Monday, July 28, 2014

GEMS of Truth shine in all religions


    “Awake in God true saints effect changes in this dream world by means of a will harmoniously attuned to the Creative Cosmic Dreamer.” So presents Paramahamsa YOgAnanda. Once the Persian mystic Abu said, “A true man is he who dwells in righteousness among his fellowmen, who may buy and sell, yet is never for an instant forgetful of god.” This remark he passed after his gentle scorn about certain fakirs feeling proud of their miraculous powers, over elements like air, water and space.” Birds too fly in the air; devil is simultaneously present in the East and the West! “ says Abu. He tries to stress that one should not miss the chiseled out goal, soul’s reach out close to God, because of any other worthless diversion. Constant thought of God, the creator, under 365x24x60x60 seconds schedule all through one’s life, should be the backdrop behind all transactions. The Persian mystic Abu, simply flags brightly love for God and submerges any other value as worthless.
     “KALi-represents, eternal principle in nature that boils down to essential duality of matter or creation.” A saint whom Sri YOgAnandaji met while he was silently standing beforethe KaLi image, at a KALi temple. This saint is known as A Perfume saint. His statements are worth reflection. He observes, “True self analysis mathematically operates to produce seers.”
     In the life of Sri Paramahamsa YOgAnanda, even before his birth, from the very conception it was the great Guru-Sri LAhiri MahAsayA, who had directed that this child Mukunda (4th child in the family) was to become a great Yogi Who will work out the salvation of souls in great masses across, from the worldly life to Higher planes of existence.  So because of the divine momentum that lead him aloft, he felt a detachment to his family. The boy Mukunda had just completed his high school studies. When his mother died Mukunda felt is as his greatest loss. He did feel deeply affectionate towards his 2 younger brothers and his youngest sister. Divine forces take their course for better good for himself and that the boy Mukunda blossoming as a Yogi was the Divine plan. That divine launch goes picking up it’s own orbit. HIS OWN DETACHMENT TAKES Mukunda by surprise. Mukunda expresses his own mental frame clearly thus:- “All attachment disappeared; My resolution to seek god as the Friend of Friends became adamantine.” Father, brothers and sisters were disressed.
     Mukunda takes leave from his family with an assures, affectionate positive note, thus:- “Revered father, how can I tell my love for you? But even greater is my love for the Heavenly Father, who has given me the gift of a perfect father on earth. Let me go, that I someday return with a more divine understanding.”
     Alongside the Yogi enlightens us with the love of a true Guru. He pours the flood light of the shastras, for us to reflect and reach the shore of wisdom. (P84-F.N.A.Y.)
    Hindu scriptures teach that family attachment is delusive if it prevents the devotee from seeking the giver of all boons, including the one of loving relatives, not to mention life itself. Jesus similarly taught:-“He that loveth father or mother more than ‘ME’ is not worthy of ‘ME’._Mathew 10:37(Bible).
     Saints of all religions have attained God realization through the simple concept of the Cosmic beloved. Because the Absolute is nirgunau, “without qualities” and achinthya, “inconceivable” human thought and yearning have ever personalized It as the Universal Mother.A combination of personal theism and the philosophy of the Absolute is an ancient achievement of the Hindu thought, expounded in the Vedas and the Bhagavad- Geetha. This “reconciliation of the opposites” satisfies the heart and the head: bhakthi (devotion) and gnana(wisdom) are essentially one. Prapatti, “taking refuge” in God and SharaNAgati, “flinging oneself on the Divine Compassion,” are really paths of the highest knowledge.
     The humility of Master Mahasaya and of all other saints springs from a recognition of their total dependence (seshatva) on the Lord as the sole Life and Judge. Because the very nature of God is Bliss, the man in attunement with Him Experiences a native boundless joy. “The first of the passions of the soul and the will is joy.”
     Sir Francis Young husband (Atlantic Monthly, Dec.1936) told of his own experience of cosmic joy: ”There came upon me what was far more than elation or exhilaration; I was beside myself with an intensity of joy, and with this indescribable and almost unbearable joy came a revelation of the essential goodness of the world. I was convinced past all refutation that men at heart were good, that the evil in them was the superficial.”      
     “Man has in him 2 levels of consciousness. The subconscious mind, then superconsciousness; the latter in it’s grandeur is the exact opposite of the subconscious mind as conceived of by Freud; super consciousness comprises the faculties that make man really man and not just a super-animal.” Professor Jules-Bois of Sorbonne said in 1928 that French psychologists have investigated and accorded recognition to the superconsciousness. All these along the steps of the ladder of evolution of Life and evolution of Mankind. Scientific advancement is trying to keep pace with philosophy. The French Savant explained that “philosophy had long back recognized the existence of a superconsciousness, being the Over-Soul spoken of by Emerson; but only recently has it been recognized scientifically”. (p.58,59-Foot  Notes, Of The Autobiography of a Yogi)
      In “The Over-Soul”, Emerson wrote: “A man is the façade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect; but the soul, whose organ he is , would he let it appear through his actions, would make our knees bend…….We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to all the attributes of God.” (P.58, 59-Foot notes of The Autobiography of a Yogi)
     Kebalananda (otherwise called as Master MahAsayA) was fortunate enough to stay with Sri LAhiri MahAsaya for 10 years. How a dedicated devotee of a True Guru was benefited, can be understood through the experience expressed by Master MahAsayA. “ To be with him, even without exchanging a word for days, was experience that changed my entire being. The master was a living temple of god, whose secret doors were open to all disciples through devotion.”(P.35,36-A.Y.)
     “LAhiri MahAsaya was no bookish interpreter of the scriptures. Effortlessly he dipped into the ‘Divine Library’. Foam of words and spray of thoughts gushed from the fountain of his omniscience. He had the wondrous clavis that unlocked the profound philosophical science hidden ages ago in the Vedas.”(P.36)
     Over 100 canonical books of the ancient four Vedas are extant. In his journal Emerson paid this tribute to vedic thought: “It is sublime as heat and night and a breathless ocean. It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics which visit in turn each noble poetic mind…..It is of no use to put away the book; if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the pond, Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently: eternal necessity, eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence……this is her creed. Peace she saith to me, and purity and absolute abandonment- these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the beatitude of the Eight Gods” (P.36-F.N-A.Y.)
    

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