Spiritual Message for the Day – Happiness Arises out of Freedom from Bondage by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 11 September 2014 15.15 EST | New York Edition

Happiness Arises out of Freedom from Bondage

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 9 – The Meaning of True Knowledge by Sri Swami Krishnananda

The aspiration for God, the union with the great ideal of yoga, is love, no doubt, but it is not love which is the other side of hatred. We cannot love a thing unless we hate something else, because love is a concentration of consciousness by the exclusion of factors which are not connected with this concentration; so, that exclusion is hatred. But in the movement of consciousness towards the destination of yoga, there is no exclusion; there is only inclusion. Nevertheless, in all practices of yoga and forms of religion there is an insistence on excluding something.

Life in a monastery, a life of asceticism, sannyasa, or a life of a monk, a religious man, a spiritual recluse, implies a sort of dissociation or exclusion for the sake of a holy pursuit. Every holy man is a renounced person. But, what has he renounced? We have, generally, a very simple and commonplace definition of dissociation, exclusion and austerity. They are things which are well known to everybody.

But the salvation of the spirit does not seem to consist of the dissociation of itself from factors with which it is, somehow or other, associated at the back. The spirit is associated with all things in one way—though, in another way, it is not so associated. The spirit is pure I, complete Self, and not an object. The factor which somehow introduces itself into the selfhood of consciousness as an object thereof is the thing that is to be renounced.

We renounce objects. We are told again and again that objects of sense have to be renounced for the sake of the pursuit of the spiritual ideal. We have to understand, first of all, what an object is, in order that we may renounce it. An object is not necessarily that which we touch with our hands or see with our eyes, but this is the general notion that we have about objects. House and property, father, mother, brothers, sisters and relations are all objects which have to be renounced in the interest of the spiritual goal. But the spirit, or the soul—the consciousness within us—is bound by something which is very peculiar. It is bound by a conviction that there is something outside it. As long as this conviction continues, it cannot renounce that which it regards as existent outside it. One cannot go against one’s own conviction. It is a very difficult, hard thing to do.

Let any renouncer dispassionately analyse his own mind. Is he convinced that there are things outside him, or not? To what extent is this conviction deeply rooted in his consciousness? Or because of a religious admonition are we estranging ourselves from the objects?

Salvation is not such an easy thing. Moksha is hard to attain because, somehow or other, we get caught in a vicious circle by any amount of effort on our part, due to a subtle, small mistake that we commit—though it may be little, like a sand particle sticking to the eye. Whatever be the extent of our religious and spiritual aspiration, we are somehow convinced that there are things outside us. This conviction is our bondage, and not the things themselves. Therefore, bondage is an idea.

We have heard it said that mind is the cause of bondage —mana eva manushyanam karanam bandha mokshayoh— but do we realise why the mind alone is the cause of bondage, and not anybody else? It is because the mind is only a conviction; it is not a substance. A conscious affirmation in a particular point in space is called the mind; it may be within a body or outside a body. A conviction is bondage. A conviction is, also, freedom. So, from one conviction which is bondage, we have to release ourselves and enter into a larger conviction which shall be our freedom.

The world is mental; it is not physical. If the physical world is there, let it be there. We are not going to be concerned with it. We are not bound by it. We are bound by the fact of our conviction that it is there outside us; and, the conviction is a part of our very existence itself. As long as I am, you also are. But there is no ‘you are’ for God. Here is the distinction between the I of God and the I of man or the I of anybody else.

It is like peeling off our own skin when we try to practise real renunciation or austerity in the true spiritual sense. We are releasing ourselves from entanglement in the lower affirmation or conviction that there is a reality external to the self, because if the external is really there, attachment is unavoidable. As long as there is a conviction that the external is there, love and hatred cannot be avoided. How can we avoid being conscious of the existence of a thing which we are convinced exists? An attitude towards it has to be developed. We either like it, or we do not like it, or we are indifferent towards it.

Renunciation is neither liking it, nor not liking it, nor being indifferent towards it. All the three attitudes are out of point altogether. In true spiritual renunciation we are not liking, or disliking, or being indifferent towards things. We are rising above all three attitudes of sattva, rajas and tamas. But, what attitude can there be other than like, dislike and indifference? We are involved only with these three attitudes.

To like the world is bondage. To not like the world is bondage. To be indifferent towards its existence is also bondage. So, there is a fourth type of attitude, if at all we can call it an attitude, by which our self—our consciousness, we ourselves—attain to a freedom where we attain a different kind of conviction altogether in which these three attitudes get subsumed, included, melted into liquid, as it were, absorbed into its higher being, and we need not have any attitude at all.

Vairagya is not an attitude. It is an attainment which is deeply mystical, highly spiritual. That is why we are so happy when we attain this conviction. This is knowledge. When this knowledge arises, we are happy automatically, because happiness arises out of freedom from bondage.

Excerpts from: Happiness Arises out of Freedom from Bondage - Chapter 9 – The Meaning of True Knowledge by Sri Swami Krishnananda

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