lightening

Many persons regard such songs of devotion as a thoughtless occupation of the simple-minded people; but, unfortunately, they do not know the secret which is revealed as a result of this mechanical exercise of recitation of the devotional songs; they do not know how this frequent service of the lips imperceptibly becomes a genuine appeal of the heart, and sinks down into the inward life, and becomes a delight to the soul, bringing her light and leading her on to the awakening.


Those who find it difficult to empty their minds of the worldly cravings and throw away the ideas and make it blank, will find the Mantra-sadhana very effective. When one is not able to clean a dirty into bottle fastened to a table, he cannot try the method of taking the bottle and emptying the ink out. Instread he can use another method of pouring clean ater into the ink bottle to the extent of forcing it to overflow so that clean water mixes up with the ink and can flow out alongwith the ink until all the ink has been washed out and the bottle contains nothing but clean water. Through repetition of the Mantra worldly the thought of the Supreme is poured into the mind until all its dirt worldly thoughts are pushed out in the overflow and only the conscious presence of the Lord abides.
This sublimation, perhaps, one may not be able to do by oneself and hence there is a need of some teacher to guide and bring one on the right track. But only an enlightened soul could be the real guide, since he has undergone the various stages of spiritual experience. As only the enlightened soul could be the true Guru, the question of his grace would not arise. With an enlightened soul the grace is always flowing, it is incessantly radiating. It is not his effort and therefor he is not to confer it. Anyone who is fully surrendered and empty can receive it.
There are three types of distances. One distance is space when two persons may live thousands of miles away and some day may come together and meet. There is a second kind of distance in time, when two persns, say father and son or wife and husband, exist as separated after the death of one of the two and are united by faint memories. A third distance exists - a third dimension- which is ego. With the bolster of ego one is separated from the Guru, the Eternal Master of the soul. GRace of the Guru happens in the demension of egolessness. Therefore let us not think of a Guru as one who can confer upon us with his grace. Instead we should think of becoming a receptive disciple- totally egoless in surrender. The spiritual Guru then comes to us from within if he is not availbable to us outsede in physical form. The Guru who can guide from moment to moment is always with us. There is no question of physical distance. The moment we have fully surrendered dto Him and He has become the centre around which all our peripheral activities rotate, grace is received, as it descends from an unknown dimension.
In such state of mind the seed of the Mantra can germinate, the deep energy of ensouled letters of sound can cause the spiritual consciousness to sprout. The 108 beads of the rosay (Mala) of the Guru are a constant reminder of 108 stages of Sadhana through which one has to pass one after another while transcending the earthly, the astral, the casual, the cosmic and the supra-cosmic consciousness of Kshra and dthen Akshra's planes of existences to reach eventually the plane of the Absolute Bliss-Consciousness of Akshra-tita Dham.


As a matter of fact, all these stages of consciousness, prior to the realisation ofthe Absolute consciousness, are the different phases of the universal consciousness of Akshra BRahman. The present state is the result of the same consciousness projecting the bodies with partial force, while its projecting power remaining a more comprehensice consciousness in which, Mahamati says the modes of Absolute consciousness paricipate. In the simple language of the lay man, he means that the soul parts (mode) of the Absolute consciousness enter into cosmic dream of the Universal conscousness of Akshara and enact this drema of miseries and woes of life. Sadhana is an attempt to awaken us from this drama of dreamy vision.


No other action bears spiritual fruit, unless one peeps within and watches the play of one's ego. When we try to drive out greed and lust and when the five fois of mind are cast ou, vanity seizes us. When vain glory, vanity, and lust for fame are honoured, all of then return to fill the vacuum of the ego. This ego is a real disease and the passions are mere symptioms. We take the vow of silence and go on fasts and try to subdue then in countless ways, but soon we find that we have travensed in vain. Ony the seeing eye of the inner Self is needed to watch the longing of the ego and way it suffers in anguish. When all pain and misery are watched out and all partial knowledge is integreated in Tartamya, Truth unfolds within, in the light of which we realise for the first time that we had acturally longed to experience the drama of suffering. This cosmic drama is created meet the same objective, say Mahamati.

Raas, the greater union

The occasion of Ras is indeed an experience of timelessness which is available to the Higher Souls for getting a short glimpse of what goes on in Akshara's divine creation of Yogmaya. In the words of Mahamati, Ras is a transcendental experience that no language can picturise in the true sense. Nevertheless, he can sayy this much that it is a stream of bliss-consciousness, in which the absolute Spirit revels through His numerous centres of consciousness.d None can communicate one's experiences to others, for no otherness abides in its joyful presence.


Again, as the Bible persuades us to seek God through love, in the book of Ras we likewise find the highest limit of man's love for God with his whole-hearted and single-minded devotion to the One Lord. No better example in this world can be cited than the Gopi-Krishna love. Love is God, because the best thing of true happiness we know on earth is love. Psychologists think that there must be some repression about sex. They are wrong. They may call it sublimation and not repression. In sex just a little glimpse of happiness comes to us. As such, even the devotees are seen using the allegory of bride and bridegroom instead of any other relationship.
Life energy is one. Sex is the biological flow of energy and it is the lowest, not the peak. It can assume many forms. When it is expressed lustfully and mentally it is passion. When it is expressed intellectually it is literature and art, when expressed spiritually it becomes love. The slight touch of love that seems to be associated with it is nothing but mere fragrance and if we repeat sexual acts we lose that, too. Differences are not of energy as such but of the applied manifestations. Energy flows towards bliss. As water flows downwards towards the sea, energy flows blissward toward the Absolute. Sex, passion, literature and art are just the small reservoirs where the flow of energy, like water, can be arrested for a while, but the flow of energy cannot remain static for long in these smaller outlets since it hides within itself an urge to meet its original source.


This is a very important aspect of spiritual life that has been touched upon by Mahamati. Every man or woman is always busy, as the psychoanalysts of today point out, in raising the imageries of exoteric form of bliss and vicariously tasting the delight of erotic reveries. Compared to the infinite bliss of esoteric Ras, the joy that we imbibe through our fancy is a mere infinitesimal reflection. The moment this emaginative energy transforms its enfatuation for physical forms into spiritual forms, the fabric of consiousness undergoes a qualitative change. And soon it begins to participate in the flow of the stream of bliss-consciousness, the divine Ras, that is perpetually heaving up the bottom of our being.