Spiritual Message for the Day – Sadhana is Always Connected With Our Soul by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 5 February 2015 18.27 EST | New York Edition

Sadhana is Always Connected with Our Soul

Divine Life Society Publication: Sadhana is Always Connected with Our Soul by Sri Swami Krishnananda

(Spoken on September 10, 1972)

Spiritual life has always been mistaken for what we do, rather than what we try to become. This is principally the reason why we do not see tangible progress even among sincere seekers and ardent aspirers of the life spiritual. We have been born into a world of action, karma bhumi, and so we are unable to get out of our mind the importance of action as constituting the principle essence of life. While action is a part of life, it is not life by itself because a particular transformation in our personal life takes the form of activity. It is action by someone, as action is not something self-existent by itself. But the existence of a person and the action of a person usually get mixed up, and traditional routines and clockwork activity are easily taken for the needed self-transformation in spiritual life.

There are various types of prejudices into which we are born. They come with our birth, and do not come later by acquisition. We are born into certain prejudices on account of the circumstances that constitute our very personal existence. Then we get into a routine; we become complacent and satisfied in our attitude that a virtuous deed has been performed, and expect a result out of the deed.

There are two difficulties here. First of all, it is difficult to judge the virtue of an action merely on the surface of it. The ethical or moral value of a conduct or behaviour or action cannot easily be discovered, but one can easily foist virtue on actions of one’s own. Generally, each one believes that one’s own actions are rightly directed, and so they are virtuous, morally permissible; therefore, we expect a very wonderful fruit out of them. This is one difficulty which we have to face and which we cannot easily discover in its proper essence and form.

The other difficulty is, how to connect action with our life. It always remains outside us like a shell with which we are covered but not vitally connected. It is like a coat that we put on. Well, the coat is good protection no doubt, but it has no connection with our body. Whatever beautiful dress we wear will have no connection with our being, and we will not change because of it. So action mostly is a kind of cloth which covers us but does not always affect our inner essence.

There is a misconception rooted in our very intellect, an error that cannot remain outside our consciousness. It gets into us deeply, and when our consciousness itself gets involved in an error, which is exactly what has happened, there is no one to detect this error.

The spiritual attitude is the outcome of a spiritual way of thinking. Now, the spiritual way of thinking is different from the temporal way of thinking in the sense that when we think spiritually, we do not think in a commercial manner. We do not judge things from the point of view of give and take, what will it bring, etc.

But spiritual thinking is spiritual judgment of the worth of things, and this is equal to recognising the spirit in things rather than the actions of things. When we recognise the spirit in things, we automatically develop a new kind of attitude. It does not come by effort; it is a spontaneous manifestation. We cannot help thinking in that manner.

To take to the path of sadhana, therefore, is a self-dedication. It is a surrender of all earthly values for the supreme value of spirituality. Sarvadharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja (B.G. 18.66): Abandon all other dharmas or virtues which are apparently conducive to earthly satisfaction, and take to the supreme dharma of the true nature of all things in the world. The supreme dharma is that which is in conformity with the nature of God, while the temporal dharma that we are asked to abandon in this verse of the Gita is the value we attach to things which we see with our eyes. The spiritual dharma, therefore, transcends all other dharmas, for the sake of which everything has to be abandoned. Tyajed ekam kulasyārthe grāmasyārthe kulam tyajet, gramam janapadasyārthe ātmārthe pṛthivim tyajet (Mahabharata 2.55.10) says the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata. For the sake of the good of a family, we may have to abandon one naughty person in our own family, even our own son; and for the good of the whole community, we may have to give up one family. For the good of the whole country and the world, we may have to give up the whole community; and for the ultimate good of the soul, we may have to give up the whole world. This means to say that everything that succeeds also transcends so that the soul, or the Self, is supremely transcendent. It is the reservoir or the ocean of all values that we seek in the world, so when we give up lower values we actually enter into the realm of higher values where the lower ones are transformed and sublimated into a new reality.

So we have to learn this art of transcendence, self-transcendence. The art of self-transcendence gradually, from the lower to the higher, which is the very principle of sadhana, is also mentioned in one verse in the Kathopanishad (1.3.10-11).

This rise is a rise of the soul from a lower state to the higher state, from greater entanglement to lesser entanglement. It is a rise of soul in all its degrees so that sadhana is always connected with our soul. It is not merely an outward action that we perform. It is always connected with our soul, and if an action, a mood, or a conduct of ours is unconnected with our conscience and soul, it is bereft of spiritual values. It is where the knowledge of the soul and the action of the personality commingle into a single force: yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanurdharaḥ, tatra śrīr vijayo bhūtir dhruvā nītir matir mama (B.G. 18.78). The inner soul and outward action have to be commingled in such a manner that they are indistinct; but today they are remaining outside. The soul is inside and the actions are outside, one having no connection with the other.

Hence, our usual activities do not help us much. Thus it is that we are mostly a failure in life in spite of our intense efforts in the various fields of action. But when our activity gets directed inwardly towards the soul, which is the point driven at by the verse of the Bhagavadgita where it is told that Krishna and Arjuna sit in the same chariot, then there is sure success. The wisdom of the soul and the outward activities of our personality are not two distinct things. They are one and the same flow uniformly moving from within us, and when this state is reached, action becomes spiritual. Your profession itself becomes a sadhana. Whatever you do becomes a saintly act, and it conduces to God vision. This is the principle of what is known as karma yoga. It is a highly transformed state of activity where the iron of action has become the gold of spirit by the touch of the philosopher’s stone of wisdom, knowledge.

So let us not be misguided, and let us not be under the impression that we can easily catch the spirit of things or very conveniently have vision of God. That is not possible. As Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to humorously say, we have to do worship of God by lighting the lamp with the oil extracted out of our own flesh. It is a very jocular way of putting things, but this is the hardship involved in sadhana. Gaudapadacharya, the great Grandguru of Sankaracharaya, tells us that it is as difficult as emptying the ocean with a blade of grass. Sometimes it is compared to the difficulty of swallowing fire or binding a wild elephant with a silken thread. These examples and comparisons are only to give us an idea as to the hardship of the task that we have taken on hand. It is very difficult, and we have to be very cautious. Very vigilant we have to be every day, and we should see that that our mind does not slip away from the ideal that we have chosen as the goal of our life.

While we may be very enthusiastic and very meticulous in our sadhana in the beginning, we are likely to slip down from the goal and fall into the mire, not knowing what has happened to us. That is worse than not doing sadhana at all. This is perhaps the inner motive behind a verse in the Isavasya Upanishad where it is told that vidya is worse than avidya – that wrong understanding is worse than no understanding at all – from which we have to be guarded very well. God bless us.

Excerpts from: Sadhana is Always Connected with Our Soul by Sri Swami Krishnananda

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