Spiritual Message for the Day – Psychological Effect of Svadhyaya by Sri Swami Chidananda

Baba Times Digest© | 2 May 2015 21.39 EST | New York Edition

Psychological Effect of Svadhyaya

Divine Life Society Publication: Guidelines to Illumination by Sri Swami Chidananda

The scriptures contain the revelations of sages who have communed with God, from whom they have derived a knowledge higher than the knowledge of physical things. This knowledge they have given in the form of scriptures. All the experiences and revelations and deep inner knowledge derived through meditation and superconscious state have been put down in the various scriptures—the Upanishads, etc. They contain the recorded experiences of the ancient sages who have established themselves in a higher spiritual realm through their determined effort, having tapped the Source Eternal of all knowledge. They are the books which reveal the knowledge of eternal verities. They are the texts whose declarations hold good for all times. They cannot be changed. They give us the wonderful knowledge of the ways of living in a divine way, so that we can transcend life in matter. They give us the secret of Sadachara (spiritual living). All these can never be found in any other books. How to awaken the divinity within us and how to progress higher towards spiritual development cannot be learnt from books of law, medicine, or books on business, etc. To work out the eternal destiny of your soul, you have to go to books other than the college texts and other than the books that fill the ordinary library. You have to go to the spiritual books and the lives of saints, which have within themselves the gems of the truths of life. And therefore, Svadhyaya (sacred study) is a golden key that opens for us the doors of the treasury of eternal wisdom, the treasury of spiritual knowledge which guides the aspirant in the path of perfection and immortal life.

Let us see what is the psychological value of Svadhyaya—scriptural study,—and also its practical value, what man can gain from Svadhyaya in his usual life. It has a very deep and intelligent reason. We know that every experience our mind comes to have at once takes in the impression of it and leaves a mark on itself. These marks become the seeds, and you know how the nature of the mind changes according to Vasanas (impressions) that it goes on acquiring. All these things were taken into account, and the sages said that if man is to progress at all and overcome unfavourable Vasanas, some methods should be devised to counter these Vasanas that are coming into his mind in his daily life. For countering these Vrittis (psychic impressions) they have given us Svadhyaya.

Svadhyaya works in somewhat this way. Supposing you drive a nail in a log of wood and you subsequently find that it is not wanted there. Instead of tugging it, you hold another nail and go on driving the second nail. The previous nail will come out and in the same process the second will have gone into the plank. Something like that,—instead of trying everyday to pull out and throw out every single Vasana which involves a lot of nervous energy, you do Svadhyaya. Every day in the morning and in the evening you try to contact the bygone personalities of different ages, sublime spiritual personalities, whose words have got a power, for they spring out of actual experience. They are transforming words. So you place yourself in direct contact with these masterminds whose living experiences fill the pages of these scriptures. When you read a scripture you forget the material world and you are in a world of ideas springing from experience, and the power of spiritual illumination is behind the words of the sages who have given out the scriptures.

Svadhyaya means, therefore, sitting before the authors of the scriptures—Valmiki, Vyasa, etc. It is a kind of Satsanga (company of the divine). You place yourself enraptured with the great ones who are illumined with the radiance of Self-realisation, when you sit in Svadhyaya. These personalities are not dead and gone. They are not extinct. They have become one with the eternal Spirit and therefore their personality is eternal. It does not perish. Their personality is not like the personality of ordinary men, which changes at death. Thus you establish contact with the sages who are present invisibly. You get the company of the illumined by reading their books.

Svadhyayanma pramadah—says the Upanishad. “Never disregard Svadhyaya”. The sages have given us this precious process of Svadhyaya, so that we may have contact with the greatest master-minds. As you go on doing Svadhyaya, if you deeply get merged in that particular book, your thoughts become completely fixed upon divinity. That itself is a sort of Savikalpa-Samadhi (superconscious state) with the feeling of awareness, for at that time all worldly ideas are shut off from the mind and there is absorption of the mind in the spiritual ideas. As you constantly do this Svadhyaya, what happens? These ideas you take into the mind; sentiment is created by these inspired ideas and your mind is filled with a whole wealth of spiritual ideas. Every day, in Svadhyaya, you take in enlightening, higher, inspiring spiritual ideas which give you courage during your moments of depression. Supposing you are depressed, Svadhyaya elevates you, invigorates and gives you every day the spiritual manna of the soul. It is the food which you take for the soul.

From morning till night, you are in a worldly atmosphere (Vyavahara). So many ideas and so many impressions are formed. So, in the evening you should do Svadhyaya which will drive out all secular impressions. They are never given a chance to stay. So the one practical utilitarian effect of Svadhyaya is the taking in of spiritual ideas, so that the worldly ideas may be overpowered by the latter. And, secondly it is a great help in concentration and meditation. How? I will give you an analogy. Now, our aim is to make our mind firmly established in a single spiritual idea. That is the idea in prayer and in all worship, so that the mind can ultimately get itself fixed in a single thought. But the mind always thinks about various undesirable things.

In ordinary unregenerate man, the mind is full of all kinds of sensual and carnal thoughts. All thinking is about objects of this world. He does not know whether anything exists beyond what he can smell, touch, etc. Suppose you begin to realise that these are not for your real progress and elevation, then, you try to think good thoughts and hold on to pure ideas. Sometimes good thoughts come in, and other times bad thoughts. The mind is like a fly which sometimes sits upon good objects and sometimes even upon spit. Thus your mind alternates between various things. But the honey-bee always sits upon flowers. It never sits upon dirt. So the mind has to be weaned away from the first stage of a fly and then it should be weaned away from the stage of a bee and finally established in a higher position. It is this that Svadhyaya does. It binds down the mind only to elevating thoughts. It does not give chance for the mind to entertain bad thoughts. The mind takes in only what is repeatedly presented to it. In the beginning, the mind will revolt. But later on, when you begin to get a taste, without Svadhyaya you would not like to take food. It becomes an essential part of man. It is food for the real being. When this habit is formed spiritual ideas only begin to dominate the field of our mental consciousness. That is the deep inner psychological working of Svadhyaya.

Excerpts from: Psychological Effect of Svadhyaya - Guidelines to Illumination by Sri Swami Chidananda

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