GIVE PEACE OF MIND A CHANCE

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Dear friends, a beautiful posting sent in by Swamiji. Alan --- On Thu, 5/2/09, Swami sadasivananda <sadasivananda wrote:

GIVE PEACE OF MIND A CHANCEalanadamsjacobs

 

GIVE PEACE OF MIND A CHANCE

 

 

All of the Saints and Sages, who have propounded practice as essential and Time as its hindrance, ultimately agree that the perfection from the practice is a Pure Mind. And further that the mind is everything and precedes all states and conditions. A genuine understanding of this reveals the secret behind the problem of birth, ageing, illness and death. Religion, if practiced correctly, does not guide man towards a spiritual preparation for death, but rather towards a transformation into eternal life before death. It is not the ravages of Time's "rough handling" that are at the heart of the problem of the cycle of life and death; it is our mental reaction to it. Time has been ordained to have dominion over our physical condition. Its dominance over our mental condition is a

matter of our own choice. The peace and purity of mind that can be achieved through abhyasa (repeated spiritual practice) and vichara (enquiry into the nature of the Self) is founded on solid experience within the depth of meditation. The state of samadhi in deep meditation gives us experience in a timeless world. The constancy of this experience solidifies our ability to remain merely a witness to the movement of ageing and illness. In reality, we are now experiencing a very vivid timeless state, and our spiritual heart, wherein our divine Self resides, is supremely attracted to it. We know by experience and the promptings of God's grace that if we cultivate this, if we befriend this, it will draw us into Itself. By further practice we will make this our best friend, one who never betrays. Therefore we will carry this keen and lively awareness and

experience of stillness and peace right to the door of death. At that moment we are steady in wisdom (sthita prajna). We will not be ravaged and overcome by death. We will calmly understand that the body is no longer habitable, and we will consciously step out of it as if we were stepping out of one room into another. The body will go the way it came, unto dust. We will go the way we came, unto God.

 

 

 

Salvation from Fear This is known as the deliverance of the Enlightened Ones. Our deliverance is the deliverance from the fear of death. Death loses its sting. The sting of death is the belief, and for most the mistaken experience, that the loss of the body will cause the loss of conscious existence. The lives of the Saints, and those who through effort and grace have entered the stream of timeless existence, prove this utterly false. Many of these Enlightened Ones have further proved their divinity to those around them who remain embodied. Their transforming process of divination was perfectly complete, transmuting every cell in their

bodies. Thus their physical body, which at birth was destined to return unto dust, was rendered incorrupt after death. Their minds became transformed and sublimated by their cultivation of the timeless Spirit within the Heart. Their physical vehicle, which was used skillfully during this transformation, also became thoroughly steeped in incorruptible immortality. They reached that which we must strive for and achieve, what in Christianity is called the purity of the "fullness and perfection of the stature of the Consciousness of Christ". Which in the East is sought for and known to be the ultimate goal of Self-realization, wherein the self of man is reunited and absorbed within the purity and perfection of God.

"When all the essences of carnal things have been transmuted into soul, and all essences of soul have been returned to Holy Breath, and man is made a perfect God, the drama of creation will conclude. And this is All." To know of that which is deemed "All", one must surely surrender to It with devotion as well as with knowledge. These two are in essence one, for the secret of Enlightenment is the Love of God! Though many of Bhagavan's disciples flowered in the fullness of jnana, what strikes us most in them is their total love and bhakti to Bhagavan. Thus the Maharshi, the embodiment of Love, enticed us with His words,

with His glance, with His life that shone upon us as a brilliant sun to know:

"The eternal, unbroken, natural state of abiding in the Self is jnana. To abide in the Self you must love the Self. Since God is verily the Self, love of the Self is love of God; and that is bhakti. Jnana and bhakti are thus one and the same…. their purpose is to lead you to dhyana, to meditation, which ends in Self-realization." And all the Sages of all the worlds will say:

 

 

"Amen. Om."