When you are in hospital, you must surrender to the doctor who knows best what is needed for your treatment. He may give you three full meals or he may give you merely barley water. He may poke you, wound you, open the wound, scrape it, and fill it up with burning iodine. But everything that the doctor does is only to hasten the day when you can walk out of the hospital. The infinite Lord has placed us here for curing us. The more faithfully we can surrender to his “treatment” and take medicines without protest, the quicker we shall get out of these sorrows into freedom and return home.

Hurry Home!

Om is the goal to be reached. We consider Om as Hari. Hara means to loot (to carry away). Om is the state of awareness, of Consciousness, which when I reach, all my experiences in (the relative, material realm) are removed. This can be done only when my vasanas (all that which blocks me from God) are exhausted. I cannot remove the infinite variety of vasanas on-by-one. “ O Lord! Please, help me to remove them.” It is similar to the attitude of a Christian when he cries for forgiveness for his sins and prays for atonement. With the same attitude, one says, “Hari!” “O Lord, I invoke Thee. Please help me to exhaust my vasanas, which I cannot do by my own efforts. I need Thy grace to loot them from me.”

Atonement is at-one-ment. Identification with Om is the total atonement for all the sins you have committed. When I awake to that higher state of Consciousness, all vasanas are looted away, just as on waking up from sleep all the dreams in the dreamer’s world are looted away. “O Lord, I know once I reach there, all these are of no value, no significance. They don’t exist at all. I want only Reality. In the non-apprehension of Reality, the misapprehensions arise. Please loot these misapprehensions.”

…The desert is the looter of the mirage water. Mirage water is a delusion – a mistaken perception, an illusion. The reality is the desert. When I rediscover the desert, the illusion disappears.

So, Om is the State of Consciousness I want to reach, and I am striving my level best to reach it. “O Lord! Please give me a little help by plundering these vasanas away from me.” But at this present moment, if we only meditate on it or chant, “ Om, Om, Om, OM,” the sound will have such a soothing effect, the chances are that we may get into a sleepy mood. The alertness and vigilance may not be there. The mind may become quiet, but it may not be alert and vigilant. Therefore, saying “Hari, Hari, Hari” in between the chanting of Om keeps you alert and vigilant.

The Return Journey

Sadhana refers to the spiritual practices that a spiritual student adopts for attaining Self-realization. All these practices are used for the process of cleansing the mind and intellect and for exhausting one’s vasanas.

All spiritual practices are done so that you will be able to see Om as clearly as you see me now. That is the whole spiritual journey from jiva (the individual soul) to Ishvara (God) – from animal-man to man-man, from man-man to God-man. Our spiritual practices are something like a photographer who adjusts the objects, arranges the lights, and prepares his sensitive film and camera lens in order to click-in his ideal photograph. Until that clicking- in takes place, however , he is constantly busy arranging and adjusting.

Click- in

In the same way, we cannot expand our sadhana into That which is beyond the mind, nor can we experience That which is behind the mind, until the clicking-in has taken place. The only difference between those who are able to click-in and those who are not is the capacity of the individual to turn around to face the inner Self. That is all. And that turning inward is also the total mechanics of religion – including the study of scriptures, going to temples, and the making of pilgrimages. These are all means to make the mind turn upon itself. If we put too much emphasis on the environment – on outer problems – an entire life can be wasted in adjusting the objects. In preparing only the camera, the clicking-in does not take place. So how can we progress spiritually? The clicking-in is the transformation that must take place within oneself. For the drowsy, worried, tense individual who continues his prayers for years in the meditation room, but refuses to smile – if that attitude persists, that person can never progress.

Raise the Bar

Spiritual practices should not be merely at the body level. Bring more and more of your conscious mind into your sadhana. This is termed as raising the sincerity and/ or deepening the sadhana. Let it be for a short time to begin with but do it with your entire mind. Let the mind also do what your mouth used to do: reading, thinking, japa (repeating the Lord’s name), meditation and so on. When you have some preoccupation mentally, it is natural that you get more agitation and therefore no concentration. There must be the spirit of renunciation of all problems, at least during the time for japa. Just as you have a spirit of renunciation over toys which have been given or taken away, similarly develop renunciation over worldly things at the meditation hour. When you were a child, a toy was a great wealth; when you grow into a youth, the thing is of no concern. In the same way, when we try to lift ourselves up to the world of the Lord, we must necessarily gain a spirit of renunciation for all objects of the world and our relationships with them, or else we cannot develop equanimity.

The Illusory Veil?/ Remove the Veil

Three obstacles in the form of thoughts stand in the way, or create a veil between us and pure Consciousness:

I don’t know.

I can’t understand.

I have no experience.

We can remove the “ I don’t know” obstacle by listening (sravana), either directly to a spiritual Master or indirectly through the scriptures. Listening does not mean in one ear and out the other. It is attentive listening to discourses on the great scriptures of the world. Once we have heard the scriptural truths, we will not understand their significance until we carefully reflect (manana) on them in our own intellect. This removes the obstacle of “ I can’t understand.” Then once our intellect has fully understood the concepts, we will still feel a gnawing sense of incompleteness if we have not firsthand experience of those truths. Meditation (nididhyasana) is the process by which we can make the understood truths our own. This removes the obstacle of “ I have no experience.” By sustained and sincere practice of meditation, we cross the last phase of the veiling power and experience union with pure Consciousness, which supports not only us but the entire universe.

Merge with the Beyond

When the mind is held exclusively in the direction of the Higher, many psychological modifications take place. Vasanas get burned up. When the pressure of the vasanas on the mind is reduced, extrovertedness of the mind is also reduced, the mind becomes purified, and your contemplation is more intense. Finally, you get beyond the mind and the intellect.

Come to rediscover, awake into the Higher state of contemplation and enjoy your limitless state of being!

Meditate! Meditate! Meditate!

Reproduced from “ Vedanta: Swami Chinmayananda, His Words , His Legacy.” This is the second MANANAM book in the Chinmaya Birth Centenary Celebration Series.