Pariprasna

Q & A with Srimat Swami Tapasyananda (1904 to 1991), Vice-President of the Ramakrishna Order.

Approach the wise sages, offer reverential salutations, repeatedly ask proper questions, serve them and thus know the Truth. — Bhagavad Gita

Question: How can I know that I am making any progress in the path of spirituality?

Maharaj: Progress in most cases is very gradual and anything very gradual will be difficult to notice, say, like the slow movement of the hand of a clock of huge circumference. Even when we study a language as infants, it is very difficult for us to observe our progress, although it is all the while taking place. The Holy Mother compares the progress of a spiritual aspirant to a man asleep who is being carried on a stretcher. He is not aware of the progress he is making, but only finds himself at the destination when he wakes up. Though unaware of it, he was all the while progressing, provided he had really been taken on the stretcher.

Our outlook in respect of spiritual life must be entirely different from that which we bring to

bear on our worldly enterprises. In worldly matters our outlook is quantitative, and measurement is our technique to ascertain progress or success. But until we have given up this idea of calculation we have not entered the realm of spiritual value.

A spiritual aspirant should be one ‘committed’. He has been compared to an angler who casts his line with the hook and bait, knowing full well that some fish will swallow it, however long it

might take. Sri Ramakrishna compares him to a hereditary cultivator as contrasted with a cultivator who takes to agriculture as a business. As soon as there is a drought or fall in the price of grains, the latter gives up the work and takes to some other occupation. But not so the hereditary cultivator. The genuine spiritual aspirant considers spiritual practice as the only thing worth doing and carries on without making a profit-and-loss account from time to time, firmly established in the hope that it is bound to fructify some time or other. As Sri Sarada Devi said, every genuine spiritual aspirant is making progress whether he knows it or not, like the sleeping man who is carried on a stretcher.

We can, however feel reassured in our sadhana if we find our faith and aspiration getting generally stronger and stronger. There will be periods of depression and dryness when the thin flame of aspiration seems to get very dim. But in every genuine aspirant these are passing phases, when he will have to wait patiently for the mood to move away like a gust of wind or a passing cloud. If our longing for God is becoming more and more insistent and absorbing, we are on the safe track and are going forward. More and more peace, purity and strength will become manifest in us. Guru Question: What exactly is the relationship between the Guru and the Ishta (Chosen Deity)? Can one meditate on them as one?

Maharaj: The conception of Guru is that there is only

one Guru for all, namely, the Supreme Being who alone can bring spiritual enlightenment to an aspirant and that the different human Gurus of whom disciples speak

form only the human media through whom the one Guru of all speaks. Without understanding and accepting this idea, if people speak of ‘my Guru’ and ‘your Guru’ as individual human beings only, they violate the fundamental philosophy underlying the Guru doctrine. In recognition of this intimate

relationship between the conceptions of the Guru and the Ishta, the practice is to meditate first on the Guru and then merge him mentally in the Ishta. Prayer

Question: Does God listen to the prayers of man? If He does, what is the proof that He does? When one prays for a particular object, and the prayer is fulfilled, one considers that to be the effect of one’s prayer. But can it not also be a mere coincidence? Perhaps what the person wanted would have been fulfilled even without his prayer. Again so many persons pray, pray most piteously, with no response at all from God.

Maharaj: If every petition we make to God were answered by Him, all would have been

devotees, only praising and never working for the achievement of all things, as it is the best short cut for attaining one’s ends. It is said that when wars take place, both the belligerents would make earnest prayers to God for victory for themselves. People have too naive an idea of God—an idea of Him as a mighty potentate sitting on a throne on high, granting favours and rejecting petitions according to His whims.

God is as much justice as He is love and, in regard to persons who approach Him for favours, He is mainly a judge. He functions through the law of Karma, according to which man’s merits and demerits are responsible for his enjoyments and sufferings.

Then the question would arise: is there no place for prayer at all? There are several alternatives. To adopt a stoical attitude, accepting the ultimacy of Karma, but striving one’s best for the attainment of one’s objective, is one way. Those who believe in the psychic efficacies of rituals, can resort to them for aiding the forces of favourable Karmas and counteracting those of evil ones.

But a true devotee, who puts entire reliance on the Supreme Being, can seek refuge in Him in a distressing situation. He does so not in a spirit of petitioning for advantages but of a total surrender in expectation of an upliftment, which neither his own powers nor merits can accomplish. In such a prayer there is also an attitude of submission, which consists in a willingness to abide by His will and wisdom, without any trace of that egotistic attitude of judging by the results. If he gets the Divine aid, he is thankful; if he fails to get it for reasons unknown to him, he says without the slightest dejection or scepticism: ‘May His will be done!’ In such an attitude there is no question of attributing success to chance or of becoming sceptical in case of failure. In either case, the attitude will be one of ‘Your will be done’.

Neither is there in it any semi-sceptical attitude of experimentation and of taking calculated risk, which expresses itself in the thought—there is gain if the prayer succeeds and if it fails, we lose nothing that we would not have lost otherwise. Such a worldly-wise attitude of giving a trial to prayer makes a travesty of it. In genuine prayer cent percent acceptance of the reality, power and beneficence of the Being one addresses must be there in the mind of the votary who should be fully en rapport with that Being, undeviated by the slightest trace of doubt or scepticism. It is not the piteous nature of the appeal made by the suppliant but his robust and unflinching faith and surrender that helps him in his prayer.