True Spiritual Living

by Swami Krishnananda

There is a starvation of the mind and the senses when we live in seclusion; and a famished personality is not always a healthy personality. So, in the beginning it will look that we are deteriorating and becoming a sort of neurotic element; and these peculiar features which can be projected outside on account of the starvation of the mind and senses can make us look awkward within ourselves. This awkwardness may put us out of order if proper guidance from a spiritual adept is not forthcoming to utilise this condition for a better purpose.

If positive spiritual guidance is not forthcoming, pure, forced and wilful isolation would be of no use. Beginners, novitiates, youngsters would be taking a very foolish step if they imagine that they should go to jungles or forests in the very beginning itself, and search for God in the woods by a withdrawal of themselves from social contact and a starvation of the mind and the senses. They will go crazy, because they have no positive spiritual guidance.

After cleansing the personality through austerity, a form of which is isolation, seclusion, etc., the personality has to be filled with positivity. It is an absence of this positivity of approach that creates the sense of vacuum often seen in spiritual life. We feel as if we are empty inside; and a vacuum is a dangerous place, because anything can enter it. We are under the impression that the vacuum will be filled by God, but that is not always the case. Even the devil can occupy that vacuum, and mostly that is what happens; God will not come.

We have the story of Amrita Manthana in the Puranas – the churning of the ocean for the purpose of the immortal nectar of the celestials. Nectar did not come. What came was poison – deadly, and frightening, darkening, repelling, which can drive us out of our senses. Such was the thing that came out when the gods churned the ocean for the purpose of an immortal ambrosia. No ambrosia came. And when we are churning the whole of existence in our spiritual practices for the sake of the nectar of immortality, that immortality will not come. Something the opposite of it will come. And then what will happen to us? We will be finished forever. We will be swept off the ground, and it will look that we are in a state worse than the one in which we were even in earthly life, in a worldly life. The retracing of steps from the spiritual direction that one has taken earlier is a common feature among spiritual seekers. They turn back upon the very same condition of life which they were leading earlier. Sometimes they fall even further down. The earlier state would have been better, because the facilities of austere living provided in a solitary place had not been taken advantage of by doing something positive.

Here, we have to also draw a line of caution. We must be very wise in choosing the kind of seclusion intended for our type of mind. Everyone is not on the same level of evolution. If a person comes from Delhi and stays in the Sivananda Ashram, it is a kind of seclusion for him, but he may not be prepared to live in Badrinath; that will be an unsuitable type of seclusion for a person living in Chandni Chowk or Connaught place. So there is also a difference in the kind of seclusion, on account of the degree of its intensity.

Even in Delhi itself, if we go to the suburbs, that will be a seclusion for a person who lives in Chandni Chowk. If we are in the middle of the city of Bombay, to go to the outskirts of Greater Bombay is a seclusion. But that is not such a seclusion as to live in Gangotri; that is something quite different. The extent or the intensity of seclusion that one can tolerate, and would be essential for a person, should be judged by oneself, if possible, by self-analysis. One should not take extreme steps. Extremes are dangerous and would immediately bring about a retaliation that is undesirable.

Therefore, the choosing of seclusion should be in the proper intensity, and not be of an extreme type. Even the Buddha failed in his extreme tapas, and he came down to what he called the middle path, or the Madhyama Marga, the via media, the golden mean of approach. We should not go to extremes. An extreme is that step which the body and the mind in the present condition cannot bear. That step should not be taken.

Our intention is not merely to die or perish. A soldier, when he enters the battlefield, does not go to die there; that is not his intention. The purpose is to win victory in the war. The soldier does not say: “Let me go and die there.” That is not the purpose. Similarly, we do not go on the spiritual path to perish. That is not the purpose. We go to win victory, and we can win victory only if we know all the tactics and techniques of warfare. We must be well trained in soldiery, in the art of battle, and we must have the suitable equipments, we must be healthy enough, and we must have greater strength than the strength of the enemy. This is very important; otherwise, victory will be far.

Now, to judge whether we have a greater strength than the strength of the enemy is also a difficult thing. We require guidance here, again – and to know this, we must know who is our enemy, first. Then only we can know whether our strength is greater or not. We should not think that the entire creation is before us to press us down into a state of defeat. The whole of creation is not being confronted at once. We are rising gradually – from the immediate atmosphere to the larger expanse of it, gradually. The whole world is taken into consideration, afterwards.

The immediate concerns of life are what we have to confront. ‘Confronting’ means solving a problem, not merely facing it with the power of will to crush it. We are not going to cut the Gordian knot, but untie it gradually. Our problems are knots, ties heaped up one over the other, and we cannot simply crush them, because knowledge is not merely an expression of brute force but a very intelligent extrication of oneself from involvements.

The nature of knowledge is very peculiar; and the practice of yoga is a rise from one stage of knowledge to another stage. Every stage in the practice of yoga is a state or stage of knowledge, understanding, and conscious experience. It is not a brute activity, it is not an unconscious dealing, and it is not something that we do unawares. Every step is a conscious step, intelligently taken, and it is nothing but a movement of our mind in a sattvic condition. Yoga is a sattvic activity of the mind when it is already freed from rajas and tamas.

Right from the very beginning we have to be cautious, and not allow ourselves to be fired up with any unnecessary enthusiasm. Sometimes a kind of jubilation enters us which is bereft of understanding. That is improper. Mere enthusiasm will not succeed. Understanding is to be there behind it because, while enthusiasm and a sense of confidence within is absolutely essential, it should not be a foolish sort of enthusiasm. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” we are told. Angels are afraid of going there, and fools are rushing into it. We should not take such steps. There is a foolishness on our part, an unintelligent enthusiasm sometimes, with which we are fired up. Because of this it is that we are failing in our attempt – not only in the practice of yoga, but in every other walk of life. Even in secular fields, we lack proper understanding and capacity of adjustment. We always go to the extreme in our thoughts, feelings, and deeds.

Thus, we again come to the point that the first thing that we have to do is to understand where we are standing. Where do I stand today? What is my physical strength? What is my moral strength? What is my intellectual capacity? What is my capacity to understand my relationship with other people? And what are the reactions that are likely to be set up by any step that I take – even the first step? If reactions are set up, what further step I am going to take to set them right? – without getting defeated, of course. These are intelligent analyses which should precede our direct practice of yoga, commencing with asana, pranayama, etc.