Spiritual Message for the Day – Psychological Non-Attachment by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 9 January 2015 14.43 EST | New York Edition

Psychological Non-Attachment

Divine Life Society Publication: True Spiritual Living by Sri Swami Krishnananda

In physical solitude, we have to cultivate the art of psychological non-attachment, because the purpose of physical solitude is to train the mind for the practice of higher yoga.

Psychological non-attachment is a difficult thing, because while social pressure and social law and regulations can prevent physical contacts with unwanted centres or objects, nobody can prevent our mind from thinking; and our thoughts are our personality. What constitutes our strength or weakness is the way in which we think. The physical conditions are not our strengths, and also they are not our weaknesses. What is in our mind, that is what we really are; that is our strength, and that is also our weakness.

It is, therefore, very futile on the part of anyone to think that one can lead a life of internal attachment while there can be an outward detachment. Bhagavan Sri Krishna warns us against this in the third chapter of the Gita. While all our physical organs may be detached from objects of sense, the internal senses may be in contact with the objects, setting up a reactionary force with a more violent contact with objects than we would have entered into merely by physical contact.

Psychological contact is worse than physical contact because the mind shakes up the entire personality and churns the bloodstream of our body. Bhishma speaks to Yudhishthira in the Santiparva of the Mahabharata, wherein he says that the moment the mind thinks of a sensual object, the entire bloodstream is affected – a thing that we are unaware of. It is similar to the way milk curdles by a touch of acid; there is a breaking up of the indivisibility of the milk. The strength of the milk goes, and it is no longer milk at all. It becomes curd. It is spoiled, and it cannot be converted back into milk. So also, an intense thought of a sensual object is like acid poured into the bloodstream of our body. It breaks up the indivisibility and the health of the blood, and the energy of the blood is isolated from the blood like butter coming out of milk due to curdling. The vitality of our system is isolated from the bloodstream, and this vitality that is so cut off from the blood is forcefully diverted or directed towards the object which the mind has been craving. We know what happens when vitality is diverted to an object. We become weak mentally and physically; and even as curd cannot be converted into milk, so also the energy that is lost is lost forever.

It is no use, therefore, thinking that thought of sense objects is harmless, says the Upanishads. Poison is not poison; the thought of sense objects is poison. Why? Snake poison can destroy only one life, but the poison of sense contact or sense thought can destroy several lives. It can cause repeated births through the cycle of metempsychosis.

All these have to be brought into the mind in seclusion, and the causes of attachments should be discovered. A thorough diagnosis of the case has to be made. The causes of attachments are misconceptions that we have in regard to things of the world. We have a wrong notion about things, and therefore we are attached to them. We do not understand things properly; therefore, we are made to cling to objects.

There are many things that can attract us – hundreds and thousands of things and conditions – but as far as spiritual practice is concerned, one has to be very, very cautious about three important prongs of human desire, which are the subjects of study in psychology and psychoanalysis, and are also mentioned in the Upanishads as the eshanas. Vitteshana, putreshana and lokeshana are the terms used in the Upanishads. These are our weaknesses. These are the weak spots in human nature, and the moment these weak spots are touched, the personality comes out like a hissing snake. These weak spots are always covered by us with great care, and we put on an artificial personality which is itself a kind of disease, on account of which we are never happy at any moment of our life.

Excerpts from: Psychological Non-Attachment - True Spiritual Living by Sri Swami Krishnananda

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