Pearls of Wise

27/02/2018 25. Purification of mind :- "There is no use in merely making a noise if you want to establish the Deity in the shrine of your heart, if you want to realize God.  First of all purify the mind.  In the pure heart God takes His seat.  One cannot bring the holy image into the temple if the droppings of bats are all around.  The eleven bats are our eleven organs: five of action, five of perception, and the mind. "First of all invoke the Deity, and then give lectures to your heart's content.  First of all dive deep.  Plunge to the bottom and gather up the gems.  Then you may do other things.  But nobody wants to plunge.  People are without spiritual discipline and prayer, without renunciation and dispassion.  They learn a few words and immediately start to deliver lectures.  It is difficult to teach others.  Only if a man gets a command from God, after realizing Him, is he entitled to teach." Thus conversing, t...

27/02/2018 The main cause of all bondage is ignorance. Man is not wicked by his own nature — not at all. His nature is pure, perfectly holy. Each man is divine. Each man that you see is a God by his very nature. This nature is covered by ignorance, and it is ignorance that binds us down. Ignorance is the cause of all misery. Ignorance is the cause of all wickedness; and knowledge will make the world good. Knowledge will remove all misery. Knowledge will make us free. This is the idea of Jnana-Yoga: knowledge will make us free! What knowledge? Chemistry? Physics? Astronomy? Geology? They help us a little, just a little. But the chief knowledge is that of your own nature. "Know thyself." You must know what you are, what your real nature is. You must become conscious of that infinite nature within. Then your bondages will burst. Studying the external alone, man begins to feel himself to be nothing. These vast powers of nature, these tremendous changes occurring...

27/02/2018 Day 5. Like every other story in our scriptures, the stories of Devi also have powerful messages to convey. Unfortunately we often miss out on proper understanding and are intoxicated by the rituals. During Navaratri we hear stories of Devi killing several Asuras. Mahisha, Sumba, Nisumba, Droomralocha, Chanda, Munda, Rakthabeeja etc. If we study the Lalitha Sahasranamam, we understand Devi is not another female but the feminine powers in us that we need to invoke. She represents the intuitive and motivational wisdom. Now, let us see who these Asuras are. Mahishasura represented by a buffalo stands for the inertia or lethargy in us. When overwhelmed by him we eat and sleep like a buffalo, without motivation to do or achieve. For us to achieve, we need to desire growth as well as dedicate our efforts to it. Hence our Ichasakthi should combine with Kriyasakthi. When we put both to work for us, Divinity will come to us. Our sages have advised us to sta...

27/02/2018 1. Introduction : 1.2 1. Lord Krishna—The Supreme Lord -2. His enchanting form with flute in hand is worshipped in the myriad homes of India. It is a form to which is poured out devotion and supreme love from the hearts of countless devotees not only in India but also in the West. He was a noble embodiment of all the great qualities of head and heart. He was the towering genius of His age. He was a great historical figure. His sports of childhood contain countless object-lessons for all thinking men. He was a glorious and extraordinary personality. Every word of Lord Krishna’s teachings and every act of His is full of sublime and grand object-lessons of momentous import to humanity in a variety of ways. Worship of Sri Krishna has been practised in India from the very commencement of the world’s culture. It is a part of the Veda itself. It is not a new cult. Sri Krishna has become the most common object of worship in the whole of India. Even in Latvia (E...

27/02/2018 I am supposed to be here to introduce to you, under the auspices of  'The Yoga Society' of this Academy, a way of the assessment of values, which we may regard as a little removed from the usual manner of the human outlook of life, a system of living whose physical expression is the Yoga-Asanas. We are here to bestow a little thought upon the impact that Yoga can have on human life as a whole and the relevance it has to the objectives of human existence. There is a need for a reorientation of the assessment of values, at least from the point of view of Yoga, and this necessity for re-orientation arises on account of the very nature of Yoga itself. Literally, or grammatically, Yoga means 'Union'. The definition or the explanation of the word does not go beyond this simple implication, 'Union is Yoga'. But union with what? And who is to be united, with what? This is not easily explained, and it is left to us to go into the depth of the suggest...

27/02/2018 There, as long as Sita was looking at Shri Rama, living in Shri Rama, for Shri Rama (the Ego thinking of God only), she never knew the difference between Ayodhya and forest. But in one little moment, she turned her attention outwards and there stood the Golden deer – the delusory golden deer. And once we see that delusion, we do not want God, we want that delusory thing only. Sita got stung by the desire, rejected Shri Rama, sent him away saying, “I want that Golden deer.” Shri Rama goes. The deer is killed no doubt, but it starts crying out and Sita asks Lakshmana also to go. He hesitatingly goes. It is at this time that Ten-headed monster, Ravana, comes in the guise of a sanyasi Bhikshu. See the anti-thesis. Dasharatha, who has conquered the ten indriyaas, is in Ayodhya, and Dashamukha is in Lanka. We are like Ravana. Our attention is constantly turned outwards through the ten indriyaas. Materialism enters the bosom of a seeker in a deceitful form. Ravana, the...

27/02/2018 It is in this context that the science of Yoga had known the presence of an interim subtle force and a subtle factor that pervades the entire system. They call it Prana and actually Prana is almost identical with the term "life"—because in describing the process of death they sometimes refer to it as "his Prana departed and he passed away"; because, with the departure of the Prana from the body, the man loses his life. So Prana the life force, that subtle inner something, is the factor that makes a difference between a living person and a dead body. When the Prana is there, the body is alive; when the Prana departs, the body is no longer alive. With the departure of Prana, the body becomes dead and soon disintegration and decomposing starts. It is the presence of Prana that makes life dynamic, progressive and vital. Therefore, the ancient Rishis discovered that it is Prana which is the link between the outer, visible, gross, physical body and th...