You are looking for freedom, eternal
life and happiness. This happens because you are already free, eternal
existence, consciousness and bliss. This is your real nature. You are ‘That’
here and now. But you have to realize it. The attachment to body, mind and
sense objects screen your radial immortal Self which nature is pure awareness
and bliss. Maya or ignorance puts a veil that hides, your eternal existence and
projects this external world.
·
‘The thought ‘I am the body’ is ignorance.
That the body is not apart from the Self is knowledge.‘
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
You see this external world as the
only reality. You think that you are the body in which thoughts and emotions
come and go and make you suffer. You have a little or not at all control on
them. Your attention is always driven to the external objects that seem very
solid and real. You enjoy through senses and mind their qualities. Pleasure and
pain is the result of it. Mind likes certain objects and dislikes others due
imagination. Your mind tries to get the pleasurable objects and to avoid the
painful ones. In this way you are caught in the play of your mind.
You have forgotten your origin, your
real Self or awareness. Your divine nature is always with you. In reality your
body, mind, sense objects, the whole world, everything exist in the ocean of
pure awareness. You cannot experience any object without the presence of
awareness. Awareness enables you to entertain good or evil thoughts, to do good
or evil deeds. It is your constant companion silent witness of everything you
do, enjoy and know. Because your mind is so engrossed to enjoy illusory sense
objects makes you to forget your essence.
·
‘One’s own reality, which shines within
everyone as the heart, is itself the ocean of unalloyed bliss.’ ‘Bliss is a state of unbroken happiness’.
·
‘The bliss of the Self is always
with you and you will find it for yourself if you would seek it earnestly.’
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Forgetting your divine Self, you try
to find eternal peace, happiness and contentment in illusory, impermanent,
limited objects. How is it possible to find unconditioned happiness in
conditioned objects or situations? Did you ever see any human being, to be real
happy because of wealth, money, women etc? Instead of it, many sages having nothing, lived a life of fullness,
peacefulness and happiness because they have lived in constant communion with
their essence within.
You try the impossible. You try to
find immortal qualities in mortal things. Maya puts a veil and you cannot experience
the ever present Atman or awareness within. So you are wandering in the thick forest
of sense pleasures which give you a little enjoyment and much pain.
·
‘Ignorance draws a veil over the pure bliss.
Direct your attempts only towards removing the ignorance.’
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Radiant immortal Self, child of
light, remember always that sensual pleasures can never give you eternal peace,
contentment and happiness. They are finite, limited and beyond all, illusory
products of senses and mind. Pleasure is just an imagination of the mind. It is
only a titillation of the nervous system. When the body, senses or mind are
tired sense objects cannot give you any pleasure at all.
Pleasures are the womb of your pains
and miseries. But you never noticed this or maybe you do not like to notice it.
You prefer to pass through many pains for some trifling moments of pleasure.
You enjoy only for a while, some kind of satisfaction and happiness. But always
after the enjoyment you are in the same condition as before, you feel discontent,
uneasy and incomplete. For one more time
you didn’t find the permanent happiness, you thought, you could get from the
object you wanted so much.
·
‘Perfect peace is of the Self. Peace
is your natural state.’
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
It is very important to know this.
That even the happiness and contentment that you feel after the enjoyment of
any object, derives from your own Self within, from your essence, the very core
of your existence. You may think that happiness comes from the object, but this
is not the truth. Your mind is so indentified with the enjoyment of your
favorite object and makes impossible to realize what exactly happens in these
moments of enjoyment.
What really happens is this: The
time the mind gets his favorite object stops its oscillation. It becomes calm
and introverted. It rests for the time being in its center (Consciousnesses). In this way mind
enjoys a reflection of happiness that derives from your inner Self (Being). But because of
inadvertence you think that happiness derives from the enjoyment of the object.
So you want to repeat this enjoyment to feel again happy and content.
 |
| ~ Swami Sivananda |
~ Swami Sivananda
Probably until now you have not
noticed this trick of the mind. You have not noticed that the happiness you
feel nothing has to do with the enjoyment of the object. The impure mind hides
the fact that happiness comes from within, from your heart. Because of this
delusion you want to repeat again and again the same experiences considering
that happiness comes from them.
· What happiness can you get from
things extraneous to yourself? When you
get it, how long will last?
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Through repetition desires and
attachments for sense pleasures become stronger. By repetition desires
intensify and take the form of intense craving and addiction to pleasures. Thus
increases your ‘ego’ sense, the attachment to the body and this physical
reality and the forgetfulness of your real nature. Desires make thicker the
veil that clouds your essence and make stronger your attachment to the body. All
these make your bondage in the wheel of pain and sorrow more tight.
·
The body-consciousness
is the wrong ‘I’. Give up this body-consciousness.'
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Because of ignorance (of your real
Self) and the sense ‘I am the body’ (that you are the mind-body complex) you see
the world real and independent from consciousness. So you think that your
happiness depends on external things and conditions. You are looking for happiness
outside of you. You are looking for happiness in wealth, possessions,
knowledge, food, comfort, money, women or men and the enjoyment of the sense
objects generally. Because of it desires, attachments and negative habits are
developed. Desires and attachments are the womb of anger, anxiety, depression, jealousy,
greed, pride, fear, hatred, violence, self-image, etc. which are the source of
pain and suffering. In reality all the above negative qualities are
modifications of the desire itself.
The
core of ego is lust, which becomes desire and the sense 'the body is Me'. Then
take place more modifications of lust such as like-dislike,
attraction-repulsion,anger, fear, depression, impatient, uneasiness, greed,
etc, the list is huge.
Desire, ‘Iness’ and pain-body are one and the same thing - the so called ‘ego’, which apparently appears as three different things; the core of them is lust.
Desire, ‘Iness’ and pain-body are one and the same thing - the so called ‘ego’, which apparently appears as three different things; the core of them is lust.
Due to the modification of desire into ‘Iness’, desiring appears as ‘I desire’ and wanting as ‘I want’. Thus desire deludes us making believe that what desire wants is our conscious choice.
·
' Rebirth is due to vasanas which are
binding. But they are destroyed in the one of Self-realization.’
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
· ' The bondage of Vasana is the real bondage. The
annihilation of Vasana is liberation or Moksha. '
~ Swami Sivananda
A vicious circle is formed. You get
little trifling pleasure coupled with manifold pain. And this goes on in
eternity. This is the wheel of samsara; the wheel of pleasure and pain, death
and birth. If you want to get out of this illusory mind-made matrix, you have
to seek the gate of exit. You have to trace back the source of ego and the
whole world.
·
‘The very purpose of self-enquiry is
to focus the entire mind at its source (the heart).
·
‘There must be untiring effort to go
inward all the time until the self is realized.’
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
You have to turn your attention
inside towards your heart. The heart is the center of your existence. It is the
source of your ego, mind and body. From the heart also emerge this mysterious
world of sense objects. In the depth of your heart you will experience the
great silence and peace of your own existence.
·
The point to be grasped is this, the
Heart means the core of one’s Being.’
·
The whole cosmos is contained in one
pinhole in the Heart.’
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Theory cannot do much. You must be
practical 100%. You have to practice intensively with faith and steady
determination to detect and root out all vicious qualities of the mind. At the
same time you must enquire in you and discern the Self from the non self.
Exercise your discrimination again and again until will flash in you that you
are the substratum of body and mind, that you are pure awareness in which body
and mind appear. Continue your efforts until all desires, attachments, all
samskaras and vasanas and the sense ‘I am the body’ will perish in Toto.
·
“The force of impressions
is tremendous. Unless all the impressions are thoroughly burnt through entry
into the state of the pure Nirvikalpa Samadhi, it is not safe for one to stay a
long time in one’s native place. He will still be in the danger zone.”
~ Swami Sivananda
·
‘Effort must be made to eradicate
the vasanas. Jnana can only remain unshaken after all the vasanas are rooted
out.’
· The Ego must, die, must vanish along with the inherent vasanas’.
· The Ego must, die, must vanish along with the inherent vasanas’.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Then with a mind free of all egoic
contents, of rajas, tamas and vasanas you will rest permanent in your own
natural state of self-awareness. You will play and dance with life. None object
or happening cannot harm you anymore. In all circumstances you will rejoice the
bliss of your true nature. You will be an embodiment of peace and harmony on
earth. All your desires and goals will be fulfilled.
·
When Brahman is realised by means of
Nirvikalpa Samadhi, then the heart’s knot viz., Avidya (ignorance), Kama
(desire) and Karma (action), is destroyed.
~ Swami Sivananda
·
When through practice we are
constantly in that free from thought state (nirvikalpa Samadhi) not going into
Samadhi and coming out again, that is the natural state (sahaja state).’ ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
~Nityananda
Read also about happiness pleasures and pains:
- Quotes by Sri Nisargadatta about pleasure pain and real happiness 'I Am That'
- Gunas and happiness by Sri Aurobindo
- What is happiness? by Sri Ramana Maharshi
- Conscious freedom from Pleasure & Pain by Swami Sivananda
- Freedom from desire the origin of ego by Nityamuktananda
Peace, love, harmony