to die everyday towards the past, become diseased. That disease is like this: suppose a child who has put on his clothes, refuses to cast them away even when he grows up. Change in clothes is quite necessary along with the growth of body.

A child s clothes are all right for a child but they would be quite ill-suited, pain-giving and would be like a prison for a young person.

Beasthood is the 'past' of man. We all have travelled through that stage. This fact is confirmed by the scientists as well as the spiritualists. Darwin declared a few years ago that man has descended from beast. But thousands of years before Darwin, here in India, Mahavira, Buddha and Krishna have announced to the world that man's soul has evolved from beasts The last link of man was beast.