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and entirely, totally, and want only that and nothing else, in
keeping with the law of things, it has to come. Therefore, the
success in life, whether spiritual or otherwise, is in the
manner of your whole-souled pouring yourself upon it, and
your karma, your work, also should be a pouring of yourself
upon it. If you pour yourself on the work, the work will be
beautiful. All work is beauty; it is not ugly. It just looks ugly
and a disastrous drudgery because it is an outside thing
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weighing heavily upon you. Anything that is outside you is
not yours, and it is not worth attempting at all.
Therefore, the love of God must manifest itself in an
appreciable measure and, as you know very well, your mind
is constituted in such a way that you cannot love anything in
this world wholly. You have some kind of affection for certain
things, but you cannot love anything entirely,
unconditionally. Here is the whole point. Unconditionally you
cannot want anything. All your wants are conditional.  Under
these circumstances I want it. If these conditions are fulfilled
I like you. If these conditions are not fulfilled, go; I don t want
you. Do you call it love? And you use the same yardstick to
measure God Himself.  If these things come from Him, I like
Him. If it does not come, I may even think that He does not
exist.
There was a devotee in Hong Kong, a well-wisher of the
ashram and a devotee of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj. He had
no children. Once, twice, thrice, four times, five times he
tried, but he could not beget children. He asked people to do
japa and so on. When he failed the sixth time also, he wrote a
letter:  I had a doubt that perhaps God does not exist; now it
is clear to me that He does not exist. This is the kind of
expectation that we have from God. If our bread and jam and
our house and property are secure from our own point of
view, God must exist. If He is pouring rain for the need of a
farmer, but that rain causes a nearby building under
construction to collapse, what do you call God  a kind
person, or an unkind person? There is a farmer with a dry
field who expects rain, and nearby somebody is building a
house and he would not like heavy rain to fall on it. So, what
should God do at that time? Should He send rain or should He
not send rain? One person will praise God; another will curse
Him.
This is to point out how difficult it is to understand things
in a holistic manner. If you cannot love a human being, you
cannot love God either. Saints tell you that if you cannot love
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what you see, how can you love what you do not see? An
abstract woolgathering manner, where you build castles in
the air about your love for God, cannot be regarded as
affection because even when you think that you love God,
there may be suspicions inside:  After all, I don t know what
will happen. After all, nothing may take place. After all, I may
not achieve It. After all, It may not be existing at all.
Varieties of doubts are listed in the Vedanta scriptures.
 Such a Thing may not be there; even if It is there it may be
not possible for me to achieve It; and even if I achieve It,
what will be may fate, afterwards? Many of you must be
having this difficulty:  After reaching God, what will happen
to me? Do not say it is an unnecessary question; a very
serious matter it is. After attaining God, what will you do
there? Will you go on sweeping the floor of God s palace or
looking at Him or receiving His commands? If you find that it
is a very unpleasant existence, what will you do there? Here
is the question:  What will I do there? Purification of the
mind by way of unselfish karma, or action, will set at rest all
these difficulties. Because we are now thinking with a turbid
mind, all these questions arise which are partly humorous
and partly foolish. Such questions will arise because our
concept of God is inadequate  inadequate because our mind
itself is not prepared for such a concept. So, by an arduous
attempt on our part to purify ourselves through worship,
even by way of ritual, japa sadhana, etc., much of this dirt can
be scrubbed out and we can attempt real concentration on
the nature of Reality.
For your purposes as seekers of God, the object of
meditation would be, of course, your own notion of the
Creator of the universe. This universe must have come from
some creative power. Ordinarily, you posit this creative
power as a transcendent element, above the world. You
cannot immediately imagine that It is just now, here, because
It has created this which you are seeing before your eyes and,
therefore, It must have existed prior to that which It has
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created. It is prior and, therefore, It is also transcendent. The
aboveness, the extra-cosmic nature, the transcendent
character of God is also something ingrained in our mind,
however much we may go on saying that He is immanent.
God is above us; He is a distant object. The idea of distance
arises on account of spatiality and temporality involved in
our experience, and also due to our belief that God created
the world and, therefore, He must be above the world. Hence
it is that we look up to the skies with open eyes when we
pray to God in our own humble way.
The personality of God is also something unavoidable in
the earlier stages. You may be told by people that God has no
form. What is the use of saying that? You cannot conceive a
formless thing. Even the concept of the formless is also a
form only. Even water, which has no form by itself, will
assume form when it is poured into a bucket. The bucket s
nature, the shape, is the actual shape of the water. Thus, the
manner of your thinking will decide the form of the object of
your meditation. Concentration on a particular thing is what
is insisted upon, and the point in concentration is that you
should not think more than one thing. To the extent you are
able to concentrate on one thing continuously for a large
extent of time, to that extent you are successful in
concentration. If two thoughts arise in the mind, it is not a
successful concentration.
In the earlier stages, especially in the case of a novitiate,
several thoughts will arise. You will be struggling hard to fix
your mind on some particular thing and, at the same time,
struggling to avoid thoughts which are irrelevant from your
point of view. When you think of God, you would not like
ungodly thoughts to enter your mind. If you think of God, you
would not like the thought of the marketplace to enter your
mind. This is how you will feel when you actually sit for
meditation. That is, you will strive to shut out certain
thoughts which you regard as disharmonious with the
characteristics of that on which you are concentrating. So,
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there are two thoughts. Even in your attempt at
concentration on one thing, two thoughts are there: the
thought of avoiding unnecessary things and the thought of
that which you consider as necessary.
There is also a third variety of thought  the mental
placement of the ideal in front of you. God Almighty, or
whatever it is, is placed in the context of your perception,
through the mind. A kind of holy distance is maintained
between you and the object; it is not just touching you. It is
difficult to imagine such a thing. The thought that there is a
little distance between you and the object of meditation is
one thought; the thought that you would like to avoid is
another thought; the thought of the nature of the object is the
third thought; and the thought that you are contemplating
and you are existing is the fourth thought. So, even when you [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]