Attitude Toward Troubles
When I
hear my dear ones lamenting the difficulties and adverse circumstance that
come their way, I feel deeply distressed. Their frantic complaints disclose
to me their mental state. It shows that the consciousness has not yet awakened
in them; that hardships are very necessary for molding their lives. Otherwise,
they should have heartily welcomed hardships and felt an inner joy for having
met them.*
By God's grace this jiva had not a few but a host of difficulties with which
to contend. During all the years I spent in Nadiad, not a single day passed
when I did not leave town for the far off lonely crematorium and other such
places to sleep on the uncomfortable bare ground there. For some time I went
without even water to quench my thirst. Later on, an old dame, who kept watch
over the wooden pieces there, began leaving a small earthen jar filled with
water for me. She even began sweeping clean the place where I slept. I continued
to sleep there even when the nights were very cold and it rained cats and
dogs. It was a decidedly severe hardship for me, but I never looked upon it
as such.
Poverty had been my lot since birth, or to be more exact, since I was four or five years old. Difficulties galore also blockedmy path during my career as a student. It was certainly anything but a bed of roses on which I slept while I pursued my studies further. But there, too, my love for my hosts earned the complete satisfaction of all the members of the families with which I stayed. Even now after so many years, you can witness how much love still exists between us.
*c.f.
"Then welcome each rebuff,
Each sting that bids
Not sit, not stand but go.
Be our joys three parts pain."
Serve the Living Saint
This reminds me of a practice that is universally in vogue. It is only after the death of a saint that his devotees and admirers try to recollect his life - his birth-place, incidents that happened to him during his life-time, and the places where he lived and performed sadhana. People are not eager to inquire his actions while he is alive. This is why I often say that the world is a worshiper of mummies only. Akha (a medieval saint) rightly sang:
Good people!
Serve the man who is awake (to truth).
That exhortation can properly be transformed into:
Good People! Serve the saint who is alive.
Region Beyond the Sky
Hence only that man who feels buoyant, when affliction crosses his path is worth the name.* The development of spiritual life really depends upon two factors: (1) our behaviour, i.e., our vital readiness and mental attitude towards an incident and (2) our physical (actual) action in response to it. We must be quite sure that our sadhana is still at zero point as long as we feel embarrassed by any circumstance in which we find ourselves, fret and fume about it, speak about it to others in a woeful tone and like to fly away from it.
*The
stern joy that warriors feel
with foemen worthy of their steel." - Sir Walter Scott
We must aim ourselves to go beyond what, in spiritual parlance, is called the sky state. Everything, animate or inanimate contains five fundamental units according to Hindu philosophy. These fundamentals (tatwa = essence or unit) are (1) earth, (2) water, (3) light, (4) air, and (5) sky. the subtlest or highest among them is the sky. Only after we experience in our being the permeation of that subtlest essence, the sky, can we experience the accomplishment of our sadhana. This state can only be reached after we pass beyond the highest states of sattwa guna (highest character). Only then is it possible to experience the All-pervading Consciousness (Eternal Life).
Oh, The Difference!
Realizing Divine Consciousness means the creating and manifestation in our being of qualities, characteristics, and powers of Life Divine. We aspire to attain this state and yet even now we love to grovel in the dirt of lethargy and waywardness. We cry over the most petty, the most despicable matters!
What I have written may not be palatable to everybody, but no one can deny that it is based on facts and not on imagination or prejudice. I make it a pint to write only that which I see personally, and I do so I order that you may thereby wake up to your present predicament and become alert.
That Dark Dangerous Cave
Oh, how many adventures were undertaken by God's grace in order to create in myself the real spirit of sadhana! And what courage had to be summoned up for it! The Lord God sent me to a place called Dhuvadhar ( a great lonely waterfall situated on the bank of the River Narmada). There appeared something like a cave near the left side of that waterfall. At the sight of that cave, I suddenly received the command (from the Voice within) to resort to that cave for my sadhana.
In the first place, the loud racking noise of the waterfall was enough to strike terror in the heart of anybody. It was, moreover, no joke to discern the way to finally reach that cave and sit in it with sufficient calmness and concentration to be able to do sadhana. In all conscience, it was a place to which everybody would have shuddered to go. For my part, it was enough that I got the order. The only thing I thought of was how to obey the order with love and devotion.. It has been my experience, based not on one but many a number of occasions, that one gets an intuitive perception of the right way to follow a commandment only when his heart hails that ocassion as a godsend meant for his elevation.
I abstain from describing the ways to which, by God's grace, I could go into that cave near Dhuvadhar. It was nothing but my Lord's superb grace that enabled me to spend every minute of the day in that cave in a heavenly ectasy practicing different kinds of sadhana.
I had, moreover, a brainstorm to procure drinking water. As for food, for five or six days I had only one recourse to save me from the pangs of hunger - the constant remembrance of God. Later some people let down a rope with a packet of food and swung in such a way so I could catch the packet. That was how I got food once a day. And, of course, I had to ease nature in that same cave. This jiva has put up with many such hardships.
Hail Your Troubles
But this is but a trifling incident. When I hear you people crying over very insignificant impediments, I wonder at what nerveless creatures we are and at what a sky-scraping height we want to reach! Therefore, please do no bewail your troubles; do not shy in alarm at them; do not turn your face away from them. It is my prayer to you all to look upon them with an eye that sees their beneficial effect upon us. You will then be able to welcome them. You will then find a new spirit, a fresh vigor and valor created in you. It is necessary for us to possess an unimaginably greater power than we do at present. Without its accretion, is impossible to do sadhana. The divine purpose behind our hardships is to create in us unconquerable strength. Even supposing that, as a matter of fact there is no such purpose behind our troubles, if we can mentally regard them as helpful to us, we are sure to raise the status of our life. It is not in order to soothe your feelings or to make you intellectually agree with the idea that all this has been written. It is the very acme of my self-experience. It has been the practice literally adopted by me. It is what our intelligence can easily accept. Even if after this long explanation we cannot hail our troubles, it is a sad and different story. I, for one, am absolutely certain that our grumbling betrays only weakness and cowardice.