Persistence

Divine Life Society Publication: Sadhana – The Spiritual Way by Sri Swami Krishnananda

The object of meditation is the final choice that you make in this world. You have selected it as the ultimate meaning for your life. There are people who cling to a certain thing throughout their lives and consider that particular thing as the be-all and the end-all of their lives. Rightly or wrongly, they have hugged that particular thing through their emotional clamouring. But this is a treacherous attitude of the emotions. It will leave you in the dark at any moment.

Nobody likes a thing continuously throughout one's life. That is the effect of the fickleness of mental activity. In the choice of the object of meditation, no fickleness is possible. You may take months to decide what it is that can give you true satisfaction.

There are devotees who choose the form of a divinity, the ultimate Godhead manifest before them in some form which they regard as final. The reason why they consider that form as final is that they are sure that the infinite longing for salvation is centralised in that particular form of divinity, as the potentiality of the power of the sun is hidden in a single ray of the sun. So, the whole world is one object.

You strike one object to the core; an atomic bomb manifests itself. Strike it further; you will find the treasures of the world coming up from inside the very object that you have struck again and again by the hammering of the mental process. Strike it further; you will find that this mind which meditates is the meeting point of all the levels of creation commingling in one point, like the sea at the meeting point of a river, where the two become one. Even in this initial stage of meditation, you will see that you rise up from meditation as a new individual, as if something has entered you, has been injected into you.

Old habits still persist. A sutra (verse) of Patanjali tells us: Never feel satisfied with any experience, because any satisfying experience in meditation,-sound, colour, perception of beauty, fragrance, -should not attract you because it is as temporary and tantalizing as any other presentation in this physical world.

Actually, what you call heaven is only a rarefied form of earthly enjoyment. A highly potent form of sensory experience is heaven; the gross form of it is the earth. When such presentations are, placed before you, don't smile, "Oh they have come. Wonderful!" No, it is a mask put on by a tremendous deceptive force before you.

The world opposes you in the beginning. Vehemently will it oppose you, and it will see that you do not succeed. People will harass you, condemn you, criticise you, say that you are a crack, and the world will present further difficulties, causing you to tremble in your person, as if you have gone wrong. I have told many a time on earlier occasions, when you churn the mind for the sake of treasures that you seek, the treasure will not come; only poison comes, as illustrated in the story of amritamanthana in the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana. Wanting nectar, you churn the ocean; deadly poison comes in the beginning.

What is this poison, actually? Wherefrom has it arisen? It is the potentiality of attachment still persisting at the last moment of the death of individuality. When a cobra is about to die, it becomes most poisonous; if it strikes at that time, it is a death strike. Likewise, the last kick that human desire gives you is a poisonous smoke of discomfiture and sorrow, and indecision of every kind. Do you know how many treasures afterwards slowly arose from the churning of the ocean in amritamanthana? Some fourteen gems are described there as the jewels of human love, tempting more and more as the succeeding ones rose up, so that the temptation to possess it rose in greater intensity. Finally, you know what happened to these people who wanted nectar in this enlightening story.

This is a story about our own selves, -the gods and the demons, the ocean, the nectar, the treasures, the jewels, the poison. All these are inside us, inside in every sense of the term, outwardly, inwardly, and also in the blend of both sides. Knowing well that such things are possible before us, through the guidance that we have received from our Master, whom we should not desert till the end of our lives,-knowing this well, march forward.

Excerpts from: Persistence - Sadhana – The Spiritual Way by Sri Swami Krishnananda