*ஞானத்தேடல் பதிவு எண்: 083 நாள்: 25.11 2022*
*பகவத்கீதை – பதினாறாம் அத்தியாயம் – தைவாஸுர ஸம்பத் விபாக யோகம் – 2*
*THE SOUL QUALITIES THAT MAKE MAN GODLIKE* – PARAMAHAMSA YOGANANDA – Select extracts
DIVINE SPOKESMEN ALWAYS SPEAK IN ABSOLUTES, not to describe what is beyond the aspiring devotee, but as a measure for striving. Chapter XVI cites the sattvic or good qualities that lead devotees to Selfrealization, and points out the tamasic or evil tendencies that unfit men to attain divinity. Stanzas 1–3 list twenty-six ennobling qualities, as follows:
1. Fearlessness ( abhayam) is mentioned first because it is the impregnable rock on which the house of spiritual life must be erected. Fearlessness means faith in God: faith in His protection, His justice, His wisdom, His mercy, His love, His omnipresence.
2. Purity of heart ( sattva-samshuddhi) means transparency to truth. One’s consciousness should be free from the distortions of attachment and repulsion to sense objects. Likes and dislikes for externals taint the heart with gross vibrations. The heart or chitta should not be influenced by the pairs of opposites; only thus may it enter the divine bliss of meditation.
3. Steadfastness in seeking wisdom and in practicing yoga ( jnana yoga vyavasthiti) is essential for reaching liberation. In his daily life the devotee should apply the guru-given or scriptural wisdom and should immerse himself in the peace born of the regular practice of yoga techniques. Wisdom guards the devotee, by right reason and perception, from falling into the pits of ignorance and sense pleasures.
4. Almsgiving ( dana) or charity is meritorious. It expands the consciousness. Unselfishness and generosity link the soul of the open-handed giver to the presence of God within all other souls. It destroys the delusion of personal ownership in this dream drama of life, whose sole Possessor is the Cosmic Dreamer. To bestow money on poor persons who will use it to injure themselves by buying liquor instead of bread gives encouragement to sin. Similarly, pearls of wisdom should not be cast before mentally rebellious and unappreciative men. But the discriminative devotee who wisely shares his wealth, knowledge, and spiritual treasures to the benefit of those who are needy, worthy, and receptive fits himself for liberation.
5. Self-restraint ( dama) is the power to control the senses when they are excited by the pleasant sensations of sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. A devotee who is master of his senses is ready for emancipation. He who succumbs to temptations will remain entangled in sense objects, far removed from soul knowledge. Every indulgence in any form of sense-lures reinforces the desire for that experience. Repetition leads to the formation of nearly unshakable bad habits.
6. Religious rites (yajnas) are enjoined by the Vedas and other great scriptures. A devotee, according to his state of development, may perform the symbolic physical rite of pouring clarified butter into fire, or the mental rite of burning wrong desires in the flames of wisdom, or the yogi’s spiritual rite of consuming human restlessness in the fire of soul ecstasy. In the ultimate, the whole of one’s life should be a yajna, with every thought and act purified by a devout heart and offered as oblation to God.
7. Right study of the scriptures ( svadhyaya) leads to emancipation. A true devotee does not suffer with mental indigestion as does one who gorges himself on scriptural lore without understanding its meaning and without assimilating it into his life. Theoretical study is helpful when it inspires a devotee to practice the holy teachings. Wisdom thoughts are faithful guides and protectors when they become one’s constant companions.
In all ages there has been conflict between theoretical knowers of scriptures—the professional priests—and men of true spiritual insight.
Pedants who lack inner realization but who boast of their erudition are often jealous of and persecute the men of God who live truth. Thus Jesus met opposition from the hierarchy of the Pharisees, and many saints in India have been ill-treated by learned pundits, as was the divine Sri Chaitanya.
Redemption does not come from what one knows intellectually, but from what one becomes as a result of that knowledge. There must be a rational connection between one’s learning and oneself, so that a truth becomes such an integral part of the being that it cannot be dislodged by contrary temptations or doubts. This is intuitional learning, or realization.
8. Self-discipline ( tapas) includes celibacy, restraint of appetite, and various methods of training the body to withstand cold, heat, and other discomforts without the usual mental agitation. If practiced with discrimination and right resolve, these mortifications help the devotee to attune his body and mind to spiritual vibrations.
Self-discipline is different from self-torture. The aim of tapas is not served by startling exhibitions, such as “fakirs” on beds of sharp nails. The profound purpose of tapas is to change in man his “bad taste” in preferring transient sense pleasures to the everlasting bliss of the soul. Some form of self-discipline is necessary to transmute material desires into spiritual aspirations. By tapas and meditation the devotee gives himself a standard of comparison between the two kinds of pleasures: physical and mental on the one hand, and spiritual on the other.
Austerity, self-denial, renunciation, penance: all are means, not ends.
9. Straightforwardness ( arjavam) is a quality of honorable men. It denotes sincerity. The eyes that see God are honest and artless. He who is free from deceit may gaze on the Utter Innocence. The aspiring devotee strives to be free from guile and crookedness. To regain the sahaja or natural state of his true being he makes himself as open and candid as the sun.
10. Noninjury ( ahimsa) is extolled in the Hindu scriptures. One of the Ten Commandments in the Bible is: “Thou shalt not kill.” The prohibition refers to the wanton destruction of any of God’s creatures: human beings, animals, plants. But the universal economy is so arranged that man cannot live without “killing” vegetables for food. Eskimos cannot live without eating seal meat. When it is an urgent matter of survival, a man is justified in saving his own more valuable life by killing fish and animals, which are lesser manifestations of Divinity. Each day millions of bacteria perish in man’s body. No one can drink any liquid or breathe the air without destroying many microscopic forms of life (and sometimes such organisms respond in kind).
During a visit to the ashram of Mahatma Gandhi in 1935, I asked the prophet of nonviolence for his definition of ahimsa. He replied: “The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed.” A man of nonviolence neither willfully gives nor wishes harm to any. He is a paradigm of the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
11. Truth ( satya) is the foundation stone of the universe. “The worlds are built on truth,” says the Mahabharata. Men and civilizations stand or fall according to their attitude toward truth. An honest person is spontaneously admired by all right-thinking men.
The Hindu scriptures, however, point out that a devotee whose ideal is truth should always exercise judgment and common sense before speaking. It is not enough merely to tell the truth; one’s words should also be sweet, healing, and beneficial to others. Hurtful statements, however accurate, are usually better left unsaid. Many a heart has been broken and many a life wrecked by truths spoken by others inopportunely. A sage carefully watches his speech, lest he wound those who are not yet ready to hear and profit by his veracious observations.
It is a mistake to think that ordinary persons are never in communion with God or the Ultimate Truth. If all men did not occasionally pass into the state of deep, dreamless sleep, even if only for a period of minutes, they could not live at all. The average person has no conscious recollection of his soul experiences; but, as a part of the Universal Whole, from time to time he must replenish his being from the Source of Life, Love, and Truth.
12. Absence of wrath ( akrodha) is the quickest way to peace of mind.
Anger is caused by the obstruction of one’s desires. A desireless man has no anger. One who does not expect anything from others but who looks to God for all fulfillments cannot feel wrath toward his fellow men or disappointment in them. A sage is content in the knowledge that the Lord is running the universe, and never considers that anything has been done amiss. He is free from rage, animosity, and resentment.
The most common “disturber of the peace” in families and among nations is wrath. A man prone to anger is shunned and often hated by his associates. Frequent outbursts of temper have a bad effect on one’s health, and often lead to violence. Yielding blindly to rage, countless men have committed crimes that led to prison or a sentence of death. For the sake of self-preservation, if for no higher reason, most persons try to learn prudence and control of anger.
13. Renunciation ( tyaga) is the wise path trod by the devotee who willingly gives up the lesser for the greater. He relinquishes passing sense pleasures for the sake of eternal joys. Renunciation is not an end in itself, but clears the ground for the manifestation of soul qualities. No one should fear the rigors of self-denial; the spiritual blessings that follow are great and incomparable.
14. Peace ( shanti) is a divine quality. A true yogi, one united to “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” is like a lovely rose, spreading around him the fragrance of tranquility and harmony.
Everything in the phenomenal world displays activity and changefulness, but tranquility is the nature of God. Man as a soul has within himself that same nature of calmness.
15. Absence of fault-finding and calumny ( apaishunam) hastens one’s spiritual evolution by freeing the mind from concentration on the weaknesses of others to focus wholly on the full-time job of bettering oneself. A person who, like a detective, is busy observing the shortcomings of others gets a false conviction of superiority—either that he himself is free from those blemishes or is otherwise qualified to appraise others. A critical person rarely perfects his own life.
A habitual critic is like a fly that sits on the moral sores of others. A true devotee, like a bee, sips the honey of good qualities from the hearts of his companions. Evil-minded disparagers—gossipers and slanderers—embrace the false notion that they can make themselves taller by cutting off the heads of others. On the contrary, there is no greater diminishment of character than in such behavior. Backbiters offend the God in others and in themselves.
The virtuous, unassumingly, uplift others along with their own rise to heights above the small meannesses of lesser fellow beings.
Nobody trusts those who spread evil instead of good: the gossips, the busybodies, the detectors of others’ frailties. The Lord does not publicly expose anyone’s shortcomings, but gives all men a conscience and the chance to correct themselves in the privacy of their soul.
16. Compassion toward all beings (daya) is necessary for divine realization, for God Himself is overflowing with this quality. Those with a tender heart can put themselves in the place of others, feel their suffering, and try to alleviate it. By daya the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” and the stern exactions of karma are modified.
If the Lord did not show mercy and give special amnesties and divine paroles from sin, His erring children would suffer indefinitely, life after weary life. Provided a man tries by self-discipline to remove the mountainous load of his past errors, God comes to the rescue. When He feels that His child is sufficiently repentant of his offenses, He destroys the age-old darkness of sin instantaneously by manifesting the liberating light of His presence.
The human father, if he is wholly guided by the masculine principle of reason, will judge his son’s fault according to the law. But the mother, filled with the tenderness of feminine feeling, is a symbol of divine compassion; she will forgive the son even if he is a murderer. Devotees find profuse remission of sins in worshiping God as the ever merciful Divine Mother instead of as the mathematically minded Divine Judge who dispenses justice through karmic law.
17. Noncovetousness, absence of greed ( aloluptvam) is possessed by one who has mastered his senses and hence harbors no desires for gross pleasures and material objects. Absence of greed and envy are characteristic of true devotees, those whose minds are absorbed in inner joys. In comparison, the world has nothing to offer.
18. Gentleness ( mardavam) is characterized by spiritual patience. God is ever gentle with His erring children and, unoffended, remains quiet when they revile or ignore Him. All men who are in divine attunement are kind and forbearing. A gentle person attracts friends on earth and also, more importantly, attracts the Lord, the Friend of All Friends. A spiritually patient man does not feel ill will toward anyone, even the most evil.
19. Modesty ( hri) is the power to feel shame at any wrongdoing and to be willing to correct oneself. A complacent man is immodest and develops a superiority complex. Devotees who exaggerate their spiritual attainments desist from a deep search for Self-realization. A humble seeker wins the attention of the shy and modest Almighty God.
Modesty as a sense of spiritual shame is the mark of a sensitive person who easily recognizes his faults when they are pointed out to him. Being ashamed, he eradicates them. A man undeveloped in soul delicacy is rebellious, sarcastic, or indifferent when advised to mend his ways. The real devotee is always modest, aspiring to attain God by removing all his mortal imperfections through following the advice of his guru or other spiritual superiors.
The ability to feel shame is an ennobling quality because eventually it leads the truth-seeker to realize fully the humiliation of being karmically forced to take birth again and again in a physical body. This compulsory confinement is alien to man’s real nature and gives offense to the illimitable soul.
20. Absence of restlessness ( achapalam) enables one to avoid physical and mental roamings and useless activities. Nervousness and restlessness are usually caused by constant indulgence in sense pleasures or by habitual negative thoughts or by emotional problems or by “driving” traits like worldly ambition.
Restlessness is absent in God’s nature; the devotee should learn to abhor mental and moral fickleness. He should keep his mind busy not with aimless occupations but with spiritual activities.
21. Radiance of character ( tejas) comes from the cosmic fire of God’s supreme consciousness, the flame of awareness, within man and other sentient creatures. As vitality, tejas is present in all beings, and in the electrons and protons and atoms. His inexhaustible energy upholds the activities of the whole phenomenal world. Through long meditation on God, the devotee becomes permeated with the effulgence of this cosmic fire.
Divine radiance in the devotee is further characterized by a natural unfoldment of spiritual magnetism, an unassumed vibratory aura of goodness, and a quiet outer expression of deep inner joy.
22. Forgiveness ( kshama) in the man of God consists in not inflicting, or wishing to inflict, punishment on those who harm or wrong him. He knows that the cosmic law will see to it that all injustices are rectified; it is unnecessary and presumptuous to attempt to hasten its workings or to determine their form. Retribution at the hands of the immutable law of karma has for its proper and far-seeing purpose the eventual spiritual redemption of the sinner.
This is not to say that wrongdoers should have no curtailment. Social structure demands constraints for its survival. Those whose duty it is to enforce just laws for the well-being of humanity act as instruments of karmic law. Their judgments should be meted out without malice or a spirit of revenge. Even if justice does not seem to prevail, the karmic law will not fail to balance the scale.
A passage in the Mahabharata is as follows: “One should forgive, under any injury. It hath been said that the continuation of the species is due to man’s being forgiving. Forgiveness is holiness; by forgiveness the universe is held together. Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is quiet of mind. Forgiveness and gentleness are the qualities of the Self-possessed. They represent eternal virtue.”
23. Patience, or fortitude ( dhriti), enables the devotee to bear misfortunes and insults with equilibrium. Outward events cannot shake him, nor can occasional inner turmoil serve to deflect him from his chosen path and goal: Self-realization. By stability the God-seeker learns to adhere under all circumstances to noble activities in the outer world and to retain the perceptions of truth that come to him during his meditations.
24. Cleanness of body and purity of mind ( shaucha) is respect for the indwelling Taintless Spirit. It has been said that cleanliness is next to godliness. On waking in the morning it is best to cleanse the body and mouth before meditation. Aside from obvious practical concerns, cleansing the body before meditation is a rite of spiritual respect, a symbolic purifying of oneself in preparation for worship. Slovenliness may distract the devotee’s attention, during his practice of spiritual exercises, from the inner to the outer world.
One who is physically clean and is also rid of the mental taints of uncontrollable desires and restless thoughts indeed invites the Lord to manifest Himself in the purified temple of his life. When the mind is calm, it becomes a divine altar for the presence of God.
25. Nonhatred ( adroha) should be practiced by everyone. A devotee who feels malice toward others loses the power to see God in all. A yogi aspiring to realize Spirit does not blind his vision by any thought or act of dislike or treachery, even against sinners or his self-proclaimed enemies. He strives to perceive in them the presence of the all-redeeming and loving God.
As the Lord is free from hatred, He shuts out no one from the boundless sphere of His tenderness and omnipresence. Similarly, one who is aware of the Divine in all creation cannot detest any man or feel any sense of disdainful superiority.
26. Lack of conceit ( na atimanita) signifies absence of excessive pride. The Lord does not harbor pride, though His cosmic possessions and powers are infinite. In humble concealment He secretly works for man’s salvation through the propelling power in virtuous actions and in the silent attraction of His love inherent in each soul.
Only he who is free from the sense of self-importance becomes richer and richer in spirituality until he is one with God. On the mountain peaks of pride, the mercy rains of God cannot gather; but they readily collect in the valley of humbleness.
THESE TWENTY-SIX QUALITIES are all divine attributes of God; they constitute man’s spiritual wealth. A God-seeker should strive to obtain all of them. The more he manifests these virtues, the more he reflects the true inner image of God in which he is made. He ever holds before his aspirations the criteria of the Supreme Perfection.
OWING TO RESPONSE TO PAST BAD KARMA, some human beings are inclined toward evil from birth. In startling contrast to the virtuous, the evil-inclined misuse such possessions as power (in whatever perverted form), or money, or social status, or bookish intellect as a sign of their “greatness” or accomplishment. They magnify their self-importance with ostentation, braggadocio, and hypocrisy. They arrogantly demean others to make themselves appear grander; and are wholly egotistical in self-interest and self-centeredness. Desiring to have everything their own way, they are quick to anger at any opposition, or even for no apparent cause whatsoever.
Analyzed as direct opposites of virtues, evil qualities may be readily recognized and, it is to be hoped, summarily shunned and vanquished from one’s storehouse of characteristics. Even the virtuous must be diligent in guarding against any invasion of evil tendencies that may be lurking in the subconscious as karmic traits from the long-forgotten past, held in restraint but not yet fully destroyed by virtue.
GOD IS NOT A VENGEFUL JUDGE who casts into everlasting hell those who transgress His commandments. But He has set forth His karmic law of cause and effect governing human action as a teaching mechanism to prevent incarnate souls from being caught forever in the outward pull of delusion. The God-given power that works with this law for the evolutionary upliftment of man is the discriminative free choice unique to the human species. Misuse of this endowment diminishes the influence of this saving inner voice of guidance. Without divine discrimination, man becomes bestial, governed by base instincts and noxious habits. In such persons, the evil tamasic propensities obscure the spiritual sattvic qualities and degrade the activating materialistic rajasic traits. Thence, according to the divine ordinance of karma, these “worst among men” attract in their next incarnation an inauspicious birth and environment commensurate with their indulgence in profligate habits and behavior.
As proper use of the privilege of free choice serves to lodge the incarnating human in a divinely endowed body and heavenly environment, so misuse of this freedom of will causes rebirth in demonic “wombs” states of hellish existence on earth or in other regions of the universe characterized by suffering and violence, or in dark astral worlds of fearsome beings and nightmares. The karmic fate of the asuras, demonic mentalities, is to remain entrapped in darkest delusion birth after birth if they do not rouse themselves from ignorance by efforts at right determination and action. Thus may they descend to the farthest possible depths, incarnating for a time even in an animal body or other medium (as may be the case in some insane persons who have lost all power of reason), or in some astral bestial form. Such instruments have no power of free choice and therefore accrue no karmic consequences for their actions. Such an existence is the bottommost saving grace for the declining being. Working out past karma without the possibility of accruing further entanglement, the descended being will then be given in his next life a new and better opportunity to redeem himself.
THE HUMAN BODY IS AN EPITOME of all external activities of Nature and also of the underlying universal intelligence or consciousness. The same cosmic powers and ordinances that create and govern the macrocosm of the universe are also at work in man, the microcosm. Man’s body is thus the real seat of true knowledge, itself the “shastras” or Vedas. The Vedic texts have an exoteric division, which deals with right action and rituals, and also an esoteric division, that of knowledge or wisdom. Correspondingly, the physical bodily instrument with its sentient activities is compared to the exoteric aspect of the Vedas, and the inner subtle astral centers and higher states of consciousness correspond to the esoteric or wisdom aspect.
As has been explained throughout the Gita commentary, the goal of human existence is to become reestablished in one’s true Self, the In Self-realization, attained by the practice of yoga, the devotee knows through direct divine experience all truth to be known about creation and its Creator. The ordinary man, identified with the physical body, is oblivious of his inherent sensitive cerebrospinal instrument of life and consciousness with its wondrous revelations. But the advanced yogi, transcending the limited faculties of the mind and senses, perceives with the pure intuition of the soul the true nature and workings of the body. He knows its life and intelligence are empowered and enlightened by the life force and consciousness issuing from the divine cerebrospinal reservoirs of power.
The body-bound person, wholly ignorant of this finer instrument of consciousness and action, remains busily engaged in desultory bodily activities, pulled hither and yon by desires and temptations. Absorbed in trying to satisfy the restless demands of his physical nature, he experiences only transitory pleasures intermixed with violent miseries. The deeper he sinks into the tamasic darkness of delusion, the farther he removes himself from the inner bliss and perfection of his true Self, and from the supreme blessedness of God-communion. His reascension begins with determined effort to align his actions with the wisdom of scriptural guidance, and culminates with the awakening of the subtle inner centers of divine perception.
How many crimes have been committed and wars fought in the name of righteousness by fanatics defending or seeking to impose their dogmatic convictions as the guide for human conduct. It is neither the exactitude and multiplicity of rules laid down in a scripture nor the size of its following that is a standard of truth. The only reliable test as to the divine authority of any scriptural injunction is realization.
Therefore, the Gita exhorts the devotee to know, or intuitively understand, scriptural injunctions—through one’s own awakened intuition or that of a true, enlightened guru—and then to follow those edicts judiciously. It is only by this power of direct intuitive perception, which does not depend on the fallible reports of the senses nor on prejudiced intellectual inference, that one can unquestionably know truth.
*Paramahamsa yogananda in GOD TALKS WITH ARJUNA*
இறைசிந்தனையில்,
ந. கணபதி சுப்ரமணியன்.
**
*உதவி*:
(1) பரமஹம்ச யோகானந்தாவின் “GOD TALKS WITH ARJUNA”
யோகசிம்மபுத்ரன் 