The Supreme Reality, or God, is like the sun. It reflects itself on the pure mind. With the help of an illuminating conversation between a devotee and Sri Sarada Devi""the spiritual consort of Sri Ramakrishna, also known as the Holy Mother""we can clearly understand the connection between spiritual practice and divine grace.
Devotee: "Mother, how does one realize God? Worship, japa, meditation""do these help one?"-
Mother: "None of these can help."-
Devotee: "Then how does one attain to the wisdom of God?"-
Mother: "It is only through his grace. But one must practice meditation and japa. That removes the impurities of the mind. One must practice spiritual disciplines such as worship, and so forth. As one gets the fragrance of a flower by handling it, as one gets the fragrance of sandalwood by rubbing it against a stone, in the same way one gets spiritual awakening by constantly thinking of God. But you can realize him right now if you become free from desire."-
The mind has become soiled by worldliness. Spiritual practices remove the impurities, and then just as the clear mirror reflects the shining sun in all its glory, the Divine Spirit is revealed clearly in the purified mind in a spontaneous way.
Here, one point must be plainly understood. The purity attained through spiritual disciplines may be of a very high order, but it is not perfect. The spiritual seeker is established in perfect purity only after divine realization, when objects of temptation become unreal, and the Supreme Spirit remains the only reality. That is why Sri Krishna declares in the Bhagavad-Gita: "Sense objects recede from the abstinent person, but the taste for them lingers still; with the realization of the Supreme Spirit, even the taste disappears."-
It is necessary for us to understand the relation of spiritual practice to divine grace and the important part they play in our lives in removing our inner obstacles. Then only can we feel enthusiastic about the disciplines, which we ordinarily undergo in a haphazard way.
Once a disciple asked the Holy Mother about the utility of spiritual practice. She replied: "Through these spiritual disciplines, the ties of past karma are cut asunder. By these disciplines the turbulence of the sense-organs is subdued."-
Devotee: "Can action ever cancel action?"-
Mother: "Why not? If you do a good action, that will counteract your past evil action. Past sins can be counteracted by meditation, japa, and spiritual thought."
It is a matter of experience that to the extent we succeed in making our mind pure through moral and spiritual struggle, we feel the flow of divine grace. Swami Brahmananda used to tell us: "To obtain God's grace is the most important aid in spiritual life. The breeze of his grace is always blowing. Just unfurl your sail."- This means that we should keep ourselves open to the divine grace""the cosmic spiritual current""by attaining purity through the performance of regular spiritual practice.
Spiritual Life""The Preparation for Receiving Divine Grace
All our spiritual teachers declare unanimously that the soul in its essential nature is pure spirit. Owing to ignorance, the spirit forgets itself and becomes identified with the ego, with the mind and the senses, with attachment and aversion, with the sense objects, with the body and its functions""all products of ignorance. The Atman puts on the masks of the causal body, the subtle body, and the gross body. It is the masks that become impure, not the Atman. The ego, the mind, and the body may be defiled but the spirit ever remains pure, enlightened, and free.
An illustration of Sri Ramakrishna helps us to understand this better. The body is like a vessel, the mind is like the water in it. Brahman is like the sun that is reflected in the water. The water may be impure and disturbed, but the light of the sun ever remains shining and pure. The Katha Upanishad declares: "As the sun, which forms the eye of the universe, is never defiled by the external impurities seen by the eyes, so the one Self that resides in all beings is never touched by the evils of the world."-
No impurity can affect our primary nature, which ever remains pure. It is our second nature that becomes impure, and it can and should be purified. Spiritual life is the cleansing of this second nature of ours, the cleansing of the masks""the coverings of the ego, the mind, and the body. So there is certainly hope for every one of us. It is rightly said that even as every saint has a past, so has every sinner a future.
It has been said that evolution is being held up by fundamental religiosity and the surge of such narrow minded and arrogant thought, sends shivers through cynical atheists and mystics alike. The bumper sticker actually did get it right: "We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
According to the 1987 classic, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, Dr. Scott Peck defines the spiritual life as fluid and that one may pass back and forth repeatedly through any of the four-probably more-stages of the soul.
Stage one upon this journey -that begins from within-is essentially our infancy in the spiritual life. Like a wild child, a person in this stage reflects the inner chaotic and anti-social, unregenerate soul that is interested only in its own self-satisfaction and ego, much like the stereotypical spoiled child.
Stage one people may claim to love others, but their behavior reflects they love their own pleasure, money, power, prestige, and security above any other. For stage one people, it really is all about them.
Stage two souls seek to "let their light shine" and will live virtuous lives and do many good works. They also can be judgmental of others, self-righteous, rigid of thought, cold of heart, legalistic concrete literal thinkers and may even be guilty of a lukewarm faith. They want to do right and they even may desire to love and please God, but have not yet fully opened up to the Inner Light, as Joan of Arc did when she challenged church and state and persisted that she had intuited God within -even while being fried.
Jesus said, "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." -John 8:32
Stage two souls have not yet been set fully free and prefer the security of a higher human authority than themselves for guidance. They submit to institutions, scripture, dogma, ritual, ministers, or gurus. This is the most appropriate stage for older children and most adults who live busy lives just trying to keep bread on the table and a dry roof above.
The difference between a stage one and stage two soul, is that a one wouldn't even notice a neighbor in need, while the two has awoken to the fact that we are to be our neighbor's keepers and they will respond to a friend-and like the good Samaritan, even to a total stranger in need.
Most theologians would agree that the opposite of faith is not disbelief: the opposite of faith is fear.
Stage three souls have not just fearlessly awoken, they have evolved!
This evolution has led them to the realization of what Christ was really talking about in the Sermon of the Mount AKA: The Beatitudes which sound like crazy promises, but are all about waking people up to The Divine.
About 2,000 years ago, when Christ was about 33, he hiked up a hill and sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people;
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."
In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and sins honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God. How comforted we will all be, when we see, we haven't got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe. God's name in ancient Aramaic is Abba which means Daddy as much as Mommy and He/She: The Lord has said, "My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours." -Isaiah 55:8
Christ proclaimed more: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
The essence of meek is to be patient with ignorance, slow to anger and never hold a grudge. In other words: how happy you will be when you also know humility; when you know yourself, the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled."
In other words: how happy you will be when your greatest desire is to do what "God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord."-Micah 6:8
"Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy." In other words: how happy you will all be when you choose to return only kindness to your 'enemy.'
"For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you." Christ warns his disciples as he explains the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God."
In other words: how happy you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom.
"Blessed are The Peacemakers: THEY shall be called the children of God."
Oh how happy the WORLD will be when we all seek justice and pursue it, for there can be none without the other.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires, theirs is The Kingdom of Heaven."
And one fine day the lion will lie down with The Lamb and man will make war no more and that is the Kingdom of God.
A stage three soul may well reject Christ as God, but often agree with the philosophy of Jesus, which Thomas Jefferson laid out when he weeded out the miracle stories from the gospels and clarified the teachings and ethics of Christ in: THE LIFE AND MORALS of JESUS of NAZARETH
1. Be just: justice comes from virtue which comes from the heart. 2. Treat people the way we want to be treated. 3. Always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with COMPASSION. 4. Consider valuable the things that have no material value. 5. Do not judge others. 6. Do not bear grudges. 7. Be modest and unpretentious. 8. Give out of true generosity, not because we expect to be repaid. 9. Being true to one's self in more important than being loyal to one's family...those who think they know the most are the most ignorant...
A stage three soul will see that a neighbor is everyone on the planet and not just those who think and look the same and are born in the same geographical localtion. Stage three's are seekers, doubters, skeptics, atheists, agnostics and frequently adults who grew up disenchanted with institutionalized religion. Their inherent intellectual curiosity leads them to seek their own way towards the Mystery of the Divine through philosophy and the study of multiple faith paths choosing and discarding according to their "inner light."
Stage three souls often become activists for social justice and reform and the increasing wave of humanitarian secularism verses the bondage of religious dogma just may be the way to change the world as we now know it.
It has been said we are all called to be mystics in the market place and a stage four, such as Thomas Merton and Rumi give voice to that experience of the curtain being lifted and seeing through the glass a bit less darkly.
A mystic can best be understood as one who is in love with the divine mystery and is viscerally connected to the unity of all creation. Mystics are not navel gazers, they feel the pain of the world within their hearts and grieve at what humans do to the other when they have no clue that The Divine is within the other as much as within themselves.
Mystics have detached from their concepts of God-not by their own efforts, but by the invitation and action of God upon a willing and simple soul in love with Pure Being, AKA: God for lack of a better word.
The mystic fool, Saint Francis, the leper kisser of Assisi, was so head over heels in love with God in everyone and all of creation that most people of his time considered him crazed, or at least, extremely eccentric. One needn't be a mystic or move beyond stage two on the spiritual journey to do what is good and right just because it is good and right. On that foundation alone people of faith, atheists and agnostics can surely find something to agree upon. Or would only a mystic see that?
I'd be reluctant to group everyone into just 4 categories. I find human nature is much too variegated for that. Vivekananda once said something to the effect that there are actually as many religions as there are people in the world. We each have our own unique situation, and we behave according to our willingness and capacity. You may be familiar with the Jack London quote: Karma is the hand we're dealt, and dharma is how we play it (I'd actually say it was the other way around....) Or, according to Vsasistha: some born-mystics go to hell, some mosquitoes become fully realized (he said it, not me!).
Anyway; I don't want to leave you with the impression that I was the one who wrote this article. The author was once Vice-President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. He also wrote the book "Meditation and Spiritual Life" (one of the best I've ever read), and contributed to "Vedanta for the Western World". I submitted the article before I learned about QuickLinks....
But I'm glad you appreciated it, and I 'm glad I was able to introduce the Swami to a few people who may have been unfamiliar with him.
Best wishes.
by
Mystic Wizard (2 articles, 175 quicklinks, 25 diaries, 92 comments)
on Monday, March 3, 2008 at 11:22:55 AM
" ...most people cannot see the Divine Light because their 'eye' is not 'single, as it must be to see the divine reality that is within and at hand. But the Divine Light is actually manifested in and around those who are really spiritually reborn, because God has given them the gift of the ultimate divine revelation and they've seen beyond the illusion of duality and fully realized they are One with God and One with all humanity."
"That is why the Christ Jesus said, 'I and my Father are one.' That’s why he said, 'As you do unto the least of our brethren, so you do unto me.' And that is also why he said when the 'Spirit of truth' comes to you, 'you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.' You will know that we are in fact One in the Spirit."
"All truly enlightened, fully self-realized people have been given that gift, and you may receive it too. But you should know that it comes only from God when you least expect it. As the great Meher Baba said, no amount of effort, no amount of austerity, no amount of sacrifice, no amount of discipline, no amount of study, no amount of devotion, no amount of begging to God, and no amount of intellectual reasoning can achieve it. It comes as a gift only when you 'lose yourself' in some aspect of the Divine and transcend your separate-self ego, as if by fortuitous accident. That brings actual epiphany and discovery of a profound divine truth, which triggers a series of divine revelations that ultimately lead to full realization that God is the eternal, omnipresent Great Spirit, Supreme Consciousness, and Divine Light that is within, above and around us all."
"I can tell you truly that when the 'seven seals' of revelation and the seven 'chakras' are opened, one is carried away in spirit to that high and holy place where God inhabits eternity. There one witnesses and realizes what God truly is, and the Book of Life is opened to you. One fully realizes that we are all in fact One in Spirit and thus becomes truly reborn of the spirit and spiritually 'anointed' by the Holy Spirit of God. But it does not mean you are then 'holy.' It means the reality of God has been revealed to you, and for a moment that seems like eternity you've experienced God's overwhelmingly ecstatic love, peace and understanding, and known true cosmic consciousness. But, then you have to learn how to recognize and accept guidance from the Holy Spirit of God, and let it guide you on your path of return to God."
"All avatars, christs, buddhas, siddhas, and the greatest sat gurus and sages were truly reborn of the spirit, realized these truths, and.found their path of return. Most devotees and students of the greatest spiritual teachers learn the truth, at least intellectually. Cabalistic Jews learn that God is formless and yet is the essence of all form, just like practitioners of the Holy Qabalah learn that God is the Divine Light and the unspeakable primordial vibration or 'Word' that was in the beginning and is made flesh in all of us."
"However you perceive or conceive of Deity, there is but one Divine Holy One, which is God. Whatever you call it, and whether you regard it as one or many or all, it is still God. Every thing originated from and came out of the One, and every thing returns to the One that is God, the Source/Creator."
Ruth was addressing the comments about Chakras in the article, and her quotes were very appropriate.
Many people misunderstand what the opening of the seven chakras are. They don't understand that it's the same as opening the seven seals of revelation mentioned in the Christian book of Revelation.
Ruth's quoting Joseph J. Adamson on the subject was great.
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