Karma and our Spiritual life - II Swami Samachittananda

Karma and our Spiritual life - II

Swami Samachittananda

(Continued from the previous issue…)

We must have a combined approach. The mixture of Jnana and Bhakti, knowledge, and devotion. That is what Sri Ramakrishna used to say as ‘Jnana-mishra bhakti’, devotion coupled with knowledge.

Why are we devoted to Sri Ramakrishna? Are we devoted to someone who was born in 1836 and passed away in 1886? The devotees of Sri Krishna and Sri Rama may not even know when they were born. It is not the historical personality who is the object of our devotion. Why do we worship and keep repeating his name? The spiritually evolved generation admires and worships the principle in a form of a saint or a prophet or an Incarnation. We do not have a single song, single hymn, where the physical appearance of Sri Ramakrishna is described. Sometimes out of devotion a devotee may say, “Oh! you have a beautiful smile on Lotus (bhakti yoga) your face” etc. But there is no gross expression about his physical body. When we say Sri Ramakrishna is our ideal, what is it about him that you like and how can He be your ideal? It is not his physical form, but it is the qualities He possessed and principles he represented for realizing God. Why do we worship him? Because he realized those Principles.

While measuring the speed of light, how do you explain what is light? Is it a flow of particles or flow of waves or energy? It is somewhat similar to a hi-speed train passed through the platform. You heard the sound but could not see the details. If you want to see the details of a running train, you either ride the train, or you travel along with the train on a parallel track in another train with the same speed. That means, until you become light or travel at the same speed, you cannot understand what light is. That is what our scriptures also say about Atman or Brahman. Brahmavid Brahmaiva Bhavati. To know Brahman is to become Brahman. Once you know the truth, the Atman or the Brahman, you become that. That is why it is said, when you get information, you may alter it, or you may even lose it. But once you know something, it becomes part of your psyche. That is why, we need to strive for knowledge. Knowledge is eternal, information is temporary or for survival.

It is this reason when Sri Ramakrishna wanted to do Sadhana of Christianity, he became Christian. When he wanted to do sadhana of Islam, he became a Muslim. Until you become that, you cannot know that. You cannot understand God by mere study. We must have love and identification, then only we can know God. These love and identification are like that of mother and her child or the lover and his/her beloved. This is Bhakti or devotion.

Rising Sun (jnana yoga)

In the very first few pages of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Master Mahashaya writes that “is this ‘knowledge of God’ like Maths or Science, which can be taught by one person

to another?”. For example, how music is taught? A teacher can sing a tone which the student has to bring out from his/her voice. No teacher can go inside and make that sound. No knowledge can come from outside. From outside only stimulus can be given. Only the help or assistance can be given from outside. The knowledge must come from within. Take any subject. For example, take dance. The teacher can dance and show the moves, but the student must learn how to do it, from within. There is no way that a teacher can go inside the student and make the student dance.

Music is abstract, all kinds of arts are abstract. As Sri Ramakrishna says, one who can sing well, can play an instrument well, or can dance well, can realize God much faster if he/she tries. Because if one can understand music which is so abstract, then one can also understand the most abstract which is God Himself. If you cannot conceive any abstract idea, then you cannot conceive the concept of God. Once, one Swami was explaining Vedanta to his student. The student asked for a concrete example for his understanding, telling “Can you please give me a concrete example?”. The Swami asked the student to get out of the class. When asked the reason the Swami told, “Why do you always need a concrete example? Why can’t you understand the abstract? One who cannot understand abstract, the spiritual path is not for him or her”.

There are many emotions and experiences in the world which we can experience but we cannot express. Say gravitational force, for example. It cannot be seen, but only felt. You can see an apple falling on the ground, but you cannot see the gravitational force which is the real cause of falling. We are dealing with abstract things always in our lives on day-to-day

basis. Emotions are abstract. Some tastes are abstract. One can feel them, but vocabulary falls short to express them.

So, the quality of our Karma will improve if we can improve the cause of the karma. Desire is the real cause behind our doing karma. Now if we want to get rid of Karma, you get rid of desires. To get rid of desires, you must get rid of ignorance. You cannot start with desire or you cannot forcefully reduce the Karma. The teaching is, to do Nishkama Karma or the selfless work. Which eventually will help us to reduce the ignorance and thereby reduce desires and finally reduce our karma. This is the way of Karma-Yoga or the Yoga of actions.

There is another way, the path of knowledge to reduce karma. What the philosophy says is this, say there is a mobile phone and you like it so much that you are desirous of having this mobile phone. But when you come to know that it is a dummy phone, immediately your desire to get that phone vanishes. Until and unless we understand the meaninglessness of that object, till then the desire for that object will not go. This is the difference between Vairagya(dispassion) and Ghrina(hatred). So, the hatred for an object is not dispassion. Desire gets killed by the knowledge of the object of desire as unread. This is the understanding. You do not need to understand and meditate on every object to realise its meaninglessness. In one stroke you can remove everything that is a part of this objective world.

Everything that we desire for, exists only in our waking state. This world does not exist if we are not in our waking state. This world does not exist in our dream or deep sleep state. That means, the objective world does not have an uninterrupted continuous existence. So, the scriptures says that why don’t you desire for a state of existence which is undivided? Even the birth and the death cannot divide that existence. We do not need to know since when we exist. Let us just know that ‘I exist’. It is our identification with the body, gives us the sense of time or our fear of getting extinct. When I am in deep sleep, my identity, the place, the time etc., everything becomes annihilated. None of them remain, but ‘I’ remain, I exist even in deep sleep. This is the goal of Religion. This is called Jnana Yoga. Our true existence is what God is.

When a raindrop falls in the ocean, it loses its individuality, but it gets back its real identity. It does not remain a single drop anymore after it falls in the ocean. We are individual droplets journeying towards our real existence, the Brahman. Once we meet the ocean, we will lose our individuality, but we will get back our real identity.

This is whole of religion and philosophy. All our actions should be done to reach this goal which is called Moksha or Mukti, Salvation or liberation.