Sadhana Bakthi Part 5
Sadhana Bakthi Part 5
Radhae Radhae
My humble pranams to my brothers and sisters of the Divine Truth.
We last talked about Roop Dhyan in devotional practice, allow me remind you a fact of reality, walking in the path of devotion one may stumble and fall in the initial part. Yes, one of the many stumbling blocks is bad association (kusang) the opposite of good association (satsang. When a person falls into bad association, the decision of the mind also changes accordingly, and thus the spiritual aspirant is unable to judge with his own intellect that he is fallen into wrong company. So long as there is an awareness of the self i.e. The Ego, till then a person can never easily admit to himself that he has fallen. It’s the nature of every man to think well of himself. Even the greatest fool does not like to hear that he is a fool. The seed of bad association is constantly present in the mind of every egoistic soul. This seed speedily grows when it comes into favorable contact with the external subjects, which are influenced by the three gunas ( Satvic, Tamasic and Rajasic nature)
When an individual is subject to bad association from three sources:
1. The inner mentality colored by the 3 gunas (sattvic, tamasic and rajasic)
2. 99% of the outer world
3. The practice of innumerable past lives
Then how can an individual’s welfare be achieved. Tulsidas ji gives a wonderful picture of the deplorable state of the individual souls.
graha grinit puni vat vas ta puni bichi mar
tahi piyaya varuni kahiya kaha upachar
Ramayan
Firstly a monkey by nature is naughty; secondly, if it were to suffer from hysteria, thirdly, if it’s stung by a scorpion and fourthly, he is made to drink alcohol, can you imagine the state of such a monkey would be?
The same state of the individual soul. Firstly, each individual soul is a sinner since endless time. Secondly, he has evil thoughts owing to his past sanskaras. Thirdly, there is the materialistic external environment. Fourthly, the intellect overpowered by the three gunas, is in the state of intoxication. Now only God can help such a pitiable soul. Shri Maharaji says “How ever there is nothing to be disturbed about. Constant practice will rectify everything. Even as an animal as wild as the lion dances to the tune of the trainer’s whip. The first ting that the spiritual aspirant must do is set right his intellect, because it’s stated in the Gita “buddhinasat pranasyathi”. The individual soul suffers downfall owing to the perversion of the intellect. When the devotee has surrendered his intellect to God and the saint, then he should direct it in compliance with the instructions of the saint”.
As I have said before the beginning part of this spiritual practice will not be easy, it comes with regular practice. Are you aware that bad association is of many kinds, reading of subjects that are adverse to spiritually is one, listening to talks of such subjects is another, seeing them and thinking about them. Amongst all of these thinking of such subjects is the worst, but reading, listening, seeing and hearing will eventually come to the stage of constant thing of the subject matter. Such thinking will change the mentality of the person and the intellect as well making it infatuated. The disastrous result is that the mind becomes totally inclined towards those adverse subjects.
Shri Maharaji said that there is a special category of wrong association, which in theory is not actually wrong, but can lead to the same kind of influence. Reading various scriptures independently is also wrong. This statement seems shocking, but it has to be properly understood. Remember that scriptures are written and composed by saints that are God inspired and only a genuine saint can understand the truth of such scriptures. When we read them by ourselves there is bound to be doubts and questions in your mind that cannot be solved without intuitive experience. If one chooses to ignore this advice it will be a situation where instead if detangling yourself, you get more entangled.
This is one subject (bad association) that needs further discussion, we will do so in the next few postings.
To be continued …
Radhae Radhae
Dr Gopal Raja
Bakthi Dham
Radhae Radhae
My humble pranams to my brothers and sisters of the Divine Truth.
We last talked about Roop Dhyan in devotional practice, allow me remind you a fact of reality, walking in the path of devotion one may stumble and fall in the initial part. Yes, one of the many stumbling blocks is bad association (kusang) the opposite of good association (satsang. When a person falls into bad association, the decision of the mind also changes accordingly, and thus the spiritual aspirant is unable to judge with his own intellect that he is fallen into wrong company. So long as there is an awareness of the self i.e. The Ego, till then a person can never easily admit to himself that he has fallen. It’s the nature of every man to think well of himself. Even the greatest fool does not like to hear that he is a fool. The seed of bad association is constantly present in the mind of every egoistic soul. This seed speedily grows when it comes into favorable contact with the external subjects, which are influenced by the three gunas ( Satvic, Tamasic and Rajasic nature)
When an individual is subject to bad association from three sources:
1. The inner mentality colored by the 3 gunas (sattvic, tamasic and rajasic)
2. 99% of the outer world
3. The practice of innumerable past lives
Then how can an individual’s welfare be achieved. Tulsidas ji gives a wonderful picture of the deplorable state of the individual souls.
graha grinit puni vat vas ta puni bichi mar
tahi piyaya varuni kahiya kaha upachar
Ramayan
Firstly a monkey by nature is naughty; secondly, if it were to suffer from hysteria, thirdly, if it’s stung by a scorpion and fourthly, he is made to drink alcohol, can you imagine the state of such a monkey would be?
The same state of the individual soul. Firstly, each individual soul is a sinner since endless time. Secondly, he has evil thoughts owing to his past sanskaras. Thirdly, there is the materialistic external environment. Fourthly, the intellect overpowered by the three gunas, is in the state of intoxication. Now only God can help such a pitiable soul. Shri Maharaji says “How ever there is nothing to be disturbed about. Constant practice will rectify everything. Even as an animal as wild as the lion dances to the tune of the trainer’s whip. The first ting that the spiritual aspirant must do is set right his intellect, because it’s stated in the Gita “buddhinasat pranasyathi”. The individual soul suffers downfall owing to the perversion of the intellect. When the devotee has surrendered his intellect to God and the saint, then he should direct it in compliance with the instructions of the saint”.
As I have said before the beginning part of this spiritual practice will not be easy, it comes with regular practice. Are you aware that bad association is of many kinds, reading of subjects that are adverse to spiritually is one, listening to talks of such subjects is another, seeing them and thinking about them. Amongst all of these thinking of such subjects is the worst, but reading, listening, seeing and hearing will eventually come to the stage of constant thing of the subject matter. Such thinking will change the mentality of the person and the intellect as well making it infatuated. The disastrous result is that the mind becomes totally inclined towards those adverse subjects.
Shri Maharaji said that there is a special category of wrong association, which in theory is not actually wrong, but can lead to the same kind of influence. Reading various scriptures independently is also wrong. This statement seems shocking, but it has to be properly understood. Remember that scriptures are written and composed by saints that are God inspired and only a genuine saint can understand the truth of such scriptures. When we read them by ourselves there is bound to be doubts and questions in your mind that cannot be solved without intuitive experience. If one chooses to ignore this advice it will be a situation where instead if detangling yourself, you get more entangled.
This is one subject (bad association) that needs further discussion, we will do so in the next few postings.
To be continued …
Radhae Radhae
Dr Gopal Raja
Bakthi Dham
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